‘You mean the other way round, don’t you?’ said Chloe.
‘No,’ said Colin. ‘If they had time to make the machines, they wouldn’t need to do anything afterwards. What I mean is that they work in order to live instead of working in order to make machines which would let them live without having to work.’
‘It’s a bit complicated …’ was Chloe’s verdict on that.
‘No,’ said Colin, ‘it’s very simple. Of course, it would have to be done by degrees. But people waste so much time making things that wear out …’
‘But don’t you think they’d rather stay at home kissing their wives and going swimming and to the pictures? …’
‘No,’ said Colin, ‘I don’t. But only because they don’t think so themselves.’
‘But it’s not their fault if they think work is so terrific, is it?’
‘No,’ said Colin, ‘it’s not their fault. It’s because they’ve been taught that “Work is holy, good and beautiful. It counts above everything else, and the workers alone will inherit the earth”. Only things have been arranged so that they have to spend all their time working and there’s no time left for the rest of it to come true.’
‘Well, they must be stupid then!’ said Chloe.
‘Yes, of course they’re stupid,’ said Colin. ‘That’s why they agree with those people who want them to think that work is the best possible thing for them. It stops them thinking for themselves and trying to reach a state where they wouldn’t need to work any more.’
‘Let’s talk about something else,’ said Chloe. ‘Things like that are so dull. Tell me you like my hair …’
‘I’ve already said that I do …’
He lifted her up and put her on his knees. Once again he felt completely happy.
‘I’ve already told you that I love you enormously – the whole of you and every little particle and detail …’
‘Well then, start going into details,’ said Chloe, letting herself sink into Colin’s arms as cuddly as a contented cobra.
26
‘Excuse me sir,’ said Nicholas. ‘But would Mr Colin like us to stop here?’
The car had stopped at the side of the road in front of a hotel. This was the right road, solid and smooth, rippling with photogenic reflections, with perfectly cylindrical trees on both sides, lush green grass, sunshine, cows in meadows, worm-eaten fences, flowering hedgerows, orchards with apples on the trees, little mounds of autumn leaves and scattered drifts of snow here and there to prevent the landscape from becoming monotonous. There were palm-trees, mimosa and Northern pines in the garden of the hotel, and a redheaded, tousle-haired boy chasing two sheep and a drunken dog. On one side of the road the wind was blowing, and on the other it was not. You could take your choice of which side you liked best. Every other tree gave shade, and in the ditch on one side only could there be found frogs.
‘Yes, let’s stop here,’ said Colin. ‘We won’t get to the sea today, anyway.’
Nicholas opened the door and jumped out. He was wearing a splendid chauffeur’s uniform of pigskin with a very slick cap to match. He took two steps back and surveyed the car. Colin and Chloe got out too.
‘Our conveyance is considerably soiled, sir,’ said Nicholas. ‘It’s all that mud we’ve been through.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Chloe. ‘They’ll give it a wash at the hotel.’
‘Go in and see if they’ve got any rooms for us,’ said Colin, ‘and anything nutritious we can eat.’
‘Very good, sir,’ said Nicholas, smartly bringing his hand up to his cap in a more exasperating manner than ever.
The velvet-covered rail on the polished oak gates in the fence sent shivers of delight running up his spine as he put his hand on it. His footsteps crunched over the gravel path, and he went up the two steps. The glazed door gave way as he pushed it and he disappeared inside the building.
The blinds were down and it was all very quiet. The sun was gently baking the windfalls and hatching them out into fresh little green apple-trees which instantly burst into blossom and gave even smaller apples. By the third generation all that could be seen was a kind of pink and green froth in which minute apples rolled around like marbles.
A few animals were snoozing in the sun, carrying out certain of their duties by spinning time on the spot. On the windy side of the road the graminivorous ones were slyly tucking in, and rotating leaves and feathers flew with a sound like crumpled silver paper. Some sharded insects tried to fight against the current, producing a soft splashing sound like the wheels of a paddle-steamer lashing into a great lake.
Colin and Chloe, in each other’s arms, bathed in the sunshine, not saying a word, although their hearts were beating together to a boogie rhythm.
