Ruins

by Brian Aldiss

  ‘I need a drink, Rose,’ he said. ‘I’m a bit upset. Come round the corner to the pub and let me buy you a drink. How are you? Lovely to see you.’

  As they settled companionably at the bar, Mrs Dwyer said, ‘I was just going home. I’ve been hanging about here for an hour. I must be daft.’ She lit a cigarette from a gold lighter, looking him in the eye meanwhile.

  ‘My husband will be furious when I get home, want to know where I’ve been, what I’ve been up to and so on and so forth and all about it. I thought we were meant to be liberated, but not me, no.’ She laughed, a curt vexed action which pinched her face.

  ‘I’m sorry to keep you, Rose, I’ve been seeing an old friend. What’s the trouble?’ Even as he asked, he knew. He had not been to work for three days. He had simply forgotten.

  It was none of Mrs Dwyer’s business, she said, messing about with an ashtray, and they scarcely saw anything of each other any longer, but she had been at head office and had happened to hear Mr Motts Senior say that he would be forced to sack Hugh Billing if he did not pull his socks up.

  Billing clutched Rose Dwyer’s hand on the stained wood of the bar. It was a firm, dry hand, its nails painted carmine.

  ‘You’re good to me. Thanks for warning me.’

  ‘I’m fond of you, Hugh. You know that, I suppose. Why do I say such things? What’s your problem?

  ‘Have you got a woman or something? Your suit’s all creased.’

  He looked anxiously round the lounge bar, searching the faces of the other drinkers. ‘What’s that tune they’re playing? It must be very popular nowadays. I’m always hearing it.’

  ‘I don’t hear any tune,’ she said flatly. ‘No juke box here. Only that Space Invaders contraption.’

  ‘Haven’t they got tapes or something playing? It can’t be in my head. Bugles or trumpets – I can’t quite tell which. Is it Herb Alpert?’

  She looked impatiently at him, pursing her lips. ‘Stop changing the subject. If it’s not women, what is your problem?’

  Shaking his head, he withdrew his hand. ‘It’s no good asking me, Rose. Somehow the bottom fell out of my life. You know I was a – what they call a drop-out in the States.’

  ‘Well, you’re back in bloody England now, mate. You want to be yourself. Hang on to what you’ve got and be thankful.’ She clutched the fawn handbag, illustrating her point by instinct.

  He looked down at the beer stains. ‘But who am I? I lack continuity … I don’t know, Rose. Work’s not important to me.’

  ‘What is?’ she asked him sharply. Then, when he did not reply, repeated, ‘What is important to you, then?’

  She puffed her cigarette, watching him not unkindly.

  He drank his drink and looked across the bar. ‘I never have any luck. With women, for instance – I seem to lose them all. They never stay. Nothing’s permanent. That’s the hallmark of my existence. Nothing solid to show, just ruins.’

  ‘Don’t talk so silly, man. You’re lucky to have women at all … Besides, ruins are permanent. That sort of attitude will get you nowhere. Strike a light, Hugh, I don’t have to spell it out, but if I wasn’t married to Harry, I’d move in on you and try to set you to rights a bit, really I would.’

  He laughed with sad pleasure. ‘I could do with a bit of that, that’s certain. How about trying anyway?’

  Sighing, she said with a wistfulness unusual in her, ‘What a little lost lamb you are …’

  She drained her glass. ‘I must get off home. Look at the time. Now, mind you turn up for work tomorrow and don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  ‘Rose, dear, you’re lovely. London’s full of people and not a one like you.’

  ‘Just as well. Bloody fool that I am.’ She blew him a kiss as she went through the door.

  He sat for a while over his empty glass before leaving. Rose’s cigarette stub smouldered in the ashtray beside him. He returned to his room. Drawing the curtains, he opened the cupboard where he stored biscuits and marmalade on one shelf and brought out his drawing materials from the lower shelf. Then he settled down at the table, shoulders hunched in concentration above the cartridge paper.

