Remembrance Day

by Brian Aldiss

  Even being filthy, stinking … Now I’m so neat, so pernickety. Quite different. One day, I picked up a sheet of newspaper by the roadside and read it. Sitting under a tree. It sounds daft now, but that was really the first time I realized that the other side – the Russians, and the Warsaw Pact countries, to which this sleeping hunk of Czech belongs – had a great arsenal of nuclear weapons too, and were quite capable of using them against us. And that nobody in their countries was allowed to protest about the situation, as we were.

  That nagged at me. I brought up the subject in camp. Some women said that I’d got hold of a bit of propaganda. Others said that if we gave up nuclear weapons – the USA and England, that is – then the other side would give them up too. They got really angry with me and called me Tory and Fascist and the rest of it. However hard I tried, I couldn’t believe their arguments. I kept thinking of those Russian missiles pointing at England.

  Jarry says under this new Russian President things are going to be different. Gorby – is that his name? I wonder if that’s really so. There must be someone knows the truth of such matters.

  There was a woman in the camp called Maeve, a nice Irish woman in her forties. She told me – this was between ourselves, she said – that she hoped the government wouldn’t disarm. She had had to knock her old man cold with a poker because he offered her violence. That was her argument. Keep a poker handy. She said nations no more than individuals saw reason. Why was she at Lakenheath? She said she liked it there, camping out without her kids, and she knew we were safe with the air force nearby to protect us.

  Although I thought Maeve was probably right, I said nothing to anyone. Everyone was so dedicated.

  I stayed in the camp – how long was it? All that summer. Then the autumn. It was so lovely, the nip in the air, the freshness, those sunsets, the sense of the year drawing in. Four or five months, I suppose. Suppressing my doubts. In all that time, I’d only once phoned Mum at Bligh’s cake shop, just to say I was OK. I wouldn’t tell her where I was. I rang off quickly. It really wasn’t very fair to her, I suppose, poor dear.

  Then one day I caught a cold from nowhere. I still can picture it. Three of the older women who lived under a big tarpaulin were having a row, and suddenly I wanted – oh, all the home comforts … A decent bed and a hot-water bottle at my feet. Mum to look after me like she used to. I got homesick. I started to cry. Perhaps what they say is true, and we are a decadent generation. I believe it. I remember so clearly that I stood there in the clearing longing for a clean handkerchief to blow my nose on, one that Mum had ironed. It was the thought of her ironing, all those years she’d ironed all my gear since I was born, never complaining … Not only that. Also the feeling, quite unexpected, that I’d been living in a foreign country among a foreign tribe. Wouldn’t it be lovely to be in bed with a real man, his arms around me, forget the cold and the hot-water bottle …

  So that was the end of my idealistic phase. Here I am, snuggled up beside this Jarry guy. I quite love him. I must say he’s well hung and knows how to go about it. Can’t count the number of girls he’s had in Prague, the bastard … There’s something sinister about him, too, which I rather enjoy, different from the wets in our office. Won’t tell me what he does for a living, though he makes out that you can’t live decently there without doing something not strictly legal.

  To be honest, I’m not sure I’m not a bit in love with Jarry. He talks so gently to me and makes Prague sound so romantic. He says why don’t I go out there with him when he goes back. Ten days’ time. What’ll I do? He’s got such a sweet face.

  It remains to be seen what Father will make of him – or him of Father, come to that. Still, we won’t stay long. Jarry has plenty of money to spend, so he must be a bit of a wheeler-dealer. After a cup of Mum’s home brew, we’ll buzz off to the coast – Yarmouth or somewhere.

  It’s a bit boring lying here. Men sleep so much. Let’s wake him in a nice erotic way, stick a fanny in his face. That should bring him back to life.

  By two thirty on the Sunday afternoon, they considered the cottage was clean enough, and all vases well enough stuffed with flowers from the garden. Ruby was good at flower arrangement; cabbage leaves went well with cornflowers. Agnes was settled comfortably in her favourite chair in one corner of the front room, where she was instructed to watch for Jennifer’s car. Ray and Ruby sat down in the kitchen with an early cup of tea, to await the arrival of daughter and Czech boyfriend.

