Millennium People

by J. G. Ballard

  We turned off the high street and entered a residential area of Twickenham, tree-lined roads of large detached houses, gardens deep enough to hold a tennis court or a wedding marquee. I noticed a Bentley in a drive, white-wall tyres set in the freshly washed gravel.

  ‘We could stop here,’ I suggested. ‘There’s a distinct Third-World feel in the air.’

  ‘David, this isn’t a joke.’ Eyebrows knitted, Kay glanced at me wearily. ‘Just once, take off the blinkers…’

  The morning’s confrontation outside the estate office had given her the appetite for another fight. I remembered how she had dominated the magistrates’ court in Hammersmith, using her wayward personality like a skilled actress. I admired her spirit, and the strong mind that had closed itself tightly around a single obsession. Neither I nor the students in her film classes ever stood a chance. At the same time, I thought of the childish drawings pinned beside the Bresson and Kurosawa posters, and the photograph of her daughter, now on the other side of the world. Only the deepest obsession could assuage that kind of sadness.

  Vera Blackburn sat behind us, staring disapprovingly at the drifting leaves. She reminded me of an experienced lady’s companion, knowing her place and always ready to agree. But I sensed that she had an agenda of her own, and would defer to Kay only as long as it suited her. Whenever I glanced back at her she closed her knees, a gesture that was both a long-distance warning and an oblique comeon.

  ‘David…’ Kay pointed through the windscreen at the lines of large, half-timbered houses. ‘Take a good look. Twickenham is the Maginot Line of the English class system. If we can break through here everything will fall.’

  ‘So class systems are the target. Aren’t they universal – America, Russia…?’

  ‘Of course. But only here is the class system a means of political control. Its real job isn’t to suppress the proles, but to keep the middle classes down, make sure they’re docile and subservient.’

  ‘And Twickenham is one way of doing that?’

  ‘Absolutely. The people here are gripped by a powerful illusion, the whole middle-class dream. It’s all they live for – liberal educations, civic responsibility, respect for the law. They may think they’re free, but they’re trapped and impoverished.’

  ‘Like the poor in a Glasgow tenement?’

  ‘Exactly.’ Kay nodded approvingly at me, and reached out to pat my wrist. ‘Live here and you’re surprisingly constrained. This isn’t the good life, full of possibility. You soon come up against the barriers set out by the system. Try getting drunk at a school speech day, or making a mildly racist joke at a charity dinner. Try letting your lawn grow and not painting your house for a few years. Try living with a teenage girl or having sex with your stepson. Try saying you believe in God and the Holy Trinity, or giving a free room to a refugee family from black Africa. Try taking a holiday in Benidorm, or driving a brand-new Cadillac with zebra upholstery. Try bad taste.’

  ‘And what’s the alternative? What happens after the Maginot Line collapses?’

  ‘We’ll have to see.’

  ‘We burn all the books and the croquet mallets and the charity donations? What takes their place?’

  ‘We’ll decide when the time comes. Now, here we are. This should do nicely.’

  Kay turned into an avenue of three-storey houses with large gardens, labradors and Land Cruisers. The clump of tennis balls sounded, the fierce grunts of mothers determined to beat their fifteen-year-old daughters. Horses clip-clopped past us when we stopped by the kerb, ridden by teenagers secure in their middle-class sanctuary. As it happened, this was my grandmother’s world, identical to the Guildford suburb where I spent my childhood. The disdain of metropolitan intellectuals was heaped on these bricky piles, but the lifestyle had been copied throughout the world. Not all Kay’s indignation would disturb a single delphinium.

  She stepped out, taking a clipboard from her briefcase. Leaving Vera to guard the car, she pinned a polling company’s badge to her jacket. She fixed another, with a photograph of the Reverend Dexter, to my lapel.

  ‘Right. Try to pass for Stephen. You’re close enough. Haunted, a little lost. And not too pious…’

  ‘That should be easy.’

  We approached the first house, a comfortable Tudor-style mansion, and stepped over a child’s bicycle that blocked the front door. A Mercedes estate car with a doctor’s sticker was parked outside the garage.

