Free The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess Page A

whole attitude.’
    ‘Are you sure,’ said Beatrice-Joanna, ‘that you actually took your tablets on that memorable occasion?’
    ‘Of course I’m sure. I wouldn’t dream of taking a risk like that.’
    ‘No, of course you wouldn’t.’ She swayed her head, reciting in sing-song: ‘Take a tablet instead of a risk.’ She smiled up at him. ‘That would have made a good slogan, wouldn’t it? But, of course, we don’t have slogans to make us good any more. We have the big stick.’
    ‘It’s completely beyond my understanding,’ said Tristram. ‘Unless –’ He beetled down at her. ‘But you wouldn’t do that, would you? You wouldn’t be so wicked and evil and sinful as to do that.’ Augustinian words. He grasped her by the wrist. ‘Is there anybody else?’ he asked. ‘Tell me the truth. I promise not to be angry,’ he said angrily.
    ‘Oh, don’t be stupid,’ she said very quietly. ‘Even if I wanted to be unfaithful, who could I be unfaithful with? We don’t go anywhere, we don’t know anyone. And,’ she said with heat, ‘I object strongly to your saying that. To your thinking that. I’ve been faithful to you ever since the day we got married, and a fat lot of thanks or appreciation I’ve ever had for my fidelity.’
    ‘I must have taken the tablets,’ said Tristram, thinking hard back. ‘I remember when it was. It was the day when poor young Roger –’
    ‘Yes, yes, yes.’
    ‘– And I’d just had my dinner and, if I remember rightly, it was you who suggested –’
    ‘Oh, no, Tristram. It wasn’t me. It certainly wasn’t me.’
    ‘– And I have a distinct recollection that I pulled the medicine cupboard down from the ceiling and that I –’
    ‘You’d been drinking, Tristram. You smelt terribly of ale.’ Tristram hung his head an instant. ‘Are you sure you took the right tablets? I didn’t check that with you. You always know best, don’t you dear?’ Her natural teeth gleamed in sarcasm. ‘Anyhow, there it is. Perhaps it was a sudden accession of paternity lust.’
    ‘Where did you get that expression from?’ he blazed at her. ‘Who told you those words?’
    ‘You did,’ she said sighing. ‘It’s an expression you sometimes use.’ He stared at her. ‘There must,’ she added, ‘be quite a lot of the heretic in you. In your unconscious, anyway. You say things in your sleep, you know. You wake me up with your snoring and then, assured of an audience, you talk. You’re quite as bad as I am, in your way.’
    ‘Well.’ He looked round vaguely for somewhere to sit down. Beatrice-Joanna made another chair come purring out of the wall. ‘Thanks,’ he said distractedly. ‘However it happened,’ he said, sitting, ‘you’ll have to get rid of it. You’ll have to take something. You won’t want to leave it till you have to go to the Abortion Centre. That’ll be shameful. That’ll be almost as bad as breaking the law. Carelessness,’ he muttered. ‘No self-control.’
    ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She was too cool about the whole thing. ‘Things may not be as bad as you think. I mean.people have been having children in excess of the ration and nothing much has happened to them. I’m entitled to a child,’ she said more warmly. ‘The State killed Roger. The State let him die.’
    ‘Ah, nonsense. We’ve been over all that before. What you don’t seem to realize in your stupidity is that things have changed. Things have changed.’ He emphasized this by punching her on the knee, once for each word.
    ‘Look,’ he said. ‘The days of asking are over. The State doesn’t ask any more. The State orders, the State compels. Do you realize that in China people have actually been put to death for disobeying the birth-control laws? Executed. Hanged or shot – I’m not sure which. It’s in a letter I got from Emma.’
    ‘This isn’t China,’ she said. ‘We’re more civilized here.’
    ‘Ah, arrant bloody nonsense. It’s going to be the same everywhere.