Millennium People

by J. G. Ballard

  ‘You two…off!’ A policeman shouted to us from the Tate entrance, waving us away from the impounded cars. I saluted him, and turned to steer Dexter across the crime-scene tape. But the clergyman had left me. Head down, hands sunk in the pockets of his raincoat, he moved in a half-run down Sumner Street and set off for Blackfriars Bridge.

  The bare-headed young woman was hurrying towards the Globe theatre. Seeing her from behind, I recognized her quirky walk, part fussy schoolgirl, part bored tour guide. She was smart but drenched, and I guessed that she had been walking the streets around the Tate for hours, waiting for Stephen Dexter to appear.

  A tugboat’s siren vented itself across the river, emptying its deep lungs in a threatening blare that rebounded from the facades of the office buildings near St Paul’s. Startled, Vera Blackburn tripped on her high heels. I caught her before she could fall, and led her into the entrance of the Globe, joining a small party of American tourists sheltering from the rain.

  Vera made no attempt to resist. She leaned against me, smiling sweetly, self-immersed and emotionally dead, a vicious and lethal child. Watching her size me up, I saw again the chemistry prodigy in the suburban back bedroom who had graduated into a Defence Ministry pin-up, the dominatrix of every deskbound warrior’s dream.

  ‘Vera? You’re out of breath.’

  ‘”Dr Livingstone”? You’re quite convincing. Who would dare presume?’

  ‘One of Richard Gould’s disguises. He left it in my car.’

  ‘Get rid of it.’ Her fingers opened the top button. ‘People will think I’ve escaped from a mental home.’

  ‘You have.’

  ‘Really?’ Her hand lingered over the buttons. ‘Is that a compliment, David?’

  ‘In your case, yes. Tragic about Joan Chang.’

  ‘Appalling. She was so sweet. I had to come here.’

  ‘You saw Stephen Dexter?’

  Her face remained composed, but a raindrop winked from her left eyebrow, signalling a covert message. She was more unsettled than she realized, and a tic jumped across her upper lip. For once the real world had made a bigger bang.

  ‘Stephen? I’m not sure. Was he by the car?’

  ‘You’re sure.’ The damp tourists had entered the Globe and were gazing at the rain-swept gallery. I raised my voice. ‘You were following him. Why?’

  ‘We’re worried about Stephen.’ She took the white coat from me and folded it neatly, then dropped it into a litter bin. ‘He’s very upset.’

  ‘That isn’t the reason.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘I’m trying to guess. Did he know about the bomb?’

  ‘How could he?’ She touched my chin. ‘He’d never have let Joan get near it. People saw her running with the thing.’

  ‘It’s amazing how she found it. All those thousands of books, and she managed to pick one with two pounds of Semtex between the covers.’ I watched the rain retreat across the river. ‘I think Stephen was sitting in the car.’

  ‘When the bomb went off? Why?’

  ‘The seat was racked back. Joan’s feet wouldn’t have reached the pedals. Almost certainly he drove her to the Tate.’

  ‘Go on. You think Stephen was the bomber?’

  ‘It’s just possible. They may have been working together. She took the bomb into the bookshop and left it on a shelf. For some reason she had a change of mind.’

  Vera opened her compact and scanned her make-up. She glanced at me, unsure whether I was being naive or trying to lead her on.

  ‘A change of mind? Hard to believe. Anyway, why would Stephen want to bomb the Tate?’

  ‘It’s a prime middle-class target. He’s a priest who’s lost his faith.’

  ‘And detonating a bomb…?’

  ‘…restores his faith. In some lonely, deranged way.’

  ‘How sad.’ Vera lowered her bony forehead as two policemen walked along the embankment. ‘At least you don’t think I was behind it.’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ I held Vera’s arm, and felt the pulse beating above her elbow. ‘Some very dangerous people are being tempted into the violence game. You might have made the bomb, but you’d never have handed it over to a pair of amateurs. You’re too professional.’

  ‘That Ministry of Defence training. I knew it would come in useful.’ Pleased, she brightened up, smiling as the sun wavered behind the clouds. ‘Still, poor Stephen.’

  ‘Why did you want to meet him here? He’s frightened of you.’

