The Paradise War

Chapter 2 Doom on the Halfshell

There are worse things than cruising up the M6 in a Jaguar Sovereign with Handel's Water Music bathing the ragged aural nerve ends. The car tops ninety without a murmur, without a shimmy. Silent landscape glides by effortlessly. Cool leather imparts a loving embrace. Tinted glass shades the way-worn eye. The interior cocoons, cushioning the passenger from the shocks and alarms of the road. It is a fabulous machine. I would throttle a rhinoceros to own one.

Simon's father, a merchant banker of some obscure stripe and well on the way to a lordship one day, had bought it for his son. In much the same way, he was buying Simon a top-drawer Oxford education. Nothing but the best for dear Simey.

The Rawnsons had money. Oh, yes they did. Piles of the stuff. Some of it old; most of it new. They also enjoyed that singular attribute prized by the English above all others: breeding. Simon's great-grandmother was a duchess. His grandmother had married a lord who raised racehorses and once sold a Derby winner to Queen Victoria, thereby ensuring fame and fortune for evermore. Simon's family was one of those quietly respectable tribes that marry shrewdly and end up owning Cornwall, the Lake District, and half of Buckinghamshjre before anyone has noticed. All of which made Simon a spoiled brat, of course.

In another day and age, Simon might have been sublimely happy idling away in a honey-stoned manor house in the Midlands, training horses and hounds, and playing the country squire. But he knew too much now to be content with a life of bag balm and jodhpurs. Alas, education had ruined that cozy scenario for him.

If any man was ever untimely born, it was Simon Rawnson. All the same, he could not suppress that aristocratic strain; it declared itself in the very warp and woof of him. I could see the lad as the lord of vast estates, as a duke with scurrying minions and a stately pile in Sussex. But not as an academic. Not for Simon the ivied halls and dreaming spires. Simon lacked the all-consuming passion of the great scholar and the ambition necessary to survive the narrow cut and thrust of academic in-fighting. In short, he had a genuine aptitude for academic work, but no real need to succeed at it. As a result, he did not take his work seriously enough.

He wasn't a slouch. Nor was it a matter of simply buying his sheepskin with Daddy's fat checkbook. Simon had rightly won his pride of place with a particularly brilliant undergraduate career. But as a third-year doctoral candidate he was finding it too much work. What did he want with a degree in history anyway? He had no intention of conducting any original research, and teaching was the furthest thing from his mind. He had no higher academic aspirations at all. Two years into the program, Simon was simply going through the motions. Lately, he wasn't even doing that.

I had seen it happening-seen the glittering prize slipping away from him as he began to shirk his studies. It was a model case of graduate burn-out. One sees it often enough in Oxford and comes to recognize the symptoms. Then again, maybe Simon just aimed to protract his university experience as long as possible since he had nothing else planned. It is true that with money, college can be a cushy life. Even without money it's better than most things going.

I did not blame Simon; I felt sorry for him. I don't know what I would have done in his place. Like a lot of American students in Oxford, however, I had to justify my existence at every turn. I desperately wanted my degree, and I could not be seen to fail. I could not allow myself to be shipped sack across the pond with my tail tucked between my legs. Thus, I had a built-in drive to achieve and to succeed that Simon would never possess, nor properly understand.

That, as I think of it, was one of the principle differences between us: I have had to scrape for every small crumb I have enjoyed, while Simon does not know the meaning of the word «strive.» Everything he had-everything he was-had been given him, granted outright. Everything he ever wanted came to him freely, without merit. People made allowances for Simon Rawnson simply because of who he was. No one made allowances for Lewis Gillies. Ever. What little I had– and it was scant indeed-at least was mine because I had earned it. Merit was an alien concept in Simon's universe. It was the central fact of mine.

Yet, despite our differences, we were friends. Right from the start, when we drew next-door rooms on the same staircase that first year, we knew we would get on together. Simon had no brothers, so he adopted me as such. We spent our undergraduate days sampling the golden nectar of the vats at «The Turf,» rowing on the river, giving the girls a bad time, and generally behaving as well as anyone might expect two untethered Oxford men to behave.

I don't mean to make it sound as if we were wastrels and rakes. We studied when we had to, and passed the exams we had to pass with the marks we needed. We were, simply, neither more nor less serious than any two typical undergraduate students.

