The Realities of Aldous U

by Michael Lawrence

  ‘What something?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now, it’s past, didn’t touch you after all. The point is, there was no need for further correspondence – until last weekend, when I decided to tell you everything. And I wanted you to see R43 before it vanished forever. It was my home for some years, after all.’

  ‘I could have done without seeing it,’ Naia said coolly. ‘Now which is the real you: Mr. Knight or Aldous U?’

  ‘I was christened John Aldous Knight,’ he replied, ‘though the middle name was at my father’s insistence. Mum wasn’t keen on it. You see, shortly before I was born my dad came across a family skeleton in a document found among his late father’s papers which showed that in her twenty-second year his grandmother, Dorothea, while married to a rather dour Presbyterian pharmacist named Holden Knight, had a child by the local Bishop.’

  ‘Not Bishop Aldous.’

  ‘The one and only.’

  ‘And that’s why you call yourself Underwood? Because of that connection?’

  ‘Underwood? I don’t call myself Underwood.’

  ‘Of course you do. What else could the “U” stand for?’

  ‘Well, it could stand for… let me see. Unsworth? Uttley? Utteridge? How about Uxley?’ He laughed. ‘Aldous Uxley – I like that!’

  Naia was less amused. ‘If your name isn’t Underwood, what is it?’

  ‘Uxenden,’ said Aldous U.

  ‘Uxenden?’

  ‘My mother’s maiden name.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘And all this time…’

  ‘The people who bought Withern Rise from your family in the late nineteen-forties didn’t require my dad’s services, so he was out on his ear. He got menial work here and there, but less and less as time went on – gardening was all he knew – and he grew bitter about his increasingly lowly status. Descended from a wealthy churchman, and here he was clearing out drains and sweeping the streets to feed his wife and kid. This resentment led him to develop an ambition to see me elevated to the social level of his grandfather’s legitimate heirs. He wanted me to study hard and achieve the sort of qualifications that would lead to a well-paid, suit-wearing position and my becoming a respected man in the community. But it wasn’t for me. I didn’t aspire to such things. All I wanted was to travel, see the world.’ He laughed. ‘If I’d only known the worlds I would see!’

  ‘This is fascinating,’ said Alaric, unfascinated. ‘But how about telling us why you brought us here?’

  ‘Because of our very different ambitions for me,’ AU went on as if he hadn’t spoken, ‘Dad and I ceased to get on. Things went from bad to worse until he no longer even looked at me. I remember one winter evening when I was sixteen. The two of us sat in the living room of our cottage in School Lane. I was trying to explain how I felt about things, smooth things over between us, and he was reading the paper as if I wasn’t there.’

  ‘I know how that feels,’ Alaric muttered.

  ‘Suddenly he got up, walked across the room, turned the light out, and closed the door behind him, leaving me in darkness. Then, the morning of my seventeenth birthday, instead of a card he left a note for me to see after he went to work. In it, he said he hoped I wouldn’t be there when he got home. I took the hint – and a room above the ironmonger’s in Stone and, in retaliation, made it known that I would no longer bear my father’s name but be known as Aldous Uxenden.’

  ‘Uxenden or not,’ Naia said, still smarting over the months of deception, ‘you must have known I’d take you for an Underwood when you signed those letters Aldous U.’

  He looked contrite. ‘As I said, I didn’t think you’d see that first letter.’

  ‘You meant me to see the others.’

  ‘A precedent had been established.’

  ‘And you put “Withern Rise” at the bottom.’

  ‘Withern Rise was the name of my house in R43.’

  ‘Yes, but still…’ She floundered.

  ‘When I was very young I wrote cryptic notes, often in lemon juice, which I signed John Aldous K above my address, printing “To the Finder” on envelopes I made with oilskin paper from the mill where my mum worked. I closed the envelopes with a seal that bore the letter “A” – the same stamp I use today, given to me by my dad when I was eight or nine to remind me of my illustrious namesake and forebear. I would post the envelopes in this hidey-hole or that, ostensibly to be found by a stranger or relative, though more often than not the finder was me. I would come upon them with feigned surprise and warm the pages over a candle to reveal the message. Last January, I put that first letter in the tree to commemorate my return to the garden I knew in early childhood, when I would toddle round after my dad while he was working. No longer needing to discover it myself, however, it remained there till you found it.’

