The Anti-Death League

by Kingsley Amis

  "What are the charges against me, Captain Leonard?" asked Dr. Best interestedly.

  "Specifically, the theft of property lying under the Official Secrets Act and the unauthorized use of it in a manner calculated further to prejudice the safety of the realm. No doubt there'll also be a civil charge relating to conduct likely to lead to physical injury or loss of life."

  "That's not so good, is it, Minshull?" said Dr. Best, grinning as broadly as when they had entered the room. "I don't like that at all."

  With a despairing glance at Hunter, Leonard said, "What do you mean, not so good?"

  "What is this property and how am I supposed to have used it?"

  "You know very well, Best," shouted Leonard. "You stole an atomic rifle and fired it off in the middle of the night."

  "Oh? And where is this rifle now?"

  "Outside in your hallstand. At least it was. I've repossessed it."

  Both doctors laughed again.

  "So it isn't there any more," said Dr. Best in childish tones. "What a pity. If it was still there we could all have had a jolly game with it."

  "You're raving mad." Leonard was shouting again. "And let's have no more of this nonsense. You're coming with me."

  "Oh no, Captain Leonard," said Dr. Best cordially. "I'm not mad. It's you who are mad. And I have a piece of paper to prove it. It's much more powerful than any piece of paper you can produce against me."

  He picked up the document from the table and flourished it.

  "I have here an order committing you to an asylum under the Mental Health Act, 1959," he went on. "This asylum. It's signed by two doctors-I'm sure you can guess who they are-and it provides for a course of treatment lasting one year in the first instance. Which means that I shall not be coming with you. It's you who'll be coming with me. Not very far, of course, but far enough."

  Hunter too got up.

  "We've a car outside," he said. "Either you go there voluntarily, or Leonard and I will take you."

  "You really shouldn't have had that brandy, Captain Hunter. I fear it's been too much for you. Neither of your alternatives is acceptable."

  Hunter and Leonard each took a step forward.

  "Stay where you are, you lunatics. Nurse!"

  Hunter turned and saw someone he recognized come through the doorway from the consulting room, a man of about thirty-five with an unusually small nose. He had discarded the white coat he usually wore and had on a white T shirt, under which his muscles were noticeable, and white drill trousers. In each hand he carried a large hypodermic syringe.

  "Hullo, Marie dear," said the man. "Long time no see, eh?"

  "You'd better take them one at a time, nurse," said Dr. Best. He indicated Leonard. "This man first, I think."

  The nurse placed one of the hypodermics carefully on the sideboard between two decanters and advanced on Leonard, who took a small automatic pistol from his pocket.

  "Keep away," he said more steadily than earlier, pointing the pistol at the nurse.

  The nurse came on. "Don't be silly, my old nut," he said.

  As soon as Leonard had snicked off his safety-catch Dr. Best caught hold of his gun-arm. Hunter jumped forward and, though hampered by the intervening corner of the table, hit Dr. Best hard enough on the cheekbone to send his glasses flying and perhaps make him loosen his hold. Anyway, Leonard shook it off, but was unable to turn before the nurse was on him. The two spun away, the left hand of each grasping the other's right wrist. At once Hunter was on Dr. Best again and bent him backwards over the table. While they were struggling, Hunter heard Minshull's laughter and then a clattering sound which he interpreted correctly as that of Leonard's pistol falling to the floor. A moment later Dr. Best got a hand to the decanter on the table and hit Hunter twice on the side of the head with it. This was not very painful, and quite soon Hunter had that wrist, so that when the stopper came jumping out of the decanter he was able to direct a stream of brandy into Dr. Best's face. While he was doing this, he heard more noise behind him, this time a crashing and smashing which turned out later to have been caused by Leonard being hurled against the loaded sideboard. The brandy quietened Dr. Best down a certain amount, so then it was not hard for Hunter to pull him upright by his lapels and give him a punch on the jaw that caused him to fall over immediately and decisively. Hunter now went for the nurse, who had transferred his hypodermic to his left hand and was repeatedly hitting Leonard with his right. He stopped this just for the instant required to bring his right elbow round and down into Hunter's stomach. Hunter dropped to hands and knees, from which position he was able clearly to see Jagger burst into the room and run up to the nurse, but not what it was which flung the nurse so hard against the oak-paneled wall that he slid quickly down it and finished up motionless.

