The Anti-Death League

by Kingsley Amis

  When no one else moved, Churchill clasped the bird with the palms of his hands over its wings. Its heart was beating very quickly. After a moment it struck down at his finger with its beak. He kept his hold, eased the parrot into its cage and sucked at the tear in his finger.

  "Let me see that," said Ross-Donaldson.

  "Lucky she didn't get her beak round it or she'd have gone through it to the bone. They're very vicious, you know."

  Churchill was aware that the company had just increased by one, perhaps two. While Ross-Donaldson peered at the injured finger, a cloud of scent and a rustle of skirts approached from somewhere in the rear. The hand in question was gently grasped by another one, thin, cool and dry, the owner of which Churchill took in as of medium height, dark hair, pale complexion and no particular age. There was elaborately cut clothing and earrings and necklaces, too.

  Ross-Donaldson said, "Lucy, may I present a brother-officer of mine, Lieutenant James Churchill of the Blue Howards? Churchill, this is Lady Hazell."

  "How do you do, Mr. Churchill." Lady Hazell gave the hand she was holding a couple of shakes and went on holding it. "It's not much use trying to see anything in here," she added truthfully. "Let me take you along to the bathroom."

  Still holding his hand, she led him to a far comer of the room and up a narrow staircase with linoleum underfoot and crumbling plaster on the walls. On the next floor, in virtually complete darkness, she drew him across a couple of yards of what felt and sounded like bare boards, then switched on a light so comparatively bright that Churchill blinked.

  They stood in what was indeed a bathroom, for it contained a bath, and in addition a washbasin and w.c. But he found it hard to imagine anyone bathing here willingly. A dank-looking rug covered some of the floorboards, its design indistinguishable. Two disused pots of paint stood in a corner beside an equally disused lavatory brush, and along the sill below the uncurtained window were half a dozen jam-pots, most of them empty, one or two holding an inch of pale-brownish liquid. The light-bulb was unshaded.

  In the two seconds he spent taking this in, Churchill felt, Lady Hazell had been taking him in. She gave no sign of how he had fared when she said pleasantly, in her faintly hoarse voice,

  "I'm afraid things are in rather a mess. We don't use this part of the house a great deal. Now let me have a look. I must apologize for poor Sadie's behavior. She's been over-excited and I'm afraid she rounded on you when you were being the only brave and helpful person there. That's life. But this doesn't look too bad, thank God. Does it hurt very much?"

  Churchill had had much more than two seconds to take Lady Hazell in. He found her a good deal better than he had expected, in several respects. To begin with, she was no more than thirty-five, if that; he had assumed that the onset of promiscuous polyandry could not be expected before the later forties. Then, she was slightly above the quite sufficiently attractive level promised by Ross-Donaldson; her complexion turned out to be white and clear rather than pale, with strongly marked black eyebrows and abundant lashes. And although her figure was obscured by the various artifices of her clothes, neither it nor they seemed too bad. Best of all, her manner was quiet to the point of docility. He knew very well that this might easily change later, but he was glad that so far she had not sprung at him with the kind of erotic snarl he had imagined when Ross-Donaldson first started describing her.

  "What? Oh. No, it's… fine, thank you."

  The blow had been right at the limit of the parrot's reach, and in fact most of the tear in the skin had already stopped bleeding.

  "Good. But I think we ought to disinfect it, and bathe it and so on. Now…"

  She opened a wall-cupboard, the glass of which was cracked and foxed, revealing a hundred or more unstoppered bottles, uncapped tubes and lidless tins. After a brief search she took out a small bottle of beetroot-colored liquid.

  "Mercurochrome. Just the thing. Let's wash the cut out first, though."

  Now she turned on one of the taps at the basin. A loud shuddering groan filled the room, dwindled to a whimper and was quiet. Water splashed, trickled, splashed again.

  "It'll run hot eventually, you'll find. I expect you'd like me to leave you to yourself, Mr. Churchill. I think there's some plaster in the cupboard. Be sure to help yourself to a drink, won't you?"