  Ruby was wearing her brown dress with a halter neck, preserved from better days. Ray had on a suit of denim, another souvenir from the past, and a white shirt, one of a pair bought at a closing-down sale in Wells. Both looked slightly uncomfortable.

  ‘They’ll be on their way back to somewhere,’ Ruby said. ‘I don’t suppose they’ll stay long. He may have a doo-dah, you never know. An appointment … He’s probably a businessman.’

  ‘Is that what Jenny said?’

  ‘No, but if he’s from Czechoslovakia, he’s probably over here on business.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure they have businessmen in Czechoslovakia. It’s a Communist country, you know.’

  There the conversation languished. After another sip of tea, Tebbutt allowed what was in his mind to surface. ‘Ruby, I was thinking. About Mike Linwood. You know, he and Jean are no better off than we are. Just because we’re poor, we don’t have to be mean. I really hate being mean. I don’t like to think of us as mean people, do you?’

  ‘What are you getting at?’ She was looking down at the table.

  ‘What I’m getting at is that we don’t have to be vindictive over this business. Perhaps we’ve got it out of proportion. They are our friends, after all, aren’t they? For all we know, they need that three hundred more than we do. They have got those three kids to feed, poor little tykes. So I was wondering …’

  She peered angrily at him over the top of her spectacles. ‘Oh yes, and what were you wondering?’

  ‘Look, Ruby, we can surely scrape by without that money, after all. Let’s forget about trying to get it back.’

  ‘What!’ She gave a small scream. Bolivar, who had been sleeping on the windowsill, scudded from the room and into the garden without a backward look. ‘Give away three hundred quid? Give it away? You must be off your rocker. Think how long it takes to earn that amount. I certainly wouldn’t give it to the Linwoods, even if I had it to spare. They’re miles better off than we are – and they always look down on us and try to be superior. Let him join the Church, let her go on the streets, let them all starve. That three hundred’s ours by right, and we’re getting it back.’

  ‘But if Mike won’t give it back—’

  ‘Then we’ll attack him. We’ll get Yarker. We’ll set fire to their bloody house, we’ll kidnap the kids, we’ll blow up the confounded doo-dah, the Chrysler. There’s a thousand things we can do. We could even get a solicitor—’

  ‘I thought you were against GBH,’ he said mildly.

  She had jumped up, the better to confront him. ‘I’m just being realistic. You’re being silly. You’re too weak, Ray, that’s your trouble, too eager to please. That’s been you all along. If you’d been more prepared to fight, you could have stayed on at the press another eighteen months and got a golden doodah – a handshake – and then we wouldn’t be stuck where we are today.’

  This was opening old wounds with a vengeance. He went red in the face. ‘Oh, and who was so keen to come here, to be a country lass, to keep a fucking goat, to have a view of bloody cornfields—’

  ‘I never thought you’d have to work in the bloody cornfields, did I, you prick? I never thought I was going to be married to a bloody YOKEL, drunk out of his mind every Saturday night!’

  To impress this sentiment more thoroughly on her husband’s attention, she brought her right hand over with a gesture not unlike that of a fast Middlesex bowler and swept his half-full mug of tea off the table. The mug flew against the kitchen sink and shattered. Fragments scattered round th
e kitchen, tea dripped over the rug.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ he exclaimed, almost in a whisper.

  ‘When you get that three hundred back, you’ll be able to afford another mug,’ she said, eyeing him contemptuously. ‘Don’t talk to me ever again about throwing your bloody money away, not while I’m in need of a new dress, not while we can’t afford to take Mother for a day at the seaside. You can think that over while you clean up the bits.’

  ‘I’m not clearing up your mess,’ he said, but by then Ruby was marching off into the garden.

  ‘What a shocking temper the woman has,’ Tebbutt said aloud, standing helplessly looking down at the wreckage.

  The doorbell rang.

  Just inside the front door the gloom was so intense that Tebbutt, pulling the door open, could see only the silhouettes of his daughter and the tall man standing behind her. He ushered them into the living-room where Agnes – all spruced up for the occasion – sat in her wicker chair. He embraced his daughter, delighted to feel her arms round him.

