Old Tom - a comment on scepticism
The whole village would agree that old Tom isn't the man he used to be. In the past he strode purposely; nowadays he shuffles. The military-style cane he now leans on used to be tucked proudly under his right arm. As he approached you, straight-backed, held head high, his eyes would challenge you to pay attention and he would greet you with a formal nod and a good morning. Now his eyes are fixed on his toes, and is greetings undecipherable murmurings if they are anything at all. No one knows this for sure, but he is reputed to have been a sergeant-major during the war. And everyone knew him for certain as a hard but fair foreman in the local mines after it. But the respect his reputation had earned him had now been replaced by a sorrowful pity that overwhelms the villagers whenever they see him.
The previous Old Tom was a man who knew everything, a man whose unquestioning certainty gave him an internal confidence which proved impermeable to any attempts to separate him from his opinions. These opinions held sway in the village pub, every Thursday afternoon, between two and four, when Tom met his cronies for a weekly pint and a blether. A lot of blethering, in fact! The landlord called it the 'pub philosophy club'. Every topic was covered, every problem solved. No crisis was too catastrophic, no trauma too troublesome, no situation too sensitive, for Tom's deep and wide knowledge and cool and calm logic to resolve. If only the great and the good had taken the time to listen in, how much better a place would the the world be now!
But that was before Bill moved into the village. An enterprising developer had bought up a row of derelict miners' cottages and refitted them in the modern traditional style, and Bill was swept in with a load of artists, antique dealers and university lecturers. Like Tom, Bill was retired, but from what no one has been able to find out. The popular hypothesis is that he was some kind of teacher, but some locals with a wilder imagination propagated the legend that he had unsavoury connections with the secret services. There was certainly something clandestine about Bill. Most people say more than they know, but Bill gave the distinct impression of always knowing more than he was saying. When he spoke, he restricted himself to the question form, so that after
a conversation with him you felt as if you had been thoroughly interrogated. These, together with being an outsider of unknown origins, meant that the villagers just didn't take to him at all. So when the members of the 'pub philosophy pub' began to put it about that Bill was the cause of Old Tom's troubles, the village was only too ready to believe it. And to be honest, there was an element of truth in the rumour. The facts of the matter are these.
Soon after he moved in, Bill took to visiting the pub every afternoon where he allowed himself one glass of gin and tonic. Anyone who drinks gin and tonic in a working class mining village can hardly be said to be making an effort to fit in, but whether Bill did it out of ignorance, defiance or just plain cussedness was just one more of the enigmatic mysteries that surrounded him. In any case, his choice of refreshment left him pretty isolated in the bar, and if he wanted a bit of company he would have to take the initiative himself. So, one Thursday afternoon, having noted on his previous Thursday visits the animated discussions going on in the back of the room, Bill asked the landlord,
"What's going on over there?"
"That's just the pub philosophy club," he was told.
So Bill shuffled over to the table, because he was interested in philosophy, because he hoped to pick up at bit of information for his spymasters, or just because he wanted a bit of company, who can tell?
"May I join you?" he asked, sitting down before anyone could refuse.
The others looked at him for a minute, then carried on talking as if he wasn't there. But Bill sat on, and this was how he managed to acquire the status of an associate, never a full, member of the pub philosophy club.
For the first few Thursdays, Bill contented himself with listening. The membership began to acknowledge his presence with a grunt, without ever addressing him directly. Acceptance into small communities never comes quickly. Eventually, Bill began to impose himself in the conversations in his usual manner, by injecting troublesome questions at inopportune moments. "Why is the British interest more important than those of other nations?" "What makes you think that women should have the same rights as men?" "Isn't it sometimes necessary to have a dictatorship?"