  Before leaving, she gave him a glance that clearly meant something, though he could not have said what. Perhaps he had already failed some vital test and would never be allowed near her again. He put one of his uninjured fingers under the tap, which was now delivering a steady but cold flow, and considered. Had he been meant to set about pulling her dress off the moment they arrived up here? And if so, would that have been taken just as a required show of keenness, to be noted and taken up later, or would one thing have been allowed to lead to another? And if so, where? In here? Then keenness was hardly the word. Or had Ross-Donaldson been pulling his leg about the whole thing? One could never be sure with him.

  And what was that about helping himself to a drink? Were there some dregs of medicinal brandy somewhere in the cupboard? He looked, but soon gave up. The risk of toppling bottles into the basin was too great, and any dregs he might find in this context would be unappealing.

  The water from the tap had settled into a state between cool and lukewarm. He washed his finger, working up a little lather from a sliver of household soap, and dried it on his handkerchief. After some thought he poured mercurochrome onto it. There was no special result apart from a bright red stain on the skin. The plaster he decided against. He used the w.c., smoothed his hair back in the mirror, lit a cigarette and slowly groped his way down the stairs.

  The room he had left could never look quite empty, but within a few seconds he was sure there were no people in it. He listened. Immediately there was the sound of a car being started and driven away. It was not, as he feared just when it began, the sound of a jeep. He went quietly through the hall to the front door, opened it and looked out. The jeep was standing on its own where it had been left, and a tail-light was receding along the drive. He shut the door and listened again. There was absolute silence. He walked across thick carpets to the foot of the stairs. From here it was quite plain that the figure on the tapestry he had noticed on arrival was human after all, a girl in a long white dress reclining at the edge of a pool or stream. Nothing was to be seen up the stairs.

  Back where he had just come from, he heard the parrot stirring in its cage. On his way over to it he noticed a tray with bottles, glasses and an ice-bucket. He understood now about being told to be sure to help himself to a drink. Grinning, he mixed himself a gin and tonic with ice. What little he had gathered of the men here earlier had not appealed to him much. They had certainly been sent packing; even now it could not have been much more than five minutes since Lady Hazell had left him in the bathroom, which meant among other things that he could not have been inside the house more than a quarter of an hour. This seemed to him very surprising. However-how much longer was he going to be on his own, and how was he going to fill in the time?

  He resumed his interrupted progress towards the parrot. Watching him, it used claws and beak to move itself ungracefully across the back of its cage. Then it forgot about him and clung there without stirring. After calling it by its name several times without any result, he moved away again and looked idly at some of the pictures. Most were portraits. Several of these, whether true likeness or not, seemed in the half-light to show such an ugly face that it was hard to imagine how they had survived the death of the sitter at latest, unless by the intervention of some close relative. The one above the chimneypiece, rendering a man in middle life whose pop-eyed petulance the artist had perhaps tried, not very hard, to represent as authority, was a case in point. It hung a little askew after being disturbed by the climber there and he straightened it. On the shelf below it he noticed a framed photograph. Although its tones were in over-violent contrast, he could make out enough of the face of the girl in it to be fairly sure
it was better-looking than the surrounding average. Faintly and, he felt, untraceably, it reminded him of somebody. He put it down.

  Suddenly Churchill felt sure he was going to have to hang about here all night, forgotten or ignored by Ross-Donaldson and Lady Hazell, with nothing whatever to do, nothing to read and in any case-he fiddled vainly with the switches beside the door-no light to read by. He drained his gin and tonic and poured another: much faster drinking than his normal tempo. But that tempo itself had recently been quickening, ever since, in fact, he and the other S1 officers had been fully informed of the nature of Operation Apollo.

  He did not want to think about this now. Carrying his fresh drink, he moved towards the hall, then changed his mind and walked to the far corner of the room. Here, next to the staircase, he found a door, then a dining-room with a long table but no chairs, then a kitchen. This had a normal light in it. It was clean and tidy, although thinly stocked with food and means of preparing it. The refrigerator contained nothing but a lot of ice-trays and seven or eight tins of tomato juice. Apart from this, it appeared that Lady Hazell lived on eggs, black coffee and various spices. The racing page of a newspaper was spread on the table. Churchill stood reading this and sipping his drink for a few minutes. Then he heard Ross-Donaldson call his name from the drawing-room.

