Though still intrigued by her, I was about to roll the credits at the conclusion of this bizarre consultation when her casual offer lodged in my mind. Curious to see her again, I arranged an appointment for the following week.
Without realizing it, I had already begun my courtship of this unusual young woman. On the evening of my appointment, I half-suspected that she was some kind of novice prostitute. However, as I lay discreetly robed on the recreation couch in my sauna, manipulating my body in response to Margaret’s instructions, there was not the slightest hint of salaciousness. During the evenings that followed I never once detected a glimmer of sexual awareness, though at times, as we moved through our exercises together, we revealed far more of our bodies to each other than many married couples. Margaret, I realized, was a sport, one of those rare people with no sense of self-consciousness, and little awareness of the prurient emotions she might arouse in others.
Our courtship entered a more formal phase. We began to go out together – that is, we shared the same films on television, visited the same theatres and concert halls, watched the same meals prepared in restaurants, all within the comfort of our respective homes. In fact, at this time I had no idea where Margaret lived, whether she was five miles away from me or five hundred. Shyly at first, we exchanged old footage of ourselves, of our childhoods and schooldays, our favourite foreign resorts.
Six months later we were married, at a lavish ceremony in the most exclusive of the studio chapels. Over two hundred guests attended, joining a huge hook-up of television screens, and the service was conducted by a priest renowned for his mastery of the split-screen technique. Pre-recorded films of Margaret and myself taken separately in our own sitting rooms were projected against a cathedral interior and showed us walking together down an immense aisle.
For our honeymoon we went to Venice. Happily we shared the panoramic views of the crowds in St Mark’s Square, and gazed at the Tintorettos in the Academy School. Our wedding night was a triumph of the director’s art. As we lay in our respective beds (Margaret was in fact some thirty miles to the south of me, somewhere in a complex of vast high-rises), I courted Margaret with a series of increasingly bold zooms, which she countered in a sweetly teasing way with her shy fades and wipes. As we undressed and exposed ourselves to each other the screens merged into a last oblivious close-up . . .
From the start we made a handsome couple, sharing all our interests, spending more time on the screen together than any couple we knew. In due course, through AID, Karen was conceived and born, and soon after her second birthday in the residential crèche she was joined by David.
Seven further years followed of domestic bliss. During this period I had made an impressive reputation for myself as a paediatrician of advanced views by my championship of family life – this fundamental unit, as I described it, of intensive care. I repeatedly urged the installation of more cameras throughout the homes of family members, and provoked vigorous controversy when I suggested that families should bathe together, move naked but without embarrassment around their respective bedrooms, and even that fathers should attend (though not in close-up) the births of their children.
It was during a pleasant family breakfast together that there occurred to me the extraordinary idea that was so dramatically to change our lives. I was looking at the image of Margaret on the screen, enjoying the beauty of the cosmetic mask she now wore – ever thicker and more elaborate as the years passed, it made her grow younger all the time. I relished the elegantly stylized way in which we now presented ourselves to each other – fortunately we had moved from the earnestness of Bergman and the more facile mannerisms of Fellini and Hitchcock to the classical serenity and wit of René Clair and Max Ophuls, though the children, with their love of the hand-held camera, still resembled so many budding Godards.
Recalling the abrupt way in which Margaret had first revealed herself to me, I realized that the logical extension of Margaret’s frankness – on which, effectively, I had built my career – was that we should all meet together in person. Throughout my entire life, I reflected, I had never once seen, let alone touched, another human being. Whom better to begin with than my own wife and children?
Tentatively I raised the suggestion with Margaret, and I was delighted when she agreed. ‘What an odd but marvellous idea! Why on earth has no one suggested it before?’ We decided instantly that the archaic interdiction against meeting another human being deserved simply to be ignored.
