Walcot

by Brian Aldiss

  ‘You haven’t changed,’ you said gallantly. But her face was puffy and pale; powder had been injudiciously added.

  She gave a brief laugh, dismissing this compliment. ‘I’ve had two children, you know.’

  A great commotion was taking place in the street, with crowds moving mainly in one direction, towards the Wall. Many women carried clothes, some carried bedding, while men carried crates of lager, or pushed baby carriages containing medical supplies, or groceries. Two small boys ran in and out of the crowds with comics under their arms. An ambulance made its way slowly forward, its siren sounding. There were cars and motorcycles moving at two kilometres an hour among the pedestrians, who filled the streets from wall to wall.

  Heather locked her substantial arm in your arm. ‘Like old times, nicht war?’ she said, with a short laugh, much like a snort.

  ‘Ah, die alte Zeit!’ you echoed, although you could not remember that she had ever taken your arm before. You were uncertain about her intentions.

  ‘I must buy some cigarettes. Helmut, get us some Philip Morris, will you? A carton.’ She explained to you, ‘If those poor devils get over the wall, they’ll be in need of a smoke.’

  The Wall could be seen ahead now. Searchlights were playing, police were shouting through megaphones, trying to order the crowds, three fire engines were manoeuvring for position. Troops were standing by, clustered beside a tank and looking bewildered. Cheers went up from the crowd as more East Berliners appeared on top of the Wall. They waved back delightedly.

  ‘What a scrimmage!’ Heather exclaimed.

  ‘We should not get so near,’ said Helmut. She ignored him, pressing on. In the hubbub, swamped by the good-natured crowds, you lost Helmut. Or perhaps he preferred to lag behind in safety.

  There was some slight danger as you pushed your way forward. Men on top of the Wall were attacking it with spades and picks; fragments of concrete and stone were flying. A youngster up there with a banjo was playing and singing All You Need is Love. Westerners were picking up the song, waving and shouting. A woman on your side of the Wall, poorly dressed in an old raincoat, was battering the Wall with a round stone, yelling expletives as she did so. Music was coming up from both sides now – non-military music, Western music, love songs, pop … Mouth organs from the East, and the odd ghetto blaster.

  Now a metal ladder went up against the Wall. A man climbed up it, to help down a woman and a small boy, but the gates had been thrown open and Easterners were pouring through, many waving arms above their heads, yelling in delight.

  ‘Freiheit! Freiheit!’ – that precious word on German lips – ‘Freedom! Freedom!’

  A middle-aged man in ridiculous clothes, with a Union Jack wrapped across his chest, stood on the Wall and began broadcasting in English.

  ‘Hi, folks, Gutes Nacht, bon soir, not to mention Good Evening! Here’s your favourite DJ, Dougie the Demon, Demon Dougie, speaking to you from Radio Charlotte, the Station with Good Vibrations. I’m on the Wall – no, not the Pink Floyd Wall, but the Wall that divides Democracy from Communism! A world is ending, folks, and a world’s beginning – not with a bang but a vodka –’

  ‘Good god,’ you exclaimed. ‘It’s Dougie Wilberforce!’

  ‘That’s ever so trendy of you, Steve!’ exclaimed Heather, impressed.

  It seemed as if the whole world had decided to embrace. Women and men from the DDR flung their arms about whoever happened to be near. Women and men from the West flung their arms about anyone who approached. Many women caught up little East Berlin boys and girls and kissed them over and over, until the children wriggled to escape.

  Heather had let go of you to join in the general rejoicing, clapping and waving. Two men pushing forward grabbed her and kissed her, one on one cheek, one on the other, all three laughing with happiness. You were seized by a tall, gaunt old lady, scantily clad in the cool night.

  ‘Liebchen!’ she said, and began pouring out her history of oppression, while Heather disappeared into the throng.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t understand,’ you said.

  ‘You are where from?’ she asked.

  ‘England.’

  ‘Englandt, mine God! Hey, this man is from Englandt, everyone!’ she cried to the passers-by.

  A man grabbed your hand and shook it. ‘Good luck!’ he said and was gone.

