by Brian Aldiss
Five shallow steps rose from the level of the drive to the front step (for the meek Guymell had been known to rise up and flood). Squire led the way up the steps to the panelled door.
‘My husband flew out to Singapore,’ Mrs Davies was telling Ash, ‘by air in the thirties, in a seaplane. I went too. It was very comfortable and we slept on board. I wouldn’t care to go now. Flights are so terribly crowded nowadays, I don’t know how people can bear it. Yet I saw in The Times just yesterday that they’re planning even bigger airliners. Where it will all end I don’t know.’
Squire was edging his friend into the hall. He waited while Mrs Davies talked to Ash. The interior was cool, and silent, apart from the click of the Dalmatian’s claws on the stone tiles as it circled him. This hall was Pippet Hall’s grandest feature, designed to make an immediate impression on guests before they were led to the relatively cramped reception rooms. Stairs led to the upper floor in a graceful double curve; portraits of Matthew and Caroline hung in heavy gilt frames on the half-landing.
‘Where are Ann and Jane?’ he asked sharply.
‘The girls have gone over to Norwich with Grace and their Aunt Deirdre. They’ll be back later,’ said Mrs Davies. ‘They’re wearing their jeans. I told them that dresses were more suitable for Norwich but, no, they would go in their jeans. Ugly things. Do you have children, Mr Ash?’
‘I think I’ll get Grahame a drink, Mother,’ said Squire. ‘Would you like one too?’
‘I could make you some tea if you liked, and there are some doughnuts from the Crooked Apron. Do you like doughnuts, Mr Ash? They’re terribly fattening…’
Squire manoeuvred Ash and his mother-in-law into the living room and poured both Ash and himself large vodkas-on-the-rocks. Leaving Ash to his conversation, he went off in search of his wife. The dog sat at the bottom of the stairs, watching him mournfully, knowing well that Dalmatians were not allowed upstairs.
Music sounded faintly along the upper corridor. Teresa had taken over the room at the south-east corner of the house. Squire tapped lightly at the door and went in.
The room was shaded. The curtain at the long south-facing window had been drawn to keep out the sun; but a thin beam, shining through the window set in the other wall, painted a line of gold across the white-and-green carpet, as if to emphasize the shadow into which the rest of the room had been plunged.
Teresa had furnished the room with rattan chairs and sofas, each with a white cushion, and all recently purchased from an artistic shop in Fakenham. There were several large plants, two monstera delicosa reaching almost to the ceiling, a rubber plant, and an aspidistra. The general effect was that an attempt had been made to recreate a Malayan environment, but the sofa had been pushed aside to make room for a white formica desk and a work table at which Teresa now sat.
The table was littered with rolls of plastic and wire and a cluttered miscellany of paint pots on a tray. Beneath the table were boxes and litter. On the walls hung the results of Teresa’s labours, fantastic insects of all sorts, beetles with amazing horns, moths with wings of gold, butterflies with eyes in their wings. These exotic creatures of wire and plastic glowed with the light from the floor, the unusual angle of illumination giving them an unexpected and even sinister aspect.
‘Tess! Are you all right?’
She had been sitting looking through the window, holding a paint brush in one hand. Although she turned to look at Squire, the end of the brush remained between her teeth, slightly wrinkling her upper lip.
‘Hello, Tom, I didn’t expect you back yet.’ As if making a decision, she dropped the brush abruptly and stood up. Teresa was a plump, soft-looking woman of under medium height. Now in her mid-forties, she had lines under the large doe eyes which were such a striking feature of her face. Her hair was piled neatly on her head and dyed with gold tints. She had taken recently to wearing plenty of make-up and false eyelashes. Her smock was stained with plastic paints; beneath it she wore crimson slacks. Crimson-nailed toes peeped from golden sandals.
Squire moved forward, clutched her, patted her chubby bottom.
‘We’ve finished filming for the day. Grahame’s here. Come down and have a drink with us.’
‘Where are the rest of them?’ In her regard was the slight suggestion of squint which he had once found so attractive.
