Kingsley Amis - Dear Illusion - Selected Stories

‘It’s not such a bad trip as it sounds,’ Joe said. ‘We’re pretty organized there. Shouldn’t take you more than a couple of hours to sort out your mail and any telegrams, and then you can go straight to your telephone period. I’ll fix that for you.’

Simpson looked his incomprehension.

‘It’s easy enough. You go to your booth, see, and you take your incoming calls first is the best way to handle it. After that you make your outgoings.’

‘What’s happened to private phones?’

‘Oh, that was all stopped. They were always going wrong, and more people kept wanting one, and it was too much trouble driving out just to do the one job. The big offices and that, they run their own booth systems. Under licence from us, of course.’

‘Then… the whole system of services has packed up?’

‘They’re trying to do away with what’s left of it, yeah.’

‘Same with things like milk? Laundry? Newspapers?’

‘Same with everything, Simmy, mate. Thursdays and Fridays, now, when they bring out the dailies, you’ll find it’s a good scheme to pick ’em up at the Area newsagent in Woking, between your calls at Leatherhead and Ascot, say, about one-thirty or two.’

‘But, I mean, what about repairs and so on? You can’t take a whole television set or washing machine back to the shop just because some tiny thing’s gone wrong.’

‘Oh, can’t you? That’s what a lot of the Fetch-and-Carry’s about today. The places stay open over the slack, see, because they’re all automated. The guv’nor here’ll be off to Norwood with his vodka machine before he opens tomorrow. Not for repairs, though. Pick up a new one.’

‘But that’s completely uneconomic.’

‘Maybe it is, but it’s what you do. Only way you can save trouble.’

Simpson tried to think. ‘So it comes to this. You do very little actual work, but you spend all your free time doing the things for yourself that it’s too much trouble for other people to do for you.’

‘You learn quick. That’s just how it goes. Only way they can get you to take trouble. We caught on to it first — you know, the British. Then everywhere else went down the same road. We led the way there.’

‘We would,’ Simpson said through his teeth.

A silence fell between the three, though there was quite enough ambient noise from the other drinkers. Wearily, Simpson drained his beaker, and the smooth, denatured taste faded at once from his mouth. A thought struggled to the surface of his mind.

‘Can you get wine these days?’ he asked.

‘Plenty,’ Ernie said. ‘Burgundy, claret, hock, all that. I don’t go for it myself, but it’s easy enough. You pick up your wine-cakes from Ascot, stick ’em in a jug when you get home, add water, and in five minutes—’

‘Wine-cakes! Christ! ’

‘Keep your voice down, mate,’ Joe advised, moving Simpson a little away from a couple of burly labouring types who had turned round with an unfriendly stare. ‘There’s alcohol in the things, same as in the beer-cakes. I don’t know how they do it, but they do. You’ll see. Come on, what about another? Forget our sorrows.’

‘My turn,’ Simpson said. ‘No, Ernie, let me, I’d like to.’

‘How are you for cash?’

Simpson produced his wallet, which was stuffed with pound notes unimprovably forged by our Temporal Treasury. ‘That ought to be enough, oughtn’t it?’

‘Fine, but have you got change? Thirty pence a pint, it is.’

‘Ninety altogether. I can give him a pound and get ten pence change.’

‘Well… you can’t, Simmy, sorry. Nobody gives change any more, except at the change shops. You got to have the exact money, because it’s—’

‘I know!’ Simpson shrieked. This last, trivial revelation turned his mounting despair to fury. ‘It’s too much trouble! Too much trouble to hand over a coin! Too much bloody trouble! What’s the matter with you all? Oh, you two are decent enough blokes, but you’re spineless! You’ve given in to the system! You must fight it!’

He yelled more in the same strain, but could not afterwards remember just what. Indeed, the whole situation immediately became confused. He took a swingeing punch on the ear, probably from one of the labourers who had glared at him earlier, and staggered sideways into the throng away from Ernie and Joe, whom he saw no more. Further blows fell on him, accompanied by shouts of ‘Student! Another bloody student! Let’s do this one up proper!’ The landlord arrived, not, it transpired, to separate the combatants, nor to throw Simpson out, but to join in beating him up.

Things were looking desperate, and Simpson was dimly relinquishing hopes of ever returning to 1975, when a new arrival, previously unseen, entered the fray on his side. With swift, well-aimed punches this person disposed of the immediate opposition and hauled Simpson out into the street. They ran. Guided by his rescuer, Simpson stumbled into an alley and found himself pushed behind a fire-escape. In the middle distance were sounds of a pursuit assembling.

‘This is a cul-de-sac,’ Simpson panted.

‘That’s why they won’t look here yet,’ the other man said, breathing easily.

‘God, you’re in good trim. Back there, the way you—’

‘I ought to be. I’ve had eight years to train for this.’

The voice was eerily familiar. So — Simpson studied it for the first time — was the face. A little balder, a little redder, but…

‘My God… it’s you. I mean me.’

‘If we stick to regarding each other as two different persons, which we are, we’ll get on better,’ Simpson II said, with the authority of one who has everything thought out in advance. ‘We’ve got a moment’s breather now. You’d better use it.’

‘But how do I get back?’ Simpson asked wildly, ignoring this advice.

‘I’ll show you. It’s all lined up.’

‘Why did they send you?’

‘I was the only really fit man on the team,’ (Simpson grinned at each of us in turn when he reached this part of his story) ‘and we didn’t dare tell anyone else. I knew the exact situation in the pub, too.’

‘You took your time about coming.’

‘Sorry. I had a long journey. And then there was traffic. Big meeting in Trafalgar Square about legalizing heroin.’

A straggle of men calling for student blood ran inefficiently past the open end of the alley. When the sounds had died away, Simpson II pulled Simpson out of cover and led him across to a dilapidated and empty garage.

‘In here. Quick. Put this in your pocket.’

‘What is it?’

‘Full report on the occupation of Mars.’

‘But…’ It took Simpson, flustered as he was, a moment to remember what was his official reason for being there at all. Then he recoiled. ‘But I can’t transfer something from one time to another! They’re always on about it, especially the Director. Danger of a paradox or a—’

Speaking with great emphasis, Simpson II swept this objection aside. (Simpson, now almost cheerful, insisted on reporting verbatim the terms in which he did so.) ‘If you leave it behind, you’ll have failed in your mission so totally that you’ll never get a decent job again. And you’re going to need that for the money. And since I’ve lived through what’s going to happen to you after this, I know you’re going to have taken it with you, so get on with it and stop arguing.’

‘All right. Thanks.’

‘A pleasure.’

Simpson was about to depart when he remembered something vital, and turned. ‘Hey, before I go — is the drink situation really quite hopeless?’

‘Put it this way,’ Simpson II said in a hurry, ‘the 1981 El Minya whites are almost…’

He broke off abruptly as shouts and running footfalls came into earshot again. Propelled by his rescuer, Simpson half-fell through the garage doorway and at once the TIOPEPE grabbed him.