The glass door gave a little squeak. Nicholas was standing there again. His cap was on sideways and his suit was rumpled with all the buttons in the wrong holes.
‘Have they kicked you out?’ asked Colin.
‘No, sir,’ said Nicholas. ‘They will be pleased to accept Mr Colin and his wife – and they can service the car too.’
‘But whatever happened to you?’ asked Chloe.
‘Hrrm! …’ said Nicholas. ‘The manager isn’t there … so his daughter saw to me instead …’
‘Put yourself straight,’ said Colin. ‘You’re indecent.’
‘I should be grateful if Mr Colin would forgive me, sir,’ said Nicholas, ‘but I thought that the two rooms were worth a little sacrifice …’
‘Go and put your civilian clothes on,’ said Colin, ‘and start speaking normally. You’re beginning to drive me round the bend! …’
Chloe stopped to play with a little mound of snow.
The flakes, soft and cool, did not melt and stayed perfectly white.
‘Look how pretty it is,’ she said to Colin.
Underneath the snow there were primroses, cornflowers and poppies.
‘Yes,’ said Colin. ‘But you shouldn’t play with it. You’ll get cold.’
‘I shan’t!’ said Chloe, and her cough was like a rip through a gorgeous piece of wild silk.
‘Chloe dear,’ said Colin, putting his arm round her, ‘don’t cough like that. I can’t bear it!’
She left the snow which was slowly falling like baby feathers and began to glow again in the sun.
‘I don’t like that snow,’ murmured Nicholas.
He remembered himself immediately.
‘I beg Mr Colin to forgive my freedom of expression, sir.’
Colin pulled off one of his shoes and flung it straight at Nicholas’s head. Nicholas was just bending down to scrape a minute stain off his trousers and stood up in surprise to see what had happened when he heard the window crash.
‘Oh, sir! …’ said Nicholas, full of reproach. ‘That’s Mr Colin’s bedroom window!’
‘Just too bad!’ said Colin. ‘Now we’ll have a bit of fresh air … And that will teach you not to talk like an automatic idiot …’
He hopped through the hotel door, helped by Chloe. The window-pane was beginning to grow again. A thin opalescent skin was forming on the edges of the frame, shimmering and iridescent with flashes of vague mysterious colours that were constantly changing.
27
‘How did you sleep?’ asked Colin.
‘Not too badly. How about you?’ said Nicholas, like a normal human being this time.
Chloe yawned and reached for the jug of black bean-syrup.
‘That broken window stopped me sleeping,’ she said.
‘Hasn’t it healed up yet?’ asked Nicholas.
‘Not altogether,’ said Chloe. ‘The trephination is still wide enough to let a piercing draught come through. This morning there was a flurry of snow all over my chest …’
‘It’s murder,’ said Nicholas. ‘I’ll give them a piece of my mind. By the way, are we off again this morning?’
‘This afternoon,’ said Colin.
‘I’m afraid I’ll have to put on my chauffeur’s unifor
m,’ said Nicholas.
‘Oh! Nicholas …’ said Colin, ‘if you start that again … I’ll …’
‘Yes,’ said Nicholas, ‘but there’s no need to now.’
He swallowed his bowl of black bean-syrup and finished his bread and butter.
‘I’ll go and take a look at the kitchen,’ he announced, getting up and straightening his tie with a pocket brace-and-bit.
He left the room and the sound of his steps could be heard getting fainter and fainter as they drew nearer to what was in all probability the kitchen.
‘What would you like us to do today, Chloe?’ asked Colin.
‘I’d like you to kiss me, and me to kiss you,’ said Chloe.
‘Sure! …’ replied Colin. ‘And then what?’
‘And then …’ said Chloe, ‘… but I can’t say it out loud …’
‘Fine,’ said Colin, ‘but after that?’
‘After that,’ said Chloe, ‘it will be lunchtime. Hold me in your arms. I’m cold. It’s that snow …’
Sunshine floated into the room on golden waves.
‘It’s not cold here,’ said Colin.
