TASK. Read the text and answer the following questions.
1. Is the narrator a character in the story or an outsider, overt or covert, omniscient or not?
2. Is the narrator presented as reliable or not?
Ian McEwan
b. 1948
SWEET TOOTH
/Extract/
IT’S 1972 AND CULTURE IS THE NEW FRONT LINE OF THE COLD WAR. SERENA FROME, JUST DOWN FROM CAMBRIDGE AND
RECENTLY RECRUITED BY MI5, IS SENT FOR HER FIRST SECRET MISSION CODENAMED SWEET TOOTH TO MEET A PROMISING
YOUNG WRITER TOM HALEY.
It was a pleasant break in routine to travel down to Brighton one unseasonably warm morning in midOctober, to cross the cavernous railway station and smell the salty air and hear the falling cries of herring
gulls. I remembered the word from a summer Shakespeare production of Othello on the lawn at King's. A
gull. Was I looking for a gull?
Certainly not. I took the dilapidated three-carriage Lewes1 train and got out at the Falmer stop to walk
the quarter mile to the redbrick building site called the University of Sussex, or, as it was known in the
press for a while, Balliol-by-the-Sea2. I was wearing a red miniskirt and black jacket with high collar, black
high heels and a white patent leather shoulder bag on a short strap. Ignoring the pain in my feet, I swanked
along the paved approach to the main entrance through the student crowds, disdainful of the boys – I
regarded them as boys – shaggily dressed out of army surplus stores, and even more so of the girls with
their long plain centre-parted hair, no make-up and cheesecloth skirts. Some students were barefoot, in
sympathy, I assumed, with peasants of the undeveloped world. The very word “campus” seemed to me a
frivolous import from the USA. As I self-consciously strode towards Sir Basil Spence's3 creation in a fold
of the Sussex Downs, I felt dismissive of the idea of a new university. For the first time in my life I was
proud of my Cambridge and Newnham4 connection. How could a serious university be new? And how
could anyone resist me in my confection of red, white and black, intolerantly scissoring my way towards
the porters' desk, where I intended to ask directions?
I entered what was probably an architectural reference to a quad […] The paved way passed under the
students' union and here I turned through glass doors to a reception area. At least the porters in their
uniforms behind a long counter were familiar to me – that special breed of men with their air of weary
tolerance, and gruff certainty of being wiser than any student had ever been. With the music fading behind
me, I followed their directions, crossed a wide open space, went under giant concrete rugby posts to enter
Arts Block A and came out the other side to approach Arts Block B. Couldn't they name their buildings
after artists or philosophers? Inside, I turned down a corridor, noting the items posted on the teachers' doors.
1
Lewes - the county town of East Sussex
Balliol-by-the-Sea – another name for Sussex University, after Balliol College of the University of Oxford. Sussex was one of ‘plate-glass
universities’ built in the sixties to serve a town that didn't have a university and to cope with the demands of a growing postwar population.
Their design often contained wide expanses of plate glass in steel or concrete frames.
3
Sir Basil Spence, a Scottish architect. Author of the campus design at the University of Sussex (1960s). (McEwan got his BA degree there.)
He is also responsible for numerous other buildings in the Brutalist style where linear concrete constructions predominate.
4
Newnham College of the University of Cambridge
2
A tacked-up card that said, “The world is everything that is the case”, a Black Panthers5 poster, something
in German by Hegel6, something in French by Merleau-Ponty.7 Showoffs. Right at the end of a second
corridor was Haley's room. I hesitated outside it before knocking.
I was at the corridor's dead-end, standing by a tall, narrow window that gave onto a square of lawn. The
light was such that I had a watery reflection of myself, so I took out a comb and quickly tidied my hair and
straightened my collar. If I was slightly nervous it was because in the past weeks I had become intimate
with my own private version of Haley, I had read his thoughts on sex and deceit, pride and failure. We were
on terms already and I knew they were about to be reformed or destroyed. Whatever he was in reality would
be a surprise and probably a disappointment. As soon as we shook hands our intimacy would go into
reverse. I had re-read all the journalism on the way down to Brighton. Unlike the fiction it was sensible,
sceptical, rather schoolmasterish in tone, as if he'd supposed he was writing for ideological fools. […] With
a pearly pink painted nail I tapped lightly on the door and, at the sound of an indistinct murmur or groan,
pushed it open. I was right to have prepared myself for disappointment. It was a slight figure who rose from
his desk, slightly stooped, though he made the effort to straighten his back as he stood. He was girlishly
slender, with narrow wrists and his hand when I shook it seemed smaller and softer than mine. Skin very
pale, eyes dark green, hair dark brown and long, and cut in a style that was almost a bob.
