by Brian Aldiss
Abby herself was cheerful. She sang little snatches of Mozart arias as well as a song called Moon River as she went about the flat. She listened to a lot of music, but had banned the Beatles. She consorted regularly with a group of female friends who met, among other occasions, in an upper room of a local hotel every Friday, to lunch, drink margaritas and smoke pot.
You asked her if it was wise to smoke pot while she was pregnant.
‘I’m not changing my way of life for any foetus!’ she said. You both laughed.
It was Friday.
As you walked in the park, a line of sturdy beeches cut into the sun’s rays one by one. You thought about the foetus that had miscarried, which had grown for a while in your wife’s body, and then had failed and died before it had truly lived. Abby was remarkably cool about the loss. Supposing the child had survived, it might be toddling by now. It would possess dolls or teddy bears precious to its heart. It would laugh and cry and sleep in its parents’ arms, smelling of fresh excreta or Johnson’s Baby Powder.
For the first time in this context, you recalled your childhood scourge, the phantom Valerie. You perceived it might be easy for such a fantasy to take command of one’s mind, as it had your mother’s. A whole world faded and disappeared when a child died prematurely.
Three elegantly dressed teenagers on horses clip-clopped by, their mounts gravely looking ahead down the long walk, the youths, two girls and a young fellow, not talking, simply enjoying the exercise and their command over the animals.
The thought occurred to you that perhaps galaxies were born in a manner similar to infants. Perhaps other universes had died unformed before this present universe had been born. The thought developed no further; it was too immense to contain. But supposing, you thought to yourself, there was an explanation for the existence of the universe and all the material in it, from galaxies down to thesmallest virus. Maybe the human mind would not be capable of comprehending that explanation.
Any more than you were able to visualize Abby’s foetus growing up, becoming adult and – whatever it did then …
Human biology was not the best, although DNA did what it could. A pretty girl on a man’s arm passed you on the path, walking smartly. You had only a glance at her face and at once your imagination sprang up. You thought what it would be like to speak to her, to hear her voice, her opinions, to dance with her, to kiss her lips, to see her naked, to lie with her, to experience the deep little well of her sexual pleasure. She had gone by, rapt in animated conversation with the wretch who undeservedly escorted her. You turned to see her from behind, her beautiful legs below her light blue skirt …
She was an example of biology at its best. How had it been in the early days of the human race? Had women looked awful then? Had they had miscarriages? Had there been love as well as lust between the primitive human pair? You wondered idly about such questions without being able to provide yourself with answers. You had admittedly become rather shallow. Presumably the human species had not greatly changed.
But one’s feelings changed, unfortunately. Abby still attracted you physically, but you hid from yourself the fact that you really did not greatly like her. You blamed your own inability to communicate; Abby was remote too, which did not help matters.
No, but I must be content. After all, I’m doing quite well. To be a geologist was just an idle dream, now I’m just – just a trader. Here’s nature and beauty all around me. And I must love Abby as once I did. No man can expect to be happy all the time – not unless he has really achieved something. One must retain that perspective. So you reasoned.
Dusk was seeping into the English world as you approached your apartment. A light was glowing in your living room, spreading a fan of illumination across the gravel outside. You looked inside.
Abby had returned from her lunchtime binge. She was lying on the carpet, her body stretched parallel to the window. She slowly lifted one leg, massaging it as it rose. She then lowered it gently and raised the other leg, massaging it too. You knew she was afraid of getting varicose veins. She still owned her profitable boutique in Mayfair, and had put a manager in to run it while she was pregnant.
You watched with awe. Perhaps if you had been closer to your mother, you would not be so astonished by women. Your seed was in this lovely woman, busy turning into a baby. It was amazing what women did, what women were! You thought at that moment that women were quite, quite different from men. And if she had only lain a little more towards the window, you could have seen her panties; they were still of interest.
You had a vivid mental picture of that place between her thighs, and of her plump mons Veneris, with its thatch of curly brown hair. The memory of it and its scents rose before you, almost overpowering you with desire.
