The Anti-Death League

by Kingsley Amis

  "You mean you're not so frightened as you were?"

  "Oh, I don't know about that. I can't tell, you see. I mean you can't tell. One can't. It's impossible to tell how the next thing that comes along is going to seem. There's much less to go on than you might think. Even about dying. I don't feel I know anything at all about that. I feel I used to know more and it's as if I've forgotten. About what you're going to feel when it's starting to happen, I mean. For most people there probably isn't a moment like that, when they know it's starting to happen. But that's a tremendous way off, anyway, as far as I'm concerned. Lots of things have got to happen first. They may be very unpleasant things but they aren't it, they won't be it. And I've got a very good chance of getting away with it. Don't let's forget that. We ought to try not to, anyway. And nothing terrible can happen for the moment, while we're here. There's a lot of time yet."

  She had been speaking rather in the way Churchill remembered from the time in the White Hart when she had told him her history, quickly but calmly, with every now and then a sharp intake of breath. For the most part she kept her eyes on her cigarette or somewhere about the foot of the bed, only glancing intermittently at him and away. Once she smoothed her hair back at the side of her head, exposing most of an ear. The sight of it seemed to concentrate his feelings of outrage. For an unimportant moment he thought of the Anti-Death League. He would have had a good reason for joining it now, if it had existed and if, had it existed, joining it would have had any meaning.

  "I wish I could be with you all the time," he said.

  "But you can't be. There isn't any way that could happen. And you're only going to be away on this thing for ten days."

  "I can't not go. At least I could, but it wouldn't help. They'd keep me under lock and key at least as long, probably much longer."

  "I know, you told me. Don't worry about it, darling. You'll be about for the next six days, well, five days now, and nothing can really happen in the ten days after that. I shan't like it but I'll be able to stand it. I don't think I shall be too frightened. Not for a bit, anyway. You know, this morning, I mean yesterday morning, I thought completely about dying, sort of looked straight at it and tried to be logical. And just for a minute it didn't seem so frightening. When I was frightened of Casement it was because he was going to hurt me, perhaps in some way I hadn't thought of before. And when I went mad I was frightened of everything, because I thought everything might hurt me. That was sensible in a kind of way, being frightened of nasty things happening, nasty experiences, even when I wasn't a bit clear on what they might be. But dying isn't an experience at all. It's an event as far as other people are concerned, but not as far as you are, one is. Of course, one can't go on being frightfully detached and sensible for long. You soon slip back. But I've sort of lost interest in the frightening part of it for the time being, if that doesn't sound too silly. Hating it is what I'm on now more. Hating having the chance of having to go off and leave everything. Well, I don't really mean everything, I just mean you."

  She put out her cigarette and turned and faced him for the first time since she had begun to talk.

  "Another thing I was thinking this morning," she went on, speaking less quickly now, "was that I could leave everything else like a shot if I could just keep you. I saw a play once where you spent all your time in a room with three other people and that was meant to be hell-you know, real hell, instead of flames. Well, if it was just you and me there I wouldn't mind it at all. Even if they arranged it so we couldn't make love. I wouldn't mind never going out and seeing the sun and the flowers and things, or reading a book or anything. That was what I thought, anyway. It was ridiculous really, I suppose. In a hundred years we'd run out of things to say."

  "We wouldn't."

  "Anyway, what I hate is the idea of having to go off and leave you. After we've been together for such a short time."

  "That's the really damnable thing," said Churchill with difficulty.

  "Perhaps it is. I'm not so sure. I just said about the short time thing without thinking. I think I'd mind the idea just as much if we'd been married for fifty years. I'd never get sick of you, would I?"

  "I know. It's just death that's wrong."

  "It can't be put right. Don't get all angry about it, darling. You'll only end up upset. That's all."

  "Do you believe in God?"

  "I'll have to think about that. I've never been able to understand what it means, you see. It's the most difficult idea I've ever heard about. And yet people seem to be able to get results by it all the time."

  Churchill said animatedly, "Only people with no sense of right and wrong. No real sense of it. What would you have to be like to worship something that invented every bad thing we know or can imagine?" He looked away. "Death in particular. If there were no such thing as death the whole human race could be happy."

  "Most of the bad things that happen are done by people. All the cruelty there is."

  "Human evil is just an instrument," he went on in the same tone. "It's not much more than incidental. I think Dr. Best is probably about as bad as a man can get, but he didn't create his own material, did he? The wherewithal for him to be bad. Pain and madness were there already. And even more so, the first men found out that if you picked up a big rock and dropped it on somebody's head, then something very peculiar happened to him. And people had been using that effect on one another ever since, but it was all there waiting for them, before they found out about it. They didn't invent it. And if it had never existed, there'd be no point in treating people badly in other ways. The point of sending a man to prison is to shorten the part of his life he can be free in, to bring his death nearer. If you couldn't do that, he wouldn't mind going to prison and you wouldn't bother to send him. So if there were no such thing as death we wouldn't all just be happy. We'd all be innocent too."

  There was a long and total silence. Catharine lit another cigarette and looked at Churchill's averted face.

  "But we're not happy and we're not innocent," she said. "We might as well agree to start from there."

