Remembrance Day

by Brian Aldiss

  ‘Not quite,’ Teresa said, with a brittle laugh.

  April ignored her. ‘All this talk and talk – Noel’s speciality. The Irish refuse to forget their history. So do I. So do I, you hear?’ Her voice rattled. ‘It’s what you’re made of, history, and blood owing.’ She sank back in her chair, covering her eyes.

  Mike went over to her, patting her thin shoulders, saying, ‘It’s the wine. She always gets like this.’

  ‘Perhaps something should be done about it, then,’ Teresa suggested.

  Noel gave her a wink, saying with forced geniality, ‘Like that as a girl, Lady Teresa, all brine and britches. Don’t worry yourself. All’s fair in love and war, ha ha.’

  With a nod at his wife, Squire rose. ‘We must be going. We have to attend Billy Lamb’s funeral tomorrow. Hence, I suppose, all our talk of death.’ As the Squires made their farewells, he said to Noel, ‘I’m sorry we can’t help you with your plans.’

  Noel tossed his white hair and stared down at his plate. The Tebbutts stood uneasily to one side. Only Auntie April remained in her place, now gazing up at the ceiling as if searching for flies. When Squire approached to say goodbye, she clutched his tweed-clad arms.

  ‘Take me, take me from here. The assassin’s billet. I don’t want to stay here all night.’

  Pulling herself up, she clutched at Teresa too.

  Noel blundered round the table, gabbling away, waving his napkin. ‘Sorry, sorry. I told you about her. Ape, you will sleep tonight in one of Jean’s hard little unaired beds upstairs and tomorrow I will drive you back to Blakeney, muzzled, OK?’

  He pulled her away from the Squires, tugging at her brittle mottled arms.

  ‘Gently, gently, please!’ Teresa exclaimed. ‘You’ll hurt her.’

  ‘That never stopped him,’ Auntie April said.

  ‘Leave this to me,’ Noel said, wrenching his sister away. ‘She’s no idea what’s going on.’

  ‘Oooh, abyss!’ the old woman shrieked. ‘You sadomite, you. Babylonian! Help!’

  But there was no help in family quarrels, and he dragged her away, holding her body like a plank before him. The Squires looked at each other and beat a hasty retreat with Jean following to open the front door for them.

  The Tebbutts remained rooted to the spot, watching as Auntie April tottered out of the room towards the kitchen.

  Victorious Noel raised a fist above his head. ‘I’ll have the old bitch put away, see if I don’t. Barking mad. And I’d like to have that bastard Squire put away …’ Catching Ray’s eye, he said, more soberly, wiping flecks of foam from his mouth, ‘What do you Muslims reckon? All I wanted from him was to hire out his confounded packing sheds as a gun club. He’s not using them now. Might have made a bit of money. Not he – landed gentry, no sporting instincts these days. Bastard.’

  Mike, keeping his distance, said in a low voice, ‘They put you down, Father, both of them. Couldn’t you see that? Curse if you like. Sir Thomas will never do business with the likes of you. You can forget about that.’

  ‘We’d better be going,’ Ruby said, tugging at her husband.

  But Noel, in real anger, had turned on his son. ‘Keep your mouth shut! You love to see me in difficulties, don’t you? I shall move out of this dump tomorrow – then we’ll see how you and that slut of a wife of yours manage without me. I’ve had all I can take of you and your pious ways.’

  As they began to shout at each other, Thelonius ran in, barking with delight to be back in the house.

  The stone-flagged hall was in gloom, its outer door open to the night. Jean Linwood stood in the shadows, leaning against the hall-stand, listening to the rumpus taking place over her dinner table.

  Ray took her hand. ‘Lovely meal, Jean. Thanks so much. And I’ll be round to speak to Mike tomorrow morning, if you’d tell him that.’

  ‘Tell him your bloody self,’ she said. As she turned her shoulder to him, she began to cry, dragging her hair over her eyes.

  ‘Lovely evening, Jean,’ Ruby said, and bundled her husband into the night.

  Three boys, crouching behind a clump of pampas, anxiously watched them go.

  As Ray reached their car, Jean screamed after them, ‘It wasn’t always like this!’

