Life in the West

by Brian Aldiss

  ‘…and then there was a bomb scare at Heathrow and we all had to be searched…’ Hearing her voice, he recalled her once-and-eternal innocence.

  He continued into the hall. Beyond Belinda’s plump back, he saw his wife, wrapped in a shortie Swedish coat with hat to match and looking tall in crimson high-heeled boots; with her stood a young man, grinning slightly, in a Russian-type fur hat and ankle-length grey tweed coat. Whiskery sideboards made a pincer movement across his cheeks, in an attempt to cut off his nose from his mouth. It was Jarvis.

  Squire had not expected that. He stopped as Teresa saw him.

  ‘Oh, darling, there you are!’ cried Teresa. ‘We are so late, I thought you’d be gone.’ She moved towards him in a tentative way: so tentatively that Jarvis, also coming forward, overtook her, sticking out a boney hand.

  ‘Glad to see you again, Mr Squire. I’ve been taking care of Teresa.’ He smiled with all the teeth at his command. ‘What a journey we’ve had!’

  So overcome was Squire by this effrontery that he accepted the hand before realizing it. The touch of it immediately roused him and he withdrew his own.

  ‘So you’re the creature who’s been fooling around with my wife and sneaking into my home when I was away! Get out immediately!’

  Jarvis opened his mouth rather wide and stuck his fists on his hips.

  ‘If you’re going to be unfriendly, two can play that game.’

  ‘Don’t you dare make trouble here, Tom,’ Teresa said.

  ‘Oh, don’t mind us,’ Belinda said, closing the front door. ‘Feel at home.’

  Squire said, ‘Teresa, you’re mad bringing this fellow here!’

  ‘Don’t you order me to get out, Mr Squire,’ Jarvis said, his confidence returning. ‘It’s not your place any more than it is mine. I’ve got every right to be here. I’m looking after your wife, and so what? You weren’t so much of a success in that line, gallivanting round the world.’

  He showed signs of continuing his discourse, but Belinda said coolly, ‘You do not have as much right to be here as Mr Squire, young man, whatever your name is. Just for the record, Mr Squire was invited here and is our guest. You were not invited and you are not our guest.’

  ‘Belinda! I was going to introduce you. Vernon has brought me all the way back from Malta. We’ve been travelling for hours…’ Teresa looked close to tears.

  ‘No doubt he took you all the way to Malta, too,’ said Belinda.

  Ron Broadwell appeared in time to hear this last exchange.

  ‘Any trouble?’ he asked.

  ‘Ron, this fellow has the impertinence to turn up here with my wife on his arm. I shall not stay if he does. You’ve arrived with her, Jarvis, you can take her away again — back to Malta, for all I care.’

  Jarvis said, ‘If you weren’t old enough to be my father, I’d bash your face in.’

  ‘You can try if you like. You’d get a few surprises.’

  ‘For two pins I would, you self-satisfed — ’

  Broadwell moved forward, his bulk making the advance an impressive sight. ‘I’m not having an intruder spoiling our evening. You must make up your own mind what you are doing, Teresa. Of course you’re welcome to stay on your own.’

  Teresa stamped her foot and shook her fists. ‘My God, Tom, how you disgrace me — in front of friends. Vern only wanted to be your frien…’

  Turning to Jarvis, Broadwell said, ‘You aren’t welcome here. Get out and go home. Close the door behind you. Go on, vamoose!’

  Glaring angrily at her husband, Teresa said, ‘We came here in perfect innocence. I wasn’t going to turn Vera away after all our troubles today. You ought to try Alitalia some time. I knew it was the wrong day to travel; the stars were against it, but I wanted to see you on New Year’s Eve. Now you show how little you care, telling Vern to take me away, treating me — ’

  He had swung away in disgust, but now he turned back. ‘What did you want to see me for, Teresa? You’ve shown no inclination these last months. I suppose you want to borrow money?’

  She grasped Jarvis’s arm. ‘I’m sorry, Vern, I didn’t mean to drag you into this. He always tries to humiliate me. I loved and trusted you once, Tom. As for you, Belinda, I knew you were never a friend of mine — ’

  ‘Oh, yes, I was,’ Belinda said sharply. ‘I was a good friend of yours, because I’ve never hinted to you that not for one moment did I think you did at all a good job of being Tom’s wife. Now you’ve found someone of your own kind, perhaps Tom can find someone to make him happier. That’s what we all hope.’