‘No,’ said Chloe, snuggling up to him, ‘but I am. And afterwards I’ll drop a line to Alyssum …’
28
Right from the start of the street the crowd were pushing and shoving to get into the hall where Jean Pulse Heartre was going to give his lecture.
People were using all kinds of tricks to needle through the eagle eye of the chastity belt of special duty policemen who had cordoned off the district and who were there to examine every invitation card and ticket, because hundreds and thousands of forgeries were in circulation.
One group drew up in a hearse and the coppers stuck a long steel spike through the coffin, crucifying the occupants to the elm for eternity. This saved having to take them out again before the funeral and the only trouble caused was that the shrouds would be all messy when the real dead men came to use them. Others got themselves parachuted in by special plane. There were riots and fighting too at Orly to get on to the planes. A team of firemen took them for a practice target and, unlacing their hoses, squirted them straight in the bulls-eye of the battle where everybody was miserably drowned. Others, in a desperate attempt, were trying to get in through the sewers. They were being pushed down again by hob-nailed boots which jumped heavily on their knuckles every time they tried to get a hold by gripping the edges of the man-holes. The sewer rats took over from there. But nothing could dampen the spirits of these aficionados. They weren’t the same, however, as the ones who were drowning and who continued to struggle, the sounds of their efforts rising up to heaven and bouncing back off the clouds with a cavernous rumbling.
Only the pure, the really turned-on group, the intimate friends, had genuine tickets and invitation cards which could be very easily picked out from the forgeries. For this reason they slipped in unhindered between the buildings along a narrow alley which was protected every eighteen inches by a secret agent disguised as a Turkish Delight or a Mud Guard. Even so, there was still a tremendous number of genuine ticket-holders, and the hall, which was already brim-full, continued to welcome new arrivals every minute.
Chick had been there since the day before. For gold he had obtained from the doorman the right to take his place and, in order to make such a switch-over plausible, had broken the left leg of the said doorman with a surplus second-hand crowbar. There was no question of sparing his doublezoons where Heartre was concerned. Alyssum and Isis sat with him, waiting for the speaker to arrive. They had spent the night there too, anxious not to miss the great occasion. Chick, in his Sherwood green attendant’s uniform, looked as sexy as a dream. He had neglected his work badly since he had come into possession of Colin’s twenty-five thousand doublezoons.
The scampering, scurrying public was made up of some very odd types. There were bespectacled pyramidal faces with lapel-length hair, yellow dog-ends and unshaven pimples, and girls with scruffy little plaits wound round and round their skulls, and lumber-doublets worn next to the skin with Elizabethan slashings giving shadowy vistas on to moony crescents of sliced breast.
In the great hall on the ground floor, with its half-glazed ceiling half-decorated with heavy water-colours, ideal for giving birth to doubts in the minds of the audience about the fun of an existence peopled with such off-putting feminine forms, more and more people were gathering, and latecomers found they had to resort to standing on one foot at the back – the other being required to kick away any neighbours who got too close. All eyes in the cadaverous crowd were on the special box in which the Marchioness de Mauvoir sat on a throne with her retainers, insulting the temporary nature of the seating arrangements of a row of philosophers, who were perched on gallery stools, by the old-fashioned luxury of her noble elevated position.
It was almost time for the lecture, and the crowd was growing hectic. An organized din came from the back of the hall, set up by several students trying to sow seeds of revolt in the spirits of the faithful by declaiming aloud passages selected at random from The Bourbon on The Bounce by Baroness Orczy.
But Jean Pulse was drawing near. The sounds of an elephant’s trunk could be heard in the street, and Chick leaned out of his box-office window. In the far distance the silhouette of Jean Pulse emerged from an armoured howdah, under which the rough and wrinkled hide of the elephant took on a bizarre appearance in the glow of a red headlamp. At each corner of the howdah a hand-picked marksman, armed with an axe, stood at the ready. The elephant was striding its way through the crowd, and the fearsome plod of the four columns moving through the crushed bodies unrelentingly drew on. At the main gate the elephant knelt down and the specially selected marksmen got off. With a graceful leap, Heartre landed in their midst and, hacking out a path with tilting axes, the group made its way to the platform. Police closed the doors and Chick raced along a private corridor leading out behind the stage, pushing Isis and Alyssum in front of him.