Upon graduation I applied for a place in the Celtic Studies program and was accepted. Being the only student from my hometown high school ever to attend Oxford, let alone graduate, was A Very Big Deal. It was written up in the local Paper to the delight of my sponsors, the American Legion Post Forty-three, who, in a giddy rush of self-congratulation, granted me a healthy stipend for books and expenses. I hustled around and scrounged a small grant to cover the rest, and, Presto! I was in business.

Simon thought an advanced degree sounded like a splendid idea, so he went in for history-though why that and not astrophysics, or animal husbandry, or anything else is beyond me. But, as I said, he had a good brain under his bonnet and his advisers seemed to think he'd make out all right. He was even offered rooms in college-a most highly sought-after situation. Places for undergrad students are scarce enough, but rooms for graduates are out of the question for any but the truly prized individual.

Privilege again, I suppose. Simon's father, Geoffrey Rawnson, of Blackledge, Rawnson and Symes Ltd, no doubt had something to do with it. But who was I to complain? Top of the staircase and furnished with a good share of the college's priceless antiques-no less than three Italian Renaissance masterpieces, carved oak panelling, Tiffany tables, a crystal chandelier, two Chippendale desks, and a red leather davenport. Nor did the regal appointments end there; we had a meticulous scout, good meals in the dining hall fortified with liberal doses of passable plonk from the college cellarer's legendary cellars, modest use of student assistants, library privileges undergrads would kill for-all that and a splendid view across the quad to the cathedral spire. Where would I get a situation like that on my own?

Simon wanted us to continue on together as before, so he arranged for me to share his rooms. I think he saw it as three or four more years of bachelor bliss. Easy for him. Money was no object. He could well afford to dither and dally till doomsday, but I had my hands full just keeping up with the fees. It was imperative that I finish, get my degree, and land a teaching position as quickly as possible. I dearly loved Oxford, but I had student loans to repay and a family back in the States that had begun wondering loudly and often if they were ever going to see me again.

Also, I was rapidly reaching an age where marriage-or at least concubinage-appealed. I was tired of my prolonged celibacy, tired of wending my weary way along life's cold corridors alone. I longed for the civilizing influence of a woman in my crude existence, as well as a graceful female form in my bed.

This is why I resented taking this absurd trip with Simon. I was neck-deep in my thesis: The Influence of Goidelic Cosmography in Medieval Travel Literature. Lately, I had begun to sense fresh wind on my face and the faint glimmer of light ahead. Confidence was feebly sprouting. I was coming to the end at last. Maybe.

It is likely Simon realized this and, perhaps unconsciously, set out to sabotage me. He simply didn't want our good times to end. If I completed my degree ahead of him, he would have to face the cruel world alone-a prospect he sought to hold off as long as humanly possible. So, he contrived all sorts of ingenious stratagems for side-tracking me.

This asinine aurochs business was just another delaying tactic. Why did I go along with it? Why did I allow him to do this to me?

The truth? Maybe I didn't really want to finish, either. Deep down, I was afraid-of failure, of facing the great unknown beyond the ivory towers of academia. After all, if I didn't finish I wouldn't fail; if I didn't finish, I could just live in my snug little womb forever. It's sick, I know. But it's the truth, and a far more common malady among academics than most people realize. The university system is founded on it, after all.

«Move yer bloomin' arse!» muttered Simon at the driver of a dangerously overloaded mini. «Get over, you great pillock.» He had been muttering for the last fifty miles or so. A six-mile traffic jam around Manchester had put us well and truly behind schedule, and the motorway traffic was beginning to get to him. I glanced at the clock on the dash: three forty-seven. Digital clocks are symptomatic of our ambivalent age; they provide the precise time to the nanosecond, but no greater context: an infinite succession of «You Are Here» arrows, but nary a map.

«It's almost four o'clock,» I pointed out. «Why not let's take a break and get some tea? There's a service area coming ip.»

He nodded. «Yeah, sure. I could do with a pee.»

A few minutes later, Simon worked his way over to the exit asic and we were coasting into an M6 oasis. The parking lot was jammed; everyone had rolled up for tea. And many of them were having it inside their cars. I have always wondered about this peculiar habit. Why would these people spend hour upon hour driving and then pull into a rest area only to stay locked in their cars with the windows rolled up, eating sandwiches from a shoebox, and drinking tepid tea from a thermos? Not my idea of a welcome break.