You shrank away, guiltily, in case she saw you there, a peeping Tom with an erection. All women … all women … you said to yourself. You thought of your Aunt Violet and of her welcoming secret places. Of Briony, swimming naked in her pool, her delicate breasts and toes. Then you mastered yourself, took your latchkey from your pocket and went to your door.
Unexpected shocks came along to jolt you both. Abby began to haemorrhage, at first slightly, one night violently. As if in a nightmare, you saw the blood seeping from her, spreading its stain across the matrimonial bed. The blue eyes flashed you a look of fear. You were both so alarmed, you got Abby into the car and drove her at two in the morning to hospital.
She was in the twenty-eighth week of her pregnancy. The bleeding was explained as ante-partum haemorrhage. She was sedated and went to the maternity hospital for further examination, while you paced up and down in the waiting room. A young doctor, with well-oiled hair, thick eyebrows and deep-set, grey eyes, came to speak to you. The eyes regarded you with compassion.
‘I’m afraid we have a problem here, Mr Fielding. Your wife is not at all well. The placenta has become separated from the uterine wall. Not only is there considerable loss of blood –’
‘How did this happen? What’s gone wrong?’
‘Such things do occasionally go wrong. Shall we sit down, Mr Fielding? It may be to do with lifestyle – a too active lifestyle, possibly. Too much drinking and smoking, for instance.’
‘Smoking pot?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t say.’
‘How’s the baby, doctor?’ There was a terrible pallor in the room from the overhead neon lighting. The pallor bathed your faces.
He looked very grave, and had to nerve himself up to announce that the child was dead.
‘Oh, no …’ You first thought was that you were cursed: this was what had happened to your mother before you were born; the accident that had brought on the storm of misery which had given birth to the phantom, Valerie.
‘Can I go to Abby?’
The doctor said, ‘She is asleep at present. We shall have to operate to remove the dead child. Can I get you a glass of water, sir?’ He was very young. Perhaps he had not met with this situation before.
‘No, thanks. Does that mean she won’t be able to bear children in future?’
‘Not necessarily. She will need time to recover, of course.’
You hid your face in your hands. ‘Oh, my God …’
The doctor put a hand gently on your sleeve. ‘It is a cause for grief, I know. However, if it’s any consolation, I must tell you that one in every four pregnancies ends in miscarriage. We see so many of them here.’
From that day onward, there was a difference between you and your wife, as if both of you blamed each other for the other partners you had been with. Abby became a more reserved person. After a while, you realized her earlier beauty had faded away, together with something of her early verve.
One cannot be happy all the time. It is almost impossible to be content. Perhaps when one is old it may be different … One must keep a perspective, even if dear Abby can’t. You thought she seemed to enjoy Joey and Terry’s company more than yours. You’re so stodgy, you told yourself.
You turn
ed out to be short-sighted, rather than stodgy. You flew with her to Switzerland, where she could rest in a five star hotel in the charming old town of Neuchatel, in a suite overlooking the lake. You killed time while she rested: killed time considering whether you were a man without qualities. Had you had character only in those terrible war years?
Back in England, the brothers frequently took Abby shopping, an expensive diversion you despised. They were more ‘fun’ than you were. Terry had recently been over to France, where he had negotiated a deal with a huge furniture store outside Bordeaux and had contracted to sell them five hundred dining room suites. It was on that excursion that he had picked up the William Hayter print. He had also been paid for the furniture in cash and had not declared it. There were other dealings, too, which made you uneasy. You too were pocketing cash and hardly thought about it.
You were intermittently miserable. You did not like what you were doing, you did not know what was going to happen next, and while Hyde Park was fine, England was still rather drab. True, London was more lively than it had been for many a year; the London journalists labelled it ‘Swinging’.
