Margot and I always talked and bickered over lunch together, soup and bread, or salad and sandwiches, before our afternoon nap on separate sofas. Today, I had to tell her I was going away.
Earlier in the year Margot had gone to Australia for two months to visit friends and travel. We needed each other, Margot and I, but we didn’t want to turn our marriage into more of an enclosure than necessary. We had agreed that I, too, could go on ‘walkabout’ if I wanted to. (Apparently, ‘walkabout’ was called ‘the dreaming’ by some Aboriginals.) I told her I wanted to leave in three days’ time. I asked for ‘a six-month sabbatical’. As well as being upset by the suddenness of my decision, she was shocked and hurt by the length of time I required. She and I are always pleased to part, but then, after a few days, we need to share our complaints. I guess that was how we knew our marriage was still alive. Yet she knew that when I make up my mind, I enter a tunnel of determination, for fear that vacillation is never far away.
She said, ‘Without you here to talk about yourself in bed, how will I go to sleep?’
‘At least I am some use, then.’
She acquiesced because she was kind. She didn’t believe I’d last six months. In a few weeks I’d be bored and tired. How could anyone be as interested in my ailments as her?
It took me less time than I would have hoped to settle my affairs before the ‘trip’. I had a circle of male friends who came to the house once a fortnight to drink, watch football and discuss the miseries of our work. Margot would inform them I was going walkabout and we would reconvene on my return. I made the necessary financial arrangements through my lawyer, and followed the other preparations Ralph had insisted on.
When Ralph and I met up again he took one look at me and said, ‘You’re my first initiate. I’m delighted that you’re doing this. You live your life trying to find out how to live a life, and then it ends. I don’t think I could have picked a better person.’
‘Initiate?’
‘I’ve been waiting for the right person to follow me down this path, and it’s someone as distinguished as you!’
‘I need to see what this will bring me,’ I murmured, mostly to myself.
‘The face you have must have brought you plenty,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you see those girls watching you at the party? They asked me later if you were really you.’
‘They did?’
‘Now — ready?’
He was already walking to his car. I followed. Ralph was so solicitous and optimistic, I felt as comfortable as anyone could in the circumstances. Then I began to look forward to ‘the change’ and fantasised about all that I would do in my new skin.
By now we’d arrived at the ‘hospital’, a run-down warehouse on a bleak, wind-blown industrial estate outside London (he had already explained that ‘things would not be as they seemed’). I noticed from the size of the fence and the number of black-uniformed men that security was tight. Ralph and I showed our passports at the door. We were both searched.
Inside, the place did resemble a small, expensive private hospital. The walls, sofas and pictures were pastel-coloured and the building seemed almost silent, as if it had monumental walls. There were no patients moving about, no visitors with flowers, books and fruit, only the occasional doctor and nurse. When I did glimpse, at the far end of a corridor, a withered old woman in a pink flannel night-gown being pushed in a wheelchair by an orderly, Ralph and I were rapidly ushered into a side office.
Immediately, the surgeon came into the room, a man in his mid-thirties who seemed so serene I could only wonder what kind of yoga or therapy he had had, and for how long.
His assistant ensured the paperwork was rapidly taken care of, and I wrote a cheque. It was for a considerable amount, money that would otherwise have gone to my children. I hoped scarcity would make them inventive and vital. My wife was already provided for. What was bothering me? I couldn’t stop suspecting that this was a confidence trick, that I’d been made a fool of in my most vulnerable areas: my vanity and fear of decline and death. But if it was a hoax, it was a laboured one, and I would have parted with money to hear about it.
The surgeon said, ‘We are delighted to have an artist of your calibre join us.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Have you done anything I might have heard of?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘I think my wife saw one of your plays. She loves comedy and now has the leisure to enjoy herself. Ralph has told me that it’s a short-term body rental you require, initially? The six-months minimum — is that correct?’
‘That is correct,’ I said. ‘After six months I’ll be happy to return to myself again.’
‘I have to warn you, not everyone wants to go back.’
‘I will. I am fascinated by this experiment and want to be involved, but I’m not particularly unhappy with my life.’
‘You might be unhappy with your death.’
‘Not necessarily.’
He countered, ‘I wouldn’t leave it until you’re on your deathbed to find out. Some people, you know, lose the power of speech then. Or it is too late for all kinds of other reasons.’
‘You’re suggesting I won’t want to return to myself?’
‘It’s impossible for either of us to predict how you will feel in six months’ time.’
I nodded.
He noticed me looking at him. ‘You are wondering if —’
‘Of course.’
‘I am,’ he replied, glancing at Ralph. ‘We both are. Newbodies.’
‘And ordinary people going about their business out there’ — I pointed somewhere into the distance — ‘are called Oldbodies?’
‘Perhaps. Yes. Why not?’
‘These are words that will eventually be part of most people’s everyday vocabulary, you think?’
‘Words are your living,’ he said. ‘Bodies are mine. But I would imagine so.’
‘The existence of Newbodies, as you call them, will create considerable confusion, won’t it? How will we know who is new and who old?’
‘The thinking in this area has yet to be done,’ he said. ‘Just as there has been argument over abortion, genetic engineering, cloning and organ transplants, or any other medical advances, so there will be over this.’
‘Surely this is of a different order,’ I said. ‘Parents the same age as their children, or even younger, for instance. What will that mean?’
‘That is for the philosophers, priests, poets and television pundits to say. My work is only to extend life.’
‘As an educated man, you must have thought this over.’
‘How could I work out the implications alone? They can only be lived.’
‘But —’
We batted this subject back and forth until it became clear even to me that I was playing for time.
‘I was just thinking …’ said Ralph. He was smiling. ‘If I were dead we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’
The doctor said, ‘Adam’s is a necessary equivocation.’ He turned to me. ‘You have to make a second important decision.’
I guessed this was coming. ‘It won’t be so difficult, I hope.’
‘Please, follow me.’
The doctor, accompanied by a porter and a young nurse, took me and Ralph down several corridors and through several locked doors. At last we entered what seemed like a broad, low-ceilinged, neon-lit fridge with a tiled floor.
I was shivering as I stood there, and not only because of the temperature. Ralph took my arm and began to murmur in my ear, but I couldn’t hear him. What I saw was unlike anything I had seen before; indeed, unlike anything anyone had ever seen. This was no longer amusing speculation or inquisitiveness. It was where the new world began.