Kingsley Amis - Dear Illusion - Selected Stories

‘I’m in favour of taking risks. There’s far too much playing safe these days, it’s ruining the country, all this stick-in-the-mud attitude. I believe in taking off my coat and getting on with the job.’

‘But, Mair, these are risks that involve other people. You’re deciding what’s best for them and then doing it, just like that. You don’t give them a chance to—’

‘If you’d done as much social work as I have, John, perhaps you’d have some idea of how many people there are in this world who are constitutionally incapable of knowing what’s best for them. They’re like children. You wouldn’t let Eira be the judge of what was best for her, would you? You wouldn’t let her put her hand in the fire to see if it was hot, would you?’

‘No, of course not, but children aren’t—’

‘I know you think social work’s something terribly complicated and difficult. Well, believe me, ninety or ninety-five per cent of the time it couldn’t be simpler, at least making the right decision couldn’t: getting it carried out is something else again, of course, but the actual decision’s a piece of cake, because you’re dealing with complete fools or complete swine or both. You’d think the same after a month in my job, I know you would.’

‘I hope not.’

‘Honestly, John, if people in general thought like you there wouldn’t be any progress at all.’

‘No, there wouldn’t, would there?’

At this fundamental point Mair steered the car to the kerb and stopped it, not, it transpired, in order to fight me but because we’d arrived. Facing us when we got out was a meagre row of shops: a newsagent’s with a lot of advertisements written on postcards, a barber-cum-tobacconist, an outfitter’s whose window stock alone would have outfitted a hundred middle-aged ladies in wool from head to foot, and a place that had no doubt once been a shop in the full sense but was now whitewashed to above eye level. This last establishment had to one side of it a door, recently painted a British Railways brown, and a bell which Mair rang. Then she took me by the arm and drew me a yard or two along the pavement.

I said: ‘What’s this in aid of, then?’ in what was supposed to be a bantering tone. Actually I was only half noticing; my mind was busy trying to decide what Mair’s ‘you’d think the same after a month in the job’ thing had reminded me of.

‘You don’t want to be in front of the front door of a house like this when they open it.’

‘Oh?’ That was it: the veteran colonial administrator to the just-out-from-England colonial administrator. We’re all a bit prowog when we first get out here, my boy; it’s only natural. Soon wears off, though, you’ll find . ‘Why not?’

‘Well, the door opening makes the draught rush through the house, and the draught carries the bugs with it. You don’t want them to land on you.’

‘You mean really bugs?’ She had my full attention now.

‘You don’t want them to land on you.’

‘Hallo, Mrs Webster, don’t often see you up this way.’

‘Oh, good afternoon, Emrys, how are you?’ Mair turned animatedly towards the new arrival, a young police constable with a long, pale nose. ‘Wife all right?’

‘Well, no, she hasn’t been too grand, actually. They had her back in for three days’ observation the week before last, and the doctor said—’ His voice became indistinguishable, chiefly because he was lowering its pitch, but also because he was removing its source in the direction of the shop that had committed itself so wholeheartedly to the woollen garment. Mair retreated with him, nodding a fair amount. I was still feeling impressed by her bit of know-how about the bugs. Real front-line stuff, that.

‘Yes, who’s here, please?’ This came from the now open front door, at which a small red-haired, red-faced man was standing.

‘My name’s Lewis.’

‘I don’t know you. What you want here?’

I looked along the pavement to where Mair, nodding faster, was standing with her back to me. It must have had all the appearance of a furtive, sidelong, up-to-no-good look. Like a fool, I said: ‘I’m a friend of your wife’s.’ As I said this, I smiled.

‘Get out of here,’ the red-haired man bawled. He wore a red shirt. ‘Get out, you bastard.’

‘Look, it’s all right, there’s no need to—’

‘Get out quick, you bastard.’ For the first time he saw Mair and the policeman, who were now approaching. ‘Mrs Webster, hallo. And you, Officer. Take away this bastard.’

‘Now calm down, Bent, nothing to get excited about. Mr Lewis is with me. He and his wife have been very kind to Betty. He’s come along with me to see how you all are. He’s a friend of mine.’

‘Sorry, Mrs Webster. Sorry, sir, very sorry.’

‘That’s all right, Bent, Mr Lewis doesn’t mind. He knows you didn’t mean anything. You just forget it. Now, can we come in?’

‘Please, yes, come in.’

‘Bye-bye, Emrys, give Maureen my love. Tell her I’ll pop in to see her in a day or two. And don’t you worry. She’s a good strong girl and with the better weather coming she’ll soon pull round, I guarantee.’

‘Thank you very much, Mrs Webster. Goodbye now.’

Before he turned away I caught a glimpse of Emrys’s face and was startled to see on it an expression of relief and gratitude, quite as if he’d just received an important reassurance of some kind. I followed Mair across the threshold, frowning and shaking my head at life’s endless enigma.

Bugs or no bugs, the house revealed itself to me as not too bad. There were loose and cracked floorboards, but none missing, and no damp; the kitchen we penetrated to was dark all right, but it smelt no worse than stale; through its open door I could see a scullery with a row of clean cups hanging above the sink and a dishcloth spread over the taps to dry. One of the twins came into view in that quarter, took in the sight of visitors and doubled away again.

‘Good afternoon, Betty,’ Mair was saying in her hospital-rounds manner. ‘My goodness, you have done well, haven’t you? You really ought to be congratulated. You have made the place look nice.’

She went on like that while I glanced round the place. It did look nice enough as far as it went, but that wasn’t at all far. Most noticeably, there was an absence of the unnecessary things, the ornaments, the photographs and pictures, the postcards on the mantelpiece that every home accumulates. It was as if the moving men had just dumped the furniture down, leaving the small stuff to be unpacked later, only in this case there was nothing to unpack. Curtains perhaps fell into the category of the unnecessary, even, with a small single window like this one, of the excessive. They were of Betty’s favourite lilac shade, and ranks of mauve personages, with sword and fan, periwig and towering hair-do, were doing a minuet on them. At this sight I felt pity stirring. Get back, you brute, I said internally, giving it a mental kick on the snout. Then I felt angry with a whole lot of people, but without much prospect of working out just who.

Mair was nearing her peroration. I looked covertly at Betty. Although no longer tarted up, she hadn’t recovered the quiet, youthful air she’d had when I first saw her. She wore a grey cardigan which seemed designed to accentuate the roundness of her shoulders. The circles under her eyes weren’t the temporary kind. She was staring up at Mair with the sarcastic patience of someone listening to a shaky alibi. Bent Arnulfsen, after standing about uneasily for a time, went out into the scullery and I heard water plunging into a kettle. Still talking, the old moral commando moved to follow him. ‘I just want to have a word with Bent a minute,’ she said, and shut the door behind her.