  After work next day, he took his drawings round to Gladys. She had given him a key to her front door. As he let himself in, he wondered apprehensively if the time would come when he walked in and found her dead. Serve him right for making an insensitive remark about her looking permanent. Perhaps his little ex-wife was dead too, somewhere across the ocean.

  But no, Gladys was as usual in her living room, standing with the aid of her stick, peering out of the window. He went over and kissed her furry cheek. She vibrated slightly.

  ‘I’ve brought you something to look at. It’s silly. I’m all right on plans but I can’t draw for toffee.’ Another English phrase.

  He spread his pictures out on the floor as she settled herself slowly in her accustomed position on the chaise-longue.

  ‘How are you feeling today, Gladys?’

  ‘I’m all right,’ she said, constrainedly, looking down at what he had drawn. She spent so long looking at the pictures that he started to apologise all over again. Gladys cut him short.

  ‘Don’t run yourself down, dear. They’re rather good. They’d be better if you had proper artistic materials. The colours in fibretips are too garish, too what I call chemical. Think how lovely this church would look if you had a real stone tint, eh? Not that black.’

  ‘They call it grey on the lid. I tried to sketch phases of my recurring dream for you. You asked or I wouldn’t have bothered. My one recurring dream.’

  Billing sat on the carpet by her feet and explained his dream. Pleasure filled him as he spoke. He suspected Gladys was lapsing into the insanity of the aged, but the thought did not alarm him.

  He would have been no more than four when the dream first visited him, he said. Thereafter, it returned from time to time. He could not say how often. He could not say when the dream last visited him; not since he had returned from the United States, from Iowa, from New York, from wherever he imagined he had been.

  In the dream, he was walking down a long country lane, weary and lost. Sometimes, details of the journey remained clear. Sometimes, he saw stones beneath his feet. In later versions of the dream he saw hedges covered in dust, dying foliage. On one occasion, he passed burnt-out cottages. Once, dead cattle. The countryside was always calm and deserted.

  He was approaching a church, standing on a slight rise ahead, an old stone-built church with a square tower, in the Early English style. Dusk was falling. It was always near sunset in his dream. The ground was obscure with mysterious movements.

  His sense of isolation increased when two figures, dark against the westerly sky, moved from a place of concealment. They stood in the middle of the tawny road, awaiting his approach. Both wore old-fashioned clothes. One was male, one female; the woman wore a poke bonnet and a stiff black bombazine dress, while, in the earlier versions of the dream, the man wore a high silk hat. They were rigidly immobile, not moving till he was close.

  They were waiting to greet him. Their hostility was a mere figment of his anxiety, his lostness. They were smiling at him. Nobody, certainly no strangers, had ever been so glad to see him. They took him by the hand and escorted him from the road to the rear of the church.

  The grand-looking church, he was surprised to find, was in truth nothing more than a ruin, a half-demolished shell, its interior blackened by fire. This he could see clearly, for this interior was lit by the setting sun. He paused, looking askance at the man, who smiled and indicated that he should proceed.

  A flat area like a stage had been cleared in front of the ruin. Some of it was paved in tile. Another building had been constructed inside the shell of the old church, a much humbler structure, a mere cottage. Here the two old people lived, and they were welcoming him into their home.

  Stones from the church formed the walls of the building. Indeed, a part of the old church served as the rear wall of the cottage.
Its roof was thatched, its windows leaded with diamond panes. It lay within the embrace of the grander structure.

  As the old couple shepherded him forward, he realised how beautiful the cottage was, and humble. The rays of the sun, which was about to sink below the distant skyline, lit the window panes brightly. The front door swung open. Inside gleamed a log fire. He heard the crackle of flames. The two old people gestured courteously to him. The dream always ended before he could enter.

  ‘And how old were you, do you say, when you first had this vision, dear?’ Gladys asked, after a silence.

  Striving to answer, Billing looked down at the sketches on the floor. He had drawn one version as a Victorian sentimental picture. A second sketch was more austere, with the church tower fading in a ghostly way into the evening sky. To a third he had given a wartime emphasis; the building in the background had been ruined by shellfire, while the figure that represented his lost self was in uniform, complete with steel helmet and rifle.