We parked, locked the car, and walked to the low brick bunker. A foul gray sky sprinkled drizzle on us, and a brisk diesel-scented wind drove it into our clothes. «Oh, please, no,» Simon moaned.

«What's wrong?»

He lifted a dismissive hand to the much-abused blue plastic letters affixed to the gray concrete wall facing us. The gesture was pure disdain. «It's a Motorman Inn-they're the worst.»

We shuffled into the gents. It was damp and filthy. Evidently some misguided rustic had herded diarrhetic cattle through the place and the management had yet to come to terms with the crisis. We finished our business quickly and retreated to the concourse where we proceeded past a gang of black-leathered bandits loitering before a bank of screeching kill-or-be-killed arcade games. The cheerful thugs tried to beg loose change from us, but Simon imperiously ignored them and we pushed through the glass door and into the cafeteria.

There was a queue, of course, and the cakes were stale and the biscuits shopworn. In the end, I settled for a Twix bar and a mug of tea. Simon, on the other hand, confessed to feeling peckish and ordered chicken and chips, apple crumble and cream, and a coffee.

I found us a table and, having paid, Simon folded himself into the booth opposite me. The room was loud with the clank of cutlery and rank with cigarette smoke. The floor beneath our table was slimy with mashed peas. «God, this is grotesque,» groaned Simon, but not without a certain grim satisfaction. «A real pigsty. The Motormaniacs strike again.»

I sipped my tea. The balance of milk to brew had been seriously overestimated, but never mind; it was hot. «You want me to drive awhile? I'm happy to spell you.»

Simon dashed brown vinegar from a sachet over his chicken and chips. He speared a long sliver of potato; the soggy digit dangled limply from his fork. He glared at it in disgust before popping it into his mouth, then slowly turned his basilisk gaze toward the food counter and the kitchen beyond. «These sub-literate drones have no higher challenge to their vestigial mental faculties than to dip over-processed potatoes into warm oil,» he said icily. «You'd think they'd get it right eventually-the laws of chance, if nothing else.»

I didn't want to get involved, so I unwrapped my Twix and broke off a piece. «How much farther to Inverness, do you reckon?»

Writing off the chips as a total loss, Simon moved on to the chicken, grimacing as he wrested a strip of woody flesh from the carcass. «Putrid,» was his verdict. «I don't mind it being lukewarm, but I hate congealed chicken. It should have been chucked in the bin hours ago.» He shoved the plate aside violently, scattering greasy chips across the table.

«The apple whatsit looks good,» I observed, more out of pity than conviction.

Simon pulled the bowl to him and tested the contents with a spoon. He made a face and spat the mouthful back into the bowl. «Nauseating,» he declared. «England produces the finest apples on this planet, and these malfeasant cretins use infectious tinned refuse from some fly-blown police state. Moreover, we stand amidst dairyland which is the envy of the free world, a land veritably flowing with milk and honey, but what do we get? Freeze-dried vegi-milk substitute reconstituted with dishwater. It's criminal.»

«It's road food, Simon. Forget it.»

«It's stupid bloodymindedness,» he replied, taking up the bowl and lifting it high. I was afraid he was going to fling it across the room. Instead, he overturned it ceremoniously upon the offending chicken and greasy chips. He pulled his coffee to him, and I offered him half of my chocolate bar, hoping to pacify.

«I don't mind the money,» he said softly. «I don't mind throwing money away-I do that all the time. What I mind is the cynicism.»

«Cynicism?» I wondered. «Highway robbery, perhaps, but I wouldn't call it cynicism.»

«My dear fellow, that's exactly what it is. You see, the thieving blighters know they have you-you're trapped here on the motorway. You can't simply stroll along to the competitor next door. You're tired, need a respite from the road. They put up this facade and pretend to offer you succor and sustenance. But it's a lie. They offer swill and offal, and we have to take it. They know we won't say anything. We're English! We don't like to make a fuss. We take whatever we're given, because, really, we don't deserve any better. The smarmy brigands know this, and they wield it like a bludgeon. I call that cynical, by God.»

«Pipe down,» I whispered. «People are staring.»

«Let them!» Simon shouted. «These scum-sucking slop merchants have stolen my money, but they do not get my calm acceptance of the fact. They do not get my meek submission.»

«All right, all right. Take it easy, Simon,» I said. «Let's just go, okay?»

He threw the coffee cup down on the table, got up, and stalked out. I took a last sip of tea and hurried after him-pausing in the parking lot to gaze in envy at the punters taking tea in the comfort and privacy of their automobiles. It suddenly seemed the height of prudence and taste.