  "Dear oh dear," said Jagger. "Got yourselves into a right mess, didn't you? Good job I got bored with huddling up in that car and started wandering round outside here. Why didn't you yell when this lot got going?"

  "We didn't think of it," said Hunter. "At first there was no need to, and then there was too much going on."

  "I gave you strict orders to stay in that car, Jagger. Where are my spectacles?"

  Leonard spoke indistinctly. He was dabbing with a handkerchief at the blood trickling from his nose and from a cut at the comer of his mouth.

  "Here," said Jagger. The glasses were undamaged.

  "A good thing for you he did disobey orders, or they'd have had you in a strait-jacket by now. Where's Minshull?"

  "Eh?"

  "There was another doctor in here. He must have slipped out. Didn't you see him?"

  "Bugger him for a start; there's plenty here to keep us busy. What was that about a strait-jacket, Hunter? Are you serious?"

  Hunter had poured himself another large glass of Dr. Best's Hine Antique. He now retrieved the committal order and handed it over.

  "They had something lined up for me as well. This chap was going to inject both of us. There's my dose on the sideboard."

  "Now do you believe he's mad?" asked Leonard, who was carefully going through what bottles remained unbroken. "Ah." He picked out a bottle of brown sherry, uncorked it, and drank from its neck.

  "Mm." Jagger nodded and sniffed. "A bit wild, certainly. But is he a spy?"

  "I can answer that question," said Dr. Best from the floor behind the dining-table.

  He got up without apparent difficulty and came over to them. His eyes looked a size larger without his glasses. When he spoke it was in a clipped, brisk tone that Hunter had never heard him use before.

  "There must have been a leak," he said. "A big leak. Twelve of our key men had been pulled in. Nearly all the others blown. Throughout the country our spy network was in ruins. The chief was in despair. The biggest job of all time had come up and he had nobody to send. Nobody? There was Best. But would Best agree to go? Best's last exploit had saved the world from destruction by death-rays. Best had been decorated by fifty governments. Best had been given a hundred million in gold and everything he wanted and no questions asked. Best was dining in his villa. Best was being served incomparable food and wines by his staff of Greek boys. Best's eye ran lazily over their naked forms. Best was called to the telephone. Best was humbly begged to come to the chief's office. Best tried to refuse. ‘Best,' said the chief, ‘the world is in danger of destruction by death-rays.' Best said it was none of his affair. ‘Best, you're the only one who can save us.' Best let himself be talked into it. Best went to see the chief. ‘Best, meet your assistant.' Best was introduced to the most marvelous twenty-year-old. Best's eye ran lazily over his naked form. Best was called to the telephone. ‘Best,' said the chief, ‘the world is in danger of destruction by death-rays.' Best knew he was the only one who could save them. Best…"

  By this time the nurse had joined Best's audience and Jagger had gone into the consulting-room next door, where he could be heard telephoning. When he came back, Best was still talking.

  "They're all barmy here, you know,
" said the nurse.

  "He's no danger to us any more," said Jagger. "No use either."

  "That's the end of that," said Leonard. "Now we can go after the man in the camp."

  "It hasn't been as much fun as I thought it would be," said Hunter.

  Best went on talking while Mann arrived and, with the zealous assistance of the nurse, took him away.

  "Very good," said Ayscue, dropping his violin and bow on to his bed. "Only a few minor points, Mr. Townsend. In bars 24 to 27…"

  The curly-haired young man seated at the Bechstein flipped back to the place indicated. As the village church organist and choirmaster he had worked so hard preparing for the Roughead concert that Ayscue had not been able to avoid asking him to be the pianist in the trio-sonata. In this role he had proved musicianly enough, though inclined to overdo his interpretation of the figured bass.

  "Yes, Major," he said in his country voice.

