by Brian Aldiss
‘Every right!’ Stoneward echoed, standing over him. ‘Yes, you’ve every right to be caught like a porker in a trap. You didn’t want to come here, yet you had to, because you scented loneliness, sniffed it right up your old nostrils. You thought it was like calling to like, you pomaded porker, because inside – though you don’t know it! – you’re just as miserable as all the other Normals. No, that’s foisting my diagnosis onto him. He hasn’t enough know-how to be miserable; that takes talent. He’s just a bucket of lard.’
Bending, he felt distastefully inside the breast pocket of the sleeping man, drawing out his wallet. In it was a red identity card stamped NORMAL. Sure it was normal – it was so normal, only one man in a million was anything else these days. On the back cover of the folder, under the bovinely solemn reproduction of Mr Nigel Hamilton Alexander’s physiognomy, were his home and his business addresses.
‘Good.’ Stoneward said. He picked the lighter from the table, ignited it, and extinguished it against the grey spread of Alexander’s underjowl. The sleeping man never stirred.
Saying ‘Good’ again, Stoneward went over to the phone and dialled. He had thought of an artistic touch. Switching off the vision, he waited for a female voice to coo ‘N-Compass Co. Coverage and Publicity,’ and then asked for Johnny Flower.
‘The boss won’t be in today, Johnny,’ he said apologetically, when the clerk’s dime-a-dozen purr replied. ‘I wouldn’t like this bit of news to get around, but Nigel Alexander is off on a benzedrine bust with a busty junkie called Jean. She’ll toss him right back at you when she’s finished with him.’
He cut off the incoherent noises at the other end of the line, smiled affectionately to himself and dialled through to Civilian Sanctions. He tuned the vision circuits in again in time to see the girl at the main desk switch him right through to the Commissioner.
‘Beynon?’ Stoneward said. He was always clipped staccato, every inch the operative with Commissioner Beynon, because that was how he responded to Beynon’s personality. ‘I’m on a new consignment from date. Target: Citizen BIOX 95005, Alexander, N.H. Usual objective: to awaken the man’s dormant powers of life-awareness. Strictly off the record, I don’t think Alexander has any to awaken.’
‘Don’t make this job too expensive,’ Beynon warned. ‘The Peace Department are having a stiff enough job as it is convincing the Police that you have Congress backing. I advise you to go easy, Stoneward.’
‘Message received and understood,’ Stoneward said. ‘Everything fine and formal, Normal.’
Beynon cut contact, turning to me. ‘How I’d like to see that louse behind bars!’ he exclaimed. ‘I can quite grasp that ultimately he may be doing good, but I don’t like to see nice, honest citizens suffer; and I don’t like the obvious pleasure he gets out of it all. What do you think he’s up to, Kelly?’
‘He’ll be after Alexander’s wife now,’ I told the Commissioner, ‘because that’s the way his nasty little mind works.’
She stood with a vase full of cactus dahlias in one hand. She wore a little apron over a fawn and white dress. She had curly chestnut hair and surprising grey eyes. She was slenderly tenderly shaped. She was some years younger than her husband. She smiled rather helplessly, entirely charmingly.
‘I was just doing the flowers,’ she said.
‘I won’t keep you long, Mrs Alexander – Penelope,’ Stoneward said; he had changed into a dark, dapper suit and looked ceaseless, creaseless. He put a calculated amount of warmth into his voice and added, ‘I’ve so often heard your husband call you Penelope, it seems more natural for me to call you that too. Would you mind?’
‘How long have you known my husband, Mr Stoneward?’ she asked, smiling but ignoring his question.
‘We’ve been friends for years, really close friends,’ Stoneward said, clasping his hands ingeniously to suggest ingenuousness. ‘I’m just so surprised he never mentioned me to you. I mean … why should he have secrets from you?’
The little jab did not appear to sink in. Perhaps Penelope also would prove to be insensitive – but he found himself hoping not. That gentle exterior, it should not be hard to wound.
‘Why indeed?’ she said. ‘How long did you say you have known my husband?’
