The Wanting Seed (9 page)

‘He’s got on very well,’ said Tristram. ‘Derek is now a very big man.’

‘Oh, but I’d say his position is not impregnable, not impregnable at all. And as for being a
big
man – well, bigness is a very relative thing, isn’t it? Yes,’ the captain agreed. with himself, ‘it is.’ He leaned closer to Tristram and said, with seeming irrelevance, ‘My rank in the
Ministry rightly entitled me to a majority at least, do you see, in the new corps. You behold me, however, with but three captain’s pips. A man called Dann, much my junior, wears the crowns. Have you ever experienced that sort of thing, Mr Foxe? Have you ever, do you see, had the humiliating experience of seeing a junior man promoted over your head?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Tristram. ‘Oh, yes, indeed. Oh, very much yes, indeed.’ The waiter brought two double ales. ‘Run out of orange,’ he said. ‘This here is blackcurrant. Hope you gentlemen will not mind.’

‘I thought,’ nodded the captain, ‘you would understand.’

‘It’s through not being homo, of course,’ said Tristram.

‘I do believe,’ said the captain in massive understatement, ‘that that has something to do with it. Your brother would certainly be the last to deny how much he owes, do you see, to his pretty inverted sexual ways. But now you must tell me, Mr Foxe, about these pretty inverted sexual ways of his, you having known him all your life. Would you say they were genuine?’

‘Genuine?’ Tristram frowned. ‘All too horribly genuine, I’d say. He started to play about in that way before he was sixteen. He never showed any interest in girls.’

‘Never? Well. We revert now to your admission that you’re a suspicious man, Mr Foxe. Have you ever been suspicious of your wife?’ He smiled. ‘That’s a hard question to ask any husband, but I ask it in all good faith.’

‘I don’t quite see –’ said Tristram. And then, ‘Good Dog, what are you implying?’

‘You begin to see,’ nodded the captain. ‘You’re quite
quick at this sort of thing. This, do you see, is a matter of very great delicacy.’

‘Are you trying to tell me,’ said Tristram, incredulous, ‘are you trying to insinuate that my wife – that my wife and my brother Derek –’

‘I’ve watched him for some time now,’ said the captain. ‘He’s known that I’ve watched him, but he doesn’t seem to have cared very much. Pretending to be homosexual must, for a normally sexed man, be a very great strain, rather like trying to smile all the time. That your brother Derek has met your wife on various occasions I can vouch for. I can give dates. He has been to your flat many times. All this, of course, may have meant nothing. He may have been giving your wife Russian lessons.’

‘The bitch,’ said Tristram. ‘The bastard.’ He didn’t know which one to turn on more. ‘She never said. She never said a word about his going to the flat. But it all fies up now. Yes, I begin to see. I met him coming out. About two months ago.’

‘Ah.’ The captain nodded again. ‘There was never any real proof of anything, though, do you see. In a court of law, when there used to be courts of law, all this would not be real. evidence of misconduct. Your brother may have visited your flat regularly because he was fond of his nephew. He would not, of course, visit when you were there, knowing you had no love for him, nor, for that matter, he for you. And your wife would not want to mention his visits, do you see, for fear of your becoming angry. And when your child died, two months ago if I remember rightly, these visits ceased. Of course, the visits may have ceased for a quite different reason,
namely his elevation to the post he now holds.’

‘You know a lot, don’t you?’ said Tristram bitterly.

‘I have to know a lot,’ said the captain. ‘But, do you see, suspicion is not knowledge. Now I come to something important that I really know about your wife and your brother. Your wife has been writing to your brother. She has written what, in the old days, was known as a love-letter. Just one, no more, but, of course, very incriminating. She wrote the letter yesterday. In it she says how much she misses your brother and, inevitably, how much she loves him. There is a certain amount of erotic detail also – not too much, but a certain amount. It was foolish of her to write the letter, but it was even more foolish of your brother not to destroy the letter as soon as he’d read it.’

‘So,’ said Tristram growling, ‘
you
saw it, did you? The faithless bitch,’ he added. And then, ‘That explains everything. I knew I couldn’t have made a mistake. I knew it. The deceiving treacherous little –’ He meant both of them.

‘Unfortunately,’ said the captain, ‘you only have my word for this business of the letter. Your wife will deny everything, i should imagine. But she will be waiting for your brother Derek’s next little talk on the television, for in that next little talk she has requested a hidden message to herself. She has requested that he introduce somehow the word “love” or the word “desire”. A pretty idea,’ commented the captain. ‘I take it, however, that you will not find it necessary to wait for that sort of confirmation. It may never occur, do you see. In any case, those two words, both or either, could occur quite naturally in a
television talk of a patriotic nature (all television talks are patriotic now, are they not?). He could say something about love of country or everybody’s desire, do you see, to do their bit to end the present emergency, such as it is. The point is, I take it, that you’ll want to act almost at once.’

