World Without Men, page 9
"The word "amoral" checked his train of thought. It was a concept he had overlooked in trying to define his own attitude to the problem of Sterilin and to what had so recently taken place in this room. It was a loophole that he seized upon momentarily with a distinct feeling of relief, for, of course, amorality implied the non-recognition of accepted moral standards and behaviour One had one's own standards, and one acted in good faith in accordance with those standards, acknowledging no higher authority. E. J.’s conduct, for in stance, could hardly be defined as immoral since she was aware of no conflict within herself, and there was no sense of having sinned against some arbitrary by-law of the soul imposed by conscience. She simply acted outside the pattern of conventional morality, in a bona fide manner. She was amoral, without a moral sense or code.
Gorste recognized that he was about to drive his own mental turbulence into the comforting padded cell of amorality. For an instant he was almost the gay dog, uninhibited, free to formulate his own rules of behaviour, able to accept whatever pleasures life might have to offer if he felt so inclined, with no sense of guilt or transgression. A moment later he sensed that he was deceiving himself. Whatever E. J.’s code of behaviour might be, his was too rigidly de fined. He was a married man, and he recognized the bonds and barriers of marriage, and his conscience, conditioned or not, was a very real thing. There might be such a thing as amorality, but it wasn’t for him. By his standards, the amoral and the immoral were the same thing, and the relationship that now existed between himself and E. J. was an evil thing within his own terms of reference.
E. J. left the settee and poured another drink for each of them. Gorste accepted it silently.
"Nothing to say?" E. J. asked. "Not even thank you?"
Something cynical twisted the shape of his lips a little. "Thank you, for the drink," he murmured.
"Perhaps," she said thoughtfully, "you think of me as too sophisticated. It’s not quite like that. I just look at life in a different way. I like to think that perhaps I can add something, however little, to the pleasure of living."
"For whom?"
"For all concerned. It takes two people to form a liaison of :hat kind. And, after all, Mr. Gorste, what is the motive? Pleasure, surely."
"Yes, but pleasure is not always a good motive …"
"It is neither good nor bad. It is the way one reacts to it that matters. In your case it is obviously a bad reaction, and you are worried; but it will pass. Next time the reaction will be less and the pleasure greater. That is how the human system adapts itself."
Gorste sipped his drink slowly. "There will be no next time, E. J. What I did was against my better judgment …" She smiled in disbelief. "I don’t remember hearing any protests. In fact you responded far more quickly and with a great deal more energy than many I could name. Why not forget about it? Push it out of your mind. Here and now at this moment it might never have happened."
Gorste stood up and placed the half empty glass on the desk. He stared out of the window into the rain. "I am resigning," he stated flatly. "I will let you have the usual formal notice of resignation in writing. One month’s notice is required, I believe."
E. J. came over to him and stood behind him, putting her hands lightly on his shoulders.
"I won t accept your resignation, Mr. Gorste. And, in any case, you won’t even submit it. By tomorrow you’ll feel quite differently …"
"It has nothing to do with you, or what happened in here, E. J. It’s well, I no longer have faith in my work. I can no longer believe that what I am doing is right, or even desirable. I’m afraid I can’t stop Sterilin at this stage; the work is too advanced. Slade can pick up where I leave off."
He turned round to face her, his eyes solemn.
"I just want to wash my hands of the whole damned business."
E. J. eyed him shrewdly. In the cold, flat light from the window she looked older now, and there were fine lines around her mouth and under her eyes.
"All right," she said. "Resign if you wish. After all, you can always withdraw your resignation within the next four weeks."
"I’m afraid you don’t really understand me, E. J.," said Gorste.
E. J. nodded slowly. "I think I do. The real trouble, Mr. Gorste, is that you don’t understand yourself."
IX
Anne had to be told, of course. Now that he had assumed the pose of righteousness (and it was a pose, he realized, but an essential pose to provide a kind of spiritual stability, and fill some indefinable vacuum in his emotional make-up), he had to be consistent in himself and follow it through. It would hurt Anne considerably, and so little did he know her that he found himself unable to predict her reaction. Would she become cold and silent and malevolent, or would she be consumed in vindictive fury? Or, more happily, would she remain calm and talk about the situation reasonably and understanding^ as he himself would try to do.
Surprisingly, when he arrived home, the television set had n^een switched on. Anne was reading the evening paper much interest, and the moment he came into the room she put it down and came over to him and kissed him.
It was almost as if she had sensed what had happened and was anxious to dismiss his fears.
Gorste, obsessed by the events of the day, came to the point immediately. He said: "I’ve resigned my job, darling." She looked at him blankly for a moment, as if something she had been about to say had suddenly been pushed out of her mind.
"I had to resign," he went on. "I came to the conclusion that it would be unethical to continue on the research pro gram. It’s a long-term question of morality."
"Morality," she echoed, puzzled. "Phil, I don’t think you ought to resign. It’s a good, secure job and you’re well paid. You can’t resign — not just yet."