  The Tebbutts had an argument over their Sunday morning breakfast – quietly, because Agnes was still asleep.

  Ray insisted he could not go back to Hartisham and try to collect the money from Michael Linwood; they had trouble enough without him pestering them.

  Ruby insisted he must go. The money was theirs and had been promised. It was not scruples but cowardice which made him hesitate.

  In the end, he gave in, driving off while his wife went out the back to look at Tess’s mange.

  At St Giles House, he left the orange Hillman in the road and walked round to the back door. Mike’s Chrysler was not in the carport. Only the broken-down Toyota truck stood among nettles, a permanent fixture. The house was silent. After waiting a moment, he knocked. Thelonius barked and whined on the other side of the door.

  Eventually, one of the boys opened up. It was either Alaric or Aldred; their pale faces, like their names, were much alike. The lad’s expression became even gloomier on recognizing Tebbutt. Without a word, he let him into the kitchen and then disappeared up the back stairs, the dog following.

  Tebbutt stood in the worn room, with its stale odours, listening to the tick of a wind-up clock. I’m getting old, he thought – and weird. Some things give you the pip. It was a phrase inherited from his mother, long ago. Well, Norfolk was a repository of forlorn things. He remembered Auntie April’s remark about priests in their ‘vestcements’, still to be smelt. To his mind, religion was yet another of the claims the past had on the present, insidious as tick of wind-up clock.

  When no sounds of human movement came to him, he crept into the passage and peered into the dining-room. Nothing had changed since he had left it twelve hours before. The dirty dishes were still piled on the table. A slice of surviving summer pudding was beached on a serving plate, staining it red. Discarded napkins lay here and there. The painted face of Noel Roderick Linwood regarded the debris.

  When Jean entered the room, she came noiselessly on bare feet, in a mustard-coloured gown, startling Tebbutt. She stood, arms akimbo over her breasts, defiantly. He shuffled. He made a facetious remark about the previous evening. Dismissing it as worthless, she told him Michael was at church. Her manner was chill and lifeless.

  ‘I’m really sorry if things are bad, Jean.’

  ‘Look, I’ve got this stuff to wash up.’

  When he said he would wait, smiling in an attempt to appease her, she said he could not: she had too much work to do. He would get his money in good time, if he stopped pestering them. Her face was drawn, forbidding argument.

  As she followed him to the back door, he asked where Noel was. She replied that if it was any of his business the old man was driving his sister back to Blakeney. At this point – as he had his hand on the latch, the door half-open, cheerful morning sun spilling over the threshold, lighting the drab interior of the house – she appeared to weaken, to soften.

  They stood close, not moving, not looking at each other.

  ‘Oh, hell,’ she said.

  He put an arm round her waist.

  He knew she had wished it. Yet the arm was in its place only a moment, curling round the slender trunk of her body just above her hips, when she threw it off, showed fury, told him to clear off or she would set the dog on him.

  He went to sit in the car and wait.

  Perhaps we should go and live somewhere else. I’ll never make any money here. Perhaps after Agnes is gone … Perhaps Ruby might welcome a change. Of course she’d be sorry to sell off Tess. And we’ve got the cottage more or less fixed up … It wouldn’t fetch a lot of money. People who come up here want somewhere near the sea.

  Besides …

  Shortly before one o’clock, the Chrysler appeared, rolled across the grass, and stopped a few yar
ds from where Tebbutt waited.

  Mike Linwood sat at the wheel, staring across at Tebbutt, evidently having trouble deciding whether or not to get out of the car. When he did so finally, he was clutching a Bible in one hand.

  He came straight over to the other car, his face drawn into lines of disapproval, his furry eyebrows twitching, and began speaking before Tebbutt could leave his seat.

  ‘This is unjust. You’re persecuting me, Tebbutt. You are trying to make a victim of me. I once thought there was trust between us – I see now I was deceived. You think that I do not intend to repay your miserable loan. Your miserable grudging loan! That’s what’s in your mind. I know. Nothing could be further from the truth.’

  Tebbutt pushed open the car door, climbing out to confront Linwood face to face. When he spoke, he repressed his rage at the other’s tone of voice, so weary, so righteous.

