The Anti-Death League

by Kingsley Amis

  "Yes, a warm heart is known to accompany, what shall we say?– the free granting of sexual favors. I hope I didn't sound puritanical about that just now, by the way. At the least, Lady Hazell has helped several of the young men in our midst to remove their frustrations. Or would you feel bound to take a harsher view?"

  "Good God, no, I've seen too much of life. There's nothing blessed about frustration."

  "I know that all too well."

  "Forgive me, Moti, believe me I'm not prying, it's just that I come across this a lot in my work, but how do you cope with that problem?"

  "I just cope. Sometimes it gets very difficult, and then I think hard to myself about a lovely girl in Ujjain and a couple of young bairns, and it becomes not quite so difficult for a while."

  "It must be different when you've got someone."

  "You've never had a wife, have you, Willie?"

  "Oh yes. Indeed I still have. It wasn't a success, though."

  "What went wrong?"

  "Oh, it was all my fault."

  "I doubt that, knowing you. Is this the place? It looks rather grand, I must say. In what period was it built?"

  "What you see dates from the eighteen-sixties, I'm told, though there are supposed to be some bits left over from Queen Anne or so. That's Lucy coming out now."

  "A striking-looking woman."

  "I agree."

  When they had got out, Naidu saluted Lucy, then swept off his hat and kissed her hand.

  "This is Captain Naidu, Lucy. Moti, you've heard me speak of Lady Hazell. Moti's a friend of James's too."

  "How do you do, Moti. Let me take you up to James straight away, both of you. He won't get up, you know, Willie. He just lies there."

  "What does he say about it?"

  "He just says he can't. Get up. When he says anything at all."

  They went into the house, where it seemed very dark in contrast to the sunlight.

  "How long has he been here?" asked Ayscue.

  "Three hours? I don't know. I went in and found him there. It scared the life out of me, honestly."

  "Has he had lunch?"

  "He didn't say. You know he took Catharine to the hospital this morning and had a talk with the doctor in charge of her? Anyway, I don't think it's anything the doctor said to him. Nothing in particular, that is. They can't know anything yet. I think it's just the whole thing… you know…"

  "Yes," said Ayscue. "In here?"

  "Yes. Do your best for him, won't you? I know you will. I'll be downstairs."

  The two men entered the room formerly occupied by Catharine. Churchill was lying on his back in bed with the covers drawn up to his chin. His uniform jacket and trousers were neatly hung on the back of a chair and his shoes symmetrically arranged underneath it. He made no movement when they went and stood at the foot of the bed.

  "Hullo, James. Moti and I thought we'd drop in and see you. How are you?"

  Churchill went on looking at the ceiling, or into space.

  "Tell us how you feel," said Naidu. "Describe it as exactly as you can. Then Willie and I will be able to help you."

  After a minute of silence, Ayscue started to speak again, but Naidu checked him with a hand on his arm. Perhaps another minute had gone by when Churchill spoke, in a faint and monotonous voice, as if very tired.

  "I didn't want to stay in camp," he said, "and go to lectures. I came over here. It was so quiet. I thought it would be better if I got into her bed. I thought that was a good idea. There was nowhere else I wanted to be. I couldn't think of anywhere else I could be. But it's just as bad. There isn't anywhere to be."

  About this time they noticed tears beginning to flow steadily from his eyes. He himself seemed unaware that this was happening. His face did not become distorted in any way.

  "It's worse," he went on. "It just shows me how much she isn't here. It isn't like the same bed or the same room. You can't remember it well enough. It wipes it all out. It stops it ever having happened. You're falling off a cliff and yesterday you saw something beautiful. Now you're falling off a cliff and so yesterday you didn't see something beautiful. She wasn't really here. Because she's gone."

  They waited, but there was evidently no more for the moment. Ayscue sat down on the bed, took out his handkerchief and wiped Churchill's eyes.

