The Primal Urge

BRIAN ALDISS

The Primal Urge

This absurd attempt to popularise various sorts of morality is dedicated to Eddie Cooney and Oscar Mellor because they were the first to hear about it in ‘The Gloucester Arms’ – and for better reasons.

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Author’s Note

Introduction

PART ONE: A Putative Utopia

1 A Fox with a Tail

2 A Towel in Common

3 At the IBA

4 ‘You Don’t Feel a Thing’

5 Breakfast with Paper and White Nylon

6 An Interesting Theory

PART TWO: Browbeaten but Victorious?

7 As Natural as Navels

8 The Light that Failed

9 Whatever the Band Plays

10 Scryban Becomes Involved

11 ‘A Bit of a Let Down’

12 The Invaders Have Nice Manners

13 Hot Pursuits, Cold Shoulders

14 Camera Obscura

15 Affairs of State

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Author’s Note

Just as it would be difficult – and fatuous – to write a history of twentieth-century art without mentioning Picasso, I have found it impossible to draw this contemporary picture without mentioning a number of the pillars of our society, from Mr Jack Solomons to Air Chief Marshal Dowding; I have presumed enough to impute to some of these public figures opinions on the hypothetical matters contained in my novel. One particular victim is Mr Aldous Huxley, who has most kindly permitted me to take this liberty with him. May I beg the other sufferers to be similarly indulgent, reminding them that such is the price of fame and semel insanivimus omnes? Of course I realise that their actual opinions could hardly fail to differ from those I have ascribed to them. But their presence here, even if involuntary, has lent me moral support in rough waters.

The same seeking for lifelines has caused me to use a number of branded goods in my pages. I would, accordingly, like to thank the manufacturers of Kosset Carpets, Odo-ro-no, Cooper’s Oxford Marmalade and several automobiles for the sense of security their products have afforded me.

Likewise with institutions. The Harlequins, the British Government and the National Book League are real, and I for one am glad it is so. But the representatives of the British Government who appear in these pages are not real; my Minister of Health, for instance, is no relation to any past, present or forthcoming Minister of Health; for this also one may be grateful.

These qualifications accepted, all characters in this book are fictitious and are certainly not intended to represent anyone living or dead; the institutions in it are purely make believe; such actions and opinions as are ascribed to these characters or institutions are imaginary; even the weather is too good to be true. Readers are asked, nevertheless, to bear in mind the lines of George Santayana:

Even such a dream I dream, and know full well

My walking passeth like a midnight spell.

But know not if my dreaming breaketh through

Into the deeps of heaven and hell.

I know but this of all I would I knew:

Truth is a dream, unless my dream is true.

B.W.A.

Introduction

This light-hearted novel has a juicy futuristic edge: someone has invented an electronic device that indicates if the person you are looking at – or talking to – is sexually attracted to you. If attraction is detected, an ER (Emotional Register) – like a coin on one’s forehead – flares with a pinkish glow.

And then? Well, the next move is up to you …

Real figures from the twentieth century feature heavily in The Primal Urge: Rock Hudson, Dr Kinsey, Bertrand Russell, Patience Strong, Eric Linklater, Gaudi and, most importantly, Aldous Huxley are referenced in the narrative. Huxley was a writer I particularly admired; in The Primal Urge I have him speak up for the ERs. I wrote to him in California, asking his permission to include a quote, and to my absolute delight received a friendly letter of consent in return.

Think of it. A real letter from Aldous Huxley!

The least I could do, in my estimation, was to offer him a copy of the finished book. A tactful second letter from him pleaded partial blindness …

By the late fifties, when I began to formulate the idea for the book, I was on the way to becoming an established writer. I had been appointed Literary Editor of the Oxford Mail. I had become rather a man-about-town and was enjoying life. London, with parts still ruinous from the air raids of WW2, was heaving itself back to various fresh pleasures. Khaki was no longer the fashion.

The text of The Primal Urge reflects that enjoyment. Elegant and prankish, it says things like, ‘Now they were together again, the evening was riding on their shoulders once more like a tame raven.’ It puts its protagonist in a swimming pool with the woman he calls Rangy: ‘Her face and the reflections of her face seemed to palpitate before him like butterflies in a cupboard.’ The Canadian physiotherapist – if indeed that is what he is – Croolter, turns out to have the full name of Croolter B. Kind.

