by Brian Aldiss
‘No. You didn’t. You are too old. I am too. Old.’ She took a small sip from her glass; the wickerwork chair creaked as she moved. ‘I shall become more old. The mornings … it’s in the mornings …’
A silence fell. She sighed and smiled at her grandson.
‘So what’s this book all about, Elizabeth?’
‘I told you. It is a … it’s a record of a shattered … a somewhat shattered life. The English don’t understand … they don’t understand the enormous … What happened in Europe. At all.’
‘I see … No, perhaps we don’t. I’m sure there’s much in what … in what you say.’ You nodded then, vaguely upset that you could find nothing more exciting than agreement to offer her. You knew her for an intelligent woman. You found, in your need to meet with your grandmother, that you were almost imitating her way of speech.
‘A book by my contemp … my contemporary, G. F. Stridsberg – Franzi, she calls herself. My Lives. No, no, My Five Lives. You read it must. Perhaps you people don’t any more. Don’t read, I mean.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Then read My Five Lives. In order to stand Europe … understand Europe. Wonderful, various – and the Balkans … Most interesting. The English know nothing. Ignorant … of such matters, nothing.’ She took another sip of her wine.
‘We are an island race, I must admit, and therefore insular.’ Her lecture made you gloomy – her lecture and the truth of it.
‘I don’t care for the place. I like … like Italy. Venice.’ She closed her mouth and clamped her shallow jaw shut, to gaze out with a blurred, hazel gaze, at the canal and the waters beyond. ‘Not to stay, of course. But to, what is it, visitair … to visit. I miss my cats.’
‘Cats really have no nationality.’
She asked after Abby’s legacy, but you had no news on that to offer.
You sipped your wine. In the silence that followed, a snatch of song could be heard from the canal below. ‘Sonia has the part of Isobel in an important production of Measure for Measure,’ you told her. ‘She’s often in films.’
After a while, Elizabeth said, ‘I met her. Ugreši Dubravka. She was passing … just last year … through. And Franzi Stridsberg once. Here. Very smart. Oh, very smart. Now I read John Ruskin. His Stones. You know, of Venice.’
You had nothing to say to that. You reached out and clasped her hand, which lay like a withered leaf on her lap. To your astonishment, Elizabeth immediately broke into song, to sing in a clear, small voice without the hesitations usual to her, ‘And when I grow too old to dream, Your love will live in my heart …’
You were moved. ‘Are you happy here, Elizabeth?’
The wrinkles of her face elasticated themselves. She made a noise like a chuckle. ‘Happiness? That question … That’s a young man’s question.’
‘Aristotle says that happiness must be earned by achievement.’
She was still grinning. ‘Aristotle. I don’t … I know nothing of his thoughts … thoughts on what my life has been, don’t you see? Thwarted. Frustrated. That’s what my life … Oh, well … And married. The Abby. Person you married. Too carnal!’ She blurted these words out. You preferred to ignore them.
‘Don’t your grandchildren – well, doesn’t the thought of them – make you happy?’
‘Why should I? Stephen. Of course I’m glad. The war … you survived the war. But it has affected. The damned war … the wars … affected us all … My chiropodist … my chiropodist comes in an hour’s … just an hour’s time. Now this wretched Cold War. I must rest.’
She reached for a small silver bell on the table beside her chair; she rang it. A musical tinkle sounded. Immediately, the stout elderly attendant appeared by your grandmother’s side.
‘Stewart. Dash it, I forgot your name. It’s Stephen. I’m so … I’m so fragile. Please excuse …’
She ordered her attendant to show you out. You kissed the ivory of your grandmother’s cheek.
Raising her voice, Elizabeth said, ‘Thank you for … Arrivederci, Stephen.’
You were going down her steep winding stair, a little sad.
You believe you loved your grandmother? Yet you said nothing affectionate to her.
I never thought of her as a cold woman, but she seemed so distant, perhaps because of her age.
So how do you feel about this meeting?
Mystified, perhaps. Gran was the bright one in our family. I’m sad about our inability to reach out to each other. I often feel like that – that I am remote; remote by nature.
