The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard

by J. G. Ballard

  ‘Charles!’ Hanson lowered his head at this apparent blasphemy, glanced up at the watch-towers over the street as if expecting instant retribution to descend from them. ‘Look, my dear fellow, take my advice. Drop the whole idea. You don’t stand a chance anyway of ever holding this mad jape, so why deliberately court trouble with the Council? Who knows what their real power would be if they were provoked?’

  Renthall rose from his seat. He looked up at the watch-tower hanging from the air on the other side of the road, controlling himself when a slight pang of anxiety stirred his heart. ‘I’ll send you an invitation,’ he called back, then walked away to his hotel.

  The next afternoon the town clerk’s secretary called upon him in his room. During the interval, no doubt intended as a salutary pause for reflection, Renthall had remained at the hotel, reading quietly in his armchair. He paid one brief visit to Mrs Osmond, but she seemed nervous and irritable, evidently aware of the imminent clash. The strain of maintaining an appearance of unconcern had begun to tire Renthall, and he avoided the open streets whenever possible. Fortunately the school had still not opened.

  Barnes, the dapper dark-haired secretary, came straight to the point. Refusing Renthall’s offer of an armchair, he held a sheet of pink duplicated paper in his hand, apparently a minute of the last Council meeting.

  ‘Mr Renthall, the Council has been informed of your intention to hold a garden fête in some three weeks’ time. I have been asked by the chairman of the Watch Committee to express the committee’s grave misgivings, and to request you accordingly to terminate all arrangements and cancel the fête immediately, pending an inquiry.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Barnes, but I’m afraid our preparations are too far advanced. We’re about to issue invitations.’

  Barnes hesitated, casting his eye around Renthall’s faded room and few shabby books as if hoping to find some ulterior motive for Renthall’s behaviour.

  ‘Mr Renthall, perhaps I could explain that this request is tantamount to a direct order from the Council.’

  ‘So I’m aware.’ Renthall sat down on his window-sill and gazed out at the watch-towers. ‘Hanson and I went over all this, as you probably know. The Council have no more right to order me to cancel this fête than they have to stop me walking down the street.’

  Barnes smiled his thin bureaucratic smirk. ‘Mr Renthall, this is not a matter of the Council’s statutory jurisdiction. This order is issued by virtue of the authority vested in it by its superiors. If you prefer, you can assume that the Council is merely passing on a direct instruction it has received.’ He inclined his head towards the watch-towers.

  Renthall stood up. ‘Now we’re at last getting down to business.’ He gathered himself together. ‘Perhaps you could tell the Council to convey to its superiors, as you call them, my polite but firm refusal. Do you get my point?’

  Barnes retreated fractionally. He summed Renthall up carefully, then nodded. ‘I think so, Mr Renthall. No doubt you understand what you’re doing.’

  After he had gone Renthall drew the blinds over the window and lay down on his bed; for the next hour he made an effort to relax.

  His final showdown with the Council was to take place the following day. Summoned to an emergency meeting of the Watch Committee, he accepted the invitation with alacrity, certain that with every member of the committee present the main council chamber would be used. This would give him a perfect opportunity to humiliate the Council by publicly calling their bluff.

  Both Hanson and Mrs Osmond assumed that he would capitulate without argument.

  ‘Well, Charles, you brought it upon yourself,’ Hanson told him. ‘Still, I expect they’ll be lenient with you. It’s a matter of face now.’

  ‘More than that, I hope,’ Renthall replied. ‘They claim they were passing on a direct instruction from the watch-towers.’

  ‘Well, yes . . .’ Hanson gestured vaguely. ‘Of course. Obviously the towers wouldn’t intervene in such a trivial matter. They rely on the Council to keep a watching brief for them, as long as the Council’s authority is respected they’re prepared to remain aloof.’

  ‘It sounds an ideally simple arrangement. How do you think the communication between the Council and the watch-towers takes place?’ Renthall pointed to the watch-tower across the street from the cabin. The shuttered observation tier hung emptily in the air like an out-of-season gondola. ‘By telephone? Or do they semaphore?’

