«Well, that was grand!» he said to himself when it was all over. «Really grand!» He mopped his face. When they had put in the feely effects at the studio, it would be a wonderful film. Almost as good, thought Darwin Bonaparte, as the Sperm Whale’s Love-Life-and that, by Ford, was saying a good deal!
Twelve days later The Savage of Surrey had been released and could be seen, heard and felt in every first-class feely-palace in Western Europe. The effect of Darwin Bonaparte’s film was immediate and enormous. On the afternoon which followed the evening of its release John’s rustic solitude was suddenly broken by the arrival overhead of a great swarm of helicopters. He was digging in his garden-digging, too, in his own mind, laboriously turning up the substance of his thought. Death-and he drove in his spade once, and again, and yet again. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. A convincing thunder rumbled through the words. He lifted another spadeful of earth. Why had Linda died? Why had she been allowed to become gradually less than human and at last… He shuddered. A good kissing carrion. He planted his foot on his spade and stamped it fiercely into the tough ground.
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport. Thunder again; words that proclaimed themselves true-truer somehow than truth itself. And yet that same Gloucester had called them ever-gentle gods. Besides, thy best of rest is sleep and that thou oft provok’st; yet grossly fear’st thy death which is no more. No more than sleep. Sleep. Perchance to dream. His spade struck against a stone; he stooped to pick it up. For in that sleep of death, what dreams?…
A humming overhead had become a roar; and suddenly he was in shadow, there was something between the sun and him. He looked up, startled, from his digging, from his thoughts; looked up in a dazzled bewilderment, his mind still wandering in that other world of truer-than-truth, still focused on the immensities of death and deity; looked up and saw, close above him, the swarm of hovering machines. Like locusts they came, hung poised, descended all around him on the heather. And from out of the bellies of these giant grasshoppers stepped men in white viscose-flannels, women (for the weather was hot) in acetate-shantung pyjamas or velveteen shorts and sleeveless, half-unzippered singlets-one couple from each. In a few minutes there were dozens of them, standing in a wide circle round the lighthouse, staring, laughing, clicking their cameras, throwing (as to an ape) peanuts, packets of sex-hormone chewing-gum, pan-glanduar petite beurres. And every moment-for across the Hog’s Back the stream of traffic now flowed unceasingly-their numbers increased. As in a nightmare, the dozens became scores, the scores hundreds.
The Savage had retreated towards cover, and now, in the posture of an animal at bay, stood with his back to the wall of the lighthouse, staring from face to face in speechless horror, like a man out of his senses.
From this stupor he was aroused to a more immediate sense of reality by the impact on his cheek of a well-aimed packet of chewing-gum. A shock of startling pain-and he was broad awake, awake and fiercely angry.
«Go away!» he shouted.
The ape had spoken; there was a burst of laughter and hand-clapping. «Good old Savage! Hurrah, hurrah!» And through the babel he heard cries of: «Whip, whip, the whip!»
Acting on the word’s suggestion, he seized the bunch of knotted cords from its nail behind the door and shook it at his tormentors.
There was a yell of ironical applause.
Menacingly he advanced towards them. A woman cried out in fear. The line wavered at its most immediately threatened point, then stiffened again, stood firm. The consciousness of being in overwhelming force had given these sightseers a courage which the Savage had not expected of them. Taken aback, he halted and looked round.
«Why don’t you leave me alone?» There was an almost plaintive note in his anger.
«Have a few magnesium-salted almonds!» said the man who, if the Savage were to advance, would be the first to be attacked. He held out a packet. «They’re really very good, you know,» he added, with a rather nervous smile of propitation. «And the magnesium salts will help to keep you young.» The Savage ignored his offer. «What do you want with me?» he asked, turning from one grinning face to another. «What do you want with me?»
«The whip,» answered a hundred voices confusedly. «Do the whipping stunt. Let’s see the whipping stunt.»
Then, in unison and on a slow, heavy rhythm, «We-want-the whip,» shouted a group at the end of the line. «We-want-the whip.»