  "You weren't very long," said Churchill when he reached him.

  "No," said Ross-Donaldson. Looking just the same as usual, he was gazing at one picture or another. "Where have you been?"

  "In the kitchen. You know, hanging about."

  "Did you notice any coffee there?"

  "As a matter of fact I did. Lots of it."

  "I think I could do with a cup. Would you like some?"

  "Well yes, but…"

  "Oh, sorry, of course. It's the second door on the left along the upstairs passage. And I would be really honestly grateful if you didn't prolong the after-play unduly. Don't feel you have to rush it, but it'll take us an hour to get back to camp and into bed and I've got this arms inspection at nine hundred hours. Have a good time."

  It was not until now that Churchill really believed that the expedition was going to have some point as far as he was concerned. Mounting the shadowy staircase he felt pleased and excited, confident that he could take in his stride any unfamiliarities or momentary enigmas presented by what was in store for him.

  Lady Hazell was lying in the middle of a very large bed with the covers up to her chin. Under the usual dim glow, it looked as if everything in the room was made of silk or velvet, but before Churchill could check on this impression she spoke to him.

  "The thing is," she said, "for you to take all your clothes off now and then come and get into bed. It's much the best way."

  He did as he was told. Once in bed he very soon found that she too had nothing on. Her body was delightfully warm, and also well shaped in detail, firm, carefully looked after, healthy: or just young. He remembered faintly that he had expected her to be beyond him in one way or another, responding far too much or not at all, but her movements were those of someone whose mind was effectively on what they were both doing.

  It was fine; it was successful; it was over. Lady Hazell stroked the back of his neck and smiled at him. She said,

  "Is it James or Jim or Jimmy or something quite different?"

  "James."

  "I've suddenly come over terribly sleepy, James. It's only about eleven. Not my usual form, I can tell you. Would you think it was awful of me if I sort of threw you out?"

  "Not in the least."

  He got out of bed.

  "The bathroom's through there. You can talk to me from it."

  This bathroom was radically unlike the one he had been in earlier. There was a bright red carpet that his toes sank into and wallpaper depicting colonnades and ornamental fountains. The bath was made of a beautiful pale green marble. There were two different kinds of lavatory paper. He said over his shoulder,

  "Do you live here on your own?"

  "I have been for the last few months. I've been making do with Mrs. Stoker. She lives just down the road. She comes up every morning and does my breakfast and washes up the glasses and tidies round, and then she goes back and does my lunch and Mr. Stoker carries it up here on a tray. He cleans out Sadie's cage and things too. And in the evenings I have a few drinks and don't usually bother. But it'll be different after tomorrow."

  "Why, what's happening then?"

  "Well, tomorrow my great friend comes back. She's called Cathy. She's been away being ill but she's all right again now. You must come over again and meet her."

  Churchill went back into the bedroom and started dressing. Lady Hazell had apparently fallen asleep. He wished that those men had not been in the house when he arrived, and that he had come on his own. At this stage it was clear to him that he would not be making another visit here. If he did, he would probably like it less. Or he might like it more, in which case he would mind about the other men more. Or, possibly, he might find himself eventually minding about them less. That was an unpleasant idea.

  He finished dressing and went over to the bed. Lady Hazell lay on her back just as he had left her. He did not want to leave her without saying good night, but was not sure how to wake her. He pressed his hand gently on the pillow beside her head and she opened her eyes at once.

  "You'd like her," she said. "She's very sweet. Oh, you're off now, are you?"

  "Yes."

  "Say good night to Alastair for me. How old are you, James?"

  "Twenty-four."

  "I suppose I must seem the most fearful old bag to you."

  "You don't at all."

  He kissed her.

  "You see, I suddenly found out that this was the sort of life I liked. I know there must be a reason for it but I wouldn't know what it is, would I? Now you're not to feel you've got to hang about, because you've got a long drive back to camp. But you must come over again soon and meet Cathy."

