Remembrance Day

by Brian Aldiss

  Dominic flushed with anger. ‘That is not to be understood. Not at all. If you think that, you make a mistake. Her inheritance makes only a difference to her, not to me. In any case, I have no interest in the Fuarblarghour estate. Plus the fact that—’

  He was about to say that he was richer than his wife. A kind of pride prevented him. He was overwhelmed with confusion. Taking a pace back, he said, ‘Well, you will see, you will understand, when Fenella appears. She’s upstairs. Perhaps I shall enquire what keeps her.’

  Rushing from the room, he encountered Fenella in the hall. She was wearing one of her mother’s tweed suits, and had draped a plaid shawl about her shoulders. The mothbally smell of these garments had been damped down with a dose of perfume.

  ‘I’ve come since you asked me, Dom,’ she said with her usual neutral air. ‘But I’m really unwell. Is Bruce here? Perhaps Doris will bring me some coffee, if she’s about.’

  She entered the library and talked for a while with Bruce Dower, the subject under discussion being mainly a disputed right of way through the Fuarblarghour estate. She spoke with some animation and every appearance of being friendly with the solicitor. Watching, Dominic thought that any onlooker would take her for normal – but then, perhaps the poor girl is normal and I’m mad. He read her every gesture, and knew she was dosed with drugs. But he too had had a snort beforehand, to help him through this occasion.

  Fenella, while talking, went over to seat herself in the most uncomfortable chair in the room, a large wooden construction vaguely resembling a coffin. Morna had presented this piece to her daughter when the latter married. It had belonged originally to an earlier Morna, a member of the Wilson family, who drowned during an Italian holiday. As Fenella seated herself, she became framed in a wooden hood. It narrowed over her towards a small shield on which, set in a scroll, was carved the word ‘Beloved’. It was a translation of the Gaelic name Morna.

  The discussion of the Fuarblarghour right of way was concluded. Dower nodded his head in a way that emphasized the immobility of the rest of him. He would tackle the local legislation immediately.

  Dominic took this opportunity to invite Bruce Dower to sit down. Dower, however, preferred to stand. He commanded the field, his hands clasped behind his back in a manner perhaps intended to remind Dominic that handcuffs existed in British society. He lowered his gaze to the white carpet as Dominic went and sat in a scarlet armchair opposite Fenella’s coffin.

  Dominic rubbed his hands together, demonstrating unconsciously that the gyves were not clapped on yet.

  ‘It’s good of you to come here, Mr Dower,’ he said. ‘I appreciate what you say, that you are Fenella’s solicitor and not mine. I regard that as an advantage. You see what I mean? An advantage. I need a witness and I wish to have got a few things correct. Things, I mean, between Fenella – matrimonial things—’

  ‘Take your time,’ said Dower, his gaze penetrating.

  This piece of condescension steeled Dominic’s nerve. ‘My problem is not with time. It’s with English grammar. You will have patience with me as a foreigner, yah? The important thing is her and me.’ He pointed at Fenella as he spoke. ‘She is making life impossible for me – driving me crazy, I can say it. So, you have to listen. That’s what I request from you. I wish to tell her in your presence –’ here he swerved to look full at his wife – ‘that I love her, that I do not wish to break apart our marriage, whatever was said in past times.’

  Fenella said coldly, ‘Bruce, you see, he’s trying to trap me. He’s so cunning.’

  ‘No, no, I’m not cunning. I’m a simpleton, Fenella. Only clever at the computer. You know it. At all else a simpleton. At human relations a simpleton. That’s why I cling to you. I found you, you found me, remember, when we were young, innocent, when I was still living at Daphne’s house. You know it. Those dark streets. And I – so lost, left by my mother. Don’t you remember how we loved, how I admired your – what is it? – poise, your face when it was gentle and soft? That can’t be left behind, I won’t let it.’

  ‘But you refuse to come up to Fuarblarghour with Malcolm and me.’ She shrank back into the chair, so that her face was obscured, so that the upper part of her body was in shadow, as if she would fade altogether from life. ‘You’re trying to trap me with your words. I don’t understand why you lie to me all the time. I know you don’t love me.’

