Complete Stories

by Kingsley Amis

  ‘And no drinks.’ Simpson had thought aloud.

  ‘Now drinks, that’s a different matter,’ the stranger said, his manner growing perceptibly warmer. ‘The pubs are open – Sunday hours, of course. In fact, I was thinking of dropping in for a pint myself. There’s a place just up there, before you get to Jermyn Street. Care to join me?’

  Simpson accepted with some relief, an emotion that changed to alarm when he realized, a minute later, that the pub in question was one he often used himself. It would be highly embarrassing to meet the 1983 Simpson in there. Then reason returned: he had only to remember to steer clear of the area when this day came round for the second time in his life, and all, or at least that much, would be well.

  He exchanged names with his companion, who was called Ernie Mullins and said he worked in a vegetable factory.

  ‘Oh, really?’ Simpson said. ‘What, er, what side of it are you on?’

  ‘Vending. Outlet apparatus inspector.’

  ‘I see. Whereabouts is this?’

  ‘South-West Area. Leatherhead. It’s not much of a job I’ve got, but it means a big part of Fetch-and-Carry’s off my mind.’

  Simpson did not like to question such a clearly basic concept as Fetch-and-Carry. Instead, he asked: ‘I suppose you get a fair amount of custom out there, these days?’

  ‘Yes, pretty fair. On a full working day we get nearly two hundred thousand, which is over half a million in a full working week. A lot more than that before the slack periods, of course. And the second week in December’s murder, when they’re buying for all that time ahead.’

  ‘That many customers in Leatherhead?’ Simpson inquired with careful casualness.

  ‘Well, there are six million people in the South-West Area now, don’t forget. I think we’re overloaded myself. People ought to have bigger deep-freezes, so they could stock up for three months instead of three weeks. But there’s not the room. Here we are.’

  They were about to enter the pub when its door was jerked open from the inside and three struggling men began to emerge. One of them (a powerful pig-faced character who turned out to be the landlord, and to whom Simpson took an instant dislike) was trying to expel another (a long-haired, heavily bearded person of about forty) with some assistance from the third (a near-replica of Ernie Mullins). All three were shouting angrily.

  ‘Fascist bastard!’ the bearded man yelled. ‘Power-structure élitist!’

  ‘Get bloody lost! Get back to your sit-in!’ This was the landlord. ‘You can’t treat me like your Board of Governors!’

  ‘You irrelevant authoritarian! You pathetic oligarch!’

  ‘Can’t you read?’ the third man demanded, pointing to a sign above the doorway that proclaimed: NO STUDENTS ALOWED.

  ‘Of course he can’t read, Joe, don’t make me laugh, he’s a student, isn’t he? Now, you, bugger off back to your boycott before I get cross! Ernie, give us a hand.’

  Not very willingly, Ernie gave a hand, and in no time, still bawling accusations of Fascism, pathos and irrelevance, the bearded man was reeling off towards the square. Simpson was introduced to the landlord, who nodded and went back into his house, and to Joe, who shook hands amiably and suggested a pint on him.

  The bar of the pub was superficially as Simpson remembered it, but he soon saw that the counter was lined with dispensing machines of various sorts, past which a thick queue was laboriously shuffling. He went along behind Joe and Ernie, and was eventually handed a large plastic beaker. When the time came, Joe put some coins into a slot on a machine marked BITTER, collected three small packets from an aperture in it, and handed one each to the other two. He led them past other machines labelled MILD, STOUT, SCOTCH, GIN, VODKER – from the last-named three, stubby pipes emerged – PORK PIE, SOSSIDGE, HAM SANGWIDGE and CRISPS. At the end of the counter, Joe took three smaller packets from a dispenser, doled out two of these as before, and nearly filled his beaker with what proved to be plain water. When the others had done the same, the trio moved away from the counter into the middle of a considerable crowd of drinkers, all standing: there was nowhere to sit down.

  Joe and Ernie, followed by Simpson, dropped their larger packets unopened into their beakers. In a few seconds they had dissolved, wrapping and all, producing a clear lightish-brown liquid. The smaller packets went in similarly, and a foamy head formed.

  ‘Cheers,’ Joe said.

