Martin Amis - Dead Babies

"Why do you ask, Giles?"

"Only that. that I've done it too. But I don't want to be a nuisance. Or a bore. I'll simply go back upstairs."

"You've done what too."

""Sort of killed myself, actually. I had, I've just drunk two liters of brandy — in one, well, no, actually in two, cos—”

"Giles, are you serious?"

"Mm. The book says I ought to die in twenty-five minutes, apparently. Seems silly now. But if you're not… I mean, I don't…"

Quentin leapt to his feet.

"Welcome to the gang, kid," said Andy, flicking his cigarette high into the air.

Within twenty seconds Quentin was on the telephone to Hampstead Central Hospital, where a nurse of Irish provenance assured him that the patient, as described, had no chance whatever of reaching them alive. The only suitably equipped unit in mortal range, she said, was the Psychiatric Casualty Wing of the Blishner Institute, Potter's Bar. She would now ring there herself and ask them to ready a stomach pump in 64, to which ward the patient should be rushed as soon as he arrived. Throughout the conversation Giles sat smiling shamefacedly on the sofa. Lucy was beside him, stroking his hair and saying as little as she could.

Quentin slapped down the telephone.

"Right. Skip — which is faster — the Chevrolet or the Jaguar?"

"The Chev," said Skip. "I tune it. It, it'll hit—"

"Get in it and rev. Lucy, Roxeanne, get Giles in there. Andy, come on. Let's get Keith in there too. No more games."

In noisy formation, the Appleseeders crowded into the drive.

"Dump little Keith in back," said Marvell. "He still stinksa rat."

"It's the mercy-dash express!" said Andy, picking Keith up by his hair and the back of his belt and lobbing him into the trunk.

"Get up front, honey," Roxeanne told Lucy. "Tell Skip the way. I'll take care of Giles."

Andy joined Roxeanne and Giles in the back seat while Lucy ran round to join Skip in the front. The Chevrolet was already in gear when Quentin raced forward from the remaining group on the porch. He put his head through the: driver's window and handed Skip an envelope. "Here are the details. I know the head man there and it might speed things up. Open it when you get there." Skip put the letter into his flying jacket and zipped it up. Quentin smacked the car roof twice.

"Now gun it."

With a wide squirt of gravel the Chevrolet ground off into the night.

"Beat me, beat me," said Andy (for Skip had switched on the tape). "Beat me, beat me — aw, chop my head off."

As the car straightened onto the road Giles slumped from his seat to the floor. Andy was about to draw this to Roxeanne's attention when he noticed that her hand was busy on his lap. His eyes swelled.

"You fork off here?" said Skip.

"Fuck off yourself," said Andy.

"Yes. Here," said Lucy.

Skip pulled them onto the dual highway at 75 mph. The heavy car rode high up the verge before stabilizing again. Andy looked down at Roxeanne's head, which bobbed rhythmically over his groin.

"Christ," he said elatedly. "We're all dying here. We're all dying!"

Quentin allowed Celia to embrace him momentarily before he shooed her back into the house. Diana and Marvell stood nervously in the hall.

"Now," he began. "Incompetent as we know the authorities to be I don't imagine they'll let two contiguous suicide attempts go completely unremarked. So shall we make a start? Marvell, may I make you responsible for the drugs? Round them up and come to me. Don't worry about the hash and whatnot — just the hard stuff. Celia, Diana: could you, as it were, spring clean? Banish, at any rate, the grosser evidences of debauchery. I'll get the lion's share of the bottles into the garage and reeky the garden. If we could reconvene in the drawing room in, say, fifteen minutes.?”

By then it was three-thirty. From the one remaining vessel in the room Quentin poured four small glasses of Benedictine. "Splendid," he said. "Now we wait."

Marvell glanced as his watch. "Oughta be there by now."

For a moment they all sat back and let the tiredness pound through them. Then Diana stood up. "I'm going to bed," she announced.

Quentin got to his feet. He kissed Diana deftly on the lips. "Good night, Diana. Thank you for your help." He conferred silently with Marvell and Celia. "I think, however, that we'll stay up and see this through."

"Okay." Diana hesitated as she turned to leave. "Wait. isn't there something else? Isn't there — haven't we forgotten something?"

Quentin spread his arms. "I fail to see what."

The effort of recall flickered once more in Diana's eyes.

"The weekend — it's over then?"

"I don't know," said Quentin, "what else it could be."

The Chevrolet came to a grilled halt broadside an ambulance in the Blishner Institute Psychiatric Casualty forecourts. As the five spilled from the car a tall young intern with long black hair noosed in a headband promptly wheeled a stretcher from between the sliding doors. "This him?" he asked, levering Giles onto the white sheeting. "Yeah." They had started back to the building when Andy abruptly snapped his fingers. "Fuck," he remarked to Lucy. "We forgot little Keith again."

He ran back to the car, exhumed Keith from its trunk, and trotted back with the body slung over his shoulder.

"What's with this one?" asked the intern, staring at Keith's blood-bubbled face.

"Uh. " said Andy. "Uh, he just took this great load of aspirins."

"Like hell he did," said the intern. "You boys had better stick around,"

He led them between the automatic doors, through the dim vestibule, along a corridor and into a small white room.

"Stay here," he told them.

: Andy watched him go. "That guy wants a fight," he said, letting Keith's body drop from his shoulder to the floor.

"I'm not staying here," said Skip. "That guy means business and I'm loaded."

"Relax," said Andy. "I tellya, he's—"

"Hey!" said Roxeanne, opening a cupboard door to reveal four shelves of bottles and vials. "Get this!"

"Christ," said Andy. "Look. Mandies! Andrenalin! Amyl-nitrate!" He spun around to Skip. "Get inna car, turn it round. We'll be right out." He began loading his pockets, Roxeanne hers. Skip kicked Keith out of the way and hopped into the corridor.

And there was Keith, looking as if he had been dead for a week. And there was Giles, drowning, dying and dying in the white room. Lucy crept nearer the stretcher. She held his limp hand in both of hers. Her face burned with incredulous disgust. "Andy," she whispered.

Andy turned, wide-eyed, a jar of pills held up in either hand. "Yeah?"

"Andy. What are you doing?" Lucy's voice trembled. "Get out of here and leave us alone. Get out."

His hands dropped to his sides. "Ah, what the hell, Lucy? I mean, really — what the hell any more?"

In the smaller of the Appleseed Rectory sitting rooms, Quentin reclined on a pink chaise-longue with Diderot's Le neveu de Rameau dandled on his thighs. But he wasn't reading. His forefingers placed in either nasal cleft, Quentin's head was tilted backward in a meditative posture.

In the larger of the Appleseed Rectory sitting rooms, unaware of Quentin's presence behind the half-closed partition doors, Celia and Marvell were together on the sofa.

"Yeah, that," Marvell was saying, "that'd be the time I was over here before. When I stayed at a, at Quentin's people's home?"

"Oh. So you visited Tallbury."

"Nah, not 'Tallbury.' What was it… fuckin' great country place. It was. ”