by Brian Aldiss
‘It’s very cosy. You’ve got some good beams.’
‘Bloody things! I’m always banging my nut on them.’
Indeed, there were sturdy beams crossing the ceiling, which was so low that Jeremy ducked his head as he crossed to a drinks cabinet with cut glass panes in its doors. The cabinet stood beside a wide stone hearth, where ashes of a dead fire lay.
Jeremy indicated the fireplace as he was about to take up a bottle of Johnny Walker. ‘It’s cosy enough in the winter. We burn logs; I pinched some of old thing’s elm logs from the field next door. Of course, we don’t need a fire just now. Why hasn’t Verity cleaned the bloody hearth out? Women! I don’t know …’
So extensive seemed his lack of knowledge on this subject that he sighed heavily.
Removing his blazer as if stripping for action, he flung it across a chair. The polo neck sweater was revealed in all its grubby glory. He poured two generous slugs of whisky into the glasses Verity produced. ‘Do you want a nip?’ he asked her.
She shook her head. ‘I’m just getting the supper ready, Jeremy.’
‘See there’s some wine with the chops, will you, dear? There should be a bottle or two of Merlot in the kitchen cupboard,’ he added, with a grin at you. ‘Nothing’s too good for our guest.’
She disappeared without answering. He gave you a wink, as if you were two men indulgently sharing a knowledge of the oddity of the female sex.
‘She calls herself a “chilly mortal”; likes electric fires. I can’t bear the horrible things.’
‘So you don’t have electric fires,’ you said, mildly. The deduction was so obvious, Jeremy did not bother to reply.
‘But you have electric lights,’ you said, pursuing the subject. ‘How are you on smoke alarms, for instance?’
‘Oh, them!’ Jeremy gave a chuckle. ‘Fashion accessories! No, no, you see, Fielding, this is an old house.’ He wagged a finger to make sure the phrase got through. ‘Not likely to catch fire, is it? Stood here for centuries. All stone. Good solid stone.’
‘Except for the beams.’
‘Of course the bloody beams aren’t stone. What do you expect?’
You sat yourself down in what you recognized as an Erko chair, and sipped your whisky. Jeremy remained standing.
‘Tastes awful, does whisky. Think how much of the stuff you could drink if you liked the flavour.’ He made the remark thoughtlessly, as if it was a witticism he had uttered many times before.
‘You get used to it,’ you replied.
‘Here,’ he said in a moment. ‘You’re a geologist of some sort or other. What do you make of this?’
He reached up and took from where it lodged on the top of the drinks cabinet, a skull which you had already noticed. He balanced it in the palm of his hand. The lower jaw was missing, as was a tooth in the upper jaw. Otherwise it was intact, with a sweep of bone curving above the vacant eye sockets.
‘Dug it up in the garden a few years ago. Chap in the pub told me it was a couple of million years old.’
‘A couple of thousand, more like,’ you said, when he handed it to you for inspection.
‘Some poor bugger probably died in the Black Death,’ Jeremy said. He poured himself another tot of Johnny Walker.
‘Not if it was two million years ago.’
You decided to give Jeremy something to consider. ‘Did you ever wonder why skulls survive in the earth so long? It represents an odd case of evolutionary overkill. Just making the skull so strong, nature neglected greatly to enlarge the brains inside. We’re supposed to have large brains; they would have been quite a lot larger if some of the growth energy absorbed in bone growth had gone into the grey matter inside.’
You had appreciated Geldstein’s lectures on Aristotle. Jeremy evidently disliked lectures. He looked at you blankly. ‘If someone whacks you on the head, though …’ He did not follow the supposition through.
‘How often does that happen?’ you asked. ‘Surely preferred methods of attack are to break your leg with a stave, or slice your head off with a sword.’
‘I see. Well, anyhow, I’ve got a thick skull to protect me from these beams. That’s what evolution means to me, old chum.’ He paused. The subject had been dismissed. You visualized a ‘thinking’ cloud above his head saying, ‘What a nutter!’ ‘Why isn’t that bloody supper ready? Now what’s she up to?’
