Kingsley Amis - Dear Illusion - Selected Stories

Actually, of course, it wasn’t Mair I ought to have been cogitating about. Mair, with her creed of take-off-your-coat-andget-on-with-it (and never mind what ‘it’ is), could be run out of town at any stage, if possible after being bound and gagged and forced to listen to a no-holds-barred denunciation of her by Betty. What if anything should or could be done about Betty, and who if anyone should or could do it and how — that was the real stuff. I was sorry to think how impossible it was for me to turn up at the gaol on the big day, holding a bunch of flowers and a new plastic umbrella.

That morning Alec Mackenzie had been unable to eat even his usual small breakfast, so when, some minutes out of Euston, coffee and light refreshments were announced, he went along to the dining-car. He felt that, in view of what lay ahead, he should have something inside him, however nasty it or the task of getting it down might prove. It was good, too, to quit the company of those sharing his compartment, a standard crew of secret agents for the bus companies: two sailors and a portable radio, an ever-toddling toddler, a man whose pipe whimpered and grumbled, an old woman with a hat who moved her lips as she read her library book and wet her fingers thoroughly before turning each page.

The first person he saw on entering the dining-car was Bob Anthony, wearing a suit that looked like woven vegetable soup and reading a newspaper with awful concentration. Alec found it hard not to dive back the way he had come, let alone stand his ground, but he knew that the two of them must have caught the train for the same reason and would have to meet sooner or later. Hoping only that it would be later, he did not resist when the steward put him in a chair facing Bob’s, but at the opposite end of the car.

For twenty-four hours now his brain had behaved as if some terminal had come loose, deactivating half of it and letting the rest work only at low efficiency. Perhaps this was what people meant when they talked about moving round in a trance. The half-rural landscape, wheeling past the window in average September sunshine, had a flat, pointless quality. Alec felt a slight amazement that things like keeping out of Bob’s way for a few extra minutes should still matter to him, and again that he should find himself making his customary weak and futile appeal for a pot of tea instead of the donkey-coloured mixture now being served under the name of coffee. Habit persisted when other things broke down. He drank coffee and ate biscuits.

The one look he had had at Bob had been quite enough to assure him that Bob’s recent outbreak of affluence showed no sign of abating. Alec was well enough resigned to his own failure — bowing uncomplainingly to the inevitable was part of his code — but he had no intention of ceasing to be indignant at Bob’s luck. A long period of floundering round the legal profession had been halted by two deaths. The first of these, brought on by an alcoholic seizure occurring slightly ahead of expectation, had had the effect of hauling Bob up a notch or two; the second, in which drink had played a more devious role as the agent of a fall downstairs, had made him virtual head of the firm, Bob having helped fate along, so to speak, by becoming friendly with the faller’s widow. The depth of this friendship remained obscure, but it was certain that the second dead man’s half-share in the business had passed under Bob’s control and stayed there.

An approaching disturbance — the sound of a hip striking the corner of a laden table, the clash of crockery on a tray abruptly snatched from collision — warned Alec that Bob was on his way to join him. He looked up and saw that, apart from some lateral distortion caused by the movement of the train, the old stooping gait was the same as ever, not in the least scholarly, the tread of someone closing in on bodily enjoyment or the means to buy some.

‘Hallo, Mac,’ Bob said in his curt tone and fake-genteel accent, then at once set about making people move so that he could sit where he wanted, opposite Alec. When he had done this he swept the cloth with the edge of his newspaper and they looked at each other in a way they often did, Bob unconcernedly claiming superior sophistication, Alec on the defensive, ready, if challenged, to stress the importance of integrity. Then both turned blank and grim. Alec found nothing to say; his attention was like a weight too heavy to move from where it had landed, on Bob’s suit. Why was he wearing it? He must have others. Where were they?

‘Well, Mac, words aren’t much use at a time like this, eh?’

‘No. No, they’re not.’

Bob signalled emphatically for more coffee. ‘I’d have thought you’d have gone down there yesterday.’

‘I didn’t like to intrude.’

‘Oh, but surely, I mean Jim would have been glad to have you there, old chap. After all, you’re not exactly a stranger.’

‘I worked it out that he’d sooner have been on his own. I know I would if it had been me.’

‘That’s where you go wrong, Mac, if I may say so. You’re by way of being a reserved type, always have been. I’m not blaming you, heaven knows — you can’t help the way you’re made — but most people aren’t like that, you see. They want their pals round them. I call that a normal human instinct. Tell me, are you still living at that place of yours in Ealing?’

‘You asked me that the last time you saw me in the Lord Nelson. I haven’t moved since then.’

‘It would drive me crackers, quite frankly, being on my own twelve hours of the day. What do you do when you feel like nipping out and having a few?’

‘I haven’t got much cash for nipping out and having a few, so the question doesn’t arise very often.’

‘No, I see.’ Bob seemed not to have noticed the bitterness which Alec had been unable to keep out of his voice. Not noticing things like that was no doubt useful to one who led Bob’s kind of life. After gazing with apparent incredulity at the coffee with which their cups were now being refilled, he went on: ‘What do you do of an evening then? You can’t just—’

‘Oh, I get a bit of bridge now and again, and there are one or two people I drop in on. There’s a colleague of mine in the export department living just ten minutes’ walk away. I usually have some grub with him and his wife Sunday midday and occasionally in the week.’

‘Still go to your concerts?’

‘Not so much now.’

Bob shook his head and drew in his breath. ‘It wouldn’t do for me, I must say.’

‘Well, we’re not all built the same, are we?’

‘No, I like being in company.’

Alec knew how true this was. The advent of the partner’s widow had done nothing to curb Bob’s habit of suddenly appearing in the Lord Nelson, the pub near the Temple both men were apt to use at lunch-time, and plying some woman with large gin-and-frenches while Alec sat up at the bar with his light ale and veal-and-ham pie and salad. Every few minutes the other two would burst out laughing at some trivial phrase, or go off into face-to-face mumbling that sometimes led to more laughter, all eyes and teeth. He never knew how to behave during these interludes.

The train had stopped at a station. Bob glanced out of the window and dropped his voice slightly. ‘I suppose it was another stroke, was it? Jim wasn’t very clear on the phone.’

‘Yes, it was a stroke all right. She died before they could get her to hospital.’

‘Good way to go, I suppose. Better than poor old Harry. He was under drugs for almost a year, you know. It makes you wonder what sort of exit you’ll have when it comes to your turn. Selfish, of course, but natural. Do you ever think about that, Mac? How you’ll go?’