  'There are things we've got to settle, James/' he said hesitantly. "You'll have to get back to camp pretty soon or you'll be marked absent. And in a case like this, top secret and the rest of it, that's serious, James. If you don't look out you're going to get yourself arrested, and then you won't be able to see Catharine at all."

  "I don't mind what happens," said Churchill almost at once.

  "That's what you say now. You'll mind all right when you find they won't let you see Catharine."

  "That's already happened."

  "I mean at all. You told me yourself they'll put you away for God knows how long if you desert. Your only chance of going on seeing Catharine is to go on this Operation thing and then come back."

  "Oh, I'm not going on the Operation," said Churchill, his tone betraying for the first time some slight emotion: surprise that Ayscue should need to be told anything so self-evident.

  Ayscue was not speaking at all hesitantly now. "You've got to," he said. "You can't just lie there. Get up and I'll drive you back to camp."

  "I'm not coming."

  "You must! James, don't be a fool. There's no sense in this kind of behavior. It just makes everything worse. Surely you can see that? Or are you trying not to? From every point of view it's your duty to get out of that bed and get your clothes on."

  "Don't tell me my duty," said Churchill slowly.

  "I'm not talking about your duty as a soldier. Not altogether, anyhow. Mostly not. You've got a duty as a man as well. That's much more important."

  "I don't want to hear about it. Not from you. Padre."

  "Forget the padre."

  "I can't forget. Or forgive. Go away. You love everything I hate. Go away. Leave me alone."

  "I won't." Ayscue leaned across and took Churchill by the shoulders. "I know what you think. You think God's arranged all this. That's absurd. You must stop yourself thinking it. It's dangerous."

  "God doesn't exist."

  "I know that as well as you do. Better than you do. You're afraid he might exist. You've got to convince yourself absolutely that there's no such thing, if you don't want to go mad."

  "But you're a parson."

  "What about it?"

  Churchill tried feebly to disengage himself from Ayscue's grip.

  "This is worse. Pretending to agree with me. It won't work."

  "Now you listen to me," said Ayscue loudly. "You're not quite as original as you think you are. To believe at all deeply in the Christian God, in any sort of benevolent deity, is a disgrace to human decency and intelligence. Of course it is. We can take that as read. I was so convinced of it when I was about your age that I saw the Church as the embodiment of the most effectively vicious lie ever told. I declared a personal war on it. That was why I joined-so as to be able to work against it more destructively from within. I used to have a lot of fun in those days with things like devising an order of service that would please God much more than merely groveling and begging for mercy or praising him for his cruelty in the past and looking forward to seeing more of the same in the future. Selected members of the congregation getting their arms chopped off and/or their eyes put out as a warm-up. Then a canticle about his loving-kindness. Then some whips and scorpions treatment on children under sixteen, followed by a spot of disemboweling and perhaps a beheading or two at the discretion of the officiating priest, with the choir singing an anthem about the beauty of holiness. Then an address explaining about God's will and so on. Then a few crucifixions, bringing out the real meaning of the Christian symbol. Finally a blessing for the survivors, plus a friendly warning that itll probably be their turn next. I used to think it was the Aztecs who came nearest to establishing the kingdom of God
on earth. What was it they were notching up, a thousand human sacrifices a week? But then the Christians arrived and soon put them down. He's a jealous God."

  When he began this speech, the tone of emotion in Ayscue's voice had been partly synthetic. Now it was all genuine. He was conscious of this and of the silence when he paused. He let go of Churchill, who lay there as before. A glance showed that Naidu had turned his back and was looking out of the window.

  Ayscue said, in a hurried, apologetic way, "But I got converted. That's to say I realized that not wanting to see these things as they are, which most people don't, doesn't necessarily make them completely stupid or insensitive or not frightened of life and death. Christianity's just the thing for people like that. A conspiracy to pretend that God moves in such a mysterious way that asking questions about it is a waste of time and everything's all right really. I joined that conspiracy. As you know. The only awkward part is covering up one's sex activities and so on. One can't bring the cloth into disrepute because that would weaken the conspiracy. And then there are times like this."

