The Green Gene

by Peter Dickinson

  Humayan opened his wallet and drew out his National Health Card. While the first policeman studied it the second said, “What do you know about this, then?”

  His gesture indicated a horizontal black line on the wall, and the short lines, vertical and slanting, which crossed it in an irregular pattern for half its length. The paint was wet.

  “Those marks?” said Humayan a little shrilly. “They have nothing to do with me! Two youths ran out shouting as I came into the tunnel.”

  “Two youths,” said the second policeman tonelessly. He shifted his stance an inch, poised for a blow, but the first policeman shoved the card under his nose and flipped the top right-hand corner with a finger. The second policeman’s brows rose.

  “That’s all right, sir,” said the first policeman, handing the card back. “I see you have not been long in our country then?”

  “Just a week.”

  “I see, sir. Well, the road here is a Zone border. I’m afraid I must ask you to go back the way you came, sir.”

  “Of course, of course,” said Humayan, determined to show himself a good Saxon citizen. “Can you please tell me what the marks mean?”

  “I can’t read the stuff,” growled the second policeman, as though he were a circus animal suddenly asked to perform an impossible trick. “But whatever it means it’s IRH.”

  “Incitement to Racial Hatred, sir,” translated the first policeman. “Good day, sir.”

  Humayan walked up the ramp, puzzling why someone had chosen to brand a white journalist’s shoulder-blade with an incitement to racial hatred. The traffic in the further lanes was now at a standstill, with police bikes threading their way through towards the obstructing clot. White men stood round their cars, pointing and arguing. Four or five cars had achieved union in metal. A breakdown van, orange light flashing, came surging up from the other direction and a policeman halted the traffic in the near lanes to allow it through an opening in the central barrier. Now that all the cars were still Humayan could see the scene of the crash more clearly; close to the foremost of the shunted cars lay a dark, sack-like object from which one green arm projected at an impossible angle. One of the arguing drivers gestured towards it, as if to prove a point, but no one else paid any attention to the dead boy.

  Humayan found Doctor Glister in the hail, wreathed in smoke but bright-eyed.

  “Ah, Pete,” he said between sucks. “I was hoping to see you. The good folk who live in the Yard have a get-together on Sunday mornings, before lunch, and I thought you might care to come and have a look at them.”

  “And allow them to have a look at me?”

  The encounter with the policemen, and to a lesser extent the death of the young slogan-writer, had made Humayan suddenly a little prickly about his place in this Western culture, whatever his card proclaimed him to be.

  “Yes, yes,” said Doctor Glister, blinking. “They are all, well … pretty intelligent people, I’m glad to say.”

  Humayan made the obvious translation to ‘broadminded’.

  “I will be delighted to attend,” he said.

  “Good, good,” said Doctor Glister and then just stood there, wheezing at his pipe like some machine which is not being used for its real function but whose engine is allowed to idle on.

  “I have been puzzled by some marks I have seen on walls,” said Humayan.

  “Uh-huh?”

  “May I draw the sort of thing?”

  On the tiny table in the hall lay a memo pad and a silver pencil. Most of the space on the pad was taken up by the words ‘Try to Remember’ and a cartoon of a smug woman in furs leading a dachshund with a knot tied in its middle, but there was room for a rough representation of the marks in the subway. Doctor Glister frowned at the paper and sucked his pipe so hard that it emitted a musical note; then he rolled the paper into a spill, lit it with a match and went through a charade of using the spill to re-light his already fuming pipe.

  “Saves matches,” he said, moving back a couple of paces so that he could glance into the kitchen. “Ogham, an ancient Irish script which our idiot government has made it illegal to use, teach or refer to. It’s not bad for slogans, but too clumsy for anything else. I understand that it developed from a secret sign-language of the druids, based on the Greek alphabet, with one to five fingers held in various positions to indicate twenty letters. The script is just a rough representation of those finger positions. “Where did you see this?”

  The final question, after the hypnotically mumbled explanation, was almost inaudible but the glance was very sharp. Humayan told his story, omitting the accident in case Doctor Glister was sufficiently public-spirited—at least vicariously—to feel that he should have offered himself as a witness after all.