  Abandoning the sanctuary of the scarlet armchair, Dominic went across to her and sat at her feet. ‘No, no, Fenella, the more you say these things the more it chokes me. You push me away when you say them. See, will you, please see I am in two minds. Yes, I admit it, I am tortured in two minds. I wish to be close and I wish to escape away when you are cold like this.’

  He had forgotten Fenella’s solicitor, who all this time stood cool and solid by the bookcase, occasionally raising or lowering his head, presumably to score a point with himself in some internal register; but otherwise refusing to be part of any scene where emotions broke loose. Nor did he do more than steer his head a few degrees to one side to observe what followed when a knock came at the library door.

  What followed was Doris, bearing a silver tray. On the tray were coffee pot and cups. She came half-way into the room, proceeding with her usual series of bounces, then stopped. Her mouth fell open at the sight of Dominic, who had made no attempt to rise, kneeling by Fenella.

  Still holding the tray, she made a half-turn towards Dower, addressing her remarks to him, instinctively recognizing the senior authority in the room.

  ‘Ooh, Mr Dominic there on his knees! What a bit of luck I hoovered this carpet last week, or whenever it was. Anyhow, ever so sorry to interrupt. Do go on with what you was doing and I’ll just set this coffee down for you. All nice and fresh brewed.’

  Making a great performance of it, like a maid in a stage farce who grabs her one opportunity to shine, Doris dragged tables about and made various attempts to dispose of the tray until Dominic told her to leave everything. Still talking, she backed towards the door, dropping one final remark at the solicitor’s feet as she went.

  ‘I was brought up an orphan, sir, you understand, so many apologies for int’ruption and do give us a ring if there’s anything else.’

  Dominic had risen and went back to his previous post. He hung his head so as to study his watch.

  The procedure of pouring coffee gave Fenella a little authority. She spoke directly to her solicitor. ‘As you will be aware, we have another orphan in the room, Bruce. Dominic was brought up in the back streets of Islington. Fuarblarghour is an historic seat – a gentleman’s seat. I am offering him the chance to leave the squalid environs of London – Shreding Green is almost as bad as Islington – and become a gentleman, engaging in gentlemanly pursuits. He refuses, as you see.’

  The solicitor’s head went up so that the broad blunt chin pointed at Dominic. Fenella’s stricture had registered.

  ‘As I see.’

  ‘But this is not the – it’s not … the point at issue. That’s right? This whole business of Fenella’s inheritance comes late to the argument. First is the estrangement.’ Dominic paused. If only he could provoke Fenella into one of her sick monologues, the solicitor would see he was trying to stand by his wife, despite the odds against him. ‘I don’t know this excuse of being a gentleman. How can I ever be a Scottish gentleman as she would like? It’s impossible, all would agree.’

  ‘You have no wish even to try,’ she said.

  He leaned forward. ‘Very well, Fen, then let’s try something over shorter distances than Scotland. I gladly came across the few metres between us to your chair, to kneel at your feet, to tell you I love you still. Now, you come across to me, will you?’

  She regarded him, as if waiting for something.

  ‘Come on, Fen. Come across to me. I don’t ask you to kneel as I did. I don’t ask you to say you love me, as I did. I don’t try to tax your pride, yah? All I ask is for you to make an approach.’

  Looking puzzled, Fenella s
hook her head dismissively. ‘Don’t be silly. Why should I? I have nothing to say to you in your present mood.’

  ‘OK. OK. But still just come. For the proof. To show you can. Just these few short metres. Please, Fen. For me. To show you still care, you sleepwalker.’

  She sighed impatiently and addressed her solicitor. ‘This is the kind of thing I have to endure. Names. All the time he challenges me, says he’ll leave me, says he doesn’t love me …’

  Dower said, in a level voice, as if not asking a question, ‘Do you find what he is asking of you now so particularly challenging?’

  A flush of anger showed on her sallow cheek. ‘You don’t expect me to fall in with what he wants, do you? When he refuses to join me in Fuarblarghour?’

  ‘Fen, it is easier to cross the carpet as an act of love than to throw up my business and go to Scotland. Have some sense.’