He marched out of the room. You heard him shouting in the kitchen. ‘Get that bloody cat out of here!’ There were noises of what sounded like a shriek. You put the whisky glass down and stood up, undecided. More shouting, footsteps, the clatter of plates smashing on a stone floor. A curse. Going to the hall door, you listened.
Muttered voices: Jeremy’s, angry; Verity’s, defiant.
You were finally summoned. Supper was served in a small back room, its one window looking out on the back garden. Verity had put two lighted candles in china candlesticks on the table. She had a dish of pork chops before her, which she endeavoured to serve. Her hands were trembling so much she dropped her fork. It fell on the floor.
‘Clumsy today, aren’t you?’ said Jeremy reprovingly.
‘Feeling terribly ill, what’s more,’ she said. ‘Ill and unloved, if you must know.’ Dropping the fork on the tablecloth, she covered her spectacles and her eyes with her hands, and burst into tears. ‘Sorry. Oh, sorry. So sorry. So, so sorry …’
Jeremy stood up. ‘Oh, get out, woman! What’s wrong with you? More bloody hysterics!’
‘But she’s really upset –’ you began, in protest.
Verity showed some spirit. She jumped up, shrieking, ‘How I hate you, you fucking bully! I won’t live with you!’ and rushed from the room.
Jeremy clenched a fist, muttering to himself, ‘I’ll give her fucking bully.’
He stood with his head to one side, looking upwards as Verity’s tread sounded on the steps of the open stair. On his face dawned a look of comic resignation, as of one who has weathered this kind of thing often before.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Jeremy. ‘Women! Unmanageable!’ He shook his head. ‘Sorry about that. You have to be patient with them. Well, she’ll be back soon, may as well get on with the meal before the chops get cold, eh, Fielding?’ He gave you a would-be jovial laugh.
Although the chops were succulent enough, you had no appetite for them. Jeremy was telling you of his previous employment, in what he called ‘an amusing Northern town’. You were bothered by a flickering light entering the room from outside. Bored with what your host was saying, you rose when he was punctuating his account with a good pull at his glass of Merlot, and stared out of the window. Beyond what Verity had described as their little woodland garden, a fire was blazing, seeming to gather strength as the world darkened into night.
You exclaimed about it.
‘Remain calm, Fielding! It’s that bloody fool Heath, my neighbour, rot his socks. Fancy setting fire to his dead elms when a wind’s getting up!’
‘Sparks are flying everywhere.’ Indeed, the sparks from the fire were whirling upwards in a fury, starring the sky with their glow. The hot winds carried up with them numerous little fragments of the materials that fed them.
‘Have another chop, old fellow. A few sparks won’t worry us. Let me pour you some more of this Merlot. Pass your glass. As I was telling you, the mayor of this dump – it was rather funny, actually – he turned up unexpectedly and there we were, neither of us with a stitch on …’
He continued with his story. You ceased eating and concentrated on the wine, wondering when you could excuse yourself and begin the walk back to the university. Certainly the wind must be getting up. The loud roaring and crackling was only partly attributable to the nearby bonfire.
When unease got the better of you, you jumped up again to peer out of the window. Jeremy also jumped up and tried to pull the chintz curtain over the window, shouting, ‘Night-time! May as well close down.’
But you tore the curtain away.
‘Christ, Jeremy, your fu
cking roof is on fire!’
‘It can’t be!’ He thrust his great head against the window-pane. The thatch was ablaze in two places, flame shot upwards, smoke billowed down. ‘Jesus Christ! Ring the bloody fire brigade! Quick! I’ll sue that stupid sod Heath for this. I’ll get every penny he ever owned off him!’
‘But Verity–’
‘What about my fucking Jag! I forgot to register it …’
With that, he flung down his table napkin and ran for the front door. For a moment you stood there undecided. You could smell the burning. Then you rushed for the stairs and ran up to the first floor. Choking smoke confronted you, billowing down from the ceiling, where plasterwork had fallen in.