‘Yes,’ said Tristram. ‘At once. She can leave. She can go. She can get out. I never want to see her again. She can have her child. She can have it wherever she likes. I shan’t stop her.’

‘You mean to say,’ said the captain in awe, ‘that your wife is pregnant?’

‘It’s not me,’ said Tristram. ‘I know that. I swear it’s not me. It’s Derek. The swine Derek.’ He bashed the table and made the glasses dance to their own tune. ‘Cuckolded,’ he said, as in some sniggering Elizabethan play, ‘by my own brother.’

The captain smoothed his rusty moustache with his left little finger, now one wing, now the other. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Officially, I have no knowledge of this. There is no proof, do you see, that you are not responsible. There is, as you yourself must admit, a possibility that the childif the child is ever born, which, officially, of course, it must not be – that the child is yours. What I mean is, how, officially, does anybody know that you’re telling the truth?’

Tristram looked narrowly at him. ‘Do you believe me?’

‘What I believe is neither here nor there,’ said the captain. ‘But you must admit that pinning this business on the Commissioner of the Population Police is going to be met with, do you see, incredulity. A liaison with a woman is a different matter. That is, for your high-
placed brother, wickedness and foolishness. But to impregnate his
inamorata
– that would be a glorious kind of head-swimming idiocy too imbecilic to be true. Do you see? Do you see?’ It was the first time he had used this tag as a genuine question.

‘I’ll get him,’ vowed Tristram. ‘Never fear, I’ll get him, the swine.’

‘We’ll have another drink on that,’ said the captain. The black waiter was near, banging his metal tray against his slightly flexed knee, humming tunelessly to the tinny drum-beat. The captain finger-snapped. ‘Two more doubles,’ he ordered.

‘They’re equally guilty,’ said Tristram. ‘What worse betrayal could there be than this? Betrayal by wife. Betrayal by brother. Oh, Dog, Dog, Dog.’ He clapped his hands on his eyes and cheeks, shutting out the betraying world but letting his mouth tremble at it.

‘He’s the really guilty one,’ said the captain. ‘He’s betrayed more than his brother. He’s betrayed the State and his high position in the State. He’s committed the foulest of crimes and the most stupid of crimes, do you see. Get him first, get him. Your wife has been merely a woman, and women haven’t much sense of responsibility. He’s the one, he. Get him.’ The drinks came, funeral purple in colour.

‘To think,’ moaned Tristram, ‘that I gave her love, trust – all that a man can give.’ He sipped his alc and fruit-juice.

‘To hell with that, do you see,’ said the captain impatiently. ‘You’re the only one who can get him. What can I do, eh, in my position? Even if I’d kept that letter, even if I’d kept it, don’t you think he would have
known? Don’t you think he’d get some of the thugs on to me? He’s a dangerous man.’

‘What can
I
do?’ said Tristram tearfully. ‘He’s in a very high position.’ This new glass was full of the stuff of snivelling. ‘Taking advantage of his position, that’s what he’s been doing, to betray his own brother.’ His mouth crumbling, wet oozed round his contact lenses. But, suddenly cracking his fist hard on the table, ‘The bitch,’ he exploded, showing his lower set. ‘Wait till I see her, just wait.’

‘Yes, yes, yes, that can indeed wait, do you see. Look, get him first, as I tell you. He’s changed his flat, he’s at 2095 Winthrop Mansions. Get him there, do him in, teach him a lesson. He lives alone, do you see.’

‘Kill him, you mean?’ said Tristram in wonder. ‘Kill?’

‘
Crime passionel
, they used to call it. Your wife can be made to confess, sooner or later, do you see. Get him, do him in.’

Tristram gleamed with unsteady suspicion. ‘How far can I trust you?’ he said. ‘I’m not going to be used, I’m not going to be made to do somebody else’s dirty work, do you see.’ That tag was bound to infect him. ‘You’ve said things about my wife. How do I know it’s right, how do I know it’s true? You’ve got no proof, you’ve shown me no proof.’ He pushed his empty glass to the centre of the table. ‘You keep your dirty drink, trying to make me drunk.’ He started, with some small difficulty, to rise. ‘I’m going home to have it out with my wife, that’s what I’m going to do. Then we’ll see. But I’m not doing any of your dirty work for you. I don’t trust one of you, and that’s flat. Plotting, that’s what it is.’

