Forgotten Life

by Brian Aldiss

  Once a year, in the Headington spring, the three ancient apple trees burst into blossom. Hope sprang into the breasts of the analysands. Christ may have died for them, God might have created the world for them … All was possible … But come the autumn and the fruits were as green and acid as the lives of those who looked out upon them from Mrs Vikki Emerova’s window.

  ‘But she had it off with him in the next room. This was in Boston. In our hotel – the well-named Luxor Hotel. A little Spanish type, five feet one and pretty weedy, I’d say. Always had a smarmy sort of grin for Sheila. I watched him. I saw him last year and was friendly. Arthur Hernandez. More properly Arturo, I’m sure. Her editor at Swain Books – not that he seems to do much editing. Those guys have generally tried their hand at writing, had no joy at it, but ever after think they have special insights into writers’ lives. He’s probably straight out of university, probably only twenty-three or twenty-four – half her age. No real experience of life. They probably did it last year too, and I never found out. There I was, being nice to him. Oh, of course he was all over me when I arrived at the Luxor from New York. By that time, they’d probably been doing it all round the States. It’s the sense of betrayal … I can’t see how Sheila could possibly – And all the time he was “Green Mouth” this and “Green Mouth” that. I said to him, “Look, when we’re not performing in public, couldn’t you relax and call her Sheila? Green Mouth is only her trade name.” And he said, “Oh, I do zees only to show respect.” Respect, and the whole time he was bloody well shafting her. I mean, there are rules about these things, and the Americans know that as well as anyone else. I’ve never been anti-American. Rather the reverse. Of course, Arthur Bloody Hernandez is probably from Puerto Rico. I wondered if I wrote to Swain and complained if they’d sack him. Sheila is their most valuable property. They wouldn’t want to lose her. Of course, I suppose they might argue that it was Arthur Hernandez, damn him, by offering his services, who kept her there instead of with a bigger organization. I know Random House made overtures. They have business arrangements with her publisher on this side of the Atlantic. Maybe I should try to persuade her to – no, I couldn’t do that. It wouldn’t work.’

  ‘You feel more anger against him than against Sheila?’

  ‘Really, I don’t blame her. Well, not much. I have always been generous. Quite generous – in fact, more generous in that respect than she’s ever been with me, by a long chalk. It was just a passing fancy – well, no real harm done. One must have a perspective, yet all the while the other person just goes on acting however they feel like, without restraint. I really don’t think Sheila has much power of self-analysis. You can see that in her novels. No kind of self-analysis. Her characters, even the sensitive ones, just barge ahead and act. She is very warm natured. All credit for that. I do try to be generous. Even when I walked in and caught them at it – there was her big soft white bum, Mrs Emerova, she on top and you could hardly see him at all, except for two nasty little thin hairy legs, like a beetle crushed by a cream puff – I’ll never forget it. You may – you should – try to be detached but it still hurts deeply to catch your wife in flagrante delicto, and on top, too. Jealousy is hard to eradicate. She gave me such a look. I simply backed away into the sitting room. Knocked over a vase of flowers. Couldn’t think what to say. At such a time, you find yourself completely at a loss. Now why should I have felt such a fool? I suppose it’s because – there’s a whole tradition behind it, a whole rich tradition. The cuckolded male is a figure of fun, even to himself. It’s not so bad for a woman who catches her husband at it. She tends to engage more sympathy, don’t you consider? It’s something to do with the shape of the sexual organs, basically, I suppose. The male equipment looks a lot funnier than those rather pretty little purses you women have. I just stood there shaking but, in a minute, out he came, all dishevelled and looking a bigger fool than I felt, tucking in his shirt. When he saw me, he made a dash for the door to the corridor, so I ran after him and managed a good kick up the arse to help him on his way. That was the most satisfying bit of the whole affair. I rather hurt my left leg doing it.’

  ‘Kicking him satisfied you?’

