The Anti-Death League

by Kingsley Amis

  "There weren't any embraces to speak of."

  "I'm sorry to hear that. How hard did you try?"

  "I didn't try at all. She's not the sort of girl you want to rush things with."

  "Every girl is that sort of girl."

  Naidu took a quick pull at his drink.

  "You don't know anything about it, Max," said Churchill.

  "Oh yes I do, my dear boy. I could see the way you were looking at her in the pub, and the way you weren't looking at anything in particular for the rest of the evening, except at your watch every ten minutes or so. She's very beautiful and that's a danger in itself to somebody like you. Before you know where you are you'll be falling in love with her. If indeed you haven't already."

  "I can't see anything against that."

  "You will, James, you will. All emotional attachments are bad. Get what there is to be got out of somebody without undue effort and then pass on to the next. It's better for everyone that way."

  "If I may come butting in here," said Naidu, "I dislike hearing James's romantic sentiments trampled underfoot in this manner. It's right and proper that a young man should hold these views and be respectful towards womankind and so on. He should not be laughed at, Max."

  "I'm not laughing at him. I'm trying to warn him. It won't do any good, I suppose. Well, who is she, James? I haven't seen her behind the bar there before. Where does she come from?"

  "You'd seen her before, Moti. That day at the hospital when we went to visit Max."

  "Of course. Standing on the path. I remember your being… struck by her then. But what a remarkable coincidence."

  "That's not good," said Hunter. "He'll start thinking it's fate and all the rest of the rigmarole. So she's another of Dr. Best's clients. Did she say anything about him? What was his diagnosis of her?"

  Churchill grinned. "I'll give you one guess."

  "Oh, no. Not suppressed lesbianism? You know, there must have been something in that man's childhood that gave him a morbid dread of the obvious. Anyway, come on. You still haven't told us about her."

  "I don't know what you want to know. She's got a husband but he isn't around. She's staying with this Lady Hazell woman you've probably heard about. But she doesn't, my girl, she's called Catharine, she doesn't join in the orgies."

  Churchill looked defensively at Hunter, who made to speak but remained silent.

  "Even so," said Naidu, "not a very salubrious environment, from all I gather."

  "Ross-Donaldson was telling me about that evening the two of you were there," said Hunter. "It sounds fascinating. Why don't we all four drive over some time? You could call on your light of love, James, and you could inspect the architectural layout and grounds, Moti, and Willie-surely there must be something for Willie to look at."

  "There's a library nobody's been near for God knows how long, Catharine says."

  "The very thing. He could write an article about it for this newspaper of his or magazine or whatever. Has he had much stuff sent in, do you know?"

  "It's early days yet."

  "I suppose so. You'll have to write him a sonnet to Catharine."

  "I wouldn't know how to start. What would you do over at Lucy's?"

  "Me? Oh, I'd go to bed with her. What else? It would probably be an experience. And my sex-life hasn't been very full recently. I don't like that. A chap tends to brood, and that's unattractive. Look at poor Brian Leonard. He'd be so much better company if he could get his end in occasionally. And probably better at catching spies too. Oh. Now that is a thought."

  "What is?"

  "The Colonel's always saying he's got his money on some local temptress-seductress type as the most likely sort of spy. Of course, the old devil's building up to going over to Lucy's himself and giving her an official inspection. But why can't we introduce the idea to Brian? All we need is one of her friends tipping him off that while reclining voluptuously on her divan she got curious about what's going on up here. Ross-Donaldson would do it if you won't."

  "What would be the point?"

  "My vivid mental picture of Lady Hazell's set-up convinces me that it's the very place for Brian. It would do him good. I can just see him with a parrot stuck to his shoulder, cross-questioning Lucy about her political affiliations."

  A car could be heard approaching the Mess.

  "This will be Willie now," said Naidu.

  No more was said while the car came nearer and stopped, footsteps sounded outside and the front door shut. Hunter frowned at his glass of soda-water and drained it. After a moment Ayscue came into the room. He looked tired.

  "He's dying," he said, and went to the dressing-table and helped himself to whisky. "In fact it's quite possible he's dead already. They said it was just a matter of hours, if that. He's been in deep coma since this morning."

