Free Kingdom Come by J. G. Ballard Page B

makes sense.’ I was still puzzled by his extreme unease with me, and tried to shake his hand. ‘I should have been more careful. My father’s death, I was on edge.’
    ‘It’s to be expected.’ Kumar seemed to relax a little, reassured that I was not about to harm him. ‘It’s best to keep your door locked. At all times.’
    ‘Thanks for the tip. There’s a lot of crime here?’
    ‘Crime, certainly. And violence.’
    ‘I’ve noticed that. These towns along the M25. There’s something in the air. I take it there are right-wing groups here?’
    ‘Many. They create real fear.’ Kumar pressed his bell again, impatient to enter his flat. ‘The Asian community is deeply concerned. In the old days there were organized attacks, but they were predictable. Now we see violence for its own sake.’
    ‘These so-called sports clubs?’
    ‘Sports? Just one sport. Beating people up.’
    ‘Asians, mostly?’
    ‘Asians, Kosovans, Bosnians. Far too many sports clubs. The police should stop them.’
    ‘I think my father belonged to one.’ When Kumar made no reply, I said: ‘You knew my father?’
    ‘Lately, not so well. When we first came to Brooklands he was very charming to my wife. He made us feel at home. Later . . .’
    ‘He changed?’
    ‘His new friends . . . sometimes they were here. They frightened my wife.’
    ‘My father wasn’t violent?’
    ‘Your father was a gentleman. But the atmosphere was different . . . everywhere the red crosses, not to help people but to hurt them.’
    ‘I’m sorry. Tell me, Mr Kumar, all this violence—where do you think it’s coming from?’
    ‘The Metro-Centre? It’s possible.’
    ‘How? It’s just a large shop.’
    ‘It’s more than a shop, Mr Pearson. It’s an incubator. People go in there and they wake up, they see their lives are empty. So they look for a new dream . . .’
    He reached for the bell, but his front door opened quietly. An elegant Asian woman in her fifties with a high forehead and severe face stared out at us. I assumed that Dr Kumar had been listening to everything we said. Her eyes followed me up the stairs, waiting until I was safely out of sight before she stepped aside to admit her husband.

8
    ACCIDENTS AND EMERGENCIES
     
    THE WAITING ROOM in the Accident & Emergency department at Brooklands Hospital was almost empty when I sat down. A teenager with a bruised cheek fiddled with a broken mobile phone. A mildly hysterical woman argued endlessly about a traffic intersection with her passive husband. An elderly man with a damp tissue to his eyes waited for news of his wife. Lastly, there was myself, more uncertain about my father than I had been when I first arrived. Together we were a collection of the ill-equipped and unsaved—a playground brawl, a wrong right turn, a heart too weary to embark on its next beat, and an assassin’s bullet had brought us together.
    Dr Julia Goodwin, who had treated my father when he was driven from the Metro-Centre, would see me shortly, according to one of the nurses. But the clock on the wall disagreed, and as usual overruled her. I tried to read the local newspaper, smiled as comfortingly as I could at the elderly man, and watched the TV set.
    It was tuned to the Metro-Centre cable channel, and showed an afternoon discussion programme transmitted from the mezzanine studio. The suntanned face of David Cruise dominated everything, and covered the proceedings like a cheap but over-bright lacquer. He was smiling and affable, but faintly hostile, like a bullying valet. Perhaps people in the motorway towns liked to be shouted at.
    ‘Mr Pearson?’ The nurse positioned her broad hips in front of the set. ‘Dr Goodwin will see you. For a few minutes . . . she’s very busy.’
    ‘Fine. How lucky to be busy . . .’
    DR JULIA GOODWIN was standing with her back to me in the small office, slamming the metal drawers of a filing cabinet as if playing an arcade pin-table. When she glanced at me through her