Millennium People

by J. G. Ballard

  Taking a bottle of wine from the refrigerator, Kay set two glasses on the table. She sat down, hands pressed to her face, staring at me.

  ‘Kay? A little early?’

  ‘You’re going to need this. Me, too, as it happens. I’ll miss you.’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Go back to Sally. Get in your car and drive straight to St John’s Wood. Dust off your briefcase and become a corporate psychologist again.’

  ‘Kay…?’ Her calm tone surprised me. ‘Why, for heaven’s sake? Because of last night?’

  ‘Partly.’ She sipped her drink, sniffing her fingers as if the scent of my testicles still clung to her nails. ‘That’s not the only reason.’

  ‘I was over-excited. The BBC demo, being kicked around by the police. Then the Tate bomb. What if I’d been impotent?’

  ‘I wish you had been impotent. I’d have preferred that. Impotence would have been the normal reaction. Instead of which, you were like Columbus sighting the New World. That’s why you need to go back to Sally. You don’t belong here.’ She reached out and held my hand. ‘You’re a domestic man, David. You feel hundreds of small affections all the time. They haunt every friendly pillow and comfortable chair like household gods. Together they add up to a great love, big enough to ignore this silly man who’s hanging around your wife’s skirts.’

  ‘Domestic…?’ I stared at my reflection trembling in the surface of my wine. ‘You make me sound like some sort of ruminant, grazing in a quiet field. I thought Chelsea Marina was trying to change all that.’

  ‘It is. But for us, violence is only the means to an end. For you, it is the end. It’s opened your eyes, and you think you can see a world that’s much more exciting. No more comfy cushions and friendly sofas where you and Sally watch the late-night news. It wasn’t the Tate bomb that got you going last night.’

  ‘Kay…’ I tried to take her wrists but she pulled away from me. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to say.’

  ‘It was the Heathrow bomb.’ Kay paused to watch me biting a childhood scar on my lip. ‘That’s been driving you all along. It’s why you came to Chelsea Marina.’

  ‘You brought me here. Remember – you found me outside the courthouse. I don’t think I’d ever been here before.’

  ‘But you were looking for somewhere like it. All those demos and marches. Sooner or later you would have found us. The Heathrow bomb still rang inside your head; you could hear it in St John’s Wood. A call sign signalling a new world.’

  ‘Kay…my wife was killed.’ I waved away my repeated slip of the tongue. ‘Laura. I wanted to find whoever planted the bomb.’

  ‘But why? You’re happily married, though you don’t seem to know it. Laura was years ago, and you didn’t even like her that much. Not the way you like Sally – or me, for that matter.’

  ‘Liking someone has nothing to do with our real feelings for them.’ I tried to smile at Kay. ‘Laura provoked the world. Almost everything she did, the smallest things she said, somehow changed me a little. Oddly enough, I could never work out how. She opened doors.’

  ‘And the Heathrow bomb was the biggest door of all. There wasn’t anything to see, but there was this huge white space. It meant everything and nothing. It gripped you, David. You’re like someone who’s out-stared the sun. Now you want to turn everything into Heathrow.’

  ‘Chelsea Marina? Video stores and plaster statues?’

  ‘You’re bored with all that.’ Kay moved aside the wine bottle and our glasses, clearing the table so that she could think. ‘You’re bored the way Richard Gould is bored. You’re looking for real violence, and sooner or later you’ll find it. That’s why you’ve got to get into your car and go back to Sally. You need those double yellow lines, those parking regulations and committee meetings to calm you down.’

  ‘Sally? I’d like to go back, but not yet.’ I touched my lips and pressed my fingers to Kay’s fierce forehead, grateful to her. ‘She has her own problems to work out. In some ways she’s as involved with the Heathrow bomb as I am. She needs to make sense of it.’

  ‘Sense? There is no sense. That’s the whole point.’

  ‘Difficult to put over, though. Only a psychopath can grasp it. Richard Gould thinks I’m wrong there.’

  ‘Richard?’ Roused, Kay looked up from her broken nails. ‘Keep away from him. He’s dangerous, David. You can stay here a little longer, but don’t get involved with him.’

