Chapter Thirteen

Henry Foster walked up to her at the Embryo Store.

“Like to come to a feely this evening?”

Lenina shook her head without speaking.

“Going out with someone else?” He wanted to know which of his friends was being had by which other.

She shook her head again.

Henry detected the weariness in her eyes, the sadness at the corners of the unsmiling mouth. “You’re not feeling ill, are you?” he asked, a bit anxiously, afraid that she might be suffering from one of the few remaining infectious diseases.

Yet once more Lenina shook her head.

“Anyhow, you ought to go and see the doctor,” said Henry. “Perhaps you need a Pregnancy Substitute,” he suggested. “Or an extra-strong V.P.S. treatment. Sometimes, you know, the standard passion surrogate isn’t quite…”

“Oh, for Ford’s sake,” said Lenina, breaking her stubborn silence, “shut up!” And then turned back to her neglected embryos.

An hour later, in the Changing Room, Fanny was energetically protesting. “But it’s absurd to let yourself get into a state like this. Simply absurd,” she repeated. “And what about? A man-one man.”

“But he’s the one I want.”

“As though there weren’t millions of other men in the world.”

“But I don’t want them.”

“How can you know till you’ve tried?”

“I have tried.”

“But how many?” asked Fanny, shrugging her shoulders. “One, two?”

“Dozens. But it wasn’t any good.”

“Well, don’t think of him.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Take soma, then.”

“I do. But in the intervals I still like him. I shall always like him.”

“Well, if that’s the case,” said Fanny, with decision, “why don’t you just go and take him. Whether he wants it or no.”

“But if you knew how terribly queer he was!”

“All the more reason for taking a firm line.”

“It’s all very well to say that.”

“Act.” Fanny’s voice was a trumpet. “Yes, act-at once. Do it now.”

“I’d be scared,” said Lenina

“Well, you’ve only got to take half a gramme of soma first. And now I’m going to have my bath.” She marched off, trailing her towel.

The bell rang, and the Savage, who was impatiently hoping that Helmholtz would come that afternoon, jumped up and ran to the door.

“I had a premonition it was you, Helmholtz,” he shouted as he opened.

On the threshold stood Lenina.

“Oh!” said the Savage, as though someone had struck him a heavy blow.

Half a gramme had been enough to make Lenina forget her fears and her embarrassments. “Hullo, John,” she said, smiling, and walked past him into the room. Automatically he closed the door and followed her. Lenina sat down. There was a long silence.

“You don’t seem very glad to see me, John,” she said at last.

“Not glad?” The Savage looked at her; then suddenly fell on his knees before her and, taking Lenina’s hand, kissed it. “Not glad? Oh, if you only knew,” he whispered and raised his eyes to her face. She smiled at him with a luscious tenderness. “Oh, you so perfect”. She was leaning towards him with parted lips, nearer and nearer. The Savage suddenly scrambled to his feet. “I wanted to do something first… I mean, to show I was worthy of you. Not that I could ever really be that. But at any rate to show I wasn’t absolutely unworthy. I wanted to do something.”

“Why should you think it necessary…” Lenina began, but left the sentence unfinished. There was a note of irritation in her voice. When one has leant forward, nearer and nearer, with parted lips-only to find oneself, quite suddenly, leaning towards nothing at all-well, there was a reason for genuine annoyance.

“At Malpais,” the Savage was mumbling, “you had to bring her the skin of a mountain lion-I mean, when you wanted to marry someone. Or else a wolf.”

“There aren’t any lions in England,” Lenina said.

“I’ll do anything,” he went on, more and more incoherently. “Anything you tell me. I mean I’d sweep the floor if you wanted.”

“But we’ve got vacuum cleaners here,” said Lenina in bewilderment. “It isn’t necessary.”

“No, of course it isn’t necessary. But I’d do it. Don’t you see?”

“But if there are vacuum cleaners…”

“That’s not the point.”

“And Epsilon Semi-Morons to work them,” she went on, “well, really, why?”

“Why? For you. Just to show that I…”

“And what on earth vacuum cleaners have got to do with lions…”

“To show how much…”

“Or lions with being glad to see me…” She was getting more and more exasperated.

“How much I love you, Lenina,” he brought out almost desperately.

Blood rushed up into Lenina’s cheeks. “Do you mean it, John?”

“But I hadn’t meant to say so,” cried the Savage, clasping his hands in a kind of agony. “Not until… Listen, Lenina; in Malpais people get married.”

“Get what?” The irritation had begun to creep back into her voice. What was he talking about now?

“For always. They make a promise to live together for always.”

“What a horrible idea!” Lenina was genuinely shocked.

“It’s like that in Shakespeare too. ‘If thou cost break her virgin knot before all sanctimonious ceremonies may with full and holy rite…’”

“For Ford’s sake, John, talk sense. I can’t understand a word you say. First it’s vacuum cleaners; then it’s knots. You’re driving me crazy.” She jumped up and caught him by the wrist. “Answer me this question: do you really like me, or don’t you?”

There was a moment’s silence; then, in a very low voice, “I love you more than anything in the world,” he said.

“Then why on earth didn’t you say so?” she cried. “Instead of mumbling about knots and vacuum cleaners and lions, and making me miserable for weeks and weeks.”

And suddenly her arms were round his neck; he felt her lips soft against his own. So deliciously soft, so warm and electric that inevitably he found himself thinking of the embraces in Three Weeks in a Helicopter. He tried to disengage himself; but Lenina tightened her embrace.

