by Brian Aldiss
The BBC news was currently full of admiration for the new man in Russia, who promised sweeping changes.
While Ray had never had any affection for the regime in the Soviet Union, he had always – even at the height of the Cold War – admired the way in which the Russians had lived simply, in poor housing, without many material goods, and without complaint. Now, if what he heard was true, he had been mistaken. All the while, ever since the Russian Revolution, the people had been oppressed and unable to protest.
Now they could speak. And what did they say? Why, that they longed for material possessions. They longed for what the West had to offer.
You bastards, Ray said to them all under his breath, as he went to the shed to refill the chainsaw with petrol; you bastards, do you dare envy me, working for this sod Yarker? Just think of Yarker in Russia! Comrade Yarkovich, paid-up member of the KGB, responsible for little massacres here and there on the Kola Peninsula, given the order of the Red Star and Bar by Comrade Leonid Brezhnev himself. Now promoted to Governor of the Lubiyanka. Is that what you bastards want?
You don’t work your guts out in Russia, do you? OK, you have no justice, but the system looks after you in some fashion from cradle to grave, doesn’t it? Over here, we have justice, Great British Justice, and they charge you for the shagging grave, so much per foot per decaying body. Do you know – have you any idea, Comrades? – what it costs to bring up a child in this capitalist country – what was the figure? Well, we must have spent close on thirty thousand pounds bringing up Jenny, wouldn’t you say?, so that she could grow up and run away from home and become a feminist, despising her father, rightly, you might claim – while at the same time trying to destroy the defences of this country. Yes, defences against you bastards, who were perfectly ready to blow us up yesterday and today are whining for Western aid and hoping to join the Common Market. I never wanted to join the bloody Common Market – well, European Community it is now – Christ, the change in name … Europe’s still for businessmen only, isn’t it? For the rich? Why should you want to join it? Oh dear, what a bloody world …
The chainsaw roared and bucked in his grasp as it bit into another tree trunk. Still his thoughts flowed on.
Let me just ask you this, though it’s a question for us, whoever us may be – the West, the Brits, the Yanks, the Germans, the French, the whole lot of us, as well as you Ruskies: how much do you reckon the Cold War has cost? A straight fucking question. How much has it all cost? The bill’s got to be paid. I mean, not just the price of all the useless armaments, the missiles, the soldiers standing to, the rations, the whole loony espionage superstructure, the space race, the military bureaucracy – you know what I mean, all that crap … And not only all that, but the miserable pollution of the planet, the hole blown in the ozone layer, the overheating stuff, the ruination of your industries and everyone’s countryside, all in the name of military preparedness. The Cold War. And not just that, Comrades, fuck you, but the poisoning of all our lives on most of the planet. You follow what I’m getting at? The last forty years, millions of us petrified with terror in case either one of your mad scientists or one of ours launched a nuclear bomb, or a general more eager for promotion – no, let’s just say some poor common squaddie who had been pissed off just one inch too much by his sergeants, his officers – let’s just say the annihilation had started … fire, smoke, radiation, destruction, death … That was the scenario we all had boiling in our cranial pressure-cookers for that long time – a whole generation plus, right? It doesn’t bear thinking of. There you are … That bill will never be paid, will it? You can collect on three hundred pounds, but on billions of hag-ridden lives – never. Talk about collective guilt …
But that’s how life is. Never better, never worse. Always shit. Filtering down from the top of the system to the bottom. And the bottom of course flinging it back again. Believe me, whenever I get my hands on a bit of it, I’m certainly going to fling it back again.
Even his boss, the porcine Yarker, was giving him shit. Tebbutt was currently engaged in sawing down the poplars as ordered. His thoughts found harmony in the growl of the chainsaw. He operated it without protection, without helmet or eyeshield or gloves, wrenching at the heavy machine, which fought and leapt in his hands.