  ‘Dangerous?’ I pointed to the elderly computer on her desk, partly buried in a pile of unread student scripts. ‘You used to run his website.’

  ‘That was in the early days. He’s moved on. Chelsea Marina failed him.’ She tried to take the cork out of the wine bottle, but gave up. ‘Richard Gould is waiting for you, David. I don’t know why, but he has been all along. When I rang him from the courthouse he asked me to bring you here…’

  I thought about this as I changed into my tweed suit, which hung in the bedroom wardrobe among Kay’s camouflage jackets and spangly party dresses. Kay was the disappointed fan, who had once hung on every word of the charismatic Dr Gould as he tub-thumped his way around Chelsea Marina, urging the residents to fight for their rights. But now Kay had become a political figure, arguing her case on discussion programmes, profiled in the Sunday broadsheets and backed by ambitious young lawyers with time on their hands. Gould was Peter Pan, mentally marooned on his asylum island, searching for his lost boys as reality moved towards him in the menacing form of a thousand starter homes.

  As I set off for the Adler, for the first time in three weeks, Kay watched me from the door. She leaned on one foot like an usherette gazing at a film with an unconvincing plotline.

  ‘David? That’s a very good impression of a man going to the office.’

  ‘I am. I need to cheer up my secretary, see one or two clients.’

  ‘And those bruises?’

  ‘I’m not going to undress. I’ll say I’ve been scuba-diving. I bumped into some strange fish.’

  ‘You did.’ She let me kiss her, and straightened my tie. ‘You look like an imposter.’

  ‘Kay, that’s the fate of anyone who’s too sincere. As long as I convince myself. When I can’t do that any longer I’ll know it’s time to go back to St John’s Wood.’

  I stood in the sunlight, thinking of Sally, whom I had not seen since leaving her outside Henry Kendall’s house in Swiss Cottage. I missed her, but she had begun to slip into the past, part of a life that I wanted to reject, a castle of obligations held together by the ivy of middle-class insecurity.

  21

  The Kindness of Light

  I WAVED TO Kay, a husband leaving for work, watched by several puzzled residents, who stared at me as if I were an actor rehearsing an activity like maypole dancing. Self-conscious in my well-cut tweeds, I crossed the street to the Range Rover. When I opened the door I noticed that I had a passenger. A black-suited man in an unwashed white shirt lounged on the front leather seat, dozing in the morning sun. He woke and greeted me with a generous smile, helping me behind the wheel. He seemed as neglected as ever, the bones of his face straining to expose themselves to the light.

  ‘Dr Gould?’

  ‘Climb aboard.’ He steered a sports bag onto the rear seat. ‘It’s good to see you, David. You don’t mind if you drive?’

  ‘It’s my car.’ I hesitated before inserting the ignition key, in case the safety lock had been wired up to some practical joke. ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘It was unlocked.’

  ‘Rubbish.’

  ‘No. The middle classes don’t steal cars. It’s a tribal thing, like not wearing a brown suit.’

  ‘I thought all that was going to change.’

  ‘Exactly. After the revolution the middle class will be shiftless, slatternly, light-fingered, and forget to wash.’ He peered into my eyes, pretending to see something. ‘Speaking as a doctor, I’d say you were in surprisingly good shape.’

  ‘Surprisingly? After Broadcasting House?
’

  ‘No. After Kay Churchill. Sex with Kay is like a resuscitation that’s gone slightly wrong. You’re deeply grateful, but parts of you are never going to be the same again.’

  Gould talked away to himself, enjoying his own patter. He was more relaxed than the haunted paediatrician in the asylum at Bedfont. In his shabby black suit he resembled an unsuccessful gangster let down by intellectual tastes. He had annoyed me by breaking into the car, but knew that I was glad to see him.

  ‘I’m heading for the office,’ I told him. ‘Where can I drop you? The West End?’

  ‘Please…Too many police wandering around in circles. We need a day in the country.’

  ‘Richard, I have to see my clients.’