‘Of the company? They’re mostly putting up at The Lion. Is anything the matter, Tess?’
She looked hard at him and said, ‘No, no, nothing’s the matter.’ With one sandalled foot she moved a cardboard carton out of the way.
‘Good. Come on down then.’
‘I’ll be there in a minute. I can’t come downstairs looking like this.’
‘Of course you can. You look lovely. Grahame won’t mind.’
She frowned, as if concentrating on resolving the contradiction in what he said.
‘If you go down, I’ll join you, if you really want me.’
‘Naturally we want you. Mother tells me the girls are in Norwich with Deirdre. I thought we might all go over and have supper in Blakeney with the film crew. It would be fun and the hotel cuisine’s not bad this season.’
With a lack-lustre air far from her normal manner, Teresa turned away, saying, ‘You go if you wish. I don’t feel like going out this evening.’
‘There is something the matter, isn’t there? Have you got business troubles?’
‘Not at all. On the contrary.’ She waved her hand over the cluttered table. ‘Vernon Jarvis is convinced I can make a great commercial success with fantasy insects. He says I shouldn’t bother to sell in England. He can get massive orders from Germany and New York which will pay much better. He thinks we should start an export company’.
‘Who’s Vernon Jarvis?’
‘A young man with flair and very good business connections. You met him before you went to Singapore but I daresay you were too busy to take any notice.’
‘I think I do remember now. Funny side-whiskers? Well, if all’s going well, don’t be gloomy, come down and have a drink.’
Going back to his vodka downstairs, Squire found Ash still in the conversational embrace of Mrs Davies, who was showing the director photographs of the three children, John — now grown-up and living in the murkier reaches of Manchester — Ann, and Jane. Prising Ash away, Squire took him into the study, where separate scripts and story-boards of each episode of ‘Frankenstein Among the Arts’ were arrayed on a trestle-table brought in for the purpose.
As Ash strolled with his drink to look out of the French windows at the sweep of lawn and meadow beyond, Squire said, ‘I’d better warn you that Teresa is in rather a peculiar mood. Probably her horoscope upset her this morning.’
‘Mine always upsets me. “Chance of financial advantage...” — and a tax form arrives with the postman. Never fear, I’ll be at my jolliest tonight.’
They switched on the video-cassette machine and flipped through a few items which might yet be fitted into the series. One showed a collection of hundreds of pepper-and-salt cellars, all different.
Both men laughed. ‘One function, diversity of forms. Condimental evolution,’ Ash said.
‘This array tells you a lot about the imagination of mankind. I think it should go in, if we can fit it in.’
‘It would have to go in Four, “Animals from Machines”. I’ll see what can be done.’
When Teresa appeared, she had changed into a summery blue dress which set off the artificial gold of her hair. She sailed into the study smiling, her mother and Nellie the Dalmatian trailing her. Greeting Ash warmly, she demanded a gin-and-tonic from her husband, and then chatted to the director. He invited her to join the party at the Blakeney Hotel.
‘Do we pick up your crew, if that’s what you call them, from The Lion?’
‘Yes, Mrs Squire. That’s where we are all staying. It’s picturesque.’
She accepted the drink from Squire without a glance in his direction.’ You should have stayed with us. There’s room. This
place has been like a nunnery with Tom away so much... Is your “Sex Symbol”, about whom I’ve heard so much, also staying at The Lion?’
‘Laura Nye? She’s in London overnight. Everyone else will be there. You’ll like Jennie Binns — she’s held us all together. Laura’s a good girl, too — as sweet as she looks. The series is her first television job. She’s had plenty of stage experience, worked with Ralph Richardson at one time.’
Teresa had developed a withdrawn look. Nellie flopped on the hearthrug.
‘Perhaps I’ll come,’ Teresa said.
Squire got the Jaguar out. It and the Peugeot drove into the village to collect the crew. Then they headed for the coast. The sun still shone, though cloud gathered. The evening appeared motionless. The tide was still out. The dinner was good.