  ‘He’s in a dangerous state of mind. Think how guilty he feels, even if he didn’t plant the bomb. He might talk to the police and make something up.’

  ‘That could be dangerous for you?’

  ‘And for you, David.’ She brushed a few fragments of mortar from my jacket. ‘And for all of us at Chelsea Marina…’

  I watched her walk away, chin raised as she passed the police. I admired her chilly self-control. As Richard Gould had said, the senselessness of the Tate attack separated it from other terrorist outrages. Not one of the works of art in the gallery remotely matched the limitless potency of a terrorist bomb. I tried to imagine how Vera Blackburn made love, but no lover would ever equal the allure and sensual potency of primed Semtex.

  I returned to Sumner Street and sat behind the wheel of the Range Rover, watching the parking ticket flap against the windscreen. I felt closer to the truth about the Heathrow bomb than I had been since arriving at Chelsea Marina. Kay was glad that I shared her bed, but was still urging me to go back to Sally and St John’s Wood. But I needed to spend more time with Kay and Vera, and above all with Richard Gould. A strange logic had emerged from the borders of Chelsea and Fulham and would spread far beyond them, even perhaps to the carousel at Terminal 2 where Laura had met her death.

  I picked up the car-phone and dialled the number of the Adler Institute. When the receptionist replied I asked for Professor Arnold.

  23

  The Last Stranger

  ‘HENRY IS COMING over,’ Sally told me. ‘That won’t worry you, David?’

  She sat in my armchair, legs stretched out confidently, sticks long returned to the umbrella stand in the hall. She was at her prettiest in this pleasant room, smiling at me with unfeigned pleasure, as if I were a favourite brother home on leave from the front. Being away from me, I had to admit, had markedly improved her health.

  ‘Henry? No problem at all. I talked to him yesterday.’

  ‘He told me. You rang from somewhere near the Tate. Horrible, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Grim. Very nasty. Impossible to grasp.’

  ‘The Chinese girl – did you know her?’

  ‘Joan Chang. She was a charmer. A kind of club-class hippy – motorbike, platinum Amex, clergyman boyfriend.’

  ‘I wish I’d met her. The bomb wasn’t part of…?’

  ‘The campaign at Chelsea Marina? No. Violence isn’t our thing. We’re much too bourgeois.’

  ‘So were Lenin and Che and Chou En-lai, according to Henry.’ Sally sat forward, taking my hands across the coffee table. ‘You’re different, David. You look slightly windblown. I’m not sure it suits you. When are you coming home?’

  ‘Soon.’ Her fingers were warm, and I realized that everyone at Chelsea Marina had cold hands. ‘I need to keep an eye on things. There’s a lot happening.’

  ‘I know. It sounds like a playgroup that’s out of control. Accountants and solicitors giving up their jobs. In places like Guildford, for God’s sake. That really means something.’

  ‘It does. Revolution is hammering on the door.’

  ‘Not in St John’s Wood. Or not yet.’ Sally shuddered, eyes drifting to the safety locks on the windows. ‘Henry says you might resign from the Institute.’

  ‘I need to take six months’ leave. Arnold is unhappy with that – I’d have to give up your father’s consultancy. Don’t worry, he’ll double your allowance.’

  Sally touched her fingertips, working through more than the arithmetic involved. ‘We’ll get by. At least
you’ll feel honest for once. That’s been the problem, hasn’t it? Daddy pays for everything.’

  ‘”Daddy pays…”’ I remembered hearing the phrase at University College, and the middle-class freshers with their expensive luggage, helped out of Daddy’s Jaguar. ‘Anyway, it’s time I stood on my own feet.’

  ‘Nobody does, David. That’s something you’ve never understood. Henry says –’

  ‘Sally, please…it’s bad enough that he sleeps with my wife. I don’t want to hear his latest opinions on everything. How is he?’

  ‘Worried about you. They all want you back at the Institute. They know this “revolution” will peter out and a lot of sensible people will have wrecked their lives.’

  ‘That could happen. But not yet. I’m still working on the Heathrow bomb. The clues are starting to fall into place.’