  He felt he was on the threshold of an important point, of something that would resolve the current situation, but could not grasp what it was. Churchill had not moved. Ayscue got up from the bed.

  "I'm afraid I haven't been any help at all," he said.

  "No," said Naidu, turning. "I'm afraid you haven't."

  "I didn't expect to be. Will you see what you can do?"

  "Of course."

  Naidu walked briskly forward and sat down on the bed at a conversable distance from Churchill.

  "My dear friend James," he said. "Let's please agree to omit God from our considerations. Your God, or indeed your no-God, or anybody's God. If you bother about such ideas, you'll have no time or attention to spare for how you should be behaving. If you make God responsible for situations, you're not responsible for how you should behave in them. But if you love even one other person you must be responsible for this. In your present state you're no use to Catharine at all. You're trying to be in her state. You're making an effort to take her place. Yes you are indeed. Now. However these events came, they're here and you must deal with them. And you can do this, because they're not unchangeable. Oh, nobody can work miracle cures, I don't mean any such thing. But you can modify these events, you can make them less bad. But to do that you must accept them first. You must forget hatred and all feelings of blame. Unless you do that you can do nothing."

  "Nobody can do anything," said Churchill quite suddenly.

  "Oh yes, my dear James, somebody can. You can. But not unless you want to. Now consider-consider with me, James, what we have. We have a chain of bad events. They're made much worse by your being afraid. And what you're afraid of is in the first place your own death. Not Catharine's."

  "No," said Churchill. "At least, I am afraid, I can be afraid. But not now."

  "Yes, now. And this is not intelligent of you. Death is not your enemy. Death's nobody's enemy. Your enemy's the same as everybody else's. Your enemy is fear, plus ill feelings, bad feelings of all descriptions. Such as selfishness, and not wanting to be deprived of what comforts you, and greed, and arrogance, and above all belief in your own uniqueness and your own importance. All these bad feelings come from considering yourself first. It's hard to say and I don't want to be a preacher, but if you could simply begin to love Me in everything there is, then your bad feelings would start to diminish. You must make up your mind to love Catharine with all your heart, so that your heart has no room for the fear that you'll be deprived of her. You must cast out that fear, and then you'll have begun to cast out all fear. At the moment you're so afraid that you're pretending to be dead. Please stop, James, and begin to try. We must all try to become men."

  Five minutes later, Churchill said, "There's nothing to say, except about this thing. And there's nothing to say about that."

  "What about cover?" asked Jagger.

  Leonard fastened the flies of his scarlet dress trousers and examined their hang in his triple mirror. The disposal of Best had bred in him an unaccustomed kind of buoyant off-handedness.

  "Everybody's used to comings and goings in this camp," he said when he felt ready to. "A special technical section can easily be posted in. The more unrnilitary they are the better. I hope I get sent some good people, by the way. Those blokes they gave me to keep an eye on Best were very sub-standard. Perhaps you could have a word with our masters about that when you get back. Are you traveling by helicopter again?"

  "No, I'll probably get the early train in the morning. I'll see what I can do for you about the extra lot of fellows."

  'With a small group under my personal orders," said Leonard, with a judicial look at his reflection as he buttoned the ultramarine jacket, "I think I can promise to nail our man within the week. The moment he moves we'll have him… Ah, here you are at last. What's been keeping you?"

  Deering had shuffled his way in and now shuffled his heels nearly together as he handed his master a pair of white gloves.

  "Sorry, sir, had to wait for a turn with the iron."

  Jagger glanced over from where he lay full length on Leonard's bed.

  "What in hell's name are those things?"

  "Ceremonial gloves."

  "Gloves? I'd like to see anything bigger than a whippet get its hand in there, old lad. Gloves!"

  "You're not supposed to be able to get your hand in," said Leonard in a cold tone. "You just carry them. It's a tradition."

  "Lot of that around here, isn't there? And the bloody place has only been going a few weeks. Springs up like weeds after rain."

  "Any news, Deering?" asked Leonard, not expecting any much, but not wanting to have to defend Mess tradition to Jagger.