Tom and Teresa rolled back to the Hall after midnight, leaving the car outside the house. They staggered indoors and Squire chained the door behind them. He went through to the kitchen to make tea while Teresa went upstairs to see that the girls were in bed. When he carried the mugs up, slopping tea on the carpets, Teresa was already undressing. A particularly brilliant dragonfly, with outstretched wings of crimson and viridian, glittered in a block of perspex on her side of the bed. She kept her gaze on it instead of looking at Squire.
‘Pleasant occasion, darling. Multo conviviality, as father used to say. I hope you enjoyed yourself as much as you appeared to be doing.’
‘It was all too apparent you weren’t enjoying yourself. That dreary doomed way you toyed with your Chicken Kiev…’
‘What do you mean? You could see I enjoyed myself. It was visible to all. And I ate up all my Chicken Kiev.’
‘Absent-mindedly.’
He removed his blazer, saying controlledly, ‘I drank a bit more than I intended. Grahame was well away, wasn’t he? Think he’d get back to The Lion safely?’
She made no answer. Instead, she disappeared behind her Chinese screen, in the shelter of which, since she had decided she was ‘getting too fat’, she preferred to undress.
‘Oh shit,’ he said, ‘if you’re refusing to talk to me, I’ll go downstairs and get myself another whisky. You’re brewing up for something — I know the expression “ bottled fury” when I see it in the flesh. Tell me what the matter is, tell me what bloody mortal sin I’ve committed now.’
‘Don’t start swearing, Tommy.’ Her voice, heavy with reproof, from behind the gold-limned outline of a Cathaian mountainside. ‘It’s always a sign of guilt.’
‘Why do you damned well say I didn’t enjoy this evening? Any reason why I shouldn’t have enjoyed myself, apart from those hang-dog looks you kept giving me?’
‘You never even glanced at me, so how would you know?’
‘I did look; I was enjoying myself. I told you.’
Her face partially appeared, as if to get a sight on him, then withdrew behind the screen again. ‘You know what I mean. There’s enjoyment and enjoyment. Absent friends and all that…’
‘What absent friends, for heaven’s sake?’ He put his blazer on again. ‘You’re not insinuating that we should have taken your mother with us?’
‘I’ve long ago ceased to expect you to be decent or even civil to my mother. I mean, it wasn’t quite the same for you, was it, without that — that girl of yours, that Laura.’
‘If you’re referring to Laura Nye, I’ve not a clue what you’re talking about. You were told, she’s gone to London. Grahame told you.’
‘That’s what makes her an absent friend, isn’t it? Gone to sleep with some young stud of hers, I suppose. That’s what models are all about, isn’t it?’
He strode round the bed and dragged the screen back. Teresa stood there in her powder-blue dressing-gown, drawn to her modest full height, unmoving.
‘Come out of there if you’re going to insult me and Laura. She’s not a “model”, as you sneeringly call her. She has worked with Peter Brooke and was in Shakespeare at the Old Vic for three years.’
‘I’d never trust anyone who was in Shakespeare for three years.’
‘Oh, this is just stupid, Tess. You’ve had too much gin. Let’s get to bed and go to sleep, and perhaps you’ll talk sense in the morning.’
She said, ‘I suppose you were playing Shakespeare on the beach this afternoon. What was it? You’re a bit long in the tooth for Romeo…’
It was very quiet outside. He went and peered through the curtains, over the balcony, at the garden and fields beyond, faintly visible in the starry night. Mist was gathering.
‘Come on, Tess, give it up. You’re spoiling for a fight and I’m not. You’re just making us miserable.’
She sat down on the side of the bed and selected a cigarette from the silver box she kept there. Lighting it with a shaking hand, she said, ‘How typical of you to pretend that I’m making the misery. You’ve been away all over the world, I’ve hardly seen you from one month’s end to the next. You come back, and I find you’ve got a new girl in tow. After all the trouble we had three years ago, I thought you’d learnt wisdom.’