  "Have they decided what it is?" asked Hunter.

  "They didn't seem too definite, no. Some type of meningitis. Not a type that responds to drugs, apparently. There was a specialist there of sorts. He told me he was satisfied they'd done all they could."

  "I.e. they'd put him to bed," said Churchill.

  He too went and poured a drink, glancing inquiringly at Naidu, who shook his head slightly.

  "He looked like somebody sleeping," Ayscue went on. "Very flushed, that was about all. There was nothing I could do for him. Young Pearce said he wanted to stay, so I wrote him a twelve-hour pass. I'll square it with the Adjutant in the morning."

  "How was he taking it?" asked Hunter.

  "Pearce? Very well indeed. He was refusing to break down and cry, though it was absolutely all he could do not to. It seemed the best thing to leave him so that he could cry all he wanted. I asked him if he thought I could be of any help to him, and he said very tactfully that he was afraid not. So I came away."

  "He's having a whale of a time round about now, isn't he?" said Churchill vivaciously. "That dispatch-rider last week. Fawkes today. Shaping up nicely, don't you think?"

  Ayscue said in a weary tone, "Probably a million people have died all over the world in that period. There hasn't been any-"

  "Oh, sorry, I was overlooking that point. That makes it all right, of course."

  "James, I suggest you try to reconcile yourself to what can't be changed."

  "Why? Why should I? I can see no reason for ever stopping minding what's happening to Fawkes tonight. No good reason. Lots of bad ones. Laziness and cowardice. Inability to concentrate on what's important. Vulgar and unthought-out ideas about everything surely having to make sense and be all right in the end. Because if it doesn't and won't be, where does that leave us?"

  Naidu said tentatively, "If you will allow a word from one of a different and, I think I'm right in saying, older religion than yours, I would suggest-"

  "I have no religion," said Churchill.

  "Oh, but a moment ago you were referring to some person, a lie,' who in your view was having a fine time with the deaths of certain people. I must confess I took this to refer to your God."

  "That was an anti-religious remark."

  "With the very greatest respect, James, it seems to me not suitable that you should be doing anything so trivial as attacking your religion at such a solemn time as this. The thought of the impending death of Corporal Fawkes should, I submit, be filling you with sorrow."

  "It does. But it fills me with anger too. Just this one thing is enough to show that we live in a bad world."

  "There are no bad things in the world." Naidu got up from the bed. "Even what might seem to us most horrible can be rendered endurable by wisdom."

  "With just as much respect, Moti, I think you're talking about sentimentality and the servile acceptance of a wish-fulfilling tradition. Not wisdom."

  "Perhaps I am. Wisdom is hard for most of us to obtain. If sentimentality and your servile acceptance will render endurable what seems horrible, let us by all means take recourse to them."

  "Yes," said Ayscue violently. "And lies too if necessary."

  Ch
urchill rounded on him as violently. "Well, you ought to know, Willie. That's what you trade in, isn't it?"

  "I'm going to bed," said Ayscue after a short pause. "Coming, Moti?"

  "Yes. Good night, James. Good night, Max. Thank you for the whisky."

  "Well, well, well," said Hunter when he and Churchill were alone. "You seem to be getting nasty in your drink these days. It's a stage we all go through. The trick is to drink much faster, especially early in the evening. Then the stuff attacks your brain on a steeper acceleration. You become inarticulate with dignity. That's the state to aim for, dear boy."

  He rose thoughtfully and strolled, hands in pockets, towards the dressing-table. "I seem to have been expressing myself too vividly for my own good. I've often suffered because of that. Anyway, self-converted or not, this is the moment when I fall off the wagon with a resounding crash."

  He picked up the whisky-bottle. Churchill went over and put his hand on Hunter's shoulder.

  "Don't be silly, Max. It's too late for that tonight. You'll get no sleep if you start now. You'll still be at it at breakfast-time."

  "Oh, jolly good, I'll be able to pick up another bottle when the waiters arrive."

  Hunter had poured a third of a tumbler of whisky and added water. He held it close to his body untasted.

  "Look, don't do it. Not now. You said you were going to stay off it altogether for a month after leaving that place. Till the end of your probation period. It's only been two days. Give yourself a chance. Take a pill and get into bed. I'll stay and chat to you for a bit."

  "I'd need so many pills I'd be falling about the place all day tomorrow. And I don't want to sleep, I want to be drunk. And it isn't really a sudden decision. When I promised everybody I wouldn't touch it for a month I put a little secret clause in the treaty. A mental reservation. It said that it would be all right for me to get drunk if a certain kind of thing went wrong. It has. So here I go."

  He drained his glass and refilled it, then refilled Churchill's. They went back to their chairs.

  "Do you mean the Fawkes thing?" asked Churchill in a puzzled tone.

  "Not as such, no. He's all right now. It's a matter of some delicacy, really. To put to someone like you, that is. From my point of view it's quite crude, in the sense that its impact on me is strong and unsubtle. But it does connect with Fawkes. As we heard just now, the Fawkes business is hitting Signalman Pearce hard. For some time, understandably, he won't be able to pay a lot of attention to anything else. And I was beginning to hope quite seriously that I might get him to pay a certain amount of attention to me."

  "You were going to make advances to him, were you?"

  "I'd already started. Well, let's call them approaches. Nothing overt. But I feel there's a fair chance he knows the sort of thing he's in for, or knew what he was in for, I suppose it'll turn out to be now this has happened. Which made it slightly encouraging that he agreed to let me take him into town and give him dinner tomorrow night. But, you see, that'll all be off. Hence my alighting from the wagon."

  "He was probably just going to soak you for an expensive meal and lots of champagne and then turn all shocked or nasty when you showed what you were after."

  "There's nothing cynical or mean about Andy. At the very least he was looking forward to an evening out with a kind friend. He's a very nice, open-hearted, unassuming boy. You don't know him."

  "How do you know him? You sound as if you and he were old buddies."

  "We had no fewer than three chats when he came over to see Fawkes at the hospital. We got on absolutely splendidly, Andy and I."

  "I shouldn't have thought he was your type, Max. I ran into him the other day. He's a nice-looking kid, I can see that myself, but not in the least effeminate."

  "Oh, I don't like them when they're effeminate. There's a kind of delicate handsomeness and physical grace that's not the slightest bit pansified, but is only found in young men. It's all gone by the time they're about twenty-five. Andy's got a lot of it. Do you know what I'm talking about?"

  "Yes, I think so. But somebody like that would be basically heterosexual, wouldn't he?"

  "Basically, yes. But having that type of good looks often means that he'll have been got at a bit in adolescence, when he was going through the phase of being drawn in that direction or at any rate wasn't averse from a bit of experimenting. So he'll have some idea of what fun it can be. On the other hand, he's had girls in the meantime and he knows by now he's attractive to them. So he's not in any doubt about his masculinity. Then I come along and suggest in the nicest possible way that just one more spot of what he used to get up to with his mates at school won't do him any harm. In fact, I tell him, it'll be more of a treat than it was then, because it'll take place in luxurious hotel bedrooms and such instead of behind the gasworks. I make a great point of laying everything on in style. French meals under crystal chandeliers, drinks in exclusive bars, theaters, trips to socially okay sporting events, I thought you'd look nice in these shirts so I got you half a dozen, I'd noticed you'd broken your wrist-watch so please say you'll accept this one. Well then, when his successor appears we've both had a lovely time and he goes back to his girls with a light heart and an intensified awareness of the possibilities of human nature. More whisky?"

  "I'm all right with this, thanks."

  "I think perhaps just a tiny spot for me, not more than a quarter of a pint." As he stood at the dressing-table, Hunter said reflectively, "You know, describing my methods to you like that makes me see how closely they resemble those of your school of thought. As you probably know, a lot of homos are keen on squalor. Or they're deliberately undiscriminating about who they go with. Or they enjoy paying for it or being paid. But with one important exception I'm just like you. I wonder whether Dr. Best may not have got on to a sort of mirror-image of the truth about me. Could I be a repressed heterosexual, do you suppose?"