  Flags were being waved. Trabants were moving slowly into the streets of the West, the stink of their exhausts adding another element to the absolute frenzy of the crowd. And now the Wall was being seriously demolished, from both sides! A young woman, possibly a schoolgirl, danced naked on top of a Mercedes. Two men with old-fashioned bellows cameras were photographing her, encouraging lewd postures.

  You happened on Heather an hour later. She had lost her glasses and had given her coat to an East Berliner. Her gaudy dress was torn under one arm.

  ‘It’s never happened before, never,’ she said. She was crying for joy and flung herself into your arms. ‘Oh, this moment, this very moment. It’s history!’

  ‘Let’s get a drink, Heather, it’s impossible here. Come back to my hotel and get a drink there. You look whacked.’

  ‘You’re not up to your old tricks?’ she asked, with a smile.

  You kissed her. ‘Don’t be so hopeful.’

  She gazed up at you flirtatiously, saying, ‘But on such a night, eh?’

  ‘You’re pretty safe. I’m sixty-five and happily married.’

  ‘Who’s happy that much?’

  You were pushing your way through the masses of people. The crowds were thinning as you advanced. You met a group who had lit a bonfire in the middle of the street; men and women were dancing beside it, dancing and kissing. A radio was playing.

  ‘Where’s Helmut?’ You had to shout to make yourself heard.

  Heather shrugged. ‘Not dancing, that’s for sure.’ She stopped. ‘Come on, let’s dance too. I feel like a dance, don’t you?’

  One of the women dancers took your arm, insisting that you join them. So you did, really not caring. Heather began singing in German, joining in with the song some of the other dancers were singing. The bonfire crackled as if it, too, rejoiced.

  You whirled round and round, suddenly jubilant. The motions of the dance, the sense that this could never happen again, liberated something in you. The end of the DDR? The end of Communism? It was something impossible, something to celebrate. And a suspicion crept over you that after all it would be pleasurable to have Heather in bed with you, just this once. It was not being unfaithful to Verity. Why, you said to yourself, it was almost a duty to Germany. ‘England expects this day that every man will do his duty.’ That sort of thing.

  You laughed aloud.

  ‘I’m sweating like a pig,’ Heather said.

  But the pair of you went along towards the hotel nevertheless.

  ‘I told you a little white lie, Steve,’ she said, clinging on to your arm. ‘I’m not the curator of the museum. In fact, I’m just a minion there, the curator is Dr Carl Hartrich, a nice kind man. Sometimes even says good morning to me.’

  She gave her short laugh.

  ‘But you’ve evidently found your niche here,’ you remarked, consolingly.

  ‘What niche? True, I like Berlin. Y’know, I go back to England occasionally to see my sister. I don’t care for it any more, everyone’s so rude.’

  You evaded a laughing gang who were trying to stop passersby. Beyond them, a Trabant by the roadside was quietly burning, emitting clouds of heavy black smoke. A policeman in a yellow coverall stood nearby, immobile, deep in thought.

  ‘So you’re reasonably happy, Heather?’

  She asked instead of replying, ‘How’s your life turned out?’

  ‘Better than I dared wish for. I’ve been lucky in love –’

  ‘I don’t know whether I’m happy or miserable. That’s the truth, Steve.’ You thought you remembered her saying something of the kind back in Ashbury days.

  ‘But Helmut –’

&nbs
p; ‘Oh, Helmut. Yes, he’s sort of kind. I can boss him about. But sex –’ She made a face as she turned down her thumb.

  You pressed on up the crowded street. Elsewhere, car horns were sounding.

  The normally staid foyer and lounge of the hotel were in a hubbub. Crowds of people, mainly male, were celebrating, those in evening dress jostling with those in cheap grey clothes or T-shirts. On every side, glasses were being raised and toasts drunk. The dining-tables further in were crowded with laughing people, while to those tables waiters struggled to make their way, trays of drinks balanced overhead like open umbrellas.

  A band was playing swing at full blast. Couples were dancing or standing hugging each other, or falling over, to the music. Glenn Miller was back in force.