  "Of course. Good night, Lucy."

  The village where the officers and men of the unit did their minor shopping and their extra-mural drinking appealed to them chiefly because of its relative closeness to the camp. The local trades, such as they were, had become depressed over the previous decades, and the region had never attracted promoters of industrial development. Consequently, the village had declined in numbers and acquired a drab, dilapidated look which did not invite the better-off people from the nearest town to consider settling there. Recently, however, quite a few such people had got into the habit of driving out on summer evenings to drink at the White Hart, the largest pub in the place and the only one with pretensions to comfort. Among the results of this new trade were a modernized interior with a small grill-room, a furnished garden and a fresh intake of barmaids, these of a type thought to be more attractive to visitors than the village girls who had formerly done the job.

  Catharine Casement became a barmaid in the lounge of the White Hart two days after she was let out of the mental hospital. The idea, and the arrangements, had been Lucy Hazell's. Dr. Best had given his qualified approval at his last interview with Catharine.

  "I suppose in some ways it's not a bad thing that you should go straight into some sort of work," he had said, rather dispiritedly. "You realize that you'll inevitably be brought into contact with men at this public house?"

  "Yes. That's all right with me."

  The doctor had shown his lower teeth. "You know my view on your feeling towards men, Mrs. Casement. I don't intend to go into them again now. What I want to impress on you is that in these next weeks you must show boldness and courage. If you find that some situation or person disturbs or frightens you, that's a sign that you must move towards it or them, not retreat. This is necessary if your probation period is to prove truly therapeutic. Remember, you are in search of a shock."

  "I'll see what I can do for you."

  "It's not for me, Mrs. Casement, it's for you. Well, we'll re-examine your case in four weeks' time. Meanwhile, I a
dvise you not to get in touch with me. The more isolated you feel yourself to be, the better the chances that something will come of our experiment. Something favorable, I hope." At this point he had smiled cordially. "But I shall be keeping myself informed of your progress."

  "How?"

  "Don't worry, I won't be obtrusive about it. You'll be left to yourself all right. Well, good-bye. For the time being. And good luck. With the experiment."

  She had decided to forget all about Dr. Best and his instructions until she had got used to being out of hospital. The first couple of days of this, at any rate, had been unexpectedly easy: completely non-frightening. On the second evening, as arranged, Mr. Stoker had driven Lucy and herself down to the White Hart so that she could be introduced to the landlord and the rest of the staff and have her duties explained to her. The landlord was a red-faced man of fifty called Eames. He wore a short brown beard, grown as a personal contribution to the modernizing of the premises. He had taken the two women into the snug and insisted on giving them champagne. What he said, plus his manner, suggested a thorough but selective briefing by Lucy earlier.

  "I'm putting you in my lounge bar to start with, Mrs. Casement, because the trade isn't very heavy there, except sometimes at weekends, and there'll be someone else on then as well to give you a hand. You get a very nice type of people in the lounge. Nice type of men particularly. But I want to impress on you that if by any remote chance anybody does get impertinent or anything, you come to me straight away and I'll deal with him, won't I, Lady Hazell? No, you won't have any trouble. As I say, they're a nice crowd. You get doctors and businessmen and officers from that camp up the road. They'll all be on your side.

  "Now as regards the technical aspect, if you could get down here at say nine-thirty, I'll run over that with you before we open, though I gather from Lady Hazell here that you're used to the serving of drinks, so I may not have very much to teach you there. The difficulty you will undoubtedly find is with remembering prices, totaling orders and giving change. What I've done, I've had a full list typed out for you in my office. Here. The drinks and so on are down this side, and over here there's the prices. I'd advise you to just work away at that until you've got it off by heart. Get Lady Hazell to help you. You could reel off an order, Lady Hazell, and Mrs. Casement could work out how much it would come to. The two of you could make a sort of game of it. You know… ‘Two large gins and tonic, please, miss, pint and a half of best bitter, one light ale, pint of ordinary bitter, scrub the light ale, how much, please?'-'Eleven and four, please, sir, and would you like a slice of lemon in the gins?' "