Do you blame your mother for that?
No, not exactly. It was just that phantom daughter, Valerie, she set between us.
I believed in Valerie. It was near to madness … Perhaps, on reflection, it was less the distancing that affected me than the sorrow; my mother’s sorrow.
Not the war, then?
Sometimes one feels ashamed for surviving when so many were lost.
Perhaps prompted by a slight continued frostiness with Abby, you returned next day at a suitable hour to see your grandmother again. Again the stinks of the Calle Galina greeted you.
Elizabeth was adjusting dusky, dull red flowers in a bowl, possibly a species of camellia, in what she called her book room. She was wearing a long, silky house coat with wide lapels. Light in the room was dim. The jalousie was closed, filtering the sunlight.
She accepted a kiss before scrutinizing you with a slight smile. ‘You prefer … I cannot think … my company to that of your bride.’
‘I am taking the opportunity to visit you again.’
‘Make love … love to – while the relationship is good – her. Be wise. Enjoy it, the … advantage. Beware. Spiritual. She’s not. I must tell you, Sid …’
At the time, you resented the advice, saying nothing in return.
Elizabeth stood quite still, with her back to the shuttered window, one hand on the table for support, the bowl of flowers before her. There was some resemblance to a portrait by Degas. She was silent, mustering her words, so that when she spoke, she spoke in a rush.
‘In my youth and when I married … married Sidney … I was a prude. Upbringing, in part. Awful. Poor Sidney. Never to see me … well, to be naked. Not completely. Now in age I am chaste. Perforce chaste. Venice, even in Venice – a lewd city as in thing … in Byron’s day. But I find in my mind … in my mind I find … discover that I am depraved. In my mind, the things I think of … Not spiritual …’
‘Are there no young men, Elizabeth …?’ You did not need to complete the sentence.
‘Only once. You are not a prude? Why do people … speak ill of depravity? It gives … when it gives so much pleasure?’
So she had shed her earlier prudishness, at least on the surface.
You rubbed your chin, unsure how to answer.
‘It doesn’t lead to happiness? Is that a valid objection?’
She was stern. ‘Tell … tell me, what does lead to happiness? Inheritance?’ She was thinking of Abby again.
You stood looking at each other across the table. It was not the occasion to trot out Aristotle. Elizabeth had gestured with her free hand, elegant, eloquent, against what was otherwise her stillness in the sweet dim room. It was hard to read her expression in the circumscribed light. Tension ran between you as you responded, trying to find a word of comfort for her, touched by her unexpected revelation.
‘Perhaps something different is required for each individual. Not fame. Not even money. Yet not an absence of fame or money either. Sex. Love. But they, also, can bring their torments. I’d say, Elizabeth, keep depravity in the mind, where it belongs.’
She gave a curt laugh. ‘You don’t know … happen to know a bisexual, a delicate man, suitable … gentle … gentle, genital … willing … Just once? I suppose not.’
‘I don’t, Elizabeth, I’m sorry to say.’
You contemplated each other. Then she dropped her gaze before dropping the subject.
‘Do you care for fuchsias? They droop. So
mewhat.’
Afterwards, you thought with sorrow about what she had been asking you for: a brief escape from her prison.
15
‘I Must Love Abby’
You were walking in Hyde Park, enjoying a cool, late summer’s day. You and Abby had moved into a smart apartment in Leinster Gardens, off the Bayswater Road. The early shine of marriage had worn off; you walked rather soberly, hands clasped behind your back.
This was the day of your thirty-ninth birthday. Abby had given you a light overcoat which you were wearing on your walk. It was undone, and flapped open – rather pleasingly, you thought. Joey and Terry had given you a print by William Hayter, which greatly pleased you. Your sister sent a bottle of brandy. Your parents had presented you with a copy of your father’s newly published book about his life, and life in general, entitled Over the Boundary. You found you were scarcely mentioned in it (‘born 1924’), while Sonia got a good deal of coverage.
