by Brian Aldiss
‘By all means,’ said Lob Inson. ‘I would not have you miss such a delectable experience for worlds. Lambeth Blossom, I am very happy that you came from the country to visit us.’
‘I cannot tell you how glad I am to leave the country. It is so poor there. Everyone lives in hovels.’
‘We hear differently in London. We hear that the peasants live well – on the fat of the land, in fact.’
‘There is no fat, my rider, only land, and we all live like pigs.’
‘But it is surely true that you eat meat every day, and fish cooked in wine, and that your menfolk are as drunk as commissars every night?’
‘We are lucky if we see fish on feast days or meat once a year. As for wine, it’s scarcer than meat. Even the rice ration is cut this year.’
‘This is another story we have been told,’ Claw Fod said. ‘The newspapers claim that you peasants live on imported Australian sheep and beer.’
‘Excuse me if I concentrate on physical pleasures rather than political ones,’ Lob Inson said. He felt the mare beneath him stir like a wild thing, and a wave of excitement ran through him. As he followed it like an animal to its lair, he thought that it was a spiritual excitement as well as a physical one. This was what they had learned since childhood, and it was a message that lay deep at the heart of his civilisation. There was control, and almost all of life was control; but beneath it lurked a thing that was hardly controllable, almost a madness. They had to build on it with rigid discipline, but always beneath the artificial layers ran the wild thing. And the wild thing was running now! The wild white mare showed her true nature at last – she had cast away the rein and snaffle – she shied and cried – she was off like the wind up the great slopes of the volcano – she was out of control – runaway, runaway! – and the self was lost in the madness of the moment.
Afterward, Lambeth Blossom and Lob Inson put on gowns and rested and talked, and Lambeth Blossom entertained her lover and her potential lover with an account of village life – briefly, so as not to be tedious.
‘Such things should not be!’ Lob Inson said. ‘Looking through the documents today, I came across an old one that certainly should not have been there. It ought to have been destroyed at an earlier reshaping of history.’
‘I fear we bureaucrats are not always efficient,’ Claw Fod said, crunching a chili and shaking his head. ‘What did the document say?’
‘It spoke of terrible things, Claw Fod. It implied that this was not the Second Millenium of Universal Goodness that we live in. It said we had not beaten the Americans, as we are taught, but that they were invading our native Chinese soil. It mentioned the barbarous Russians, suggesting that they too had turned against us.’
‘This must have been an enemy document, sent to make us unhappy and confused, Brother-in-law. We were taught that the Americans were all killed. Did it mention the British?’
‘Yes. It said we had bombed London, but the British were not defeated and helped the Americans and Europeans fight against us!’
‘Then it’s nonsense! The British would never do that. We are partly British – their blood is in our veins, if history is to be believed!’
Lob Inson pressed his hands together in a gesture of bewilderment. ‘You are the one who says it cannot be believed.’
During this man’s talk Lambeth Blossom had slipped off the bed and was chewing a chili by the window, cooling herself and gazing across the rooftops of London or down at the street, five floors below.
‘Have you any ideas on this subject?’ Lob Inson asked her.
She looked at the two friends with downcast eyelids. ‘I heard in the villages a story too terrible to be credited, although it fits in with what you are saying.’
‘Please tell us! You can see by what we have said that we shall not report you to the secret police.’
She said falteringly, ‘I heard that the secret police might be British, and not Chinese. In the villages, they speak of barriers round the land beyond. They say that London and the country here form only a small place surrounded by barbed wire and guards. They say that London is not London but a piece of make-believe.’
‘Excuse me to say that there you are talking nonsense, Lambeth Blossom,’ Claw Fod said. Turning to his brother-in-law, he continued, ‘You see the peasants are only peasants and so they talk nonsense all the time; and this girl too is only a peasant. This is not merely falsification of history but lies!’
