The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

The blue-whiskered youth with pie attached interrupted his ingestion to cry, ‘Back in the good old Twentieth Cen! Those were the days, cinemas and atomic wars and skyscrapers and lots of people! Wish I’d been alive then, eh, Gavvy! Loads of the old duh duh duh duh.’

Turning on the new enemy, Birdlip levelled his sights and said, ‘You are a student of history, I see.’

‘Well, I watched the wavies since I was a kid, you might say,’ said the whiskers unabashed. ‘All the noise they had then, and these old railway trains they used to ride around in reading those great big bits of paper, talk about laugh! Then all these games they used to play, running around after balls in funny clothes, makes you weep. And then those policemen like you say, Gav, huk huk huk huk huk, you’re dead. Some lark!’

‘You’re from the engineers?’ Birdlip asked, bringing his tone of voice from the deep freeze department.

The blue whiskers shook in agreement.

‘Old Pursewarden derailed day before yesterday. Buffo, he was off! Psst phee-whip, join the ranks of missing persons! They’re all jacking off one by one. Reckon I’ll be manager by Christmas. Yuppo these Butch, giddin mate, knock and wait, the monager’s engarged, eff you please.’

Frost formed on Birdlip’s sweating brow.

‘And what are you doing at the moment?’ he asked.

‘Just knocking back the last of this deelicious pie.’

Gavotte said, coming forward to salvage the sunken conversation, ‘As I was saying, I hoped that one of our most expert humans, Mr Jagger Bank, would be along to help me, but he also –’

‘Would you repeat that name again,’ said Birdlip, falling into tautology in his astonishment.

In a stonish mental haze, Freud staggered down to the basement, his face white. Completely ignoring the drama of the moment, he broke up the tableau with his own bombshell.

‘Jan,’ he said, ‘you have betrayed me. Bucket has been fitted with a homing device behind my back. I can only consider this a profound insult to me personally, and I wish to tender my resignation herewith.’

Birdlip gaped at him, fighting against a feeling that he was the victim of a conspiracy.

‘It was agreed between us,’ he said at last, ‘that Bucket should not be fitted with the device. Nor did I rescind that order, Freddie, of that I can assure you.’

‘Bucket has admitted that he spent last night when the office was closed in Paddington,’ Freud said sternly.

Fingers twitched at Birdlip’s sleeve, attracting his attention. Nervously Gavotte hoisted his trousers and said, ‘Er, I’m afraid I may be the ha ha guilty party ha ha here. I installed a homing device in Bucket, I fear. Nobody told me otherwise.’

‘When was this?’

‘Well, Bucket was done just after Fleetfeet and I fixed Hippo. You two gentlemen were closeted with that gentleman with tartan boots – Captain Pavment, did I hear his name was? Bucket came out of the room and Fleetfeet and I fixed him up there and then. Nobody told me otherwise. I mean, I had no instructions.’

Something like beatitude dawned on Freud’s face as the misunderstanding became clear to him. The three men began a complicated ritual of protest and apology.

Side-whiskers, meanwhile, having finished his pie, consulted with his roman, who had found the cause of the trouble. They began to unpack a new chronometer from the store, pulling it from its carton with a shower of plastic shavings that expanded until they covered the table and dropped down onto the floor.

‘Stick all that junk into the furnace while I get on fitting this in place, Rustybum,’ Side-whiskers ordered. He commenced to whistle between his teeth while the roman obediently brushed everything off the table and deposited it down the furnace chute.

Freud and Birdlip were exceptionally genial after the squall. Taking advantage of a mood that he recognised could be but temporary, Gavotte said, ‘I took the liberty of having a look over your shelves yesterday, Mr Birdlip. Some interesting books you have there, if you don’t mind my saying.’

‘Compliments always welcome,’ said Birdlip, mollified enough by Freud’s apologies to be civil, even to Gavotte. ‘What in particular were you looking at?’

