Paradise News

by David Lodge

  “Phew! We went the wrong way after Customs,” said the lady in the blue jumper. “A fine thing if we’d missed our connection, what would Terry have said, turning up at Honolulu airport and us not there?”

  “We nearly missed our flight from East Midlands this morning, the traffic was that bad on the Ring Road,” said the lady in the yellow frock.

  “Terry said he’s bringing a very special friend, that he wants us to meet. I expect she’ll be at the airport with him.”

  “Brian wouldn’t have gone that way himself, but we took a taxi to save the expense of parking the car, it’s shocking what they charge, isn’t it?”

  “He’s doing ever so well at his photography, he works for all the top fashion magazines down under. I said to Sidney, I wouldn’t be surprised if his girlfriend’s a model.”

  “Brian’s very interested in photography too, only as a hobby of course, he has a business to run.”

  “Business, eh?” said Sidney.

  “Yeah. Sunbeds, rentals and sales,” said Brian. “We were doing all right until about a year ago, but business hasn’t been so good lately. I put it down to all these scaremongering articles about skin cancer. Written by thickheads who don’t even know the difference between UVA and UVB.”

  “Er, what…?”

  “Ultraviolet A and Ultraviolet B. They’re the two types of radiation that make you tan.”

  “Oh.”

  “UVA reacts with the melanin in the dead cells of your outer skin –”

  “Dead cells?” said Sidney uneasily.

  “Dead and dying,” said Brian. “It goes on all the time. The UVA reacts with the melanin to make you brown. The UVB makes you burn. The sun gives out both types of radiation, but sunbeds are mostly UVA, so they’re much better for you. Stands to reason.”

  “Use one yoursef, do you?”

  “Me? No, well, I’m allergic, see. It happens to about one in a thousand. For most people, though, they’re safe as houses. I could let you have one cheap if you’re interested.”

  “Me? Oh, no thanks. I got to be careful.”

  “To tell you the truth, I could let you have about a hundred and fifty of ’em cheap. We’re thinking of moving into exercise machines instead.”

  The tram delivered the Travelwise party to Terminal Seven, and they were conveyed by more escalators and moving walkways to the lounge where they were to wait for their onward connection. The two middle-aged couples chattered indefatigably as they were borne along.

  “Well it’s time he got married, I was only saying to Sidney the other week, it’s time Terry settled down, his life seems to be one long round of pleasure, parties, restuarants, surfing, it’s all very well but you can wait too long to start a family. Have you got children?”

  “Two boys. We’ve left them in charge of the house, with my mother. Well, you don’t want kids with you on a second honeymoon, do you?”

  “I’ve got a married daughter, she lives in Crawley, her husband’s in computers. They’ve got a lovely house, a twenty-foot through living-room, and fitted kitchen in light oak. Sidney did the bathroom for them as a wedding present, circular bath, built-in jacuzzi, gold taps. He was in the trade you see.”

  “Builder, are you?” Brian asked.

  “Was. Plumbing and central heating. Luxury bathrooms. Just me and three men. I had to sell the business.”

  “Do all right out of it?”

  “Just about enough to retire on.”

  “You’re not looking for a little investment opportunity?”

  “No thanks.”

  “The thing about exercise machines is, they’re boring. You ever tried one? Well, take my word for it, they’re dead boring. That’s why people wear Walkmans while they’re using them. Now, my idea is, instead of buying say, a rowing machine, and all you do every day is row row row, or a cycle machine, and all you do is pedal pedal pedal, you take out a rental agreement with us and we change your machine every month. Like a travelling library. An exercise-machine library. What d’you think?”

  “Wouldn’t do for me, I’m afraid. Or, rather, it would do for me. Dicky heart, you see. I had to retire early, doctor’s orders.”

  “But they’re very good for the heart, exercise machines! Just what you need.”

  “What you going to do with the sunbeds, then?”

  “Flog ’em for what I can get. I thought I’d try some of the hotels in Honolulu.”

  Sidney laughed uncertainly. “I wouldn’t have thought there’d be much call for sunbeds in Hawaii.”

  “Don’t suppose there is. But if I make a few business calls while I’m there, it means I can write the whole trip off against tax, see? Beryl being down as my personal assistant, of course.”

  “Oh, I see. Clever,” said Sidney.

  The other Travelwise passengers did not fraternize, but they congregated in the same part of the departure lounge, and kept a watchful eye on each other as a precaution against missing the call for their flight to Honolulu. The lounge overlooked a runway, and from its windows you could watch the planes coming in to land. Bernard gazed, fascinated, at the sky above the horizon. Every minute or so a dot appeared in the middle of this space, a tiny, glowing dot, like a star, and gradually increased in size, until it revealed itself to be a large jet plane, with its flaps down and its landing lights on. It slowly sank towards the ground, its wheels hit the runway with a puff of smoke, and seconds later it raced past, huge, heavy and dangerous, out of his vision; and Bernard looked again at the apparently blank sky until, sure enough, another dot appeared, like a small, glowing seed, and grew into another plane.

