It was when the water was almost smooth again that the swans came slowly out from the shadows at the other end – their long tracks cutting the lake like curled-back metal upon metal. They calmly passed the toppled, plastic ducks, the swimming ducks and the submerged doll by the bank. The woman rose to greet them, holding up both hands with the choice bread. Her back was straight and proud.
Security
‘AND I’M NOT really supposed to sit down at all,’ said the young man. ‘Not on this kind of a job.’
‘What kind is it?’ asked the girl who’d been sitting for some time on a seat in the gallery watching her small son stumping around close to the wall of pictures. Now and then he bent to examine the look of his boots on the parquet pattern of the floor.
‘You can see, can’t you?’ the man extended his arm with the dark blue armlet. ‘It’s Security. I’m not even supposed to stand still as a matter of fact.’
‘Oh – security,’ said the young woman turning her head towards him. She glanced from his one shoulder to the other as though measuring them or rather measuring some other massive shoulders which were mysteriously missing. At the same time she took in his head with its light, longish hair, and again her eyes moved just a fraction above it as if his complement – some tall, strapping fellow – might be directly behind. She glanced at the armlet, a plain one without letters.
‘It’s not the usual band,’ he explained, ‘but, of course, its being a temporary thing makes no difference. It’s official and it’s Security.’
‘Well, if you’re not allowed to sit or stand or talk I suppose you’d better move on. Maybe I’ll see you later when you come round again.’
The security man hesitated for a moment, nodded and walked off. The girl studied his shoes as he went past.
Because it was a busy but small town, this building – the largest in the place – had been used to accommodate both Art Gallery and Museum. Everything here was on a small scale, as well as being arranged haphazardly on the time-scale. From one end of the gallery one could look through into a place of old and new machinery. On Saturdays and Sundays and on school holidays the wheels of these machines would spin and hum. At the push of a button old engine levers and the limbs of miniature cranes clicked into action, while down the length of the room, in semi-darkness, red and blue lights sparked on and off. Leading out of this was a narrow, windowless place where models of three undersized dinosaurs stood in line, jagged jaw touching scaly tail, with a bat-winged creature hovering from wires overhead. Right at the other end of the Room of Pictures an archway led through into the Room of Weapons – a history in words and pictures, with models and objects varying from Stone Age axes to the latest missiles. Further in was a display of Foodstuffs of the World – their growth and preparation. Bundles of cereal and trays of seed were here, coloured photos of fruits, plants, cattle, sheep – men fishing, hunting, building fires, women holding jars, pots, plates, mothers feeding babies, children eating, not eating, pictures of bursting cornucopia and empty food-bowls. Beyond this another archway opened into a bright room where Greece was represented by a dozen or so white marble heads looking with confidence and a marvellous serenity towards the windows. Even from the far end of the gallery it was possible for visitors to see parts of the street and, occasionally, the people who hurried past on a level with the windows. Sometimes an anxious eye outside would meet the marble gaze inside. A puffy red brow might turn momentarily as if to compare itself with the clear brow behind glass. Occasionally large birds were flung by the wind onto these windowsills while the heads remained half-smiling, calm and beautiful at all times.
The place where the young woman sat was brilliantly lit, but it was getting on towards closing-time and in the domed glass roof the afternoon light was fading. There were many blues in the paintings round the walls but the girl kept looking up at the slowly darkening blue overhead. Sometimes she would turn to watch the little boy who was beginning to trail his feet, now and then bumping softly against the wall in his padded coat, for it was nearly bed-time. The whole museum was quiet, almost deserted, but after a while the firm footsteps of the security man came slowly round again.
‘I’ve been thinking about that job of yours,’ said the girl.
‘My temporary job.’
‘Anyway, I’ve been thinking about it – the security bit. The pictures and things may be safe enough – even the dinosaurs – but I can’t say I feel it myself.’
‘Oh, so you think I’m no good at it,’ said the young man quickly. ‘There were dozens in for the job – dozens, I don’t mind telling you. But they just happened to choose me.’
‘But of course, of course! You may not be all that heavy, but it’s the reflexes that count. I daresay you’re very good on your feet – good at spotting trouble and all that.’
‘You’re right,’ said the man brightening up. ‘I am very quick on my feet. In fact at one time I was an absolutely first-rate runner.’
