“I loved it,” says Howard. “Never wanted to leave.”
“Oh, well,” says the driver.
Howard struggles to suppress a sense of nothingness, of total unreality.
Things are pretty bad in Britain, Howard soon discovers, as he goes about questioning government officials. Phil was right — people are dying of everything, breaking their necks on level ground, and falling out of clean, empty air. Cancer is endemic. Heart disease is raging, as are arteriosclerosis and various lethal cere-brovascular conditions.
He remembers vaguely about all this from when he was living in the country. But then it seemed somehow natural and inevitable. There is a kind of fatalism in the atmosphere of this place which the officials he meets all seem to share. After his first horrified reaction has passed, Howard begins to think that this fatalism may be the only thing that keeps people sane.
“I see ninety-seven thousand, three hundred and seven people died last year of acute myocardial infarctions,” he remarks to an official in the Ministry of Health, trying to keep his tone conversational, as they go through the tables of statistics together. He watches the man closely to see how he reacts when he has to talk about this appalling figure. But he shows no signs of any reaction at all.
“I think that’s about average for Western Europe, isn’t it?” he says. “Shall I ask them to send some coffee in?”
He’s a decent sort of man — Howard knows his type well from his stay in the country. But while Howard sits there, trying not to think about those 97,000 piled corpses, he apparently sits there thinking about coffee.
“Four thousand, six hundred and twenty people died of aortic aneurysms (nonsyphilitic),” Howard reads out. “Two thousand, three hundred and thirty-five of nephritis and nephrosis … Don’t you find these figures at all disturbing?”
“Oh, don’t run away with the impression that we’re not concerned,” says the official defensively. “We’re doing quite a lot of research in most of these areas — though of course we all agree we ought to do more. And we have started putting health warnings on cigarette packets.”
Howard is touched and embarrassed. Not only is the official not complaining of the handicaps with which they have been saddled by Howard’s fellow-countrymen — he’s apologizing that they haven’t overcome them!
But what people in general feel about the situation Howard finds it very difficult to determine. A minority kill themselves, or systematically intoxicate themselves, or withdraw into various psychotic or schizophrenic states: but, as the various experts he talks to point out, this is often because of the difficulties they have caused themselves, or been caused by others. He is shown polls indicating percentage satisfaction with the Prime Minister and the performance of Government. But no one seems to have any figures for the percentage of people who are satisfied with life in general.
“It seems a curious omission,” he murmurs politely. “It’s a rather obvious question.”
The officials and experts all spread their arms helplessly, and give little laughs. Their insouciance is irritating, and also rather charming. But then they don’t even seem to have wondered before what they themselves feel about the matter.
“Am I happy?” they repeat, visibly embarrassed. “What, personally? Well… yes, I suppose so…. Reasonably satisfying job, and so on … home … children … I can’t really complain….”
Howard gazes out of the window of his official car at people in the streets, trying to read the expression on their faces as they wait for buses or try to cross the road. They don’t appear to be thinking about their chances of dying of aortic aneurysms or arteriosclerosis. They seem to be a simple, happy-go-lucky folk who are content if they can merely catch a bus or two each day, and find a bit of a gap in the traffic to nip through, and survive till bedtime.
“Cheer up!” says his driver, with the curling trench-coat, looking at him in the mirror.
“What?” says Howard.
“The look on your face! Don’t worry — it may never happen. That’s my philosophy.”
Howard does his best to smile. Under the long curling hair hanging lankly over the driver’s neck, Howard has noticed, is a tumour the size of a sparrow’s egg.
~ ~ ~
He arranges a meeting with a leading dissident intellectual, J. G. D. McKechnie, to get another perspective on the problem. It takes place in McKechnie’s flat in Belsize Park. They sit in flowered armchairs in front of the gas-fire, and drink Nescafe out of flowered mugs.
What J. G. D. McKechnie says explains a lot.
It’s a question of profit, he explains. The whole economy centres on the medical-pharmaceutical complex. There is massive investment in disease and mortality which the system protects by distracting people’s attention from it. It has a vested interest in brainwashing people into believing that they are happy, when in fact they are not and could not possibly be. It does this by drugging them with things which it persuades them to believe they want. McKechnie lists specifically food, drink, sex, attractive clothing; labour-saving machines and mechanical transport; holidays and leisure activities; so-called “high” culture — music, art, literature, etcetera — and so-called “pop” culture — in which he includes the singing of old Tin Pan Alley songs, such as “Show Me the Way to Go Home,” in public houses run by the big breweries.
“Winter sports?” asks Howard, thinking uncomfortably of the Alps.
“Right,” says J. G. D. McKechnie.
“Walking tours in the Tyrol?”
“All that kind of shit.”
So this explains his driver’s attitude. This explains the neutral look on the faces of people in the streets. And perhaps even the look on J. G. D. McKechnie’s face.
“What about you?” Howard asks him sympathetically. “Are you happy?”
McKechnie seems surprised by the question. He frowns, and curls his beard round his finger, gazing about the room. A Siamese cat picks its way among the confusion of London Library volumes lying open on the table. At the window overlooking the garden the young girl with whom he is living sits painting — tiny brush strokes, with her head very close to the work, silent, absorbed. A clock chimes the quarter.
“Oh, sure,” he says, sliding down into his armchair and putting his feet on the bookcase — he is not wearing socks, Howard notices. “I’m perfectly happy. Don’t try and make me out to be some kind of embittered nut compensating for an unsatisfactory sex-life.”
So McKechnie was right. Even he has been drugged by the system and anaesthetized against the perception of his own misery. His jaws have been wrenched open, like everyone else’s, and the tranquillizers crammed in — a Siamese cat, a few books and records, an eighteen-year-old girl with wild hair and intent lips slightly parted….
Howard’s heart goes out to him. They must start the world again, to produce a McKechnie who is freed from cat, books, records, and girl.
Michael Wayland’s over in London, too.
There is a familiar roaring noise as Howard is crossing the lobby of the Connaught, and there is this compelling figure bearing down upon him, pinioning his arms, and searching his face with eager recognition.
“Michael!” cries Howard, astonished.
“!” grimaces Michael eloquently, no less astonished.
“Howard,” Howard reminds him.
“Howard,” agrees Michael.