The plot drifts pleasantly along, ending with the lovers in London, arm in arm, emerging into the air of the capital, evening-calm, gasoline-sweet …

The British version of The Primal Urge appeared in 1961. I had some trouble in getting it published; when it was accepted, the British publisher asked, ‘Couldn’t you clean it up a little?’ The American publisher, on the other hand, was asking me to make it a bit dirtier …

Nowadays, I doubt such questions would arise. The mores of 1961 have more or less sunk below the sexual waterline. Waterlines themselves have also sunk.

Brian Aldiss

Oxford, 2012

PART ONE

1

A Fox with a Tail

For London it was one of those hot July evenings in which the human mind is engulfed in a preoccupation with the moist palm, the damp brow, the armpit.

Sweating continently, James Solent emerged into the motionless heat of Charlton Square. With a folded newspaper raised to his forehead in an odd defensive gesture, he came down the steps of the grey trailer onto the grass and paused. The door of Number 17, where he lived, beckoned him; but competing with the wish to go and hide himself was a desire to overhear what three men nearby were saying.

‘Such a gross imposition could only be swung onto a politically indifferent electorate,’ one said.

The second, lacking words to express what he thought of this sentiment, guffawed immoderately.

‘Rubbish!’ the third exclaimed. ‘You heard what the Minister of Health said the other day: this is just what’s needed to give Britain back her old sense of direction.’

It was the turn of the first man to burst into mocking laughter. Seeing Jimmy standing nearby, they turned to stare curiously at his forehead.

‘What’s it feel like, mate?’ one of them called.

‘You really don’t feel a thing,’ Jimmy said, and hastened across the square with his newspaper still half-heartedly raised. He let himself into Number 17. From the hall he could hear Mrs Pidney, the landlady, drowsily humming like a drowned top in the kitchen. The rest was silence. Reassured, Jimmy discarded his paper, revealing the disc on his forehead, and went up to the flat he shared with his brother. Fortunately Aubrey Solent was out, working late at the BIL; that undoubtedly saved Jimmy an awkward scene. Aubrey had grown uncommonly touchy of recent weeks.

The flat contained the usual facilities, a kitchen, a living room (with dinerette), Aubrey’s large bedroom and Jimmy’s smaller bedroom. Everything was so tidy that the one glossy-jacketted LP lying in the middle of the carpet looked to be posing. Skirting it, Jimmy hurried into his room and closed the door.

Just for a moment he played a tune on the panelling with his finger tips. Then he crossed to the looking glass and surveyed himself. The suit Harrods had made him before he began his new job in January was daily growing to look better on him, more like him; for the rest he was twenty-five, his brown hair not objectionably curly, his face round but not ugly, his chin neither aggressive nor recessive.

All, in fact, he told himself, sighing, alarmingly ordinary. ‘Oh, ye of the average everything,’ he addressed himself, improvising, as he frequently did, a rhymed oration, ‘Oh, ye of the average height, overtaken by taller folk, undertaken by smaller folk … an average fate one might certainly call a joke.’

One feature only was definitely not, as yet at all events, ordinary; the shining circle, three and a half centimetres in diameter, permanently fixed in the centre of his forehead. Made of a metal resembling stainless steel, its surface was slightly convex, so that it gave a vague and distorted image of the world before it.

It looked by no means ill. It looked, indeed, rather noble, like a blaze on a horse’s brow. It lent a touch of distinction to a plain face.

Jimmy Solent stood for some minutes before the wardrobe mirror, looking at himself and, through himself, into the future. It was a time for wonder: he had taken the plunge at a period when to plunge or not to plunge was the consuming question. He was one of the first to plunge, and the seal of his precipitance was upon him. His preoccupation was gradually banished by the barking of the loudspeaker in the square outside. Slipping off his jacket, Jimmy went over to the window. His outlook here was generally less interesting, being more respectable, than that from his brother Aubrey’s bedroom windows. They looked out on to backs of houses, where people were unbuttoned and being themselves; Jimmy’s window, in the front of the house, stared perpetually out at facades, where people put on closed little public faces.

Now, however, there was life in the square. This week, a big grey trailer, so reassuringly similar to the Mass Radiography units, stood on the seedy grass beneath the plane trees. A queue of men and women, most of them in summer dresses or shirt sleeves, stood patiently waiting their turn to enter the trailer. At five-minute intervals, they emerged singly from the other side of it, generally holding a newspaper, a handkerchief or a hat, to their foreheads, disappearing without looking to left or right. A few spectators idled about, watching the queue; at the beginning of the week there had been cameramen. From the bedroom window – from safety! – it all appeared rather comical: at once unreal and typically English. Jimmy found it hard to realise he had come through that same mill only twenty minutes ago; just as the government had promised, his forehead did not ache at all. Though he prodded it experimentally, his disc neither moved nor ached. The marvels of modern science were indeed marvellous.