These sort of questions always got right up Old Tom's nose. In his view, a lot of things were self-evident and to question them was
to reveal yourself as either an idiot or, worse still, a traitor to Britain and the great British culture. Old Tom tended to treat Bill's questions with the contempt he felt they deserved, either by ignoring them completely or fixing the enquirer with a hostile stare before moving on to the next part of his argument. The others, of course, followed his lead, but the lack of response never seemed to damp Bill's enthusiasm and the questions kept coming.
Things came to a head one Thursday when the group seemed a little stuck for a topic to discuss. It was the football close season, parliament was in recess and no politicians, or even celebrities, had been up to any noteworthy mischief. The group were sitting in silence when Bill sidled over with his gin and tonic. So, to break the ice, he asked,
"What if the world wasn't the way it is, but was completely different?"
Well, this was just too much for Old Tom. I mean, how much stupidity could a man be expected to tolerate? Silence, or even a frosty look, was a completely inadequate response to such an inane thought.
"If the world wasn't the way it was," he muttered, angrily, "it wouldn't be the world, would it? It would be something else."
Tom's acolytes smiled. Old Tom certainly had the unwanted interloper there. But Bill wasn't finished.
"Why would the world not be the world if it was a bit different?" he added.
Tom resorted to his cold stare, and initiated a discussion on the oil price, the economy and how the vested interests of the rich and powerful always overcame the needs and rights of the working man. It seemed as if normal service had been resumed, but, as Old Tom's disciples were to discover, they had just witnessed the beginning of the end.
Old Tom appeared for the meeting on the next Thursday, but took no active part. The main agenda seemed to be the role of Britain in maintaining world peace, a subject on which Tom was known to have strong views, as he did on everything. But he sat there in silence, listening to his old friends putting forward their opinions, which were in fact his opinions recycled second-hand. The landlord, looking over from the bar, noticed that Old Tom seemed mostly uninterested in the proceedings, his eyes coming alive only when Bill interjected one of his previously unwanted and senseless questions. These questions were, of course, dealt with by the group as before, by being ignored, the old members following Old Tom's unofficial but unchallenged guidelines, and each time Tom' eyes sank back into a disappointed disinterest. According to the landlord's testimony, Tom was slumped when he came into
the pub that Thursday, but was slumped even more when he left.
These then are the public facts of the matter, which wafted around the village with the usual distortions and additions that rumours accumulate in their travels. But in itself this public knowledge doesn't solve the mystery. The reasons for the changes in Old Tom are private, behind the closed doors of Tom's home, and in the secret recesses of his mind.
"Why would the world not be the world if it was a bit different?"
Although Old Tom had dismissed this question in his usual offhand way when Bill had raised it, it came back to bother him again and again during following week. It kept him awake at night, demanding, so it seemed, some kind of answer. It made him think about
himself. As a child he had been 'little Tom', in the army 'young Tom'. Down the mines he had been 'Mr Tom' to his subordinates, and now he was 'Old Tom'. So many Toms, and, when he thought about it, all so different. And yet, he was sure, they were fundamentally the same Tom, he still was who he was. He wasn't someone else because he had changed over time.
He went for his usual walks along the river, stopping at the bank and gazing into the water. This river had been there for centuries, much, much longer than when the mines had been sunk below the ground and the houses built above it. Yet, watching a floating leaf speed downstream, it struck him that the actual water in any part of the river changed very few seconds. So was it the same river or a constant procession of new rivers? Once you start questioning, everything seems so uncertain.
By the end of that week, poor Old Tom didn't have an opinion left. He could no longer be certain about anything. He was distracted, so deep in thought trying to find answers that he was oblivious to the rest of the world. And he was depressed as the answers refused to come. Quite simply, to those how knew him he had just suddenly 'lost it'.
It's been a few months since these events took place, and I'm pleased to report that Old Tom seems to be improving a little. Now he
occasionally notices people when they pass him. He didn't say anything at the "pub philosophy club's" meetings for months, but now, once or twice during the afternoon, his voice can be heard. But only ever to ask an occasional question.
James Gault June 2012
Published in OUDCE Philosophy Review 2013.