You saw a copy of the book for sale in Hatchard’s window in Piccadilly, together with a photograph of your father, his cricket cap at a rakish angle. He was ‘The Sporting Politician’, in journalistic jargon. Martin was now in the shadow Cabinet opposing Douglas-Home’s government; the children of the nation were still benefiting from his attentions and being despatched to distant lands.
You were walking without a limp. You had been to an NHS hospital. Despite other people’s worries, the operation on your leg had gone smoothly. The food had been deplorable but the nursing good: you had soon recovered.
Which was as well, for Abby was four months pregnant. She had had a miscarriage previously: in your depression, you had both turned to Purple Hearts. You sat about a lot, sometimes holding hands. You watched the BBC show, That Was the Week That Was on television, and derived some enjoyment from the Profumo affair. Yet somehow rather less enjoyment of life.
There had been a time before you were married when you and Abby had seen little of each other for almost two years. You had met a young academic called Briony Coates with whom you had an affair. You saw her first of all through an art shop window, buying a set of Cumberland pencils, and were attracted for one of those inscrutable reasons. Perhaps it was something in the way she held her head, or the way her face lit when she smiled.
Briony Coates was small and dark and had a surreal sense of humour. Her brown eyes were often downcast, or half-hidden by a lock of hair, as if to guard her inner self. She taught mythology at the nearby college. She was mild and sensitive and swam almost every day, sun or shower, in a small swimming pool in her widowed mother’s garden in Canongate. Margaret Coates looked like a mouse: she was far from being a mouse. Her married life had been spent in Kenya with her husband, a big game hunter turned game park warden. She liked to talk about spiritual matters. She taught a weekend course in watercolour painting and was no mean painter herself; her oils sold in Bond Street galleries. She and Briony also made ends meet by letting out their first floor to lodgers. Much of Briony’s time was spent reading, astronomy, psychology and mythology being her favourite subjects. While you were with Briony, those subjects attracted you, too.
Briony was calm, affectionate, amusing, and she and Mrs Coates welcomed you into their placid nest. You were free for a short while to move within those circumspect rooms, one of which housed a large Paul Nash watercolour, which hung over the fireplace. The lives of the Coateses were secretive and quiet, yet intense, in a way you found highly attractive. Its spiritual quality was something you thirsted for. Briony told you unexpectedly one day that her father had been injured in the war and had lost an arm, together with other injuries. Her mother, Margaret, had nursed him devotedly. He had died the previous year.
The Coateses, mother and daughter, played music on their ancient gramophone, mainly Wagner. ‘So original,’ said Briony once, after you had been attracted by the Vorspiel of Act 1 of Lohengrin, where the music seemed to emerge from a higher sphere, or from the earth itself. They often spoke of Wagner as a great musician.
‘Wagner is superior to Beethoven, in my opinion,’ said Margaret.
‘Such amazing energy and accomplishment,’ said Briony.
‘I’d never have enough stamina to sit through The Ring,’ said you.
‘It does require endurance,’ said Briony, with a laugh. ‘And why not? After all, I read that Wagner based The Ring Cycle on Aeschylus’s Oresteia.’
‘Mmm,’ you said.
You went away and read Oresteia, wondering at the powerful and majestic figures of a family which bestrode such death and horror.
‘But families are a bit like that …’ said the mild Briony, when the subject came up again, ‘or would like to be. I always admired Clytemnestra. It’s true she is, well, a bit of a monster, but still, well, she has much to put up with.’
‘Not quite the type for Canongate.’ You kissed her.
‘I teach mythology classes. They make you see murder at every turn in the road.’
When Briony acquired a more important post at Durham University, she moved north – and something in you was lost. Her pretentiousness, her gentleness.
Margaret Coates sent you an affectionate letter, inviting you to one of her suppers. You set it aside, forgot it, failed to answer.