Others at once took up the cry, and the phrase was repeated, parrot-fashion, again and again, with an ever-growing volume of sound, until, by the seventh or eighth reiteration, no other word was being spoken. «We-want-the whip.» They were all crying together; and, intoxicated by the noise, the unanimity, the sense of rhythmical atonement, they might, it seemed, have gone on for hours-almost indefinitely. But at about the twenty-fifth repetition the proceedings were startlingly interrupted. Yet another helicopter had arrived from across the Hog’s Back, hung poised above the crowd, then dropped within a few yards of where the Savage was standing, in the open space between the line of sightseers and the lighthouse. The roar of the air screws momentarily drowned the shouting; then, as the machine touched the ground and the engines were turned off: «We-want-the whip; we-want-the whip,» broke out again in the same loud, insistent monotone. The door of the helicopter opened, and out stepped, first a fair and ruddy-faced young man, then, in green velveteen shorts, white shirt, and jockey cap, a young woman.
At the sight of the young woman, the Savage started, recoiled, turned pale. The young woman stood, smiling at him-an uncertain, imploring, almost abject smile. The seconds passed. Her lips moved, she was saying something; but the sound of her voice was covered by the loud reiterated refrain of the sightseers.
«We-want-the whip! We-want-the whip!»
The young woman pressed both hands to her left side, and on that peach-bright, doll-beautiful face of hers appeared a strangely incongrous expression of yearning distress. Her blue eyes seemed to grow larger, brighter; and suddenly two tears rolled down her cheeks. Inaudibly, she spoke again; then, with a quick, impassioned gesture stretched out her arms towards the Savage, stepped forward.
«We-want-the whip! We-want…»
And all of a sudden they had what they wanted.
«Strumpet!» The Savage had rushed at her like a madman. «Fitchew!» Like a madman, he was slashing at her with his whip of small cords. Terrified, she had turned to flee, had tripped and fallen in the heather. «Henry, Henry!» she shouted. But her ruddy-faced companion had bolted out of harm’s way behind the helicopter.
With a whoop of delighted excitement the line broke; there was a convergent stampede towards that magnetic centre of attraction. Pain was a fascinating horror.
«Fry, lechery, fry!» Frenzied, the Savage slashed again. Hungrily they gathered round, pushing and scrambling like swine about the trough.
«Oh, the flesh!» The Savage ground his teeth. This time it was on his shoulders that the whip descended. «Kill it, kill it!»
Drawn by the fascination of the horror of pain and, from within, impelled by that habit of cooperation, that desire for unanimity and atonement, which their conditioning had so ineradicably implanted in them, they began to mime the frenzy of his gestures, striking at one another as the Savage struck at his own rebellious flesh, or at that plump incarnation of turpitude writhing in the heather at his feet.
«Kill it, kill it, kill it…» The Savage went on shouting. Then suddenly somebody started singing «Orgy-porgy» and, in a moment, they had all caught up the refrain and, singing, had begun to dance. Orgy-porgy, round and round and round, beating one another in six-eight time. Orgy-porgy…
It was after midnight when the last of the helicopters took its flight. Stupefied by soma, and exhausted by a long-drawn frenzy of sensuality, the Savage lay sleeping in the heather. The sun was already high when he awoke. He lay for a moment, blinking in owlish incomprehension at the light; then suddenly remembered-everything.
«Oh, my God, my God!» He covered his eyes with his hand. That evening the swarm of helicopters that came buzzing across the Hog’s Back was a dark cloud ten kilometres long. The description of last night’s orgy of atonement had been in all the papers.
«Savage!» called the first arrivals, as they alighted from their machine. «Mr. Savage!» There was no answer.
The door of the lighthouse was ajar. They pushed it open and walked into a shuttered twilight. Through an archway on the further side of the room they could see the bottom of the staircase that led up to the higher floors. Just under the crown of the arch dangled a pair of feet.
«Mr. Savage!»
Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east,