‘And they say that the world united against us,’ Lambeth Blossom went on, ‘and that all that is left of our great race after the bombs stopped falling is parcelled out into reservations surrounded by wire. We merely live in the British-occupied zone – and they have intermarried with us, not us with them. Over in the next valley is an American-occupied zone.’
Lob Inson laughed. ‘You see, Claw Fod, what nonsense we run into when we try to track down truth! We must cure ourselves of this vice and take to a more profitable hobby. Lambeth Blossom’s idiotic story teaches us that we are idiots! Her story is plainly make-believe, another infiltrating lie of our enemies – the Africans, perhaps. There is one big flaw in her story that no one could fail to spot. If we were conquered by the British, why do all the other legends at least agree that we rule the world?’
Lambeth Blossom continued to look out of the window. ‘Our enemies say it is because we Chinese have a kind of madness about world conquest. That is why even in defeat we pretend this little village is the great London.’
The two men looked very solemnly at each other. At last, Lob Inson said heavily, ‘This poor girl is very dangerous. We must report her to the police after all. Such lies are dangerous. Nubile as she is, she is a traitor to Universal Goodness.’
‘Certainly! We will hand her over after I have tried her Runaway White Mare. We must not expose people to this dangerous peasant nonsense.’
‘Even if it were true,’ said Lob Inson reflectively, ‘as of course I know it cannot possibly be, how would that affect any of our private and personal lives? Do we not still have our civilisation intact?’
‘Exactly! Lambeth Blossom, come to me,’ called Claw Fod.
But the girl stood unheeding by the open window. Tears ran from her eyes, blurring the view of the crowded rooftops with, beyond them, the great cone of an extinct volcano. Then she jumped.
The Lonely Habit
People with my sort of interest in life are very isolated. That is, if they’re intelligent enough to feel that kind of thing. My mother always says I’m intelligent. She’s going to be annoyed when she hears I’m arrested for – well, no need to be afraid of the word – for murder.
We’ll have a good laugh about it when I get out of here. That’s one thing I do admire in myself. I may be intelligent, but I still have a sense of humour.
I dress well. Not too modern, to keep me apart from the younger set, but pretty expensive suits and a hat, I always wear a hat. Working for Grant Robinsons, see. They expect it. I’m one of their star representatives, and popular too, you’d say, but I don’t mix with the others. And I would never – well, never do it to one of them. Or to anyone I know or am in any way connected with.
That’s what I mean about intelligence. Some of these – well, some of these murderers, if you must use the word, they don’t think. They do it to anyone. I only do it to strangers.
Quite honestly, I say this quite honestly, I would not think of doing it to anyone I knew, even if I’d only been introduced. My way, it’s much safer, and I think I might claim it is more moral too. In the war, you know, they trained you to kill strangers; you got paid for it, and given medals. Sometimes I think that if I gave myself up and really told them my point of view – I mean really and sincerely from the heart – they would not – well, they’d give me a medal instead. I mean that. I’m not joking.
The first man I ever did it to, that was in the war. It was like a new life opening up for me. Since then, I suppose I’ve never done more than two a year, but how my life has changed! T
hey talk a lot of nonsense about it, all these criminologists, so called. They don’t know. But the bad habits it’s cured me of! I used to sleep so badly, I used to be nervous, used to drink too much, and all sorts of bad habits you mustn’t mention. I read somewhere it weakened your eyes. And a funny thing, after I did that first fellow I never had asthma again, and it used to trouble me a lot. Mother still sometimes says, ‘Remember how you used to wheeze all night when you was a little chap?’ She’s very affectionate, my mother. We make a good pair.
But this first fellow. It was an East Coast port, I forget the name, not that that matters so much, although I sometimes think I wouldn’t mind going back there; you know, just for sentiment. Of course, I suppose your first – well, your first, you know, victim (there’s a daft word!) is very much like your first love affair, if you go in for that sort of thing.
All the others, however many of them there have been, have never come up to that first one. It’s never been quite the same. I mean, they’ve been lovely and well worth while from my point of view, but not a patch on that first one.
