The Wanting Seed (17 page)

‘We come first,’ said Mavis. ‘Remember that. You and me and the children.’

‘All right, all right, go on now.’ Mavis went to the outhouse. The van drew up and Captain Loosley alighted stretching. Young Oxenford revved up then
switched off. Sergeant Image walked up to join his chief. Young Oxenford took off his cap, disclosing a red band on his brow like the mark of Cain, wiped with a spotted handkerchief, then set his cap on again. Shonny opened the door. All was ready.

‘Good afternoon,’ said Captain Loosley. ‘This is State Farm NW
₃₁₃
, and you are – I’m afraid I can’t pronounce your name, do you see. But that doesn’t matter. You have a Mrs Foxe staying with you, haven’t you? Are these your children? Delightful, delightful. May we come in?’

‘It’s not for me to say yes or no,’ said Shonny. ‘I suppose you must have a warrant.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Captain Loosley, ‘
we
have a warrant, do you see.’

‘Why does he say that, Dad?’ asked Llewelyn. Why does he say “Do you see”?’

‘It’s just his nerves, God have mercy on him,’ said Shonny. ‘Some people twitch, others say, “Do you see”. Come on in then, Mister –’

‘Captain,’ said Sergeant Image. ‘Captain Loosley.’ They all came in, keeping their caps on.

‘Now,’ said Shonny, ‘what precisely is it you’re looking for?’ ?

‘This is interesting,’ said Sergeant Image, rocking the rough cradle with his foot. ‘When the bough breaks the cradle will fall. Down will come baby –’

‘Yes,’ said Captain Loosley. ‘We have reason to believe, do you see, that Mrs Foxe has been living here for the whole period of her illicit pregnancy. “Baby” is the operative word.’ Mavis came into the room. ‘This,’ said Captain Loosley, ‘is not Mrs Foxe.’ He spoke
peevishly, as though they were trying to fob him off. ‘She is like Mrs Foxe but she isn’t Mrs Foxe.’ He bowed to her as in ironic congratulation on a reasonable attempt at deception. ‘I want Mrs Foxe.’

‘That cradle there,’ said Shonny, ‘was for pigs. The runt of the litter usually needs special looking after.’

‘Shall I,’ asked Sergeant Image, ‘tell young Oxenford to beat him up a litde?’

‘Let him try,’ said Shonny. Swift red suffused his face as though through the operation of dimmers. ‘Nobody beats me up. I’ve a good mind to ask the lot of you to leave.’

‘You can’t do that,’ said Captain Loosley. ‘We’re doing our duty, do you see. We want Mrs Foxe and her illegal offspring.’

‘Illegal offspring,’ parroted Llewelyn. ‘Illegal offspring,’ delighted with the phrase.

‘Supposing I were to tell you that Mrs Foxe isn’t here,’ said Shonny. ‘She paid us a visit just before Christmas and then moved on. Where to I don’t know.’

‘What is Christmas?’ asked Sergeant Image.

‘That’s irrelevant,’ snapped Captain Loosley. ‘If Mrs Foxe isn’t here, I take it you’ll have no objection to our confirming that for ourselves. I have here,’ he fumbled in his tunic side – pocket, ‘a sort of all-purposes warrant. It covers search, do you see, and everything else.’

‘Including beating – up,’ said Mavis.

‘Exactly.’

‘Get out,’ said Shonny, ‘the lot of you. I’ll not have State hirelings rummaging through my house.’

‘You’re a State hireling, too,’ said Captain Loosley evenly. ‘We’re all servants of the State. Come now, do
please be reasonable, do you see. We don’t want any nastiness.’ He smiled wanly. ‘We’ve all got to do our duty, when all’s said and done.’

‘Do you see,’ added Dymphna and then giggled.

‘Come here, little girl,’ said Sergeant Image ingratiatingly. ‘You’re a nice little girl, aren’t you?’ He crouched, rocking on his hunkers, and puss-pussed her, snapping his fingers.

‘You stay here,’ said Mavis, drawing both children to her.

‘Aaargh.’ Sergeant Image snarled briefly at Mavis and then, rising, put on a mask of idiotic sweetness. ‘There’s a little baby in this house, isn’t there?’ he said wheedlingly to Dymphna. ‘A wee sweet little baby, that’s right, isn’t it?’ Dymphna giggled. Llewelyn said stoutly:

‘No.’

‘And that’s the truth, too,’ said Shonny. ‘The boy spoke no less than the truth. Now will you all get out and stop wasting your time as well as mine? I’m a busy man.’