  ‘You broke your promise, Mike. You have not returned the loan. You promised it at the beginning of last week. You broke your promise. So I’ve come to collect now.’

  ‘You’re persecuting me. I haven’t enough money to get the boys to the optician.’

  Turning to stare into the distance, Linwood began to speak of his embracing spirituality. He supposed Tebbutt would find such a grave matter funny; yet it was a decision based on months of anxious thought and prayer. He repeated the words in case they were unfamiliar to his listener: thought and prayer. It had been his vision on the way to Damascus. Didn’t, he asked, even Ruby claim she had visions? He hoped to do his mite to turn the tide against all the greed and despair with which the world was threatened.

  ‘You should be telling this to Joe Stanton, not me,’ Tebbutt said. ‘Come on, I got you out of a hole. Don’t give me this shit – pay up. That’s all I ask. I don’t care if you’re going to turn Buddhist.’

  At which Linwood gave a snort of contempt, spun on his heel and marched towards the house. After a moment’s hesitation, Tebbutt sprang into action, following him as he entered at the back door. Thelonius jumped delightedly up at his master. Jean entered with a tray from the passage, giving her husband a wan questioning look without a smile.

  ‘As you can see, I’m being pursued.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, give him the money and be done with it,’ she said. She set down the tray of dirty dishes by the sink, turning her back on the men as she started to run the hot water.

  Taking no notice of Jean’s remark, Linwood perched himself on the edge of the table.

  ‘Since you’ve barged in here, Ray, we’d better have a talk, you and I. I want to tell you something. You know my father, Noel. You had the doubtful pleasure of meeting him again last evening. He’s a materialist of the old school. He grew up in an age of materialism, when to make money was the main aim in life, no matter at whose expense. Father is—’

  ‘What did he invite me round here for?’

  ‘To embarrass me, of course. Didn’t you gather that? You lied to him and he enjoys lies. That nonsense about being Muslim. Father is utterly destitute of spiritual values.’

  ‘Oh, shut up about spiritual values,’ Jean called from the sink, clattering dishes, and was ignored.

  ‘Noel’s a money-grubber, a miser. His occupation in life was to sell arms to the troubled nations of the Middle East, to any little dictator with the finance. It was under his creed I was brought up and, as a good and dutiful son, I laboured long under his spell. My eyes were blind and I saw not.

  ‘I’m throwing it away now, that dreadful creed. I’m going to be free at last.’

  ‘Then come and help me clear up these dishes,’ said Jean in the background.

  ‘Patience, dear, I’m trying to help Ray. You see, Ray – a change of heart! A little late in life, you might say, but the Lord rejoices in a sinner come to repentance, whatever his age. Even a failure like me. You may laugh inwardly to hear me use the time-honoured language of the Bible. So be it. But—’

  ‘Mike, look, all this stuff is between you and your family. I don’t care what you do. Don’t tell me. Just pay up and I’ll be off.’

  A plate came sailing in their direction, missing both of them, to crash on the floor.

  ‘Pay up! Get out of here, the pair of you!’ Jean screamed.

  When neither of them moved – were, indeed, transfixed by surprise – she gave a muffled cry and ran for the back door, shedding another plate as she went, to disappear into the garden.

  ‘She’s very upset,’ Tebbutt said. ‘Shouldn’t you go to her?’

  ‘She’ll be back. Don’t worry. I know Jean. Emotional. The sort of person prayer would greatly help.’

  ‘“The sort of person …” Christ, Mike, is that how you think of your wife? I’d say she’s out of her mind with worry.’

  ‘No, listen, Ray, calm down. I don’t wish to quarrel with you or any man. You and I are of the same generation, almost. You must surely be sympathetic to what I have said about my materialist upbringing. The odds were loaded against us. There are millions like us. The unhappy post-war generation, deceived from birth. As Proverbs truly says, Where there is no vision, the people perish. We’ve lived out an awful dilemma, captives of economic necessity. Have you ever considered that the Cold War is a macrocosmic projection of inner death? All that stuff we were getting from Sir Tom last night the – Enlightenment and all that – utter guff.

