by Evelyn Waugh
Miles, sauntering among the sleeping flowers, was suffused with melancholy. He did not much care for music and this was his last evening at Mountjoy. Never again, perhaps, would he be free to roam these walks.
Mountjoy had been planned and planted in the years of which he knew nothing; generations of skilled and patient husband-men had weeded and dunged and pruned; generations of dilettanti had watered it with cascades and jets; generations of collectors had lugged statuary here; all, it seemed, for his enjoyment this very night under this huge moon. Miles knew nothing of such periods and processes, but he felt an incomprehensible tidal pull towards the circumjacent splendours.
Eleven struck from the stables. The music ceased. Miles turned back and, as he reached the terrace, the shutters began to close and the great chandeliers were one by one extinguished. By the light of the sconces which still shone on their panels of faded satin and clouded gold, he joined the company dispersing to bed through the islands of old furniture.
His room was not one of the grand succession which lay along the garden front. Those were reserved for murderers. Nor was it on the floor above, tenanted mostly by sexual offenders. His was a humbler wing. Indeed he overlooked the luggage porch and the coal bunker. Only professional men visiting Mountjoy on professional business and very poor relations had been put here in the old days. But Miles was attached to this room, which was the first he had ever called his own in all his twenty years of Progress.
His next-door neighbour, a Mr. Sweat, paused at his door to say good-night. It was only now after twenty months’ proximity, when Miles’s time was up, that this veteran had begun to unbend. He and a man named Soapy, survivals of another age, had kept themselves to themselves, talking wistfully of cribs they had cracked, of sparklers, of snug bar-parlours where they had met their favourite fences, of strenuous penal days at the Scrubs and on the Moor. They had small use for the younger generation; crime, calvinism and classical music were their interests. But at last Mr. Sweat had taken to nodding, to grunting, and finally, too late for friendship, to speaking to Miles.
“What price the old strings tonight, chum?” he asked.
“I wasn’t there, Mr. Sweat.”
“You missed a treat. Of course nothing’s ever good enough for old Soapy. Made me fair sick to hear Soapy going on all the time. The viola was scratchy, Soapy says. They played the Mozart just like it was Haydn. No feeling in the Debussy pizzicato, says Soapy.”
“Soapy knows too much.”
“Soapy knows a lot more than some I could mention, schooling or no schooling. Next time they’re going to do the Grosse Fugue as the last movement of the B-flat. That’s something to look forward to, that is, though Soapy says no late Beethoven comes off. We’ll see. Leastways, me and Soapy will; you won’t. You’re off tomorrow. Pleased?”
“Not particularly.”
“No, no more wouldn’t I be. It’s a funny thing but I’ve settled down here wonderful. Never thought I should. It all seemed a bit too posh at first. Not like the old Scrubs. But it’s a real pretty place once you’re used to it. Wouldn’t mind settling here for a lifer if they’d let me. The trouble is there’s no security in crime these days. Time was, you knew just what a job was worth, six months, three years; whatever it was, you knew where you were. Now what with prison commissioners and Preventive Custody and Corrective Treatment they can keep you in or push you out just as it suits them. It’s not right.
“I’ll tell you what it is, chum,” continued Mr. Sweat. “There’s no understanding of crime these days like what there was. I remember when I was a nipper, the first time I came up before the beak, he spoke up straight: ‘My lad,’ he says, ‘you are embarking upon a course of life that can only lead to disaster and degradation in this world and everlasting damnation in the next.’ Now that’s talking. It’s plain sense and it shows a personal interest. But last time I was up, when they sent me here, they called me an ‘antisocial phenomenon’; said I was ‘maladjusted.’ That’s no way to speak of a man what was doing time before they was in long trousers, now is it?”
“They said something of the same kind to me.”
“Yes and now they’re giving you the push, just like you hadn’t no Rights. I tell you it’s made a lot of the boys uncomfortable your going out all of a sudden like this. Who’ll it be next time, that’s what we’re wondering?