‘Very good. But then it isn’t really you or your job I’ve been thinking about after all. It’s that word. Security. I can’t believe in it, can you?’
The young man frowned darkly again. ‘Security here, you mean?’
‘No, no. Anywhere. I can’t believe in it. And – to be honest – yes, it’s this gallery and all the other stuff through there that put me in mind of it.’
The security man looked along the walls. Though most of the paintings seemed neither good enough nor bad enough to invite theft or slashing, there were some more striking and enigmatic. In one canvas the great surface of matt black paint tunnelled down into a well of brilliant, glossy darkness at its centre. In another a scarlet top was spinning in vast spaces of blood-flecked white, and further along an all-over pattern of thick black lines was set over rows of white ovals with dark centres. In closer focus the ovals with dots emerged as hundreds of eyes behind bars. The girl, following his glance, said that these interested her – they were better perhaps than the creamy portraits and the feathery flower-pieces. Of course, she said, she could detect a good many bad dreams amongst this lot. And for a start there was no security against bad dreams. ‘It’s just that word makes you think,’ she said. ‘Especially with a child. When you’ve got one of your own you’ll feel the same.’
It seemed a long way ahead for the young man to envisage. Nevertheless it brought him back to take another look at the little boy. He had got over his dreamy patch and was running along the wall again, stopping now and then to test the hard toes of his new boots against the ventilation gratings, then running on quicker and quicker to reach the large Still Life with Melons at the top of the room, and after a cursory glance, back again to the far end where he halted sharply at the painting of a black-striped tiger in a forest of pylons. He cautiously touched the tiger’s tail with one finger. At the same time he looked round.
‘I suppose you could say that’s one reason why I’m here,’ said the security man. ‘There’s this difficulty about bringing children in. It’s O.K. till they begin to get bored. And it’s the kids themselves I’m thinking about. Because sooner or later, you see, a vase is going to get bashed or a painting scraped. And then the child – or rather the father or mother – will be in trouble. You’d be surprised the things that can happen here.’ The little boy was now softly stroking his finger down the whole length of the painted black tail and again when he came to the tip he looked round. ‘They always know when they shouldn’t be doing it,’ brooded the young man.
The girl beckoned to the child but there was no need to call him across. He was already walking back, slowly and proudly, the way he’d come. The man stayed where he was beside the girl, but neither spoke. After some time she moved away to make another slow round of the gallery and then, taking her son by the hand, went through the archway into the adjoining room. So for a time they disappeared from the young man’s view, but not from his imagination. For the place they were now in was more familiar to him than any other part of the museum. He had a feeli
ng for history. To him there was an order and logic about the Weapons room which was lacking in the others – a steady progression from rough to smooth, from crude to functional – and all underlined by the efficient lay-out of the place. For him even the most ancient and cumbersome weapons and implements had a certain streamlined quality. The Stone Age axeheads had been shaped and used – enough for him to see the skilled hand at work. Through time the polished flints had become sharper, flatter. Later, the spears and pikes progressed from blunt to fine. He could visualize the pair in there studying the bits of armour – a paltry enough collection in his view. But their ponderous metal also held glamour for him – the smooth, hinged plates sliding the one under the other like the joints of giant insects, while the glittering anonymity of the head in its helmet resembled the anonymous heads of astronauts in the photos further on. The clumsy cannonballs, even the slow-swinging guns, had done the job at the time. The shelves of inlaid pistols in their glass case were his special pride. As for the rocket missiles with their pearl-smooth surface – they were as streamlined as the human hand could make. The security man got little satisfaction from the marbles, he enjoyed the ancient reptiles in passing, he was tolerant of the paintings. But for this particular room he had a proprietary feeling. He knew the history and the function of every object it contained.
A bell in the building reminded him of the time. There was still time to talk. The young man walked slowly through into the other room. The girl was standing against a wall of rifles slung at angles. The boy, he was thankful to see, was not running around but standing on the toes of his boots trying to look over into the high case of pistols.
‘I’m afraid they’ll be putting out the lights quite soon,’ said the man, looking at his watch. ‘But you’ve still got fifteen minutes or so. Is there anything special he’d like to see?’
‘Oh no, don’t bother,’ the woman said.
