by Brian Aldiss
Punctually at ten o’clock, only shortly after Clement had arrived, his bell buzzed, and he admitted his first client into the tiny waiting room. Clement crossed to the inner door and ushered into his sanctum a plump cheerful man in his early eighties, who entered the room clutching a stick in one hand and a string shopping bag in the other, his head held high in order to see through thick glasses.
‘How are you, Clement?’ the newcomer said. He stomped here and there about the room, laid down his stick and shopping bag on the couch, peered out of the window, commented on this and that, admired Clement’s gloomy Piranesi print as he had often done before, finally coming to rest in the armchair by the electric fire and saying, with his habitual optimistic air, ‘Things much as ever?’
Captain Charles Parr was the oldest and most faithful of all Clement’s clients, a record tacitly acknowledged between them by the captain’s familiar use of Clement’s Christian name. He had been consulting Clement since the mid-seventies, with intermissions only for Clement’s or his own excursions abroad.
‘Much as ever,’ Clement now replied. ‘And with you? When did you get back from India?’
‘Just yesterday. Terribly sorry to be back here. Bombay was as pleasant as always.’ He launched into an enthusiastic account of his trip, to which Clement listened without giving it his complete attention. Captain Parr’s history was no stranger than that of many others; yet it was of interest. His endorsement of Bombay, a city from which other Western visitors often recoiled in horror, was of a piece with his boyish outlook on life, which had survived eighty years of stress.
One of Captain Parr’s most admirable traits was his openness to experience. He had begun life humbly, one of a large family brought up in the slums of Pimlico. Getting work in the offices of a minor shipping line, he had spent his pre-war years of adolescence holidaying in Belgium and Holland. The shipping line had allowed him discount fares over to Zeebrugge, and there he had cycled about the Lowlands, picking up fluent Flemish. One day, on the ferry returning to Harwich, he had encountered an Indian lady in some trouble, and, with his knowledge of the intricacies of immigration regulations, had been able to help her and her father. They had invited him to visit them, an invitation the youthful Parr had accepted, but the war came along and put a stop to the friendship.
The war was the making of Charles Parr. The number of Englishmen who could speak Flemish was small. He volunteered for service and, after the Nazis invaded the Netherlands and Belgium, was made an officer in the SOE. From London, he helped conduct the operation which airdropped secret agents into Holland. He also went twice to wartime Holland himself, on one occasion getting captured, escaping only by shooting two of the enemy and returning to England in a stolen fishing boat.
Clement had never discovered when, if ever, Captain Parr had left the secret service. After the war, however, he had become a travel writer and journalist, ostensibly to see more of the world, possibly as a cover. Shortly after India gained its independence, he was in the Indian Embassy to make some travel arrangements, where he met Sushila, the Indian lady he had helped some years earlier. They fell in love and married within a few weeks.
The newly married Parrs settled in Lathbury Road in North Oxford, and there raised two sons and a daughter. Captain Parr, however, was often away on his mysterious trips, which took him to the Far East, the Antarctic and elsewhere. On his return to Oxford, he was always united with his family and with Clement Winter’s armchair. He had discovered, however, that Sushila’s relations in Bombay were as prosperous as they were amiable, and often appeared to spend more of the year with them than with his wife in North Oxford.
Sushila left him abruptly in the early eighties, when the three children were adult, to go and live with a fox-hunting stockbroker in Gloucestershire. But Charles Parr, who quarrelled with no one, took his wife’s dereliction in good part, remained friendly with her, became chummy with the fox-hunting stockbroker, and returned regularly to Clement’s chair, sometimes bringing with him the present of a Gloucestershire pheasant. He had also become friendly with Sheila and Joseph.
And why did he return regularly to Clement’s chair? It was a question Clement often asked himself about his oldest client. Of course, old habits were hard to break. Captain Parr had nothing particular on his mind; he perhaps enjoyed the chance to talk, being somewhat lonelier than he would ever care to admit.
‘How’s your book getting on?’ the captain asked now, companionably. Clement replied with a few generalities, reflecting that there was, after all, something on the other’s mind, the subject which had first drawn him into Clement’s orbit. His wartime operations were known as Operation North Pole; the Germans having acquired knowledge of British codes, every agent Captain Parr’s organization parachuted into Holland had been captured and often shot by the Wehrmacht on landing. It was this – rather than the two soldiers he had had to kill in the line of duty – which occasionally preyed on the captain’s mind, and drove him into reminiscence.
The prescribed hour was drawing to a close when the captain said, ‘Look, Clement, I know I owe you for a few sessions. I’m afraid I can’t pay up until I get a couple of articles published in the States.’
‘Don’t leave it hanging about too long.’
Captain Parr heaved himself out of the armchair and collected up his belongings in a brisk way. ‘I’m sorry about your brother’s death, by the way, Clement. He was a bit of a blighter, your brother, but we got on well. He presented me with a copy of his dirty book, Eastern Erections, or whatever it was called. He was another Far East buff, although he didn’t exactly share my passion for India. It was funny how he completely changed during the last few months of his life, wasn’t it?’
Not wishing to admit that this remark took him unawares, Clement turned towards his desk and murmured, ‘In what way do you think he changed?’
