Kingsley Amis - Dear Illusion - Selected Stories

The scrap of paper bearing this message was no longer to be found. The remains of his snack had likewise been cleared away. The bed had been remade. A more thorough look than he had earlier ventured showed him pyjamas, fresh underclothes, shirts. Their mundane practicality seemed designed to dishearten him. With head bent he moved slowly round the room a couple of times, then halted and for some minutes stared at the wall in an unfocused manner. After that he sat down on the bed and paused a moment before dropping his head into his hands and rocking slowly to and fro. Anyone looking at him would have said that a thoroughly wretched man, if not a despairing one, was sitting there. Presently Adrian drew his legs up on to the bed and lay down on his side with his knees drawn up and his hands clasped. Unexpectedly, he slept.

There passed another immeasurable tract of time. At its end, at the sound of the door being unlocked, Adrian sprang up and stood beside the bed, smoothing his hair and straightening his tie. When all four of the men he had previously seen came into the room, they found him facing them in a posture of defiance.

After sending him a look of peculiar distaste, Chatterton moved over to one side, as if to underline his supervisory status. ‘Come along, Hollies,’ he said sharply.

Fotheringay and Llewelyn began to move forward, but Adrian eluded their grasp. ‘Let me come of my own accord, please. I’m quite capable of setting one foot in front of the other.’

‘Oh, good show, sir,’ said Fotheringay, ‘but anybody can see you’re terrified. Why not admit it?’

‘What, terrified of you?’

Fotheringay’s immediate response was to punch Adrian in the stomach. He collapsed on to the bed. ‘That was quite unnecessary,’ said someone: Chatterton.

‘Just a tap, that’s all. Look, he’s getting up already.’

‘Our orders are not to hurt him physically.’

‘There won’t be a mark on him, if that’s what’s bothering you.’

By now Adrian was facing them again, still panting and groaning, half doubled up, but back on his feet, and was allowed to make his own way out of the bedroom, round a couple of corners in the passage and into a room of about the same size but partly subdivided by a grey-painted screen on rollers. Two men were visible: after a first glance one of them went behind the screen and the other led an unresisting Adrian over to a corner where there stood a narrow backless couch of the sort to be met with in doctors’ consulting rooms.

‘Take off your jacket and shirt and then get up on here, please.’

Adrian followed instructions and successively had his blood pressure taken and allowed auscultation of his chest. Both exercises were rapid but thorough.

‘Now sit up and take a series of deep breaths as I tell you, please.’

He felt the small cool circle of the stethoscope applied in turn to various parts of his back.

‘Thank you. Please get dressed and sit on the chair.’

‘Well?’ asked another voice.

‘His heart and circulation appear excellent. His blood pressure is above normal, but then he’s obviously in a condition of extreme tension, if only as shown by his respiratory rate.’

‘So there’s no real risk?’

‘In an undertaking of this kind there’s always a risk, but if you mean am I prepared to take this risk then yes, I am.’

‘Good. Let’s get on with it, then.’

‘Mr Hollies? Mr Hollies, I’m going to put you to sleep for a couple of minutes, nothing more than that. When you wake up you’ll be in one piece and still here. Do you understand? Oh well, here goes.’

When Adrian came to himself after what he suspected to be only a short time, he was in some discomfort. He had been strapped into a chair in a way that prevented him from leaving it and also bound his wrists to its arms. More noticeably, his head was tightly clamped and what felt like pieces of sticky tape had been applied to his eyelids to prevent even their slight closure. A large screen of the TV type, at present blank, filled most of his vision. He must have made some movement because almost at once a voice spoke to him from behind his chair, the voice of the man who had seemed to be some sort of doctor.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Restricted.’

‘No nausea or trouble with breathing?’

‘I’ve never felt better in my life.’

‘Bravely spoken, Mr Hollies. Happy viewing.’

As he spoke, a thrumming click sounded, the screen in front of Adrian lit up and in a moment, with excellent definition and lifelike colour, images began to appear.

The first of these, that of an attractive young woman, Adrian found pleasant enough, and he had no objection when, smiling at the camera, she proceeded to undress, nor did he find what immediately followed any worse than embarrassing. When other persons joined her, however, he very quickly started showing signs of discomfort and not long after of distress. When a cry of pain sounded from the direction of the screen, he struggled to free himself and to turn his head away. Within a couple of minutes he was making anguished sounds and, as far as was possible to him, thrashing about. A female scream of terror and his own scream rose together, at which point the film froze and two or more men seized him and gagged him. But as soon as the coloured shapes were again in motion and appropriate sounds to be heard, he was able to show how much clamour could be created by a gagged man, especially in the forms of shrieks and inarticulate noises of protest and pain. In the end the man who had last spoken hurried forward and, with the screen now darkened, silence fell.

This time Adrian woke up lying on his bed. His eyelids were sore, his eyes ached and his lower lip was swollen and tender; he remembered biting it and feeling blood trickle down his chin. Despite these things he felt comfortable and languid, and guessed he was under some sedative or painkiller. He was alone. Presently, taking his time, he pushed himself upright and round until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. He had not long to wait.

The door clicked a couple of times and opened to admit the supposed doctor, who was now wearing a suit and tie. He looked closely at Adrian and said, ‘You should be lying down.’

‘I can get all the rest I want. I’m not going anywhere.’

The doctor was not listening. He brought from his jacket two small containers and handed them over. ‘Take two of the round red ones to stop things hurting, not more than six in twenty-four hours. The white ones will calm you down and also help you to sleep. Dose of two, maximum six a day, got it?’

‘Are you off somewhere?’

‘I have things to see to.’

When the doctor had gone, Adrian went into the bathroom and came back holding a glass of water. Before he could have taken a pill there was the unexpected sound of a tap on the outside of his door.

‘Come in,’ he called. At the sight of Chatterton and Fotheringay he got up not very steadily, seized a chair by the back and ran at them with it, calling to them to keep their hands off him.

Fotheringay twisted the chair out of his grasp. ‘Sit down, Mr Hollies,’ he said easily.

As he sat on the bed again, Adrian said, ‘Will you tell me something? Please?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Those, those things you made me see, they weren’t real, were they?’

‘Well…’

‘When those men, when they forced the girl to do what she did, that wasn’t really happening, was it? Please tell me.’

‘We weren’t on that side of it, Chatterton and me.’

‘I mean, when they started… started… that poor girl,’ said Adrian, and burst into tears, racking sobs he seemed at the same time to be trying to restrain. ‘Sorry,’ he gasped after some moments — ‘sorry, I thought I could just ask you in the ordinary way, but when it came to it… I found I couldn’t. Sorry.’