  ‘Pity you didn’t use lemon juice that time,’ Naia said. ‘It wouldn’t have occurred to me that those sheets were anything but blank.’

  ‘I still don’t get the reason for two names,’ said Alaric.

  ‘In most realities I’m Aldous Uxenden,’ AU replied, looking directly at him for a change. ‘But in a few, where I have dealings with Withern Rise residents who might wonder about the bloodline of someone called Aldous, I stick to John Knight. It’s simpler that way.’

  ‘Simpler,’ Naia said. ‘Rich, coming from you.’

  ‘So what do we call you?’ Alaric asked.

  He waved a hand around. ‘Here, I’m not fussy.’

  ‘I’d like to know why you didn’t show yourself the day you ran me out of the forest,’ Naia said. ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it was me. I came upon that nasty little scene almost too late, and my only thought was to get you away while that oaf was otherwise engaged.’

  ‘Beating Alaric up.’

  ‘Beating me up?’ said Alaric.

  ‘I mean Ric,’ Naia said.

  ‘If you’d seen me there,’ AU went on, ‘the fisticuffs would have finished long before you were through interrogating me, so... I ran you out.’

  ‘Isn’t it time you told us why you brought us here?’ Alaric asked.

  ‘Mm,’ AU said. ‘I wish there was somewhere for you to sit to hear it.’

  Naia’s mouth went dry. ‘That bad, is it?’

  ‘You might not see it as the most cheering news ever.’

  They waited while he considered how best to put it.

  ‘Go on then,’ Alaric said impatiently.

  Still he hesitated. But finally: ‘It’s not easy, and I won’t be absolutely sure until I run a check, but unless I’ve made a gross error of interpretation, while we’ve been standing here chatting something’s been happening to your realities.’

  A further pause invited the inevitable query, as a whisper from both of them at once: ‘What sort of something?’

  Aldous Uxenden explained.

  60: –

  For weeks there’d been little doubt in his mind that Alaric’s reality hadn’t long to go. All the signs were there – subtle signs, but ones he’d seen before, which almost always augured sudden and swift termination. There being nothing he could do to prevent this, he’d closed his mind to it: it was, after all, just one reality among many. But then the Alaric of that reality picked up the pouch Naia dropped and came to R43, where AU answered most of his questions. He’d answered them because once he’d discovered where the boy was from it didn’t matter how much he knew; and besides, it had been good to talk about those things rather than keep them to himself, as usual.

  What he had not guessed until this very morning was that Alaric’s might not be the only reality in trouble. Perhaps it had come to him in his sleep, he had no way of telling; all he knew was that as he emerged from slumber his mind was so burdened with this worry that within half-an-hour he’d left his new lodgings above the Sorry Fiddler for the Withern Rise he would soon own, and there entered, in quick succession, every reality of his cluster. They were all similar, of cour
se – R43 had been the sole anomaly – but only that Alaric’s and that Naia’s had suffered the devastating storm of the night before. Only in theirs had the old oak lost a limb. Only in theirs was there an air of dark expectancy, of fragility, and overcast skies with a red smear that spread as you watched, like the blood of a fresh wound through the fibers of a bandage. He’d witnessed a similar combination of factors on three occasions over the years, and on each they’d been shared, as now, by just two realities. As all three cases had concluded with the fusion of those two in a matter of hours, he was left in no doubt that Alaric’s and Naia’s realities were no longer merely parallel, but on the verge of integration. They were about to become one.

  ‘But if two realities merge…’ Naia said, hearing of this.

  ‘Yes?’ said Aldous U.

  ‘Well, won’t there be two of everything? Everyone?’

  ‘If your realities go the way of the others, the result will be a kind of pick-‘n’-mix of the two, except that no one will have a hand in the picking.’