  "Well, the blokes are bitching and binding like buggery about the way you've been messing them around," said Deering contentedly. "Up in the middle of the night, off into the wilds before they could-"

  This evening, Leonard could have faced a mutiny single-handed. "I'm not interested," he said. "Anything else?"

  The telephone rang.

  "Leonard here."

  "Have you any idea where I can reach Mr. Jagger, sir? There's an outside call for him."

  "He's with me now… For you."

  At the second attempt Jagger heaved himself off the bed and took the receiver.

  "Jagger."

  "Then this ragtime search," went on Deering. "Three hours of it and they come up with a couple of rusty shells that must have been around since the Boer War, a typewriter in a sack and a set of filthy pictures stowed away under one of the sleeping-huts. The padre's, I bet you what you like. Apparently they were really something. You know, people on the job. Who's got them now, do you know?"

  "I do not. Is there anything else?"

  "Yes, I want to apply for a transfer. I'm brassed off with this joint."

  "Talk to me about it in the morning."

  "All right, sir. Good night."

  Deering left. Leonard turned to Jagger, who had replaced the receiver after a bare couple of assenting words and whose face was now thoughtful.

  "Big news?" asked Leonard.

  Jagger gave an instant impression of falsity. "No," he said. "No, nothing in particular. Nothing to do with this job, anyway."

  "Oh. Are you ready to go down?"

  "Christ, I've been lying about waiting."

  In front of the glass again, Leonard scrutinized the image of his face, which was looking a bit meaty after what Dr. Best's nurse had done to it, then turned his attention to Jagger's reflected form, now peering indecisively at its original.

  "Aren't you going to comb your hair?"

  "All right, if it'll make you feel better. Have you got a comb to lend?"

  "Well…"

  "Look, me combing my hair was your idea. I'm not going all the way up to that attic they've put me in to fetch a bloody comb. If you want me to be a credit to you and the Service you've got to provide the wherewithal, right?"

  "Oh, very
well. Here you are."

  The comb slipped and tore jerkily through Jagger's fiery thatch in a way that suggested this was something he did eveiy couple of years. His body was canted over to one side and he kept the operative elbow unhandily close to his chest. In the end most of his hair was horizontal, including some portions that would have done better to follow the curve of his skull.

  "They'll have to take me as they find me," he said, plucking the greater part of a ragged tuft of red hairs from the comb and handing it back. "Now if there's any buggering protocol like kissing the Adjutant's bum or cheering whenever the Queen's mentioned you'd better fill me in right away."

  "Just do as I do and you'll be all right. Come on, we're late already."

  In the ante-room they were hailed by the Colonel.

  "Ah, here are our spy-catchers," he said. "Magnificent job of work this afternoon, both of you. Congratulations. Settled that crazy fellow's hash in fine style. Great relief. Now, what are you drinking, Mr. Jagger? Spot of pink gin?"

  "I'd as soon just stick to my beer, thank you, Colonel. I took the liberty of laying on a supply with one of your waiters."

  "First-class idea. And sherry for you, eh, Brian? Ah, and Willie. You're looking a bit harassed, Willie. A drop of whisky will put you right."

  "Thank you, sir. Is there any sign of my guest, do you know?"

  Ayscue, who had just hurried into the room, did look harassed, also more gaunt than usual. He was rubbing his eyes as if they itched intolerably.

  "Oh, the fellow who's going to lecture us on our Patagonian opposite numbers. No, not a trace. Don't you worry, he'll be along soon."

  "I'm sure he will, yes. Could I have a word with you about Churchill, sir?"

  "Of course, of course. I take it you've been over to see him. Tell me…"

  The Colonel and Ayscue moved away. Hunter moved in from the other side.

  "I wonder what's going to become of poor Dr. Best," he said.

  "Well, he's not our pigeon any more," said Jagger. "No point in interrogating a lunatic, let alone bringing him to trial. If he ever recovers I suppose we might take an interest again."