  “Something interesting out there?”

  Bernard turned to find the man in the beige safari suit standing beside him. “Just the planes coming in to land. Every minute or so, regular as clockwork. I suppose this must be one of the busiest airports in the world.”

  “No, not even in the top ten, actually.”

  “Really?”

  “Chicago’s O’Hare is the busiest in terms of traffic movements. Heathrow handles more international flights, and the most passengers.”

  “You seem to know a lot about it,” said Bernard.

  “Professional interest.”

  “You’re in the travel business?”

  “In a way. I’m an anthropologist, my field’s tourism. I teach at South-West London Poly.”

  Bernard examined him with more interest. He had a bald, domed head, though he looked no more than thirty-five or six, and a heavy lower jaw, now covered with a harsh black stubble, like magnetized iron filings.

  “Really?” said Bernard. “I’d no idea that tourism came into anthropology.”

  “Oh yes, it’s a growth subject. We get lots of fee-paying students from overseas – that makes us popular with the admin boys. And there’s bags of money available for research. Impact studies … Attractivity studies … Trad anthropologists look down their noses at us, of course, but they’re just envious. When I was starting my PhD, my supervisor wanted me to study some obscure African tribe called the Oof. They have no future tense, apparently, and only wash at the summer and winter solstices.”

  “How very interesting,” said Bernard.

  “Yes, but nobody’s going to give you a decent grant to study the Oof. And anyway, who’d want to spend two years in a mud hut surrounded by a lot of stinking savages who don’t even have a word for ‘tomorrow’? In my line of research I get to stay in three-star hotels, at least three-star … My name’s Sheldrake, by the way, Roger Sheldrake. You may have come across a book of mine called Sightseeing. Surrey University Press.”

  “No, I haven’t, I’m afraid.”

  “Ah. Only I gathered you’re an academic yourself. I couldn’t help hearing your father – is it? – on the plane …” Sheldrake jerked his formidable chin in the direction of Mr Walsh, who was slumped in a seat nearby with the numbed, haggard look of a refugee in a transit camp. “He said you were a theologian.”

  “Well, I teach in a
theological college.”

  “You’re not a believer?”

  “No.”

  “Ideal,” said Sheldrake. “I’m interested in religion myself, obliquely,” said Sheldrake. “The thesis of my book is that sightseeing is a substitute for religious ritual. The sightseeing tour as secular pilgrimage. Accumulation of grace by visiting the shrines of high culture. Souvenirs as relics. Guidebooks as devotional aids. You get the picture.”

  “Very interesting,” said Bernard. “So this is a sort of busman’s holiday?” He indicated the Travelwise label on Sheldrake’s stainless-steel attaché case.

  “Good Lord, no,” said Sheldrake with a mirthless smile. “I never go on holiday. That’s why I moved into this field in the first place. I always hated holidays, even as a kid. Such a waste of time, sitting on the beach, making sandpies, when you could be at home doing some interesting hobby. Then, when I got engaged, we were both students at the time, my fiancée insisted on dragging me off to Europe to see the sights: Paris, Venice, Florence, the usual things. Bored the pants off me, till one day, sitting on a lump of rock beside the Parthenon, watching the tourists milling about, clicking their cameras, talking to each other in umpteen different languages, it suddenly struck me: tourism is the new world religion. Catholics, Protestants, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists – the one thing they have in common is they all believe in the importance of seeing the Parthenon. Or the Sistine Chapel, or the Eiffel Tower. I decided to make it my PhD subject. Never looked back. No, the Travelwise package is a research grant in kind. The British Association of Travel Agents are paying for it. They think it’s good PR to subsidize a bit of academic research now and again. Little do they know.” He grinned mirthlessly again.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “I’m doing to tourism what Marx did to capitalism, what Freud did to family life. Deconstructing it. You see, I don’t think people really want to go on holiday, any more than they really want to go to church. They’ve been brainwashed into thinking it will do them good, or make them happy. In fact surveys show that holidays cause incredible amounts of stress.”

  “These people look cheerful enough,” said Bernard, gesturing at the passengers waiting to board the flight to Honolulu. There were now quite a lot of them, as the time of departure neared: mostly Americans, dressed in garish casual clothes, some in shorts and sandals as if ready to walk straight off the plane on to the beach. There was a rising babble of drawling, twanging accents, loud laughter, shouts and whoops.

  “An artificial cheerfulness,” said Sheldrake. “Fuelled by double martinis in many cases, I wouldn’t be surprised. They know how people going on vacation are supposed to behave. They have learned how to do it. Look deep into their eyes and you will see anxiety and dread.”

  “Look deep into anybody’s eyes, and that’s what you will see. Look into mine,” Bernard thought of saying; but instead he said: “So you’re going to study sightseeing in Hawaii?”