“I tell you where you went wrong, chum. You didn’t give enough trouble. You made it too easy for them to say you was cured. Soapy and me got wise to that. You remember them birds as got done in? That was Soapy and me. They took a lot of killing too; powerful great bastards. But we got the evidence all hid away tidy and if there’s ever any talk of me and Soapy being ‘rehabilitated’ we’ll lay it out conspicuous.
“Well, so long, chum. Tomorrow’s my morning for Remedial Repose so I daresay you’ll be off before I get down. Come back soon.”
“I hope so,” said Miles and turned alone in his own room.
He stood briefly at the window and gazed his last on the cobbled yard. He made a good figure of a man, for he came of handsome parents and all his life had been carefully fed and doctored and exercised; well clothed too. He wore the drab serge dress that was the normal garb of the period—only certified homosexuals wore colours—but there were differences of fit and condition among these uniforms. Miles displayed the handiwork of tailor and valet. He belonged to a privileged class.
The State had made him.
No clean-living, God-fearing, Victorian gentleman, he; no complete man of the renaissance; no genteel knight nor dutiful pagan nor, even, noble savage. All that succession of past worthies had gone its way, content to play a prelude to Miles. He was the Modern Man.
His history, as it appeared in multuplet in the filing cabinets of numberless State departments, was typical of a thousand others. Before his birth the politicians had succeeded in bringing down his father and mother to penury; they, destitute, had thrown themselves into the simple diversions of the very poor and thus, between one war and the next, set in motion a chain-reaction of divorces which scattered them and their various associates in forlorn couples all over the Free World. The aunt on whom the infant Miles had been quartered was conscribed for work in a factory and shortly afterwards died of boredom at the conveyer-belt. The child was put to safety in an Orphanage.
Huge sums were thenceforward spent upon him; sums which, fifty years earlier, would have sent whole quiversful of boys to Winchester and New College and established them in the learned professions. In halls adorned with Picassos and Légers he yawned through long periods of Constructive Play. He never lacked the requisite cubic feet of air. His diet was balanced and on the first Friday of every month he was psychoanalysed. Every detail of his adolescence was recorded and microfilmed and filed, until at the appropriate age he was transferred to the Air Force.
There were no aeroplanes at the station to which he was posted. It was an institution to train instructors to train instructors to train instructors in Personal Recreation.
There for some weeks he tended a dish-washing machine and tended it, as his adjutant testified at his trial, in an exemplary fashion. The work in itself lacked glory, but it was the normal novitiate. Men from the Orphanages provided the hard core of the Forces, a caste apart which united the formidable qualities of Janissary and Junker. Miles had been picked early for high command. Dish-washing was only the beginning. The adjutant, an Orphan too, had himself washed both dishes and officers’ underclothes, he testified, before rising to his present position.
Courts Martial had been abolished some years before this. The Forces handed their defaulters over to the civil arm for treatment. Miles came up at quarter sessions. It was plain from the start, when Arson, Wilful Damage, Manslaughter, Prejudicial Conduct and Treason were struck out of the Indictment and the whole reduced to a simple charge of Antisocial Activity, that the sympathies of the Court were with the prisoner.
The Station Psychologist gave his opinion that an element
of incendiarism was inseparable from adolescence. Indeed, if checked, it might produce morbid neuroses. For his part he thought the prisoner had performed a perfectly normal act and, moreover, had shown more than normal intelligence in its execution.
At this point some widows, mothers and orphans of the incinerated airmen set up an outcry from the public gallery and were sharply reminded from the Bench that this was a Court of Welfare and not a meeting of the Housewives’ Union.
The case developed into a concerted eulogy of the accused. An attempt by the prosecution to emphasize the extent of the damage was rebuked from the Bench.
“The jury,” he said, “will expunge from their memories these sentimental details which have been most improperly introduced.”
“May be a detail to you,” said a voice from the gallery. “He was a good husband to me.”
“Arrest that woman,” said the Judge.