‘I’ve known Ni since … let’s see … Oh, since seven years or more. We met when he was blowing the fanfares for my book on Human Sex, and that was in twenty fifteen. Come to think of it, perhaps that’s why he never mentions me; sex isn’t always considered respectable. What sort of a reception does it get in this house, Penelope?’
She set the vase with a bump on the window ledge and turned smartly. This girl’s legs consisted of an infinite number of points it was imperative to kiss. Steady, Stoneward, the outward display of her might look lively, but the vital grey matter would be dead: how else explain her marriage to N.H.A.?
‘If you have anything important to say, Mr Stoneward, would you please say it and leave? I am rather busy morning.’
‘Yes, I’ve something to say,’ he told her, sitting on the arm of a chair and stretching his legs. He laughed ruefully. ‘Trouble is, I’m not keen to say it. I’m afraid you will be shocked.’
‘If you will tell me, I will tell you if I am shocked,’ she said, attempting to humour him.
‘Okay. Penelope, sweet though you are, Nigel has left you for another woman, the cad.’
‘You are talking nonsense,’ she said.
‘I am speaking the truth. He has tired of you at last, the old dog. Every man his own Romeo.’
‘You are talking nonsense. I don’t believe you have even met my husband,’ she said sharply.
‘He has gone off with a blonde double-breasted girl called Jean with hep hips and sigh-size thighs who is old enough to be his mother and big enough to be his father,’ he lied.
She picked up the vase of dahlias again, in case a weapon were needed. All the interlocking softnesses of her face had frozen hard.
‘Get out!’ she shouted. ‘You’re drunk.’
‘No, it’s true!’ Stoneward said, bursting into laughter despite himself. He had spoilt such dramatic scenes before merely because his sense of humour had run away with him – he kept thinking of funny details with which to adorn his theme. ‘It’s all true, Penelope! This wicked girl Jean is old enough to be Ni’s mother. How do I know, you ask? Because she’s my mother! She sure gets around! But this time she’s got a square.’
He rolled into the chair, laughing. Hell, what did it matter how you played your hand when you knew you couldn’t put a foot wrong? That’s what is known as a hand-to-foot existence. It didn’t matter if this chick believed him or not – he had Congress backing. And a free chuckle.
Penelope had moved out with those nicely hinged knees to the call booth in the hall. She dialled angrily and spoke to someone. Sobering, Stoneward sat up and listened. He guessed she was calling Johnny Flower, wanting to know if hubby was under control at the all-N-Compassing office. This was rich! By the shattered look on her face when she returned, slowly, lowly, he knew that he had guessed rightly and Johnny had passed on his little tittle-tattle.
‘I’m truly sorry, Mrs Alexander,’ he said, returning to seriousness to hand out a really corny line. ‘It isn’t that he doesn’t love you any more, it’s just that he fell into temptation. His spirit was willing and his flesh was weak. Try to take it bravely. I don’t think he’ll ever come back to you, but you can always find another man, you know. You’re man-shaped!’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said and burst into tears. With a gallant effort, she tried to check herself but failed; she settled herself in a chair to cry more comfortably. Stoneward went across to her on hands and knees, like a pious panther. When he smoothed her hair, she flicked her head away, continuing to cry
‘You shouldn’t cry,’ he said. ‘Alex was always unfair to you. He left you here shut away. He kept secrets from you. He kept money from you. He never told you about me … I can’t bear to hear you cry. It sounds like te
rmites in a tin beam.’
He put his arms round her, cuddling her. In a minute he was kissing her, her grief and his greed all mixed together in a bowl of tears.
‘Leave me alone,’ she said. ‘Who are you? Why did you come and tell me this?’
‘I thought I’d made that clear, Penelope. Ni told me to come and tell you. He’s bored to death and he’s quitting – going to start life anew, a-nude.’
Though she had been crying, she had not really believed till now. Something Stoneward said seemed to have penetrated and made her accept the situation as he presented it.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she said, which is what all women say when they first begin to believe.
Stoneward neither contradicted nor accepted her statement. He just crouched by her, naked under his clothes.
‘Whatever am I going to do?’ Penelope asked aloud at last, speaking not to him but to herself.