  ‘Laura…you’ve really done your best for her.’ Sally waited as I tried to avoid her eyes. ‘I never actually met her. Henry told me a lot of things I didn’t know.’

  ‘About Laura? Gallant of him.’

  ‘And about you. Husbands are the last strangers. Are you ready to visit your mother? The manager at the home called several times. She’s started talking about you.’

  ‘Has she? Too bad. It’s not my favourite topic.’ I stood up and walked around the settee, trying to work out the altered positions of the furniture. Everything was in the same place, but the perspectives had changed. I had tasted freedom, and grasped how unreal life in St John’s Wood had become, how absurdly genteel. To Sally, I said: ‘That sounds callous, but I’ve given up a lot of heavy baggage – guilt, bogus affection, the Adler…’

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘I hope not.’ I stopped at the mantelpiece and smiled at Sally through the mirror, warming to her Alice-like reflection in my old husbandly way. ‘Wait for me, Sally.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  A car was being parked outside the house, edging into the space behind the Range Rover, shunting and reversing as the driver made a point of not touching my rear bumper. Henry Kendall stepped out, dapper but uncertain, like an estate agent in a more exclusive neighbourhood, where different social rules applied.

  After speaking to Professor Arnold I had called Henry from outside the Tate, and asked him if he still had his Home Office contacts. I needed to know if the bomber had made a warning call to the Tate in the minutes before the explosion. Glad to get off the phone, Henry promised to pursue his sources.

  Now we faced each other across a domestic hearth, trying to decide which of us would first invite the other to sit down. Henry was eager to yield to me, and was surprised that I seemed keen for him to assume the duties of man of the house. Already he looked at me with the sudden panic of a lover who realizes that the cuckolded husband is only too happy to leave him in full possession of his wife.

  When all this was settled, Sally left us and we sat over Scotch and sodas.

  ‘You’ve changed, David. Sally noticed it.’

  ‘Good. How exactly?’

  ‘You look stronger. Not so evasive, or calculating. The revolution’s done you good.’

  I raised my glass to this, deciding that I had never fully grasped how boring Henry was, and how much I resented the years I had spent in his company. ‘You’re right, I was a mess. As it happens, I’m not playing any real part.’

  ‘You were at Broadcasting House.’

  ‘Someone told you about that?’

  ‘The Home Office take a keen interest in everything.’

  ‘They must be worried.’

  ‘They are. Key people in Whitehall resigning their jobs? Seniority, pension rights, gongs and knighthoods, all thrown out of the window. It undermines morale, breaks the chains of envy and rivalry that hold everything together.’

  ‘That’s the idea. You can thank the revolution.’

  ‘Rather silly, though?’ Henry treated me to an understanding smile. ‘Boycotting Peter Jones, letting off smoke bombs in school outfitters…’

  ‘Middle-class pique. We sense we’re being exploited. All those liberal values and humane concern for the less fortunate. Our role is to keep the lower orders in check, but in fact we’re policing ourselves.’

  Henry watched me tolerantly over his whisky. ‘Do you believe all that?’

  ‘Who knows? The important thing is that the people at Chelsea Marina believe it. It’s amateurish and childish, but the middle classes are amateurish, and they’ve never left their childhoods behind. But there’s something much more important going on. Something that ought to worry your friends at the Home Office.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘Decent and level-headed people are hungry for violence.’

  ‘Grim, if true.’ Henry put down his whisky. ‘Directed at what?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. In fact, the ideal act of violence isn’t directed at anything.’

  ‘Pure nihilism?’

  ‘The exact opposite. This is where we’ve all been wrong – you, me, the Adler, liberal opinion. It isn’t a search for nothingness. It’s a search for meaning. Blow up the Stock Exchange and you’re rejecting global capitalism. Bomb the Ministry of Defence and you’re protesting against war. You don’t even need to hand out the leaflets. But a truly pointless act of violence, shooting at random into a crowd, grips our attention for months. The absence of rational motive carries a significance of its own.’