Yarker revealed his ignorance by insisting on having the trees down at this time of year, when they were still in leaf. It simply added to the difficulties of felling. Tebbutt was now working on the fourth tree along; three raw stumps stood behind him. Bent double, he guided the revolving chain to bite at an angle into the trunk. Deeper it went, screaming, sending up a spume of sawdust. As the tree gave a warning groan, Tebbutt stepped smartly back. A woman and a child from nearby bungalows watched over the fence in delighted terror as the poplar crashed down, bounced once, and settled like a defeated gladiator in the dust.
Tebbutt straightened, eased his back, then began sawing the fallen tree into logs, which he bagged on the spot in yellow polythene sacks. After some while, setting down the chainsaw, he took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow.
A lanky figure was entering the garden centre, looking about in a short-sighted way. It came on a few paces, saw Tebbutt, halted, made a salutation. It was Noel Roderick Linwood, Mike’s father, his white hair afloat.
‘Hello there,’ he called.
‘Perhaps he’s brought the bloody money,’ Tebbutt said to himself.
Noel stood his ground, waiting for Tebbutt to come to him. The salutation had been a summons. Tebbutt pocketed his handkerchief and trudged over to where the old man stood.
Noel Linwood clasped a walking stick in his right hand. His left was in his blazer pocket. He held his head back, squinting down his strawberry nose as Tebbutt approached.
‘You look a trifle hot.’
‘I am hot. Fucking hot. Are you after some plants?’
‘Shouldn’t you be kneeling towards Mecca, or some such nonsense?’
Tebbutt laughed. ‘You didn’t come here to ask me that. I’m sorry if I was rude to you at dinner that time. It was the wine. Plus a naturally bumptious disposition.’
Without changing his expression, Noel Linwood said, ‘I was amused. There’s a paucity of humour in our house. I was particularly amused afterwards, to watch from the dining-room window as your wife beat you up by the car. She’s what they call a bit of a joker too, isn’t she?’
Tebbutt did not reply. He simply stood there, letting sweat trickle down his face. He spoke again only when it seemed as if the other would never break the silence.
‘Mr Linwood, your son Mike owes me a considerable sum of money – considerable to me. Have you come to pay it back? Why exactly are you here?’
Lifting his stick, Linwood half-pointed it at Tebbutt. ‘I can see you’re not in a good mood. Physical labour always took me the same way. Made me truculent too. I am not responsible for my son’s activities. I’ve been paying off his debts for God knows how long, and now I’ve stopped. I’ve sworn off it. You may know the old Iraqi saying, “A donkey must be fed, but a son finds his own grazing.”’
‘You sound just like Mike. Now I know where he got it from. Sorry, I must get back to work.’ From the corner of his eye, he saw Pauline Yarker watching him from the window of her mobile home. She had switched off her radio, the better to overhear the conversation.
‘You enjoy what you’re doing, eh?’
‘I’m a peasant.’
‘No, no, Tebbutt. “Not so fast”, as they say in the cinema. I came by because I wanted to ask you – and that amusing wife of yours, of course – what’s her name? – to dinner again on Saturday night. And really I don’t care a bit what you say at table – within limits. Lie as much as you wish. A counterbalance to Michael’s preachments … Eight o’clock, Saturday. You look as if you could do with a good free meal.’
‘I don’t need a free meal. I just want my money back, and I certainly don’t wish to meet your son socially until I get it.’
The old man showed his
rows of too-white teeth in something that could be construed as a grin. ‘If you turned up, you might get the money, mightn’t you? My friend Tom Squire will be there, by the way, with his missus. So try and look smart.’
With that, he gave a genial nod and turned away.
Back from work that evening, Ray entered the kitchen at No. 2 Clamp Lane, kicked off his boots, and told Ruby of Noel Linwood’s invitation.
She pretended to be more astonished than she was, and sat down heavily on a chair. ‘I can’t believe it. I feel quite faint.’
‘Put your head between your legs.’
‘I can’t.’
‘I’ll put mine there.’
‘Tonight, darling. I take it we’re not really going round to their bloody place on Saturday, are we?’
‘We’re less likely to get our money back if we don’t go. Besides, remember what a good cook Jean is.’