“Why didn’t you say so?” she whispered, drawing back her face to look at him. Her eyes were tenderly reproachful. “I wanted you so much. And if you wanted me too, why didn’t you?…”

“But, Lenina…” he began protesting. Then she untwined her arms and stepped away from him. He thought, for a moment, that she had taken his unspoken hint. But when she unbuckled her white cartridge belt and hung it carefully over the back of a chair, he began to suspect that he had been mistaken.

“Lenina!” he repeated apprehensively.

She put her hand to her neck and gave a long vertical pull; her white sailor’s blouse was ripped to the hem. His suspicion condensed into a solid certainty. “Lenina, what are you doing?”

Zip, zip! Her answer was wordless. She stepped out of her bell-bottomed trousers. Her zippicamiknicks were a pale shell pink. Zip! The rounded pinkness fell apart like a neatly divided apple. A wriggle of the arms, a lifting first of the right foot, then the left: the zippicamiknicks were lying lifeless and as though deflated on the floor.

Still wearing her shoes and socks, and her tilted round white cap, she advanced towards him. “Darling. Darling! If only you’d said so before!” She held out her arms.

But instead of also saying “Darling!” and holding out his arms, the Savage retreated in terror, flapping his hands at her as though he were trying to scare away some intruding and dangerous animal. Four backwards steps, and he was stopped by a wall.

“Sweet!” said Lenina and, laying her hands on his shoulders, pressed herself against him. “Put your arms round me,” she commanded. “Hug me till you drug me, honey. Kiss me”; she closed her eyes and let her voice sink to a sleepy murmur, “Kiss me till I’m in a coma. Hug me, honey, snuggly…”

The Savage caught her by the wrists, tore her hands from his shoulders, thrust her roughly away at arm’s length.

“Ow, you’re hurting me, you’re… oh!” She was suddenly silent. Terror had made her forget the pain. Opening her eyes, she saw his face-no, not his face, a ferocious stranger’s, pale, twitching with fury. Aghast, “But what is it, John?” she whispered. He did not answer, but only stared into her face with those mad eyes. The hands that held her wrists were trembling. He breathed deeply and irregularly. She suddenly heard the grinding of his teeth. “What is it?” she almost screamed.

And as though awakened by her cry he caught her by the shoulders and shook her. “Whore!” he shouted “Whore! Impudent strumpet!”

“Oh, don’t, do-on’t,” she protested.

“Whore!”

“Plea-ease.”

“Damned whore!”

“A gra-amme is be-etter…” she began.

The Savage pushed her away with such force that she staggered and fell. “Go,” he shouted, standing over her menacingly, “get out of my sight or I’ll kill you.” He clenched his fists.

Lenina raised her arm to cover her face. “No, please don’t, John…”

“Go!”

One arm still raised, and following his every movement with her eyes, she scrambled to her feet and still crouching, still covering her head, made a dash for the bathroom.

Outside, in the other room, the Savage was striding up and down, marching, marching to the drums. “Down from the waist they are Centaurs, though women all above. But to the girdle do the gods inherit. Beneath is all the fiend’s. There’s hell, there’s darkness, there is the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie, pah, pah!”

“John!” called a small voice from the bathroom. “John!”

“O thou weed, who are so lovely fair and smell’st so sweet that the sense aches at thee. Was this most goodly book made to write ‘whore’ upon? Heaven stops the nose at it…”

But her perfume still hung about him. “Impudent strumpet, impudent strumpet, impudent strumpet.” The rhythm beat itself out. “Impudent…”

“John, do you think I might have my clothes?”

He picked up the bell-bottomed trousers, the blouse, the zippicamiknicks.

“Open!” he ordered, kicking the door.

“No, I won’t.” The voice was frightened and defiant.

“Well, how do you expect me to give them to you?”

“Push them through the ventilator over the door.”

He did what she suggested and returned to his uneasy pacing of the room.

“John.”

He would not answer.

“John.”

“What is it?” he asked gruffly.

“I wonder if you’d mind giving me my Malthusian belt.”

Lenina sat, listening to the footsteps in the other room, wondering, as she listened, how long he was likely to be doing that; whether she would have to wait until he left the flat; or if it would be safe, after allowing his madness a reasonable time to subside, to open the bathroom door and make a dash for it.

She was interrupted by the sound of the telephone bell ringing in the other room. The footsteps stopped. She heard the voice of the Savage.

“Hullo.”

…

“Yes.”

…

“If I do not usurp myself, I am.”

…

“Yes, didn’t you hear me say so? Mr. Savage speaking.”

…

“What? Who’s ill? Of course it interests me.”

…

“But is it serious? Is she really bad? I’ll go at once…”

…

“Not in her rooms anymore? Where has she been taken?”

…

“Oh, my God! What’s the address?”

…

“Three Park Lane-is that it? Three? Thanks.”

Lenina heard the click of the replaced receiver, then hurrying steps. A door slammed. There was silence. Was he really gone?

Cautiously she opened the door a quarter of an inch; peeped through the crack; was encouraged by the view of emptiness; opened a little further, and put her whole head out; finally tiptoed into the room; stood for a few seconds with strongly beating heart, listening; then darted to the front door, opened, slipped through, slammed, ran. It was not till she was in the lift that she began to feel herself secure.