‘It’s not my intention,’ sighed Captain Loosley, ‘to prefer charges against either you or your wife. Produce Mrs Foxe and her offspring and you’ll hear no more about it. You have my word for that.’

‘Do I have to throw you out?’ cried Shonny. ‘Because, by the Lord Jesus, I’ve a mind to set on the lot of you.’

‘Bash him a little, Oxenford,’ said Sergeant Image. ‘It’s all a lot of nonsense.’

‘We’re going to start searching,’ said Captain Loosley. ‘I’m sorry you’re being so unco-operative, do you see.’

‘Get upstairs, Mavis,’ said Shonny, ‘you and the
children. You leave all this to me.’ He tried to push his wife out.

‘The children stay here,’ said Sergeant Image. ‘The children will be made to squeal a little. I like to hear children squeal.’

‘You unholy Godless bastard,’ cried Shonny. He threw himself at Sergeant Image, but young Oxenford was quick to interpose himself. Young Oxenford punched Shonny lightly in the groin. Shonny cried in pain and then began to flail wildly.

‘All right,’ said a voice from the kitchen doorway. ‘I don’t want to cause any more trouble.’ Shonny dropped his fists.

‘
This
is Mrs Foxe,’ said Captain Loosley. ‘
This
is the genuine article.’ He showed restrained delight.

Beatrice-Joanna was dressed for outdoors. ‘What,’ she said, ‘will you do to my children?’

‘You shouldn’t have done it,’ wailed Shonny. ‘You should have stayed where you were. Everything would have been all right, God forgive you.’

‘You have my assurance,’ said Captain Loosley, ‘that no harm will come either to you or to your children.’ He suddenly started. ‘Children? Children? Oh, I see. More than one. I hadn’t considered that possibility. All the better, of course, do you see, all the better.’

‘You can punish me as much as you like,’ said Beatrice-Joanna, ‘but the children have done no harm.’

‘Of course not,’ said Captain Loosley. ‘No harm at all. We intend harm only to the father. My intention is merely to confront the Metropolitan Commissioner with the fruits of his crime. Nothing more than that, do you see.’

‘What is this?’ cried Shonny. ‘What’s going on?’

‘It’s a long story,’ said Beatrice-Joanna. ‘It’s too late to tell it now. Well,’ she said to her sister, ‘it looks as though the future’s taken care of. It seems that I’ve found somewhere to go.’

Part four

One

T
RISTRAM
was ready to begin his anabasis. He yearned, like a compass-needle, towards his wife in the north, the prospect of repentance and reconciliation like the prospect of sore labour’s bath. He wanted comfort, her arms, her warm body, their mingled tears, rest. He did not now particularly want revenge.

There was chaos in the metropolis, and that chaos seemed at first like a projection of his own new freedom. Chaos whooped like a big laughing Bacchante and told him, not very far from Pentonville, to club a harmless man with his truncheon and steal his clothes. This was in an alley, after dark, in the hinterland of public cooking-fires and flares spluttering with human fat. Electricity, like other public utilities, seemed to have failed. Here was jungle night, broken glass crackling under one’s feet like an undergrowth. Tristram wondered at the maintenance of civilized order in that jail he had left; how much longer could it last? Then, wondering, he saw a man leaning by the mouth of the alley, singing to himself, drunk on something. Tristram raised his club and the man went down at once, obligingly, as if this was what he had been waiting for, and his clothes – a round-necked shirt, a cardigan, a checked suit – came off without effort. Tristram turned swiftly into a free
civilian but decided to keep his warder’s truncheon. Dressed for dinner, he went off looking for food.

Jungle noises, black skyscraper forest, starred sky dizzily high, the ruddiness of fires. In Claremont Square he came upon people eating. They sat, men and women alike, round a barbecue, about thirty of them. Metal grills of roughly reticulated telegraph wire – these rested on plinths of heaped bricks; beneath were glowing coals. A man with a white cap forked and turned spitting steaks. ‘No room, no room,’ fluted a thin donnish person as Tristram shyly approached. ‘This is a dining club, not a public restaurant.’

‘I,’ said Tristram, brandishing his truncheon, ‘also have a club.’ Everybody laughed at this puny threat. ‘I’ve only just got out of prison,’ wailed Tristram plaintively. ‘I’ve been starved.’