  A friendly woman in her forties greeted us, drying her hands on a kitchen towel. Kay beamed over her clipboard and introduced us.

  ‘Could we have a moment of your time? We’re carrying out a survey into social habits.’

  ‘Fair enough. I’m afraid ours are pretty deplorable. I don’t know if we fit in.’

  ‘I’m sure you do. We’re particularly interested in highincome families.’

  ‘I’m flattered.’ The woman folded her tea towel. ‘I’ll have to tell my husband. He’ll be very surprised.’

  Kay smiled tolerantly. ‘You clearly have an immaculate home. Everything is so clean and polished. Could you estimate the number of hours a day you spend on housework?’

  ‘None.’ The woman pretended to bite her lip. ‘We have a live-in housekeeper and a daily help. I’m a GP, far too busy at the health centre to flick a duster around. Sorry, that’s not much use.’

  ‘It is…’ Certain that she had found a convert, Kay leaned forward, lowering her voice. ‘Speaking as a doctor, do you think there’s an overemphasis on domestic hygiene?’

  ‘Yes and no. People are rather obsessed with germs. Most of them are harmless.’ She paused as a teenage boy ambled past, berated by a sister somewhere in the kitchen. ‘Look, there’s a riot brewing.’

  ‘A last question.’ Kay scanned her clipboard, pencil poised. ‘How often would you say your lavatories are cleaned?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Every day, I hope.’

  ‘Would you consider having them cleaned every three days?’

  ‘Three? Pretty risky around here.’

  ‘Or once a week?’

  ‘No.’ The woman glanced at Kay’s lapel badge. ‘That doesn’t sound like good idea.’

  ‘You’re sure? A less than snowy white bowl would worry you? How do you feel about the prevalence of toilet taboos among the professional middle class?’

  ‘Toilet taboos? Are you working for a lavatory paper firm?’

  ‘We’re mapping social change.’ Kay spoke soothingly. ‘Personal grooming lies at the heart of people’s sense of who they are. Would your family consider washing less often?’

  ‘Less?’ The doctor reached for the door handle, shaking her head. ‘It’s impossible to imagine. Look –’

  ‘And you personally?’ Kay pressed. ‘Would you bathe less frequently? Natural body odours are an important means of communication, especially within families. You’d have time to relax, play with your children, adopt a freer lifestyle…’

  The door closed in our faces. Kay stared at the oak panelling, undaunted. As we walked down the drive, feet sinking in the deep gravel, she ticked the replies on her clipboard.

  ‘That was useful.’ She signalled to Vera, who started the Polo and followed us down the street. ‘I call that a promising kick-off.’

  ‘Perhaps. I don’t think she grasped what you were getting at.’

  ‘She’ll think about it, when she tells her son to take a shower and change his socks. Believe me.’

  ‘I do. Is this the first time you’ve been out here?’

  ‘I’ve been coming for months.’ Kay strode along the pavement, urging me to keep up with her. ‘Remember, David, the middle class have to be kept under control. They understand that, and police themselves. Not with guns and gulags, but with social codes. The right way to have sex, treat your wife, flirt at tennis parties or start an affair. There are unspoken rules we all have to learn.’

  ‘And you never bothered?’

  ‘I’m unlearning them. Don’t worry, I still shower every day…’r />
  A hundred yards along the avenue we approached another large house, a Georgian villa with a swimming pool in the rear garden. Light from its surface danced among the leaves of the tall oak that sheltered the drive. A six-year-old girl in a wet swimsuit answered the door, hanging on to the collar of an airedale delighted to find us on the step.

  A smiling woman in her late thirties came to the door, ready for an evening out in her black satin dress and vampish make-up.

  ‘Hello – you don’t look like the babysitter.’

  Kay explained our visit. ‘We’re carrying out a survey into leisure habits. How much time people spend on foreign travel, seeing films, going to parties…’

  ‘Not enough.’

  ‘Really?’ Kay busied herself with the clipboard. ‘How many foreign holidays a year do you take?’

  ‘Five or six. Plus a summer break. My husband’s a BA pilot – he’s in Cape Town this weekend.’