  ‘Sit down and I’ll get you a drink,’ you told Heather. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘A lager and a Fernet-Branca. Thanks. Phew, it’s hot in here.’ She fanned herself with one hand.

  You made your way to the bar, where many men fought for the attentions of the besieged barmen. You began calling for attention with the rest.

  A man in evening dress with a long, leathery, outdoor kind of face put an arm round your shoulders, saying, ‘It’s a case of the survival of the loudest. Darwin would be interested.’

  ‘I’d buy Darwin a drink if he were here.’

  ‘He’d see the human race at its best. Let me buy you a drink, buddy. I’m a pal of all Limeys.’

  The leathery man turned out to be one of a party consisting of three Americans, of which he, Henry Dice, was one. There was also an Englishman and a French woman, smartly attired and smoking black Balkan Sobranie cigarettes. Her name was Violane. One of the Americans had a young woman on his knee, they were kissing when you joined them at their table. The Englishman drank without setting down his shot glass, elbows on the table.

  You and Dice were carrying eight bottles of lager between you, together with a small bottle of Fernet-Branca. You held two of the bottles in your hand and had another bottle gripped precariously under each arm, high up in the armpit. The Fernet-Branca bottle protruded from your jacket pocket.

  ‘Can’t stay. Got a girlfriend over there. Just a quick drink.’

  It transpired that all but the girl on the knee, who had come from Leipzig, were members of an EU trade delegation. The two Americans were arguing about what was happening at the Wall. One claimed that trade would benefit, that once the Easterners had seen the prosperity of the West, they would no longer tolerate their wretched lot and Communism would die the death. There would then be a whole new nation to trade with. He was rather drunk and his pronunciation was indistinct.

  The second American, the one with the girl on his knee, denied this. He claimed that the Easterners were not going to return to the DDR once they had escaped. Their nation would soon be emptied of its population unless they were stopped. Western Germany would sink under the weight of, well, he had to say it, Communists, fascists and savages.

  ‘No, we are not savages,’ said the girl, suddenly speaking up. ‘This indiscipline which you see here in this hotel would never happen in our land.’

  ‘What about the Stasi?’

  The Englishman in the party said nothing. He drank steadily, a sip at a time, regarding you with unrelenting hostility.

  Henry Dice was not exactly sober, not exactly drunk. He said to you, seriously, ‘Is this one night’s aberration or are we witnessing a profound shaft in geopolitics? I mean shift, a shift in geopolitics? Just last week I was in Moscow. The dump was in a ferment. I don’t doubt that Communism is about to disappear up its own arsehole, they’re fucked up economically and agriculturally.’

  ‘Not true of Hungary.’

  ‘Admitted, Hungary is an exception. Believe me, buddy, the world is about to turn on its axis. The people in the slave nations will be free at last. It’s America saving Europe again, thanks to President Reagan, with a tad of help from Mr Gorbachev.’

  ‘And Mrs Gorbachev, Raisa,’ said the French woman from behind a veil of smoke. ‘Isn’t she a revelation? So smart, so appealing. Gives a whole new slant on Russian womanhood, isn’t it? I believe that from now onward women have a new chance. Look at this little slut here’ – she pointed with her cigarette to the young woman now smooching with the man on whose knee she was sitting – ‘product of an evil system. Never had any chances. Give her a good shower and have her hair attended to and put her in decent clothes and you would transform her.’

  Then, as if suddenly changing the tactics of her argument, she said, bitterly, ‘And after all that, she would still be a putain!’

  ‘But that’s because of poverty,’ you told her, swigging lager from the bottle. ‘You know very well that prostitution is a product of disadvantage.’

  ‘No, of disposition,’ she shot back.

  ‘Nuts,’ said Dice. ‘It is because women have pussies and pussies mean money. Age old, the trade in pussies. Come on, Violane, we’re a trade delegation, you should know that.’

  ‘That is not what cons mean!’ she said. ‘And I despise this euphemism, “pussy”.’

  He belched relaxedly.

  ‘You think? Why else do you figure we men would put up with you women if you hadn’t got cunts?’ He was bellowing now, only half jovial.

  The silent Englishman at the table switched his malevolent gaze from you to Dice.