  ‘Your father-in-law? See him tomorrow. The place we’re visiting is important, David. It may even shed light on the Heathrow bomb…’

  We set off for Hammersmith, and took the flyover towards the brewery roundabout, passed Hogarth’s house and drove into the west along the M4. Gould lay back, gazing at the single-storey factories, the offices of video-duplicating firms and the lighting arrays of unknown stadiums. This was his real terrain, a zone without past or future, civic duties or responsibilities, its empty car parks roamed by off-duty air hostesses and betting-shop managers, a realm that never remembered itself.

  ‘Tell me, David – how did yesterday go? At the BBC?’

  ‘We broke in, briefly. Everyone enjoyed themselves trying to get arrested. Moral indignation lit up the whole of Regent Street. A few people were cautioned.’

  ‘Too bad. A mass arrest would have put Chelsea Marina on the map.’

  ‘The police were called away. The Tate bomb stopped everything in its tracks.’

  ‘Grim. Truly grim. Vera and I were in Dunstable, checking out a gliding school.’ Gould covered his eyes with a shudder. ‘Looking back at the BBC demo, how do you feel about it?’

  ‘We all arrived on time, and knew what we were doing. Parking was difficult. When Armageddon takes place, parking is going to be a major problem.’

  ‘But the action as a whole – what did you think of it?’

  ‘Broadcasting House? It was childish.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘And pointless. A lot of responsible people pretending to be hooligans. A student rag for the middle-aged. The police didn’t take it seriously for a second.’

  ‘They’ve seen too many sit-ins. They’re easily bored – we need to take that into account.’

  ‘Put on more lavish productions? Burning down the NFT was irresponsible. And criminal. People might have been killed. If I’d known I’d never have taken part.’

  ‘You weren’t fully briefed. Breaking the law is a huge challenge for professionals like you, David. That’s why the middle class will never be a true proletariat.’ Gould nodded to himself, and put his feet up on the dashboard. ‘As it happens, I agree with you.’

  ‘About the NFT?’

  ‘About everything. Fortnums, the BBC, Harrods, Legoland. Smoke bombs and pickets. A complete waste of time.’ He reached out to take the wheel. ‘Careful – this is not where I want to die.’

  A horn sounded behind us, and headlamps flared in the rear-view mirror. Surprised by Gould’s comments, I had braked as we passed the Heathrow Hilton on the fast dual carriageway to Bedfont. I picked up speed again, and moved into the slow lane.

  ‘Richard? I thought you planned the whole campaign.’

  ‘I did. When we started. Now Kay and her chums pick the targets.’

  ‘So the revolution has been postponed?’

  ‘It’s still on. Something significant is happening. You’ve sensed it, David. Chelsea Marina is only the beginning. An entire social class is peeling the velvet off the bars and tasting the steel. People are resigning from well-paid jobs, refusing to pay their taxes, taking their children out of private schools.’

  ‘Then what’s gone wrong?’

  ‘Nothing will happen.’ Gould examined his teeth in the sun-visor mirror, a grimace of infected gums that made him close his eyes. ‘The storm will die down, and everything will peter out in a drizzle of television shows and op-ed pieces. We’re too polite and too frivolous.’

  ‘And if we were serious?’

  ‘We’d kill a cabinet minister. Or sneak a bomb into the Commons chamber. Shoot a minor royal.’

  ‘A bomb?’ I kept my eyes on the traffic, conscious of the tail fins of parked airliners a few hundred yards inside the Heathrow perimeter. ‘I’m not sure…’

  ‘It’s a large step, but it might be necessary.’ Gould touched my hand with his bloodless fingers. ‘Would you do that, David?’

  ‘Kill a cabinet minister? I’m too polite.’

  ‘Too docile? Too well brought up?’

  ‘Absolutely. Anger was bred out of me long ago. I’m married to a rich man’s daughter who’s very sweet and very loving, and treats me like one of her father’s tenants. If she’s chasing her latest fox she gallops over my potato patch without a thought. And all I do is smile and settle her charge account at Harvey Nicks.’

  ‘At least you know it.’

  ‘I couldn’t plant a bomb in the Commons or anywhere else. I’d be too nervous of hurting someone.’

