Walcot

by Brian Aldiss

  ‘Got a photo of her somewhere,’ he muttered, as he went. ‘Somewhere …’

  When he reached the topmost step, he let go of the banister. He tottered. Abby called out. He reached for the rail again, missed it, and fell backwards. He fell the whole length of the stairs, over and over, to land huddled at Abby’s feet.

  She screamed in horror. ‘Uncle! Uncle!’

  You came running. You knelt and lifted his lordship’s torso; his old white head fell back, his mouth fell open. He gave a last sigh and was dead, neck broken in the fall.

  Some of the dark-suited men gathered about his body, hands behind backs again, bowed slightly forward in the manner of vultures awaiting a feast. The bishop came and crossed himself.

  ‘Sands of time have run out for old Lyndhurst, what?’ said Claude Hillman, his tone of voice suggesting he hoped to lighten the gloom of the atmosphere.

  Abby supported herself against the carved newel of the stair and wept. Augusta and other women came in a flurry of skirts as you wrapped your arms about the shaken girl.

  ‘This marks the death of Old England, ma’am,’ intoned Reg the Butler, who had been swept along with the tide of womanhood.

  ‘Unfortunate,’ intoned Augusta. ‘Unfortunate in the extreme … It’s not like Ben …’ The bishop took her hand, but she pulled away from his clutch.

  Chancellor the wolfhound threaded its way between the legs of the guests standing around, to sniff at its master’s body. It lifted its old grey head to send a long howl echoing through the hall.

  13

  On the Grand Canal

  You were dreaming that you were addressing a great audience on a serious subject. Inevitably, you began by including elements of your own life, but then seemed to go on to say of the universe that, even if someone gave humanity an explanation for its existence, humanity would in fact be unable to understand the explanation.

  A huge figure rose in protest from the front row of seats.

  She spoke: ‘But Stephen, I’m your mother …’ It was a withering condemnation. At this statement, a murmur rose from the audience. She continued, ‘You never spoke like this when you were a boy.’

  ‘Of course I didn’t,’ you managed to say, before the whole audience rose against you, roaring and laughing you off the stage.

  You awoke.

  What a terrible embarrassment! What a betrayal!

  And it was the day, at long last, of your marriage to Abigail Cholmondeley.

  The ceremony took place in St George’s Church in Hampstead, shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The crisis had prompted you to press her, just as, nine months later, there was a sharp rise in the birth rate, also prompted by that same crisis.

  ‘I’m not getting married in the provinces, darling,’ Abby had said.

  Abby’s parents were divorced. The reception was held in her father’s home in Parson’s Walk, where Nigel Humphrey Cholmondeley lived in some comfort. At this time, his ex-wife, Eleonora, was living with him.

  The reception was lavish, with two hundred and eighty guests attending. Furniture had been removed from the room, although the walls remained hung with popular modern British painters such as Graham Sutherland, John Piper and Edward Burra. Among the guests, Wilberforces, Hillmans and Frosts made a good showing. Violet and Bertie were there, together with their adult offspring, Joyce and Douglas. Violet was wearing a new, floor-length amethyst-coloured dress. Belle Hillman had entirely abandoned her earlier mute period and was now being vivacious with a young blonde man called Roger Knee. Joy and Freddie Frost were not speaking to each other, but cheerfully barged into the conversations of others. Claude and Ada Hillman dressed up for the occasion, and strove to accompany their offspring, Joey and Terry, who were industriously touring the territory.

  You asked Claude what he was doing now.

  Ada answered for him, with a strong tone of disapproval. ‘He is running a model agency.’

  ‘How’s it going, Uncle?’ you asked.

  ‘About as good as if I was the only model available,’ he said, with a lopsided grin. ‘These young females aren’t easy to handle.’

  ‘Then why are you always handling them?’ snapped Ada, not expecting an answer.

  Your mother was present, looking rather more human than in your nightmare; but Martin had refused to come to the reception on the grounds that the Parson’s Walk house was a citadel of Toryism and it would never do for him to be seen there, occupying, as he did, his current position.