  "But that's just giving up. There must be something one can do."

  "What do you suggest?"

  "If people could see what their real enemy was," he said, frowning, "they might start behaving differently. They might be nicer to one another. A lot nicer. There wouldn't be any religion to give them excuses for oppression and intolerance and pride and not helping."

  "Is that what you really want?" asked Catharine after another pause. "Sort of brotherly love all round? It doesn't sound your style."

  He turned to her, saw her hazel eyes with the dark flecks in them gazing back at him, her mouth as straight as ever, and spoke with much hatred.

  "No, it isn't. When I look at you and think of what may be going to happen to you, I want to do something that'll show-"

  A diffused yellowish glare showed through the thin curtains like an instant of daylight. Almost immediately afterwards the windows rattled sharply and some object in another room fell to the floor. Then, several seconds later, they heard a thick, tearing, thundering noise, not long in itself but followed by dozens of echoes.

  Catharine had her hand in Churchill's. ‘What was that?" she asked.

  "I don't know. Yes I do. You've heard it before too. This afternoon when we were having a cup of tea in the kitchen. It was one of those weapons they were firing on the exercise."

  "Has the war started?"

  "No. Let's think. It can't be a night scheme or I'd have heard about it. And even if it'd been a snap do Max would have had time to let me know. I suppose the technical chaps might have fixed up a night firing test. I can't think what they'd hope to establish, though."

  He got out of bed and went to the window.

  "Nothing to see. But there are probably too many hills in the way. I didn't think it sounded the same as this afternoon. Nearer this time. But these things can be deceptive at night."

  "Come back to bed, darling. You can find out about it
tomorrow."

  "It's very strange."

  "If there's no danger or anything, can't we forget about it for now?"

  "I'm sorry. Of course."

  He got in beside her again. She put her arms round him and drew him down onto the pillows.

  "I want to ask you something. This thing you're going off on next week. I still don't know what it is and I know you wouldn't tell me anyway and that's all all right. But how dangerous is it? You can tell me that without giving anything away."

  "It isn't dangerous at all," he lied.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes. It's just a trip. There and back. But it's one of those things that would be absolutely no good if the opposition got to hear about it."

  He and the other S1 officers had been told that they had something like a seventy-five per cent chance of surviving Operation Apollo. A Pakistani colleague with whom he had been chatting recently had suggested that this was a deliberate deception, and that the planners of the Operation would not dare allow any of those who had taken part to survive it. Churchill was half convinced of this. It seemed appropriate to the nature of their task. He told himself now, as often before, that he must go through with the Operation, that he ought to want to unreservedly, because the people it was designed to stop just had to be stopped.

  'You won't leave me, will you?" asked Catharine.

  "How could I ever do that?"

  "I don't know. It's just a nasty fancy I've just had. You sounded so much off on your own just now."

  "About that explosion? I was only-"

  "No, I meant before that, when you were talking about people being happy and innocent. It was like you talking to yourself. As if you might forget about me one of these days. You won't, though. Will you? If I've got to lose you I'd rather do it by dying than any other way."

  Churchill held her very tight and pushed his face against hers.

  "I won't do anything like that, honestly."

  "Promise? Promise faithfully you won't leave me?"

  "I promise."

  Brian Leonard parked his car in its space below the Mess and sat for some moments accumulating the will to get out. It was just on eleven o'clock in the morning and he had spent the preceding six and a half hours either on his feet or behind the wheel. He had had no breakfast and was unshaven. As on the afternoon before, a bloody knee showed through a rent in his trousers, but this was the other knee and a fresh pair of trousers. Now that he was stationary the heat of the day began to close round him and so drive him into the open, much as he would have preferred to stay out of sight.

  What roused him finally was the sound of a heavy lorry moving up in low gear from the main gate. In it were some of the soldiers who, after traversing nine or ten miles apiece during the closing stages and aftermath of Exercise Nabob, had been turned out of their beds two and a half hours before reveille and transported back to the hills for yet another sweep on foot. All this was on Leonard's order and they knew it. Their debussing point would be in sight of the car park and he had no desire to run the gauntlet of their swearing, with perhaps, given the speed at which their feelings had mounted the last time he was near them, a few bursts of machine-pistol fire thrown in. He got quickly out of his car and hurried up to the Mess building.

  An armed sentry outside the ante-room door came to attention as he passed. He saluted with less than his usual punctilio and made his way to the door of the Command Post, which opened to him after a short interval.

  "At ease, please," he said uneasily to the sergeant-major and corporal who had risen to mark his entry. "Anything new?"

  "No, sir," said the sergeant-major, "not since the ten o'clock report, the one we passed-"

  "Which you passed to me over the air, quite so."

  "He's due to check in again any minute, sir."

  "Oddly enough, that's why I'm here."

  "Find anything up there, sir?" asked the corporal.

  "No. Nothing. Nothing at all."

  "Who do you reckon did it, sir?" persisted the corporal. "This bloke you're having watched? Is he the same one as you were all looking for on the Exercise?"

  "Yes. I shall know more very soon."

