Paradise and Elsewhere (11 page)

“Something happened after all, didn't it?” The woman's voice was loud in Libby's ear. “You're thinking there might be some good footage on that.” True, Libby had been thinking just that, but now she couldn't bear to look, as the crowd fell upon the two figures, covering them completely. “They had it coming,” the woman said. “Someone'll get that film, wait a few days and sell it to NTV when they start to worry. They'll get a good price. And then everyone will know about Wantwick and how we do things here.”

“True… ”

“You can stay as long as you like,” she added, picking up the coins on the floor and slipping them in the pocket of her dressing gown, “free. I don't mean your keep—you'll have to work for that—just the staying. I'd take advantage of the offer if I were you.”

“She's right,” said the voice from the cupboard.

“This is what those people pay for?” asked Libby, wiping her eyes. Outside, there was no sign of Clark and Sally. A man strode up to the camera and beckoned to two small girls, who scurried forward and helped him to strap it on his back.

“The people of Wantwick,” the woman declared, “are mean as hell but they live to a good age and have a strict regard for truth. Are you staying or are you going out?”

Downstairs, someone impatient was knocking on the door. For the first time, Libby looked the woman properly in the face, and managed for a few seconds to meet her pale grey eyes. “What will I do?” she asked.

The woman pulled one of the animal cages away from the wall and groped for something behind it. “Stay,” she replied, holding out a maroon dressing gown festooned with cobwebs, and explained, almost gently: “For when you sell the clothes off your back.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Kissing Disease

 

 

 

 

T
he virus to blame
, much magnified, looked soft and harmless, like a punctured tennis ball. It lived in the salivary glands; the disease could only be transmitted mouth to mouth and children at least were immune till puberty. Gary—who was fourteen—lay on the floor in his bedroom, the door locked to protect him from whoever else was in the house. He was listening to national radio. It was a panel discussion, with various oldies going on about how not kissing was ruining their lives.

“It's all very well,” one woman said, her voice quivering with emotion, “to say it's just a little thing, but it's the part of lovemaking I've always enjoyed most, really.”

“I'd go further than that,” another chipped in. “It's an activity I used to enjoy in its own right, even prefer to, well, you know.”

“Let's call a spade a spade,” said a third. “It's a charter for the most brutal and demeaning kind of heterosexual sex.”

It was amazing, Gary thought, that so many people found it impossible to resist kissing, considering that unless they had some other disease as well it was perfectly possible to do all the rest and anything else you could imagine on top. Maybe they'd made a mistake about the incubation period being only a couple of hours. Or maybe it was just that the older generation had got in the habit and couldn't get out of it, sticking their tongue inside each other's mouths and so on, yuck, getting those saliva glands working a treat. He caressed his prick affectionately: under his jeans it was hard—most of the time these days.

“Surely,” said the chairman, “this is all just conditioning. After all, don't we all know that the Eskimos never kiss anyway?”

“Too right!” Gary said, and beat the floor with his fist. Nor did he: he'd grown up with it.

“And we shouldn't forget,” the chairman continued solemnly, “that Laverill is far from unique. The sudden emergence of a new virus is now a fact of modern life, with nearly forty towns in this country alone hosting a new contagious disease, each with its own problems and tragedies.”

But there were plenty of advantages too, Gary thought. School was still going, but only just. As the teachers went down, they had to bring people in from outside, and some of them didn't last very long: really, you only attended if you wanted to: it was more of a social occasion than education. And there could be no other part of the country where sexual intercourse between minors was regarded as the lesser of two evils, and on top of that, even if it hadn't been, there was no one in a fit state to check up on it… No other place on earth where a fourteen-year-old would be able to put it about with such impunity, and all the schoolgirls were issued with contraceptive pills and condoms. Men didn't like kissing anyway: they liked fucking.

 

T
he town was surrounded
by a
cordon sanitaire
. The army had thrown up a barbed-wire fence and there were roadblocks, even on the little lanes and byways. From his window Gary could see the fires they lit to keep warm. He wanted to be a soldier himself, when he grew up. It wouldn't be long, perhaps a week, they said on the news, till all children and adults untouched by the disease were evacuated. Once outside, after a period of quarantine, they would be able to kiss without risk. But Gary wasn't at all sure if he wanted to go. He was frightened of kissing, and he liked Laverill: he'd never be so free anywhere else.

