Читать книгу What Not - Macaulay Rose - Страница 7

Oxford Circus. The hub of the world, where seething mobs fought on the platform like wild beasts. Piccadilly Circus. Lucky people, thought Ivy Delmer, who got out there, all among gaiety and theatres. Trafalgar Square. There naval officers got out, to visit the Admiralty, or the Nelson Column. Charing Cross. There people had got out during the Great War, to go and help the War Office or the Ministry of Munitions to run the business. So much help, so much energy, so many hotels.... And now there were more than ever, because so much needed doing, and hotels are the means heaven has given us to do it with.

At Charing Cross Ivy Delmer and Kitty Grammont got out, for, without specifying the hotel where the Ministry of Brains carried on its labours, it may be mentioned without indiscretion that it was within a walk of Charing Cross.

Miss Grammont and Miss Delmer walked there, Miss Delmer well ahead and hurrying, because to her it seemed late, Miss Grammont behind and sauntering because to her it seemed superfluously early. The Ministry daily day began at 9.30, and it was only 9.40 now.

The summer morning was glittering on the river like laughter. A foolish thing it seemed, to be going into an hotel on a summer morning, to be sitting down at a government desk laden with government files, taking a government pen (which was never a relief, only a not-exactly) and writing pamphlets, or answers to letters which, if left long enough, would surely answer themselves, as is the way of letters, and all to improve the Brains of the Nation. Bother the Brains of the Nation, thought Miss Grammont, only she used a stronger word, as was the custom in what Mrs. Delmer called her unfortunate family. Black doubt sometimes smote her as to not so much the efficacy of the work of her Department as its desirability if ever it should be perfectly accomplished. Did brains matter so greatly after all? Were the clever happier than the fools? Miss Grammont, whose university career had been a brilliant intellectual adventure, felt competent to speak for both these types of humanity. She knew herself to be happier when playing the fool than when exerting her highly efficient brain; the lunatic-asylum touch gave her more joy than the studious, and she wore learning like a cap and bells. But stupidity was, of course, a bore. It must, of course, be mitigated, if possible. And anyhow the object of the Ministry of Brains was not to make people happy (that could be left to the Directorate of Entertainments), nor to make them good (that was up to the Church, now, to the great benefit of both, divorced from the State), but to further social progress and avert another Great War.

Miss Grammont yawned, because the day was yet so young, and followed Miss Delmer up the steps of the hotel.