  ‘You have no wish to try,’ Fenella said coldly. ‘You hate Fuarblarghour. I know it. Don’t deny it. You are not worthy of the trust I placed in you when we married. You’re like everyone else. I know your plan. Doris had no business in here. You’re trying to make Bruce hate me, make me the laughing stock of Stirrup and Dower. You would humiliate me by making me come to you like some puppy dog. Well, I’m not your puppy dog. The Camerons don’t behave like that. People keep up pretences of loving you. Cruel! Cruel! It was just the same at school – fair words, foul pretences. Believe me, I wasn’t fooled once.’

  She was gazing into the distance now.

  ‘I met someone – I have held her in my arms, I so trusted her, yes, gave myself to her – oh, when I think how she fooled me! – and I could have drowned, yes, drowned with her, right down to the bottom of the loch, and when they pulled us out I’d still be holding her, my arms tight about her, pressed to her body. Then I found out how worthless she was. Mother showed me. Immediately—’

  Bruce Dower set himself in motion and crossed to a position between the husband and the wife, from whence he could look down on both of them, as one come to judge the living and the dead.

  ‘Getting down to the present case, Mrs Mayor,’ he said. ‘Getting to the present case, it is my duty to remind you that your husband has stated a) that he loves you, and b) that he has no wish to break up the marriage. He retracts whatever he may have said on that subject in the past.’

  Fenella had raised her hands to her face. She continued to talk in low, rapid tones, ignoring the solicitor.

  ‘It’s always the same. The little hypocrite, she cared so little for me – whatever she said, she really cared for Jamie more. Oh, their lies, their tricks.’

  ‘Excuse me, Mrs Mayor, but what we have here is something of a different case. Mrs Mayor!’

  He spoke in peremptory tones. Fenella had shrunk back into the Beloved chair, her hands folding over her chest, so that, if canted backwards through ninety degrees, she would have appeared ready for the sexton. In anticipation of that dignitary’s arrival, she relapsed into silence, lips and eyes closed.

  Dominic came over to regard her with concern. Both men, looking down on her, heard her faint whisper, ‘Go away, I’m ill …’

  There was no doubting that Dower had interrupted the beginning of a sick monologue. When Dominic lifted her hand, she made no response.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘what am I to do? Sometimes she will talk for one hour, two hours, all I suppose in … I don’t know what. A different person speaks. What am I to do?’

  ‘It’s not within my brief to offer you advice, Mr Mayor,’ said Dower, making himself an extra inch taller, and his voice a shade quieter, to show respect to the corpse, ‘but I would suggest ex officio that a) you call a doctor, and b) though you must understand from this moment on that I have never said what I am about to say, I would consider your best course of action is to permit Mrs Mayor to retire to her estate in Fuarblarghour. Alone.’

  ‘With Malcolm?’

  ‘Accompanied by the child. Bearing in mind I have not said whatever you believe you have heard me say.’

  These chill official words went like a dagger to Dominic’s heart, producing not blood but tears. To his shame, he found himself weeping in front of the solicitor. Dower ran his tongue round between his teeth and his lips, continuing to study Dominic.

  Fenella came to life with a terrible scream. She jumped up from her coffin-like chair.

  ‘Liars! Traitors! Have you no pity? I heard you whispering together. I can’t trust any of you. Pretend to love me, serve me! You’re all against me. Well, I’ll stand no more. The worm has turned at last. Get out! Get out!’

  Waving her skinny arms above her head, she gave every appearance of being demented. She rushed at Dower, succeeding in knocking over the coffee tray, which fell to the floor with a crash. A dark stain spread across the carpet. The accident brought Fenella’s activities to a halt. She stood there looking blank, as though totally unaware of what the three of them were doing in this room.

  ‘Well, I will take my leave of you, Mrs Mayor, thank you,’ said Bruce Dower. ‘Perhaps we should talk again tomorrow. If you care to give me a ring. Or I shall be going up to Edinburgh on Thursday. Thank you for the coffee. Good evening, Mr Mayor, thank you.’

  With these courtesies, he bowed slightly and moved towards the library door. Dominic hurried after him.

