The Anti-Death League

by Kingsley Amis

  "I will. Good night, Lucy, and thank you very much."

  "It's a pleasure."

  He put his arms round her and kissed her, wishing slightly that he could find this rather splendid, which it obviously was in fact, instead of just rather agreeable.

  "Come and see me again."

  "I'd like to."

  Before Hunter had shut the door behind him Lucy was back in bed. She was sure that Captain Leonard would turn out to be all right really, but the qualification meant something like when you got to know him thoroughly or although there were hefty reasons for thinking him not all right. Something had seen to it so far that nobody who was not all right, even really, turned up at what she referred to, but did not think of, as her evening parties. One of her most faithful friends, a dentist who had motored up from the town every Monday and Thursday evening for two years, except when he was on holiday, had explained to her that the thing worked very much like a club. A new person was not invited along unless he was well known to the inviter and had been carefully considered in the two key aspects, as drinking-companion downstairs and, in so far as this could be estimated, as performer upstairs. It had all been a matter of making a sensible choice of people to start with, and this, no doubt mostly by luck, she must have managed to do.

  She predicted to herself that, should Captain Leonard turn out to be not completely all right, this would take the form of his having too little of something or other rather than too much. Her brief look at him downstairs had been enough to suggest to her that there was nothing masterful about him. That could raise problems. The problems raised by over-masterful men were, in her experience, less troublesome. They were certainly less varied.

  When, a couple of minutes later, Leonard knocked and came in, her prediction about him looked as if it was going to be justified. He kept fairly close to the wall, like a child at a new school. He smiled at her and said,

  "Jolly nice room you've got here, haven't you?"

  "The thing is," she said, "for you to take all your clothes off straight away and then come into bed. It's much easier like that."

  "Oh, couldn't we have a little chat first? After all, we've only just met. We don't know each other."

  "We soon will if you do as I say. And chatting afterwards is nicer."

  Paying no attention to this, he sat down on the far corner of the bed and began polishing his pince-nez on a blue silk handkerchief that, she noticed, exactly matched his jacket.

  "It's a great relief," he said, "to be able to come here and relax after a day on the sort of job I'm doing now. You get all wound up when you're engaged on vitally important, really very very secret work."

  The degree of guttural emphasis he gave the last phrase, and the peering look at her that accompanied it, puzzled her faintly. But she said nothing.

  "I can tell you," he went on after a moment, "that some of those gentlemen in the East and round the place generally would give their eye-teeth for just five minutes with some of the documents I was dealing with today."

  He gave her another look, this time through the pince-nez. She still said nothing, feeling a little unkind, but knowing that total silence on her part would either pull him the more quickly into bed or push him the more quickly out of the door.

  "Some of these new weapons we have are really quite terrifying."

  Silence.

  "They make the atomic bomb look like a firework."

  Silence.

  "Absolutely revolutionary."

  Silence. After about forty seconds of it Leonard got to his feet and, with a faint but sharp sound, pulled the bow of his evening tie apart. Lucy relaxed. She knew where she was now. It was the ego build-up as preliminary. Even her dentist friend would still sometimes be telling her, at this stage, about his plans for the welfare of indigent ex-members of his profession, other people's plans for luring him back into teaching. It made no difference to what happened next.

  When Leonard had nearly taken off his trousers a kind of metallic trickling noise began. Lucy could not make out where it came from and was startled. So was Leonard, clearly, but within a second he was pulling his trousers back up again.

  "It's all right," he said abstractedly. "It's an emergency. But it may not be anything. Thing on my wrist tells me when they want to get through to me. Got to go and get through to them now. I hope I'll be able to come back, but if I can't I hope you'll understand. I did want to talk to you."

  He ran oat, his jacket over his arm. Lucy turned onto her side. When the trickling noise started she had been very interested in where it came from, but already the question seemed boring. Forgetting Dr. Best, she thought this was probably the end of the evening and might as well be. She fell asleep, but soon woke up again two or three minutes later when Leonard ran back into the room and set about undressing as quickly as anybody she had ever met in her life.

  "What was that funny noise that made you rush out in such a hurry?"

  With a kind of plunging dance-step he trod off one shoe after the other.

  "Was it a telephone sort of thing or something?"

  The zip of his trousers whined briefly.

  "But it's all right now, is it?"

  A sound like the plucking of a very slack guitar-string came from the elastic waistband of his underpants.

  "Oh."

  Almost immediately after that Captain P. B. Leonard of the Sailors was demonstrating beyond possibility of error that as regards one side of life at any rate he was not just all right really, but all right. He went on with the demonstration rather longer than Ross-Donaldson's findings might have indicated as likely or average for the relevant age-group.

  "Wow," said Lucy eventually.

  "Did I do it properly?"

  "Yes, you did. Very properly indeed."

  "Honestly?"

  "Yes, absolutely honestly."

  "Good. I particularly wanted to do it properly because I think you're marvelous. You're so pretty. When Alastair told me about the set-up here it somehow never entered my head that you'd be pretty. And I certainly never dreamt for a minute that you'd be sweet as well. But you are. You're very sweet."

  "So are you."