  But Hanson merely laughed and changed the subject.

  Julia Osmond was equally vague, but equally convinced of the Council’s infallibility.

  ‘Of course they receive instructions from the towers, Charles. But don’t worry, they obviously have a sense of proportion – they’ve been letting you come here all this time.’ She turned a monitory finger at Renthall, her broad-hipped bulk obscuring the towers from him. ‘That’s your chief fault, Charles. You think you’re more important than you are. Look at you now, sitting there all hunched up with your face like an old shoe. You think the Council and the watch-towers are going to give you some terrible punishment. But they won’t, because you’re not worth it.’

  Renthall picked uneagerly at his lunch at the hotel, conscious of the guests watching from the tables around him. Many had brought visitors with them, and he guessed that there would be a full attendance at the meeting that afternoon.

  After lunch he retired to his room, made a desultory attempt to read until the meeting at half past two. Outside, the watch-towers hung in their long lines from the bright haze. There was no sign of movement in the observation windows, and Renthall studied them openly, hands in pockets, like a general surveying the dispositions of his enemy’s forces. The haze was lower than usual, filling the interstices between the towers, so that in the distance, where the free space below their tips was hidden by the intervening roof-tops, the towers seemed to rise upwards into the air like rectangular chimneys over an industrial landscape, wreathed in white smoke.

  The nearest tower was about seventy-five feet away, diagonally to his left, over the eastern end of the open garden shared by the other hotels in the crescent. Just as Renthall turned away, one of the windows in the observation deck appeared to open, the opaque glass pane throwing a spear of sharp sunlight directly towards him. Renthall flinched back, heart suddenly surging, then leaned forward again. The activity in the tower had subsided as instantly as it had arisen. The windows were sealed, no signs of movement behind them. Renthall listened to the sounds from the rooms above and below him. So conspicuous a motion of the window, the first sign of activity for many days, and a certain indication of more to come, should have brought a concerted rush to the balconies. But the hotel was silent, and below he could hear Dr Clifton at his cages by the window, humming absently to himself.

  Renthall scanned the windows on the other side of the garden but the lines of craning faces he expected were absent. He examined the watch-tower carefully, assuming that he had seen a window open in a hotel near by. Yet the explanation dissatisfied him. The ray of sunlight had cleft the air like a silver blade, with a curious luminous intensity that only the windows of the watch-towers seemed able to reflect, aimed unerringly at his head.

  He broke off to glance at his watch, cursed when he saw that it was after a quarter past two. The Town Hall was a good half-mile away, and he would arrive dishevelled and perspiring.

  There was a knock on his door. He opened it to find Mulvaney. ‘What is it? I’m busy now.’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Renthall. A man called Barnes from the Council asked me to give you an urgent message. He said the meeting this afternoon has been postponed.’

  ‘Ha!’ Leaving the door open, Renthall snapped his fingers contemptuously at the air. ‘So they’ve had second thoughts after all. Discretion is the better part of valour.’ Smiling broadly, he called Mulvaney back into his room. ‘Mr Mulvaney! Just a moment!’

  ‘Good news, Mr Renthall?’

  ‘Excellent. I’ve got them on the run.’ He added: ‘You w
ait and see, the next meeting of the Watch Committee will be held in private.’

  ‘You might be right, Mr Renthall. Some people think they have over-reached themselves a bit.’

  ‘Really? That’s rather interesting. Good.’ Renthall noted this mentally, then gestured Mulvaney over to the window. ‘Tell me, Mr Mulvaney, just now while you were coming up the stairs, did you notice any activity out there?’

  He gestured briefly towards the tower, not wanting to draw attention to himself by pointing at it. Mulvaney gazed out over the garden, shaking his head slowly. ‘Can’t say I did, not more than usual. What sort of activity?’

  ‘You know, a window opening . . .’ When Mulvaney continued to shake his head, Renthall said: ‘Good. Let me know if that fellow Barnes calls again.’

  When Mulvaney had gone he strode up and down the room, whistling a Mozart rondo.