He had a photograph of a man and a woman kissing, torn from a magazine. He kept it under his mattress: but he didn't need to get it out in order to see it. He'd looked at it so often that it was printed on his retina. Their eyes were hooded, their faces smooth, slack as those of sleepers. They'd twisted their necks so that their teeth didn't clash, and opened their mouths wide. The woman had her hands in the picture as well: she was holding the man's jaw pulling him closer and down. It was horrible, perverse.

Gary shook his head to get rid of the image, turned the radio off and stood by his door listening: all quiet. He turned the key and slipped down the stairs. He'd go to the pub and have a couple of pints with his best and only friend Tim, a private from one of the regiments guarding Laverill. Gary had met him wandering about the town one night and helped him to find a clean girl. When it came to it, Tim had been reluctant, and Gary had to put his hand on his shoulders and push him forward. But after, Tim said he thought he was in love and wanted to see her again the next night.

“No,” Gary explained. “Girls aren't like us. If they do it too often, eventually they go soft and want to kiss you. They're stupid that way.”

“But if she's safe… ” said Tim.

“But if she does it to you, she'll do it to anyone—and then it's only a matter of time—see?” He'd been proved right. Tim might be in the army, but he had no real experience of girls, and
no idea
what it was like to live in Laverill. His naivety offset the difference in their heights and ages and made the friendship possible.

 

T
here were two bars
, one for the kissers—the larger one—and one for the clean. He had to walk past the frosted glass of the kissers' bar. God only knew what was going on in there: there were shouts and laughter, bursts of song, a sudden silence and then a scraping sound as if tables were being moved. As he paused to listen, the lights went off and someone burst out of the door walking on all fours. He hurried around the corner to the clean door.

He showed his card, and recited his address and date of birth. You had to be a member and renew the card after your test, every month: it was a nuisance, but without some check, kissers would always be sneaking in, as if they didn't have the bigger bar for themselves anyway.

Tim was at their usual table in the corner and nodded curtly when Gary raised his eyebrows and pointed at his glass: people were quiet in the clean bar, but the music, whilst drowning out the din from next door, made it almost impossible to hear someone speak from more than a couple of feet away. Tim sat with his shoulders slumped; he had dark circles under his eyes. He took his pint without thanks and downed a good third of it in one go.

“I'm sick of Laverill,” he said. “It's doing me in, all this keeping your mouth to yourself. I'll be screwing someone and all I can think of is how my mouth is filling up with saliva. Haven't you noticed that?”

“I just spit,” said Gary, taking a mouthful of beer.

“It makes me—you know. I lose it. It's embarrassing.” There was a long silence between them. Gary began to tap out the beat of the music on the table, then stopped himself.

“I dream of lips,” Tim said quietly, looking at the backs of his hands. Gary exhaled slowly, shaking his head.

“It's different for you because you grew up outside. You must've got the habit of it, I suppose. Me, I never have.”

“Exactly what happens, when someone gets it? Does it really rot your brain? That's what they told us in the camp.”

“Well, not exactly rot,” Gary said slowly and with a certain amount of relish. Despite the subject matter, he enjoyed being the one in the know. “More like
scramble—
I mean, people can still add up, drive cars, even planes, if they want to. Sometimes they do things they couldn't manage before, in fact. Mutating Identity Syndrome. My mum and dad got it, right at the beginning before they knew what it was. Her first; then she gave it to him.

“It doesn't show on the outside. Not at all. She came home one afternoon, just like normal, and pottered around in the kitchen. I was about twelve. She gave me a glass of milk with some digestive biscuits. Then she went upstairs, and I heard her on the phone for a bit. I put the TV on, and I didn't realize at first that the singing was her! Never heard anything like it. I went up, and she was sitting on the edge of her bed in her slip with her hand on her chest like this, singing her heart out. Italian opera. Wavering and swooping up and down, very loud. Her face was the same, but it had an expression on it like I've never seen before: like the cat that's got a lifetime supply of cream. She looked right through me. It wasn't her anymore.”

“Was the singing in tune?” asked Tim.

“As far as I can tell. The point is, my mum never sang. Not so much as hummed a theme tune. And there she was… Next thing, there's a hammering on the door. A bloke with a van trying to deliver a piano ordered by Mrs. Canetti. Just as I've persuaded him to go away—the singing blaring out of her window all the while—up comes someone else who says he's her voice tutor. I try to slam the door in his face—I wanted to phone my dad—but he keeps pushing the bell; the singing stops and down she comes in her dressing gown.