  "Christ, how would I know?"

  "It might explain my feelings about women." Hunter sat down again. "As far as going to bed with them is concerned-something I've been known to do between affairs-I've always found them surprisingly pleasant considering they're not boys. Less interesting anatomically, true, but the main outlines of their shape strike me as all right, if a bit eccentric. It's the details I can't really do with. I don't like the shape of their hands. Little narrow claws like that never did anything of importance. And those finger-nails. There's something precious about them. And when did you ever see a good-looking woman with a decent firm nose? Little puggy snouts. Well. Doesn't it strike you that I'm sort of cooking up excuses for objecting to them? I mean, if I were as dead against them as an honest-to-goodness, middle-of-the-road, God-fearing queer ought to be, what I'd be taking against would be things like their breasts. Which in fact I'm definitely for. Do you see what I'm driving at?"

  "Yes. So much so that you must be on the wrong track. From what I know of Dr. Best's line on things, if you were a repressed heterosexual things like breasts would be exactly what you would take against, so that you could go on concealing from yourself your basic heterosexuality."

  "Whereas if I were a repressed homosexual the reason I'd take against things like breasts would be that my concealed hatred of women was fastening on one of their most obvious womanly attributes. Yes, I see. I must say I really shall have to do something about Dr. Best. I'm beginning to feel quite strongly on the point."

  "What sort of thing have you in mind for the doctor?"

  "A nasty sort of thing. That's as far as I've got with the project at the moment. But I've plenty of time to map out a scheme before we all finish here and go our respective ways."

  Churchill said, "I think I will have some more whisky after all."

  "Help yourself. You're a bit up and down tonight, aren't you?"

  "Sorry."

  "Don't worry about Fawkes. I told you, he's better off than any of us."

  "It's not only that. It's… the Army."

  "Why, what's it been doing to you?"
r />   "I seem to have got completely fed up with it. I don't believe in it any more."

  "Christ," said Hunter, "did you ever?"

  "Oh yes. I thought it did very good and necessary things. That's why I joined."

  "My dear, you never cease to amaze me."

  "Well, why did you join?"

  "Just the uniform. My favorite kind of young fellow looks at his best in it. I'm told that opportunities for the side of life we've been discussing are better in the Navy, but they make the lower deck wear such silly trousers. Whereas khaki really brings out the… I remember the very day I decided I must take the Queen's shilling. My parents had dragged me along to look at and be looked at by a new school, a thing I'm sorry to say they had to do at more than one juncture. We were wandering round some gloomy bloody cloister in the wake of the Head, when there appeared from nowhere the most theatrically gorgeous child you ever saw in your life-wearing his Training Corps uniform. That's for me, I said. To myself, of course."

  "And was it?"

  "Oh yes, it was, any time I cared to ask. But it was also for about forty other people any time they cared to ask. Unfortunately."

  "That's good, though, isn't it, according to you? It ought to have taken care of preventing you getting emotionally involved."

  "Yes, indeed it ought, but it didn't work like that. I was still feeling my way in those days. I'm in no such danger now."

  Hunter stood up and slowly took off his jacket.

  "What's this I'm in for?" asked Churchill. "A demonstration?"

  "That takes at least two, and besides myself there's only you present, and you're not my type, I'm sorry to say. You're too mature. In looks, that is. No, I'm getting ready for bed. And don't say how sensible that is of me or I'll drink the rest of that bottle to put you in your place."

  "I'll be off, then. See you in the morning."

  "You will. Good night, James. Thank you for listening."

  When Churchill had gone, Hunter sat down on his bed and looked jerkily about his room, like a man in search of something to smash.

  "Now you're sure Evans knows which key it is?" asked Leonard.

  Deering clicked his tongue and sighed. "I told you," he said. "There's only just the four on the ring. One's the key of the room. Evans knows that one because Ayscue's lent it to him dozens of times so he can pick up his laundry and the rest of it. Then there's one that must be the key of Ayscue's strong-box because it's too small to be anything else. Then there's a Yale key we don't know anything about, but it can't be the one we're after because the cupboard's not got a Yale lock. So the only other one must be the one. Okay?"