Bureaucracy -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Satire; Science fiction
The same types of people were in the train who had been in it on the
Monday morning in May which is described in the opening chapter of this
work. The same types of people always are in tube trains (except on the
air-raid nights of the Great War, when a new and less self-contained
type was introduced). But they were the same with a difference: it was
as if some tiny wind had stirred and ruffled the face of sleeping
waters. In some cases the only difference was a puzzled, half-awakened,
rather fretful look, where had been peace. This was to be observed in
the faces of the impassive shopping women. Still they sat and gazed, but
with a difference. Now and then a little shiver of something almost like
a thought would flicker over the calm, observing, roving eyes, which
would distend a little, and darken with a faint annoyance and fear. Then
it would pass, and leave the waters as still as death again; but it had
been there. And it was quite certain there were fewer of these
ruminating ladies. Some had perhaps died of the Mind Training Course, of
trying to use their brains. (They say that some poor unfortunates who
have never known the touch of soap and water on their bodies die of
their first bath on being brought into hospital: so these.) Some who had
been in the ruminating category six months ago were now reading papers.
Some others, who still gazed at their fellows, gazed in a different
manner; they would look intently at someone for half a minute, then look
away, and their lips would move, and it was apparent that they were, not
saying their prayers, but trying to repeat to themselves every detail of
what they had seen. For this was part of the Government Mind Training
Course (observation and accuracy). And one large and cow-like lady with
a shopping-bag containing circulating library books and other
commodities said to her companion, in Kitty Grammont's hearing, two
things that accorded strangely with her aspect.
"I couldn't get anything worth reading out of the library to-day--they
hadn't got any of the ones I'd ordered. These look quite silly, I'm
sure. There aren't many good books written, do you think?"
Doubtful she was, and questioning: but still, she had used the word
"good" and applied it to a book, as she might have to butter, or a
housemaid, or a hat, implying a possible, though still dimly discerned,
difference between one book and another. And presently she said a
stranger thing.
"What," she enquired, "do you think about the state of things between
Bavaria and Prussia? Relations to-day seemed more strained than ever, I
thought."
Her companion could not be said to rise to this; she replied merely
(possibly having a little missed the drift of the unusual question) that
in her view relations were very often a nuisance, and exhausting. So the
subject was a little diverted; it went off, in fact, on to
sisters-in-law; but still it had been raised.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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