  ‘Let’s be lucky,’ Ernie said.

  ‘All the best,’ Simpson said tentatively.

  This proved acceptable, and they drank. The ‘bitter’ was bland, by no means unpalatable, and without either much resemblance to the beer Simpson was used to or any particular character of its own. (He told us it bore very much the same relation to our bitter as powdered coffee to coffee.)

  ‘Well, what do you think of it?’ Ernie asked, but before Simpson could reply a sort of altercation had broken out at the bar.

  ‘Do something about it, then!’ an elderly man was repeatedly shouting at the landlord, who after a time switched off the miniature television set he had been watching and waddled impatiently up to the counter.

  ‘Give over, can’t you?’ he said. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Repair the bloody thing! I want vodka and I’m going to have vodka!’

  ‘Not this week you’re not! The machine’s broke and that’s that!’

  ‘Replace the bloody unit, then!’ the elderly man yelled. ‘Or get a mechanic on to it!’

  ‘You off your rocker? What’s a mechanic? And how can I replace it now? Look, you take a gin on the house and pipe down.’

  This was evidently thought suitable, and the hubbub died away. Simpson turned to his companions.

  ‘Bad management, running out of vodka in the middle of a holiday.’

  ‘Oh, he’s not run out,’ Joe said. ‘Just the dispensing unit gone. Might happen to anybody.’

  ‘You mean there’s plenty of the stuff around, but it isn’t coming through to the tap? Well, why can’t he take it from the bottle or the tank or whatever it is? That wouldn’t be any—’

  ‘Too much trouble, mate. You can’t expect him to do that.’

  ‘Good God! He’s got a pretty soft life, that landlord, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Has he hell! Think of Fetch-and-Carry in a place like this.’

  ‘Fetch-and-Carry?’ Though he had heard the phrase already, Simpson was now comparatively relaxed and off his guard, and for a moment he revealed his total bewilderment.

  Joe and Ernie looked at each other and seemed to make up their minds. Ernie spoke.

  ‘You’ve been inside, Simmy, haven’t you? You can tell us.’

  Simpson in his turn came to a decision. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Course you have. Nothing to be ashamed of. Goes on all the time. The wife’s brother, he was in eleven years. It’s the strain, see. Treat you all right, did they?’

  ‘Not too bad.’ (Neither then, nor later, did Simpson establish what he had been inside, whether gaol or madhouse or some new-fashioned place of confinement.)

  ‘So they ought. Well, you’ll be needing to know about Fetch-and-Carry. Where are you going to live?’

  ‘Oh … just round here.’

  ‘Fine, you’ll be South-West Area, then. The thing is, draw up your week’s timetable and stick to it. Mondays do your burnable rubbish out at the Coulsdon dump. That’ll take you the morning and some of the afternoon. Fill in the rest of the time with your shoes or the cleaners’ or your fancy shopping. Tuesday take your unburnables down to Mitcham, then fetch your meat from Epsom or your fish from Weybridge or your booze from Ascot, if you can afford any. Wednesdays you’ll want to do the Post Office, and that’s where Joe comes in. He’s in the S-W GPO at Staines.’

  ‘It’s not such a bad trip as it sounds,’ Joe said. ‘We’re pretty organized there. Shouldn’t take you more than a couple of hours to sort out your mail and any telegrams, and the
n you can go straight to your telephone period. I’ll fix that for you.’

  Simpson looked his incomprehension.

  ‘It’s easy enough. You go to your booth, see, and you take your incoming calls first is the best way to handle it. After that you make your outgoings.’

  ‘What’s happened to private phones?’

  ‘Oh, that was all stopped. They were always going wrong, and more people kept wanting one, and it was too much trouble driving out just to do the one job. The big offices and that, they run their own booth systems. Under licence from us, of course.’

  ‘Then … the whole system of services has packed up?’

  ‘They’re trying to do away with what’s left of it, yeah.’

  ‘Same with things like milk? Laundry? Newspapers?’

  ‘Same with everything, Simmy, mate. Thursdays and Fridays, now, when they bring out the dailies, you’ll find it’s a good scheme to pick ’em up at the Area newsagent in Woking, between your calls at Leatherhead and Ascot, say, about one-thirty or two.’

