The fat's in the liver, the cod's in the sea. "Streptocock-Gee to Banbury T …" How beautiful her singing had been! And those childish rhymes, how magically strange and mysterious! He sat watching her–seeking through the tired flesh, seeking and finding that young, bright face which had stooped over his childhood in Malpais, remembering (and he closed his eyes) her voice, her movements, all the events of their life together. She squeezed his hand, she smiled, her lips moved then quite suddenly her head fell forward. Her vague eyes brightened with recognition. Well, make yourself comfortable." She walked briskly away.Īt the sound of her name, she turned. Besides, there's Number 3." She pointed up the ward. Then with a little start she would wake up again–wake up to the aquarium antics of the Tennis Champions, to the Super-Vox-Wurlitzeriana rendering of "Hug me till you drug me, honey," to the warm draught of verbena that came blowing through the ventilator above her head–would wake to these things, or rather to a dream of which these things, transformed and embellished by the soma in her blood, were the marvellous constituents, and smile once more her broken and discoloured smile of infantile contentment. Every now and then her eyelids closed, and for a few seconds she seemed to be dozing. Her pale, bloated face wore an expression of imbecile happiness. Linda looked on, vaguely and uncomprehendingly smiling. Hither and thither across their square of illuminated glass the little figures noiselessly darted, like fish in an aquarium–the silent but agitated inhabitants of another world. Propped up on pillows, she was watching the Semi-finals of the South American Riemann-Surface Tennis Championship, which were being played in silent and diminished reproduction on the screen of the television box at the foot of the bed. Linda was lying in the last of the long row of beds, next to the wall. Their progress was followed by the blank, incurious eyes of second infancy. Faces still fresh and unwithered (for senility galloped so hard that it had no time to age the cheeks–only the heart and brain) turned as they passed. Still blushing, she led the way down the ward. "Take me to her," said the Savage, making an effort to speak in an ordinary tone. From throat to temple she was all one hot blush. The nurse glanced at him with startled, horrified eyes then quickly looked away. "She's my mother," he said in a scarcely audible voice. (Not that there were many visitors anyhow: or any reason why there should be many visitors.) "You're not feeling ill, are you?" She was not accustomed to this kind of thing in visitors.
"Why, whatever is the matter?" she asked. When somebody's sent here, there's no …" Startled by the expression of distress on his pale face, she suddenly broke off. "You mean, of her not dying?" (He nodded.) "No, of course there isn't. "Where is she?" asked the Savage, ignoring these polite explanations. "We try," explained the nurse, who had taken charge of the Savage at the door, "we try to create a thoroughly pleasant atmosphere here–something between a first-class hotel and a feely-palace, if you take my meaning." Every quarter of an hour the prevailing perfume of the room was automatically changed. Television was left on, a running tap, from morning till night. At the foot of every bed, confronting its moribund occupant, was a television box. The air was continuously alive with gay synthetic melodies. Linda was dying in company–in company and with all the modern conveniences. It was a large room bright with sunshine and yellow paint, and containing twenty beds, all occupied. At the lift gates the presiding porter gave him the information he required, and he dropped down to Ward 81 (a Galloping Senility ward, the porter explained) on the seventeenth floor. As the Savage stepped out of his taxicopter a convoy of gaily-coloured aerial hearses rose whirring from the roof and darted away across the Park, westwards, bound for the Slough Crematorium.
THE Park Lane Hospital for the Dying was a sixty-story tower of primrose tiles.