  ‘What do you think? Then out she came, dressed, but hair dishevelled. Wanted a drink and a cigarette. Did I tell you she smokes when she’s on these tours? Cigars if nothing else is available. She’s like a demon. Well, it is all a bit testing. I sympathize with her and I do see why she’s got to do it. And I said to her, quite quietly and decently, “I know you’re under pressure but this has got to stop”, and she said, in a sort of level voice, “I’m enjoying it too much to stop.” That’s what she said. “I’m enjoying it too much to stop.” As cool as you like, Mrs Emerova. I’ll tell you the effect that sentence had on me, shall I? She never wrote a sentence half as powerful. It just destroyed me. I suppose I didn’t look any different. She gave me a drink from the drinks cabinet and I drank it. But something went inside me. I still feel … of course I do. It was bad enough to be told she was enjoying it. One does enjoy these affairs. The surreptitiousness, the sense of … But to rub it in … And then to say point blank that she meant to continue, whatever I felt about it. What I felt about it didn’t matter to her in the slightest. How can you recover from that? It’s so unlike her. Generally she’s so considerate. But perhaps she’s been like that all the time. I mean, how long have we been married – and all the time she was secretly quite indifferent to what my feelings were if they got in the way of her pleasure? “I’m enjoying it too much to stop …” Christ, what an insult. It’s as if I’m bleeding inside and yet, now we’re back home, I have to continue as normal. We both continue as normal, as if nothing had happened. It’s grounds for divorce, isn’t it?’

  ‘Do you want a divorce?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. It’s a crowning insult, isn’t it?’

  ‘Did she mean it as an insult? Was she not also upset at that moment?’

  ‘I should hope she was! Isn’t it at such moments that the truth slips out? How often had they had it off together? Not just in Boston. New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles. Can you imagine, they might have done it in Salt Lake City? Ugh … At least I seem to have put paid to Hernandez. I made sure they weren’t alone together for the rest of the time we were there. And I don’t think he had the appetite for it after being found out. Men don’t, do they? There are rules to the game, you know, and if you’re caught out, fine, then however much it costs you say you’re sorry and you stop. You stop, don’t you, for the sake of the other person’s feelings? Isn’t that the rule? You and the other woman know you run that risk. If found out – all over. Finish. Isn’t that the rule?’

  ‘Do you think of it as a game with rules?’

  ‘There are rules, aren’t there? Remember your ethology. In everything there are rules, in every species. Otherwise civilization falls apart. Even when two nations threaten each other, rules remain. If that wasn’t so, then the planet would have been destroyed long ago. Even nations which hate each other obey rules, almost unwittingly. How much more so between individuals. How am I going to live now? Am I supposed to go on as if nothing had happened?’

  ‘What has really happened? Sheila returned to England with you, didn’t she?’

  ‘I can’t talk to you, Mrs Emerova. You’re supposed to offer me something, you know. A therapist is supposed to use his or her own feelings in the service of the patient. That’s me. How should I best behave in this mess?’

  ‘Do you feel it is a mess? Your marriage is continuing, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s continuing, yes. But for how long? What’s she thinking? Is she longing for Hernandez every moment of the day? “I’m enjoying it too much to stop.” It puts me off my stroke, I don’t mind admitting. Yes, I do mind admitting it. I feel that when we have intercourse she’ll just be thinking of him all the while, and making comparisons.’

  ‘Does that make you feel inferior?’

  ‘Oh, Chr
ist, it makes me feel bereaved. Our calling has little defence against bereavement. How am I to know what she’s thinking?’

  ‘May you not suppose that she wants everything to continue as normal?’

  ‘What right has she to hope that? I’m the one who should be deciding about that! Instead, I’m arranging for a party for her next Thursday, to celebrate her latest effusion …’

  ‘Doesn’t that suggest that you both want everything to continue as normal?’

  ‘Well, it can’t continue as normal, can it? That’s not possible. Not while I still have so much anger inside me. Okay, under the stress of the tour, when she’s the cat’s whiskers and the whole world’s bending an ear to her, I quite understand that then she’s feeling so good that she wants the odd extra bit of adulation – I mean, this guy Hernandez, he has no interest in her as such, he’s only interested because she’s the grand and glorious Green Mouth who brings so much money into his company, whose new novel has got 1.5 million copies in print. It’s impersonal on both sides, in a way, all part of the big Green Mouth act – I understand that, it’s my business to understand. Good for her! But “I’m enjoying it too much to stop …” Am I supposed not to feel angry and hurt because I’m an analyst? What do you expect?’