  “No, no, it’s a different type of tourism. Sightseeing’s not the real selling point of the long-haul beach holiday: Mauritius, the Seychelles, the Caribbean, Hawaii. Look at this –” He whipped out of his briefcase a holiday brochure, and held it up in front of Bernard, concealing with his hand the printed legend on the front cover. It featured a coloured photograph of a tropical beach – brilliantly blue sea and sky, blindingly white sand, with a couple of listless human figures in the middle distance reclining in the shade of a green palm tree. “What does that image say to you?”

  “Your passport to paradise,” said Bernard.

  Sheldrake looked disconcerted. “You’ve seen it before,” he said accusingly, removing his hand to reveal these very words.

  “Yes. It’s the Travelwise brochure,” Bernard pointed out.

  “Is it?” Sheldrake examined the brochure more closely. “So it is. Never mind, they’re all the same, these brochures. I’ve got a bundle of them in here, same picture, same caption on every one, more or less. Paradise. It bears no resemblance to reality, of course.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “Six million people visited Hawaii last year. I don’t imagine many of them found a beach as deserted as this one, do you? It’s a myth. That’s what my next book is going to be about, tourism and the myth of paradise. That’s why I’m telling you all this. Thought you might give me some ideas.”

  “Me?”

  “Well, it’s religion again, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose it is … What exactly are you hoping to achieve with your research?”

  “To save the world,” Sheldrake replied solemnly.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Tourism is wearing out the planet.” Sheldrake delved into his silvery attaché case again and brought out a sheaf of press-cuttings marked with yellow highlighter. He flipped through them. “The footpaths in the Lake District have become trenches. The frescoes in the Sistine Chapel are being damaged by the breath and body-heat of spectators. A hundred and eight people enter Notre Dame every minute: their feet are eroding the floor and the buses that bring them there are rotting the stonework with exhaust fumes. Pollution from cars queuing to get to Alpine ski resorts is killing the trees and causing avalanches and landslides. The Mediterranean is like a toilet without a chain: you have a one in six chance of getting an infection if you swim in it. In 1987 they had to close Venice one day because it was full. In 1963 forty-four people went down the Colorado river on a raft, now there are a thousand trips a day. In 1939 a million people travelled abroad; last year it was four hundred million. By the year two thousand there could be six hundred and fifty million international travellers, and five times as many people travelling in their own countries. The mere consumption of energy entailed is stupendous.”

  “My goodness,” said Bernard.

  “The only way to put a stop to it, short of legislation, is to demonstrate to people that they aren’t really enjoying themselves when they go on holiday, but engaging in a superstitious ritual. It’s no coincidence that tourism arose just as religion went into decline. It’s the new opium of the people, and must be exposed as such.”

  “Won’t you do yourself out of a job, if you’re successful?” said Bernard.

  “I don’t think there’s any immediate risk of that,” said Sheldrake, surveying the crowded lounge.

  At that moment there was a stirring in the waiting area and a surge of passengers towards the gate, as a member of the airline ground staff was observed to pick up a microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, we shall begin boarding with rows thirty-seven through forty-six,” he announced.

  “That’s us,” said Bernard. “I’d better get my father on his feet.”

  “I’m in row twenty-one,” said Sheldrake, examining his boarding pass. “And it looks as if the plane will be full. Pity, I’d like to pick your brains. Perhaps we might get together in Honolulu. Where are you staying?”

  “I don’t know yet,” said Bernard.

  “I’m at the Wyatt Imperial. Best hotel in the Travelwise brochure. Thirty pounds a day supplement, or would be if I was paying for myself. Come and have a drink one day.”

  “That’s very nice of you,” says Bernard. “I’ll have to see. I don’t know how busy I’ll be. I’m not on holiday either, you see.”

  “No, so I gathered,” said Sheldrake, glancing at Mr Walsh.

  4

  ALL DAY THEY had been chasing the sun, but while they waited for their connection at Los Angeles it had got well ahead of them, and during the flight to Hawaii darkness overtook the plane. Bernard had a window seat, but could see from it only a black abyss. In the airline’s complimentary magazine he found a route map which showed no trace of land between the West Coast of America and the Hawaiian islands, a distance of two and a half thousand miles. What if something went wrong with the aircraft? What if the engines suddenly stopped? It was a thought that didn’t seem to be troubling anyone else aboard the plane. The stewardesses, wearing flowers in their hair and brightly coloured flora
l print sarongs, had been lavish with complimentary drinks before, during and after dinner, and there was a party mood in the cabin. The big American men sauntered up and down the aisles, plastic glasses clamped in their fists, as if they were in a pub or club: they leaned over the backs of seats to gossip, slapped each other’s shoulders and guffawed heartily at each other’s jokes. Bernard envied their confident demeanour. He always felt as if he should raise his hand and ask permission from the cabin crew to leave his seat. Seeing Roger Sheldrake coming down the aisle on the other side of the plane, he hid his face behind the magazine. He didn’t feel ready for another seminar on tourism just yet, and he was anxious not to disturb his father, who was mercifully asleep. Bernard had forbidden him an aperitif, but had allowed him a quarter-bottle of Californian burgundy with his chicken teriyaki, and that had been enough to send him off.