Chick had cut some peep-holes in the back of the stage which was tastefully draped with hangings of festered velvet. They sat there on some cushions and waited. Just a yard in front of them Heartre was getting ready to read his notes. An extraordinary radiance emanated from his ascetic athletic body and the throng, captivated by the overpowering charm of his slightest gesture, waited anxiously for the starting signal.
Numerous were the cases of fainting due to intra-uterine exaltation which affected the female section of the audience in particular and, from their hide-out, Alyssum, Isis and Chick could distinctly hear the accelerated breathing of the twenty-four gate-crashers who had stolen in under the stage and were quietly undressing to take up less space.
‘Remember?’ asked Alyssum, looking tenderly at Chick.
‘Yes,’ said Chick. ‘That’s where we first got to know each other …’
He leaned towards Alyssum and kissed her tenderly.
‘Were you under there?’ asked Isis.
‘Mmm …’ said Alyssum. ‘It was lovely.’
‘I bet it was,’ said Isis. ‘What’s that, Chick?’
Chick was starting to open a big black box that he had with him.
‘It’s a recorder,’ he said. ‘I bought it specially for the lecture.’
‘Oh!’ said Isis. ‘What a good idea! … Now we needn’t bother to listen! …’
‘Quite,’ said Chick. ‘And when we get home we can listen to it all night long if we like – although we won’t because I don’t want to spoil the records. I’ll get copies made first and maybe I’ll get “His Martyred Void” to make a commercial pressing for me.’
‘It must have cost you a lot,’ said Isis.
‘Shhh! …’ said Chick. ‘That’s not important.’
Alyssum sighed. Such a little little sigh that she was the only one to hear it … and even she did not hear it very clearly.
‘We’re off! …’ said Chick. ‘He’s started. I put my mike amongst the others on the table so that nobody would notice.’
> Jean Pulse opened his mouth. At first all that could be heard was the clicking of the cameras. Photographers and reporters from the cinema and the press were having the time of their lives. But one of them was knocked over backwards by the rebound from his camera and a horrible confusion ensued. His furious colleagues rushed to his aid and sprinkled him with magnesium powder. He disappeared in a blinding flash to the general satisfaction of all and the police carried off to prison the ones who were left.
‘Marvellous!’ said Chick. ‘Now I’ll be the only one with any record of what’s happened!’
The audience which had been fairly well-behaved until then began to get worked up and showed its admiration for Heartre by repeated shouts and acclamations after every word he said – which made perfect understanding of what he was saying rather difficult.
‘Don’t try to grasp everything,’ said Chick. ‘We’ll listen to the recording at our leisure.’
‘Especially since we can’t hear a thing here,’ said Isis. ‘His voice isn’t as loud as a mouse’s. By the way, have you heard from Chloe?’
‘I’ve had a line from her,’ said Alyssum.
‘Did they get there safely?’
‘Yes, but they’re going to cut their honeymoon short. Chloe isn’t very well,’ said Alyssum.
‘And how’s Nicholas?’ asked Isis.
‘He’s fine. Chloe said he’s been misbehaving wickedly with the daughters of every hotel-keeper they’ve stayed with.’
‘Nicholas is OK,’ said Isis. ‘I only wonder why he’s a cook …’
‘Yes,’ said Chick, ‘it is funny.’
‘Why?’ said Alyssum. And, twisting Chick’s ear, she added, ‘I think it’s better than collecting Heartre’s books.’
‘Chloe isn’t seriously ill, is she?’ asked Isis.
‘She didn’t say what it was exactly,’ said Alyssum. ‘She just said her chest was hurting her.’
‘Chloe’s such a pretty girl,’ said Isis. ‘I can’t imagine her being ill.’
‘Oh!’ whispered Chick, ‘look! …’
Part of the ceiling was slowly lifting and a row of heads appeared. Daring admirers had just found their way in through the stained-glass window and had carried off this difficult and dangerous operation expertly. Others were pushing them from behind and the first lot were energetically gripping the edges of the raised cornice.