  Over the next three days, however, the mood of elation gradually faded. To Renthall’s annoyance no further date was fixed for the cancelled committee meeting. He had assumed that it would be held in camera, but the members must have realized that it would make little difference. Everyone would soon know that Renthall had successfully challenged their claim to be in communication with the watch-towers.

  Renthall chafed at the possibility that the meeting had been postponed indefinitely. By avoiding a direct clash with Renthall the Council had cleverly side-stepped the danger before them.

  Alternatively, Renthall speculated whether he had underestimated them. Perhaps they realized that the real target of his defiance was not the Council, but the watch-towers. The faint possibility – however hard he tried to dismiss it as childish fantasy the fear still persisted – that there was some mysterious collusion between the towers and the Council now began to grow in his mind. The fête had been cleverly conceived as an innocent gesture of defiance towards the towers, and it would be difficult to find something to take its place that would not be blatantly outrageous and stain him indelibly with the sin of hubris.

  Besides, as he carefully reminded himself, he was not out to launch open rebellion. Originally he had reacted from a momentary feeling of pique, exasperated by the spectacle of the boredom and lethargy around him and the sullen fear with which everyone viewed the towers. There was no question of challenging their absolute authority – at least, not at this stage. He merely wanted to define the existential margins of their world – if they were caught in a trap, let them at least eat the cheese. Also, he calculated that it would take an affront of truly heroic scale to provoke any reaction from the watch-towers, and that a certain freedom by default was theirs, a small but valuable credit to their account built into the system.

  In practical, existential terms this might well be considerable, so that the effective boundary between black and white, between good and evil, was drawn some distance from the theoretical boundary. This watershed was the penumbral zone where the majority of the quickening pleasures of life were to be found, and where Renthall was most at home. Mrs Osmond’s villa lay well within its territory, and Renthall would have liked to move himself over its margins. First, though, he would have to assess the extent of this ‘blue’ shift, or moral parallax, but by cancelling the committee meeting the Council had effectively forestalled him.

  As he waited for Barnes to call again a growing sense of frustration came over him. The watch-towers seemed to fill the sky, and he drew the blinds irritably. On the flat roof, two floors above, a continuous light hammering sounded all day, but he shunned the streets and no longer went to the café for his morning coffee.

  Finally he climbed the stairs to the roof, through the doorway saw two carpenters working under Mulvaney’s supervision. They were laying a rough board floor over the tarred cement. As he shielded his eyes from the bright glare a third man came up the stairs behind him, carrying two sections of wooden railing.

  ‘Sorry about the noise, Mr Renthall,’ Mulvaney apologized. ‘We should be finished by tomorrow.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Renthall asked. ‘Surely you’re not putting a sun garden here.’

  ‘That’s the idea.’ Mulvaney pointed to the railings. ‘A few chairs and umbrellas, be pleasant for the old folk. Dr Clifton suggested it.’ He peered down at Renthall, who was still hiding in the doorway. ‘You’ll have to bring a chair up here yourself, you look as if you could use a little sunshine.’

  Renthall raised his eyes to the watch-tower almost directly over their heads. A pebble tossed underhand would easily have rebounded off the corrugated metal underside. The roof was completely exposed to the score of watch-towers hanging in the air around them, and he wondered whether Mulvaney was out of his mind – none of the old people would sit there for more than a second.

  Mulvaney pointed to a roof-top on the other side of the garden, where similar activity was taking place. A bright yellow awning was being unfurled, and two seats were already occupied.

  Renthall hesitated, lowering his voice. ‘But what about the watchtowers?’

  ‘The what –?’ Distracted by one of the carpenters, Mulvaney turned away for a moment, then rejoined him. ‘Yes, you’ll be able to watch everything going on from up here, Mr Renthall.’

  Puzzled, Renthall made his way back to his room. Had Mulvaney misheard his question, or was this a fatuous attempt to provoke the towers? Renthall grimly visualized his responsibility if a whole series of petty acts of defiance took place. Perhaps he had accidentally tapped all the repressed resentment that had been accumulating for years?