Order was restored and the panegyrics continued.
At last the Bench summed up. He reminded the jury that it was a first principle of the New Law that no man could be held responsible for the consequences of his own acts. The jury must dismiss from their minds the consideration that much valuable property and many valuable lives had been lost and the cause of Personal Recreation gravely retarded. They had merely to decide whether in fact the prisoner had arranged inflammable material at various judiciously selected points in the Institution and had ignited them. If he had done so, and the evidence plainly indicated that he had, he contravened the Standing Orders of the Institution and was thereby liable to the appropriate penalties.
Thus directed the jury brought in a verdict of guilty coupled with a recommendation of mercy towards the various bereaved persons who from time to time in the course of the hearing had been committed for contempt. The Bench reprimanded the jury for presumption and impertinence in the matter of the prisoners held in contempt, and sentenced Miles to residence during the State’s pleasure at Mountjoy Castle (the ancestral seat of a maimed V.C. of the Second World War, who had been sent to a Home for the Handicapped when the place was converted into a gaol).
The State was capricious in her pleasures. For nearly two years Miles enjoyed her particular favours. Every agreeable remedial device was applied to him and applied, it was now proclaimed, successfully. Then without warning a few days back, while he lay dozing under a mulberry tree, the unexpected blow had fallen; they had come to him, the Deputy Chief-Guide and the sub-Deputy, and told him bluntly and brutally that he was rehabilitated.
Now on this last night he knew he was to wake tomorrow on a harsh world. Nevertheless he slept and was gently awoken for the last time to the familiar scent of china tea on his bed table, the thin bread and butter, the curtains drawn above the luggage porch, the sunlit kitchen-yard and the stable clock just visible behind the cut-leaf copper beech.
He breakfasted late and alone. The rest of the household were already engaged in the first community-songs of the day. Presently he was called to the Guidance Office.
Since his first day at Mountjoy, when with other entrants Miles had been addressed at length by the Chief Guide on the Aims and Achievements of the New Penology, they had seldom met. The Chief Guide was almost always away addressing penological conferences.
The Guidance Office was the former housekeeper’s room stripped now of its plush and patriotic pictures; sadly tricked out instead with standard civil-service equipment, class A.
It was full of people.
“This is Miles Plastic,” said the Chief Guide. “Sit down, Miles. You can see from the presence of our visitors this morning what an important occasion this is.”
Miles took a chair and looked and saw seated beside the Chief Guide two elderly men whose faces were familiar from the television screen as prominent colleagues in the Coalition Government. They wore open flannel shirts, blazers with numerous pens and pencils protruding from the breast pocket, and baggy trousers. This was the dress of very high politicians.
“The Minister of Welfare and the Minister of Rest and Culture,” continued the Chief Guide. “The stars to which we have hitched our wagon. Have the press got the handout?”
“Yes, Chief.”
“And the photographers are all ready?”
“Yes, Chief.”
“Then I can proceed.”
He proceeded as he had done at countless congresses, at countless spas and university cities. He concluded, as he always did: “In the New Britain which we are building, there are no criminals. There are only the victims of inadequate social services.”
The Minister of Welfare, who had not reached his present eminence without the help of a certain sharpness in debate, remarked: “But I understood that Plastic is from one of our own Orphanages . . .”
“Plastic is recognized as a Special Case,” said the Chief Guide.
The Minister of Rest and Culture, who in the old days had more than once done time himself, said: “Well, Plastic, lad, from all they do say I reckon you’ve been uncommon smart.”
“Exactly,” said the Chief Guide. “Miles is our first success, the vindication of the Method.”