‘The boys all go for that chest of miniatures – the smallest guns in the world, the smallest flags – like toys, like wedding-cake ornaments – miniature bullets, bayonets, rifles, rockets, and most of them in working order. I can open it up.’ Bored or angry she might be – he couldn’t say which – but the few steps from one room to the other had changed things. She gave him an unfriendly look.
‘Or anything you’d like to ask?’ he tried again. She didn’t look at him or answer. The thing rankled. He was indignant at the aggression. And she was staring round the walls with a dark face. Did she think he’d invented the lot?
The small boy meantime had been quietly walking about on the backs of his heels, laboriously circling the suit of armour and balancing, with arms outstretched, between rows of spears and arrows, across to the far side of the room. The labour was too much. He straightened up suddenly onto the toes of his boots and helping himself along by the smooth side of the model rocket he stomped back into the picture gallery. For a few steps he staggered on his toes, then gave up and broke into a daring clattering gallop down the length of the room. ‘There, I knew it!’ cried the security man. The boy had tripped at a corner and landed face down on the floor. He was howling like a banshee. The mother flew back up the room after him and the young man followed slowly. But long before he reached them the crying stopped. He watched the scolding and the soothing with a certain distant envy. Already the child was up on his feet. Now he was walking off by himself staring down at a red knee and a scarred boot with the pride of one who has stroked the tails of wild beasts and got away with it.
‘Look how quickly they get over it!’ exclaimed the security man. ‘Really, for all the worrying you do – they get over everything! Our mother was the same with us at that age, and my sister’s just the same with hers. But they’re tough – really tough. Look at him! Determined nothing’s going to hurt him now or ever, that’s what he is!’
He didn’t look at the girl as he said this but straight ahead into the glass of a picture frame where he watched her winding a long scarf about her neck, ready to move off. A warning buzz came from the entrance hall beyond the marbles.
‘We’re just going,’ she said, moving towards the boy.
‘No need to hurry. You’ve got lots of time.’
He stood watching as the mother took the child by the hand, as they walked down lines of paintings past good dreams and nightmares, then back through the archway again into the Weapons room, moving quickly on by smooth and jagged blades, past flying cylinders and metal globes of war and on through a hundred knife-points, a hundred gun-points …
‘But they’re tough, tough—’ murmured the security man staring abstractedly after them. He was confused. He scarcely remembered who or what had been tough. And the two beyond were receding like creatures in a dream – not fragile, yet seeming totally exposed, disarming and unarmed. Now they were moving through the food displays between cornstacks and fruit baskets and heaped plates, through photos of rich farmland and dried up desert, past bulge-eyed famine babies and smiling feasters. He caught a last glimpse of them in the furthest room where for an instant the child hung back, turning a warm, enquiring head towards a reasoning head of stone. Then they were gone.
The security man walked slowly through the building, switching off lights. Certain lights in the entrance hall would be on all night but, far behind, the dinosaurs had withdrawn into the shadows, the colours in the paintings turned to black. The separate details of the food display – crops, seeds and fruit, the figures in the photos and the posters – had merged together. The marbles’ outline was blurred and broken. The man’s own skin, reflected from the windows as he passed, looked grey. Now there was almost total darkness through the building. What little glare there was remained in the hard, cold surfaces of metal skin inside the Weapons room.
A Field in Space
‘YEARS AGO,’ SAID Sullivan, ‘I was at a formal gathering of persons who were for the most part almost strangers to one another. Some enormous committee had been formed. I’ve forgotten now what it was all about. There were at least forty of us and naturally they were going to subdivide it into smaller and smaller committees – you know the kind of thing. Anyway we were all there – teachers, administrators, lecturers, professors, clerics and social workers, representatives from this and that organization. I remember the catering bit came into it too, for there were glasses and coffee cups on the side, and a few cheese wafers – that kind of thing. As I say what it was all about I can’t remember now. It may have been about making money for something or other. A very good cause anyway. The thing escapes me.’
‘How can the purpose escape you when you remember the cheese wafers?’ said his friend Turner.
‘It often happens. As I said it’s years ago. Sometimes you only remember odd details. For instance, the main thing, in fact the only thing, I particularly remember about this meeting was the field.’