‘So you’re still unconvinced,’ said the captain. He began to feel in one of his tunic side-pockets.

‘Yes, plotting. Struggle for power within the party-characteristic of the Interphase. Historian, that’s what I am. I should have been Head of the Social Studies Department, if that homo swine hadn’t –’

‘All right, all right,’ said the captain.

‘Betrayed,’ said Tristram dramatically. ‘Betrayed by homos.’

‘If you go on like this,’ said the captain, ‘you’ll get yourself arrested.’

‘That’s all you people can do, arrest people. Arrested development, ha ha.’ And then, ‘Betrayed.’

‘Very well,’ said the captain. ‘If you want proof, here it is.’ And he took a letter out of his pocket and held it up.

‘Give it me,’ said Tristram, clawing. ‘Let me see it.’

‘No,’ said the captain. ‘If you don’t trust me, why should I trust you?’

‘So,’ said Tristram. ‘So she did write to him. A filthy love letter. Wait till I see her. Wait till I see both of them.’ He clanked an uncounted handful of septs and florins on to the table and, unseeing and very unsteady, began to leave.

‘Him first,’ said the captain. But Tristram was weaving his way out, blindly firm of purpose. The captain made a tragi-comic face and put the letter back in his pocket. It was a letter from an old friend, one Dick Turnbull, on holiday in the Schwarzwald. People didn’t look these days, didn’t listen, didn’t remember. Still, that other letter did exist. Captain Loosley had quite definitely seen it on the Metropolitan Commissioner’s desk. And, unfortunately,
the Metropolitan Commissioner had – before sweeping it and other private correspondence, some of it abusive, into the hellhole in the wall-seen that he’d seen it.

Six

S
AND-HOPPERS
, mermaids’ purses, sea gooseberries, cuttle bones, wrasse, blenny and bullhead, tern, gannet and herring gull. Beatrice-Joanna took a last breath of the sea and then went to the State Provisions Store (Rossiter Avenue branch) at the foot of the mountain of Spurgin Building. The rations had been cut yet again with neither warning nor apology from the twin ministries responsible. Beatrice-Joanna received and paid for two blocks of brown vegetable dehydrate (legumin), a large white tin of synthelac, compressed sheets of cereal, a blue bottle of ‘nuts’ or nutrition units. Unlike the other women shoppers, however, Beatrice-Joanna did not indulge in whines and threats (though these were muffled, there having been a small quickly quelled shoppers’ riot three days before, the door today flanked by greyboys); she felt full of the sea, as of some huge satisfying round dish of wobbly blue-green marbled meat. She wondered vaguely, leaving the shop, what meat had tasted like. Her mouth recollected only the salt of live human skin in a purely amatory context – lobes, fingers, lips. ‘He’s my meat,’ sang the song about adorable Fred. That, she supposed, was what was meant by the term sublimation.

It was thus in a full street, engaged in an innocent housewife’s task, that she was suddenly confronted with the loud accusations of her husband. ‘There you are,’ he called, swaying with ale. He semaphored wildly at her, his feet seemingly glued to the pavement outside the entrance to the flats which made up the greater part of Spurgin Building. ‘Caught in the act, eh? Caught coming back from it.’ Many passers-by became interested. ‘Pretending to go and do the shopping, eh? I know all, so you needn’t pretend.’ He ignored her string-bag of meagre groceries. ‘I’ve been told everything, the lot.’ He teetered, with balancing arms, as though on a high window-ledge. The little life inside Beatrice-Joanna shuddered as if threatened. ‘Tristram,’ she began to scold bravely, ‘you’ve been on the alc again. Now get inside at once and into that lift –’ ‘Betrayed,’ wailed Tristram. ‘Going to have a baby. By my own blasted brother. Bitch, bitch. Well, have it. Go on, get out and have it. They all know, everybody knows.’ Some passers-by tutted. ‘Tristram,’ said Beatrice-Joanna with spread lips. ‘Don’t call me Tristram,’ said Tristram, as though that were not his name. ‘Deceiving bitch.’ ‘Get inside,’ ordered Beatrice-Joanna. ‘There’s been a mistake. This is not a public matter.’ ‘Isn’t it?’ said Tristram. ‘Isn’t it just? Go on, get out.’ The whole crowded street, the sky, had become his own betrayed home, a cell of suffering. Beatrice-Joanna firmly tried to enter Spurgin Building. Tristram tried to prevent her with arms weaving like cilia.