Kronk

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Camilla and Gabriel were neither happy nor unhappy. They were tranquil. They did not indulge any more in gargantuan feasts, in prolonged orgies of sex or in disseminating P 939

throughout the nation. They were quiescent. Sometimes, in an occasional black mood, Gabriel doubted gloomily if they were still alive.

They slept, they woke, they ate, they exercised, they made love, they went to restaurants or theatres, they came home, they drank tea or hot chocolate and then they slept once more. It was, at least, a cycle of existence. But, Gabriel realized, even cabbages had cycles of existence. He thought that he and Camilla had become cabbages. Cabbages that could talk, demonstrate affection, even make love after a fashion. But still cabbages. He was too tranquil to weep about it.

At the beginning of the P 939 crusade, Gabriel had acquired one hundred and fifty tablets of InSex in the belief that they would be necessary to spread the spirochete of non-aggression with all possible speed. He had greatly overestimated the sales resistance, prejudice and moral fibre of the public. Once off the ground, as it were, P 939 joyously spread its own metaphorical wings and flapped merrily forth in all directions. Now, as was evident from strange happenings in all parts of the world, Eustace Greylaw’s synthetic venereal disease was well on the way to establishing planetwide control of its host.

Gabriel still illegally possessed well over a hundred tablets of InSex. Occasionally, out of sheer boredom, he and Camilla would use a couple to jazz up their otherwise routine, mechanical and entirely unexciting sex-life. The InSex was potent enough to temporarily override the inhibiting and tranquillizing effect of P 939, so that under its stimulus Gabriel and Camilla would rush at each other like two deprived animals in season, scratching and biting and squeezing each other towards orgasm until the aphrodisiac had run its course. But the sexual mania was brief; and afterwards they were always bitterly sorry, even ashamed, as they tenderly nursed each other’s love wounds, recalling with horror the violence that had occasioned them. After such lapses, they would drink hot chocolate and take sleeping pills and go to sleep with their backs towards each other, determined never to indulge in such beastliness again.

But, while supplies of InSex remained, there was always the next time. It was the drug of desperation, their only release from everlasting peace and domestic harmony. Gabriel did not have the heart to flush the tablets away — partly because the original one hundred and fifty had cost one thousand pounds and partly because the occasional bouts of sexual violence they induced were at least breaks in the monotonous round of non-aggression. The only trouble was the unhappiness that came afterwards.

Eventually, Gabriel had an idea. He would sell the remaining tablets back to the pusher in Soho, no doubt at a greatly reduced price. In that way temptation would be removed, and he and Camilla could use the money thus realized to buy expensive and totally unnecessary presents for each other or at least to enjoy a few really sumptuous meals.

Camilla approved of the scheme. But she did not care to allow Gabriel to brave the hazards of Soho alone. It still was, she understood, an area of vice and temptation wherein an unaccompanied and tranquillized ex-book sculptor might find himself exposed to corrupting influences.

So, one warm spring evening, Gabriel and Camilla descended from their twenty-fifth storey apartment in Margot Fonteyn House, Shepherd’s Bush, found an auto-cab and programmed it to take them to the West End. Nervously, Gabriel carried the InSex tablets in an antique snuff box in his pocket. He hoped it wasn’t going to be difficult to find the pusher and fix the price.

The charge for illegal possession of InSex was attempted rape.

As the auto-cab sped along the Bayswater Road, Camilla looked out through the window at the dusky twilight settling gently over Kensington Gardens. Hardly anyone was about, and the expanse of grass and trees seemed quite enchanting in the fading light. She had a sudden uncontrollable desire to walk barefoot on the grass. It was a long time since she had walked barefoot on grass. Half a lifetime ago, it seemed.

“Stop the cab, Gabriel.”

“Why?”

“It’s spring. I want to walk in the park. I want to listen to the birds. I want to feel the grass under my feet. I want to look at the statue of Peter Pan. I want to stroll by the Serpentine.”

“What about the InSex? We are supposed to be dumping it for folding money, remember?”

“The InSex can wait. We can always drop it in the water.” She giggled. “It might have an odd effect on the fish… Anyway, we don’t need the money, really. It was a crazy idea to try to sell it back… Yes, that’s what we’ll do — we’ll drop it in the Serpentine. Then we’ll forget all about InSex, P 939 and everything. Spring is spring is spring.”

With a sigh, Gabriel stopped the car and paid it off. They got out.