‘I love you,’ he said simply. ‘I always have. Every word your husband has told me about you has been music to my ears. I’ve treasured the smallest fact about you, Penelope. I know your vital measurements, the size of stocking you take, the make of soap you use, which breakfast cereal you prefer, the names of your favourite movie and phoney stars, how long you like to sleep nights. Unless you have secrets from Ni, I know everything about you, for you as a Normal are only the sum of these pretty facts. Come with me to my flat, I’ll take care of you – worshipping from afar all the time, have no fear! My research days for my magnum opus are over!’
She looked at him doubtfully.
‘You know what,’ she said. ‘I think that right now I want to get away out of here. I can’t think here at all. Will you kindly wait five minutes while I just go pack a bag, Mr Stoneward? Then I’ll be with you.’
‘Your eyes have spent their days drifting among the starry nights,’ he said dreamily.
Penelope laughed, got up a little jerkily and left the room. Paul Stoneward buried his face in the warm patch she had created in the chair, drumming his fists on the chair arm. People were all the same, all the same, even this golden girl, just a puppet … all pulp puppets. He nursed his terrible secret: once people ceased to have any power over you, they were absolutely in your power. He could almost have cried about it.
He rose, walked quietly into the hall and dialled Civilian Sanctions again. When he had given Beynon his orders, he returned to the living room to await Penelope. She appeared after a quarter of an hour, entirely composed, clutching a tan suitcase a little too tightly. Stoneward took her arm and led her out of the house, mincing exaggeratedly by her soft side.
As they walked down the drive, he looked back over his shoulder. Brick house with pink and pistachio trim, lawn with pink roses florabounding all over the place in each corner, mail box on its white post at the foot of the driveway down the slope. Stoneward laughed. This popsie was really leaving home.
‘Coffee?’ she said suspiciously. ‘What’s that?’
‘When you’ve done pacing up and down, it’s an old time euphoric with taste additives,’ Stoneward said, setting the cups down and widening his nostrils over the steam. It was exhilarating to have the three dimensional shape of her in his room.
He had rolled Nigel Hamilton Alexander, snores and all, under his bed, and stuffed a sponge into his mouth. He had chased round, half-serious, half-laughing, straightening out the room after he had let her in. Penelope hardly noticed him; she walked up and down the room like a little caged – well, a little caged cutie. You could see the exercise doing her ankles good; they looked fine. Not so her soul. Penelope was still in a state of shock. No resilience, these Normals – except physically, of course, in the case of present company.
Present company drank down her java like a good girl and heeled over onto the rug. Stoneward, who had been watching like a lynx, caught her as she fell, thought several thoughts, licked his lips, but straightened up and let her sleep.
Business first. Congress should have of his best.
Hustling into the bedroom, legs moving like dapper nutcrackers, head cool as a safe, he pulled several stage properties out of a drawer and flung them onto the bed, ruffling the covers as he did so. Then he seized the mortal remains of N-Compass Co’s chief and rattled them roughly back to life.
‘Penelope … stop … lemme get to the … ugh …’ Alexander muttered, chewing his way through a king-size mist.
‘Don’t give me that crud about Penelope after what you’ve been doing to Jean,’ Stoneward said nastily. ‘Look at the mess the pair of you have made of my bedroom, you dirty old romp. Get up and get out.’
Heavily, Alexander pulled himself to the bedside and sat on it. His dull eye, moving like a whale in heavy seas, finally lighted on a female garment by the pillows.
‘Jean left you that pair with her love,’ Stoneward said. ‘Said to tell you she had another pair some place. Now come on, snap out of it, Nigel.’
The older man buried his head in his hands. After some minutes of silent battle, he launched himself to his feet, exclaiming, ‘I got to get back home and sort all this out with Penelope.’
‘Home! Penelope!’ Stoneward echoed. ‘Don’t be immoral, old sport. You can’t have it both ways. The past has ceased to exist for you. You were a Normal, now you’re not. Normals don’t behave like you have; your card will have to be stamped “Neurotic” now!’
‘You’re just confusing me, mister,’ Alexander said stubbornly. ‘I got to get home.’
‘That’s what I’m telling you, Alexander the Grunt. You’ve got no home. You’ve stepped outside the bounds of normal behaviour and so your Normal life has ceased to exist. Face up to it like a man.’