  Jennifer Tebbutt was a smart young woman of twenty-eight, dressed at present in a tailored dove-grey business suit cut on severe lines which emphasized the slimness she had inherited from her mother. She had always been rather plain; careful make-up now disguised some of those deficiencies. Her brown hair was cut fashionably short. Except for the slim gold watch on her wrist, she wore no ornament.

  ‘Hasn’t my little hippie girl become smart!’ said Tebbutt, surveying his daughter admiringly.

  ‘I never was a hippie, Dad.’

  She appeared to bubble over with pleasure as she introduced her companion, Jaroslav Vacek, to her father. The latter noted that she slipped a hand possessively round the Czech’s arm as she did so.

  Vacek smiled broadly as he shook hands with Tebbutt. A gold tooth glinted in his upper jaw. He was very solid, and was wearing a shiny double-breasted suit which made him look wider than he was. His complexion was sandy, his hair sandy but made drab by the application of hair oil.

  In his manner was something Tebbutt did not find reassuring. He stood stolidly before Tebbutt, hands in jacket pockets, thumbs protruding forwards, dominating the small room, which he surveyed with a calm stare, turning his head this way and that, even while addressing Tebbutt.

  He answered a few questions noncommittally. Although his English was fluent, his accent took a while to become accustomed to. While they were exchanging remarks, Jennifer marched off to summon her mother. Tebbutt listened to her heels determinedly clicker-clack on the quarry tiles in the passage, passing the shattered remains of his mug on the way. ‘Been having a row again?’ she called.

  Agnes, bolstered by Indian cushions, contrived a bob in her chair when introduced to Vacek. He bowed and enquired after her health.

  ‘I can’t get about, you see,’ she said. ‘My legs pain me all the time. My kidneys are leaking protein. And other problems. Well, I’m old. Fortunately, I have a very good daughter, very kind, yes. The doctor’s worse than useless.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Life is always hard for the old.’

  ‘At least you’re young, Mr Vacek. I’m on the scrapheap. Is Czechoslovakia a healthy place? At least you don’t have these nuclear power stations, do you?’

  ‘Oh yes, we certainly do. Mainly in Bohemia. Since our coal is of poor quality, we rely more and more on nuclear power, let’s say.’

  Tebbutt asked him if he was in Britain working with Jenny.

  ‘No, I don’t work with her exactly. I am in England merely on an economic advisory trip, that’s how to describe it.’ He turned his back as he spoke, to look at the bookcase with its imprisoned runs of Galsworthy and old boxes of jigsaws.

  ‘Let’s say I am escorted by your Jennifer.’

  ‘I see.’ Tebbutt was annoyed by the broad back. ‘Are you in manufacture, would you describe it?’

  Turning towards him, Vacek sighed, as if answering questions only out of a sense of duty. ‘I am a member of the Czech Scientific and Technical Council. Despite the nuclear power plants, our industry is in rather a backward condition in certain aspects, owing to unfavourable world trade. For instance, backward in shall we say infrastructure and computerization, let’s say. And there are other difficulties. So I come to study Britain’s economic miracle, about which we hear much.’

  ‘Oh, our famous economic miracle!’ Tebbutt gave a laugh. ‘I’ve heard talk of our economic miracle on the television. You won’t see many signs of it in Norfolk. A chap I know committed suicide only yesterday because he’s been made redundant.’

  With a slight dismissive gesture of his right hand, Vacek said, ‘But Britain is very prosperous, Mr Tebbutt. We admire your achievements under firm, clear leadership. You have made great progress since the seventies.’ He looked about, as if hoping that Jennifer would re-emerge and end this discussion. ‘The revived British economy is the envy of Eastern Europe, let’s say. We hope also to turn things around, as you have done, by study of your methods.’

  ‘You mean laying people off work and increasing unemployment to bring down inflation? Millions off the workforce, thousands homeless, cutting children’s allowances?’

  ‘Mr Tebbutt, allow me to say that in every stride towards economic progress and revival of trade must be fall-out, you understand?’ He was leaning forward, heavy, slightly patronizing. ‘It’s inevitable. It’s an equation, a formula, let’s say. Unemployment is necessary – even desirable, let’s say – to combat inflation, to stabilize demand at home, to have a system responsive to market forces. Market forces is with us a new concept, you see. In our country, we have full employment, yet nobody works. Something must go on what your mother calls the scrapheap. More firmness must be demanded from the workforce.’

