‘I’ll have what? Oh yes, I’ve dined.’
‘I too. Rather well, in fact, as perhaps you’ve already inferred. I’m speaking from, where am I speaking from, yes, of course, I’m speaking from my club. There’s been a slight difference of opinion here, not to say an argument, which you may be able to settle. Now. How would you, how do you pronounce T,I,S,S,U,E, as in the kind of paper?’
‘Well, tissue, to rhyme with, er, miss-you, for instance.’
‘I understand. Not like,’ and here Jimmie paused for so long that Gordon thought he must have moved on elsewhere, perhaps in search of a taxi, until he came back on the line to say, ‘Not like atishoo, the comic or fanciful representation of a sneeze. Just so. I’m greatly obliged to you, my dear Gordon, and good night.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Oh my dear fellow, I do hope I haven’t got you out of bed, have I?’
‘No no, I assure you. I was just wondering what the argument was about.’
But Jimmie had disconnected before Gordon had done more than start his second statement.
‘I was just wondering what the argument was about,’ said Gordon to Jimmie again. This time he said it not over the telephone but face to face or near enough, in the hall of Gray’s club. Not wishing on the whole to have to go in search of Jimmie all over the building, which he had never visited before, Gordon had told the porter who was expecting him and had himself waited here in the hall.
At least he had hoped the fellow was the or a porter. There had been a moment of slight and wordless misunderstanding when, meeting some difficulty with the glass door from the street, Gordon had seen through the pane a man coming towards him who looked no older and was better dressed than he and whom he had briefly taken for a member of the club on his way out. From the change in this man’s demeanour at Gordon’s inquiring reference to Mr Fane, it was easy to guess that he for his part revised any first impression that the newcomer might have been some artisan or workman, arrived at the club to repair its dishwasher, say. All was quickly well, and no more than a couple of dukes or millionaires had put their heads round the corner to look him over when Jimmie himself arrived, full of total memory of who Gordon was and what he was doing there. After some irresolution on both sides Gordon had reminded him of the recent telephone-call.
‘Oh good God yes,’ said Jimmie amiably, ‘I should have explained there and then but I didn’t want to take up your time. I’d dined here, rather well as perhaps you inferred, and Johnnie Wessex and I and one or two others had got into some sort of barney about language and pronunciation, a prime concern of mine as you must know, Gordon. I won’t bore you with an account of their rather unthinking points of view but I was taking the line that the old natural way of speaking, among reasonably well-educated and thoughtful people, was being, how shall I put it, was becoming eroded by creeping pedantry. Creeping pedantry,’ he repeated, making no move in the direction of the inner parts of the club where food and drink were presumably to be found. ‘Whenever I turn on the wireless or the television I hear the announcer putting in glottal stops in places where they’ve no business to be, they talk about the I R A,’ said Jimmie with a little explosion of breath before the name of each letter, and I expect they call it the R A F,’ similarly enunciated, ‘and in no time every English word that begins with a vowel or vowel sound or looks as if it does will begin with a confounded glottal stop. Have I told you all this before, dear boy?’
Gordon hesitated. ‘No,’ he said, it’s true you’ve mentioned glottal stops before, but then they were part of an attack on Americans.’
‘Americans?’
‘Yes. You said it went to show how German they were.’
‘When was this supposed to be?’
‘It was in the taxi on the way to Cakebread’s. That restaurant.’
‘An excellent place, let it be said.’ Jimmie spoke strongly, as if contesting disparagement. ‘Excellent, what I had was first-rate.’
‘I’m glad you enjoyed it.’
‘You did get my note thanking you for the occasion?’
‘I must have done.’
‘Oh dear, these days I’m quite capable of having forgotten to post it. I’m afraid I’ve always been scatterbrained in such regards and of course in recent years I’ve deteriorated even from what I was. Which is not to say I make no sense any longer. On the contrary, let me remind you that we were talking of pedantry in pronunciation and I was saying I come across it whenever I switch on any broadcasting device. Any moment now I expect to hear somebody talking about whenever or how-ever. The traditional way of saying such words is I should have thought quite sufficiently comprehensible, don’t you agree?’
‘Yes,’ said Gordon. He did agree. More than that, if Jimmie wanted to talk about ways of saying words it would have been impolitic and almost certainly useless to try and prevent him. On the other hand, something seemed to be needed to shift them from the kind of padded pews that, still in the hall, they had settled companionably down on. At that moment he caught sight of a youngish man, doubtless heir to a fortune or a marquisate or both, who had evidently come to peer at them. More to the point, he held a drink in his hand, a reasonably powerful-looking one, and it was not every day that Gordon felt he could do with a drink, but today was such a day. He swallowed furtively.
Jimmie had been going on, ‘I take as part of the same undesirable phenomenon that it’s becoming fashionable in ordinary speech, not just in song to give unstressed vowels their full value, not only Manchester and observer but, well, caramel and condom and no doubt plenty of others. I say, would you fancy a drink perhaps?’
‘Yes, I rather would.’ Gordon tried to sound unequivocal without seeming to have no room for any other thought. ‘What a good idea.’
‘Oh. I’m terribly sorry, my dear fellow,’ cried Jimmie, ‘I do so clearly see that on a day like today you would be feeling in particular need of a wee tassie.’
Since the day was neither particularly cold nor rainy nor windy, in fact rather clement for the time of year, nor yet the notorious anniversary of the battle of Flodden, say, Gordon could not fully understand what was meant. He made a vague noise designed to show that there was no ill feeling on his side at least.
‘How very thoughtless of me. We must repair that discreditable oversight with all speed.’ Jimmie looked at his wrist-watch, a piece that displayed its merit by being large rather than small. ‘However it might be easier if I just rounded off this point while it’s fresh in my mind. Fowler remarks somewhere that when reciting a sentence like, for instance, Hunt has hurt his head – m’m? – it’s as important not to pronounce the initial H in has and his as it is to pronounce it in Hunt, hurt and head. Yet we hear trained actors bleating of their inamorata that they love her and villains growling that they must kill him. Years ago, much farther back than they remember, their ancestors decided to proclaim that they knew how to speak proper …’
As a conscientious but exhausted watchman might strive to keep awake, so Gordon fought to go on taking in what Jimmie was saying, and failed. He was beset by longing less for a drink than simply to be elsewhere, not necessarily far away, the next room would do, even at a pinch some unoccupied corner of this one, but it was not to be. What was to be took place quite soon after all.
‘… not a very momentous sound-shift, but I think it is starting to happen,’ said Jimmie. ‘And now we simply must have that drink. You’d have got it earlier if you hadn’t been so patient with me when I was going full tilt on my hobby-horse, or one of them. Ridiculous of me. Anyway, what will you have?’
They stood now in the bar, which was rather more like an immensely