‘I got to get home. That’s all I know.’
‘Don’t you love me any more, Ni?’ Stoneward asked, peeping at his watch. ‘We used to be such buddies in the old days. Remember the Farellis, the Vestersons, the vacations in Florida? Remember the pistachio shoots off Key West?’
‘Ah, shut up, you give me bellyache,’ Alexander said, ‘not that I wish to be insulting and I’d like to make it clear I regret it if I have committed a nuisance on your premises.’
‘Spoken like a man!’ Stoneward cried delightedly. ‘That’s what I call breeding, pal. It’s all you have left, believe me.’
‘Just help me get a taxi, will you?’
They went down onto the street, quiet, well-manicured street full of ditto people. A cab pulled up for them. Paul Stoneward bundled in after his victim, who did not protest beyond a grunt. He glanced at his watch again; but his timing had always been faultless and he could have patted himself with approval.
‘2011, Springfield,’ Alexander said to the driver.
The drive took them fifteen minutes. The cabby pulled up uncertainly by a big advertisement hoarding. Stoneward dragged his companion onto the sidewalk, crammed money into the driver’s hand and said, ‘Beat it, bud.’
He stood there, hands on hips, posing for his own pleasure and whistling the opening theme of Borodin’s Second Symphony, while Alexander moved unhappily back and forth, a bull bereft of its favourite china shop. Before them loomed a big hoarding boosting Fawdree’s Fadeless Fabrics.
‘It’s gone! My house – my home has gone!’
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Stoneward said.
Crying as if in physical pain, Alexander ran behind the hoarding. Nothing there – just a flat lot with a little dust still hanging above it (The Civic Demolition boys must have worked their disintegrators with real zest!) Alexander burst into howls of anguish.
‘You’re having a wail of a time, Alec Sander,’ Stoneward said, taking the other by the arm. ‘Now why don’t you listen to me, your uncle P.? You’re at last – although a solid forty-five – getting a glimmer of what life is about. You’re learning man! Life is not a substantial thing; you can’t guarantee any one minute of it, past, present or future; you can’t salt it away in moth-balls. You thought it was secure, safe, snug, something as solid and predictable as
the foot in your boot, didn’t you? You were wrong by at least one hundred and eighty degrees. Life is a dream, a dew. Fickle, coy and hard to please, prone to moth. Nothing is left to you now, man, but dreams. You never had a dream in your life. Now you have actively to start dreaming. Now – at last!’
‘Penelope,’ Alexander said. He pronounced the single word, then he took out his silk handkerchief and blew one forlorn and faded chord on his nose. The breeze turned over a page of his hair and he said, ‘Penelope, you don’t understand … Penelope, I can’t live without her mister. We … shared everything. I can’t explain. We shared … had secrets.’
‘You had secrets?’ Stoneward whispered, leaning forward. ‘Now you’re really giving, man. Let me inside the catwalks of your psycho-
logy, if you’ll pardon the dirty word, and I’ll see if I can help at all.’
‘There was one secret,’ the middle-aged man said, weeping without restraint now as he talked, ‘one secret that was very dear to us. I suppose everyone must have something. You have such a sharp way of being sympathetic, Paul, I can’t be sure if you’ll understand. Remember how I was trying to dodge away from Johnny J. Flower in the bar, whenever it was? This morning. I like him. I like Johnny. It wasn’t that I didn’t like him; and he likes me – you could see that. I wanted it to stay that way. I want him to like me. I don’t to know if you’ll understand … You see, I didn’t want Johnny to find out what a bore I am. I always dodge him if I can. People bore me – except you, Paul, you’re my only friend. I don’t mind being bored; it’s, well, kind of comfortable – you know you’re safe when you’re bored. But I know I am boring, too, and that’s the secret Penelope and me had … I never wanted Johnny to find out. She knew I knew I was a bore and she – well, she just understood, that’s all. I’ll never find anyone like her again and now she’s gone. Gone, man.’
Paul Stoneward did not even laugh. He had seen right down into the depths which had hitherto been closed to him, and he was frightened. Without another word, he turned away, walking off with hunched shoulders past the hoarding, down the road, leaving Alexander crying on an empty lot.
