I Like It Here

I LIKE IT HERE
a novel
by
KINGSLEY AMIS


1
THE DEPORTATION ORDER arrived one clear, bright morning early in April.
“Owen?” the telegraph boy asked. “Garret Owen?”
“More or less,” Garnet Bowen told him, feeling the bulk of the envelope fearfully. It could mean the first step on the road towards a sum of money. On the other hand it could be some newly-devised kind of recall to the colours. “Thank you.”
Bowen, whose large and well-made frame blended with an air of inefficiency, started reading. Without preamble he was informed that the idea was excellent and he was to go ahead. He had to read to the end and scratch his thinly-haired head a lot before he saw just where excellence was being imputed. Last month, drinking with the representative of an opulent American magazine, he had helped the talk along by describing the new kind of travel article he had pretended to think desirable. And now some misinformed, progressive and well-intentioned fathead in New York had taken him up on it. He winced when he saw the size of the fee offered. Well, that finished it. He would have to go now.
Trying to smile, he hurried into the kitchen where his wife, a pretty little dark woman with strong hands and big wondering eyes, was putting a protesting child into its coat to the accompaniment of a song being sung very loudly and badly by Frank Sinatra. The noise was coming through an extension loudspeaker on the wall.
“There’s some more money we can have,” Bowen bawled.
“Sorry, can’t hear with this row. Oh, do stand still, Sandra.”
Bowen went back to the front of the house, no very great distance, and turned off the gramophone. “You came, you saw, you conquered me,” Sinatra sang. “When you did that to me I knew somehow th—” You tell us how, a part of Bowen’s mind recommended. Another part was reflecting that to cut Sinatra off in mid-phoneme was not such uproarious fun as it was with the men who did the religion at five to ten on the wireless, but it was nice all the same. It was only a pity that Sinatra could never know.
In the kitchen once more, Bowen read the telegram aloud. As he did so he began quailing internally. It had all started when, mellowed by the acceptance of a B.B.C. script and the small consequent celebration, he had let his wife reveal how much she wanted to go abroad that summer and how much good it would do them all according to her. Her mother would put up a good whack of the money, which could be recouped out of articles inspired by first-hand acquaintance with foreign matters. And getting right away from London would give him the chance to write that play. Until a couple of years ago Bowen had been supposed to be a novelist who was keeping himself and his family going on the proceeds of journalism, wireless talks and a bit of lecturing. In the last six months or so he had started being supposed to be a dramatist who was keeping himself and his family going by the same means. He had never really supposed himself to be much more than a journalist, wireless talker and occasional lecturer. But his wife disagreed.
“Well, that’s fine,” Bowen now informed her at the end of his recital. “We can do it easily now, especially if we don’t take the car.” There was something fearful about having a car abroad. It would make things happen in more abundance and more quickly.
“Oh, I think we should now Mummy’s offered it, and it’ll be so useful with the children. We can just come and go as we please. I wish you’d take some lessons, though, and get your licence. It’d be such a help if you could relieve me on long trips. Won’t you?”
“Well, I’d rather not, dear, if you could possibly manage on your own.” He had had enough experience at the wheel during his Army service to fill him with ever-renewed surprise that vehicles usually overtook one another without colliding with anything, and a little incident on the Nijmegen road one night in 1945, involving his own jeep and an unlighted lorry, could still make him whimper to himself. “I’ll give a hand with the children, take them off your shoulders a bit.”
“Mind you do, now. Well, where shall we go? Somewhere hot.”
“Yes, somewhere hot. And where there’s a lot of wine. What do you think? France?”
“Well, not those mountains we went to that time. What were they exactly?”
“The Vosges. No, not there. By the sea somewhere.”
“Yes, but it’s got to be really hot. Does it get hot in France?”
“In the South it does.” The word Antibes flared across the dark vault of his mind, quickly followed by another, shorter word. “But it’s very expensive there, you know. All the rich people go.”
“Yes, I know. Well, what do you suggest?”
“There’s Spain, of course. But then there’s all that filthy bullfighting to cope with. I don’t really fancy that, I must say.”
“We needn’t go to it, need we ?” she asked him. “Anyway, is it cheap? That’s the main thing.”
“I think it is. But a lot of awful craps go to Spain. And all the Spaniards are supposed to be proud all the time.”
“What about Italy?”
“All those rotten old churches and museums and art galleries.”
“There’s no need to decide now, we’ll think of a place. Look, I must take this creature out before she gets intolerable. Are you going in?”
“Yes, I’m having lunch with Bennie Hyman.”
“Oh? Good job I asked you.”
“I thought I told you last night.”
“Well, you didn’t. And for goodness’ sake, Garnet, call in and pick up those shoes. The heels on the pair you’ve got on are right down. They’ll be beyond repair if you keep on wearing them in that state.”
“All right, darling. See you about tea-time.” Bowen went up and pinched the ear of his daughter, who growled at him. “Same to you, chum. You wait till you