  ‘You’ll have to explain that.’

  ‘Well, let’s say a man had a leg amputated in one reality but not the other. The person he becomes when the two realities are joined could be a combination of those two versions of himself.’

  ‘One leg one day, two the next?’ Alaric said.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Naia.

  Aldous U flipped open his satchel and took out the pouch that had taken him to Alaric’s earlier. ‘Our man could be missing a leg in the new reality but have no memory of losing it. This could easily upset the balance of his mind, but one notion he’ll never entertain is that he might once have been two individuals. Nor will anyone else. Family, friends, everyone he knows, will have adapted to the new him without being aware of it.’

  ‘But won’t they have any memory of where his leg went?’

  ‘Some might, but probably not all. There’ll be a lot of confusion.’ He put the pouch in his pocket. ‘I’ll see if it’s happened yet. Don’t go away.’

  He took a rather theatrical step backward and disappeared. They stared first at the empty space, then at one another.

  ‘Doesn’t sound too good for one of us,’ Naia said, and walked off, feeling her way step by step as though across treacherous ice. Alaric sank to the ‘ground’ and folded his legs at the knee.

  AU was back in minutes. ‘I’ll try the other one now,’ he said, exchanging the empty sample-bottle he now carried for the fawn-colored pouch he’d used earlier to get to Naia’s reality. ‘I might have gone there direct, but it could be risky in the present circumstances.’

  Again he took the vanishing step. Alaric and Naia looked at one another across the expanse, but said nothing.

  The next time he appeared, Aldous Uxenden said, with a note of triumph: ‘Carrying a single pouch, I can see both realities at once from either one. They’re a hairline out of alignment, a touch less opaque than normal, but they look the same to the last leaf, twig, blade of grass. And there are two Kates, working at the same task.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ Naia asked, heading back. ‘Wait for them to merge properly?’

  ‘I think they’ve already merged,’ AU said. ‘But for them to appear as a single entity we have to treat them as such.’

  ‘How do we do that?’

  He took out the pouches that had conveyed him to R39 and R47.

  ‘By using these at one and the same time instead of separately as I’ve just done.’

  ‘What if you’re wrong and they haven’t fully merged?’ Alaric asked.

  ‘Then we have some waiting to do. Or some rethinking.’

  ‘You said that if there were any differences in the two realities before they were joined only some of those differences would survive. Where does that leave us? I mean…’

  He looked at Naia. She understood at once.

  ‘We won’t merge, will we?’ she said in alarm. ‘Become one person?’

  AU shook his head. ‘You weren’t at home during fusion. That’s why I removed you, so it wouldn’t happen.’

  ‘But it would have if you hadn’t gotten us out in time?’

  ‘Bet your boots,’ he said. He put a pouch in each of his two side pockets. ‘And if your next question’s going to be would the merged version have been a Naia or an Alaric, I really couldn’t say.’

  ‘But personality-wise, memory-wise?’

  ‘Bits and pieces from each of you, is my guess. Prescription for an awful lot of mood-swings, to say nothing of identity crises. Of course, if the physical result had been male,’ he added with a grin, ‘he wouldn’t have had far to look for his feminine side. Shall we go?’

  ‘Go?’

  He took Naia’s arm, linked it through his.

  ‘I could go alone again, but I’m not sure it would accomplish much.’

  ‘What do you expect to accomplish?’

  Instead of replying, he crooked his other arm at Alaric, who said, ‘Feels as if we’re going to do the Can-Can,’ but linked anyway.

  ‘Wait,’ Naia said. ‘You didn’t say what this place is.’

  ‘Did I not?’ said Aldous U. ‘Oh well. Get ready to breathe now.’

  ‘Breathe?’

  He stepped forward, taking them with him, and next thing they knew they were gulping air by the trunk of the willow in the north garden. They were still recovering as AU, more used to this, peered out through leaves.

  ‘Well, it looks normal…’

  They joined him; also peered. The sky was a fine, clear blue. The red blemish was no more. The garden was in the same post-storm disorder that they’d last seen it. Kate stooped on the driveway, gathering the last of the broken twigs from the lawn, tossing them into the old wooden wheelbarrow.