‘I’m sure you as an analyst noticed the difference. He became much more contented. There was a whole lot of Jungian stuff he spouted to me, the last evening we spent together. Joe set more store by that sort of thing than I do.’
Clement said nothing, and the captain rattled on in his cheerful way, ‘I rather liked his girl friend, too, didn’t you? What was her name?’
‘Lucy.’
‘That’s it, Lucy. Very attractive girl, very vital. She knew a lot about the thing Joe went through – revelation, he called it. I got the impression they had plenty of sex. Joe was a bit of a randy bastard, wasn’t he? What’s happened to Lucy now? I’d quite like to see her again. She must miss Joe a lot. It was rather sudden, wasn’t it? His death, I mean. Well, mustn’t keep you, Clement, old boy. See you next week.’
He waved his stick in an authoritative way, his gesture of goodbye, only to pause in the doorway. Diving one hand into his string bag, he came up with a little bundle, wrapped in greaseproof paper, which he pressed into Clement’s hand.
‘I brought you a present from Bombay, old boy.’
Clement saw him out, smiling, and clutching a dozen spiced papadoms.
He went back into the inner room to phone Lucy Traill.
16
Clement entered the hallway of his house to find a suitcase standing there.
The time was just after five, and, as it was raining, he had taken a taxi home from King Edward Street. The rain, slight at first, no more than a whisper round the city, had persisted, gradually raising its voice, as roofs of colleges, pavements, and multitudinous gutters added their liquid commentary, until water everywhere was pouring into the many throats of the Isis and Cherwell in a continuous shout. Clement didn’t like noise or wet; he phoned Luxicars to drive him home.
His mind was so taken up with thoughts of a College meeting he had to attend that evening that he allowed the suitcase little attention. At first assuming without great surprise that Michelin had returned, he was almost past it when he realized it belonged to Sheila, although it was not one of her special green Green Mouth cases.
‘Sheila!�
�� he called.
She came immediately out of the living room as if she had been waiting for him. She was dressed in what he thought of as her London clothes, a rather pretentious new costume consisting of a deep blue wool wrap top over a blouse and emphatic gabardine trousers, with a mock tortoiseshell necklace wrapped twice about her neck. Her face was strained and anxious.
‘Clem, I don’t want you to say anything. I’m going. I’m leaving. Please don’t say anything. I can’t explain. I don’t want to hurt you, but this has to be.’
‘It’s raining.’
‘That’s got nothing to do with it. Please don’t try to stop me. I don’t like doing this.’
They stared at each other.
‘Do you mean – you’re leaving me for another man?’
‘Don’t ask me questions. It’s all over, Clem. I can’t help it.’
‘Is it that fellow Arthur Hernandez?’
She hesitated, as if contemplating a lie, and then said, ‘He gets into Heathrow early tomorrow morning. I’m going to meet him.’
He felt himself to be quite calm, chiefly because he could not believe what he heard. Pushing past her, he walked into their living room and set down on the table the little greasy package Captain Parr had given him. Then he turned to her again – she had followed him in.
‘You’re trying to tell me you’re leaving me for that little wretch you met in Boston?’
‘I’ve known him for some time. We’re terribly compatible. I don’t have to explain anything to you.’
‘Has this got to do with Michelin?’
‘Of course not. I loved her and I’m sorry she has cleared off. You’ll have to look after yourself. A car’s coming for me.’
‘Now you’re clearing off.’ He found he had difficulty swallowing. ‘This is a delusion. It’s part of your fantasy life, Sheila. You want to be Green Mouth all the time, and it can’t be done.’
‘I thought you’d say something like that.’ She sounded miserable. ‘You were bound to say something like that, weren’t you? That’s why I will not discuss the matter with you. There’s plenty of money in the bank; you won’t go short.’
With trembling hands, Clement unwrapped the papadoms and held the package out to his wife.
‘Would you like one?’
As she shook her head, he said, looking down, ‘Please don’t leave me. You’re so dear to me. You always have been, ever since we met. Who’ll find you as dear as I do? There’s so much stored between us, stored up against winter and bad weather … Our relationship has been so intense – well, I thought so – to break it now would injure you as well as me.’
He bit one of the papadoms and tried to chew it.
‘Don’t be a fool, Clement, those things aren’t cooked. I have to do this. I’m not your little lost girl any more. I’m independent. I want to live, be free – I’m just sick of our relationship. I want to see something of the world, travel, meet new people. Put those disgusting things down.’
‘You know I don’t like Indian food.’ He put the bitten papadom down and removed the piece he had chewed into his handkerchief. She looked on, unmoving, in contempt. ‘Sheila, we know what happiness is – let’s not lose it.’ He spat into the handkerchief.
‘I’m trapped. I feel trapped. I want to get away and meet new people.’