He was a sailor, and he was drunk, and I was in this convenience on the sea front. Terrible night it was, raining like fury, and I was sheltering in there when this chap reels in, quite on his own. I was in my army uniform, rifle, bayonet, and all, and he knocked my rifle over into the muck.
Really I was more scared than annoyed. He was so big, see, well over six foot, and terribly heavy. He asked me if I had a girl friend and of course I said no. So then he came at me – I mean, there wasn’t much room. I thought it was some sort of sexual assault, but afterwards I thought about it over and over, and I came to the conclusion that he was just attacking me. You know these stupid people: they just like to use their fists, given the chance, and I think he was attacking me because he thought I was standing there with a purpose and that I had abnormal ideas. Which of course was not so. Happily I am very very normal.
Obviously I am tremendously brave too, because I was not scared when he came at me, although I had been before. My brain went very clear, and I said to myself, ‘Vern, you can kill this drunk with your bayonet!’
A great and tremendous thrill ran through me as I said it. And when I stuck the bayonet into him, it was as if I had guidance from Above, because I did not hesitate or miss or strike in the wrong place or not hard enough, or anything that anyone else might have done. At that time, I really did think I had received guidance from Above, because I was praying a lot at that period; nowadays, the Almighty and I seem to have lost our old rapport. Well, times change, and we must accept the changes they bring.
He made a loud noise much like a sneeze. His arms went up and he fell all over me, pushing me against the door as if he was embracing me. Again that tremendous thrill of joy went through me. Somehow it has never had the same power since.
I hung on to him, and he kicked and struggled to be fully dead. It was a bit alarming, because I wasn’t sure if he really was a goner, but when he was finally still, I stood there grasping him and wishing he had another kick left in him.
The problem of disposing of him came next. When I pulled myself together and thought, that one was easily solved. All I did was drag him out of the place, through the rain, to the sea wall. I gave him a push; over he went, into the sea. It was still pouring with rain.
This is a funny thing. I saw that he had left a trail of blood all the way to the edge, but I did not like to stop and do anything about it because I hate getting wet; I hated it then and I’m still the same.
Perhaps that may sound careless of me. Perhaps I trusted to Providence. The rain poured down and washed all the stains away, and I never heard anything more about the matter.
For a while I forgot about it myself. Then the war finished, and I went home. Father was dead, no great loss. Mother and me set up together. We’d always been good friends. She used to buy my vest and pants for me. Still does.
I got restless. The memory of the sailor kept returning. Somehow, I wanted to do it again. And I wondered who the sailor had been – it seemed funny I didn’t even know his name. In a book I once read, it talked about people having ‘intellectual curiosity.’ I suppose that’s what I had, intellectual curiosity. Yet I’d heard people say that looking at me I look rather stupid – meaning it in a complimentary way, of course.
To recapture that early thrill, I bought a little bayonet in a junk shop and took to looking into conveniences. I don’t mean the big ones that are so noisy and busy and bright. I like the quaint old Victorian ones, the sleepy ones with drab paint and no attendants and hardly any customers. I am an expert in them. To me, they are beautiful like old trams. Call me sentimental, but that’s how I feel, and a man has a right to express himself. They arouse artistic promptings in me, the real ones do.
It was pure luck I found the one in Seven Dials. Most of the area was demolished, but this fine old convenience, has been left, dreaming in a side alley. It is still lit by gas, and a gas-lighter man comes round every evening and lights it. That was the place I chose to – well, to repeat my success in, if you like.
It wasn’t only a question of art, oh no. In my job, you have to be practical. I found that the inspection cover inside this place would come up easily. A ladder led down to another cover, eight feet below the first one. There were also pipes and things. When you opened this second cover, you were looking right into the main sewer.
It was as good as the seaside!