"What exactly do you mean: not just yet?"
She hesitated, then smiled coyly. "Well, darling, I’ve got a secret for you. I wasn’t sure until today." A brief pause while she kissed him lightly on the lips. "We’re going to have a baby."
Gorste said nothing, just stood rigidly holding her.
"So you see why you can’t resign, Phil. You’re going to need that job, and we’re going to need all the money we can get. We have to move out of the flat, perhaps buy a house. We can’t take any chances with our baby’s future, can we?" As Gorste made no response, she moved away from him and regarded him anxiously. "What’s the matter, darling?" she asked. "Aren’t you pleased?"
He seemed to come alive, as if someone had pressed a switch. "Of course," he murmured vaguely, then went over to an armchair and sat down. Anne followed, sitting on the floor, curling herself up against his knees.
"You’re worried about something, Phil. Please tell me." He was looking at her strangely, as if he had never seen her before. His voice when he spoke was quiet and toneless. "You’re quite sure about the baby?"
"Yes. I saw the doctor today. Another six months, he said."
"Anne, I’ve left you on your own a great deal during the past few months. There have been evenings when I've had to work late …"
"It’s all right, darling. I've never complained, have I?"
"What I mean is, well, I've always trusted you, Anne…She looked up at him with wide, questioning eyes. "Philip, what on earth … ?"
He chose his words carefully. "You see, it’s this way. I can’t possibly be the father of your child. I’m sterile."
Her face, her expression, became transfixed. Slowly she stood up, holding on to the mantelpiece for support.
"Philip, you’re talking nonsense. Of course you’re the father. You don’t imagine … ?"
"Nor did your first husband. Drewin never imagined that you were being unfaithful."
Her face, paler now, was taut and suddenly older. The knuckles of the hand that held the mantelpiece gleamed white through the skin.
She said slowly: "For God’s sake, Philip, things were different then: I hated Drewin and I loved you. There has never been anyone else."
"I’m sterile, and it was Drewin who made me that way," Gorste stated factually. "He did it with radioactive isotopes; so you can’t be having my child. It’s just not possible."
"You’re terribly mistaken, Philip," she said, more calmly. "I don’t believe you’re sterile. I know about what Drewin did. He told me just before I killed him; that was why I killed him. He said he knew about us and that I was wasting my time because he’d fixed things so that you’d never be a man again …"
"You killed him …" Gorste echoed in cold consternation. Anne came nervously towards him and knelt down by his chair. He remained remote and frigid. She said: "I didn’t mean to tell you ever. It — it slipped out. But it’s true, Phil.
I killed him for what he had done to you. I killed him so that we could be together …"
"It was suicide. He gassed himself."
"He’d been drinking heavily one night. He wanted coffee.
I put four sleeping tablets in it. When he was unconscious I dragged him into the kitchen, and, well, … I'm not sorry, darling; I've never regretted it."
Gorste stood up, leaving her kneeling by the chair, and paced heavily across the room. "You murdered your husband," he said hollowly. "You were unfaithful to him and then you murdered him."
Anger began to flush into Anne's face. She stood up slowly, staring intently at Gorste who, still pacing the floor, took care not to look at her.
"You talk," she said, "as if you never had anything to do with it. If I was unfaithful it was because of you. If I hadn’t killed Drewin we wouldn’t have been married now."
"What appals me is that it’s happening all over again," said Gorste in a thin strained voice. "You’ve been playing around with some other man behind my back, and you’re having his child. You thought you could pass it off as mine, but it won’t work. How long will it be before you decide to murder me, too? How long?"
"You fiend!"
"Coming from you that’s funny. I just can’t believe it; that you could actually kill a man in cold blood. There wasn’t even a fight or an argument. You doped his coffee, then pushed his head in the gas oven. That’s about as cold-blooded as you can get."
"So … what are you going to do about it?"
Gorste looked at her for the first time in minutes. His face was a mask; there was hate in his eyes. "We’re through, Anne. I don’t want an unfaithful wife, and I won’t protect a murderess. Get out and go to your lover. Get out! That’s all."
"You’re a stupid fool, Philip," she said angrily. "There isn’t any lover, and what I did was for you. Can't you get that into your thick skull?"
"You re a liar," he said firmly.
She lost control of herself at that point, and flung herself at him, beating at his face with clenched fists, and biting his wrists as he tried to restrain her. And the tears came abruptly, and crying and moaning she tried to hurt the man who she felt had hurt her. Gorste became angry and struck at her. She fell, caught her head against the edge of the coffee table, and lay still.
When he had confirmed that she was dead, Gorste’s first reaction was to telephone for the police. He dialled the first three digits without feeling, his mind drained of all thought or emotion. Then he hesitated and replaced the phone.
It was an accident, of course. He hadn’t deliberately tried to kill her or hurt her in any way. She had slipped — the rest had been inevitable.