Simon had the car running by the time I caught up with him. «You knew what it would be like when you went in there,» I charged, climbing in. «Honestly, sometimes I think you do this on purpose, just so you can gripe about it afterwards.»

«Am I to blame for their criminal incompetence?» he roared. «Am I responsible?»

«You know what I mean,» I maintained. «It's slumming, Simon. It's your vice.»

He threw the car into gear and we rocketed through the parking lot and out onto the motorway. It was a good few minutes before Simon spoke again. The silence was merely the calm before the storm; he was working up to one of his tirades. I knew the signs well enough, and, judging from the intensity with which he grasped the steering wheel, the storm was going to be a doozey. The air fairly trembled with pent-up fury.

Simon drew a breath and I braced myself for the blast.

«We are doomed, of course,» he said slowly, picking out each word as if it were a stone for a slingshot. «Doomed like rats in a rain barrel.»

«Spare me.»

«Did you know,» he said, assuming my ignorance, «that when Constantine the Great won the battle of the Milvian Bridge in the year 312, he decided to put up a triumphal arch to commemorate his great victory?»

«Listen, do we have to go into this?»

«Well, he did. The only problem was that he could find no artists worthy of the project. He sent throughout the whole Roman Empire, but couldn't find a single sculptor who could produce even a halfway acceptable battle frieze or victory statue. Not a man easily deterred, however, Constantine ordered his masons to remove statuary from other arches and attach them to his. The artists of his age were simply not up to the task, you see.»

«Whatever you say,» I grumped.

«It's true,» he insisted. «Gibbon considered it the turning point of Roman history, the beginning of the decline. And it's been downhill for Western civilization ever since. Look around, sport; we have finally reached the nadir. The end of the line. Finis! Kaput! We are doomed.»

«Oh, please don't let's start-« My plea was a paper parasol raised against a typhoon.

«Doomed,» he repeated for emphasis, rolling the word out like a cannonball. «No doubt there was a curse placed upon our sorry heads from the cradle. You're an American, Lewis, you must have noticed-it's in our very demeanor. We British area doomed race.»

«You look like you're doing all right to me,» I told himn sourly. «You're surviving.»

«Oh? Do we look like a surviving civilization to you? Consider our appearance: our hair is limp and greasy, our skin is spotty, our flesh pallid and scabby, our noses misshapen, Our chins recede, our foreheads slope, our cheeks run to jowl and our stomachs to paunch; stoop-shouldered, bent-backed, spindle-legged, we are rumpled, shaggy, and unkempt. Our eyes are weak, our teeth are crooked, our breath is bad. We are gloomy, depressed, anemic and wan.»

«Easy for you to say,» I remarked, seeing as how Simon displayed absolutely none of the physical defects he described. His own physique was blissfully free of blemish; his words were smoke and sizzle without the fire, all bat and no rabbit. As expected, he ignored me.

«Surviving? Ha! The very air is poisonous. And the water-that is poisonous, too. And the food-that is really poisonous! Let's talk about the food, shall we? Everything is mass-produced by devious men in salmonella factories for the sole purpose of infecting as many consumers as possible and charging them for the privilege, before turning them over to the National Health, who give 'em the chop and a hasty, anonymous burial.

«And 1f by some miracle, we should somehow survive our meager noonday repast, we are sure to be done in by the unrelenting meanness of our very existence. Look at us! We slog numb and shell-shocked through bleak, pestilential cities, inhaling noxious gases spewed from obsolete factories, clutching wretched plastic bags full of toxic meat and carcinogenic vegetables. The stinking rich amass wealth in tax-exempt offshore capital investment accounts, while the rest struggle along stark streets knee-deep in canine excrement to punch the time clock in soul-stifling sweatshops for the wherewithal to buy a rind of rancid cheese and a tin of beans with our overtaxed, undervalued pound.

«Observe any street in any city! You'll see us shuffling grimly from one hateful upmarket boutique to another, wasting our substance on obnoxious designer clothes that do not fit, and buying gray cardboard shoes made by slave labor in the gulags, and being routinely abused by blowzy, brain-dead shop assistants with blue mascara and chicken-fleshed legs. Overwhelmed by marketing forces beyond our ken and control, we vainly roam the halls of consumer greed, hire-purchasing wildly complicated Korean appliances we neither want nor need with hologrammed plastic cash from smug, spotty-faced junior sales managers in yellow ties and too-tight trousers who can't wait to scuttle off to the nearest pub to suck down pints of watery beer and leer at adenoidal secretaries wearing black leather mini-skirts and see-through blouses.»

