the crumbs from the rich man’s table saw to that) — and then glanced at him pointedly.
‘You look rather worried, Robert. Bad day?’
Franklin murmured noncommittally. The hours spent trying to detect false clues in the faces of the Spot Bargain announcers had sharpened Judith’s perceptions. He felt a pang of sympathy for the legion of husbands similarly outmatched.
‘Have you been talking to that crazy beatnik again?’
‘Hathaway? As a matter of fact I have. He’s not all that crazy.’ He stepped backwards into the carton, almost spilling his drink. ‘Well, what is this thing? As I’ll be working for the next fifty Sundays to pay for it I’d like to find out.’
He searched the sides, finally located the label. ‘A TV set? Judith, do we need another one? We’ve already got three. Lounge, dining-room and the hand-set. What’s the fourth for?’
‘The guest-room, dear, don’t get so excited. We can’t leave a hand-set in the guest-room, it’s rude. I’m trying to economize, but four TV sets is the bare minimum. All the magazines say so.’
‘And three radios?’ Franklin stared irritably at the carton. ‘If we do ii1vite a guest here how much time is he going to spend alone in his room watching television? Judith, we’ve got to call a halt. It’s not as if these things were free, or even cheap. Anyway, television is a total waste of time. There’s only one programme. It’s ridiculous to have four sets.’
‘Robert, there are four channels.’
‘But only the commercials are different.’ Before Judith could reply the telephone rang. Franklin lifted the kitchen receiver, listened to the gabble of noise that poured from it. At first he wondered whether this was some offbeat prestige commercial, then realized it was Hathaway in a manic swing.
‘Hathaway!’ he shouted back. ‘Relax, for God’s sake! What’s the matter now?’
‘- Doctor, you’ll have to believe me this time. I climbed on to one of the islands with a stroboscope, they’ve got hundreds of high-speed shutters blasting away like machine-guns straight into people’s faces and they can’t see a thing, it’s fantastic! The next big campaign’s going to be cars and TV sets, they’re trying to swing a two-month model change can you imagine it, Doctor, a new car every two months? God Almighty, it’s just—’
Franklin waited impatiently as the five-second commercial break cut in (all telephone calls were free, the length of the commercial extending with range — for long-distance calls the ratio of commercial to conversation was as high as 10:1, the participants desperately trying to get a word in edgeways between the interminable interruptions), but just before it ended he abruptly put the telephone down, then removed the receiver from the cradle.
Judith came over and took his arm. ‘Robert, what’s the matter? You look terribly strained.’
Franklin picked up his drink and walked through into the lounge. ‘It’s just Hathaway. As you say, I’m getting a little too involved with him. He’s starting to prey on my mind.’
He looked at the dark outline of the sign over the supermarket, its red warning lights glowing in the night sky. Blank and nameless, like an area for ever closed-off in an insane mind, what frightened him was its total anonymity.
‘Yet I’m not sure,’ he muttered. ‘So much of what Hathaway says makes sense. These subliminal techniques are the sort of last-ditch attempt you’d expect from an over-capitalized industrial system.’
He waited for Judith to reply, then looked up at her. She stood in the centre of the carpet, hands folded limply, her sharp, intelligent face curiously dull and blunted. He followed her gaze out over the rooftops, then with an effort turned his head and quickly switched on the TV set.
‘Come on,’ he said grimly. ‘Let’s watch television. God, we’re going to need that fourth set.’
A week later Franklin began to compile his inventory. He saw nothing more of Hathaway; as he left the hospital in the evening the familiar scruffy figure was absent. When the first of the explosions sounded dimly around the city and he read of the attempts to sabotage the giant signs he automatically assumed that Hathaway was responsible, but later he heard on a newscast that the detonations had been set off by construction workers excavating foundations.
More of the signs appeared over the rooftops, isolated on the palisaded islands near the suburban shopping centres. Already there were over thirty on the ten-mile route from the hospital, standing shoulder to shoulder over the speeding cars like giant dominoes. Franklin had given up his attempt to avoid looking at them, but the slim possibility that the explosions might be Hathaway’s counter-attack kept his suspicions alive.
He began his inventory after hearing the newscast, and discovered that in the previous fortnight he and Judith had traded in their Car (previous model 2 months old)
2 TV sets (4 months) Power mower (7 months) Electric cooker (5 months) Hair dryer (4 months) Refrigerator (3 months) 2 radios (7 months) Record player (5 months) Cocktail bar (8 months)
Half these purchases had been made by himself, but exactly when he could never recall realizing at the time. The car, for example, he had left in the garage near the hospital to be greased, that evening had signed for the new model as he sat at ‘its wheel, accepting the saleman’s assurance that the depreciation on the two-month trade-in was virtually less than the cost of the grease-job. Ten minutes later, as he sped along the expressway, he suddenly realized that he had bought a new car. Similarly, the TV sets had been replaced by identical models after developing the same irritating interference pattern (curiously, the new sets also displayed the pattern, but as the salesman assured them, this promptly vanished two days later). Not once had he actually decided of his own volition that he wanted something and then gone out to a store and bought it!
He carried the inventory around with him, adding to it as necessary, quietly and without protest analysing these new sales techniques, wondering whether total capitulation might be the only way of defeating them. As long as he kept up even a token resistance, the inflationary growth curve would show a controlled annual ten per cent climb. With that resistance removed, however, it would begin to rocket upwards out of control Driving home from the hospital two months later, he saw one of the signs for the first time.
He was in the 40 m.p.h. lane, unable to keep up with the flood of new cars, and had just passed the second of the three clover-leaves when the traffic half a mile away began to slow down. Hundreds of cars had driven up on to the grass verge, and a crowd was gathering around one of the signs. Two small black figures were climbing up the metal face, and a series of grid-like patterns of light flashed on and off, illuminating the evening air. The patterns were random and broken, as if the sign was being tested for the first time.
Relieved that Hathaway’s suspicions had been completely groundless, Franklin turned off on to the soft shoulder, then walked forward through the spectators as the lights stuttered in their faces. Below, behind the steel palisades around the island, was a large group of police and engineers, craning up at the men scaling the sign a hundred feet over their heads.
Suddenly Franklin stopped, the sense of relief fading instantly. Several of the police on the ground were armed with shotguns, and the two policemen climbing the sign carried submachine-guns slung over their shoulders. They were converging on a third figure, crouched by a switch-box on the penultimate tier, a bearded man in a grimy shirt, a bare knee poking through his jeans.
Hathaway!
Franklin hurried towards the island, the sign hissing and spluttering, fuses blowing by the dozen.
Then the flicker of lights cleared and steadied, blazing out continuously, and together the crowd looked up at the decks of brilliant letters. The phrases, and every combination of them possible, were entirely familiar, and Franklin knew that he had been reading them for weeks as he passed up and down the expressway.
BUY NOW BUY NOW BUY NOW BUY NOW BUY
NEW CAR NOW NEW CAR NOW NEW CAR NOW
YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
Sirens blaring, two patrol cars swung on to the verge through the crowd and plunged across the damp grass. Police spilled from their doors, batons in their hands, and quickly began to force back the crowd. Franklin held his ground as they approached, started to say: ‘Officer, I know the man—’ but the policeman punched him in the chest with the flat of his hand. Winded, he stumbled back among the cars, and leaned helplessly against a fender as the police began to break the windshields, the hapless drivers protesting angrily, those farther back rushing for their vehicles.
The noise fell away when one of the submachine-guns fired a brief roaring burst, then rose in a massive gasp