“Of all the new prisons established in the first glorious wave of Reform, Mountjoy alone has produced a complete case of rehabilitation,” the Minister of Welfare said. “You may or may not be aware that the Method has come in for a good deal of criticism both in Parliament and outside. There are a lot of young hotheads who take their inspiration from our Great Neighbour in the East. You can quote the authorities to them till you’re black in the face but they are always pressing for all the latest gadgets of capital and corporal punishment, for chain gangs and solitary confinement, bread and water, the cat-o’nine-tails, the rope and the block, and all manner of new-fangled nonsense. They think we’re a lot of old fogeys. Thank goodness we’ve still got the solid sense of the people behind us, but we’re on the defensive now. We have to show results. That’s why we’re here this morning. To show them results. You are our Result.”
These were solemn words and Miles in some measure responded to the occasion. He gazed before him blankly with an expression that might seem to be awe.
“You’d best watch your step now, lad,” said the Minister of Rest and Culture.
“Photographs,” said the Minister of Welfare. “Yes, shake my hand. Turn towards the cameras. Try to smile.”
Bulbs flashed all over the dreary little room.
“State be with you,” said the Minister of Welfare.
“Give us a paw, lad,” said the Minister of Rest and Culture, taking Miles’s hand in his turn. “And no funny business, mind.”
Then the politicians departed.
“The Deputy-Chief will attend to all the practical matters,” said the Chief wearily. “Go and see him now.”
Miles went.
“Well, Miles, from now on I must call you Mr. Plastic,” said the Deputy-Chief. “In less than a minute you become a Citizen. This little pile of papers is You. When I stamp them, Miles the Problem ceases to exist and Mr. Plastic the Citizen is born. We are sending you to Satellite City, the nearest Population Centre, where you will be attached to the Ministry of Welfare as a sub-official. In view of your special training you are not being classified as a Worker. The immediate material rewards, of course, are not as great. But you are definitely in the Service. We have set your foot on the bottom rung of the non-competitive ladder.”
The Deputy Chief Guide picked up the rubber stamp and proceeded to his work of creation. Flip-thump, flip-thump the papers were turned and stained.
“There you are, Mr. Plastic,” said the Deputy-Chief handing Miles, as it were, the baby.
At last Miles spoke: “What must I do to get back here?” he asked.
“Come, come, you’re rehabilitated now, remember. It is your turn to give back to the State some of the service the State has given you. You will report this morning to the Area Progressive. Transport has been laid on. State be with you, Mr. Plastic. Be careful, that’s your Certificate of Hum
an Personality you’ve dropped—a vital document.”
II
Satellite City, one of a hundred such grand conceptions, was not yet in its teens but already the Dome of Security showed signs of wear. This was the name of the great municipal edifice about which the city was planned. The eponymous dome had looked well enough in the architect’s model, shallow certainly but amply making up in girth what it lacked in height, the daring exercise of some new trick of construction. But to the surprise of all, when the building arose and was seen from the ground, the dome blandly vanished. It was hidden forever among the roofs and butting shoulders of the ancillary wings and was never seen again from the outside except by airmen and steeplejacks. Only the name remained. On the day of its dedication, among massed politicians and People’s Choirs the great lump of building materials had shone fine as a factory in all its brilliance of glass and new concrete. Since then, during one of the rather frequent weekends of international panic, it had been camouflaged and its windows blackened. Cleaners were few and usually on strike. So the Dome of Security remained blotched and dingy, the sole permanent building of Satellite City. There were no workers’ flats, no officials’ garden suburb, no parks, no playgrounds yet. These were all on the drawing boards in the surveyor’s office, tattered at the edges, ringed by tea cups; their designer long since cremated and his ashes scattered among the docks and nettles. Thus the Dome of Security comprised, even more than had been intended, all the aspirations and amenities of the city.
The officials subsisted in perpetual twilight. Great sheets of glass, planned to “trap” the sun, admitted few gleams from scratches in their coat of tar. At evening when the electric light came on, there was a faint glow, here and there. When, as often, the power station was “shedding its load” the officials stopped work early and groped their way back to their darkened huts where in the useless refrigerators their tiny rations were quietly putrefying. On working days the officials, male and female, trudged through cigarette ends round and round, up and down what had once been lift-shafts, in a silent, shabby, shadowy procession.