  ‘But, I mean, what about repairs and so on? You can’t take a whole television set or washing machine back to the shop just because some tiny thing’s gone wrong.’

  ‘Oh, can’t you? That’s what a lot of the Fetch-and-Carry’s about today. The places stay open over the slack, see, because they’re all automated. The guv’nor here’ll be off to Norwood with his vodka machine before he opens tomorrow. Not for repairs, though. Pick up a new one.’

  ‘But that’s completely uneconomic.’

  ‘Maybe it is, but it’s what you do. Only way you can save trouble.’

  Simpson tried to think. ‘So it comes to this. You do very little actual work, but you spend all your free time doing the things for yourself that it’s too much trouble for other people to do for you.’

  ‘You learn quick. That’s just how it goes. Only way they can get you to take trouble. We caught on to it first – you know, the British. Then everywhere else went down the same road. We led the way there.’

  ‘We would,’ Simpson said through his teeth.

  A silence fell between the three, though there was quite enough ambient noise from the other drinkers. Wearily, Simpson drained his beaker, and the smooth, denatured taste faded at once from his mouth. A thought struggled to the surface of his mind.

  ‘Can you get wine these days?’ he asked.

  ‘Plenty,’ Ernie said. ‘Burgundy, claret, hock, all that. I don’t go for it myself, but it’s easy enough. You pick up your wine-cakes from Ascot, stick ’em in a jug when you get home, add water, and in five minutes—’

  ‘Wine-cakes! Christ!’

  ‘Keep your voice down, mate,’ Joe advised, moving Simpson a little away from a couple of burly labouring types who had turned round with an unfriendly stare. ‘There’s alcohol in the things, same as in the beer-cakes. I don’t know how they do it, but they do. You’ll see. Come on, what about another? Forget our sorrows.’

  ‘My turn,’ Simpson said. ‘No, Ernie, let me, I’d like to.’

  ‘How are you for cash?’

  Simpson produced his wallet, which was stuffed with pound notes unimprovably forged by our Temporal Treasury. ‘That ought to be enough, oughtn’t it?’

  ‘Fine, but have you got change? Thirty pence a pint, it is.’

  ‘Ninety altogether. I can give him a pound and get ten pence change.’

  ‘Well … you can’t, Simmy, sorry. Nobody gives change any more, except at the change shops. You got to have the exact money, because it’s—’

  ‘I know!’ Simpson shrieked. This last, trivial revelation turned his mounting despair to fury. ‘It’s too much trouble! Too much trouble to hand over a coin! Too much bloody trouble! What’s the matter with you all? Oh, you two are decent enough blokes, but you’re spineless! You’ve given in to the system! You must fight it!’

  He yelled more in the same strain, but could not afterwards remember just what. Indeed, the whole situation immediately became confused. He took a swingeing punch on the ear, probably from one of the labourers who had glared at him earlier, and staggered sideways into the throng away from Ernie and Joe, whom he saw no more. Further blows fell on him, accompanied by shouts of ‘Student! Another bloody student! Let’s do this one up proper!’ The landlord arrived, not, it transpired, to separate the combatants, nor to throw Simpson out, but to join in beating him up.

  Things were looking desperate, and Simpson was dimly relinquishing hopes of ever returning to 1975, when a new arrival, previously unseen, entered the fray on his side. With swift, well-aimed punches this person disposed of the immediate opposition and hauled Simpson out into the street. They ran. Guided by his rescuer, Simpson stumbled into an alley and found himself pushed behind a fire-escape. In the middle distance were sounds of a pursuit assembling.

  ‘This is a cul-de-sac,’ Simpson panted.

  ‘That’s why they won’t look here yet,’ the other man said, breathing easily.

  ‘God, you’re in good trim. Back there, the way you—’

  ‘I ought to be. I’ve had eight years to train for this.’

  The voice was eerily familiar. So – Simpson studied it for the first time – was the face. A little balder, a little redder, but …

  ‘My God … it’s you. I mean me.’

  ‘If we stick to regarding each other as two different persons, which we are, we’ll get on better,’ Simpson II said, with the authority of one who has everything thought out in advance. ‘We’ve got a moment’s breather now. You’d better use it.’