  ‘So you have cheap flights? Do you feel that air travel is a bit of a con?’

  ‘It’s one of the perks.’ The woman produced a gin and tonic from behind the door and sipped it reflectively, staring at the photograph of Stephen Dexter on my lapel. ‘Wives get restless if husbands have all the fun.’

  Kay sagely nodded. ‘I meant travel generally. Is it a kind of confidence trick? The same hotels, the same marinas, car-rental firms. You might as well stay home and watch it on television.’

  ‘People like going to airports.’ The woman gazed at the sky, as if it had crossed her mind that her husband might make an early return. ‘They like the long-term car parks, the check-ins, the duty-frees, showing their passports. They can pretend they’re someone else.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s a kind of brainwashing?’

  ‘I want to be brainwashed.’ The woman turned away as the sound of barking came from the pool. ‘Must go. They’re trying to drown the dog. Have a word with the people next door. He’s in a wheelchair…’

  ‘Not so good,’ Kay admitted as we stepped onto the pavement. She tapped the pencil against her teeth. ‘Nobody can be that passive.’

  ‘You have a problem,’ I told her as we walked on. ‘What happens if people like things as they are? Maybe they’re happy being conned?’

  ‘The prisoners polish their chains? I won’t accept that.’

  Followed by Vera and the Polo, we moved along the quiet road, ready to provoke the revolution. But the catalysts that had radicalized Chelsea Marina were missing. There were no redundancies, no impossible debt burdens or negative equity, no double yellow lines. Prosperous suburbia was one of the end-states of history. Once achieved, only plague, flood or nuclear war could threaten its grip. Nonetheless, Kay was undaunted, striding ahead of me down the Maginot emplacements of Arcadia Drive, searching for a trench in which to bury her mines.

  At the third house we were greeted by a slim, grey-haired woman with the clear eyes and thin mouth of a senior civil servant. She reminded me of the three worthies who had looked down at me in the magistrates’ court. Beyond the hall I could see an elderly man seated in the living room, a whisky at his elbow as he squinted at a crossword.

  Kay introduced us, omitting my clerical title. ‘A few questions? We’re carrying out a lifestyle survey.’

  ‘I’m not sure we have a lifestyle. Or does everyone these days?’ The woman listened to her husband’s bellow, and called back: ‘Lifestyles, dear.’

  ‘Don’t want one,’ the husband shouted. ‘Haven’t had one for thirty years.’

  ‘Well, there you are.’ The woman’s eyes were examining Kay’s make-up, her chipped nails and the loose threads on her jacket. ‘We don’t seem to need a lifestyle.’

  Kay pressed on with a game smile. A springer spaniel joined us and began sniffing her knees. ‘Do you think there’s too much emphasis on leisure these days? Foreign travel, dinner parties…?’

  ‘Yes, I do. There are far too many dinner parties. I don’t know what people find to talk about.’ Over her shoulder she replied to her husband: ‘Dinner parties, dear.’

  ‘Can’t stand them. Judith?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘What?’

  Kay tapped her clipboard. ‘So would you favour legislation banning dinner parties?’

  ‘Difficult to enact, and impossible to enforce. It’s such a strange idea.’

  ‘Tennis club dances?’ Kay asked. ‘Wife swapping? Should they be banned? Or are they the opiate that keeps the middle classes under control?’

  ‘Judith?’

  ‘Wife swapping, dear.’ The woman glanced at me with skittish look in her eye. ‘No, I’m not against wife swapping.’

  Kay scribbled on her clipboard. ‘You’re a liberal in sexual matters?’

  ‘Yes. I always have been, probably without realizing it. Now…’

  Kay pushed away the spaniel. ‘What’s your position on consensual sex?’

  ‘With one’s husband? In theory, it’s an excellent idea. Tell me, who is sponsoring this survey?’

  ‘And animals?’

  ‘I’m very fond of them, of course.’

  ‘They need our affection?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘So you’d sign a petition to revoke laws against sexual intercourse with animals?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Kay smiled brightly at the spaniel. ‘You could have sex with Bonzo…’

  We reached the safety of the street and returned to the Polo. Kay tossed away her clipboard and sat in the rear seat with me, taking my hand out of exhaustion. She waved at the house as we cruised past. The spaniel was barking, while husband and wife stood in the open door, staring at the unsettled gravel.