  Ron laid a hand on his wife’s arm. She glared like a cat about to pounce, and then put an arm round him.

  ‘Such fun to be totally honest for once,’ she said: ‘Sorry, Teresa.’

  But Teresa had already turned back to her husband. ‘You of all people accusing Vernon of fooling around with me behind your back. Why can’t I invite him home? He only came for coffee and a business chat. I’ll invite in who I like. I wanted him to see my work. I’m not going to be cooped up while you do what you please with any woman you fancy.’

  Jarvis was also talking. Squire found he had ceased to listen. Before the spectacle of his wife attacking him and defending Jarvis, all the fight had gone out of him. He was thinking rather abstractedly about closing up the Hall, perhaps even selling up — why not? Maintaining it was just a struggle — and going abroad somewhere, living on capital and royalties. Maybe California. Or one of the Adriatic islands. Mali Losinj. But even if they were Yugoslav, they were still communist. Singapore? Malaysia. Without Laura?

  Jarvis was still talking, wagging a finger, maintaining a long self-righteous discourse, chiefly concerned with how his popularity with women was sustained because he treated them right, although he didn’t think it was fair to marry. Furthermore, he cultivated Teresa because she was good at her craft and they would make a success of the business they were developing if only their capital hadn’t run out unexpectedly. Even that was because of his generosity. He was too generous.

  Squire realized that Séverine and her husband were listening with fascination — the scent of her perfume reached him. Much as he hated this occasion, he recognized that he could laugh about it with her afterwards. Possibly rather a long time afterwards.

  He noted also that Teresa’s mother and Willie had made themselves scarce. His dry mouth reminded him how welcome alcohol would be.

  ‘Perhaps we should go and have a drink somewhere,’ he said, cutting in on Jarvis’s speech. ‘We’ll sort this false nonsense out once and for all. There’s bound to be a pub open in Ascot tonight. I won’t impose this disruption on my friends any longer. But if you are determined to consort with all and sundry, Teresa, then we must make arrangements accordingly.’

  ‘I didn’t say — ’ Teresa began, but Jarvis silenced her. ‘I’m not drinking with you, Mr Squire. Not after the way you’ve insulted me in front of these people. And damaged my reputation. I intended you no harm.’

  Squire laughed with a poor parched sound. ‘You’d better understand that you’ve done me considerable harm — and Teresa also. If you don’t want to talk, why not simply blow back into the night, the way you came?’

  At this point, Ron Broadwell heaved himself forward, clapping his hands. Belinda took Squire’s arm and squeezed him.’ I don’t believe it,’ she said.

  ‘Did you two come in a taxi?’ Ron asked Teresa, flinging open the front door.

  ‘Of course not. Vern had his car at the airport. And where’s my mother? Tom, you’re turning me away — realize that, you’re turning me away. I warn you, I don’t like it, and I shan’t stand for it.’

  ‘Good-bye, Teresa,’ he called.

  ‘Terry, let’s scram out of here,’ Jarvis said, tugging at his coat. He added menacingly to Broadwell, ‘And I’ll plant one on you if you shove me.’

  ‘Do you wish me to turn the dogs on you?’

  The front door slammed. Broadwell ushered his wife and Squire into the living room to t
he fire, ostentatiously wiping sweat from his forehead.

  ‘I thought the blighter was going to attack me, I really thought he was going to hit me. You heard what he said? Well, Jacques, Séverine, you see how we English live. It’s all drama — the land of Shakespeare.’

  The French couple smiled and shrugged and expressed their sympathies with Squire. ‘It happens all the while in France,’ Jacques said. ‘Maybe with stabbing in addition.’

  Broadwell went to the window, drew back the curtain, and watched to see Jarvis drive off. Uncle Will and Mrs Davies stood by the fireplace, holding hands without speaking.

  ‘We’d better leave after all that,’ Willie said, glumly.

  ‘I never thought she would actually go with him,’ Squire said. He felt his lips pale and sat down. ‘I never thought to see that. She sided with him…I need a drink.’