  The various arguments went on. At other tables, people were convulsed with laughter or waving their hands above their head for greater self-expression, or trying to stand up, or making speeches, or telling jokes, or kissing, or arguing, while the band played on. They had just reached Speedy Gonzales.

  A waiter came round with a pillowcase. He said he was collecting for the refugees from the DDR. Violane fished in a little beaded black bag and produced a fifty deutschmark note. It fluttered into the already swollen pillowcase. You too found some notes.

  Dice told the man to clear off. ‘It’s a scam! The cash will go straight into your own goddamned pocket!’ When the waiter had moved on to the next table, Dice said by way of explanation, that he had met that type of fraud elsewhere, ‘including in San Francisco, I might add’.

  The Englishman, who had not stirred, said nothing, continuing to stare with a look of hatred, first at Dice, then back at you again.

  Belatedly, you remembered Heather. You rose from the table, lager bottle in hand, Fernet-Branca bottle in pocket, and left the trade delegation. You never said goodbye. No one remarked on your going. You made your way with difficulty through the throng. It was impossible to tell how sober you were or were not, because drunkenness was in the very air you breathed.

  Heather, when you found her, was red in the face. She was dancing with an elderly man, and drooping over his shoulder. He was bearing much of her weight, even her eyelids were heavy.

  You tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Sorry, this is my girl.’ Even as you spoke you wondered at the possessive article. He was indignant and spoke no English. He made it clear, however, that the woman was unwell and he was about to take her up to his room.

  ‘Oh no, you don’t, I’m taking her with me. I’ve known her for years.’

  A struggle then ensued. The man kept a hold on Heather and fended you off with his right arm. ‘Bitte! Bitte!’ he kept saying.

  ‘I used to shag her!’ you shouted in the man’s furry ear, to sharpen the argument. ‘When she was young, and pretty.’

  He swore at you, rather despairingly. His trophy was about to be snatched from him.

  ‘Heather! Heather, you’re coming with me, aren’t you?’ You called to her from her distance.

  She roused and said she was coming. She said further that she had never met the other man and did not know who he was, only that he had bought her drinks. She added, touchingly, that she felt sick and wanted to be taken to your room.

  Although you were unsure how much you wanted her, you needed to establish ownership. The old man backed away, swearing. You got Heather to the lift and ascended t
o the third floor, where you trotted her along the corridor to your room. She was emitting something between a giggle and a shriek. As soon as she was in the room, she rushed for the toilet. You went and lay on the bed, flinging the Fernet-Branca bottle to the floor.

  ‘A most unattractive proposition,’ you said, at the sound of Heather vomiting.

  You plunged into a deep sleep, leaving the future of the world undecided.

  13

  An Arrival from Venice

  The year was 1999. England’s extraordinary display of grief over the death of Princess Diana two years earlier had died away. You and Verity had discussed that extravagant display of emotion. ‘People wept for the sorrow of their own lives through the passing of hers,’ Verity concluded. ‘It must have been a placebo effect.’

  The family lived on. You and Verity Fielding were preparing to celebrate your tenth year of marriage with a party. You resided in a sprawling, late eighteenth-century house outside Cambridge, in Waterbeach. As you said when you moved in, no relation to Walcot beach.

  With you lived your and Verity’s daughter, May, the prized daughter of your later years. Verity’s son, Ted Nash, by Jeremy, was a year or two older. Ted was in Australia for a gap year. Those painful years when you were being divorced from Abby, and Verity was getting her divorce from Jeremy, lay far behind you. Now was a time to be grateful and throw a little party.

  You were working out the phrasing of your party invitations on your iMac. Verity was away at present, lecturing at Cambridge on ‘The Trail of Responsibility in the English Novel, 1719–1939’.

  You were now moderately prosperous, even distinguished. A tide had turned for you some years ago with the skull found in the Ashbury dig. The past had come to your rescue. Your students were moderately excited as you went down on your knees with a brush, to reveal more of the bone. You were careful to disturb nothing.

  The brush uncovered a hard whitish line of bone. It converged with another. Finally, one side of a small neat skull was revealed, together with some neck bones. Your class yelped with excitement.