“There's no one here of that name,” she says. That was it—over, just like that. Snap. Back to normal as if nothing had happened. Whole thing can't have lasted more than an hour. But of course it gets worse. They do it more and more often, and they don't always come back to who they really are in between. Sometimes it's real people, sometimes invented ones. Once she brought a whole lot of other kids back to the house and started giving them baths. Another time she was, well, best not say. You can imagine. They slip into other people's houses, or see a nice car and drive off in it, things like that. And of course, when they're off, they forget they've got it and go around kissing and infecting everyone else. I haven't seen my dad for weeks. Don't want to either, after the last time. Basically, since the age of twelve, I've had to look after myself. Of course, it has advantages… I'd've never got into a pub before, for instance… ” Tim sighed, looking around the bar. It was about half-full. The people in it were mostly very young or very old and many of them were sitting alone.

“And I can't wait to be in the army like you,” said Gary. “As soon as I can. Solid. Stable.” He sat up straighter.

“Only one personality between us, eh?” said Tim. “Fact is, Gary, it's not a lot of fun. I don't really know why we're here. I'm not supposed to tell anyone this,” he continued softly, rubbing his chin. “None of the kissers ever try to escape, you know. But every day we turn back hundreds of people trying to get in. Someone was shot in the leg yesterday. It made me sick—an old man with a walking stick, just ignored all warnings—” He emptied his glass and grasped Gary's arm. “Come on. I can't stand this dump. I mean, sounds like they're having a better time on that side than we are here… Let's go out for a bit.”

They walked in silence down High Street. For once, most of the street lights were on. It was past nine, but some of the shops were still open and full of people, though they were not always shopping. Some kind of amateur dramatics were taking place in Ransome's; there was an art class in the pharmacy. Other shops had broken windows and nothing left inside; yet others had been unopened for months, their displays thick with dust. The state of the town, too, had its advantages: it was a long time since Gary had paid for anything except food—the grocery store was run by the army—though one day, he supposed, everything would run out. He spotted a couple kissing, slipped his arm through Tim's and steered him over to the other side of the road. Tim could have arrested them if he had his uniform on, but even so Gary would have thought twice before pointing them out; it was just too embarrassing.

“I've had enough of this,” he said as soon as they were safely past. “What about the Fox and Grapes just up there?”

“
We
could—” Tim began, stopping in his tracks.

“Could what?”

“You know. Kiss.” Gary's arm was still threaded through his.

“Get off me! You've got it!” he shouted, trying to pull away but only succeeding in twisting his shoulder.

“Hold on,” said Tim, “I haven't. I'm Tim Murray, right? It's just I miss it. And you ought at least to know what it's like.”

“It's disgusting,” said Gary and spat copiously on the pavement.

“It'd be safe. Just once.” Very slowly, Tim removed his hands from his pockets, thus releasing Gary's arm. They stood, facing each other in a silence punctuated only by the sharp intake of their breath and the helpless sound Gary made when he swallowed. Tim slipped one hand gently behind his neck. Gary felt as if he was going to faint—the erection was easily the biggest he'd ever had—and as Tim's face moved closer, he moved his body back so that it wouldn't be detected. Their lips touched, warm and dry but terribly soft; there was a moment's hesitation, then Gary closed his eyes and twisted his neck a little—it happened without thinking—his jaw relaxed, and Tim's tongue slipped inside, running between teeth and lips, nudging against the roof to this mouth. He couldn't speak; but he thought
God
, and wanted to do it back. They drew breath and began again, slower. Their lips were wet now, mobile and slippery. Gary clasped Tim to him, and subsided against the window of a shop that once sold greetings cards.

“Let's stop for a bit,” he gasped after he didn't know how long. He was exhausted and his lips felt raw.

“Okay,” said Tim. They walked on, side by side, more slowly than before.

“Here it is,” Tim said. “The Fox and Grapes.” Gary didn't notice at first that they'd passed the entrance to the clean bar. Tim passed briefly outside the door marked with a roughly painted ‘K', which was ajar. He raised his eyebrows just as if he were asking whether Gary wanted another pint.