‘I’m going to a party this evening,’ he told her, to change the subject. ‘At the BIL, Aubrey’s HQ; I’m sorry you’re not coming. I shall have to be getting ready soon.’
‘I don’t envy you,’ Alyson said. Nevertheless she watched him keenly as he walked into the kitchen. He there assembled a carraway roll (Jimmy did not so much enjoy carraway rolls as endure them under the impression they were fashionable), a slice of Camem-bert cheese, a spoonful of cream cheese, a wedge of butter and pickings from the garlic-flavoured salad which reposed in the refrigerator. Hesitating a moment, he poured himself a glass of dry Montrachet; it was not quite the thing with the cheese, he realised, but he liked it.
‘Come over here, Jimmy,’ Alyson said, when he appeared in the living room with his tray.
He went over at once to where she was sitting on the divan. She was wearing the green suit with the citron lining that Aubrey had bought her at Dickens and Jones. Underneath it, she wore a citron blouse, and underneath that could have been very little; all the same, Alyson looked warm. And, ah, undeniably, warming.
Changing her mind about whatever she was going to say, Alyson remarked, ‘You are too obedient, Jimmy. You must not come when just anyone calls you.’
‘You’re not just anyone, Alyson,’ he said, but missed the required lightness of tone such an obvious remark demanded. He took his tray sadly into the dinerette, from where he could still see her ankles and calves, curved like a symbol against the plum background of the divan. They looked, indeed, very beautiful; as if he were having his first glimpse of the Himalayas, Jimmy felt humbled by them. Then a hint of colour made him hold one hand up before his face; a pink radiance covered it. The disc on his forehead was doing its stuff.
Feeling both shattered and pleased, Jimmy lingered over his meal. The Montrachet was very good. He sipped it, listening to the music from the record player. A band featuring an overharsh trumpet flipped through the current trifle called ‘You Make Me Glow’; that tune had been lucky; the show in which it was sung had been running for some weeks before the Prime Minister made his sensational announcement. Yet it might almost have been written for the occasion and brought unexpected fortune for the songwriter, who found himself overnight the author of a hit and able to afford the enemies he had always dreamed of.
‘Fate decreed
Your effect upon me should be so:
You not only make me knock-kneed,
You make me glow.
Presently,
Or when all other lights are down low.
Your touch will kindle me, you see
You make me glow.’
Alyson switched it off.
‘What I was going to say, Jimmy,’ she exclaimed, speaking with an effort, ‘is that I feel rather appallingly glum just now. It’s the sight of all those people queueing out there – and all over London – I suppose. They’re so patient! Nobody seems quite to have grasped how epochbreaking these ERs, these Norman Lights as they call them, really are; not even people who are against them, like this politician, what’s his name, Bourgoyne.’
‘Let’s not get onto politics,’ Jimmy said. ‘You know how we always argue. Stay as sweet as you are.’
Although he expected her to take him up on that, she said nothing, moving her legs restlessly. She began to hum, ‘You Make Me Glow’, but broke off as if realising the idiocy of the tune.
‘I sometimes think the opposite of amusement is not boredom but peace,’ she said. She was deliberately misquoting a current poster, and Jimmy laughed.
‘I’m not sure sometimes that boredom and peace aren’t the same thing,’ he said and, having said it, thought it silly. Alyson evidently did not.
‘A lot of people feel like that,’ she replied. ‘Perhaps otherwise they would never have consented to have their foreheads tampered with; they’re eager for anything that makes a change. It’s understandable enough.’ She sighed luxuriously and added, deliberately guying the pathos of what she said, ‘We’re the generation what missed the war, lovie. Remember?’
Jimmy liked her saying that. It put them on an equal footing, for although Alyson happened to be his brother’s mistress, she was Jimmy’s age to within a month; Aubrey, six years older than Jimmy, had been born in 1930, thereby missing the war too, but he had been excluded from Alyson’s remark. Alyson was perceptive; she seemed to know exactly how and when Jimmy felt uncomfortable.
‘Don’t be glum any more,’ he advised. ‘It makes you look so huggable that no one could be expected to have any sympathy for you.’
Alyson gave no answer. Contentedly, Jimmy finished his meal and went to take a shower.
Thirty seconds under the hard, cold spray was enough. He towelled himself, applied Odo-ro-no, sucked an Amplex tablet to remove any anti-social traces of garlic, and dressed for the party. As he did so, he looked out of his window again. The queue outside the grey trailer was no shorter; the shadows in the square were longer.
These ER Installation Centres, to give the trailers their proper name, had dispersed themselves over a bewildered Britain on the previous Monday morning. It was now only Thursday evening, and already some 750,000 people up and down the country, had the Register painlessly – and perpetually – embedded in their brows.
The great conversion, in fact, had begun with many of the omens of success. Although much of this was due to the careful government campaigning which had preceded the conversion drive, the personal appearance of the Prime Minister on TV, wearing his ER, on the evening before the grey trailers opened their doors, had undoubtedly won over thousands of doubters to the cause he favoured. Even the Opposition conceded his speech had been powerful.
His disc gleaming interestingly but unobtrusively below his shock of silver hair, Herbert Gascadder had said to the watching millions: ‘I beg each one of you to realise that only a superficial view can hold that the ER is a menace to society. If you think more deeply, you will see the ER as I do, as a badge of liberty. We have, as a nation, always been diffident about expressing ourselves; that, perhaps, is why some sociologists have called loneliness one of the great curses of our age. The ER is going to break down that barrier, as well as many others.
‘The ER is the first invention ever to bring man closer to his fellow men. Even television, that great institution by whose medium I am able to speak to you in your homes tonight, has proved a not unmixed blessing – in fact, often a disruption – to family life. Over the ages, since we ceased to huddle together in caves, we have inevitably drawn further apart from one another. Now, I sincerely believe, we shall find ourselves drawn nearer again, united by those common impulses which the ER makes apparent.
‘Yet I would not have you think of the ER as something fantastic or crack-brained, a mere aberration of science. It will, in fact, have the same effect as any other invention, once we are accustomed to it; that is, to make a slight but inevitable modification to man’s daily life. We can only continue to exist by a policy of change in this highly competitive world. Let us thank God that the ER is a British invention. More, let us show our thankfulness by getting our ERs installed as soon as we can, so that by simplifying our private lives we can all pull together and make this nation, once more, a land of opportunity.’
‘How Gascadder would love me now,’ Jimmy thought, glancing again at his brow in the mirror while he adjusted his tie. His ER was still there, slightly larger than a penny, a symbol of patriotism and of hope.
‘Be a good boy and don’t drink too much,’ Alyson advised, as he finally appeared, ready to leave the flat.
‘Don’t be so motherly!’ Jimmy said. ‘We are meant to be Unlovable Young People.’
‘Good God!’ she exclaimed. ‘That! It’s hard enough being People!’
For a moment he shuffled by the door, looking at her. The rest of