‘Fall to,’ said the donnish person. ‘Though this may prove, at first, too rich for your stomach. These days,’ he epigrammatized, ‘your criminal is your only moral man.’ He reached over to the nearest grill and picked up, with a pair of tongs, a long hot metal skewer spitted with chunks of meat. ‘A kebab,’ he said. Then, squinting at Tristram in the firelight, ‘You’ve no teeth. You’ll have to get some teeth somewhere. Wait. We have some very nourishing broth over here.’ And, most hospitably, he fussed round searching for a bowl, a spoon. ‘Try this,’ he said, ladling from a metal pot, ‘and heartily welcome.’ Tristram, like an animal, carried this gift trembling to a corner away from the others. He sucked in a steaming spoonful. Rich, rich, an oily liquid in which were suspended gobbets of smoking pliant rubbery stuff. Meat. He had read about meat. Ancient literature
was full of meat-guzzling – Homer, Dickens, Priestley, Rabelais, A. J. Cronin. He swallowed the spoonful, retched, lost it. ‘Slowly, slowly,’ said the donnish man, coming up to him kindly. ‘You will find it delicious fairly soon. Think of it not as what it is but as one of the pulpy fruits of the tree of life. All life is one. Why did they put you in prison?’

‘I suppose,’ said Tristram, still retching, ‘because,’ recovering, ‘I was against the Government.’

‘Which government? At the moment we don’t seem to have a government.’

‘So,’ said Tristram, ‘the Gusphase has not yet begun.’

‘You seem to be something of a scholar. In prison you must have had leisure to think. Tell me, what do you make of the present times?’

‘You can’t think without data,’ said Tristram. He tried the broth again; it went down much better. ‘So this is meat,’ he said.

‘Man is a carnivore, just as man is a breeder. The two are cognate and the two have been long suppressed. Put the two together and you have no rational cause for suppression. As far as information is concerned, we have no information because we have no information services. However, we can take it that the Starling Government has fallen and that the Praesidium is full of snarling dogs. We shall have a government soon, I don’t doubt. Meantime, we band ourselves into little dining clubs for self-protection. Let me warn you, who are just out of prison and hence new to this new world, not to go out alone. I will, if you like, put you up for this club of ours.’

‘That’s very kind,’ said Tristram, ‘but I have to find
my wife. She’s in Northern Province, just outside Preston.’

‘You’ll have some difficulty,’ said this kind man. ‘The trains have stopped running, of course, and there’s little road transport. It’s a very long walk. Don’t go unvictualled. Go armed. Don’t sleep in the open. It worries me,’ he said, squinting again at Tristram’s sunken jaws, ‘that you have no teeth.’

Tristram took from his pocket the twice-transferred halves of dental plate. He turned them over and over ruefully. ‘A brutal prison warder,’ he said unjustly.

‘I think,’ said the donnish man, ‘we may have a dental mechanic among our members.’ He went over to the group and Tristram finished his broth. It was heartening, no doubt about that. A memory of an ancient Pelagian poem – or rather one of the author’s own notes to it – steamed into his mind.
Queen Mab
. Shelley. ‘Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resembles frugivorous animals in everything, and carnivorous in nothing; he has neither claws wherewith to seize his prey, nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear the living fibre.’ And again, ‘Man resembles no carnivorous animal. There is no exception, unless man be one, to the rule of herbivorous animals having cellulated colons.’ That was, perhaps, after all, all bloody nonsense.

‘Your teeth can be mended,’ said the kindly donnish man, returning, ‘and we can fill a scrip for you with cold meat for the journey. I shouldn’t, if I were you, think of starting before daylight. You’re very welcome to spend the night with me.’

‘You’re genuinely very kind,’ said Tristram genuinely. ‘I’ve never before, I honestly think, met such kindness.’
His eyes began to fill with tears; it had been an exhausting day.

‘Think nothing of it. When the State withers, humanity flowers. There are some very nice people about these days. Still, hang on to that weapon of yours.’

Tristram retired that night with his teeth in. Lying on the floor in the donnish man’s flat, he champed again and again at the darkness as at so much airy meat. His host, who had given his name as Sinclair, had lighted them both to rest with a wick floating in fat; it had smelled delicious. The homely flame had shown a small untidy room crammed with books. Sinclair, however, had disclaimed any pretensions to being what he called a ‘reading man’; he had been, before the electricity failed, an electronic composer, specializing in atmospheric music for television documentaries. Again, before the electricity failed and the elevators were grounded, his flat had been a good thirty storeys higher than this one; today, apparently, the weakest rose and the strongest fell. This new flat of his had belonged to a real reading man, a professor of Chinese, whose flesh had proved, despite his great age, not unsucculent. Sinclair slept innocently on his wall-bed, snoring gently, only occasionally talking in his sleep. Most of his utterances were gnomic, some were plain nonsense. Tristram listened.