You went to see Sonia performing in a John Arden play. Sonia was winning good notices. Her performance in the Arden play won her the lead role in the film Loves of Mrs Meredith. It was a great hit with audiences everywhere; this she made clear when she came to see you. Abby, back in your life, grew to like your sister, as she was inclined to like anyone whose prospects were good. ‘Prospects’ was a word Briony had giggled at. Sonia had met Christine Keeler somewhere at a smart party, which added to her interest in Abby’s eyes. ‘The little slut!’ Sonia had exclaimed, enviously.
Into all these pursuits, and into the pursuit of making money, you entered with some determination. Yet there was a trace of feeling that this eagerness was forced, was ‘put on’, as a garment is put on to cover one’s nudity. Briony, with her serene, nunlike countenance, was hard to forget. You corresponded, but the letters tailed off with time.
The war and its hardships were long past; there had been, not purity, but an integrity about the period, as if the human race, or at least the male portion of it, found its true being only when food was short, when necessity ruled, when lives were in danger, when one lived almost tribally – as if the demands of phylogeny for challenges dominated the trivial needs of ontogeny for a quiet, individual transit through the years.
What did one do about the flaccid routines of peace, when one’s adulthood had been honed in the arts of survival? Regarding that time, of course, one could agree with Aristotle’s definition: doing something one regarded as worthwhile, such as fighting for one’s country, was the source of a ghastly happiness with which peace could not compete.
Moneymaking and marriage were not enough.
Just before your marriage to Abby, Briony had sent you a greetings card. She had written in it, ‘Hope it works. Don’t let it work against you.’ You pretended it was just Briony’s envy speaking; in fact, she knew you better than you would allow yourself to admit.
Possibly even Hilary Montagu in his disillusion had enjoyed the drama of despair. No, you dismissed that speculation as ridiculous; but at least Montagu had reached a fitting, if grim, conclusion. To live on into peacetime inevitably proved an anticlimax.
The intricacies of personal relationships – how insignificant they were. But how much perseverance they required!
There was Abby, so boisterous! And the self-effacing Briony, slipped for ever away into the past, to live her own balanced and inscrutable existence. You came to believe that perhaps humankind’s larger brains had developed, not because of struggles against severe weather, or carnivores, but against other men and tribes of men. The hunt had become a measure of man’s intelligence.
Your attempt to discuss such matters with your male friends met with laughter. ‘Who cares what they did in the Stone
Age?’ But I cared, and regretted my straying from the path of learning.
What was a married man to hunt in peacetime? Undeniably, many of the dealings of Britannia Furnishing were on the shady side, which provided some excitement, but it occurred to you that the Cold War gave politicians on both sides of the Iron Curtain something more interestingly akin to the hunting instinct.
Then there was science, the pursuit of knowledge. It certainly yielded positive rewards. You were interested in the reports of Crick and Watson, who had discovered the double helix, the structure of DNA. The genetic material of humanity and most animals had been revealed. You received an excited letter from Briony about the discovery – a bulletin, nothing more.
You believed that when Francis Crick announced in the pub that he and James Watson had found the secret of life, their joy, their victory, must have been almost unbearable. You looked at a diagram of this remarkable double helix. It was explained that ‘the two sugar-phosphate backbones twist about on the outside with the flat hydrogen-bonded base pairs forming the core’. It took you many years of intermittent study before you could understand even half of it. The discovery represented for you a refinement and triumph of the old hunting instinct.
Abby was unmoved by this remarkable advance in science. Her own prospects were concerned with Lord Lyndhurst’s will. Lyndhurst had left Abby a generous sum of money, but there were anomalies in the will over which lawyers debated, to their own enrichment. Various clauses were contested by Lyndhurst’s widow, Lady Augusta. The resultant legal dispute promised to be a long one.
Slowly, your depression evaporated, or was set aside. Abby received you into her bed again, and once more became pregnant. This time, the pregnancy seemed to be going well. Indeed, even the international situation had improved. Although more and more American troops were being poured into Vietnam it proved to be the one occasion in which the British were not involved. At least President Kennedy had signed the Atmospheric Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. And everyone had been excited when he had recently delivered a peppy speech beside the Berlin Wall. Perhaps there wasn’t going to be a nuclear war after all; perhaps people could die from natural causes.