  ‘Dad put an axe through that wheelbarrow ages ago,’ Alaric said. ‘Bought a new one. Heavy-duty plastic, black and yellow.’

  ‘So it’s my reality,’ Naia said with cautious relief.

  ‘Not entirely,’ said AU.

  ‘Not entirely?’

  ‘I mowed your grass the other day.’

  This grass hadn’t been mowed for at least three weeks. When all that this suggested had sunk in, Naia said: ‘As we weren’t in our realities when they merged, how do we know either of us has a place here?’

  ‘We don’t, yet,’ AU replied. ‘But if this works out the way I hope…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Let’s find out.’

  They had taken no more than half-a-dozen steps when the air shivered. Naia and Alaric, at one and the same instant, whispered: ‘What was that?’

  ‘I hope,’ AU whispered back, ‘that it’s the composite reality modifying itself following receipt of new information.’

  ‘New information?’ said Naia.

  ‘The two of you.’

  61: 39/47

  Kate Faraday looked round at the sound of feet shushing through the uncut grass. She straightened up, smiling.

  ‘I wondered where you two’d got to.’

  Naia and Alaric looked at one another. Which two?

  ‘Everything all right here?’ Kate said, looking at Aldous U but not quite directing the query to him. Naia made a vaguely affirmative-sounding noise in her throat. ‘And you are…?’ This time directly to AU.

  ‘You don’t know him?’ Naia asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Kate said uncertainly.

  ‘Hullo, Mr. Knight.’

  All heads turned to see an elderly figure dragging a bloated green garden sack around the corner of the house. Aldous Uxenden nodded to Aldous Underwood as he approached.

  ‘Morning, Aldous.’

  Naia stared at AU. Kate didn’t know him but Aldous did?

  ‘Pick-’n’-mix,’ he said softly, reading her mind.

  ‘What shall I do with this?’ Aldous asked Kate.

  ‘We’ll have to build a bonfire. Leave it here for now.’ He stood the sack against the wheelbarrow. ‘Much more round there?’

  ‘Stacks,’ he said cheerfully.


  ‘I’ll come and give you a hand,’ Kate said as he started back.

  ‘Righty-ho.’

  Naia watched him go, thinking how quickly he’d gotten over the cat. He was just turning the corner when the sack he’d brought fell sideways and half its contents tumbled out. Kate stooped to repack it. Needing to clarify the situation, and the part she was expected to play in it, Naia said, as casually as she could: ‘Any thoughts about where to bury Alaric yet?’

  ‘Bury Alaric?’ Kate cast a surprised glance at the human being of that name, standing tense and silent beside Aldous U.

  ‘The cat,’ Naia said.

  ‘Cat? What cat?’

  After which, Naia was lost for words. AU stepped into the breach.

  ‘I should tell you what I’m doing here,’ he said to Kate. ‘My father was gardener here way back. I haven’t been within these garden walls since I was very young, and your son and daughter kindly invited me in for a little look. I hope it’s all right.’

  Kate looked up at him. ‘You’re very welcome, but they’re not my children. Not exactly. They are brother and sister, though. Twins, actually.’

  Alaric’s gasp was quite audible. Naia made no sound.

  ‘It must feel strange,’ Kate went on, tying the neck of the sack. ‘Seeing the place again after all these years, through older eyes.’

  Aldous U smiled. ‘Much older eyes.’

  She stood up. ‘We could do with someone like your father now.’

  ‘Fancy a job?’ Naia said pointedly.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Garden of my own to see to. Good to meet you,’ he said to Kate.

  ‘And you. Pop in again, any time.’

  ‘We’ll see you off the premises,’ said Naia.

  She nudged Alaric out of his trance and the three of them set off across the north garden, toward the side gate. They were a few paces short of the path that would take them there when Naia looked back and saw Kate heading for the corner of the house to join Aldous. They waited till she’d gone, then swerved, hurried round the hedge, to the willow.