  ‘Too bad,’ Kay reflected. ‘She doesn’t want to fuck Bonzo. Still, the thought may cross her mind.’

  ‘How did it go?’ Vera asked. ‘No problems?’

  ‘It went well. David?’

  ‘Surprisingly well. You certainly gave them food for thought.’

  ‘That’s the idea. Stir things up. Make them realize that they’re the victims.’ She sat forward and tapped Vera’s shoulder. ‘Stop here. I’ll only be a moment.’

  She had noticed a home-owner in his front drive, hosing away the weekend mud on his Rolls Royce. Seizing her clipboard, she dived from the car before it halted. I followed her as she straightened her skirt and approached the man, who wore a singlet and had the burly physique of a successful builder.

  ‘Good evening, sir. All that mud on the Roller – looks like a job for the wife. We’re researching a new product for the discriminating motorist.’

  ‘You and the Reverend?’ The man read my name-tag. ‘You’ve changed. All that kneeling must be hard work.’

  ‘Reverend Dexter is a family friend. Tell me, sir, how would you feel about Spray-on Mud?’

  ‘Spray-on –?’

  ‘Mud. A synthetic liquid mud, conveniently packed in an aerosol can.’ Kay adopted the singsong voice of a department store demonstrator. ‘An effective way of impressing people in the office car park on Monday mornings. A quick spray on the wheels and your colleagues will think of rose pergolas and thatched cottages.’

  ‘My colleagues will think I’m ready for the funny farm.’ The man turned back to his hose. ‘Daft. Hasn’t a prayer’s chance. You’ll need more than the Reverend…’

  ‘Kay, for heaven’s sake…’ I held her arm and bundled her back to the car. As I pushed her into the rear seat she was shaking with exhaustion and excitement. When we set off she lay back with her head on my shoulder, roaring with laughter.

  ‘“Spray-on Mud.” Sorry, David, I couldn’t resist that. Think about it, though. We could make a million – it’s the product for our age…’

  12

  The Video Store

  WE DEBRIEFED OURSELVES over large gins in a pub near the Harlequins ground. Sitting on a stool by the bar, skirt hitched back, Kay combed out her hair, confident that she was the dominant presence in the room of rugby drinkers, middle
-aged men eyeing her over their pints. Our expedition to the middle-class heartland had its absurd aspects, but these passed her by. She was engaging with the enemy – not the residents but the cultural prisons in which they languished.

  I watched her with unfeigned admiration, aware that nothing at the Adler had prepared me for her. Psychiatry was at its best when dealing with failure, but had never coped with success. Kay was driven by the true fanatic’s zeal, a belief system that was satisfied with only one convert, herself. In many ways she was right. The social conventions that tied people to their cautious and sensible lives had to be cleared away.

  ‘Today Twickenham, tomorrow the world,’ Kay announced, after telling me to order another round. ‘Vera?’

  ‘You were great.’ Vera sniffed her gin, smoothing the hair off her high forehead and refusing to meet the eyes of the rugby crowd. ‘Why do the women always come to the door? Where the hell are the men?’

  ‘They’re fading away. Sitting in soundproofed rooms, wondering what happened.’ Kay patted my cheek. ‘There are definitely fewer of you, David.’

  ‘I’ll tell my Green friends. We need a sanctuary.’

  Vera finished her drink, exchanged a glance with Kay and went out to wait in the car. I watched her stride stony-faced through a door held open with mock gallantry by an amiable beer drinker with the shoulders of a prop forward.

  ‘A moody soul,’ I commented. ‘She must miss the Defence Ministry. All those nasty weapons to play with.’

  ‘I’m fond of her.’ Kay tore the top sheet off her clipboard. ‘She’s very sweet. A fully house-trained sociopath. Did she tell you her murder story?’

  ‘The wicked stepmother and the home chemistry kit? She dangled it in front of me.’

  ‘Let’s see how good a psychologist you are. Is she telling the truth?’