The man in charge of the loudspeaker, being hot and bored, was not talking into his microphone properly. Only occasional phrases were intelligible. One bit sounded like ‘We are free to sit here in a fine old state’; he must have been saying something equally preposterous, like ‘freer citizens of a finer state.’

‘… government’s assurance … many eminent doctors agree … nothing but healthful … far from being an affront to national modesty … greatest assets … no expense … only a minor operation …’

The voice mumbled like a cloud of bees, and the minor operation was a major operation taking place all over the country: for the grey trailers were parked by now in the centre of every town and village from Penzance to John o’Groats. The whole population was potential queue-fodder. Jimmy came away from the window.

Somebody was moving about in the living room. Jimmy straightened his tie. It was unlikely to be Aubrey, but Jimmy called out, ‘Is that you, Aubrey?’ and went to see.

It was not Aubrey. It was Aubrey’s girl, Alyson Youngfield, if the noun ‘girl’ may be used here ambiguously. She had discarded her summer gloves and was fanning herself with the discarded LP sleeve. Jimmy’s face lit at the sight of her.

‘He’ll be late this evening. Alyson,’ he told this charming creature settling herself on the divan with the elegance of a puma. Her fairness took on a special quality with the July weather; under the neat blonde hair, her skin seemed to ripen like wheat.

‘Not to worry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t really expect to find Aubrey at home, but it’s cooler here than in my bed-sitter. It gets like an oven just under the roof. Let’s have a little hi-fi to combat the heat, shall we?’

In that instant Jimmy saw she was looking at his forehead. It caused him none of the embarrassment anyone else’s regard would have done; with pleasure, he wondered whether an acquired tactfulness or natural kindness caused her, when she saw his glance, to say matter-of-factly, ‘Oh, you’ve got yours. I must get mine tomorrow.’

With gratitude, to draw her into a conspiracy, Jimmy answered incautiously, ‘Are you really? Aubrey won’t like that.’

He knew at once he had said the wrong thing.

‘Aubrey will eventually be wearing one himself; you’ll see. It’ll come to us all in time,’ Alyson said. But she said it stiffly, turning her fair head with its most immaculate locks to gaze at the window. As always, Jimmy found himself reflecting how hard it was to gauge the precise relationship between her and Aubrey. A serious quality in Alyson and an evasive one in Aubrey made them both not entirely easy people to estimate.

‘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 the room was nothing; she, sitting there in her Dickens and Jones suit, had an extra dimension, a special reality, a future in the balance. ‘Goodbye, Alyson,’ he said, and went out to the most momentous party of his life.

Jimmy was usually unassuming; yet the feeling had grown on him lately that there was some sort of help he could give Alyson. What help, he did not know; Alyson made no deliberate appeals and, aware of their potentially awkward position in Aubrey’s flat, they both confined their conversations to light chit-chat. Yet the something which remained unsaid had been growing stronger ever since Jimmy arrived at the flat. One day soon it would emerge from its hidden room into the light.

What convinced Jimmy that this was no illusion of his romantic imagination was the contrast between Alyson’s and Aubrey’s natures and their relationship with each other. Alyson was both intelligent and tolerant – but her comings and goings at the flat had a casual quality which implied little passion for Aubrey. Aubrey was a withdrawn young man; the streak which in his brother appeared as diffidence had been transmuted in him into aloofness. He was ‘correct’, in manner, dress and choice of church, food and book. He was a conformist with a career. In short, he was hardly the type to take a mistress; Alyson was hardly the type to become his mistress. They ought to be either husband and wife or strangers, and that was the crux of the matter.

A smell of sausages coiled juicily about the landing. As he descended the stairs, Jimmy could hear them frying.

The kitchen door, as usual, was open. Hilda Pidney spotted Jimmy as he reached the hall and came out, as she always did unless one was moving very rapidly, to exchange a few words. She was stocky and fifty, with the face, as Alyson once remarked, of one crying in a wilderness of hair. Despite her miserable expression, she was a cheerful soul; her first words now struck exactly the right note with Jimmy.