Fidelity

“No,” he insisted. “She did it because she was distressed. It’s just a product of her present state of mind. Surely you can see that?” “Her present state of mind is a product of the fact that in the past she has refused psychosurgery. Now she’s given us the opportunity to break the vicious circle.”

Neal wanted to slap her. “I won’t allow it.”

“You have no say in the matter. She’s already signed the consent form.”

“I’ll fight it. She was under sedation when she signed, wasn’t she? Then she was acting when the balance of her mind was disturbed by drugs. I’ll sue.”

“The balance of her mind was disturbed before she decided to sign. Cases like this are commonplace; they make up perhaps a third of our patients. There are innumerable legal precedents. You’d lose.”

“I can’t believe that’s what she really wants.”

“She’s at the end of her tether. It’s what she wants.”

“It’s disgusting.”

“Not at all. We’re not proposing to make a robot out of her, you know. We have a detailed biography and a complete psychoprofile culled from the unconscious memory. The diagnostic computers have already identified the recurrent areas of distress and have recommended the appropriate chemotherapy. The drugs are quite specific in their mode of action. All we intend to do is to eliminate the affective disorders of her personality, not alter her entire psychic structure. Claire’s ill. We’re going to make her well again.”

“I have to see her.”

“You can. After the operation.”

***

He took a long walk through the tidy streets, where people sat contentedly at outdoor cafйs and bars. Some even smiled at him as he went by. All was harmony in the world since the advent of psychosurgery; people hurried into operating theatres in times of stress as readily as they had once turned to pills or drink or violence. Crime was almost extinct, and there had not even been a minor war for the past two decades—among the developed nations, at least. But they were paying a big price. The birth rate was falling, and everyone was becoming complacent and mentally stagnant. He and Claire were perhaps the only serious artists still working in the country. The others produced pap for mass consumption, and declared that suffering and soul-searching were obsolete in life and therefore in art.

Neal had always rejected this utterly. He and Claire had fought a rearguard action against it all their working lives and had gained their notoriety as a result. But although they were both minor celebrities, their work did not sell well and Malcolm’s patronage had been invaluable. Malcolm looked like a wrestler but had the soul of an aesthete. It was fortunate that there were still people like him who, while not artists themselves, nevertheless appreciated the value of the true creative spirit.

He walked on, inert to all gestures of fellowship. He hated the bland smiles and the engineered friendliness of these hollow people. They were spiritually dead, and wanted everyone else to be like them. Legislation was currently being framed to permit “correctional psychosurgery” for children and adolescents with their parents’ consent. The next generation would come out of a mould like jigsaw pieces and would slot together to make one vast blank whole.

He and Claire were planning to write a book together denouncing this headlong rush to conformity. They had marshalled an impressive list of facts to support their case. Inspiration was dying not only in the arts but also in the sciences, where the output of original research papers had plummeted in recent years. Claire had also discovered that— The book might never be written. He could not believe that she would have the operation. It would be a betrayal of everything they had stood for. He entered St Paul’s. The cathedral was silent, empty, and he took a seat under the dome. Everything seemed polished to a glittering sheen, and the sky-blue glass in the arched window stood out in resplendent glory, fired by the sun. An ecclesiastical museum; the religious instinct, once the prime mover of art, was dead.

A secular priest came by and sat down beside him. He wore a black suit and a small oval badge bearing the maroon letters PC on a white field. A Psycounsellor, holding a higher degree in clinical psychology and religious philosophy. One of the new breed of domestic missionaries whose job it was to bring mental heathens to the altar of orthodox sanity.

“Can you talk about it?” the priest asked softly.

“No,” Neal said emphatically, striding out of the cathedral.

* * *

Their three-roomed apartment was in Berwick Street. The place was in disarray, with soiled clothing, empty food cartons, bottles, cutlery and crockery lying everywhere. Claire was a hopeless housekeeper, and it had always fallen to him to keep the place tidy.

At the desk beside the slanting window Neal found her notepad. Inside was a draft of an unfinished poem. It was barely decipherable, being defaced with vigorous crossings-out, scrawled insertions and amendments. It began: