The Primal Urge. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘I beg each one of you to realise that only a superficial view can hold that the ER is a menace to society. If you think more deeply, you will see the ER as I do, as a badge of liberty. We have, as a nation, always been diffident about expressing ourselves; that, perhaps, is why some sociologists have called loneliness one of the great curses of our age. The ER is going to break down that barrier, as well as many others.

      ‘The ER is the first invention ever to bring man closer to his fellow men. Even television, that great institution by whose medium I am able to speak to you in your homes tonight, has proved a not unmixed blessing – in fact, often a disruption – to family life. Over the ages, since we ceased to huddle together in caves, we have inevitably drawn further apart from one another. Now, I sincerely believe, we shall find ourselves drawn nearer again, united by those common impulses which the ER makes apparent.

      ‘Yet I would not have you think of the ER as something fantastic or crack-brained, a mere aberration of science. It will, in fact, have the same effect as any other invention, once we are accustomed to it; that is, to make a slight but inevitable modification to man’s daily life. We can only continue to exist by a policy of change in this highly competitive world. Let us thank God that the ER is a British invention. More, let us show our thankfulness by getting our ERs installed as soon as we can, so that by simplifying our private lives we can all pull together and make this nation, once more, a land of opportunity.’

      ‘How Gascadder would love me now,’ Jimmy thought, glancing again at his brow in the mirror while he adjusted his tie. His ER was still there, slightly larger than a penny, a symbol of patriotism and of hope.

      ‘Be a good boy and don’t drink too much,’ Alyson advised, as he finally appeared, ready to leave the flat.

      ‘Don’t be so motherly!’ Jimmy said. ‘We are meant to be Unlovable Young People.’

      ‘Good God!’ she exclaimed. ‘That! It’s hard enough being People!’

      For a moment he shuffled by the door, looking at her. The rest of the room was nothing; she, sitting there in her Dickens and Jones suit, had an extra dimension, a special reality, a future in the balance. ‘Goodbye, Alyson,’ he said, and went out to the most momentous party of his life.

      Jimmy was usually unassuming; yet the feeling had grown on him lately that there was some sort of help he could give Alyson. What help, he did not know; Alyson made no deliberate appeals and, aware of their potentially awkward position in Aubrey’s flat, they both confined their conversations to light chit-chat. Yet the something which remained unsaid had been growing stronger ever since Jimmy arrived at the flat. One day soon it would emerge from its hidden room into the light.

      What convinced Jimmy that this was no illusion of his romantic imagination was the contrast between Alyson’s and Aubrey’s natures and their relationship with each other. Alyson was both intelligent and tolerant – but her comings and goings at the flat had a casual quality which implied little passion for Aubrey. Aubrey was a withdrawn young man; the streak which in his brother appeared as diffidence had been transmuted in him into aloofness. He was ‘correct’, in manner, dress and choice of church, food and book. He was a conformist with a career. In short, he was hardly the type to take a mistress; Alyson was hardly the type to become his mistress. They ought to be either husband and wife or strangers, and that was the crux of the matter.

      A smell of sausages coiled juicily about the landing. As he descended the stairs, Jimmy could hear them frying.

      The kitchen door, as usual, was open. Hilda Pidney spotted Jimmy as he reached the hall and came out, as she always did unless one was moving very rapidly, to exchange a few words. She was stocky and fifty, with the face, as Alyson once remarked, of one crying in a wilderness of hair. Despite her miserable expression, she was a cheerful soul; her first words now struck exactly the right note with Jimmy.

      ‘Why it suits you a treat, Mr Solent!’

      ‘I’m so glad you think so, Mrs Pidney,’ he said, putting his hand up self-consciously. ‘I see you’ve got yours.’

      He had, in truth, the merest glimpse of it through her mop of hair.

      ‘Yes, I went straightaway at nine o’clock this morning,’ she told him. ‘I got there just before the trailers opened. I was second in the queue, I was. And it didn’t hurt a bit, did it, just like what they said?’

      ‘Not a bit, no.’

      ‘And I mean it is free, isn’t it!’ She laughed. ‘Henry’s been trying to make it work already. I ask you, at my age, Mr Solent. I can see I’m in for something now!’

      He laughed with her without reservation.

      ‘I think these Emotion Registers are going to give a lot of people a new lease of life,’ he said.

      ‘You know what people are calling them,’ she said, grinning. ‘Nun Chasers or Normal Lights. Funny how these nicknames get round, isn’t it? I’d better get back to me sausages, quickish-like. Cheerio.’

      As Jimmy let himself out of the front door, he thought, ‘She wasn’t coy. She has accepted it in the proper spirit. Three cheers for Mrs Pidney and the millions like her. They are the backbone, the backbone of England; such vertebrae, one dirty day, will rise and slay the pervertebrae.’

      He strolled gently towards Park Lane, where he intended to capture a taxi, making himself enjoy the heat by contrasting it favourably with the cold, rain-bearing wind which had been blowing only a few days before. Everyone behaved much as usual in the streets. Considering that the grey trailers had been hard at work everywhere for four days, surprisingly few people had additions to their foreheads, but those few were attracting no interest. The man and woman in the bright red Austin-Healey, the cadaverous commissionaire, the two squaddies sunning themselves on the corner of South Audley Street, all wore their Emotion Registers as to the manner born. The cabby who answered Jimmy’s raised hand also bore the new token. Into every class, the ERs were finding their way.

      The party to which Jimmy was going, Sir Richard Clunes’ party, was being held in one of the formidable blocks, Kensington way, which had been built at the end of the last decade. It was – with a few exceptions like Jimmy himself – a British Industrial Liasons party for BIL personnel, and therefore more in Aubrey Solent’s line than Jimmy’s, for Aubrey was a BIL man; Jimmy was entangled in literature. But Sir Richard, while promising to lend Jimmy a portrait for an exhibition he was organising, had genially invited him to the party at the same time, on the principle that younger brothers of promising executive material were worth suborning in this way, particularly as party material was always scarce at this season of year.

      It was a small party: Jimmy could see that as soon as he arrived – much smarter than the literary parties to which he was more accustomed, which were generally toned down by provincial novelists with no style or reviewers with no figure. These were London people; more, BIL people! – BIL people living useful days and efficient nights. ‘They’re already at their primes, I’m sure they read The Times at breakfast,’ Jimmy told himself, glancing round as he shook hands with a beaming Sir Richard and Lady Clunes. Sir Richard had mobile eyebrows and a chin the shape of a goatee. His manner flowed with milk and honey, and he engaged Jimmy in pleasant talk for two minutes precisely.

      ‘Now let me see who you’ll know here, Solent,’ Sir Richard said, as that halcyon period drew to its scheduled close. ‘Ah, there’s Guy Leighton, one of our most promising young men. You’ll know him, of course – he has been working on the K. R. Shalu business with your brother. Guy! Can you spare us a moment, my dear boy?’

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