  ‘But how do I get back?’ Simpson asked wildly, ignoring this advice.

  ‘I’ll show you. It’s all lined up.’

  ‘Why did they send you?’

  ‘I was the only really fit man on the team,’ (Simpson grinned at each of us in turn when he reached this part of his story) ‘and we didn’t dare tell anyone else. I knew the exact situation in the pub, too.’

  ‘You took your time about coming.’

  ‘Sorry. I had a long journey. And then there was traffic. Big meeting in Trafalgar Square about legalizing heroin.’

  A straggle of men calling for student blood ran inefficiently past the open end of the alley. When the sounds had died away, Simpson II pulled Simpson out of cover and led him across to a dilapidated and empty garage.

  ‘In here. Quick. Put this in your pocket.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Full report on the occupation of Mars.’

  ‘But …’ It took Simpson, flustered as he was, a moment to remember what was his official reason for being there at all. Then he recoiled. ‘But I can’t transfer something from one time to another! They’re always on about it, especially the Director. Danger of a paradox or a—’

  Speaking with great emphasis, Simpson II swept this objection aside. (Simpson, now almost cheerful, insisted on reporting verbatim the terms in which he did so.) ‘If you leave it behind, you’ll have failed in your mission so totally that you’ll never get a decent job again. And you’re going to need that for the money. And since I’ve lived through what’s going to happen to you after this, I know you’re going to have taken it with you, so get on with it and stop arguing.’

  ‘All right. Thanks.’

  ‘A pleasure.’

  Simpson was about to depart when he remembered something vital, and turned. ‘Hey, before I go – is the drink situation really quite hopeless?’

  ‘Put it this way,’ Simpson II said in a hurry, ‘the 1981 El Minya whites are almost …’

  He broke off abruptly as shouts and running footfalls came into earshot again. Propelled by his rescuer, Simpson half-fell through the garage doorway and at once the TIOPEPE grabbed him.

  ‘El Minya,’ the Director said. ‘Somewhere in Spain, no doubt. Never heard of it. Anyway, the Spanish white wines are all terrible, aren’t they? Still, I suppose when there’s nothing else …’ />
  ‘They’d be in wine-cakes like the rest of the stuff.’ Simpson’s earlier gloom had returned in full.

  Rabaiotti said nothing. I said nothing. Schneider had slipped away, perhaps to fetch the drinks we so sorely needed.

  ‘Well,’ the Director said, trying to strike a consoling note, ‘it’s just a phase, isn’t it? That’s the way to look at it. After all, everything was all right again in 2010 when you went there, Simpson. And the position couldn’t have cured itself in a couple of months.’

  ‘No, it might take twenty years. That’s 1990. Say ten of those twenty years to get things back into reasonable shape. That’s 2000. Say the 1983 situation had only been going in full for three years, which is pretty bloody optimistic. That’s 1980. So from then until 2000 or so it’ll be wine-cakes and beer-cakes. Oh, it’ll look like a phase from 2050 all right. But what good’s that?’

  ‘There’s spirits,’ Rabaiotti muttered.

  ‘I didn’t taste those. I expect they’ll make you drunk, though. Which is how I intend to be for the duration of the phase.’

  The others nodded hopelessly. Then Schneider came tearing back into the lab, a large book held open in front of him.

  ‘El Minya!’ he screeched. ‘El Minya!’

  In a moment we were clustered round him. ‘What is it? What have you—?’

  ‘I knew I knew it! It was one of the German objectives in 1943. It’s not in Spain, it’s in Egypt. On the Nile. Here, look at the atlas. Don’t you see? Israel! The only place where that Ernie chap said things were different!’

  ‘But Israel only goes up to the Suez Canal in that part,’ I objected.

  ‘Now it does! Now it does! Just the other day there was a report that they were preparing to get on the march again. The finest agriculturalists in the world! Who can make the desert blossom like a rose! Or flourish like a vine!’

  The Director looked round the circle, beaming. ‘Saved, gentlemen! No wonder you, Simpson, or rather the other you, said you’d had a long journey. All the way from Jerusalem!’