‘Oh yes, you’ll get a look at Jean too, won’t you? Does she let you have the odd feel now and again?’
‘Nothing odd about it.’
After Ray had milked the goat, they settled down to discuss the unexpected invitation. They rarely went out, except to some people they knew in Bale, for whom Ray had once worked. They could not understand Noel, never once considering that he might simply be bored. And they had a certain wariness of Sir Thomas Squire, as one of the landowners of the district, and a man who was famous to boot.
But Ruby was prepared to go along with whatever her husband wished. She was preoccupied with her disturbing vision on the way to work. With her usual reticence, she was not ready to tell Ray about it. It remained safe in her head, like the cash in the Toby jug. For the more she thought it over, the less certain she was that the old woman by the dark river had said, ‘People saw you die by the seaside.’ Had the figure been her mother, saying, ‘People saw me die by the seaside’? Or had the figure in some way been Jennifer? Was it a warning from her daughter?
The more the vision frayed round the edges, the more Ruby directed her fears towards her daughter.
Ever since Jenny had called with the Czech whose name Ruby had already forgotten, she had worried about her. It was understandable that mother and daughter were no longer as close as formerly. Jenny had transformed herself into a real city lady – ‘yuppie’ was the word – after her silly period in CND; Ruby herself – well, what was she now but an old country cabbage?
It was worth something nowadays to look back to the happy days of Jenny’s childhood, when they had had no money problems. How nicely the little girl had played in their walled garden in Birmingham, 35 Long Eaton Road. As a tot, she had enjoyed her sandpit, making sand-pies and pretending to have a shop. Later, she had tended her own little patch of garden, sowing blue cornflowers and love-in-a-mist. Before Joyce married that builder, she and Ruby used to take Jenny to the seaside, to Skegness or Hunstanton. They liked Hunstanton best. She could picture the small figure now, running delightedly along a margin of tiny waves, waving her plastic spade in excitement or chasing a seagull.
She had been afraid even then, even as she and Joyce sat on the sand behind a hired wind-break. Afraid that the dread day would come when nuclear war broke out and they were all destroyed; war had so often seemed inevitable. And afraid, more immediately, that something awful would happen to Jenny and she would drown. Fire or flood, it would surely come. She dreamed of it.
As far as she knew, Jenny was even now at a coastal resort like Hunstanton, showing off bits of England to her foreign boyfriend. Happy. Let’s hope you’re happy, Jenny love. You’ll never know how much your old mum loves you. I’m sure that daft vision thing was just a projection of my inner worries for you. Be all right, there’s a dear.
What a bugger that we can’t live rational lives. There’s always that other layer going on, behind the eyes. Another dimension, so vivid. I’m not sure I haven’t had visions ever since I was a girl. You tend to put them out of mind and forget them quickly, like dreams.
Perhaps I should worry more. Perhaps I worry too much.
Remember how things used to be, before Ray lost his job and Jenny was just a little tacker …
Hartisham was an ancient village. Many Saturdays had passed it by. In the fifteenth century, Margaret Paston of Norfolk had written to her husband in London of the great increase of lawlessness in Hartisham. ‘Sir John Partrich passed to God on Tuesday last past, whose soul God assoil! His sickness took him on Tuesday at eight of the clock when he was out riding, and by three afternoon he was dead. Now who will controul the mischief?’
By the mid-1980s, things were quieter. Sir Thomas and his wife, Lady Teresa, presided over what remained of the small community. A lad’s suicide was the one current token of unrest.
The Squires rolled up to St Giles House in their black Jaguar only a minute before the Tebbutts’ orange Hillman arrived.
Noel Roderick Linwood had evidently been watching for his distinguished guest. He rushed into the garden, waving his arms above his head in effusive greeting, with barely a glance at the Tebbutts.
Not quite knowing what to do, Ray and Ruby stood by the open doors of their car, looking on. Ruby gazed with awe at the knight whom she had seen on television, thinking to herself with self-deprecatory amusement that she might as well have a good look since, so obscure was her life, she would probably never again meet in the flesh anyone who had been sanctified by the TV cameras.