  Eleonora, Nigel Cholmondeley’s ex, was a smart, yellow-goldish kind of person, her coiffeur very smooth, merging almost undetectably with her skin, which was of the same tint. Her eyes, being heavy-lidded, sheltering dark golden eyes, gave her a languid air. She carried a remote resemblance to Abby. Eleonora was being charming to you, taking you about with a hand on your arm and introducing you to various noteworthy guests on Abby’s side of the family. Among these guests was a ruddy-faced man in his sixties who resembled a prosperous farmer. His name was Oliver, an uncle of the bride.

  He removed a cigar from his mouth to speak.

  ‘Delighted to meet you, and congratulations, old chap,’ he said, shaking your hand. ‘You’re taking on something, you know. Dear little Abby had an unsettled childhood; she’s wayward, that’s what.’

  ‘Oh, she’s not that bad,’ said Eleonora, smiling, but sounding a cautionary note.

  ‘Worse, dear, worse,’ said Oliver. ‘In the manner of all young women, of course.’

  At that moment, a young woman came up and proffered a dish of canapés.

  ‘“And the silken girls bringing sherbet,”’ Oliver, quoting, intoned.

  ‘They’re stuffed olives, Sir.’

  Chuckling, he waved her away.

  He said to you, ‘I bumped into Tom Eliot once – tedious fellow, good poet though. I’ve come over to England especially to see my niece get hitched. My home’s in Tuscany nowadays. Can’t stand the English climate, y’know. I speak fluent Italian, of course; well-connected …’

  Eleonora said, ‘Not as fluent as you think, mio cognate!’ Turning to you, she said, ‘Oliver’s a bad boy. Oh, as what one calls a callow youth, he was pally with d’Annunzio, that terrible Fascist womanizer.’

  With leisurely gestures, Oliver relit his cigar, using a pink-tipped match.

  ‘Eleonora dear, you malign poor Gabriele! He was a literary man, a great protagonist of the arts. When he was ruler of Fiume, didn’t he have the Sitwells to stay? I was there at the time, selling him a horse. He promoted the career of Tamara de Lempicka, remember.’

  ‘He seduced her, you mean,’ said Eleonora, waving cigar smoke away from her face. ‘Tamara was young then and, oh, d’Annunzio was an ugly old man! But he seduced all the women. He was insatiable, a lecher of the first water. Second water, too, come to think of it.’ Turning to you, Eleonora said, ‘But his palace! Oh, it had been the home of the daughter – I have forgot her name – of Ricardo Wagner and Cosima Liszt. When I stayed there, I had in my quarters a dark blue bath and bidet. There is no such romantic place in this austere little island even today.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ you said. You had never heard of the people of whom they spoke.

  You and Abby honeymooned in Venice, where you asked her who Tamara de Lempicka was.

  ‘Oh, some bygone painter,’ she said. ‘Was she art deco style? Anyhow, a real degenerate – slept with everyone she painted, man or woman … including my mother.’ She laughed. ‘And that was just for a pencil sketch!’

  ‘Did your mother get the sketch to keep?’

  ‘Such scandalous lives in those times. It was what the English escaped to Italy for, from Byron and Shelley onward.’

  ‘Yes, but was Lempicka a good artist?’

  ‘That’s like asking, was Byron a good poet!’ Abby threw up her hands a little way. ‘Oh, it’s so tiresome not to know anything!’

  You were in a vaporetto, chugging slowly along the Grand Canal towards its exit and the approach to the
island of San Giorgio Maggiore. Both of you had about you a wild and windy look, although nothing but a slight breeze, product of your progress, ruffled Abby’s hair.

  You quoted Byron, to even the score. ‘“I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand; I saw from out the wave her structures rise …” What comes next?’

  ‘Look!’ Abby exclaimed, pointing to a building on the shore. ‘There’s the humble little Bauer Hotel! How lovely is the lacy stonework. Isn’t it dainty, Steve? Who, long dead, can have had in mind such a design, and translated the thought into stone? Oh, there’s the Rezzonico Palace – wonderful; in itself a world masterpiece. But why are you bothering about de Lempicka? She’s old and unimportant. Her sitters are golden dummies!’

  ‘I know Byron says of Venice, “The pleasant place of all festivity, The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy.”’

