Appleby Plays Chicken Read Free

meet a crisis. And that’s bad.’ He paused, and seemed aware that his pupils were looking at him in some perplexity, as if the context from which he was speaking wasn’t at all clear to them. He sat up, conscientiously determined to achieve lucidity. ‘Of course initiations and ordeals are scarcely an American discovery. The authentic American discoveries are very few – although as it happens great importance must be attached to them.’ He paused again, and everybody felt on familiar ground. Pettifor would leave this little conundrum for anyone to chew on who cared to, and go on with his main proposition.
    ‘Aren’t initiations pretty primitive?’ somebody asked vaguely.
    Pettifor nodded. ‘No doubt. But the notion of passing into manhood by enduring a bad half-hour is very general. You get it outside primitive societies just as much as within them. Only it’s not always half an hour. You should put in a little time, my dear Leon, investigating some of our public schools.’ And Pettifor looked round his flock with the slightly wolfish expression one could occasionally detect on his lean features.
    ‘Ian, don’t you agree?’
    ‘My public school was a regular old Belsen, of course.’ Ian Dancer spoke with nonchalant pride. ‘But nothing to my prepper. And we weren’t passing into manhood then.’
    ‘You were passing out of the nursery. It’s another stage at which a brisk injection of confidence is needed.’
    ‘It was brisk, all right. But injection isn’t technically quite the right word. David remembers. He was at the same place.’
    David nodded. ‘Yes – but I don’t recall that we positively competed over what we could take. That seems to me utterly idiotic. Just think of the waste of nervous energy Leon endured before he escaped to civilization for a while. There he was, with his natural aptitude for symbolic logic, or whatever it is. And he had to worry himself half round the bend wondering whether he was as tough as some half-wit in the same rooming house. A rooming house, incidentally, is what college boys live in over there. And our Leon was just another neurotic college boy.’
    ‘If you’re not the most insolent crowd!’ Leon, who was controlling an enormous flagon of cider, passed round the circle, liberally dispensing it. ‘And I don’t remember all that waste of nervous energy. I husbanded it, rather. I knew what I’d need over here. The sweetest of tempers, and what’s called a buoyant nervous tone.’ He paused before Pettifor. ‘How do I rate there, sir?’
    ‘Very creditably, Leon. Alpha-minus-query-minus. And they are certainly a tiresome crowd.’ Pettifor swept the rest of his charges with an appraising glance. Whatever his odd preoccupation tonight, he’d been continuing to follow the talk with some part of his mind. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘they really do seek knowledge of your astounding country. They’re hydroptic for that, you might say, as well as for this endless cider. Tell them…let’s see. Yes – tell them about playing chicken.’

 
     
2
     
    ‘But I’ve seen that! I’ve seen it on the flicks.’ Timothy Dumble announced this triumphantly. ‘It’s precisely this business of proving to yourself that you’re as tough as the other chaps.’
    ‘Is it done with a revolver?’ someone asked. ‘A revolver with one of the six chambers loaded?’
    ‘No. That’s Russian roulette. Chicken is done with cars. You line up a lot of cars facing a sheer drop over a cliff. Then you all drive for the edge, hell-for-leather. The chap who jumps out first is the chicken. It’s very simple.’
    There was a moment’s silence, and then David spoke. ‘What about the cars?’
    ‘Americans have no end of cars – isn’t that so, Leon?’
    ‘Sure. They just can’t pile them over the cliffs fast enough, Timothy.’
    ‘Although I suppose chicken can be played only by the fairly substantial classes. Have you ever played it, Leon?’
    ‘Not that kind, I guess. But