The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [212]
So old Parsnip was summoned and that day his nerve stood firm. He passed fairly calmly through the gas chamber on his way to rejoin Pimpernell.
“We might as well knock off for the day,” said Dr. Beamish. “We shall be busy again soon when the excitement dies down.”
But the politicians seemed determined to keep the excitement up. All the normal features of television were interrupted and curtailed to give place to Mountjoy. Survivors appeared on the screen, among them Soapy, who described how long practice as a cat burglar had enabled him to escape. Mr. Sweat, he remarked with respect, had got clear away. The ruins were surveyed by the apparatus. A sexual maniac with broken legs gave audience from his hospital bed. The Minister of Welfare, it was announced, would make a special appearance that evening to comment on the disaster.
Miles dozed intermittently beside the hostel set and at dusk rose, still calm and free; so purged of emotion that he made his way once more to the hospital and called on Clara.
She had spent the afternoon with looking glass and makeup box. The new substance of her face fulfilled all the surgeon’s promises. It took paint to perfection. Clara had given herself a full mask as though for the lights of the stage; an even creamy white with sudden high spots of crimson on the cheekbones, huge hard crimson lips, eyebrows extended and turned up catwise, the eyes shaded all round with ultramarine and dotted at the corners with crimson.
“You’re the first to see me,” she said. “I was half-afraid you wouldn’t come. You seemed cross yesterday.”
“I wanted to see the television,” said Miles. “It’s so crowded at the hostel.”
“So dull today. Nothing except this prison that has been burned down.”
“I was there myself. Don’t you remember? I often talked of it.”
“Did you, Miles? Perhaps so. I’ve such a bad memory for things that don’t concern me. Do you really want to hear the Minister? It would be much cosier to talk.”
“It’s him I’ve come for.”
And presently the Minister appeared, open-necked as always but without his usual smile; grave to the verge of tears. He spoke for twenty minutes. “. . . The great experiment must go on . . . the martyrs of maladjustment shall not have died in vain . . . A greater, new Mountjoy shall rise from the ashes of the old . . .” Eventually tears came—real tears for he held an invisible onion—and trickled down his cheeks. So the speech ended.
“That’s all I came for,” said Miles, and left Clara to her cocoa-butter and face towel.
Next day all the organs of public information were still piping the theme of Mountjoy. Two or three patients, already bored with the entertainment, presented themselves for extermination and were happily despatched. Then a message came from the Regional Director, official-in-chief of Satellite City. He required the immediate presence of Miles in his office.
“I have a move order for you, Mr. Plastic. You are to report to the Ministers of Welfare and Rest and Culture. You will be issued with a Grade A hat, umbrella and briefcase for the journey. My congratulations.”
Equipped with these insignia of sudden, dizzy promotion, Miles travelled to the capital leaving behind a domeful of sub-officials chattering with envy.
At the terminus an official met him. Together in an official car they drove to Whitehall.
“Let me carry your briefcase, Mr. Plastic.”
“There’s nothing in it.”
Miles’s escort laughed obsequiously at this risqué joke.
At the Ministry the lifts were in working order. It was a new and alarming experience to enter the little cage and rise to the top of the great building.
“Do they always work here?”
“Not always, but very very often.”
Miles realized that he was indeed at the heart of things.
“Wait here. I will call you when the Ministers are ready.”
Miles looked from the waiting-room window at the slow streams of traffic. Just below him stood a strange, purposeless obstruction of stone.