  ‘If you accept that she is having to undergo a big act, then perhaps this hurtful thing she said was also a part of the big act and has no further meaning? Couldn’t it just have been Green Mouth speaking?’

  ‘Big Mouth, you mean.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid that it’s ten past twelve. Just gone …’

  ‘I meant to ask you about my brother.’

  ‘Can we talk about him next week?’

  Clement got to Carisbrooke in time for lunch. As he collected a plate of plaice and pommes frites, he saw that he would be sitting next to George Forbes, the Medieval History Fellow, with whom conversation was no bore.

  ‘What did you make of Playing for Time?’ George asked.

  ‘Yes, very funny. I took it with me for light reading on my trip. I’ll let you have it back. He used to live just near here, you know.’

  ‘You’re looking a bit battered.’

  ‘Worse than usual? What about you?’ Such remarks as George’s were perfectly acceptable, coming from George. He spoke in a kind of conspiratorial way. He was a sturdily built man with a beaky face and high cheek bones, on which there rested a high colour. He had a shock of white hair. A handsome-looking man, Clement thought. Also, he voted Labour, which Clement considered was to be prized in a Professor of Medieval History.

  ‘I’m fresh as a daisy,’ George said, smiling to show it was not true. ‘I’ve been invigilating. Ten more days and I’m off to Stanford. What’s the matter?’

  ‘Oh …’ He picked at his fish. ‘Usual boring problem … Domestic, blah, blah, blah. Let me ask you something, George. Don’t you regard life as a game to be played according to the rules? Wouldn’t you say that? I mainly mean unwritten rules.’

  Without ceasing industriously to demolish his fish, George said, ‘We live in a post-Christian society where the written rules were brought down from Mount Sinai by Moses. We subscribe to the idea that it is wrong to murder or steal. “Do not adultery commit, Advantage rarely comes of it”, etcetera. These days, there’s less of a consensus than there was, say, before the world wars. It’s harder to know by what rules the other chap’s playing.’

  ‘You don’t quarrel with the idea of life as a game, though?’

  ‘A bloody unsporting one.’ George removed a bone from his mouth. ‘A philosopher would say your question was without meaning.’

  ‘It’s true we impose the idea of a game. For most of the people I see, “game” has comforting connotations. It implies that there will be a half-time, and someone will be looking on to see fair play. It’s an antidote to injustice. People hate injustice.’

  ‘No. They like it. They are happy to put up with it. Otherwise, they’d all vote more sensibly.’

  ‘I’ve got a spot of injustice at the moment. I’m supposed to sort out Joseph’s life, as if I was capable of sorting out my own.’

  ‘I thought you chaps were used to that kind of situation. Doubtless it’s rather different if it’s your brother. Comes a bit too close to home. Are you going to have some pudding?’

  ‘All his papers have been dumped on me. I can’t just throw them away, can I?’

  ‘How about letting the dead bury the dead?’

  ‘That comes well from an historian. He wants – wanted – me to do something with them. I don’t know whether I’m supposed to write his biography or what. Or just put out a collection of his letters or miscellaneous pieces … He wasn’t all that well known, that’s the trouble.’

  ‘I suppose that Joseph Winter is quite a respected name in some circles. Trouble is, his chosen field was the Far East, wasn’t it? Pity he didn’t play safe and go for the Tudors and Stuarts, where the big money is.’

  ‘His involvement was with the East.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to belittle him. I just meant that it’s a rough old world and there are hierarchies in historical circles as in everything. Really, the study of things Far Eastern is in its infancy. The documents aren’t easily available – or extant, in many cases. No prestige attaches. He wrote the standard history of Sumatra, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, C.U.P. Sells all of ten copies a year.’

  George pushed his plate to one side and sipped his wine. ‘Your brother did something in the East during the war, didn’t he? Remind me.’

  Clement said, ‘He served in the Forgotten Army.’