Squire was tall and upright, with a slightly theatrical air of authority about him. The hair that remained to him appeared crisp and well-groomed, in contrast with Noel’s wild mop. His smile as he shook hands seemed to Ruby to be excellent and unforced. She took in his profile, with adequate forehead and nose and a strong jawline, eyes deep-set and grey – searching but not judgemental.
Ignoring not only the Tebbutts but Lady Teresa as well, Noel plunged into conversation with his guest.
Teresa Squire seemed to expect this. She did not step forward, but remained at the car. Having gazed sufficiently at Squire, Ruby turned her attention to his wife. Teresa, aware of this scrutiny, looked at her and then away without changing her expression in the least.
She leaned against the side of the Jaguar, clutching her elbows in her hands. She contemplated, or appeared to contemplate, the rickety chimney of the Linwood establishment. She wore gold bracelets on the upright arm.
Ray stuck his hands in his pockets, to stand in a rather sullen attitude, angered at being ignored.
Meanwhile, Noel Linwood was commiserating with Tom Squire on a threat to his life, as reported on television and elsewhere. ‘So the KGB are after you, Sir Thomas, ha ha!’
Squire was explaining that he had been involved in a symposium held in Luxembourg on relationships between art and economics. Soviet delegates had been present, as well as a West German kremlinologist, Klaus Leberecht. At one point, the argument had become heated, when the Russians made derogatory claims about Western art being degenerate. Squire had contradicted, stating that art in the West was free – within certain financial limits – and in no way subject to state dictates.
After angry exchanges, the Soviet delegation had marched out, uttering, it was true, vague threats about seeing that ‘international discourtesy’ would be punished.
This situation Squire explained dismissively in a few sentences, evidently tired of the whole subject.
Mike Linwood had meanwhile emerged from the front door with a child at his heels. He made no attempt to approach, standing mute with eyebrows drawn together. Squire gave him a cordial wave of the hand.
Laughing at what Squire had told him, Noel Linwood clapped him familiarly on the back.
‘They’ll kill us all one day. Bomb us, invade us, who knows what. If you ask me, our days are numbered. We’re in decline, that’s the truth.’ He laughed again.
Ruby saw the shadow of a smile cross Teresa’s face, although she continued to gaze towards the rooftops.
‘My information somewhat contradicts that view,’ Squire told Noel, givi
ng every indication of being about to make a hasty move towards the house without actually stirring a foot. ‘According to Klaus Leberecht, who is generally to be relied upon, and other authorities I have spoken to – well, it’s pretty common knowledge – the Russian economy is in an extremely bad, if not terminally decrepit, way.
‘In fact, Klaus goes so far as to predict the collapse of the entire rotten Soviet system by 1990.’
Noel looked incredulous. ‘That’s all rubbish, dear boy,’ he said with a dismissive gesture. ‘You’ll see. Once they’ve mopped up Afghanistan, the Ruskies’ll invade India. India will fall like a slice of rotten cheese. Gorgonzola. Then they’ll turn on the West.’
‘Are you going to introduce us to your other guests?’ Squire enquired.
‘He’s drunk,’ Ray told his wife quietly. ‘Old Linwood’s drunk!’ He began to feel interested in the evening.
Ruby, flustered by the introductions, informed Squire she had seen him on TV. As they moved into the hall, Mike Linwood managed to avoid speaking to Ray Tebbutt. Nor did Tebbutt get much of a smile from Jean, which angered him again. An ancient unspeaking lady, who sat in a corner as if a hallowed part of the furniture, ignored them all.
Over everything boomed the voice of the self-constituted host, offering, threatening, making jokes about this and that, demanding drinks.
His voice, thick as treacle, made the house seem more crowded than it was. It calmed a little only when everyone held a glass in their hand. In the silence that followed, Teresa complimented Jean on the lack of ornament cluttering the room.
‘They’ve been sold, Lady Teresa. What we had.’