  ‘Millions of us have served as units of state, without spiritual dimension. Isn’t that so? Our brief existences should be full of faith, hope, love. Instead, if we live as the state requires, we throw our lives away. You’re nothing more than a work unit, a statistic, an “X” on a vote paper – a consumer.

  ‘Don’t you know that’s so? I’m certain you do, really. Think of young Lamb. Job gone – he had no other identity. So he perished. Isn’t that so?’

  Tebbutt felt bound to agree with this proposition, at least in part. ‘I’ve never had doubts about my identity, but I see what you mean.’

  Setting his head quizzically on one side, Linwood said, ‘I’m not sure that you do see. Otherwise you would not let this paltry sum of money upset our relationship, my dear Ray. I would like to bring you to God one day.’

  Rushing forward, Tebbutt caught Linwood by the collar and wrenched him from the table. There he paused. Another car had roared up behind the house, hooting as it stopped. Mayhem was averted.

  Noel Roderick Linwood had returned. He breezed into the house, white hair trailing like a horse’s mane, grunting, as he urged Jean back into the house. She fled before him, rushing into the dark interior, in a mustard-coloured flurry. Thelonius began a furious barking.

  Tebbutt released Linwood and dropped his hands.

  Halting in the middle of the kitchen, Noel did a slow turn, cartoon-fashion, his shoulders drooping, arms trailing, mouth agape, to stare at Ray.

  ‘You back again? Come to finish off the summer pudding? Or did you never leave? Is he converting you to God or you him to Allah?’ He allowed his son no glance. ‘Opium of which people?’

  ‘I’m here for the shagging three hundred pounds he owes me. Nothing more, nothing less.’

  Noel smote his forehead. ‘Blood from a stone … And now you’re intending to strangle him. Why? As usual he’s preaching, eh? Out of the mouths of boobs and suckers shall come forth prose, as the Bible says, in its amusing way …’

  Still maintaining his slumped carriage, Noel wove his way from the kitchen and disappeared into the house. A door slammed. Upstairs, the boys turned up their rock music extra loud, celebrating their grandfather’s return.

  Mike was pale. ‘You see how terrifying it is to live here. They’re all in spiritual crisis.’ He spoke almost in a whisper. ‘Money’s their god, as I fear it is yours. You were about to resort to force. Everywhere one looks it’s the same story nowadays. Art, literature, music – the cash nexus rules. That’s why I wish to take Holy Orders. Perhaps you might understand from my example. What do the majority of townspeople do on Sundays, instead of going to church? Why
, they go shopping. Shopping! It’s degradation.’

  ‘Maybe. But at least it’s something the whole family can do together.’

  ‘And so is praying.’ Linwood looked pleased, having scored a point. More confident now – though still darting glances in the direction his wife and father had taken – he crossed to the sink, poured himself a glass of water from the tap, and sipped it.

  ‘I suppose you see no difference between shopping and praying. That’s precisely what being an economic unit means.’

  ‘Don’t be such a prig. People do what they can. We work for a living – the trouble is, the living isn’t good enough.’

  ‘You might as well be in Bulgaria, or some atheist state – Albania, China … You must perceive that the world is being overtaken by a creeping form of spiritual death. All then becomes clear. That’s the reason I’m joining the Church. Why be so adversarial, Ray? It’s for the good of my soul. Don’t grudge me that.’

  ‘And what about the good of Jean’s soul?’

  Linwood smiled. He set down his glass on the draining board where the dirty dishes were piled. ‘It’s not quite the same for women, is it? Basically, I mean. Read your Bible. Despite all the feminist nonsense being talked … I mean, that’s a different kettle of fish, somehow, isn’t it?’

  A door slammed in the house. Noel Linwood returned to the fray, showing his unnaturally white teeth in something between a grin and a growl. He waved a piece of paper at Tebbutt.

  It was a cheque for three hundred pounds, written in Noel’s spidery hand. Thrusting it at Tebbutt, he told him to take it and get out; as he spoke his grimace was switched on to his son, who had drawn himself up as if before a firing squad.

  Tebbutt grabbed the cheque.

  Without forethought, he launched a lie to save his dignity. ‘I shall donate your generous cheque, Mr Linwood, to the Anglo-Muslim Society of Great Britain.’ He almost ran to his car.