Simon had lift-off. I settled back for the ride as his cavalcade of horror rolled on. It was all about the Channel tunnel and a landscape awash in Eurotrash, and French fashion victims, and acid rain, and lugubrious Belgians, and Iranian language students, and lager louts swilling Heineken, and football hooligans, and holes in the ozone layer, and Italian playboys, and South American drug lords, and Swiss banks, and AmEx Goldcards, and the greenhouse effect, and the Age of Inconsequence, and soon and so forth.

Simon clutched the steering wheel with both hands and punched the accelerator for emphasis, bobbing his head to the cadence of his words and glancing sideways at me every now and then to make sure I was still listening. Meanwhile, I bided my time, waiting for an opportunity to toss a monkey wrench into his fast-whirling gears.

«We won't have any place to call our own, but we'll all have cold Guinness in cans, and inscrutible Braun coffeemakers, and chic Benetton sweatshirts, and nifty Nike Cross-Trainers, and gold-plated Mont Blanc fountain pens, and Canon fax machines, and Renaults and Porsches and Mercedes and Subs and Fiats and Yugos and Ladas and Hyundais, and Givenchy, and Chanel pour Homme, and Aeroflot holidays, and Costa Del Sol condos, and Piat D'Or, and Viva Espania, and Sony, and Yamaha, and Suzuki, and Honda, and Hitachi, and Toshiba, and Kawasaki, and Nissan, and Minolta, and Panasonic, and Mitsu-bloody-bishi!

«Do we care?» he demanded rhetorically. «Hell, no! We don't bat an eye. We don't turn a hair. We don't twitch a solitary sedentary muscle. We sit transfixed before the Tube Almighty, lulled into false Nirvana by a stupefying Combination of pernicious banality and blather while innocuous cathode rays transform our healthy gray cells into Jellied veal!»

As harangues go, it was one of Simon's better efforts. But his dolorous litanies could endure ad infinitum and I was growing weary. He paused for breath and I saw my chance.

'If you're so unhappy,» I said, throwing myself into the withering flow of invective, «why do you stay here?»

Curiously, that stopped him. He turned his face to me.

«What did you say?»

«You heard me. If you're as miserable as you make yourself out to be, and if things are as bad as you say-~why not leave? You could go anywhere.»

Simon smiled his thin, superior smile. «Show me a place where it's better,» he challenged, «and I'm on my way.»

Offhand, I could not think of any place perfect enough for Simon. I might have suggested the States, but the same demons infesting Britain were running rampant in America as well. The last time I was back home, I hardly recognized the place-it wasn't at all as I remembered. Even in my own small, mid-American town the sense of community had all but vanished, gobbled up by ravening corporations and the townsfolk's own blind addiction to a quick-buck economy and voracious consumerism. 'We might not have a Fourth of July parade down Main Street any more, or Christmas carols in the park,» my dad had said, «but we sure as hell got McDonald's, and Pizza Hut, and Kentucky Fried Chicken, and a Wal-Mart mini-mall that's open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week!»

That was the way of the world: greedy, grim, and ghastly.

It was like that everywhere, and I was tired of being reminded of it every time I turned around. So I rounded on Simon, looked him in the eye, and I threw his challenge back in his face. «Do you mean to tell me that if you found a place that suited you better, you'd leave?»

«Like a shot!»

«Ha!» I gloated. «You never would. I know you, Simon-you're a classic malcontent. You're not happy unless you're miserable.»

«Oh, really?»

«It's true, Simon,» I declared. «If everything was perfect you'd be depressed. That's right. You actually like things the way they are.»

«Well, thank you so much, Dr. Freud,» Simon snarled. «I deeply appreciate your incisive analysis.» He punched the accelerator to the floor.

I thrust home my point. «You might as well admit it, Simon-you're a crap hound, and you love it. You are a connoisseur of misery: Doom on the halfshell! Bring it on! The worse things get, the better you like it. Decadence suits you-in fact, you prefer it. You delight in decline; you revel in rot.»

«Watch out,» he replied softly-so softly I almost didn't hear him, «I just might surprise you one day, friend.»