  George spread wide his hands in a despairing gesture. The two men looked at each other. Then they began to laugh.

  ‘Come round and have a drink this evening and advise me,’ Clement said. ‘I’d like you to view the documents. Make it six o’clock and we’ll have a bit of a tipple. My wife should be back by then.’

  George Forbes arrived in Rawlinson Road shortly after six, wearing an old cream jacket Clement recalled from previous summers. The two men sat by the swimming pool for a drink and a gossip; then Clement led the way up to his study, and the bundles of Joseph’s papers.

  ‘It’s a bit of a clutter as yet.’

  ‘My brother inherited the family business. I don’t suppose he’ll leave any papers, thank God.’

  Boxes full of notes and notebooks presented a problem. George nosed here and there, muttering to himself.

  ‘Literacy, the curse of the thinking classes …’

  Clement sat at his desk and watched. ‘One owes one’s brother something. We were never all that close. Joseph was twelve years my senior. The war came between us, that Grand Canyon between generations. I admired him from afar.’

  George presented himself as a solid block between Clement and the window, as he leafed through one of the notebooks. He read out, “‘War. Why is war so popular? Because it allows us to cease being rational. (Not only war itself but armed forces, the acolytes of war, also irrational, organized as secret societies, end product death and disability.) Instead, more like animals, being aware of sacrifice, blood flowing, substitute of primitive courage for passage of time. Intellect tells us to hate war; an older thing sees in it a dangerous release. Like a drug.” Good enough in its day, possibly. Bit dated now. Not the stuff for the eighties.’

  ‘There are a lot of essays in that box which appear never to have been published.’ Clement felt embarrassed and got up to pour them more wine.

  After reading spasmodically, George said, ‘Trouble is, Joseph was really a popular author without being all that popular. All these Thai dynasties – they’re too remote for the average reader. Why don’t you turn all this material over to the Far East Library, and let them sort it out?’

  ‘Have a look at his wartime stuff. That’s in a different vein.’

  Ignoring the invitation, George said, shuffling in a box, ‘And I believed it was only in plays that men wrote on the backs of envelopes …’

  ‘I
thought of trying to write Joseph’s biography. It might get some events in my own life clear.’

  George gave him a sage look. ‘Would it add to your reputation? Even in College? Bit obscure …’

  A touch of colour entered Clement’s sallow cheeks.

  ‘I feel I want to give him a chance …’

  George’s expression showed what he thought of that remark. The evening sun was slanting in at the window, illuminating the dust on bundles of old newspapers.

  ‘For instance,’ said Clement, going over to another box by the window, and selecting from it a black binder containing a number of typed sheets, ‘there’s this. It’s a record of a British post-war operation which, as far as I’ve checked, has never been written about. Joseph links the personal – sometimes very personal – with the historic. It gives a clear picture of what conditions were like in Sumatra in 1945–46, after the Japanese were beaten. Would you like to take a look?’

  George was already glancing at his watch and sighing.

  ‘All those damned exam papers waiting to be marked. I’d better get back. Thanks all the same. Maybe another time.’

  After George had gone, Clement wandered through to the rear of the house, touching items of furniture as he went, sometimes only with an extended finger. Michelin had laid a supper table for two in the dining room. He preferred not to glance at it, turning instead into the wide kitchen which opened from the rear hall. There he poured himself a Smirnoff, trickling the vodka on to the rocks at the bottom of his glass and tempering it with a little white Cinzano.

  Clutching this glass, sipping at it, he made his way slowly into the garden, across which long westerly shadows had fallen. The shadow of the great Norway maple, growing two doors away in the Phillips’ garden, and a living memorial to the time when North Oxford had been pleasant farmland, was cast on the kitchen and guest bedroom wall as if to emphasize the redness of the brick. This wall was pitted with holes and rusted nails, scars and gouges, like a landscape of the past, where previous generations of householders had encouraged green things to scale the heights up to the bedroom window. Various bees and flies took refuge there in the autumn, living out October in increasingly rickety state, on this sunniest of walls. Now it was the ragged pattern of the maple which dominated the brick face.