What would the average man have done? It was an accident and he would not have wasted time in confirming death. He would have called a doctor; then the doctor could call the police if he thought it necessary.
He picked up the phone again and dialled a number. The doctor's voice came over the line.
"This is Philip Gorste, I — "
"Ah, Mr. Gorste," interrupted the doctor cheerfully, "I’ve been meaning to ring you. The lab report came in today. You know, about your sterility test. … You were wrong, completely wrong!"
"Meaning?" said Gorste, hardly able to concentrate on the other’s words.
"Meaning you’re not sterile and never were sterile. No reason why you shouldn’t have a family of twenty if you wish. Unless, perhaps, your wife …"
"Yes, my wife," Gorste echoed bitterly.
"Perhaps I ought to examine her, just to make sure. Not that she's sterile, but sometimes there can be a slight physical impediment which can be corrected."
“She's sterile enough, and there's nothing you or anyone else can do about it. You'd better come over and examine her right now."
The doctor hesitated an instant, as if he had detected some strange and convincing inflexion in Gorste's voice. Then he said: “I'll be there without delay, Mr. Gorste. Give me five minutes."
Gorste hung up dejectedly, then lifted the phone again and dialled the police.
Part Three
The Girl
X
The big flame-coloured letters of the neon sign spelled Sterilin. Each letter was a convoluted glass tube fifty feet tall, and the word was clamped high on the wall of the Wasserman building, glaring its message into the night like a danger beacon. It dominated Piccadilly Circus, swamping all the other neon lights in its vicinity. You could see it from across the river, and on a clear night the letters of the word could be made out from the top of the Microwave Tower in Highgate, nearly six miles away.
But tonight visibility was not good. The sign peered harshly through a semi-opaque curtain of persistent drizzle, frustrated and confined, but seeking compensation in the wet surface of the road where the reflection, broken and shimmering in the rain film, echoed glowing fragments of the word — Sterilin.
Piccadilly Circus was almost deserted. The rain had sent the evening pleasure seekers scuttling into movies and theatres and restaurants. There was not much traffic. Drivers whose destination lay beyond the West End preferred the metallic air-conditioned luxury of the Metrocircle Tunnel with its four-lane, plastic-surfaced road, or the wide ambitious highway of the elevated Central Bypass, poised like an in finite bridge across the tops of the taller buildings.
The statue of Eros was floodlit, as it had been for the past half century. The arrow no longer pointed towards Shaftesbury Avenue; instead it was aimed accurately at the gigantic Sterilin sign. The change in orientation had been surreptitiously introduced some four or five years ago, and few people realized that Sir Bernard Wasserman was behind it Sir Bernard had, in fact, pulled a few influential wires, and the statue had been turned on its pedestal one night to face and complement the message of the neon sign. Eros and Sterilin: symbols of the early years of the twenty-first century, if you stopped to think about it, but not many people bothered to think at all. They were too busy being happy.
It was part of Brad Somer’s job to do a great deal of thinking, however. But not tonight. Wasserman wasn’t on his mind, nor was he consciously aware of the giant word glaring incandescently at him through the rain. It was simply one of the things you took for granted, a part of the Piccadilly décor, as familiar and unremarkable as the Guinness clock in years gone by; and not only in Piccadilly, for Sterilin, in scarlet neon, could be seen in most main roads and streets in most cities and towns in the country or in the world.
He was waiting for a girl. Six or seven other men were waiting for girls, too. It was a popular occupation in the age of atomics and automation and applied happiness. They were all standing on the island at the centre of Piccadilly Circus, under the luminous shadow of Eros, becoming progressively wetter as each minute passed by. Occasionally they eyed each other covertly, and each looked cold and damp and treasonably miserable, out of key in this ecstatic world of 2021. But it was only a temporary modulation of mood brought about by the weather. In due course, and one by one, came the girls, and the transient gloom of the patient males dispersed like fine frost in morning sunshine.
Somer’s girl was late, and soon he was alone on the island. It continued to rain and he continued to wait. The raindrops bounced and pattered on the shining wet road, creating ephemeral craters that came and went like snapshots. Cars sighed and they sped wearily past, throwing a gentle spray into the air from hooded wheels.
He looked idly around A flashing green sign in the direction of Regent Street announced: Kill Bad Breath! Chew Choosy, the Chic Chicle. Adjacent to it the outline of a nude woman in amber glowed intermittently in the darkness, alternating with a vivid blue phrase that said: Eat Here and View. And beyond that, enigmatically traced in white*and crimson: You Want It! We Have It! And more and more neon signs advertising gasoline, movies, hair cream, lingerie, cars, nylons, perfumes, gyrojet services, beers, wines, spirits, cigarettes, and all the other desirable amenities of civilization. And, remotely visible over the dark shoulder of a semi skyscraper, a luminous pointing hand with the bold legend: God Needs You Need God. But nobody ever bothered to look at the neons … unless he happened to be waiting for a girl.
