The resentment each felt for the other had not been foreseen or guarded against. In bed the original Ian Nicol could be recognized by his position (he lay on the right of the bed), but as soon as both men were strong enough to walk each claimed ownership of birth certificate, union card, clothes, wife and National Insurance benefit. One day in the hospital grounds they started fighting. They were evenly matched and there are conflicting opinions about who won. On leaving hospital they took legal action against each other for theft of identity. The case was resolved by a medical examination which showed that one of them had no navel.
The second Ian Nicol changed his name by deed poll and is now called Macbeth. Sometimes he and Ian Nicol write to each other. The latest news is that each has a bald patch on the back of his head.
THE PROBLEM
The Greeks were wrong about the sun; she is definitely a woman. I know her well. She often visits me, but not often enough. She prefers spending her time on Mediterranean beaches with richer people, foreigners mostly. I never complain. She comes here often enough to keep me hopeful. Until today. Today, perhaps because it is Spring, she arrived unexpectedly in all her glory and made me perfectly happy.
I was astonished, grateful, and properly appreciative, of course. I lay basking in her golden warmth, a bit dopey and dozey but murmuring the sort of compliments which are appropriate at such times. I realized she was talking to me in a more insistent tone, so I occasionally said, “Yes” and “Mhm”. At last she said, “You aren’t listening.”
“Yes I am —” (I made an effort of memory) “—You were talking about your spots.”
“What can I do about them?”
“Honestly, Sun, I don’t think they’re important.”
“Not important? Not important? Oh, it’s easy for you to talk like that. You don’t have to live with them.” I almost groaned aloud. Whenever someone makes me perfectly happy they go on to turn themselves into a problem. I gathered my energies to tackle the problem.
I said, “Your spots were first noted by Galileo in the sixteenth century, through his new improved telescope. Before that time you were regarded as the most perfect of all heavenly bodies —”
She gave a little waiclass="underline" I said hastily, “But they aren’t permanent! They come and go! They’re associated with several good things, like growth. When you have a very spotty year the plants grow extra fast and thick.”
She hid her face and said, “Why can’t I have a perfect heavenly body like when I was younger? I haven’t changed. I’m still the same as I was then.” I tried to console her. I said, “Nobody is perfect.” She said nothing.
I said, “Apart from a few top-level physicists and astronomers, nobody gives a damn for your spots.” She said nothing.
I said, “The moon has spots all over her and nobody finds those unattractive.” The sun arose and prepared to leave. I gazed at her in horror, too feeble to move, almost too feeble to speak. I whispered, “What’s wrong?”
“You’ve just admitted seeing other planets when my back is turned.”
“Of course, but not deliberately. Everybody who goes out at night is bound to see the moon from time to time, but I don’t see her regularly, like I see you.” She said, “Perhaps if I played hard to get you would find my spots interesting too. What a fool I’ve been to think that give give giving myself seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, a hundred years a century was the way to get myself liked and appreciated when all the time people prefer a flighty young bitch who borrows all her light from me! Her own mother! Well, I’ve learned my lesson. From now on I’ll only come right out once a fortnight, then perhaps men will find my spots attractive too.”
And she would have left without another word if I had not jumped up and begged and pleaded and told her a lot of lies. I said a great deal had been discovered about sunspots since Galileo’s day, they were an electromagnetic phenomenon and probably curable. I said that next time we met I would have studied the matter and be able to recommend something. So she left me more in sorrow than anger and I will see her tomorrow.
But I can never hope to be perfectly happy with her again. The sun is more interested in her spots than in her beams and is ready to blame me for them.
THE CAUSE OF SOME RECENT CHANGES
The painting departments of modern art schools are full of discontented people. One day Mildred said to me, “I’m sick of wasting time. We start work at ten and tire after half an hour and the boys throw paper pellets at each other and the girls stand round the radiators talking. Then we get bored and go to the refectory and drink coffee and we aren’t enjoying ourselves, but what else can we do? I’m tired of it. I want to do something vigorous and constructive.”
I said, “Dig a tunnel.”
“What do you mean?”
“Instead of drinking coffee when you feel bored, go down to the basement and dig an escape tunnel.”
“But if I wanted to escape I could walk through the front door and not come back.”
“You can’t escape that way. The education department would stop your bursary and you would have to work for a living.”
“But where would I be escaping to?”
“That isn’t important. To travel hopefully is better than to arrive.”
My suggestion was not meant seriously but it gained much support in the painting department. In the seldom-visited sub-basement a flagstone was replaced by a disguised trap-door. Under this a room was dug into the school’s foundation. The tunnel began here, and here the various shifts operated the winch which pulled up boxes of waste stuff, and put the waste into small sacks easily smuggled out under the clothing. The school was built on a bank of igneous quartz so there was no danger of the walls caving in and no need of pitprops. Digging was simplified by the use of a chemical solvent which, applied to the rock surface with a handspray, rendered it gravelly and workable. The credit for this invention belonged to the industrial design department. The students of this department despised the painters digging the tunnel but it interested them as a technical challenge. Without their help it could not have reached the depths it did.
In spite of the project’s successful beginning I expected it to fail through lack of support as the magazine, the debating society and the outing to Linlithgow had failed, so I was surprised to find after three months that enthusiasm was increasing. The Students’ Representative Council was packed with members of the tunnel committee and continually organized dances to pay for the installation of more powerful machinery. A sort of tension became obvious throughout the building. People jumped at small sounds, laughed loudly at feeble jokes and quarrelled without provocation. Perhaps they unconsciously feared the tunnel would open a volcanic vent, though things like increase of temperature, water seepage and the presence of gas had been so far absent. Sometimes I wondered how the project remained free from interference. An engineering venture supported by several hundred people can hardly be called a secret. It was natural for those outside the school to regard rumours as fantastic inventions, but why did none of the teachers interfere? Only a minority were active supporters of the project; two were being bribed to remain silent. I am sure the director and deputy director did not know, but what about the rest who knew and said nothing? Perhaps they also regarded the tunnel as a possible means of escape. One day work on the tunnel stopped. The first shift going to work in the morning coffee-break discovered that the basement entrance was locked. There were several tunnel entrances now but all were found to be locked, and since the tunnel committee had vanished it was assumed they were inside. This caused a deal of speculation.