  “Yes, yes,” said Doctor Glister, losing interest. “But they wouldn’t have turned you back if you’d shown them your RRB pass.”

  “I do not have one.”

  “Oh, but you ought to!”

  Doctor Glister took his pipe out of his mouth to say this, and said it with a sudden shocked concern, as though Humayan were on the verge of committing some ugly social solecism. Then he put his pipe back and reverted to mumbles.

  “What I mean is, however detestable our regime, it is foolish not to arm oneself with the weapons it actually provides. Don’t you agree?”

  His look was still very sharp, as though he were searching for some sign that Humayan had seen through his bufferish mask. Or perhaps the look itself was just another mannerism, like the blinks and the pipe-sucking. Humayan thanked him and went upstairs.

  He did not feel like cooking his own evening meal, and he felt lonely and alien, so he decided to go and investigate an Indian restaurant, Saxons only, which he had seen in the course of his walk. Witch or no witch, the planets were still smiling on him, for the proprietor, Mr. Palati, came from Bombay, was of Humayan’s own caste, and took his trade seriously. He neglected his other customers to gossip with Humayan, and before the evening was out gave him the address of a club for Indians in London, and also of two reliable brothels.

  “And of course, my dear fellow,” he added, “you will not go chasing the green ladies. Oh no. The English are very superstitious about such things, I tell you often I have laughed at their ignorances, and they believe the green ladies have special talents, you know? But I can promise you from my own experience it is not so, all lies and fantasies, and now the law has made the punishments very severe, very horrible. Only the English would be fools enough to take such risks. But there is a fat white girl at the Daffodil who can …”

  Mr. Palati made her sound very exotic, but Humayan, to his alarm, felt no stirrings.

  And even next morning, Sunday, when the gym was quiet and the far traffic stilled and he could detect certain faint movements beyond the cupboard, he felt no particular urge to inspect. This alarmed him still more. He turned his book over, closed his eyes and whispered those verses of the Kama Sutra that had never before failed to bring him to bursting manhood, if he chose. The charm had no effect.

  This was Glenda’s doing. He remembered her look as she had come from the cupboard and a broken phrase in the launderette. Yes, she hated the sex act, so she had bound her new servant …

  Scrabbling with terror he began to unbuckle the collar from his wrist, and then an opposite and equal terror stopped him. What kind of curse might an English witch have put on such a token? Wait! She had said he could take it off in the bath!

  In the tiny shower-space, with the warm water slashing its whips against his shoulders, the Kama Sutra worked its boyhood magic. He sang a little as he dried. The thought had struck him that Mr. Palati might know of a house where the girls were prepared to offer their services in a showerbath. London, after all, is a mighty city, catering for many needs. And thanks to the majestic salary that the RRB was paying him he could afford such amenities.

  He chose sev
en minutes past twelve as the precise moment to make his appearance in the courtyard. Little groups of pale people stood about among the vivid flowerpots; he felt the flicker of all their eyes as he stole forth, and heard a judder in the conversation like a bad cut in a taped radio conversation; then the eyes switched back and the fluting tones of Kensington rippled on. Moirag and another green maid were handing round drinks; three middle-aged men in expensive casuals were talking to Kate, almost nudging each other for her attention; she was laughing, but not at anything any of them had said. Humayan thought it lovely to see her standing there in the noon sunshine, flowering with happiness, however base a dung had fed the flower. He considered this a very poetical image, and that it was particularly generous of him to think of it, considering all the circumstances. Glenda was talking to Kate’s lover, who wore a rather old brown shirt and brown trousers; she waved and beckoned him over, but Doctor Glister intercepted him.

  “Hello there,” he said. “What’ll you drink, Pete? Just orange? Sure? No, no, that’s no trouble … Moirag, will you be squeezing an orange for Mr. Humayan, darlint?”

  Moirag scowled assent.

  “Fine, fine,” said Doctor Glister. “Now, Pete, let’s find you someone who isn’t talking about bombs and kidnappings. Who would you like to meet? And—don’t say it—who would like to meet you? What about these three lovely ladies?”