  Mrs Davies began to weep. ‘Take me away, please Willie… I never expected to hear a daughter of mine treated like that by her husband. We ought to go after them. Oh, oh, how awful everything is…Tom, you’re so cruel… Poor Teresa…’

  ‘I’ll get you a drink, Mrs Davies,’ Ron Broadwell said. ‘We all need one. Big ones, at that. And — Happy New Year, everyone, by the way!’

  It was midnight. Distant bells began to peel.

  13

  Illegal Currency Charges

  Ermalpa, September 1978

  It was midnight; Thursday, 14 September, was passing into history.

  The lights in the corridors had dimmed or had been switched off. Francesca da Rimini and Paolo, their nudity and guilty love shrouded in decent shadow, stood like sentinels over the dark foyer of the hotel, staring towards the Via Milano. Down that thoroughfare, last Fiats were fleeing, travelling all the faster in their comparative solitude, like the remnants of a school offish escaping from a vast maw.

  In the bar of the Grand Hotel Marittimo, lights still burned, the skilled waiters still waited, smiling and polite, pocketing their small tips. The tables were still encircled by conference delegates, most of them drinking and smoking, all of them talking.

  Herman Fittich, buoyed by the success of his talk that evening, was laughing as he compared teaching experiences with members of the French delegation. Rugorsky was at another table, arguing with Morabito and some Italians, though turning every now and again to pat the arm of Maria Frenza, who sat next to him, smoking and smiling exclusively into the night air.

  Dwight Dobell sat with Frenza at another table, discussing the vagaries of the American academic system. Squire was at the same table, half-listening; he had sat through many similar discussions in his time, yet the American academic system remained incomprehensible to him. Each conversation added a mite more incomprehensibility. He got up as if to go to the toilets, but turned instead to the lift, and travelled to the second floor. It might as well be bedtime.

  The long melancholy corridors with their high arched ceilings were dim; every other light was off. A few trays lay uncollected outside doors. The silence was as thick as a blanket on a hot night. A vacuum cleaner, entangled in metres of its own cable, stood awaiting morning; its heavy fake streamlining suggested that it was a survivor from the regime of Mussolini; with its jutting black rubber prow, it even looked like Mussolini.

  Before he reached the corner of the passage, Squire heard voices. A woman’s first, sharp, protesting. Then a man’s.

  He turned the corner. The first door on the left was open. Light poured into the corridor from a bedside lamp.

  A man bent over a woman. He was in trousers and shirtsleeves. His jacket had been flung down on the bed. He was holding the woman fairly gently and speaking persuasively, not in English. She had reached the door, and was leaning backwards, to get as far away as possible. She saw Squire.

  At the same moment, he recognized d’Exiteuil and Ajdini. D’Exiteuil turned, poking his little beard over his shoulder, looking extremely displeased by the interruption. Ajdini waved enthusiastically.

  ‘Ah, Tom Squire! I must simply have a word with you. There is rather an abstract question needing to be resolved.’

  She moved fast, eluding d’Exiteuil, turning deftly to wish him good-night, smiling, linking her arm with Squire’s, adjusting her coiffure, thanking d’Exiteuil for his kindness.

  D’Exiteuil stood at his door, his brows gathered darkly, pulling at his cheek as he folded his arms across his chest.

  ‘Good-night, Jacques,’ Squire said.

  Squire walked briskly along to his room, unlocked it, ushered Ajdini in, followed her, and locked the door behind them. He was laughing more openly than she, as he stood beside her. She was a tall lady. Colour had mounted into the normal pallor of her cheeks.

  ‘I see that look in your eye,’ she said, pushing him with extended arm, ‘I hope I just didn’t step from the frying pan into the fire.’

  ‘What a gorgeous voice you have, Selina, and how lovely you look when a little ruffled. Was Jacques going to rape you?’

  ‘Of course not. Jacques? He is harmless. I simply changed my mind, that’s all. I simply changed my mind. Now I’m going to bed and I hope that you will be an English gentleman and not present me with any difficulty.’

  ‘Don’t insult me with the English gentleman bit. Regard me as Serbian, just for tonight. I’ve got you here and I won’t let you go till morning.’

  ‘I’m not insulting you, I’m praising you, for heaven’s sake. You’re not another little Enrico Pelli, I know that. Now, I’ll have a drink with you while you calm down a bit, for friendship, then I will go to my room.’