Unhappily, for reasons I failed to understand at the time, our first meeting was not a success. To avoid confusing the children, we deliberately restricted the first encounter to ourselves. I remember the days of anticipation as we made preparations for Margaret’s journey – an elaborate undertaking, for people rarely travelled, except at the speed of the television signal.
An hour before she arrived I disconnected the complex security precautions that sealed my house from the world outside, the electronic alarm signals, steel grilles and gas-tight doors.
At last the bell rang. Standing by the internal portcullis at the end of the entrance hall, I released the magnetic catches on the front door. A few seconds later the figure of a small, narrow-shouldered woman stepped into the hall. Although she was over twenty feet from me I could see her clearly, but I almost failed to realize that this was the wife to whom I had been married for ten years.
Neither of us was wearing make-up. Without its cosmetic mask Margaret’s face seemed pasty and unhealthy, and the movements of her white hands were nervous and unsettled. I was struck by her advanced age and, above all, by her small size. For years I had known Margaret as a huge close-up on one or other of the large television screens in the house. Even in long-shot she was usually larger than this hunched and diminutive woman hovering at the end of the hall. It was difficult to believe that I had ever been excited by her empty breasts and narrow thighs.
Embarrassed by each other, we stood without speaking at opposite ends of the hall. I knew from her expression that Margaret was as surprised by my appearance as I was by her own. In addition, there was a curiously searching look in her eye, an element almost of hostility that I had never seen before.
Without thinking, I moved my hand to the latch of the portcullis. Already Margaret had stepped back into the doorway, as if nervous that I might seal her into the hall for ever. Before I could speak, she had turned and fled.
When she had gone I carefully checked the locks on the front door. Around the entrance hung a faint and not altogether pleasant odour.
After this first abortive meeting Margaret and I returned to the happy peace of our married life. So relieved was I to see her on the screen that I could hardly believe our meeting had ever taken place. Neither of us referred to the disaster, and to the unpleasant emotions which our brief encounter had prompted.
During the next few days I reflected painfully on the experience. Far from bringing us together, the meeting had separated us. True closeness, I now knew, was television closeness – the intimacy of the zoom lens, the throat microphone, the close-up itself. On the television screen there were no body odours or strained breathing, no pupil contractions and facial reflexes, no mutual sizing up of emotions and advantage, no distrust and insecurity. Affection and compassion demanded distance. Only at a distance could one find that true closeness to another human being which, with grace, might transform itself into love.
Nevertheless, we inevitably arranged a second meeting. Why we did so I have still not understood, but both of us seemed to be impelled by those very motives of curiosity and distrust that I assumed we most feared. Calmly discussing everything with Margaret, I learned that she had felt the same distaste for me that I in turn had felt for her, the same obscure hostility.
We decided that we would bring the children to our next meeting, and that we would all wear make-up, modelling our behaviour as closely as possible on our screen life together. Accordingly, three months later, Margaret and myself, David and Karen, that unit of inten
sive care, came together for the first time in my sitting room.
Karen is stirring. She had rolled across the shaft of the broken standard lamp and her body faces me across the blood-stained carpet, as naked as when she stripped in front of me. This provocative act, presumably intended to jolt some incestuous fantasy buried in her father’s mind, first set off the explosion of violence which has left us bloody and exhausted in the ruins of my sitting room. For all the wounds on her body, the bruises that disfigure her small breasts, she reminds me of Manet’s Olympia, perhaps painted a few hours after the visit of some psychotic client.
Margaret, too, is watching her daughter. She sits forward, eyeing Karen with a gaze that is both possessive and menacing. Apart from a brief lunge at my testicles, she has ignored me. For some reason the two women have selected each other as their chief targets, just as David has vented almost all his hostility on me. I had not expected the scissors to be in his hand when I first slapped him. He is only a few feet from me now, ready to mount his last assault. For some reason he seemed particularly outraged by the display of teddy bears I had mounted so carefully for him, and shreds of these dismembered animals lie everywhere on the floor.
