1

       A Fox with a Tail

      For London it was one of those hot July evenings in which the human mind is engulfed in a preoccupation with the moist palm, the damp brow, the armpit.

      Sweating continently, James Solent emerged into the motionless heat of Charlton Square. With a folded newspaper raised to his forehead in an odd defensive gesture, he came down the steps of the grey trailer onto the grass and paused. The door of Number 17, where he lived, beckoned him; but competing with the wish to go and hide himself was a desire to overhear what three men nearby were saying.

      ‘Such a gross imposition could only be swung onto a politically indifferent electorate,’ one said.

      The second, lacking words to express what he thought of this sentiment, guffawed immoderately.

      ‘Rubbish!’ the third exclaimed. ‘You heard what the Minister of Health said the other day: this is just what’s needed to give Britain back her old sense of direction.’

      It was the turn of the first man to burst into mocking laughter. Seeing Jimmy standing nearby, they turned to stare curiously at his forehead.

      ‘What’s it feel like, mate?’ one of them called.

      ‘You really don’t feel a thing,’ Jimmy said, and hastened across the square with his newspaper still half-heartedly raised. He let himself into Number 17. From the hall he could hear Mrs Pidney, the landlady, drowsily humming like a drowned top in the kitchen. The rest was silence. Reassured, Jimmy discarded his paper, revealing the disc on his forehead, and went up to the flat he shared with his brother. Fortunately Aubrey Solent was out, working late at the BIL; that undoubtedly saved Jimmy an awkward scene. Aubrey had grown uncommonly touchy of recent weeks.

      The flat contained the usual facilities, a kitchen, a living room (with dinerette), Aubrey’s large bedroom and Jimmy’s smaller bedroom. Everything was so tidy that the one glossy-jacketted LP lying in the middle of the carpet looked to be posing. Skirting it, Jimmy hurried into his room and closed the door.

      Just for a moment he played a tune on the panelling with his finger tips. Then he crossed to the looking glass and surveyed himself. The suit Harrods had made him before he began his new job in January was daily growing to look better on him, more like him; for the rest he was twenty-five, his brown hair not objectionably curly, his face round but not ugly, his chin neither aggressive nor recessive.

      All, in fact, he told himself, sighing, alarmingly ordinary. ‘Oh, ye of the average everything,’ he addressed himself, improvising, as he frequently did, a rhymed oration, ‘Oh, ye of the average height, overtaken by taller folk, undertaken by smaller folk … an average fate one might certainly call a joke.’

      One feature only was definitely not, as yet at all events, ordinary; the shining circle, three and a half centimetres in diameter, permanently fixed in the centre of his forehead. Made of a metal resembling stainless steel, its surface was slightly convex, so that it gave a vague and distorted image of the world before it.

      It looked by no means ill. It looked, indeed, rather noble, like a blaze on a horse’s brow. It lent a touch of distinction to a plain face.

      Jimmy Solent stood for some minutes before the wardrobe mirror, looking at himself and, through himself, into the future. It was a time for wonder: he had taken the plunge at a period when to plunge or not to plunge was the consuming question. He was one of the first to plunge, and the seal of his precipitance was upon him. His preoccupation was gradually banished by the barking of the loudspeaker in the square outside. Slipping off his jacket, Jimmy went over to the window. His outlook here was generally less interesting, being more respectable, than that from his brother Aubrey’s bedroom windows. They looked out on to backs of houses, where people were unbuttoned and being themselves; Jimmy’s window, in the front of the house, stared perpetually out at facades, where people put on closed little public faces.

      Now, however, there was life in the square. This week, a big grey trailer, so reassuringly similar to the Mass Radiography units, stood on the seedy grass beneath the plane trees. A queue of men and women, most of them in summer dresses or shirt sleeves, stood patiently waiting their turn to enter the trailer. At five-minute intervals, they emerged singly from the other side of it, generally holding a newspaper, a handkerchief or a hat, to their foreheads, disappearing without looking to left or right. A few spectators idled about, watching the queue; at the beginning of the week there had been cameramen. From the bedroom window – from safety! – it all appeared rather comical: at once unreal and typically English. Jimmy found it hard to realise he had come through that same mill only twenty minutes ago; just as the government had promised, his forehead did not ache at all. Though he prodded it experimentally, his disc neither moved nor ached. The marvels of modern science were indeed marvellous.

      The man in charge of the loudspeaker, being hot and bored, was not talking into his microphone properly. Only occasional phrases were intelligible. One bit sounded like ‘We are free to sit here in a fine old state’; he must have been saying something equally preposterous, like ‘freer citizens of a finer state.’

      ‘… government’s assurance … many eminent doctors agree … nothing but healthful … far from being an affront to national modesty … greatest assets … no expense … only a minor operation …’

      The voice mumbled like a cloud of bees, and the minor operation was a major operation taking place all over the country: for the grey trailers were parked by now in the centre of every town and village from Penzance to John o’Groats. The whole population was potential queue-fodder. Jimmy came away from the window.

      Somebody was moving about in the living room. Jimmy straightened his tie. It was unlikely to be Aubrey, but Jimmy called out, ‘Is that you, Aubrey?’ and went to see.

      It was not Aubrey. It was Aubrey’s girl, Alyson Youngfield, if the noun ‘girl’ may be used here ambiguously. She had discarded her summer gloves and was fanning herself with the discarded LP sleeve. Jimmy’s face lit at the sight of her.

      ‘He’ll be late this evening. Alyson,’ he told this charming creature settling herself on the divan with the elegance of a puma. Her fairness took on a special quality with the July weather; under the neat blonde hair, her skin seemed to ripen like wheat.

      ‘Not to worry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t really expect to find Aubrey at home, but it’s cooler here than in my bed-sitter. It gets like an oven just under the roof. Let’s have a little hi-fi to combat the heat, shall we?’

      In that instant Jimmy saw she was looking at his forehead. It caused him none of the embarrassment anyone else’s regard would have done; with pleasure, he wondered whether an acquired tactfulness or natural kindness caused her, when she saw his glance, to say matter-of-factly, ‘Oh, you’ve got yours. I must get mine tomorrow.’

      With gratitude, to draw her into a conspiracy, Jimmy answered incautiously, ‘Are you really? Aubrey won’t like that.’

      He knew at once he had said the wrong thing.

      ‘Aubrey will eventually be wearing one himself; you’ll see. It’ll come to us all in time,’ Alyson said. But she said it stiffly, turning her fair head with its most immaculate locks to gaze at the window. As always, Jimmy found himself reflecting