‘Perhaps it would be useless to tell you that you really don’t.’ He looked at her searchingly. ‘You’re happier in your fantasy world. You just have to decide where its boundaries lie. I know I have many deficiencies, Sheila; I’m all too aware of them, but by now you are used to them – hardened to them – and against them you must set the fact that I love you as much as ever I did – no, that really we love each other as much as ever. It’s a miracle, and it is real. Ours is the most enormous luck. You’re my life. Shall I tell you how eagerly I open my eyes in the morning to see your face again, how I miss you if—’
‘No, you shan’t tell me. You’re always telling me things. I knew it would be like this. I should have left before you returned, but I wanted to do the decent thing. I couldn’t just leave a note like that bitch Michelin.’ She glared at him from her position of immobility as he paced about the room. ‘To hell with it, to hell with you, you and your claims on me. I want to be free, to be my own self for once—’
‘You mean you want to go off with that seedy little Spaniard!’
‘All right, call him names. Art’s American, anyway, not Spanish. Art has capabilities you’ve never dreamed of. Look at you – you’re more interested in your dead brother than you are in me. That’s what you like, you feel safe dealing with the dead. Your whole life you’ve kept people at arm’s length. You’ve kept me at arm’s length—’
‘Sheila, careful, some words can destroy a marriage.’
‘So can some silences. Now I’m speaking out. This is my turn, at last. Art is a wonderful talker, just as he’s a wonderful lover. Yes, I am going to go off with him, to be an equal partner. He’s flying over to get me. I’m going to escape at last from under your wing, if you want to know – rejoice in being a free woman.’
He sank down on the arm of the chair during this speech but, in his pain, immediately stood up again.
‘Oh, it’s being a free woman, is it? You’ve been talking to Maureen too much. This is her idea. She dominates you far more than I do. Your problem’s not me or this Spaniard, it’s feminism. Can’t you see that we’ve got a good equal partnership here? Don’t let all the Maureens in the world persuade you otherwise.’
Her face was dark. ‘You keep bringing Maureen into the conversation. Don’t think I don’t know you had an affair with her, just when I was at my most wretched. What right have you got to criticize me?’
‘That was ages ago, best forgotten.’ Hostility was naked between them now. The swords were out. They were on the battlefield.
‘Well, I haven’t forgotten it. You do what you like now – and I’m going to do what I like.’
‘If you leave here now, you never come back! I warn you.’
‘I don’t want to come back. I’m sick of the damned place, sick of Oxford, sick of you!’
‘And I’m glad you’re going!’
The front doorbell rang, signalling from another world.
‘Don’t answer it,’ Clement said. ‘Bugger them.’
‘Shut up,’ Sheila said. She went through to the front door, and in a moment Cheri Stranks was in the living room with them, smiling and silently confused, pretty as a peacemaker and scenting blood in the air.
‘I’m sorry, do tell me if it isn’t convenient. I didn’t mean to interrupt anything. Are you going away?’
‘Just for the weekend,’ Clement said, shooting a glance at Sheila. ‘Come in, come in. How are you keeping, Cheri? No signs of the baby yet?’
‘We’re going to London,’ Sheila said, with a ferocious look at her husband, as if adding under her breath, ‘And you’re going to hell.’
‘Oh, I expect you’re going to the opera,’ Cheri said. ‘I thought I’d just drop in and see you.’ She gestured to the road, where the blue Zastava Caribbean stood out in the rain. ‘Sorry to butt in. I wondered if I could help in any way, really in any way at all. Arthur told me you’d lost your housekeeper. Can I give a hand? I was passing this way.’
‘Thanks very much, but—’ Clement began, when Sheila cut him off, moving forcibly in front of him and saying, as she took Cheri’s arm, ‘That’s very kind. Very kind. We are in a bit of a pickle, as it happens. The surface of the pool hasn’t been skimmed today – that was always Michelin’s morning job. And I’m afraid there’s a stack of washing-up. If you could help …’
She manoeuvred the younger woman out to the back, shut the door on her, and returned, picking up a brown wool coat from an armchair, throwing it across her arm in a business-like way.
‘There you are. There’s someone else to see to all your needs. You always land on your feet, don’t you, Clem? Now I’m off. A car will be round at any moment.
I think I hear it now.’
He caught her arm. ‘I love you, Sheila, please don’t go. He’s not worth it.’
‘He’s worth it to me, and that’s all that matters.’
‘But you don’t know,’ he said desperately.
‘I’m going to find out,’ she said, with a kind of grim gaiety, but he plunged on. ‘Listen, you are always pretending to everyone that you had a happy childhood. I never contradict you, do I? I know how you live in this fantasy world. Well, you’ll smash it all up if you aren’t careful, and then you may not like reality when it hits you.’
‘I’m not on your couch any more, and I can look after myself. I’m not one of your fucking sick, though you may like to think it.’
There was a car at the door, and the rain was stopping.
‘I didn’t mean that, Sheila. Please don’t go, please don’t leave me!’
She had opened the front door. A uniformed chauffeur was approaching up the path. She snatched up her suitcase, but he smiled professionally and took it from her. She walked down the path behind him, not looking back. The rain petered out. Eaves were dripping. Alice Farrer appeared in her front garden and pretended to prune something. The suitcase was stowed in the boot of the car, the door was opened for her. She got in. The chauffeur got in. The car moved forward down Rawlinson Road. He stood there in the doorway, staring, hoping she would wave. She did not wave.