  ‘Why a mask? Look, feast your eyes, my darling Steve, that’s the amazing Ca’ Foscari, built in the fifteenth century. So fine, so delicate, so strong! It alone makes the fifteenth century worthwhile, I’d say. A truly magnificent façade, don’t you agree?’

  You agreed it was magnificent. The opium the hall porter had sold you both was taking hold now. ‘Better than anything Uncle Bertie ever built.’ You burst into laughter at the thought.

  She was waving her bare arms about in a frenzy of expression. ‘And when you think – all these buildings, artworks in themselves, contain so much artwork. Venice is a treasure house. There is more artistic merit on the banks of the Grand Canal than in all Britain …’

  ‘Artistic, yes okay, maybe, but religiosity too; overwhelmingly. I was impressed by the Tiepolo frescoes – that was different – on the ceiling of – which church was that? So many damned churches …’

  ‘The dei Gesuati.’

  ‘There in those Tiepolos we saw pure form, pure colour, a sense no other artist conveys – a sense that there is a kind of divinity latent in the human race to which we can all aspire. Nothing religious … maybe sacred. Aspiration; it means breathing out, doesn’t it?’ – you were talking wildly, not necessarily to your bride, trailing one hand in the grubby water rippling by – ‘Certainly this great city of grime and stinks and magnificence encourages that belief. Thank God I am not bald. It would be a disaster not to have hair in this bejewelled city. A sin; a single sin.’

  Abby lay back in her seat, sighing, her breast rising with the lift of her heart. ‘Here is where what is mingles with what ought to be. All these remarkable canvases, depicting holiness in the richest Renaissance robes … Richest Renaissance robes … Why did we fall away from such standards? What can the modern world offer half so fine? Plumbing, of course; showers. Perhaps all these holy people stank. Europeans have such sharp noses. Why do you think that is? Negroes and Chinese have flat noses. Chinese don’t smell, do they? Maybe it’s sharp noses that have made Europeans so great. The Medici had big conks, didn’t they? Big conks; big cocks … sniffing, smelling out injustice.’

  ‘How funny that rude words are all four-letter words.’

  ‘Anglo-Saxons … their words. They must have been rude all the time …’

  You pulled yourself up and nestled against Abby, tasting a square inch of her delectable neck.

  ‘But Venice is a living memorial – well, not living, but you know what I mean – to injustice. Just to in justice.’ You were not especially intelligible. ‘For every patron of the arts there must have been a hundred labouring peasants and gonorrhoeas – um, gondoliers – men with hardly a pair of trousers to their name. The Italian tongue, the tongue, is so rich, full of words, of course, but most of those who speak it are so poor. I mean, you wouldn’t really want to live here, would you, sweetheart? As Granny does?’

  ‘There’s another language; the physical language.’ She slid a slender hand over the zip of your slacks. You took absent-mindedly to kissing her lips and the shining red lining of them. You said between kisses, ‘Oh, the physical language – the physical tongue …’ You found you were stroking Abby’s thigh, more from familiarity than philosophy. ‘The dialogue of cock and cunt is the only true tongue; it must have come first.’

  ‘You come first, darling.’

  ‘I’m looking into it, as I’m looking into this fascinating part of you. Practice makes perfect. Ah, your grand little Grand Canal, here it is. I suppose we could have a screw here on the boat, right now, couldn’t we?’ You had your hand up her skirt and were gently rubbing the treasures you found concealed in her panties, as a miser polishes up his jewels.

  ‘We’re getting to the mouth of the Giudecca,’ she murmured, vaguely. Her eyes were closed. ‘Oh, oh, yes, that’s it …’

  While you kept rubbing that teasing little spot, you were giggling and repeating, ‘The mouth of the Giudecca, the mouth of the Giudecca …’ You paused for a moment in your hospitable ministrations to sniff with your nose and lick with your tongue your entrepreneurial finger. ‘The old world had to give place to the new, and to you, lovely darling delicious you! I’ll buy you an ice cream and you shall practise gelatio on me! You saw that canvas by Francesco Guardi, painted towards the end of the eighteenth century. It’s called The Ascent of the Montgolfier Balloon, and there you see depicted our unjust friends, the Venetians, dressed up in rather ropey finery, gawping upwards like peasants’ – with your other hand, you felt the delectable balloonlets of her bottom – ‘as the hot air balloon ascends over the Giudecca. It’s the new technology taking over, as it’s taking over and over today.’