‘All those old science fiction stories took my fancy. Pity nobody writes anything like it nowadays.’

‘We live in a completely different society,’ Freud said. ‘With the coming of personal automation and romen labour, the old Renaissance and Neo-Modern socioeconomic system that depended on the banker and an active middle class died away. Do I make myself clear?’

‘So clear I can’t quite grasp your meaning,’ said Gavotte, standing on one leg and cringing to starboard.

‘Well, put it another way. The bourgeois society is defunct, killed by what we call personal automation. The mass of the bourgeoisie, who once were the fermenting middle layers of Western civilisation, have been replaced by romen – who do not ferment. This happily produces a stagnant culture; they are always most comfortable to live in.’

Gavotte nodded and cleared his throat intelligently.

Birdlip said, ‘The interesting literary point is that the death of the novel, and consequently of the science fiction novel, coincided with the death of the old way of life. The novel was, if you care so to express it, a by-product of the Renaissance and Neo-Modern ages; born in the Sixteenth Century, it died in the Twenty-First. Why? Because it was essentially a bourgeois art form: essentially a love of gossip – though often in a refined form, as in Proust’s work – to which we happily are no longer addicted.

‘Interestingly enough, the decay of large organisations such as the old police forces and national states can be traced to the same factor, this true product of civilisation, the lack of curiosity about the people next door. One must not oversimplify, of course –’

‘Governor, if you were oversimplifying, I’m a roman’s auntie,’ Bluewhiskers said, leaning back in mock-admiration. ‘You boys can’t half jet with the old wordage. Tell us more!’

‘It’s too hot,’ said Birdlip sharply.

But Gavotte, with an honourable earnestness from which the world’s great bores are made, said, ‘And I suppose reading science fiction helps you understand all this culture stuff?’

‘You have a point there,’ agreed Freud.

‘Well, it wasn’t my point really. I read it in one of Mr Birdlip’s books upstairs – New Charts of Hell, I think it was called.’

‘Oh, that. Yes, well, that’s an interesting book historically. Not only does it give a fair picture of the humble pioneers of the field, but it was the first book to bring into literary currency the still widely used term “comic inferno.”’

‘Is that a fact? Very stimulating. I must remember that to tell my wife, Mr Freud. Yes, “comet inferno.”’

‘“Comic inferno” is the phrase.’

Anxious to bring this and all other idiotic conversations in the universe to an end, Birdlip mopped his steaming brow and said, ‘I think this room might well be termed a comic inferno. Freddie, my dear boy, let us retire to the comparative cool of our offices and allow Mr Gavotte to get on with his work.’

‘Certainly. And perhaps a gin corallina might accompany us?’

As Gavotte managed to scratch both armpits simultaneously and yield to the situation, Birdlip said, ‘Certainly … Now let me just collect this wonderful manuscript on superfluous activities and we will go up. It’ll shake some of your precious beliefs, that I’ll promise, friend Freud. Now where did I put the thing? I know I laid it somewhere. …’

He wandered vaguely about the room, peering here and there, muttering as he went. Compelled by his performance, first Freud and then Gavotte in innocent parody joined in the search for the manuscript.

At last Birdlip shambled to a halt.

‘It’s gone,’ he said, running his hands through his hair. ‘I know I put it down on that table.’

Side-whiskers began to look as guilty as a permanent expression of craftiness would allow.

Hippo tried to stand as still as the gentle vibrations of his mechanism would allow. His arms stiffly extended, he held out ignored drinks to Birdlip and Freud.

Birdlip paced up and down his office, complaining volubly. At last Freud was forced to interupt him by saying, ‘Well, if that fool’s roman burned the MS in the furnace, then we must write to the author and get another copy. What was the chap’s name?’

Smiting his forehead, Birdlip brought himself to a halt.

‘Jagger Bank? No, no, that was someone else. You know what my memory’s like, Freddie. I’ve completely forgotten.’