  ‘I must have been four the first time. I sat on my mother’s knee to tell her all about it. And before my sixth birthday … that was when my dear Dad fell off the ladder and killed himself …’

  Scarcely were the words out when Billing began weeping as he had not wept for countless years and the tears splashed down on to his sketches. His whole frame shook with sobbing. Horrified as he was by his performance, he could not staunch the tears, had no idea from what deep well they came. He felt Gladys’s frail arm round his shoulders, but still the grief went on, like a river pouring from a glacier.

  At one point he heard himself say, ‘You see how my life’s in ruins – without a father I never had any … any pattern of approval. Even women could not give me a … give me a permanent …’

  The sobbing swept away his words.

  Later, he was mopping his face, childlike, and apologising.

  ‘You poor dear,’ Gladys said, ‘you were robbed, robbed. Life can be very cruel. And your mother can’t have been a great help. As we’ve agreed, she was a bit of a … bit of a swank …’

  She mopped her eyes but her general calm in the face of these earth-moving revelations was reassuring.

  So ashamed was Billing of his weakness in revealing his emotions that he did not go near Gladys Lee’s house for several days. By night, he roved far afield, through parks and stone streets, walking with echoes and shadows. He had learnt how to travel on the underground without paying. From the underground, he transferred to an ordinary train, and travelled down to Winchester. He slept that night against the door of the cathedral, but the season was growing cold. The rheumatism returned, bolder than before.

  He got back to London. His firm had sent on to his digs his employment cards and a small payment owing; Mr Motts Senior had finally acted.

  It was the weekend. Escape was the only thing: he would return to California. Living was easier there. He might take up RDS again, make a movie, find a new woman. All he need do was earn the air fare. He pocketed the last of his money and went on a rare drinking bout across town, in Hammersmith, home of some market porters he knew.

  ‘Jimmy, Jimmy, stop your running!’ someone called to him as he was heading towards Gladys’s house after midnight. He ran in earnest then, making Shepherd’s Bush echo to his footsteps, looking back to call derisively at the man, looking ahead again just in time to see the great black lorry bearing down on him, like a shark on a drowning baby.

  Dr Platt was young and smart and carried himself very straight. He smelt chemically clean. He had a small moustache and was sharp in a friendly way with the patients in the surgical ward. Billing recalled, with a feeling he did not analyse, the time when he had looked like that. Dr Platt’s suit was impervious to creases in the wrong places.

  ‘You can leave hospital tomorrow,’ Dr Platt told him. ‘You’re lucky, old chap. It’s a simple break and all you’ll need is a crutch for a while. The abrasions on your trunk are healing well. Of course, that arm may take longer. You’re not as young as you were. What are you, fifty? You’ll survive.’

  As he was walking on, Billing called to him, ‘Doctor, excuse me – do the nurses have to play that music all the time?’

  ‘Radio One? I don’t care for it myself, but most people like it, or get used to it.’

  ‘No, I mean at night, when the radio’s off. Is it a tape they play? That everlasting bugle, or whatever it is.’

  Dr Platt shook his head. ‘I don’t follow you. There’s nothing else. You’re hearing things.’ He walked away, paused, sighed, then returned to Billing’s side.

  ‘Perhaps you are hearing things, old man. How long have you been conscious of this music?’

  ‘Oh …’ He was confused by the unexpected question, did not know what to say and was afraid of losing the doctor’s attention. ‘I couldn’t say … Some while.’

  ‘What’s your theory?’

  ‘What theory?’

  The doctor tapped a ball-point pen against his thumb nail. ‘How do you account for the noise? Most sufferers have a theory about the noises they hear. Flying saucers. The Russians. The CIA. The chap next door. A secret ray. I just wondered what your theory was.’

  ‘I thought it was the radio. I don’t have any theories. You mean it’s in my head?’

  ‘The noise is called tinnitus. Many older people suffer from it. Nothing we can do about it though some recommend a change of diet. Don’t worry.’ He gave a smart nod and passed on to the next patient.