  Two of the lovely ladies, Mrs. French and Mrs. Smith-Higgins, were of roughly the same age as Mrs. Glister but less handsome, the former being short and red-faced and the latter a pale, harsh creature with grey and wispy hair. The third, Mrs. Turnbull, was young and brisk and buxom, with hair drawn hard back in a bun. From time to time a small boy rushed through the crowd of drinkers and swung on her skirt as though he were trying to pull it down, but it had been engineered to withstand such stresses.

  “But don’t you think,” she was saying with a braying note on the emphasised words, “it was a very wicked feature to attempt at all? I mean, we’re all glad to know, but …”

  “What are you talking about, Polly darling?” said Doctor Glister.

  “The witch report,” snapped Mrs. Turnbull. Humayan jumped and shrank at the same moment. Now that Glenda had tamed him, was the whole coven about to reveal itself?

  “Oh, I don’t know,” twittered Mrs. French. “Personally I thought it was all jolly interesting and …”

  “One moment, Mary,” said Mrs. Smith-Higgins. “Mr. Humayan hasn’t the faintest notion what we’re talking about, and how could he?”

  Her attempt to pronounce his name in a thoroughly foreign fashion was gallant but misconceived. Mrs. Turnbull sighed with impatience to return to her tirade, but Doctor Glister, however soft his intonation, was a more experienced conversation-snatcher.

  “Yes, Pete,” he said. “We have here a magazine called Which? whose life’s work is to protect the interest of the consumer, and to measure the different excellencies and failings—mostly failings—of goods and services. One month it will tell you that so-and-so’s children’s bikes fall to bits on their first outing, and the next that the cheapest soap contains exactly the same ingredients as the most expensive. Never shall I forget the rejoicing among the bourgeoisie when Which? pronounced what they all already knew, that Sainsbury’s was the best chain foodstore. It was as though Christ had appeared to the apostles and told them that two and two make four. So what have they done this month, Polly? I had thought you were their staunchest defender.”

  “Usually, yes,” snapped Mrs. Turnbull. “But this month they’ve done servants. They’ve got about a thousand stupid bitches up and down the country to fill in forms about their servants, and tabulated the results, as if they were electric kettles! I ask you!”

  “And the Welsh came out on top, easily, of course,” said Mrs. French. “Gwynnedd was frightfully pleased when I told her.”

  “Pleased enough to be drunk all evening,” said Mrs. Turnbull. “We could hear her singing all through Hedda Gabler.”

  “But she’s got a beautiful voice,” protested Mrs. French. “That’s another advantage, only there wasn’t anywhere for it on the form.”

  “As a matter of fact,” said Mrs. Smith-Higgins with fastidious clarity, “I don’t agree with either of you. I can see no harm in doing the survey, provided it’s properly done. But this was ridiculous—not just the silly cartoons they printed with it, but such a small sample, and the control group of European au pairs even smaller, and so many loaded questions. For instance that one about illegitimate babies, where the Greens came out with a far higher ratio than the au pairs …”

  “Well, we all knew that,” said Mrs. French.

  “… but they didn’t make any allowance for the difficulty of Greens getting free contraception, especially in white Zones, and they didn’t …”

  “Sue!” said Mrs. Turnbull with a different sharpness in her voice. Humayan felt the lovely ladies’ eyes flick over him. He smiled a meek apology for his untrustworthiness.

  “Oh, Pete’s all right,” said Doctor Glister. “In fact this is just his cup of tea. He’s a professional statistician.”

  Having injected this numbing dart into the conversation he turned away. Moirag came stumping across the yard with a tumbler of orange juice which she thrust gruffly at Humayan, but Mrs. Turnbull stopped him from taking it.

  “Moirag!” she said briskly. “That glass is perfectly filthy. Get him a clean one.”

  The criticism was justified. Mauve lipstick smeared one rim of the glass and lip-shaped crescents of milk the other. Moirag grunted and wheeled away.

  “I’m sorry,” said Mrs. Smith-Higgins. “It’s just one of those things.”

  “One is very much on their side, of course,” agreed Mrs. Turnbull, “but it’s stupid to pretend they aren’t often quite impossible.”

  “That’s what I was saying,” said Mrs. Smith-Higgins. “People keep telling us we live in an age of communications, but they always leave out that communications only work if they’re true. The whole truth. Things like this Which? report—if you leave out the marriage and residence regulations because of the RRB, then you …”

  Humayan had been vaguely aware that a man had drifted into their group. Now the newcomer spoke.

  “Sue darling, come and talk to Denny and Toby about finances for the nativity play.”

  The newcomer was bronzed but flabby. He laid a ringed hand on Mrs. Smith-Higgins’s arm and she stopped with her mouth open.

  “Hell, we’ve only just finished the accounts for the last one,” she said.

  He smiled and explained, not to his wife but the other three.

  “They’re off to Malaga next week, and when they come back it will be almost summer hols.”

  His hand now gripped her skinny arm. Humayan saw a definite tug, and a moment of resistance, before he led her away.

  “Not a very good excuse,” said Mrs. Turnbull.

  “But just in time,” twittered Mrs. French. “Poor darling Sue, it’s such hell for her sticking our company for an hour that she has two or three quick ones before she comes out.”

  “It must be hell, being no good at people, like that,” said Mrs. Turnbull.

  “There you are,” said Mrs. French, “that’s a nice clean glass, Mr. Humayan.”

  And it was. But Moirag had stirred at least a dessertspoonful of salt into the orange. He was shocked to discover that the idiot feud still continued, but he sipped the appalling mixture and wondered what he could do to end it while he half-listened to Mrs. Turnbull and Mrs. French analysing the importance of being good at people, their arguments all based on their own virtues and tacit reservations about each other’s. Then Kate slipped in beside him.

  “Hi, Polly,” she said. “Hello, Mrs. F. Do you mind if I take Pete away? Francis wants to talk to him.”

  Any demur they made was invisible. Humayan bowed to them, and as he was doi
ng so was nearly flung to the floor by a buffet from behind. He recovered and looked round to see Moirag surging away, taking no more notice of the collision than an oil-tanker might which ran down a row-boat. Kate too was unconcerned, and led him across the courtyard, smiling off several male attempts to suck her into conversations. Humayan could almost feel the prickle of inner gaiety like static electricity around her. When she introduced her lover she lingered over the syllables of his name, in an attempt to suggest mysterious Erse diphthongs.

  “And Pete’s is even worse,” she said. “It’s got eighteen syllables so he lets us call him Pete.”

  “Very decent of him,” said Mr. Leary. His face was broader than that glance at his profile had suggested, and its redness was not the flush of health or high blood-pressure, but a curious weathering of the skin as though it had been scrubbed a few days earlier for too long a time with too harsh a brush. His nose had a drooping, smashed-in-childhood shape, so his whole countenance seemed coarse and battered and debauched, except that his blue eyes were not at all bloodshot. He spoke with an educated accent, occasionally softening a vowel so that ‘decent’ was half-way to ‘dacint’.

  “Katie says you’re working in my field,” he said.

  “I am not sure what your field comprises,” said Humayan, who was beginning to wish that he had been less free with his vauntings about his discoveries and prowess.

  “The whole green world is my pasture,” said Mr. Leary. “‘Green’ with a capital ‘g’ of course. I am paid to be tender with the susceptibilities of minority groups. Hi, kid sister.”

  Glenda thrust between them a plate of little biscuits soggy with pate.

  “Now listen,” she said. “You treat Pete right or I’ll do you.”

  She slid away, a knack of movement she had inherited from her father.

  “She scares me,” said Mr. Leary with a laugh. “She has a will of iron and she knows too much. Mind if I call you Pete too? Fine. Now the point is I work for The … hell, anyway, you probably won’t know it, but it’s a newspaper. I’m their Celtic Affairs Correspondent. Anything green is my meat. I write under the name of Frank Lear to preserve our reputation for impartiality. That’s the sort of paper we are—editorial staff soft liberal, shareholders hard fascist. We compromise …”