  "Where Andy and I are swapping those little phrases. I think unless you stick to a rigid four-in-a-bar there you may be in danger of…"

  "Swamping you. Right, Major. Duly noted."

  "Fine." Ayscue ran a handkerchief round his neck. "Now, Andy. Just after that, in bar 28, that first note. It ought to have a good strong accent on it, I think, from both Mr. Townsend and you."

  Pearce put his flute to his lips and produced a note with a good strong accent on it.

  "Yes. Not sudden, of course, just the natural top of the crescendo. Oh, I wanted to ask you both… Going back to bars 17 and 18: would it be a good idea if I did a rather different sort of staccato bowing for the middle two quavers in each of those bars? The trouble is, if you're hopping downstairs like that, you've got the volume but it's difficult to get the tone. Anyway…"

  When Ayscue had tried over the two bars in question, Pearce said tentatively,

  "I don't know, sir, it sounds a bit fancy that way, somehow."

  "Well, it's not right for the period, is it?" said Townsend.

  Ayscue pretended to consider. He had merely wanted Townsend to feel paid back in kind for being criticized on the figured-bass detail.

  "No, it isn't. I see that now you mention it. I'll leave it, then. Well. That's all I've got, I think. Is there anything else?"

  "Just the ending, sir," said Pearce. "Those last few bars-are we still supposed to be staccato there?"

  "No, very much not. Four long accents to the bar, and as tight together as you can get them without actually phrasing them over."

  "Right, sir."

  There was a pause. Pearce played a short run rapidly, then slowly. Townsend looked up from the piano.

  "Shall we run through it again, Major? I've got plenty of time myself."

  "No, I don't think so. Let's leave something in hand for the performance. Thank you both for coming. Now what time shall we say on Sunday? Two-thirty at the church? Can I give you a lift to the village, Mr. Townsend? Sure? See you both on Sunday, then."

  Conscious of having bundled them out rather, Ayscue began wandering slowly round his hut, hands in pockets. A final play-over of the Roughead piece would not in fact have been wasted, but he had decided against it to make certain that his interest stayed alive, that the trio-sonata remained untouched by the mingled anxiety and boredom that had infiltrated other concerns of his. He had abandoned his scheme of a unit magazine. The only contribution of substance had been the anonymous poem. This, when asked for it by Leonard earlier that afternoon, he had handed over without question, without any of the personal concern he had felt on first reading it. Determining its authorship and that of the poster about the Anti-Death League had begun to suffer the process, odiously familiar over the past few years, of ceasing to involve him and becoming something that merely nagged at him for a time, until he woke up one morning and added it to the list of his evasions. And when had he last thought about Pearce's situation? And then there was Churchill's news, reported by Hunter the previous evening. Ayscue knew he must work out some means of helping, but felt he had become unable to solve such problems. He was afraid that quite soon he would no longer be capable of any action.

  There was a knock at the door. When it opened, Nancy rushed in as if she had spent the previous hour in a cage instead of running about the camp. She was followed by one Tighe, who had replaced Evans as Ayscue's batman at the first opportunity after the League meeting.

  "All right, sir?" asked Tighe. "Or do you want me to take her round again?"

  "No, they've gone now, thank you. Here."

  Ayscue handed over five shillings.

  "Have a drink with me, Tighe."

  "Thank you, sir."

  Was he really very much surprised and slightly puzzled, or only pretending to be? Ayscue gave it up. When Tighe had gone, he stooped down and took Nancy's head onto his knees.

  "Would you like another little run?" he asked. "Say if you're too tired."

  The telephone rang.

  "Ayscue here."

  "Call for you, sir… You're through to Major Ayscue."

  "This is the museum," said Lucy's faintly hoarse voice. "Could you come over, do you think?"

  "I'm afraid this evening isn't very convenient. I have to take the chair at a lecture here."

  "A lecture?" She sounded puzzled, no doubt wondering if this was a code phrase she was expected to interpret on the spot.

  "Yes, a lecture. By somebody called Caton. On American and South American armed forces and their public image. What you might call a very real lecture. An actual lecture, so to speak."

  "Oh. Oh, I see. But I wasn't thinking of this evening. I meant straight away."