  They emerged into the hall in time to see Arold and Doris scuttling for cover. Perceiving he was spotted, Arold called out, ‘Sorry, Mr Dominic – thought I heard a scream. Must of bin the wind. Sorry!’ He scudded out of sight.

  Dominic, feeling a compulsion to leave the house, followed Dower out towards his car. As if touched however remotely by Dominic’s unmanly display, Dower made a tut-tutting noise and wiped his forehead with a folded handkerchief.

  Then he offered an unexpected remark. ‘Suppose you think we English hard-hearted?’

  Swallowing back a last sob, Dominic replied, ‘I am English.’

  They reached Dower’s car. Dower unlocked it and climbed in. Sudden fear and anger took Dominic, to think the man was going away without further comment. He stuck one of his small feet in the way of the car door.

  ‘Look here, I know you think it is not your bloody professional business to comment like a human being, but I want to know what you think of Fenella. You saw a bit of what she’s like – really like. I can bet you never met anyone like that before, yah?’

  The legal face, with its flush of colour across the high bridge of the nose, craned itself up at Dominic, with a fresh touch of the hawk.

  ‘I am empowered to act only for your wife, as you are aware. It may be that when and if legal proceedings are instituted, Stirrup and Dower will be instructed to act against you. Pending that eventuality, there can be no further communication between us. I must advise you, moreover, that anything I have witnessed here this evening – irrespective of the fact that my firm will be submitting their account for my services – I cannot have witnessed, and have not witnessed. However, I wish to assure you there is and will be no personal animus in the matter. You understand my meaning?’

  Dominic nodded. ‘I see it. Jesus. That answers my question.’

  ‘Not so. It answers only the first part of your question. To answer your second part: I take it you are no reader, from the impoverished state of your library shelves. When I am not involved professionally, which is rarely, I read the English classical novelists – Fielding, Austen, Reade, and so on; to use an old-fashioned phrase, they improve the mind. Should you ever have occasion to take up Charles Dickens’s novel Little Dorrit, you will discover there a minor character, Miss Wade. Miss Wade is characterized by Dickens as “a self-tormentor”. It may well be that you will be struck by the resemblances between Miss Wade and certain living persons with whom we are both acquainted … Good evening, Mr Mayor. Good luck.’

  The Bentley pulled slowly through the manor’s electronic gates and drove away in the direction of the M4. Dominic stood watching it go before turning back to the house.

 
; The dogs in their caged runways were barking furiously. In the blackest mood, Dominic slammed the front door shut behind him. That bastard Dower, full of middle-class snobbery, barely concealing his contempt, telling him to read Dickens at a time like this. Why, he could probably buy up that rotten firm of solicitors and close it down and put Bruce Dower out on the street – together with all those old books which so improved his mind.

  Dower was ideal for Fenella. The blinkers were torn from Dominic’s eyes by what had transpired. OK, the meeting had not gone as he hoped. What had he hoped? But he saw there was no possible future for him and Fenella together. Whatever he’d previously decided, it was better to let her go off with the boy. She’d be happier. She’d be free. It was undeniable that he was now reduced merely to nagging and accusing. He felt too bitter. She’d worn him down. She’d eaten his fucking heart out.

  He had never said, had never had the courage to say outright, ‘You must learn to hate your mother.’ He should have said it. He owed it to her. But over and above that disease of the mind conveyed through the proud family line was that more prevalent British disease, the scourge of class. He had not realized that she hoped for him to become a gentleman. She had always regarded him as … well, he did not understand this nebulous thing: you had to be born to it. Was it how he spoke, how he held his knife and fork? Was there something wrong with his secondary school? Was being an orphan in itself a crime in her eyes?

  It was something he would never understand. Something that made Fenella feel even worse, even more like a worm.

  She had been taken up by some preposterous dream. Morna’s Will was her last strike against her daughter. Her final act of domination. She had wished that Scottish morgue on her.

  Fenella would rush to tumble into the cobwebbed yesterday that Fuarblarghour represented. The coffin of inheritance, of something to be kept up, a Name. Its ancient furnishings, its decay, its mouldering oils of Highland scenes … Oh, Jesus …