  She wriggled, squeaked, sighed, impervious to your lecture. You rubbed the faster. You slipped down on your knees and kissed with merited fervour the seat and throne of her pleasure.

  The boat forged on. It arrived at the much-quoted mouth of the actual Giudecca. It swerved to starboard. Before you, across the frothy waters, the island of San Giorgio loomed, the phallic tower of the church beckoning its saucy visitors.

  ‘If only this journey, this voyage,’ you said, laughing, ‘this little sea trip, this excursion up the excursible, could go on forever … or rever …’

  14

  Elizabeth Sips Her Wine

  But of course it did not go on forever. Later that evening, you had a slight falling out, as newly-weds will, as surely as the tide turns. At Frühstück next morning (for there were many German tourists in the hotel) you were still feeling slightly aggrieved. You phoned Belle, your father’s sister, and received from her your grandmother’s address in the Calle Galina. You then made your excuses to an ominously silent Abby, and set off alone to see Elizabeth.

  Since her husband had died, Elizabeth Fielding, now entering her eighties, was accustomed to spending some months every year in Venice. She stayed in the apartment of an old school friend, Dorothy Barnstable, who had made a prosperous marriage and who, at this time of year, went with her husband – whom she met only in the spring months – to stay with him and multitudinous friends by a lake in the Tyrol.

  Elizabeth was attended by her friend’s staff – two elderly matrons and an elderly man who, with his broad, bent back and wispy beard, reminded you of a Tiepolo caricature. The staff made it plain that they preferred Elizabeth to their employer, although whether this was because they simply enjoyed a change of dictatorship or were genuinely fond of the virtuous Elizabeth was never made clear, at least, not to Elizabeth, who preferred uncertainty to decision.

  When you arrived, rather hot and tired, wearing a ludicrous straw boater which you quickly removed, your grandmother was sitting on a balcony in a capacious basketwork chair. A glass of white wine stood by her right elbow. The balcony overlooked the narrow-waisted Calle Galina, which fed distantly into the lagoon. As you came into her presence, Elizabeth set down a small, leather-bound volume she appeared to have been reading, entitled The Variable Powers of the Human Mind.

  She was wearing a patterned satin jacket over a white cotton dress. Her white hair was beautifully dressed, with a dark velvet ribbon. She appeared, without
much moving, somewhat pleased to see you. Music played softly in the background – if not a Boccherini string quartet, then something Boccherini-like. You settled yourself down on a second, inferior, basket-work chair. After a glass of white wine had been ordered for you, Elizabeth removed her spectacles and, indicating, with a languid hand a paperback book on the table beside the one she had been reading on the powers of the mind, began by saying, ‘I would recommend …mend this book to you, Stephen … Stevie. You observe I have a … back … I have a paperblack. Oh, back is what I mean to say. Because … this is a paperback because … simply … because it is lift. More easy to lift.’

  You noted that her speech impediment had grown worse. It may have been a good pair of Italian corsets that assisted her to sit so upright, yet Elizabeth seemed much the same person she had been a few years ago, when you and she had last met. A striped awning overhead shaded her delicate skin from the sun. Her face was bone pale, without make-up; her features were still sharp, unblunted, though blotched, by age.

  ‘I have at home of course … of course I have at home a hardcover. I possess a hardcover copy. The title is The Museum of … Well, you can read. Read it yourself. The Museum … The Museum of Forgotten Memories … of Unconditional Surrender. By Ugreši. Dubravka Ugreši, yes. It is a memorable shattered … a record of a shattered life. A memoir, I mean. In a way. A history of Eastern Europe. In a way. As all … yes, really, as all our lives have been … I mean, shattered. As yours, too. Yours has been.’

  ‘In a way, yes, Granny. Shattered, I suppose, but we are accustomed … I mean, that’s how it is.’

  She considered the remark. ‘That’s not artic … not really very articulate.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought about it, Granny.’

  She looked sternly at you; she had a flinty gaze. ‘Here, you call me … you call me Elizabeth. My name … by my name, Elizabeth. I may be … old. Though I am … I yet possess a name.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Elizabeth. I called you “Granny” only as a mark of respect.’