He made to speak but she raised a hand. ‘I’m talking, aren’t I? You can have your say afterwards, though I’m not sure if I’ll listen. I’m fed up, Tom, utterly fed up. What sort of marriage is it? If you want to know, I drove up on to the headland this afternoon and watched you with that woman through binoculars. I saw you mauling her about, cuddling her, kissing her, feeling her tits — in front of the others, too. How do you think I liked that, eh? You bastard!’
‘Christ!’ He ran the palm of his hand up his forehead and into his hair. ‘Teresa, you’re just being tiresome and exercising that suspicious nature of yours. Neither you nor I are anything to do with the world of television or show biz or whatever, and once “Frankenstein” is finished and in the can at the end of August, that will be the end of it as far as I’m concerned. I shall go back to work as usual.
‘But we both know about show biz. Different pressures, different moeurs. Sure, I did put my arm round Laura’s shoulder. It was breezy, she was cold, and she needed cheering up. Nothing more to it than that. So just drop the whole subject right here and now. Did you feel good, spying on me?
‘I admit I’ve been away a bit, but we agreed that this was my chance and I took it. “Frankenstein” is a marvellous opportunity and a new subject and I’m proud of it. But this period will shortly be over, then we’ll live a more normal sort of life. Simply let me sail through it without having emotional problems with you.’
Teresa came round the bed, shuffling her bare feet into fluffy slippers as she walked.
‘Men are such bloody liars. I tell you I saw you with her through the binoculars. Now you expect to jump into bed with me and screw me, don’t you? Whatever’s to hand, eh, Tommy Squire? You’ve been fucking that bitch in Singapore and all over the map, haven’t you?’
‘No.’ He regarded her woodenly, head down, face heavy, the flesh of his jowls creased as he faced her charge, his eyes defensive, angry.
His monosyllable — or his pose — stopped her before she reached him. She coughed furiously over the cigarette, fist to her mouth.
‘You bloody liar! Sagittarius woman with Cancer man — I should have known all along it would never work out. You’re a philanderer, you philander even with your mind, you’re rootless, you live only for yourself, don’t you? Well, why don’t you go back to Yugoslavia and live the way you used to live there?’
‘Don’t be silly, dear, you’re working yourself up for nothing. I’ve no wish to return to Yugoslavia, I’m too old, I want a peaceful life.’
‘A fine way you go about it. I suppose you’ll tell me you’re undergoing the male menopause next. That girl must have loved all that sort of thing — a case of Much Ado About Nothing, wasn’t it? Get out! I’m not having you in this bedroom with me. Go and sleep in one of the guest rooms. You’re no better than a guest.’
He moved slowly, like a man in a dream, picking up his pyjamas, his brass carriage clock from the bedsid
e table, and his mug of tea.
‘The stars may be moving against us, Tess, but that is not my wish. We have to make our own decisions and not pretend we are helpless. You must behave less cruelly to me.’
‘It’s your behaviour not mine that’s at fault.’
Squire wandered for a while through the vacant rooms of the Hall, unable to rest. He was familiar with the dimensions of the house from childhood, could walk them unhesitatingly with his eyes closed. In the dead of night, this familiar substantial presence was doubly comforting. Every room held for him a different ambience; by its temperature, its smell, its silences, the very texture of its air or the creak of its oak floor-boards, he could tell which room he was in, and respond to its character.
She had her difficulties, finding her way through life. All the astrological nonsense which recently had preoccupied her was simply a means by which she tried to manoeuvre round the hidden obstacles of her existence.
He thought back to an evening only three nights ago, before Grahame Ash, Laura Nye, and the crew had come down to Hartisham to film — only three nights ago, but now, separated from the present by the quarrel, a long way in the past. It had been so peaceful, so domestic: Tess and he, and the two girls, and Tess’s reliable friend, Matilda Rowlinson, sitting drinking coffee in his study after supper. Yet even then he had been dreaming of someone else…
Teresa was painting, copying a large butterfly. She used acrylics on a large pad, and worked deftly, occasionally looking up and smiling at Ann and Jane, who lolled by the fire with Nellie, the Dalmatian. Ann was just thirteen, her sister eleven; the sandy gene had run out with their elder brother; they had inherited their mother’s mouse, and their father’s enquiring nature.