  Tebbutt went red. ‘How can sacking skilled men be admirable? Don’t try to tell me unemployment is ever desirable. It ruins a man’s life, and his family’s. You’re looking at one of the victims of unemployment, of deliberate government policy. You may see an economic miracle. I don’t wish to be rude, but I see a country falling apart, able-bodied decent chaps kicked out of jobs they’ve done for years, misery, homelessness, families breaking up, the North disintegrating – not just the North, either – whole regions ruined, industries having to close, good old firms—’

  The dismissive gesture cut him off. ‘But this is all inevitable in a period of transition, isn’t it? The sweeping away of the obsolete. These “good old firms”, let’s say, may not fit in the wider picture. I should not tell you when I am in your country to learn. Of course, there are casualties among the unqualified, but the general trend—’

  ‘Unqualified? I wasn’t unqualified. My print firm wasn’t unqualified. We were quick to adopt new methods, to seize export orders. But when the industries in the Midlands were shut down, bang, our customers went down the drain just like that. We went bust. Do you imagine we got government compensation?’

  Tebbutt could not make himself be quiet. ‘I know of thousands of men like me. On the scrapheap. It’s a bitter thing. You lose your self-respect, let me tell you. Over forty, you’ve no chance of finding another job. I’m a skilled printer and what do I do rather than go on assistance? I dig. This week, I’ve dug, I’ve sawn down trees. What for? For peanuts.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘For less than the statutory living wage. Don’t talk to me about Britain’s bloody economic miracle.’

  At that juncture, Agnes heaved herself half out of her chair and said loudly, ‘So you have been up to the seaside? How did you like it?’

  Glad of the diversion, Vacek turned to her, summoned a smile, and said, ‘It was beautiful. We went for long walks, and we stayed in a hotel which was clean and nice, with your splendid English breakfasts.’

  Tebbutt stuck his hands in his pockets, and went to stare out of the window at the ruined cottage opposite.

  ‘Oh, breakfast, yes …’ Agnes pursued the subject. ‘Very nice. But what about the sea? Your country’s on the Mediterranean, I believe?’

  He shook his head
, half-turning away from her as he spoke. ‘No, you are mistaken in your geography, let’s say. Czechs have no sea coast. It was an error made also by your William Shakespeare in his play The Winter’s Tale. We have no sea, so it’s a fascination for us, naturally.’

  ‘Have you known Jennifer for long?’ Agnes asked.

  He hesitated before replying. ‘I met her last week. As the public relations officer for MTD, she was so kind to meet me at the airport.’

  ‘I see,’ said Agnes, ‘but the two of you stayed in the hotel together,’ and said no more.

  Sounds came from the kitchen of cheerful voices, of smashed crockery being swept up and a kettle being filled. Eventually Ruby and Jennifer entered the room and they all settled down to a rather uncomfortable conversation. Tea followed, a little early, accompanied by one of Mrs Bligh’s best sponge cakes.

  ‘So you’re doing well still, Jenny, love, are you?’

  ‘It’s not so hectic at this time of year, Mum,’ she replied, casting an affectionate look at Vacek – a look not lost on her grandmother.

  ‘I suppose you meet all and sundry in your job,’ the latter remarked.

  ‘All and sundry is who we try to sell our products to, Gran,’ said Jennifer, equably.

  She and Jaroslav stayed for two hours. After a walk round the garden they declared they must go; Jenny wanted to take Jaroslav to Yarmouth. Ruby and Ray stood at the gate to wave goodbye as the white car drove off. It was lost to sight as soon as it had climbed the low hill. Rather dejectedly, they returned indoors and Ruby began clearing away the tea things.

  ‘What did you make of him?’ Ruby asked. ‘First Communist we’ve ever had in here …’

  ‘I can’t say I took to him. You’ve seen pictures of Prague. It’s very grand. He probably lives in some damned great mansion. He had a contempt for this little hutch directly he saw it, that’s my impression.’