‘Verity! Where are you?’ No response.
A loud crash came from one of the rooms, followed by the crackle of flame consuming something dry. You threw open the nearest door.
It was the main bedroom, stretching, as far as you could gather, from front to back of the cottage. Of the two twin beds, one was already on fire. On the other Verity was sprawled. An oak beam had fallen in and lay in part across the empty bed. The bedclothes were burning fiercely. The heat was intense. A windowpane cracked like a twig snapping.
‘Verity!’
You thought she stirred. It was difficult to see across the room. You waved a hand in front of your face, fruitlessly, in an attempt to clear away the smoke. A mass of flaming thatch fell at your feet. You jumped back, but the fire had to be crossed if you were to get to Verity. Flames were spreading with horrifying rapidity as you hesitated.
So you gave a great yell. You plunged forward through the flame, scattering fragments of burning straw everywhere. A rug by the dressing table, hitherto merely smouldering, burst suddenly into flame.
You reached the bed. You endeavoured to lift Verity. As you did so, you saw, on her bedside table, a bottle of white tablets. The top was off the bottle and some tablets had been spilled by an empty glass. With a mighty effort, you lifted up Verity’s inert body, hefting it over one shoulder. Staggering, you plunged back through the smoke and flame. One of your trouser legs began to burn.
You managed to carry Verity downstairs. You phoned the new hospital in Oxford, you phoned the fire brigade, then you carried her out into the flickering dark of the front garden. Jeremy and his precious Jag were nowhere to be seen. You knelt by Verity on a patch of grass, nursing her head, until an ambulance arrived. Her body was limp. She gave an intermittent shuddering breath.
‘Stay alive, Verity,’ you whispered to her. ‘You mustn’t die, poor darling. You mustn’t die …’
Behind you, the blaze took firmer hold of ‘Nash Villa’. The racket and roar of it all drowned out your pleas to her.
9
Tolstoy Unread
The years seem to pass more quickly as you grow older. Spring, summer, autumn, winter – all blur into one another. You fail to notice the changes about you.
Not until the late eighties, when President Gorbachev was emerging from the Soviet Union to visit Western capitals and in the streets of New York and London, crowds were acclaiming him, calling ‘Gorby! Gorby!’, did you realize you had entered the consumer society. You were then planning to purchase a house.
You received an invitation to address the Institut fur Geologische Wissenschaften in West Berlin. You accepted almost by rote, for a new house was foremost in your mind. That and your mother’s continuing illness.
You had a particular house in mind. It stood not exactly in town, nor in a suburb, rather it was in a conurbation, with open space on either side of it. It stood in a quiet road as regards passing traffic, though not exactly quiet with regard to passing planes overhead, readying themselves to land at London Heathrow. Quite close was what had been a park in Edwardian times, when it had been surrounded by open country. A supermarket now stood within easy walking distance.
A branch of Barclay’s Bank was also close, just a street away. Unlike the shops and a delicatessen surrounding it, the bank remained closed on Sundays, but there was no longer any difficulty in getting your hands on cash to spend; the bank had installed a cash slot in its wall and money was now available twenty-four hours a day, every day of the week. The installation of cash-slots outside banks made the spending of money far easier for everyone, everywhere.
You had been spending money. You had money to spend. You and your wife had accumulated antique and reproduction furniture. She had developed a liking for expensive glassware; the eighteenth century goblets from which you drank your wine were much admired by your many friends. These friends were new friends in the main. They also had possessions they valued. On your dining tables you enjoyed the work of Dublin silversmiths, Italian plates and Swedish candelabra, while on your walls hung, if not costly oils, then original watercolours by the likes of Copley Fielding, Birkett Foster and John Sell Cotman, artists who strove to represent something resembling the real world. In your study you had framed first proofs of G. B. Tiepolo’s Scherzi.
Not that there was anything particularly ostentatious about this mode of life. In no way did it compare with the accounts you received now and then from your sister Sonia, in California. It seemed that when not filming, Sonia was aboard a luxurious yacht in Antibes – no matter if it never left harbour – or skiing off-piste on some hitherto unknown Alp. All this among the famed, or would-be-famed, of the film world. It was, as she reported, a hideously expensive business simply being a star.