  "Is it urgent? Is anything wrong?"

  "I think it is rather. Urgent, I mean. It's… Mr. James?"

  "What's the trouble?" asked Ayscue, trying not to sound frightened.

  "Well… he won't get up. He's gone to bed and he won't get up."

  "Is he ill?"

  "Not exactly. He just won't get up."

  "You mean because of…"

  "Yes."

  Ayscue hesitated. "I don't think I'd be any good to him," he said. "Whenever we've talked about this sort of situation in the past, more or less in general, all I've done is make him angry."

  "Well, that would be better than nothing, honestly. Better than him being as he is. You don't know what he's like."

  "All right. Ill come over at once. Of course I will."

  When he had rung off, Ayscue sat for a time staring at the front page of the Roughead sonata. Then he got up, put on his jacket and cap, told Nancy she must stay where she was, and hurried across a corner of the meadow to a hut of the same pattern as his own.

  Naidu was sitting on his bed in his shirt sleeves reading a lavishly illustrated work on Georgian furniture he had borrowed from the town library. He put it aside and stood up when Ayscue came in.

  "Good afternoon, my dear Willie."

  "Hullo, Moti. Can I ask you a favor?"

  "By all means, of course. Would you care for a glass of fresh lemonade?"

  "No thanks. Look, Moti, it's about James Churchill. I've just had Lucy Hazell on the telephone and he's at her place now and as far as I can make out he seems to be suffering from… well, having some sort of breakdown. I'm going to drive over there and I wondered whether I could persuade you to come along too. He'll probably pay more attention to you than to me."

  "Oh, do you think so?" Naidu stood considering for a moment. "I give a conversation class at five P.M."

  "That won't leave you any time. Can't you postpone it or something?"

  "Naturally I can. I take your word for it it's necessary. Excuse me for two seconds while I telephone."

  They were soon on their way in Ayscue's pick-up truck. As they passed near the place where St. Jerome's Priory had been, Naidu said,

  "That proceeding last night carries an air of fantasy. What could anybody hope to gain from such a thing?"

  "I don't know, Moti. And I don't really expect to. There's a lot going on in this part of the world t
hat you and I have no idea of. Anyway, the Colonel told me before lunch that Brian Leonard expects to arrest that psychiatrist chap any moment."

  "I can shed no tears over that, can you? A man all of whose feelings are malevolent. From what Max and Brian have to say of him it's easy to form a picture of a man very hostile to his fellow-creatures. He wages war on them to the utmost of his ability."

  "Like a sort of super-Venables."

  "Oh, there I think, Willie, you're being rather unjust to the gallant major. He views human beings with nothing more than a weariness and contempt for not being the vessels of perfect reason he'd like them to be. This makes him an excellent choice to supervise the training for this highly destructive project, whatever it is, that the unit exists to further. A person of the type of Best would be excessively involved with the destruction. Whereas Venables is detached. As is our good friend Alastair Ross-Donaldson, who is, if you like, at a further stage. Mankind as such makes no appeal to him one way or the other. In his eyes we're all just a lot of little points on a graph."

  "Now who's being unfair? I've always found Alastair perfectly pleasant. He's certainly got very nice manners."

  "Oh, of course he has. I don't want to be harsh to him, Willie. He's a very nice chap indeed. But his manners, admirable as they are, are purely and simply the product of his training. The finest kind of English training."

  "Scottish, actually, I imagine. But I take your point. But I still think there's more to Alastair than just shows on the surface."

  "Which no doubt would only be revealed in certain situations. Until these things come along, I agree there's a lot we don't know about people, including ourselves."

  They said nothing for a time, each thinking of Churchill. Then, when they were nearing their destination, Naidu said,

  "I've heard a good deal about Lady Hazell in the Mess, but some of it sounds wildly exaggerated. Is she as promiscuous as Alastair, for instance, gives one to understand? Whatever you say will of course go no further."

  "I don't really know the answer, Moti. I've just met her a couple of times over this piece of music I found in her library. She seems pretty decent to me. She's certainly been very kind to poor Catharine Casement."