Vile Bodies

In this short chapter comprised entirely of dialogue, Adam and Nina have a conversation over the telephone. Adam tells Nina that he thinks the Major is a sham and that they can’t be married because Adam still hasn’t received his money. Nina is unhappy. Later, she rings him up again and tells him she is going to marry Ginger. Adam is furious and says he never wants to see her again.

Adam, still stinging from loss, goes to visit Agatha in the hospital. The Matron warns Adam not to excite the patient. Agatha is sluggish from her hospital stay but tells Adam to fix a drink from the stash she has hidden in one of the cabinets. They gossip, and Agatha is depressed to learn that many party regulars are moving away or getting married. She says she has disorienting dreams about her car crash. Soon Miles arrives with some records and Agatha tells him to pull out the phonograph from under the bed. Soon a whole party of people arrive at the nursing home, including Nina. The nurses are under strict orders not to allow parties but are easily bribed with alcohol and a promise that they will be mentioned in Miles’s next Mr. Chatterbox column.

Adam implores Nina to meet him for dinner and Nina agrees, admitting to the practical reality of Ginger’s money but also to her fondness for Adam. Soon, Agatha shows signs of delusional hallucinations, and the Matron kicks the partygoers out of the nursing home.

At Shepheard’s, where Lottie mentions a man coming by about money, Adam meets Nina for dinner and Nina stays over. They express a longing and an unhappiness neither can articulate. The next morning, Lottie asks Adam to settle his bill for just over seventy-six pounds and has him sit down and fill out the check immediately, though he knows it is for money he does not have.

Ginger comes to Shepheard’s, furious that Nina stayed with Adam the previous night. In his witless, inarticulate way, Ginger demands that Adam stay away from Nina. He admits to being smitten with Nina, to calling her up several times a day and to carrying her picture around with him when he was abroad. He points out that he has money, while Adam is broke. In anger, Adam “sells” Nina to Ginger for the price of his bill at Shepheard’s, terms to which the crass Ginger agrees after some haggling. Adam calls Nina to tell her the arrangement. Affectionately, she calls him a cad.

Lottie remembers that the man who came by about money was the Major, and Adam immediately phones Nina to tell her this latest reversal of his fortunes. However, she informs him that she and Ginger were married that morning.

On Nina and Ginger’s honeymoon, Ginger struggles to remember lines from Shakespeare’s Henry V (“this scepter'd isle”) as he tries to express his feelings about the English landscape as viewed from an airplane (256). Nina sees only signs of ugly modernity and says she thinks she might be sick. In the meantime, Agatha’s delusions increase while she is sedated in her hospital bed. She dies soon after.

Colonel Blount slumbers in his room as his housekeepers prepare Doubting Hall for Nina and Ginger’s Christmas Eve arrival. When Blount awakes, he is in his usual confused state, first remembering and then forgetting that his daughter has been married. He is, however, pleased to remember that Ginger comes from money. When Nina arrives, however, it is with Adam, whom the confused Blount is happy to accept as Ginger. Ginger’s regiment has called him up on account of impending war.

Nina mentions how awkward her honeymoon with Ginger was, and Adam mentions that virtually no one came to Agatha’s funeral. Miles has left the country. The neighboring rector stops by and is scandalized to see Adam pretending to be Ginger. They gather in a common room to see a private screening of Colonel Blount’s film. The film is poorly made and poorly presented, filmed as a talkie but with no sound apparatus. Soon, the electrical circuit fails, and Doubting Hall is thrown into darkness.

The family spends a peaceful Christmas together, exchanging gifts, attending church, and making a routine of visiting neighbors, all of whom accept Adam as if he were Ginger. The only thing most people remember about Ginger is that he was fond of torturing cats. Following Christmas tradition, the landowners visit the servants’ quarters to admire the decorations, hand out gifts, and drink wine. Relaxing later that afternoon, the Colonel and his family all express warm wishes to one another under false pretenses. Blount asks Adam if he can get two thousand dollars to compensate for the losses he has taken on his film venture, but before Adam can respond, the Rector stops by again to declare that a news bulletin has announced that England is at war.

This is the only chapter in the novel to have a title instead of a chapter number. Adam is a soldier in the war. Sitting in a desolate landscape, he reads an update from Nina informing him that she’s going to have a baby of uncertain fatherhood. Ginger is in a London military office with Nina. Doubting Hall is now a wartime hospital, and everyone in London is under orders to sleep in gas masks. In the darkness, a figure approaches, holding a flamethrower. Adam prepares a “Huxdane-Halley bomb,” a fictional chemical weapon that disperses leprosy, but discovers the figure is the Major, who informs Adam he’s now a General. Both men are alone, having lost their fellow soldiers in the fighting. They both acknowledge that the 35 thousand pounds the General owes Adam is not worth very much anymore, and the General writes a check for it. They retreat into the General’s broken-down military vehicle, where they meet a young woman named Chastity (one of Melrose Ape’s singing “angels”). Chastity describes her wartime experience of being passed around as a refugee as akin to attending a series of pre-war social events. Together, the three of them drink champagne and Adam falls asleep. Nearby, the war rages on.