‘I see,’ said Turner thoughtfully. ‘A field, was it? I pictured this meeting in the city. It shows how the mind runs in grooves. Why shouldn’t it be in the country after all? Good idea! A picnicking committee.’
‘But we were in a city,’ said Sullivan, ‘and in a large boardroom round a huge polished table – you must know the sort of place. They usually have portraits round the walls, going right back to wigs, and often cups and medals in a glass case donated to people for special services. Even now I can visualize right behind me on the sideboard this huge silver platter with dates on it.’
‘Why dates specially? Were they all Arabs? It was a meeting about North Sea oil, I suppose.’
‘I’m talking about dates engraved in the silver,’ said Sullivan, ‘giving the month and year it was presented or something.’
‘Anyway, you said a field interested you,’ said his friend. ‘Was it a picture of a field? You’d be unlikely to see one from a city window, I suppose. Though I know there are places even in the centre of town where you can see green grass – and I’m very thankful to live in a city where that’s still possible.’
‘Wait a bit,’ said
Sullivan. ‘After the main discussion the thing began to relax very slightly – if you can call it that. Professionals hate to be seen relaxing in public in case they’re thought to be not absolutely on the ball. Being a mixed crowd, it was in fact rather sticky at first. People slowly began to ask one another what their professions, occupations, interests were. Oh, nothing personal of course. Good heavens, no! Women, wives, children, sex, salaries, job expectancy, life expectancy and all the rest of it were kept strictly in the background. This meeting seemed a most secret society as these things tend to be. The atmosphere was discreet, very cautious, intensely subdued. Afterwards a silence fell and our chairman – a kind and charming fellow – leaned forward and said courteously to someone at the opposite side of the table, “And your field, Mr Peterson? Can you tell us something about that?”
‘A natural enough question. Most of us had answered up reasonably and promptly to the field question. You remember the kind of thing: “At present I’m working with Dr Sneddon on Demography and Roman Genetics, but I’ve been asked to take over a rather broader field on my own in the autumn,” or I remember a rather melancholy and reserved young woman telling us that she “was engaged in a study of psychometric techniques as applied in tests of intelligence, temperament and personality and the application of psychological methods to problems of human relations.” Of course there were more direct answers. I remember one formidable woman barking out brusquely “Waves and Vibrations” – without batting an eyelid – to be as brusquely echoed by the classical scholar beside her who proudly uttered the word “Hexameters!” and left it at that. One very young man from Theology – looking little more than a schoolboy – promptly gave his field as “Christian Ethics as relating to marriage and the family, social and industrial life, war and peace.” There was a fairly long pause after that. It seemed that this stripling had pretty much hogged the whole field of life for himself. A pause, then, until someone bravely chipped in that he was attempting to redress the balance between something or other on one side and something else on the other. I can’t remember what the things were at this distance, I’m afraid. What I do remember was that as luck would have it, poor fellow, we never heard the outcome of the balancing business because as he leaned back rather sharply to demonstrate it one whole leg of the chair split under him. It wasn’t enough to throw him or even stop him talking – you’ll agree, I think that very little stops talk in our particular fields except, perhaps, a plus 5 on the Richter scale earthquake. But I will admit it was unsettling – particularly the sudden splintering crack of wood. Such things are supposed to break the ice, of course, but I doubt if this chap wanted any ice broken on his behalf, and it wasn’t long before he rose to his feet with those familiar words: “my apologies… but another meeting to attend…” Well, as I’ve told you, eventually our chairman leaned across the table to this man, Peterson – a solid-looking person with a lined, brown face and those keen very pale blue eyes that are romantically supposed to belong to the seafaring kind, though they are often to be found amongst city business men and just as commonly seen in computer technicians as in birdwatchers. This man – silent up till now – responded enthusiastically to the field question. “I wouldn’t say my field has been absolutely successful,” he said. “I don’t produce a lot from the ground. On the whole it’s a silt soil, but with too much sand and not enough clay to be really fertile. As you know, if the soil feels gritty it’s a sand. If it’s sticky and silky it’s a clay, if sticky and gritty it’s sandy silt or sandy clay loam. Loam grittiness mostly means sand, silkiness means silt and stickiness means clay. But you don’t have to take it from me. I’m quoting from a book that happens to mean a lot to me.”
The Man Who Wanted to Smell Books Page 25