  Henry listened to Sally’s footsteps in the bedroom above our heads. ‘As it happens, people at the Home Office are thinking along similar lines. The revolt at Chelsea Marina is a sideshow. The really dangerous people are waiting in another corner of the park. Take this Tate bomb, clearly the work of hard-core terrorists – renegade IRA, some demented Muslim group. Be careful, David…’

  When I let myself out, half an hour later, I could hear Sally’s bath running. I thought of her emerging from a cloud of talc and scent, ready for Henry and a long and pleasant afternoon.

  ‘Henry, say goodbye to Sally for me.’

  ‘She misses you, David.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘We both hope you’ll come back.’

  ‘I will. I’m involved in something that needs to be worked out. All these duties, they’re like bricks in a rucksack.’

  ‘There are cathedrals built of bricks.’ Henry straightened his tie as two of my neighbours walked by. Forever doomed to feel the interloper, he could still not accept that he had pulled off his extramarital coup. He leaned into the driver’s window when I sat behind the wheel. ‘You were right, by the way. There was a warning call.’

  ‘At the Tate?’

  ‘A few minutes before the bomb went off. Someone rang the main desk at the gallery.’

  ‘A few minutes?’ I thought of Joan Chang, running frantically around the bookshop. ‘Why didn’t they clear the building?’

  ‘The caller said the bomb was under the Millennium Bridge. The staff assumed it was a hoax, some kind of joke about the famous wobble.’

  ‘Who made the call? They must have traced the damn thing.’

  ‘Naturally, but keep it to yourself. It came from a mobile phone, stolen about a week ago from Lambeth Palace. A Church of England task force was meeting there, looking into social unrest among the middle classes. The phone was stolen from the Bishop of Chichester…’

  I started the engine, and watched Henry walk back to the house. Sally was at the window, towel wrapped under her arms. She waved to me, like a child watching a parent leave on a long trip, wistful despite her hopes of seeing me again, realizing that a small revolution, however misguided and amateurish, was at last touching her.

  She had invited me to the house, but made no serious attempt to win me back, leaving me alone to talk to Henry. As she stood by the window I sensed that she was glad to remind herself of my inexplicable behaviour, which went against everything in my nature. That someone as straight and stuffy as her husband could act out of character helped to explain the cruel and meaningless event that had taken place
in a Lisbon street. Anger and resentment were fading, pushed into the umbrella stand with her walking sticks. In a sense I was helping to free Sally from herself. The world had provoked her, and irrational acts were the only way to defuse its threat.

  24

  The Defence of Grosvenor Place

  CHELSEA MARINA WAS ready to make its last stand. Three weeks later, from the windows of Kay’s living room, I watched the residents’ committee organize the defence of Grosvenor Place. Fifty adults, almost every neighbour in the cul de sac, had gathered in front of number 27, all talking at the tops of their confident voices. Indignation was working itself towards critical mass, and the explosion threatened the entire civic order of Chelsea and Fulham.

  The bailiffs were due to arrive in minutes, determined to evict Alan and Rosemary Turner, both entomologists at the Natural History Museum, and their three teenage children. The Turners were one of the many families who refused to pay their maintenance charges, defaulted on their mortgage and ignored all demands from the utility companies and the local council. The Turners were now a test case, and a formidable coalition of banks and building societies, council officials and property executives were determined to make an example of them.

  I had met the Turners, a high-minded but pleasant couple, and sometimes helped the younger son with the algebra problems his mother set him. For a month they had been without water or electricity, but their neighbours rallied round, feeding cable and hose-pipe extensions over their garden walls. Unable to afford the children’s school fees, the Turners hung a large banner – ‘WE ARE THE NEW POOR’ – from their bedroom balcony.

  Sadly, this was all too true. Kay organized a whip-round, but a week later Mrs Turner and her daughter were caught shoplifting in the King’s Road Safeway. Listening to the list of pilfered items, from breakfast cereals to orange juice, the magistrates were ready to let Mrs Turner off with a caution. On hearing that she lived in Chelsea Marina, they closed their minds to clemency and talked darkly of Fagin gangs on the prowl, flaunting their Hermès scarves and Prada handbags. The chief magistrate, the headmistress of a local comprehensive school, lectured Mrs Turner on the perils of the middle class abdicating their responsibilities, and fined her £50. I paid this, and Mrs Turner returned to a cheerful street party, the first martyr of Grosvenor Place.