Brian Aldiss - The Primal Urge

‘Can you see to undress?’ he asked Rose.

‘Yes, by the light of your ER,’ she said.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered, turning tactfully away.

‘How’s the costume?’ he asked, when they emerged into the night air a minute later.

‘A bit tight.’

‘So’m I. Feel O.K.?’ She looked like a lusty goddess.

‘Hungry,’ she said, wrapping her arms round her middle.

‘We’ll eat later, that I swear: Jimmy’ll never let you starve. The night’s young!’

Suddenly he knew indeed that the night was young and he was young. The excitement of the dark purred through his body. In one grand flash, he recalled all the events of the day, getting up, his work, having his ER fitted, the party, Rose. It was all unreal, bygone, prehistoric. A new era had begun; the ERs were going to change everything. In Merrick’s words, he had inherited a major liberty.

He raced round and round the lawn, puppy-like.

‘The world’s begun again, Rangy my love,’ he shouted. ‘You and I are the only ones to guess it yet, but the jolly old millennium began today? Hurray! Life’s the greatest invention yet!’

‘Not so loud , Jimmy,’ she said. ‘You’re crazy!’

‘Nuts to you, you great big lovely ploughable adult of a woman,’ he called. Charging at the pool, he bounded in and disappeared with a resounding splash. Rose followed more gracefully, diving off the side of the bath.

‘Distinctly frappé,’ she said in a small voice, as they swam together. She shook her head vigorously in distress.

‘Where have they kept this pool all day?’ he asked. ‘Feels like liquid oxygen. Death to the loins.’

‘Oh Jimmy, I do feel funny. I think I’d better get out.’

He put an arm round her shoulders. Her flesh was as heavy and cold as refrigerated meat.

‘Come on then, pet,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a hand out. You’d better go indoors and have a warm-up. A sip more whisky’s what you need.’

‘No, wait a tick … Ugh, better now, I think. It was just one of those momentary things. Sorry. I seem to be functioning properly again now.’

Rose trod water, and then they began swimming slowly round the tank like a goldfish in a bowl. The water had evidently had a cooling effect on their genes, for their Norman Lights no longer glowed, spoiling what might have been rather an unusual effect.

‘Are you sure you’re all right, Rangy?’

‘I told you I was.’

‘The water’s quite hot when you get used to it.’

‘What I was thinking.’

He floated on his back, gazing into the clear night sky with its complement of stars. Somewhere way up there was a super-civilisation which had solved all its troubles and wore new suits every day; it was not having half the time he was.

‘I think I’m ready to get out,’ he said. ‘How about you, Rangy?’

‘I could stay here till dawn now I’m properly in. One becomes acclimatised, you know.’

He drifted over to her. Her face and the reflections of her face seemed to palpitate before him like butterflies in a cupboard. Reaching out, he caught and kissed her; they climbed together up rickety wooden steps, trotting over short grass and gravel to the changing hut.

There, Jimmy thoughtfully locked the door on the inside, and proceeded with the next stage of his master plan. Waiting a moment, he called softly in mock-consternation. ‘Rangy, what a fool I am! I forgot to bring any towels.’

‘You are lying to me, Jimmy, and I hate lies,’ she said from her side of the partition.

‘I’m not lying!’ he said angrily. ‘I did not bring any towels. I was in such a hurry I forgot.’

In the faint light, he noticed as he spoke a towel hanging on a hook, on the rear wall of the hut. Rose presumably had found one too and believed Jimmy had provided it. Snatching it off the peg, he bundled it up and thrust it under the seat. Then he bounded round the partition.

‘If you’ve found a towel, you’ll have to let me share it, pet,’ he said. He saw at once that she had one.

‘Go away, Jimmy,’ she said quickly, clutching the towel round her body as he bathed her in his ruby light. ‘I haven’t got any lipstick on yet.’

He was too intent to laugh.

‘It’s a lovely warm towel!’ He exclaimed, grabbing a corner of it. ‘Don’t be greedy! It’s big enough to cover two of us! How about saving me from the foggy, foggy dew? I’m shivering.’

The odd thing was, that when they were pressed together under the towel, Jimmy did begin to shiver. Excitement made him shiver as he felt her wet limbs wet upon his. He ran his hand down the great hyperbola of Rose’s back, sliding it over her buttocks and gripping them, then working it round her thigh.

‘Oh, Jimmy, you know I’m hungry!’ she wailed.

‘For God’s sake, give me time,’ he said.

She did. He fed upon the riches of the wide world on that cramped wooden floor. Sometimes he wondered, with only the mildest concern, whether she would not suffocate him, sometimes whether she would not crack his ribs; sometimes whether he had not bitten off more than he could chew, but always he rose triumphantly to face a fresh attack, always they were matched. She had spoken at the party against making a mockery of sex; of that she was not guilty; the core of earnestness Jimmy sensed in her was there even in her gladdest abandonment; she swam with him up the mountainside of love like a salmon leaping up a waterfall. In the end, he was flooded with a delighted and transcendent surprise, cast on a shore beyond Ultima Thule. Exhausted, thrilled, jubilant, panting like a dog.

‘Oh, darling …’ Rose sighed at last, ‘what a rough brute you are!’

‘Me! You’re the brute! – you’re the beauty and the beast. Rangey, you’re all things. Rangey, how old are you?’

‘Don’t ask petty questions,’ she said, giving him a final hug, tugging his hair gently, kissing his neck.

‘But I know so little about you!’

‘That’s just as well for you,’ she said, getting onto her knees. He tried to pull her on top of him again but she wisely would not come, so he got up and fetched the Chianti bottle. She was dressing as fast as she could and would take no wine.

‘We must be filthy from this beastly floor!’ she said. ‘It’s all gritty and beastly. Don’t they ever sweep the damned place?’

‘Wonderful, heavenly floor!’ Jimmy said. ‘We’ll come and visit it and lay an offering to Venus on it every anniversary of this date, won’t we?’

When she did not reply, he knew he was being hearty. More, he knew they would never come here again. He was about to say something else when she seized his arm. Footsteps sounded outside on the concrete path. A pause while the grass muffled them. Then the handle of the changing hut door was turned. Jimmy clapped his hand up to his forehead to cover his ER in case it should be visible through the frosted glass, but it had ceased to glow. They listened while the footsteps receded.

‘We could always have said we were waiting for a bus,’ Jimmy said.

‘Jill’s old man keeps late hours,’ Rose said tugging on her skirt. ‘It’s past midnight.’

‘And a good time was had by all. Oh, Rangy, I love you so! This has been such a wonderful evening for me. I can’t really believe your name is English Rose.’

‘Does it sound so very unlikely?’ she asked, with a strange seriousness in her voice.

‘Very,’ he said. It astonished him that he should be feeling suddenly irritable with her, and hid it as best he could; we resent those who please us, for they can guess our weakness. ‘I’m going to get you a meal now, woman.’

‘Really?’ She relaxed at once. She was nearly dressed. He regretted it was too dark to see anything of her underclothes; such things were a mystery to him. Pulling himself together, he blundered round the partition to put his own clothes on.