  ‘What did he call it?’ Billing asked himself. It would be nice to be a member of the professional class, as his father had been; to walk away briskly after making a statement, not to have life hanging round you like a question mark. One day, Dr Platt would age and hear noises in his head, too. But not for a long time …

  It was strange to be outside again, and even stranger to walk with the metal crutch. He did not dislike the feeling of importance it gave him. He must do something with his life. In particular, he would go and see Gladys Lee.

  It was afternoon. He sat in a coffee shop in Knightsbridge not far from the hospital, lacking courage. He talked to the other customers, beckoning them over for a chat, until the manageress came up and asked him courteously to leave. At a second café, the manager spoke less politely. He limped into the park and lay by the Serpentine, watching people go by, hoping to see someone he knew.

  His thoughts turned to his mother. She had played a mean trick, leaving her money to that blind idiot. Perhaps he had really hurt her by being afraid of her. After all, what if she was a hypocrite and liar? What if she did swank a bit?

  Why had he been incapable of loving her, bereft as she was of a husband? He might then have freed both of them. With her death, that chance had passed away.

  The discomfort of his thoughts drove him from the park. Outside a cinema, a woman’s face gazed down from a hoarding. Her eyes were smiling perhaps a little vaguely, the expression was calm, bereft of passion. ‘Night Music’ was the name of the film. Smaller letters said, ‘And Introducing Kathy Cleaver’. Billing stood mute, staring up into her eyes. It was his Cathy. Maybe her dream was coming true. Certainly she was not looking at him.

  Early next morning, Billing reached Gladys’s front door and sank down on the step. He dared not unlock the door and go in. She would still be asleep, drugged by the pills she took. He slept himself and was roused two hours later when the old nurse arrived.

  ‘Why, you’ll catch your death of cold, Mr Billing, sat there like that. Fancy! You’d better come in and I’ll make you a hot cup of tea.’ The glass eye seemed to gleam with compassion.

  He stood up stiffly, aware of his injuries, his age. His suit was crumpled. It was true that he felt chilled, yet he entered the house reluctantly, afraid to confront Gladys in case she was angry with him.

  For the first time, he noticed the unpleasant closed smell of the place.

  The unusual time of day made everything in the house revelatory. As the nurse disappeared into the kitchen, he paused undecided on
the threshold of Gladys’s bedroom. It was a room he had never been invited to enter. He looked round uncertainly, examining the landing wallpaper, which exhibited, from floor to picture rail, a faded pattern of stags attacked by wolves. Morning light filled the house with mist and shadows. He entered her room.

  She was in bed. He had never seen her so early, just awakened, looking so much more in the clutches of death than usual. An evil smell pervaded her bedroom. She panted unpleasantly, as if she were an old dog, peering at him from the sheets through rheumy eyes, displaying broken pegs of teeth.

  ‘Go away,’ she said.

  He waited miserably in the living room, clutching himself inside his damp clothes, resting his crutch against the cane-backed chair. ‘Sorry,’ he said aloud.

  On one of the side-tables lay a parcel which, on inspection, proved to be addressed to him. He recognised Rose Dwyer’s handwriting. She had sent on a few items from his rooms. There was no note in the parcel. So he was homeless as well as jobless. He could say nothing when the nurse brought him in tea and toast spread with melting peanut butter.

  An hour later, Gladys Lee hobbled slowly into the room with her stick. Billing stood up, nodding his head to denote affability. After shooting him an angry look, she turned her gaze elsewhere. Her pearls rattled.

  ‘I didn’t expect ever to see you again.’ Her tone was flat, unsmiling, her head sunk between her shoulders.

  He smiled feebly. ‘I’ve had an accident, Gladys. I gave your name to the hospital as my next-of-kin.’

  She went and sat by the electric fire, hunched over her stick, staring into the glowing element, not speaking for a long while.

  ‘You look a mess … What day is it?’

  Billing remained standing, propped on his crutch. He said, awkwardly, ‘I’m glad to see you again.’

  ‘You still haven’t had your hair cut.’ She gestured with a blotched hand for him to sit down.

  ‘This dream of yours – why did it comfort you?’ She came straight to whatever her point was; she had no time to waste.