Fortunately I can breathe a little more freely now. I move my head to take in the ceiling camera and my fellow combatants. Together we present a grotesque aspect. The heavy television make-up we all decided to wear has dissolved into a set of bizarre halloween masks.
All the same, we are at last together, and my affection for them overrides these small problems of mutual adjustment. As soon as they arrived, the bruise on my son’s head and my wife’s bleeding ears betrayed the evidence of some potentially lethal scuffle. I knew that it would be a testing time. But at least we are making a start, in our small way establishing the possibility of a new kind of family life.
Everyone is breathing more strongly, and the attack will clearly begin within a minute. I can see the bloody scissors in my son’s hand, and remember the pain as he stabbed me. I brace myself against the settee, ready to kick his face. With my right arm I am probably strong enough to take on whoever survives the last confrontation between my wife and daughter. Smiling at them affectionately, rage thickening the blood in my throat, I am only aware of my feelings of unbounded love.
1977
THEATRE OF WAR
Author’s preface
After three hundred years, could civil war again divide the United Kingdom? Given rising unemployment and industrial stagnation, an ever more entrenched class system and a weak monarchy detaching itself from all but its ceremonial roles, is it possible to visualize the huge antagonisms between the extreme left and right resolving themselves in open civil conflict? I take it for granted that despite its unhappy experience in South East Asia the intervention of the United States to defend its military and economic investments would be even more certain than it was in Vietnam. I also assume that the television coverage would be uninterrupted and all-pervasive, and have therefore cast it in the form of a TV documentary, of the type made popular by World in Action.
Part One
LONDON UNDER SIEGE
STREET BATTLE
Inner London, a back street in Lambeth, where confused street-fighting is taking place. Tank engine noise forms a continuous background to heavy machine-gun fire and intercom chatter. Twenty soldiers, five American and the rest British, move from door to door, firing at the other end of the street, where Big Ben is visible above the shabby roof-tops. Helicopter gunships circle overhead. A tank stops by a house and soldiers dart in. A moment later a woman emerges, followed by three exhausted children and an old man carrying his bedroll. They run past with stunned faces. Bodies lie everywhere. Two negro GIs drag away a dead enemy soldier with shoulder-length hair. Stitched to his camouflage jacket is a Union Jack. The picture freezes, and the camera zooms in on the Union Jack until it fills the screen, soaked in the soldier’s blood.
WORLD IN ACTION TITLES
Superimposed over the bloody Union Jack: ‘Civil War’
Commentator
One street battle is over, but the civil war goes on. After four years no solution is in sight. American casualties total 30,000 dead, a hundred thousand missing and wounded. A million British civilians have died. Despite mounting criticism at home America pours more and more troops into what is now the European Vietnam. But the fighting continues. This week the Liberation Front launched a major offensive against a dozen cities. Here in Lambeth a suicide squad fights its way to within 800 yards of the House of Parliament. How long can the British government survive? Will peace ever come? World in Action is here to find out.
STREET BATTLE
The fighting is over, and the government forces are mopping up. They flush frightened civilians from the basements and herd them away past the bodies of enemy soldiers. At the junction with the main road in the background a British Airways advertisement hoarding is riddled with bullet holes. A sullen-faced young English woman is frisked roughly by British troops while others tear the Union Jacks from dead enemy soldiers. The tank drags away a tangle of bodies lashed together by their wrists. In a jeep loaded with looted cameras, radios and record players pop music blares from the intercom.
CUT TO NIGHT-TIME SOHO
Background of garish lights, pintable arcades, strip clubs. GIs spill out of cars and move into a bar.
Commentator
GIs relax during a weekend of R & R. Two days ago they were fighting off a Liberation Front offensive in the suburbs of Manchester. As the United Nations talks of settlement and both sides in the civil war plan new offensives, what do the ordinary GIs think of the prospects for peace?