It was, he had to admit, a very fine spring evening — warm with a delicious after-scent of rain in the air. Odd that he had not noticed himself that the only possible thing to do on such an evening was to stroll in the park. He was grateful to Camilla for reminding him. It was a long time since he had strolled with her in the park. That, too, was what marriage was all about.

They walked past Kensington Round Pond, and the twilight deepened. It was indeed a long time since Gabriel had strolled in the park, because he was pleasantly surprised by the lack of people.

It was not until they had reached the statue of Peter Pan that he remembered why lovers did not linger in the tree-enchanted, grass-held twilight. And by then it was too late.

The prepubes must have been stalking them for several minutes. Gabriel had been aware of odd little noises, but had idiotically dismissed them merely as twilight sounds. When the rush came, he and Camilla were taken completely by surprise.

The prepubes closed in on them like a human noose, tightening round them then dragging them to the ground. Gabriel could not see Camilla, though he could hear her muffled cries.

Prepubes of both sexes were sitting on his legs, his arms, his chest, his head. Busy little fingers were going through his pockets.

“No jackpot,” piped a thin and possibly female voice. “Only about thirty in paper money, a clip of cab tokens, and a little box with pills in it. The box might bring a piece of the old folding.”

“What are the pissing pills?”

“Dunno.”

“Hi, buster.” A prepube removed her bottom from Gabriel’s face. “What are the pissing pills?”

Gabriel raised his head with an effort. He could see parts of Camilla. She, too, was held down expertly by several prepubes. A very small child sat carelessly on her head. A boy of perhaps twelve was tearing at her dress and pinching her breasts.

“Hi, buster!” The foot connected heavily and painfully with Gabriel’s ribs. “About the pissing pills.”

“Aspirin,” he said cautiously. He was rewarded with another kick.

“That so? Then suck some and get cool.”

Gabriel struggled, but cruel little fingers pinched is nostrils, forced his mouth open and popped some InSex tablets in. He did not know how many. He stopped struggling. He began to breathe very heavily. He shivered. He wanted to loosen his clothes. He wanted to die. He felt drunk. His head rattled with terrifyingly erotic images. He felt explosive with desire. He knew he was developing the greatest, the most insatiable, the most implacable erection in the world. He was lost in a red, red mist.

“Holy Beatles!” exclaimed a joyous and childish voice from far, far away. “It’s InSex. Give me one!”

“And me!”

“I want it too!”

“Don’t drop the pissing box or we lose the pissing InSex!”

“Give a shot each to the titters!”

“Let’s feed this joker’s dolly.”

Briefly the mist cleared for Gabriel. Something demonstrably and violently female lay beneath him. It moved, it writhed, it moaned. It blew desire to a white heat. Gabriel strained and jerked and groaned. The body beneath him was pulled away. Then it writhed and clawed its way back. Or was it another body? He did not know. He did not care. He was surrounded by writhing, gasping, straining bodies. And he did not know and he did not care. The terrible compulsion was all that mattered — all that was real at the centre of a hot dark moist erectile universe.

Mercifully, the overload of InSex did not allow him to remain even semi-conscious for long. He slipped down into a pulsing limbo, his body jerking mechanically long after his mind had surrendered to oblivion.

When at last he returned to reality, he was stiff and cold and filled with a thousand aches and all the horror of returning fragments of memory.

The air was still and cold. There was a high, full moon. And nearby, there were two bodies lying familiarly close to each other on the grass. One was Camilla, the other a prepube — a boy of perhaps eleven or twelve. They had their hand tightly round each other’s throat. They felt very cold.

Camilla’s clothing had been torn to shreds. There were scratches and bruises all over her body, blood on her abdomen. Her mouth was wide open, her tongue protruded, and she stared in sightless wonder at the moon.

Numbly, Gabriel removed the prepube’s hands from her throat. Numbly he raised her haid, pressing it to his breast, kissing the damp hair, stroking the cold forehead, rocking back and forth as one long cry of anguish exploded from the depths of his being.

He sat there, cold, mindless and tormented, nursing Camilla, weeping and mumbling incomprehensible endearments to her while the moon passed slowly across the sky. He sat ther nursing his dead love until the noise of a low, patrolling proc chopper jerked him back into the world of reality. He saw the proc chopper’s searchlight sweeping sysematically across the park.

Then he had the good sense to kiss Camilla for the last time very gently, gently lay her down — then run.