  To Renthall’s amazement, a succession of creaking ascents of the staircase the next morning announced the first party of residents to use the sun deck. Just before lunch Renthall went up to the roof, found a group of at least a dozen of the older guests sitting out below the watch-tower, placidly inhaling the cool air. None of them seemed in the least perturbed by the tower. At two or three points around the crescent sun-bathers had emerged, as if answering some deep latent call. People sat on makeshift porches or leaned from the sills, calling to each other.

  Equally surprising was the failure of this upsurge of activity to be followed by any reaction from the watch-towers. Half-hidden behind his blinds, Renthall scrutinized the towers carefully, once caught what seemed to be a distant flicker of movement from an observation window half a mile away, but otherwise the towers remained silent, their long ranks receding to the horizon in all directions, motionless and enigmatic. The haze had thinned slightly, and the long shafts protruded further from the sky, their outlines darker and more vibrant.

  Shortly before lunch Hanson interrupted his scrutiny. ‘Hello, Charles. Great news! The school opens tomorrow. Thank heaven for that, I was getting so bored I could hardly stand up straight.’

  Renthall nodded. ‘Good. What’s galvanized them into life so suddenly?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I suppose they had to reopen some time. Aren’t you pleased?’

  ‘Of course. Am I still on the staff?’

  ‘Naturally. The Council doesn’t bear childish grudges. They might have sacked you a week ago, but things are different now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Hanson scrutinized Renthall carefully. ‘I mean the school’s opened. What is the matter, Charles?’

  Renthall went over to the window, his eyes roving along the lines of sun-bathers on the roofs. He waited a few seconds in case there was some sign of activity from the watch-towers.

  ‘When’s the Watch Committee going to hear my case?’

  Hanson shrugged. ‘They won’t bother now. They know you’re a tougher proposition than some of the people they’ve been pushing around. Forget the whole thing.’

  ‘But I don’t want to forget it. I want the hearing to take place. Damn it, I deliberately invented the whole business of the fête to force them to show their hand. Now they’re furiously back-pedalling.’

  ‘Well, what of it? Relax, they have their difficulties too.’ He gave a laugh. ‘You never know, they’d probably be only too glad
of an invitation now.’

  ‘They won’t get one. You know, I almost feel they’ve outwitted me. When the fête doesn’t take place everyone will assume I’ve given in to them.’

  ‘But it will take place. Haven’t you seen Boardman recently? He’s going great guns, obviously it’ll be a tremendous show. Be careful he doesn’t cut you out.’

  Puzzled, Renthall turned from the window. ‘Do you mean Boardman’s going ahead with it?’

  ‘Of course. It looks like it anyway. He’s got a big marquee over the car park, dozens of stalls, bunting everywhere.’

  Renthall drove a fist into his palm. ‘The man’s insane!’ He turned to Hanson. ‘We’ve got to be careful, something’s going on. I’m convinced the Council are just biding their time, they’re deliberately letting the reins go so we’ll over-reach ourselves. Have you seen all these people on the roof-tops? Sun-bathing!’

  ‘Good idea. Isn’t that what you’ve wanted all along?’

  ‘Not so blatantly as this.’ Renthall pointed to the nearest watch-tower. The windows were sealed, but the light reflected off them was far brighter than usual. ‘Sooner or later there’ll be a short, sharp reaction. That’s what the Council are waiting for.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with the Council. If people want to sit on the roof whose business is it but their own? Are you coming to lunch?’

  ‘In a moment.’ Renthall stood quietly by the window, watching Hanson closely. A possibility he had not previously envisaged crossed his mind. He searched for some method of testing it. ‘Has the gong gone yet? My watch has stopped.’

  Hanson glanced at his wristwatch. ‘It’s twelve-thirty.’ He looked out through the window towards the clock tower in the distance over the Town Hall. One of Renthall’s long-standing grievances against his room was that the tip of the nearby watch-tower hung directly over the clock-face, neatly obscuring it. Hanson nodded, re-setting his watch. ‘Twelve-thirty-one. I’ll see you in a few minutes.’

  After Hanson had gone Renthall sat on the bed, his courage ebbing slowly, trying to rationalize this unforeseen development.