1st US soldier (reclining in bar)
It’s a very ticklish situation over here. It’s hard to analyse and get a complete grasp of the whole story, because from my position at least you can’t get a glimpse of the whole subject. You know, you don’t know what motivates these people. Peace seems to be very far off, at least to me it does.
Commentator
Tell me, do you think it’s all worth it?
2nd US soldier
It’s hard to say. I think we’re just, as I see it, we’re fooling around. That’s about all. I do think we should be here.
Commentator
What’s the alternative to fooling around?
3rd US soldier
Well, they call it a civil war. If it’s a war, it should be that. They push us, we push them, it’s a kind of stalemate as I see it right now. I think we should show them who’s boss. Because what I’ve seen of the gooks over here, they’re going to fight, fight – you know? – and just keep on fighting.
2nd US soldier
If you’re fighting a war, fight it like a war, with all the mass of power we have. Power in reserve, air power, land power, and power from the sea. We’ve got battleships offshore can pound this place to absolutely nothing.
Commentator
Tough talk from the GIs as they relax, but in the bright light of day, as London picks up the pieces after the latest NLF offensive, what exactly is the present military position? Can either side win this war? In New York today President Reagan was asked what kind of settlement he would hope to resolve. The President replied: ‘I don’t think we can talk about settlement of the war at this point. I think we can talk about our willingness to accept a coalition or fusion government. At least it could very well be talked about in the open before we begin to talk about negotiations.’ President Reagan spent the day in New York City where he addressed a luncheon audience and denied that the war is indefensible, a view strongly challenged by Congressional leaders of both parties. But how accurate is the picture which the American public at large has of the civil war?
NEWSREEL
Medley of clips – Civilians running as GIs and British government troops move across a tenement courtyard, firing at a roof-top sniper; helicopters circling a fortified Wembley Stadium; street execution near Piccadilly Circus of three NLF soldiers in plain clothes, hands wired
, as a crowd outside a sandbagged cinema looks on; corpses of children laid out in a village hall; gun-battle outside a Top-Rank Bingo hall; crowd at Bellevue, Manchester, fun-fair backing off a roundabout to reveal a body pumped up and down by a wooden unicorn to the Wurlitzer music; lines of strip clubs in Oxford, entrances guarded by Military Police barring civilians; pound-notes over-printed ‘One Dollar’; tanks ringing Parliament Square; shops loaded with consumer goods; a huge bonfire of Union Jacks; elderly refugees camping on the canted decks of a multi-storey car park in Dover, guarded by uncertain-looking GIs straight off a troop-carrier; government troops demolishing a rebel earth bunker lined with carefully framed portraits of George VI during World War II, visiting munitions factories and bombed-out East Enders.
Commentator
As each day passes, life in the government-held areas becomes less and less tolerable. London is a city under siege. Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham are the last remaining strongholds of government support, defended by massive American forces. The countryside belongs to the NLF. The continuous infiltration of the London suburbs by guerilla battalions mingling with the local population has brought the front line to everyone’s doorstep. Bomb outrages, kidnappings, street battles with snipers, the assassination of local political leaders – these are part of day-to-day life. In the five years of its exile in Riyadh, uneasy guests of the Saudi royal house, the monarchy has lost all credibility, unwilling to commit its waning prestige to either side in the civil war. Meanwhile, in the London over which the Queen once reigned, the black market flourishes. Millions of dollars’ worth of American goods pour into the capital, propping up a juke-box economy of pirate TV networks, thousands of bars and brothels. In many towns and suburbs the main unit of currency is the illegal NLF pound sterling. The government-backed British dollar is despised. Anything can be bought, but nothing has any value. More and more young people slip away to join the Liberation Front. Doctors, engineers, trained mechanics desert to the enemy forces. They leave behind a population that consists mainly of the old middle class and an army of bartenders, croupiers and call-girls. London is now a gigantic Las Vegas, the largest light-bulb in the world, ready to blow out in a hail of rebel machine-gun fire.
The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard Page 139