In those first few seconds I wondered if I'd missed a trans-sexual element in the stories. He wore a
collarless shirt made of flecked white flannel, tight jeans with a broad belt and scuffed leather boots. I was
confused by him. The voice from such a delicate frame was deep, without regional accent, classless.
“Let me clear these things away so you can sit.” He shifted some books from an armless soft chair. I
thought, with a touch of annoyance, that he was letting me know that he had made no special preparations
for my arrival.
“Was your journey down all right? Would you like some coffee?” The journey was pleasant, I told him,
and I didn't need coffee. He sat down at his desk and swivelled his chair to face me, crossed an ankle over
a knee and with a little smile opened out his palms in an interrogative manner. “So, Miss Frome …”
“It rhymes with plume. But please call me Serena.”
He cocked his head to one side as he repeated my name. Then his eyes settled softly on mine and he
waited. I noted the long eyelashes. I'd rehearsed this moment and it was easy enough to lay it all out for
him. Truthfully. The work of Freedom International, its wide remit, its extensive global reach, its openmindedness and lack of ideology. He listened to me, head still cocked, and with a look of amused
scepticism, his lips quivering slightly as though at any moment he was ready to join in or take over and
make my words his own, or improve upon them. He wore the expression of a man listening to an extended
joke, anticipating an explosive punchline with held-in delight that puffs and puckers his lips. As I named
the writers and artists the Foundation had helped, I fantasised that he had already seen right through me and
had no intention of letting me know. He was forcing me to make my pitch so he could observe a liar at
close hand. Useful for a later fiction. Horrified, I pushed the idea away and forgot about it. I needed to
concentrate. I moved on to talk about the source of the Foundation's wealth. Max thought Haley should be
told just how rich Freedom International was. The money came from an endowment by the artistic widow
of a Bulgarian immigrant to the USA who had made his money buying and exploiting patents in the twenties
and thirties. In the years following his death, his wife bought up Impressionist paintings after the war from
5
The Black Panther Party – a 1960s-1970s African-American revolutionary left-wing organization.
Georg Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) – a German philosopher, a major figure in German idealism.
7
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) – a French philosopher, phenomenologist.
6
a ruined Europe at pre-war prices. In the last year of her life she had fallen for a culturally inclined politician
who was setting up the Foundation. She left her and her husband's fortune to his project.
Everything I had said so far had been the case, easily verified. Now I took my first tentative step into
mendacity. “I'll be quite frank with you,” I said. “I sometimes feel Freedom International doesn't have
enough projects to throw its money at.”
“How flattering then,” Haley said. Perhaps he saw me blush because he added, “I didn't mean to be
rude.”
“You misunderstand me, Mr Haley …”
“Tom.”
“Tom. Sorry. I put that badly. What I meant was this. There are plenty of artists being imprisoned or
oppressed by unsavoury governments. We do everything we can to help these people and get their work
known. But, of course, being censored doesn't necessarily mean a writer or sculptor is any good. For
example, we've found ourselves supporting a terrible playwright in Poland simply because his work is
banned. And we'll go on supporting him. And we've bought up any amount of rubbish by an imprisoned
Hungarian abstract impressionist. So the steering committee has decided to add another dimension to the
portfolio. We want to encourage excellence wherever we can find it, oppressed or not. We're especially
interested in young people at the beginning of their careers …”
“And how old are you, Serena?” Tom Haley leaned forward solicitously, as if asking about a serious
illness.
I told him. He was letting me know he was not to be patronised. And it was true, in my nervousness I
had taken on a distant, official tone. I needed to relax, be less pompous, I needed to call him Tom. I realised
I wasn't much good at any of this. He asked me if I'd been at university. I told him, and said the name of
my college.
“What was your subject?”
I hesitated, I tripped over my words. I hadn't expected to be asked, and suddenly mathematics sounded
suspect and without knowing what I was doing I said, “English.”
He smiled pleasantly, appearing pleased at finding common ground. “I suppose you got a brilliant first?”
“A two one actually.” I didn't know what I was saying. A third sounded shameful, a first would have
set me on dangerous ground. I had told two unnecessary lies. Bad form. For all I knew, a phone call to
Newnham would establish there had been no Serena Frome doing English. I hadn't expected to be
interrogated. Such basic preparatory work, and I'd failed to do it. Why hadn't Max thought of helping me
towards a decent watertight personal story? I felt flustered and sweaty, I imagined myself jumping up
without a word, snatching up my bag, fleeing from the room.