For my purpose, this unhygienic arrangement could not have been better. I mean, when you’ve done with the – well, with the man’s body, it must be disposed of. I mean, finally disposed of, I mean, or they’ll be round after you, you know, the way they are on the films, like the Gestapo, you know; knocking at your door at midnight. Funny, here I sit in this cell, don’t feel scared. I didn’t do it, really I didn’t.
It’s a very lonely habit, mine. When you’re sensitive, you feel it badly at times. Not that I’m asking for pity. I reckon a lot of these chaps – well, a lot of them was lonely.
So I did it again. It was a little sturdy man this time, said he was some sort of a scout for a theatrical agent or something. Very soft-spoken, didn’t seem to worry about what I was going to do. Most of them are really worried, wow! This scout, he just shed a tear as I let him have it, and did not kick at all.
Some hobbies start in a funny way – casually, if you like. I mean, as I got him down to the lower cover – I threw him down, of course – all the stuff came out of his inner pocket. I gathered it up and stuffed it in my own pocket before slipping him into the sewer, where the water was running fast and rank to bear him away.
Frankly, it was a waste of effort. The glow just wasn’t there. No inspiration and no relief. It just didn’t come off. At the time, I resolved never to do the trick again, in case – you never can be sure, in case they found out.
Once back home with Mother, I made an excuse to slip up to my bedroom – naturally, we have separate rooms now – and I looked at what I had in my pocket. It was interesting, a letter from his sister, and two bills from his firm, and a cutting from a newspaper (two years old and very tattered) about a general visiting Russia, and a card about a pigeon race, and a little folder showing all the different shades of a shiny paint you could buy, and a union card, and a photograph of a little girl holding a tricycle and another of the same little girl standing by herself and laughing. I stared at that photograph a lot, wondering what she could be laughing at.
One time, I left it lying about, and Mother found it and had a good look at it.
‘Who’s this then, Vern?’
‘It’s the son of a chap I work with – daughter, I mean. A daughter of a chap I work with.’
‘Nice, isn’t it? What’s her name?’
‘I don’t know her name. Give it here, Mum.’
‘Who’s the chap? Her father, I mean, which is he?’
‘I told you, I work with him.’
‘Is it Walter?’ She had never met Walter, but I s
uppose I had mentioned his name.
‘No, it’s not Walter. It’s Bert, if you must know, and I met his little girl when I went round to his place, so he thought I’d like a photo of her, because she took to me.’
‘I see. Yet you don’t know her name?’
‘I told you, Mother, I forgot it. You can’t remember everyone’s name, can you? Now give it here,’
She can be very annoying at times. Her and my father used to have terrible rows sometimes, when I was small.
As I said, mine is rather a lonely way of life. I began to dream of those hidden pockets, warm and safe and concealed, each with their secret bits of life. Everywhere I went, I was haunted by pockets. I wished I had emptied all the pockets of that scout – wished it bitterly. You hear people say, ‘Oh, if I could have my time over again’. That’s how I felt, and I began wasting my life with regret
Another man might have turned into a miserable little thief, but that was not my way of going on. I’ve never stolen a thing in my whole life.
The third fellow was a disappointment. His pockets were almost empty, though he had some race-course winnings on him that I was able to use towards some little luxuries for Mother.
And then I suppose my luck was in, for the next three I did gave me something of the relief I found with my first – well, partner, you might say, to be polite about it They were all big men. And what they had about them, hidden in their pockets, was very interesting. Do you know, one of those men was carrying with him a neatly folded copy of a boy’s magazine printed twenty years earlier, when he must have been a boy himself. You’d wonder what he wanted that for! And another had a nautical almanac and a copy of a catalogue of things for sale in a Berlin store and a sickly love letter from a woman called Janet.
All these things I kept locked up. I used to turn them over and over and think of them, and wonder about them. Sometimes, when the men were found to be missing, I could learn a little about them from the newspapers. That was fun and gave a great kick. One man was something in the film world. I think that if life had been a bit different, I might have been a – well, a detective, why not? Of course, I am much happier as I am.