Martin Amis - Dead Babies

boring self-analyses, and only every now and then going noiselessly down on his knees to look up her skirt, or peering down her blouse when he rose to take his leave, or making: faces and V-signs at her while she chirruped on in sightless self-regard.

It happened on the eve of Whitehead's discharge, among the trees at the end of the front lawn.

"Although The Lunch have more native talent than One Times Two," said Keith, putting an arm round her narrow shoulders, "they haven't the professionalism."

"No?" said Lizzy. It was the first time they had touched.

"Or so it seems to me," he replied, pressing his free hand against one or other of her breasts. "Do you not feel this?"

"I always thought The Lunch lead guitarist, Gary Tyler, was too technical to ever really let go."

"Tyler, certainly," assented Keith as he guided a hot palm between her thighs. "But only in composition. In performance" — he hooked her dress over her waist and began to force down her tights—"he's as limited as the rest of them."

"Even in the Dark Tunnel album?"

"Not so much there, I grant you," little Keith conceded, tugging her bunched underthings over her shoes, "but you'll agree that his predictability is seldom, if ever, accompanied," he continued, rolling effortfully on top of her, "by what might be called a satisfactorily fulfilled expectation. For example. "

It was quick, as he remembered — quick, pleasureless and very mad.

Five days later Keith was enjoying a glass of water in the college bar when Quentin, Andy, Diana, and Giles came in.

"Nowhere to sit."

"By that little f attie over there," said Diana.

"What, the dwarf?" said Andy.

"I dislike dwarfs. They depress me," murmured Quentin, examining his rings.

"I'll handle it," said Andy.

Keith looked up in furtive terror as they crossed the bar toward his table. Andy stepped forward, compressed his nostrils with thumb and index finger, and nasally inquired, "There can't be anyone sitting here, now can there?"

"Highly unlikely," said Diana as the four sat,

"Bust out the fuckin' brandy, whyncha," said Andy. Keith sat stretched with horror. He didn't dare leave because they'd see just how short he really was.

"My mother's got manic depression again," said Giles through his laterally placed fingers, "and's got to go to the bin. She actually wants to know about some Institute near her, in Potter's Bar, actually. I don't want her to though, cos she'll make me see her more."

"That Blishner dump?" said Andy. "Yeah, I go there for drugs."

"Tell me things about it," said Giles. "Where is it, for instance, actually?"

Nobody seemed interested in replying.

"I can tell you," Keith found himself saying. "I can tell you, if you like."

"Really?" asked Giles. "Thanks, that would be… that would be… Have you got a pen or anything?"

"Yes," said Keith, producing one.

"Howda fuck do you know?" said Andy.

"I was there last month. I was in there."

"Yawn. A maddie. Let's make a run for it."

"No, I was in there, but I'm all right now."

"Good. Look, who the fuck are you anyway?" Andy asked, quite friendly now.

"Keith."

"Who?"

"Keith."

"Keith what, you little prick."

"Oh. It's an awful name. Whitehead."

"Whitehead's not such a bad name," said Giles. "White-head," he repeated experimentally.

"It is if you've got them all over your face," said White-head.

They all laughed.

"Hey," said Andy. "I like this dwarf. This dwarf, he's all right, you know? This dwarf's. okay."

He watched the last of his lucent girlfriends curl in on herself, rise yearningly on the stirred embers, erase in black

smoke, and shrink to a charred and wizened ball. He poked the scattering fire with a stick. They were all dead now, his girlfriends. the one with the tenderly veined breasts, the: one that looked like a woman he had sometimes seen in the village, the one with the impossibly concave pants, the one with the deep and pleading eyes, the one whose lips had seemed to say. No, they were all dead, dead, and their ashes strewn upon the wind. What will my nights be now? he thought.

The question of who had done this thing to him interested Whitehead not at all. He had expressionlessly removed the johnny poster and burnt it along with everything else, without considering the matter further. It made no difference anyway. All the shame was his. He looked at Appleseed Rectory, half a mile away, hiding behind a nylon curtain of misty sunlight. "Get your staring done with," he said, beginning the long haul down the field.

"Open up, open up," shouted Keith wearily at the Tuckle door. "It's me, it's Whitehead."

The slat opened and the bolts were thrown back. Mr. Tuckle emerged. He stood there stonily.

"Out of the bloody way then," said Keith. "I want some more of that gin I brought you. That's if you haven't already bloody—"

Mr. Tuckle stood there stonily. Keith fell silent. He was in slippers, and now even Mr. Tuckle towered above him.

"What's the matter?" asked Keith.

"Go away, Mr. Whitehead," said Mr. Tuckle. "I'm sorry, sir, but we've decided that we don't want you here any more. Go away, Mr. Whitehead, please."

Keith limped in tears across the lawn. Once in his room he got to his knees and prayed for a few minutes. He then sat on his bed, sniffing richly. On the bunkside table, a piece of cheap writing paper and a ballpoint pen awaited the caress of his pudgy fingers. Dear Lucy, he began. As he wrote, his boots beckoned from the corner of the room.

"Why, I'd restore a feudal society, of course," pronounced Quentin.

"Casual," said Andy, nodding.

"Casual?" said Roxeanne. "You mean you people aren't revolutionaries? Marvell, what the hell are we doing here with these people? What in fuck are you then?"

"We're ecstatic materialists," said Andy as he crawled across the floor, holding spent brandy bottles up to the light. "Meaning, we grab whatever the fuck's going." He drank deeply from an unattended glass. "Plus which, we grab it from people who haven't got much anyway. Check?"

Those conversations.

"Quentin," said Marvell. "In this feudal society, what if you were — what the hell are they? — serfs, yeah. What if you were a serf?"

"Bliss," Quentin replied. "The point eludes you. A hierarchical society is inversely reciprocal. The satisfactions of the higher echelons lie in command, protection, responsibility, in giving orders; the satisfactions of the lower echelons lie in docility, security, myopia, in obeying orders. It's a quasi-ritualistic enactment of one's role."

"What if you had a dumb lord and a smart serf?"

Andy pounced: "Then it's tough shit on the serf!"

"Precisely," Villiers affectionately agreed.

With conviction Roxeanne said, "You people have to be kidding. What do you feel — hey, Giles."

Giles looked up, smiling palely.

"Don't ask him," said Andy. "He's one too — practically a millionaire."

"Hey, Keith?"

Whitehead's boots were hurting him so much that he could hardly breathe, let alone speak.

"Don't ask him," said Andy. "He's not anything. He's just a wreck."

Roxeanne shook her head. "But you can't regress. There's no way. It's too late for that now. All you can do is smash everything, raze the entire planet, and then start over, make it new."

"In which event," crooned Quentin, "a feudal society would soon re-establish itself. It sounds very arduous. Why bother?"

"Not if you smashed everything. Culture, books, buildings, all the way back, every kind of institution, all the foci of—"