Whether ostentatious or not, your possessions had a habit of multiplying. For this reason, you and an estate agent were now looking round this large, empty mansion. The garden, though at present rather neglected, had been landscaped. You admired a waterfall pouring from a rise in the ground, supplying a stretch of water on which, in due season, water lilies blossomed. Under the flat round leaves of those lilies, carp nosed about with an indolence suggesting that they too profited from the consumer society. This stretch of water encouraged many different kinds of bird to live among adjacent trees. A small apple orchard was, as you remarked, not displeasing. You approached it along a path sequestered from the main lawn by hedges of kolkwitzia, towering above your head.
You were inclined to purchase. Firstly, your wife must come to view and approve.
You were calm, although well aware that in Beijing, on the other side of the world, students were being massacred in Tiananmen Square. Sorry though you might be about that, it would not deter you from buying a house. You had little interest in the fact that behind the slaughter, a new and economically powerful China was being born.
The estate agent was a polite, deferential man, half your age. Together you emerged from the main gates, where you had a discussion regarding when it would be most convenient to return. You were standing near the ‘For Sale’ notice when you were surprised to hear your name called by a man some way down the road, just emerging from a BMW. The estate agent departed. You remained where you were, jiggling your car keys, while the newcomer approached.
He was of modest height and wore a double-breasted suit. His shoes shone brightly. You recognized him – it was Pief Geldstein. So then you went towards him, shook his hand, clutched his arm.
Pief was pleased to see you. When you suggested you went somewhere for a coffee and a chat, he explained regretfully that he was too busy. He had gold rings on his fingers and leopard-skin on his shoes. As you remarked, he looked prosperous.
‘I am prosperous, my dear Steve. Because I am a hard worker. While I was working for my father in his restaurants, I was studying engineering and its principles. I don’t care for the restaurant business; it belongs to my father’s generation. I’m a modern man. I have a degree in engineering and now I’m boss of my own firm. It is a tad small as yet, but it expands.’
‘Well done!’
‘Yes, I really think so, but not done yet.’
As you stood there, outside the empty house, in the mild sunshine, Pief explained the nature and function of his business. First of all, he said, showing his teeth in a
wide smile, he married a clever woman, not a great beauty, not even a Jew, but a good woman to help him plan the future. And by the way, he had changed his name to Goldstone. Better for business – there were still some shits about, he said, clamping down on the smile.
‘You, Steve,’ he said, ‘I know your success comes from sand.’
You wondered what Walcot might have to do with it, before realizing he was referring to the exhumation of the famous plesiosaur at Ashbury.
Without waiting for your response, Pief went on, ‘But my success comes from the present. I make and deliver complete bathrooms. I buy in some components, I issue plans and I give firm estimates, I plug in whole toilets and lavatories, women’s and gents’, to new factories being built. I hardly bother with private houses, small projects like that. Me, I do all the plumbing, the urinals, the jakes, the hand-driers, the wash basins, the mirrors, everything necessary; lighting, towel machines, French letter machines – sorry, condom machines – I do it all. My staff I’m talking of. My company is Sale-Safe. That’s what it’s called, with good reason. Sale-Safe pic. I do everything, right down to tons of toilet paper and gallons of liquid soap, all at preliminary costing. When the builders are there, I am in there like knives. Construction is everywhere today, the economy expands, my men, they come in quick, they work quick, do a faultless job, get well-paid – depends if they are illegal immigrants – so I make my plenty dosh.’
He nodded in agreement with himself, smiling again, full of pleasure with his own success. Tapping his head, he said that Sale-Safe sprang from his own brain.
‘You see, Steve, it’s a time of opportunity. You suss a niche, you go for it.’ He asked you why it was that Britain had abolished the old, antiquated monetary system of pounds, shillings and pence, answering his own question by declaring that computerization was changing everything, including the way everybody thought.