  "But what I can't understand is this. Why, being so pretty and sweet, you have to go to bed with all these men one after the other when you can't really know any of them, very well."

  Lucy broke her usual rule of not discussing this question, which everybody except Ross-Donaldson and one or two others got to sooner or later. "I don't have to do it. I just like doing it. I don't say I like sex any more than the next person but this is the way I like it. I know it wouldn't do for everybody."

  "It certainly wouldn't for me-the corresponding business, I mean. But I don't want to sound as if… How did you get on to it, kind of thing?"

  "Well, like everything else, you find you've started before you've noticed you've started. To begin with, I just got married in the ordinary way, and it was literally years before I found out that my husband was having a lot of other ladies while I was going out of my way to be an absolute model wife from that point of view. So then I just started not being a model wife on a very tiny scale and he got most frightfully cross about it. He kept saying that that wasn't the point and that wasn't the same and surely I could see that. So I said of course I could, and the next time I started I really went to town on seeing to it that he remained in blissful ignorance throughout. Which you'd have thought would have solved everything. But it didn't at all, because the other person got frightfully cross because I was still living with my husband and not hating it all that much and not not sleeping with him into the bargain. Well then just for the sake of a quiet life I had a divorce, and then before I could turn round I was back in the same position, only it was much worse this time, because everybody knew what was going on. That wasn't my fault really. What happened was that my new other person got so cross with me for not hating my new husband that he rang up and told him what I was up to. So then both of them were cross. But soon after that my
new husband, old Hazell, he got drowned in an accident, and I was free again. I didn't want to get married again straight off, and there was more crossness about that. So then I must have decided I'd just had enough of all that. I must have worked it out that if I started sleeping with everybody nobody could get enough of me to start wanting to have all of me and getting cross about not. But that's only me thinking things over afterwards. At the time all I noticed was that I'd started sleeping with everybody."

  Leonard had listened to this as conscientiously as if it had been a lecture on Chinese eavesdropping techniques. He said, "Will you let me take you out to dinner one of these evenings?"

  "I never go out in the evenings."

  "Couldn't you make an exception?"

  "I've just been telling you why making exceptions is the one thing I absolutely don't do anymore."

  "I know, but… I promise I wouldn't get cross."

  "That's what you all say, and then when you get cross and I remind you of your promise you say yes, but that was only a promise not to get cross about unreasonable things, it wasn't meant to cover things like this."

  After a pause, Leonard said, "Could I take you out to lunch, then?"

  "That's no better from my point of view, and I'm always in bed at lunchtime anyway. On my own, I mean."

  "Could I stay the night, I don't mean necessarily tonight, but some night?"

  "No you couldn't. I hate sleeping in the same bed as anyone. Please don't ask me. Why are you so set on this sort of thing, anyway?"

  "I want to talk to you, that's all.''

  "We've been chatting nineteen to the dozen for the last ten min- ‘ utes."

  "But I want to get you on your own. Really on your own."

  "Ah, there you go. What do you want to talk to me about? Not all that stuff about how awfully secret what you're doing is?"

  "No, I'm sorry about that, I was on the wrong… I don't know why I said that. No, it isn't that I want to discuss anything in particular, I just want to talk to a woman, because I haven't for some time."

  "Aren't you married?"

  "No. I used to be. Well, technically I still am, but she went off about two years ago after we'd been married for six years. She just went off."

  "Why?"

  "She didn't say. I asked her several times but she didn't say."

  "What sort of man did she go off with?"

  "She didn't go off with any sort of man. She just went off."

  "Oh, well that is a bit…"

  "I haven't got a girl friend at the moment either."

  "But of course you usually have one."

  "Well, fairly usually. There don't seem to be as many girls about who like talking as there were just after the war. I find it difficult to get them to open up these days. But I knew straight away that you and I could talk about anything. But we can't really now, because of that Dr. Best fellow hanging about."

  "Keep him hanging. He won't come in while you're here. He'd better not try."

  "I know, but he might knock or… Just him being in the same house puts me off."

  "He's horrible, isn't he? I've only met him for five minutes before, but I could tell he was horrible."

  "He's…" Leonard stopped and looked for a phrase that did not contain the letter R. "… undoubtedly most unpleasant. But tell me-do any of your other friends know him? Particularly officers from the camp. Have any of them mentioned him to you?"

  "I don't think so, no. Why?"

  "I just wondered. Well no, it's more than that. It's my job to keep an eye on the contacts people have. It wouldn't do to have blokes on secret work being indiscreet in the wrong sort of company. So…"

  "Wrong sort of company. So when you went into all that song and dance about how tremendously hush-hush what you were up to was you were seeing whether I was a spy or not, is that it?"

  "Well yes, roughly," said Leonard, as Lucy started laughing. Her shoulders shook against his side. Presently he joined in, though without carrying complete conviction.

  "But you mean you think Dr. Best might be a spy," said Lucy finally.

  "Yes. What do you think of that idea?"

  "Well… if I could swallow the idea of there being spies at all then I wouldn't have any trouble with the idea of Dr. Best being one. But as it is…"

  "The spy is a uniquely characteristic and significant figure of our time," said Leonard, quoting from the introduction of one of his manuals and trying to make it sound casually thrown off.

