“A gramme is always better than a damn,” she concluded with dignity, and drank the sundae herself. “Oh, for Ford’s sake, be quiet!” he shouted. “Remember one cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments.” Bernard pushed away the proffered glass impatiently. “A gramme in time saves nine,” said Lenina, producing a bright treasure of sleep-taught wisdom. “As usual.” He remained obstinately gloomy the whole afternoon wouldn’t talk to Lenina’s friends (of whom they met dozens in the ice-cream soma bar between the wrestling bouts) and in spite of his misery absolutely refused to take the half-gramme raspberry sundae which she pressed upon him. In the end she persuaded him, much against his will, to fly over to Amsterdam to see the Semi-Demi-Finals of the Women’s Heavyweight Wrestling Championship. “Talking? But what about?” Walking and talking–that seemed a very odd way of spending an afternoon. “I meant, alone for talking,” he mumbled. “But, Bernard, we shall be alone all night.”īernard blushed and looked away. Land on the top of Skiddaw and walk for a couple of hours in the heather. “Then what’s time for?” asked Lenina in some astonishment.Īpparently, for going walks in the Lake District for that was what he now proposed. Andrew’s? But again, no: Bernard considered that Electro-magnetic Golf was a waste of time. Then what about a round of Electro-magnetic Golf at St. But Bernard thought there would be too much of a crowd. Lenina had suggested a swim at Toquay Country Club followed by dinner at the Oxford Union. The first afternoon they went out together was particularly fine. (Apart, of course, from going to bed: but one couldn’t do that all the time.) Yes, what was there? Precious little. For what was there that one could do in private. Which meant, in practice, not doing anything at all. That mania, to start with, for doing things in private. Pretty harmless, perhaps but also pretty disquieting. However,” he added consolingly, “I think he’s pretty harmless.” Otherwise the Director would never have kept him. Luckily for him, he’s pretty good at his job. “Some men are almost rhinoceroses they don’t respond properly to conditioning. “You can’t teach a rhinoceros tricks,” he had explained in his brief and vigorous style. But Henry, with whom, one evening when they were in bed together, Lenina had rather anxiously discussed her new lover, Henry had compared poor Bernard to a rhinoceros. “Alcohol in his blood-surrogate,” was Fanny’s explanation of every eccentricity. And yet, so unique also was Bernard’s oddness that she had hesitated to take it, had actually thought of risking the Pole again with funny old Benito. As an Alpha-Plus psychologist, Bernard was one of the few men she knew entitled to a permit. Not more than half a dozen people in the whole Centre had ever been inside a Savage Reservation. Moreover, for at least three days of that week they would be in the Savage Reservation. The prospect of flying West again, and for a whole week, was very inviting. Anyhow, it was of absolutely no importance. And even then, how inadequately! A cheap week-end in New York–had it been with Jean-Jacques Habibullah or Bokanovsky Jones? She couldn’t remember. Added to which, she had only been to America once before. No, decidedly she couldn’t face the North Pole again. Nothing to do, and the hotel too hopelessly old-fashioned–no television laid on in the bedrooms, no scent organ, only the most putrid synthetic music, and not more than twenty-five Escalator-Squash Courts for over two hundred guests. The trouble was that she knew the North Pole, had been there with George Edzel only last summer, and what was more, found it pretty grim. So odd, indeed, that in the course of the succeeding weeks she had wondered more than once whether she shouldn’t change her mind about the New Mexico holiday, and go instead to the North Pole with Benito Hoover. ODD, ODD, odd, was Lenina’s verdict on Bernard Marx.
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