  "But how could he have got hold of one of those things?" The corporal did not notice a silencing glare from the sergeant-major. "And what did he think he was playing at? That place isn't a military objective, is it?"

  Before Leonard could order the sergeant-major to have the corporal put under close arrest and on punishment diet, the civilian telephone rang.

  "Mr. Lock's house," said Leonard into it.

  "Public library here."

  "Go ahead. Lock speaking."

  "I'm afraid there's still no sign of that book you wanted, sir. We've looked in just about all the usual places."

  "Start looking in the unusual places, then, and quick about it."

  "Yes, sir. The trouble is, there are one or two, uh, bookcases that we can't get into without a key."

  "Get into them just the same. Remember it's a very large book. It shouldn't be at all difficult to find. Now what about the chief librarian? What's he been up to?"

  "Just going round the shelves as before in his usual routine, sir. But he certainly looks under the weather. One of us asked him what the bandage was in aid of and he said he had a fall. No details."

  "Mm. Any unusual visitors to the library?"

  "No, sir."

  "Well, you go off and find that book or I'll report you to the Town Clerk."

  "Right, sir."

  Leonard rang off, then picked up the receiver again, dialed the exchange and asked to be connected to the special tests engineer. While he waited, he stared at the other two men in turn until they picked up the magazines they had been reading when he arrived. He had not minded the way they looked at him as much as the way they looked at each other. Eventually a voice spoke into his ear.

  "Special tests here."

  "Lock speaking. The frequency of the day is five kilocycles. How's the equipment?"

  "No faults have developed. We've had four more transmissions since you spoke to me earlier, three outgoing and one incoming, all of good quality."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Of course I'm sure. The incoming was from a doctor in the town, the outgoing were to the local golf club, a drug company and a wine merchant. We tested as usual after each transmission, and the quality was undoubtedly good. It's all here on tape; you can check for yourself if you want."

  "Never mind. The moment you get a transmission with the slightest hint of bad quality I want to know about it at once, you understand?"

  "Of course I understand. Is there anything else?"

  "No. All right. Good-bye."

  Ringing off finally, Leonard frowned. The first man he had talked to had sounded satisfied, if not pleased, with having no information to impart; the second had sounded casual, towards the end almost impatient. The latter was the more annoying. This mere technician, this electrical eavesdropper, seemed to imagine he was on a level with a qualified phylactologist like himself. Leonard thought he understood how, thirty years ago, a master farrier of the Sailors would have felt on being hobnobbed with by an armored-car mechanic in oil-stained dungarees. The image of the Sailors swelled in his mind. Even more than a bath and a shave and a change and a meal, he needed something that would uplift his spirits as never before: taking the salute, perhaps, at a march-past of the whole strength of the Sailors in full ceremonials, preceded by their trumpet-and-drum band and regimental mascot-a bull seal on a trolley drawn by a color-sergeant.

  "I'll be in the ante-room if anyone wants me," he said, and went there.

  Colonel White sat at a card-table in the middle of the room with Major Venables at his side, a telephone at one elbow and a bottle of sherry and a glass at the other, having decided that the location and amenities of the Mess made it a more suitable temporary headquarters than his office. Leonard came to attention before him and, at his nod, lowered himself rather slowly into a chair at the t
able.

  "You look as if you could do with a drink, Brian, among other things," said the Colonel kindly.

  "I'd love some of that sherry, sir."

  "Press the bell, then, will you?"

  "And what have you discovered, Leonard?" asked Venables.

  "Nothing. The area from which the rifle might have been fired is a comparatively small one and it isn't there. We've beaten a broad path from that area back to the road and it isn't there. The sides of the road are being swept up to a depth of a hundred yards-they should be completing that any moment. But I'm convinced it isn't there. It's somewhere in that mental hospital or its grounds. I just know it is. The place is being searched as we sit here, but I've only been able to infiltrate three men into it and they may take an hour or two yet."

  Venables gave a groaning cough. "Why do you not simply move your soldiery into this establishment and have them rend brick from brick until they find the missing weapon?"

  "There are several objections to that, the chief of which is that it would almost certainly serve Best's turn. Whatever the exact reasoning behind this performance of his, attracting publicity to this unit and its activities as a means of embarrassing Operation Apollo must be a main consideration. So we've got to move as surreptitiously as possible. When the time comes for us to make an arrest we must attract the minimum of attention, so that we can release our own story about what's happened to him. I've a plan for that. As soon as the rifle's found and I receive my authority from my master, I shall act."

  By now a glass had arrived for Leonard and he had emptied it one and a half times. He already felt much better, very nearly certain that the missing NHW-17 would be found as he had predicted.

  "It was by almost unbelievable good fortune," said Venables, lighting one of his square-section cigars, "that Dr. Best was near at hand during the only period, and that a short one, when the rifles were unguarded, by almost unbelievable skill in woodcraft that he was able to approach and depart unseen, and by almost unbelievable coolness of head that he managed to conceive and execute the stratagem of removing the weapon from its wooden container and placing a number of stones there in its stead, thus preventing immediate discovery of the theft. I would go further. I would say that what is almost unbelievable in three such radical aspects is quite unbelievable in aggregate."