  ‘You can get over that, David.’ Gould spoke offhandedly, like a doctor making light of a patient’s trivial worry. ‘If your motives are sound, anything is possible. You’re waiting for a greater challenge. You haven’t found it yet, but you will…’

  Gould sat forward, hands smoothing his toneless face, trying to massage a little colour into his cheeks. We turned off the airport road and entered East Bedfont, moving past a small business park towards the children’s hospice which had taken responsibility for the infants at Bedfont Hospital.

  Gould guided me up a gravel drive that led to a three-storey Georgian house. There were carefully trimmed shrubs and a wide lawn unmarked by human feet. Brightly coloured swings and slides sat on the grass, but the children were absent. Leaves and rainwater lay on the tiny seats, and I guessed that this was a playground where no child had ever played.

  Gould was undismayed. As we stopped by the rear entrance to the hospice he lifted the sports bag from the seat. He opened it on his lap, revealing a selection of plastic toys. Pleasantly surprised, he began to test them, and his face came alight when one of the dolls began to talk back to him in her recorded voice.

  He stepped eagerly from the car, like a devoted godparent at a birthday party, and drew a white coat from the sports bag. He pulled it over his suit, hunted the pockets and found a name-tag, which he pinned to my lapel.

  ‘Try to look professional, David. It’s surprisingly easy to impersonate a senior consultant.’

  ‘”Dr Livingstone”?’

  ‘It always works. You’re a colleague of mine at Ashford Hospital. Now…you’ll like the children, David.’

  ‘Are we allowed in?’

  ‘Of course. These are my children. The world is meaningless to them, so they need me to show them they exist. In a way, they remind me of you…’

  We entered a rear hallway beside the kitchens, where lunch was being prepared for the small staff. Gould kissed the nursing sister in charge, a handsome black woman with a welcoming manner. Gould held her arm while they climbed the stairs, as if they were fellow conspirators.

  The three sunny wards held thirty children, almost all bedridden, passive little parcels posted to death soon after they were born. But Gould greeted them like his own family. For the next hour I watched him play with the toddlers, making glove puppets out of old socks and Christmas tape, swooping around the ward with his arms raised, handing out toys from his holdall while wearing a Santa Claus jacket borrowed from the sister. She told me that he had brought Christmas forward for the children living out their last weeks.

  I followed her from the ward when she left Gould to his high spirits. She accepted a cigarette and lit it for herself.

  ‘You do a remarkable job,’ I complimented her. ‘The children seem very
happy.’

  ‘Thank you…Dr Livingstone? We do what we can. Many of the children will soon be leaving us.’

  ‘How often does Dr Gould come here?’

  ‘Every week. He never lets them down.’ Her smile drifted across her broad face like a sunny cloud. ‘He’s very involved with the children. Sometimes I wonder what he’ll do when the last of them goes…’

  When I returned to the ward Gould was sitting beside the cot of a three-year-old boy with a shaved head. A wide scar ran across his scalp, crudely stitched together. His eyes had shrunk into his face, but were fixed unblinkingly on his visitor. Gould had lowered the side of the cot and sat forward, an arm under the wool blanket. He looked up at me, waiting for me to go, making it clear that I was intruding on a private moment.

  Later, when Gould appeared in the car park, I said: ‘I’m impressed. No computer could have done all that. One or two almost recognized you.’

  ‘I hope so. David, they know me. I’m one of them, really.’

  He tossed the empty sports bag and the white coat into the rear seat of the Range Rover, and then stared at the lawn with its silent slides and swings. He seemed almost boyish in his edgy way, younger but more intense than the amateur terrorist I had met in the gondola above the National Film Theatre.

  Trying to reassure him, I said: ‘You help them, David. That’s worth something.’

  ‘No.’ Gould’s fleshless hands warmed themselves on the car roof. ‘They’re not really aware of me. I’m a vague retinal blur. Their brains have switched themselves off.’

  ‘They could hear you. Some of them.’

  ‘I doubt it. They’re gone, David. Nature committed a crime against them. Besides, certain things are meaningless. After all the theorizing, all the chains of cause and effect, there’s a hard core of pointlessness. That may be the only point we can find anywhere…’

  I waited before starting the engine, while Gould stared at the windows of the wards on the first floor.