  ‘Your room’s not lonely. I am. You promised me that you would sleep with me tonight. You must keep your promises. You’ve whetted my appetite, Selina.’

  The fine bone features became finer, turning almost to porcelain. She commenced to prowl about the room, looking about her, as if bored by the conversation. He stood and watched her slender buttocks moving under her dress.

  ‘My belief in the miraculous doesn’t extend to quite that extent.’ She sighed. ‘Let me go, Tom. I don’t like to be your captive. This is boring. How’d you like to be a woman and go through this same scene so often? I was going through it only just now with Jacques, except that as yet you have not laid a finger on me. But that will come, eh?’ She looked at him with contempt, yet with a half-smile; there was a coquetry she seemingly could not suppress.

  ‘You must continually plant yourself in the same scene, mustn’t you, Selina? The role must give you a little titillation and pleasure, isn’t that so?’ He heard anger and banter and lust, spiced with a mite of sympathy, in his own voice.

  She stopped pacing and faced him. ‘Give me a cigarette.’

  ‘Don’t smoke.’

  ‘It’s so late.’

  ‘You look fresh.’

  ‘I will not have any of your phoney psychiatry such as you gave me this morning. That was an insult, I consider. That Freudian stuff… That’s why I avoided you and would not eat dinner with you this evening, in case you wondered.’

  ‘I didn’t wonder. I guessed. But my remarks weren’t meant to irritate. I simply had a moment of perception regarding some of your troubles, or thought I did. I don’t want to pry, why should I? But if I can help I’d be glad to.’

  ‘Because you think you can get me into bed that way.’

  He laughed. ‘Does it hold such fears for you that you dread it? It’s pleasant. Precious, if done for its own sweet sake, not as some sort of — bargain. Often exciting, sometimes consoling, occasionally — miraculous.’

  She flushed. ‘Okay. That’s enough. I’m not a kid, you know. I can’t be talked into what I don’t wish to do. I’m not just a bloody body, you know.’

  ‘True.’ He pulled the door key out of his trouser pocket by its plastic label, walked over to the door, and opened it.

  ‘You’re free to go if you wish.’

  She gathered herself up, breasts, stomach, handbag, between her arms, then suddenly changed posture, raising a finger.
r />   ‘Wait! Maybe I have a cigarette left after all, let me just look.’

  She opened her handbag and produced a packet, which she flipped open and proffered, letting Squire see the label. ‘Drina’.

  ‘You can buy them in Germany now. So many poor Yugoslav Gastarbeiter are in the Bundesrepublik, working away to keep democracy going.’

  ‘And maybe to prop the tottering communist economy back home?’

  As he accepted a cigarette, they both laughed. After they had lit up, she closed the door gently with her back and smiled at him.

  ‘Wicked Jacques may still be lingering in the corridor with intent. I am afraid to go from your room.’

  ‘If not sex, I’ve only got vodka to offer.’

  ‘Fine.’

  She consented to sit down on the bed. After a drink, she allowed him to kiss her. Then she drew away her lips and smoked in silence. He watched her, admiring the line of her neck, its feather of dark hairs, her lobeless ear.

  ‘How could there be any possible connection between the death of my father, so long ago in Kragujevac, in a country I no longer visit, and my political sympathies?’

  ‘It’s just an intuition, and my intuitions aren’t reliable. But I also lost my father at an early age, and am aware of the stresses such bereavements bring with them. Otherwise, I had only your extraordinary reading of Aldous Huxley to go by. In his most enduring book, Brave new World — which I suppose Herman would classify as science fiction — Huxley dramatizes the battle between the state and the individual or, to define it more narrowly, between a bureaucracy and sexuality. Do you hate Huxley because he was on the side of sexuality? Doesn’t sexuality and all that goes with it challenge the Perfect State — or any state that claims perfection and therefore classifies all who criticize it as criminals? Remember the words of the Savage in Brave New World. He claims the right to be unhappy, to grow old and ugly and impotent, to catch syphilis, to be tortured, because then he can get a glimpse of freedom and poetry. I’d say on the basis of our very slight acquaintance, that you might be alarmed by the Savage in all of us, including the Savage in yourself. By opting for a repressive system, you repress the Savage.’