The Primal Urge. Brian Aldiss

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      Guy, to fill the gap in the conversation, brought Rose back into it with a general remark. Seizing his chance, Merrick bunched heavy eyebrows over his heavy spectacles and said, ‘Miss English, your having your Norman Light installed so promptly shows you to be a forward-looking young lady. Would you cooperate in a little experiment, a scientific experiment, for the benefit of those of us who have still to, er, see the light?’

      ‘What do you wish me to do?’ she asked.

      He was as direct as she.

      ‘We would like to observe the amount of sexual attraction between you and Mr Solent,’ he told her.

      ‘Certainly,’ she said. She looked around at each one of them, then added, ‘This is a particular moment in time when our – my – responses may seem to some of you improper, or immoral, or ‘not the thing’, or whatever phrase you use to cover something you faintly fear. In a few months, I sincerely hope, such moments will be gone for ever. Everyone will register spontaneously an attraction for everyone of the opposite sex and similar age; that I predict, for the ER’s function at gene level. And then the dingy mockery which our forebears, and we, have made of sex will vanish like dew. It will be revealed as something more radical and less of a cynosure than we have held it to be. And our lives will be much more honest on every level in consequence.’

      She spoke very simply, very intensely, and then turned to look into Jimmy’s eyes. Listening to her, watching her moving mouth, seeing her tongue once briefly touch her lips, taking in that face a sculptor would have wept at, Jimmy knew his Norman Light was no longer an ambiguous silver. He caught a faint pink reflection from it on the end of his nose. When the rangy girl surveyed him, he saw her disc redden and his own increase output in sympathy. She was so without embarrassment that Jimmy, too, remained at ease, interested in the experiment. Everyone else maintained the surprised, respectful silence her words had created.

      ‘A rosy light!’ exclaimed the sandy woman and the momentary tension relaxed.

      ‘Not by Eastern casements only … !’ Jimmy murmured. It surprised him that, although he still glowed brightly, he consciously felt little or no attraction for Rose. That is to say, his fiancée, Penny Tanner-Smith (not to mention Alyson Youngfield), was still clear in his mind, and he felt no insane desire to go to bed with this strange, self-possessed woman.

      ‘The attraction is there and the ERs detect it,’ Rose said. ‘There lies their great and only virtue: they will force a nation of prudes to recognise an incontrovertible natural law. But, as I say, they work at gene – or what will no doubt be popularly termed ‘subconscious’ – level. This force lies like a chemical bond between Mr Solent and me; but I feel not the slightest desire to go to bed with him.’

      Jimmy was amazed at how unpalatable he found this truth, this echo of what he had just been thinking; it was one thing silently to reject her; quite another for her openly to reject him. This absorbed him so completely he hardly listened to the discussion which flowed around him.

      Merrick was shaking Rose’s long hand; she was admitting to being a ‘sort of brain specialist’. The wife of the clerical-looking man was squeaking something about ‘like a public erection …’ and urging her husband to take her home. Everyone was talking. Sir Richard and Felix Garside were laughing at a private joke. Bertie was signalling to a young waiter. Drink and olives circulated.

      When Sir Richard excused himself to greet someone else, Jimmy also slipped away to another part of the room. He was disturbed and needed time for thought. From where he stood now, he could see Rose’s back, a rangy figure with a handbag swinging from her crooked arm. Then a heated discussion on the effects of colour TV on children rose on his left and broke like a wave over him. Jimmy joined in vigorously, talking automatically. He emerged some while later to find the subject held no interest for him, though he had been as partisan as anybody; muttering a word of excuse, snatching another drink, he went into the corridor to stand by an open window.

      Here it was distinctly cooler and quieter. Jimmy leant out, looking down four stories to the untidy bottom of the building’s well. He lapsed into one of the untidy reveries which often overcame him when he was alone. His thoughts went back to Rose English, the woman with the unlikely name, and then faded from her again. Euphoria flooded over him. A waiter brought him a drink. He groaned at his own contentment. The world was in a hell of a state: the political tension in the Middle East was high, with war threatening; the United States was facing a worse recession than in 1958; the British political parties were bickering over a proposal to build a tunnel under the Severn; gold reserves were down; the whole unstable economic edifice of the country, if one believed the newspapers – but who did? – tottered on the brink of collapse; and of course the ERs would deliver a rabbit punch to the good old status quo of society.

      But it was summer. It was summer in England, hot and sweet and sticky. Everyone was stripping off to mow a lawn or hold a picnic or dive into the nearest dirty stretch of river. Nobody gave a sod. Euphoria had its high tide willynilly, come death, come danger. The unexpected heat made morons of us all, quite as effectively as did the interminable wretchedness of winter.

      He sighed and breathed the warm air, full of discontent and indifference, those hallmarks of the true-born Englishman. As Jimmy withdrew his head from the window, Rose English was approaching, coming self-assuredly down the corridor.

      ‘Hello,’ she said, without noticeably smiling. ‘I wanted some cool air too. People should not give parties on nights like this.’

      ‘No,’ Jimmy replied, rather glumly. Yes, she had something about her.

      ‘I didn’t mean to embarrass you in there, Mr Solent.’

      ‘Jimmy, please. I’ve got such a wet surname.’ He had trained himself not to wait for laughter after making that modest joke. ‘You didn’t embarrass me; as you say, everyone’ll soon be in the same boat.’

      ‘No, I didn’t mean that. I mean, I hope I said nothing to hurt you.’

      ‘Of course not.’ His Norman Light was glowing; without looking directly, he could see hers was too. To change the subject, he said, ‘I could do with a swim now.’

      ‘Same here.’ He thought it was a schoolgirlish phrase for somebody of her seriousness to use and wondered if she was in some way trying to play down to him.

      ‘I know a fellow – he was at Oxford with me – who’s got a private swimming pool. Would you care to come for a bathe with me?’

      ‘Thank you. I should really prefer dinner,’ she said. He knew by her tone she thought he had tried to trap her into that; how could she believe him so subtle? He took one of her hands, thinking at the same time he must be a little tight to dare to do so. A lunatic notion blossomed in his brain, swelling like a blown balloon.

      ‘I’ve just thought of the idea!’ he said. ‘Quite spontaneous – there’s no catch. An evening like this is wasted in a place like this; it’ll probably pour with rain tomorrow! We could go out and have a swim with them – Hurn, their name is – and then we’ll still have time for a meal afterwards. Honestly! I mean how about it? It’s a genuine offer. It would be great fun.’

      ‘Perhaps it really would be great fun,’ she said pensively. A waiter, watching them interestedly, gave them gin-and-its. And all the while a drowning Jimmy-inside was telling him, ‘She’s not your kind, kid. You don’t like the cool and stately type. She’s nearly as big as you are. She’s too experienced: she could blow you into bubbles. She’s too old for you – she must be thirty-five if she’s a day. I warn you, Solent, you’ll СКАЧАТЬ