  "Oh, I thought it was molders of the communal mind by means of manipulation of the mass media who were meant to be that. So somebody was saying in the newspaper on Sunday, anyway."

  "I suppose it depends on how you look at it. After all, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to have two characteristic and significant figures of our time at once. But we're getting off the point. Dr. Best could be a spy easily. Oh, I don't mean a Russian in disguise-what we call a non-transvasive defector. That means a man who goes over to the other side without actually going there. Our psychologists have done quite a lot of work on the personality patterns of people like that, and even their physical characteristics. Dr. Best corresponds pretty closely to one of them. To several of them, in fact," he added after a moment's reflection.

  "Would you like me to sort of keep my ears open when he comes to see me? Lead him on, kind of thing?"

  "Yes, I think it might be a good idea." Leonard got out of bed and began dressing in a preoccupied way. "Then you could let me know how you get on when I come over again. Tomorrow, perhaps."

  "As soon as you like. Look, I've been dying to ask you. What was that noise that made you run out of the room earlier on?"

  "This thing." He held up his right wrist. "It tells me when I'm wanted on the wireless."

  "Wanted on the wireless?"

  "I've got a wireless set in my car so that the camp can get in touch with me if anything urgent comes up. But I can't be expected to sit by it all the time just in case, so they buzz me on this thing."

  "What did they want you for?"

  "Nothing really. It was a mistake. The bloke at the camp said he fell against the thing that operates this thing. Skylarking about, I suppose. I'm going to give them a rocket for it in the morning."

  "It sounds rather like a joke to me."

  "A joke? I don't see any joke in it. Who would want to do a thing like that?"

  "I don't know. No, it wouldn't be much of a joke, would it? I say, you have got dressed quickly."

  "It's one of the things you've got to learn how to do in this job. You have to be ready to go anywhere at a minute's notice."

  He finished tying his tie and came over to the bed.

  "I'll see you tomorrow night, then. I do like you very much, Lucy. It's all right for me to call you Lucy, is it?"

  "Oh yes, I think we know each other well enough now."

  "I wish you'd be my girl."

  "I am your girl."

  "No, I meant just my girl."

  "I'm sorry, Brian, but I explained to you about how I never be just somebody's girl. It isn't because it's you; I'd say the same to anybody."

  "I understand. You got my name and you can't have heard it more than once."

  "It's quite easy to get good at that if you get plenty of practice. You'd be surprised, honestly."

  "Mm. Well. Shall I tell Dr. Best he can come up?"

  "Tell him to give it five minutes. And tell him I'm tired and he's not to stay long."

  "I'll remember. Well. Good night, Lucy."

  "Aren't you going to give me a kiss?"

  "Oh, sorry."

  "Good night, Brian."

  As soon as she was alone Lucy jumped out of bed and went into the bathroom. When she came back she put on a pair of silk pajamas and a black satin bed-jacket with a scarlet lining and got back into bed. She wished Dr. Best had chosen another time to come and see her; she was marvelously tired now and felt she could sleep the clock round. In fact she did fall asleep, in a half lying, half sitting pos
ition against the pillows, her arms spread out on the covers.

  She could not have slept for more than a few minutes, because when she awoke it was to hear a car, presumably Leonard's, driving away from in front of the house, and Dr. Best speaking to her from close by.

  "A most interesting type. Not unfamiliar, but interesting."

  "What?" asked Lucy in a hoarser voice than usual.

  "You needn't answer this, of course, but did he acquit himself satisfactorily?"

  "Who? Do what?"

  "Captain Leonard, who left you just now. Is he a person of average masculinity? I assure you most seriously I ask you purely in a scientific spirit."

  "I don't care what spirit you ask me purely in, I'm not answering. You can go and…" Lucy checked herself. "Why do you want to know?"

  "As I said, he interests me."

  Dr. Best came forward and sat on the edge of the bed about where Lucy's knees were. She glimpsed a couple of inches of pale and apparently hairless leg between his trouser-cuff and the top of his sock.

  "Did he say anything to you about this job of his that he evidently considers so secret?"

  Without taking any decision whether Leonard's ideas about the doctor were fantastic or not, Lucy became alert. "A little, yes," she said.

  "Did this little strike you as plausible? Or was he talking wildly? In your estimation, naturally."

  "He's on secret work all right."

  "Mm. Of what nature?-according to him."

  Lucy was unfamiliar with Dr. Best's line of inquisitiveness. She said experimentally, "He didn't say exactly, but I gathered it was something to do with nuclear war."

  "Oh." The doctor seemed delighted. "That has a very familiar ring. The number of people who believe themselves to be engaged on that type of activity would comprise a World War II division. Did he give any details?"

  She remembered a phrase from a newspaper. "Tactical atomic weapons."

  "Wonderful," he said, positively laughing now. "The technology of the unconscious is never less than a decade behind its frontiers in reality. All the people who were the victims of private poison-gas attacks in the era of the flying bomb. Any moment now the Red Chinese will have stolen one of those tactical atomic weapons and start boring holes in his brain with it."