“I’ve submitted to insults and beatings from him because I was so selfish when you and I were a twosome. I now understand exactly what you put up with.”
Burnell shook his head impatiently. “What are you saying? This penitence. It’s a bit late for penitence, isn’t it—from either of us? Steff, I can’t trust what you say because I don’t know what happened between us.”
“But I do!” As she swung round to face him, he saw that at last she had gained the anger, or perhaps the courage to deliver what she had come to say. In her expression, her impassioned look, he was reminded of something he had merely mislaid, buried too deep to be stolen, and without thought he leaned forward to receive it.
“I do! Oh, Roy—I’ve ventured inside your head, into your very heart. A rare and uncomfortable privilege… I’ve got hold of one of your EMV bullets and I’ve played it through my own brain. All through, all those years. And the insight nearly killed me. The shock of it!”
She suddenly flung her arms round his neck. Without volition, he wrapped his arms about her waist. The gardener roared nearby on his machine, eyes rigidly averted.
Burnell pushed her away. “You found the bullet? How? I was in the wrong country?” He was incoherent. “You can’t—you’ve brought it with you? Give it me! That’s all I want.”
She explained. He broke into her explanation then begged her to go on. She told him that Humbert’s firm, Stuckmann Fabrics, had contacts and a chain of dealers in carpets and costumes in Central Asia. By putting pressure on his dealer in Tashkent, she had got him to trace one of the missing EMV bullets. This was after she had seen Burnell in the Swindon hospital. Her intention had always been to restore Burnell’s memory to him.
Once the bullet had come into her hands, she had been unable to resist the impulse to view it herself. She said it was a woman’s curiosity. When she played it, when those episodes from the past had again come to life, she had been forced to experience Burnell’s side of their marriage. There, undeniably, was her younger self, preserved, seen from a loving but analytical perspective. For weeks she had been overwhelmed with the pain of new insight into herself.
“I just want the bullet,” he said, but she was in full spate.
She had had to leave Humbert for a week, to go to a sanctuary for women and think things over. He had beaten her when she returned.
“He was too insensitive to see I had changed. It was so hard for me. What’s that poem we learned at school? ‘Would God the gift to others give us, To see ourselves as others see us’? It was so hard… I had to accept that I was so immature. I followed the daily activities of a trivial little person. I saw that impartially, through your loving eyes.
“Oh, we were fine in bed, screwing, so I had reckoned that was enough. I was so superior, so prissy, so precise, so juvenile. My clothes! My God! But I never conversed with you, never responded to your jokes, was bored by your insights into life, hated architecture…”
He took her hand, halting her flow of words and tears that were about to fall. “I was probably just as insensitive. Aren’t people like that? Perhaps I wanted you that way—did you ever consider that possibility? If, indeed, you were as you claim. When you’re young it’s really hard to… Anyhow, forget it. Just give me that bullet. You have brought it?”
She hesitated. “Your hands are cold. The bullet’s in the car. Humbert’s got it. He paid for it. He wants to hand it over to you.”
“What? You’re mad! It’s none of his business. I will not speak to Humbert.” He was immediately angry. “I suppose you’ve let him have a look at the bullet, too, just to make him randy, eh? Steff Hillington when young and naked…”
Stephanie turned away and began to walk slowly towards the kissing gate. She said, without looking round, “You are chilly, you are cold, if you imagine that. I wasn’t going to let Humbert in on our past life, no way. Then I found he just wasn’t interested.”
He caught her up, grasping her arm to detain her by the gate, asking her why she did not talk straightforwardly: why should
Humbert decide to hand over the bullet? What kind of power play was it?
They were beside the holly hedge. She pulled at a leaf absentmindedly, pricking a finger; he saw the bright speck of her blood, no bigger than a pinhead. Motives were always mysterious; had she drawn blood accidentally, or with the intention of allowing some physical sign for her troubled state of mind? Whatever had been her intention, he was moved by the sight of that bright red spot on her pale finger.
“Roy, please don’t be like this. I can’t take it. OK, Humbert wants to hand over the bullet. It’s kind of a ceremony—I don’t know what goes on in his mind. You see, he wants to hand me over too. He and I have come to the end of the road.”
“Hand you over?”
“Hand me over.”
In a quiet voice, he said that could not be. “I’m planning to go to Spain immediately. There’s someone in Madrid I love and need.”
After scrutinizing his expression, she made a moue of resignation. Pulling a wisp of handkerchief from her brassiere, she twisted it round her finger, beginning to walk slowly back in the direction of the house.
“Oh well, if that’s the way it is… OK, somehow I didn’t…” She choked back tears before saying in a more formal voice, “In any event, I couldn’t really have expected you’d take me on a second time—me and the boy. After everything. You’re not really made like that.”
“Like what?”
“Laura thought it was worth trying.” She spoke indifferently. “Okay, I’ll get the bullet for you. Humbert will give me a lift into Norwich. He’s quite obliging in some ways, the old bastard.”
Burnell stood on the edge of the path by the summerhouse, watching her go. The breeze was getting up, so that her fawn coat fluttered about her legs as if to detain her.
“Steff,” he called. “Wait a moment. Don’t just walk off. I… I don’t know any Spanish…”
Her shoes crunched as she crossed the gravel toward the waiting black car. She had not heard. He had called too faintly.
He wanted to say to her, “Look, you score more points than you know for gaining self-knowledge. Of course it was painful—it’s meant to be, so you remember the lesson. And we live in a world where love is scarce and almost always has to be earned and re-earned, and besides…”
But all he managed to do was to call her name again, much more loudly this time.
Inside the old house, the old contest was still being played. Shoes were shuffling across the treacherous floor. As the game progressed, discussion of artistic matters fell away. Fruit and stones were traded. More coffee was ordered and brought. They played competitively.
Jenny Binns fell into a passion when her port was sacked by Tarquin, and threatened to leave the game entirely. She was comforted by a stiff gin and tonic. Other players demanded the consolation of alcohol. The opposed clocks brought their mixtures of good fortune and havoc.
Clementine Burnell seemed to be winning. She played her game alone, marrying no one. Violet Burnell married her husband and Sheila Lippard-Milne in quick succession. Money poured out of the bank. Old scores were settled. The Empty Lipstick Cases piled up in Newcastle.
When time came for a lunch break, some players were delighted. Others, like Ben Burnell, were reluctant to leave the board and face reality, even the reality of game pie followed by fresh fruit salad and cheese. Laura presided over the lunch table as they talked over past games. Punctually at two-thirty, Tarquin ordered them all back into the Dairy, where he promptly Lutined his brother’s wife.
When dusk began to gather, it was still difficult to judge who was ahead of the game. One of the horrors and delights of “Newcastle” was that the outcome was uncertain until the bitter end. They agreed to play on until the very stroke of midnight and hold a reckoning then.
It was only over port and liqueurs and a late night tongue sandwich that anyone remembered to ask where Roy had gone.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Life in the West
Forgotten Life
Remembrance Day
Somewhere East of Life
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Portions of this novel were previously published in New Worlds: as “FOAM”, “Friendship Bridge” and “To the Krasnovodsk Station”, respectively in New Worlds I, New Worlds 3 and New Worlds 4.
Another portion, “The Madonna of Futurity”, was published simultaneously by Editors Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber in Universe 3, and in Heyne Science Fiction Jahresband 1994, edited by Wolfgang Jeschke, in Germany, and also in 3ABTPA in Moscow.
Copyright © 1994 by Brian W. Aldiss
ISBN 978-1-4976-0847-4
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Somewhere East of Life Page 44