Young women, emboldened by the Pill, wore their hair and their skirts shorter, just as they shed the taboos under which their mothers and grandmothers had laboured. On stage and screen, in various dives and at pop concerts, in cars and by the side of the road, youth was voting for Free Love and the joys of sex without responsibility. You would be forty before long, but everyone else was outrageously young. When the Beatles sang All You Need is Love, they really meant ‘All You Need is Youth’.
But for you and Abby, youth was disappearing, seeping away through the floorboards of a marriage.
The youths who worked for you in your factory were careless. The success of the West had depended, at least in part, on willingness to work. The willingness had disappeared with the new freedoms. You had been tempered by war; you were different from the new generation. Although the youngsters in fact had little in common with one another, what they did share was the fact that the priorities and pressures of warfare had missed them. They had no care for intellectual responsibility. Your well-concealed bad conscience was no match for their lack of any conscience at all.
Even the economics of the country were uncertain.
You felt your own situation to be uncertain. Perhaps all thirty-ninth birthdays were secretly like that. Some comfort was offered by the reflection.
Later that year President Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas.
16
A Modernizing Government
‘Oh, Martin, you really should buy yourself a new suit, dear,’ said Mary. ‘Now you’re going to be really important.’ She and your father were standing in their bedroom as the latter prepared to go to Downing Street. He was standing in trousers and braces, trying to brush a little shine out of the cloth at his knees.
‘I’m not going to kneel in front of Harold,’ he said, with a brief laugh at the very thought.
‘But you should look your best. You’re not as young as you were. It’s so important, dear.’
‘We’re Labour, my duck, not a gang of lordly Tories. Suits are hardly a priority.’
‘Well, let me at least give your hair a trim. It’s long at the back. It hangs over your collar.’
He struggled into his jacket and checked to see that his wallet was in place in the inner pocket. ‘Don’t fuss, my dear, or I’ll miss the bloody train.’
She stood back to survey him. ‘Just don’t swear in front of the PM, that’s all I ask.’
‘Wilson’s okay. He probably says “bugger” all the time, like a man of the people.’
‘Are you going to take him a copy of Over the Boundary?’
He frowned at her. ‘Are you mad?’
She smiled. ‘I was only teasing, Martin, dear. Let me drive you to the station.’
On her way back from the station, Mary Fielding called in at the local fishmonger’s to buy some whiting. She thought to celebrate her husband’s elevation with a dish of whiting for supper, since she believed she did whiting well. They looked so pretty, done in breadcrumbs with their tails stuck through their eye sockets. She found the fishmonger in a gloomy mood.
Mrs Walker, who ran the grocer’s along the street, also looked gloomy. ‘Come forward please, Frances,’ she told her assistant, not coming forward herself to greet her regular customer as she usually did. The little shop held pleasant smells of leaf tea and demerara sugar and other enticing things.
Frances was young and bright, and smiled as she asked Mary what she could get her.
‘My word, everyone is gloomy today,’ Mary remarked rather pointedly, casting a glance at Mrs Walker. A chair was provided for customers to sit on. Mary sat on it.
‘I’m not a bit gloomy, Mrs Fielding,’ said Frances, putting her head prettily on one side. ‘I’m ever so happy. The Beatles are booked to give a concert in America. Fancy! Fantastic, I’d say. It was on the news this morning. I heard it when I was getting dressed.’
‘Who may the Beetles be? I have never heard of the Beetles.’
‘Oh, Mrs Fielding, bless! You must have heard of the Beatles! They’re real great. The Fab Four, like. And John Lennon, he’s –’
‘Please serve your customers, Frances, without lecturing them,’ said Mrs Walker, with asperity. She came forward as she spoke, smiling at her customer.
‘Please Please Me is the recent Beatles hit, Mrs Fielding, and that is exactly and precisely what we aim to do here – please our customers.’ She rubbed her hands together at the mere prospect.
‘I have never heard of it,’ said Mary, while returning the smile. In fact, she had often heard the song, which had become difficult to avoid; but she considered it somehow superior to have not heard of it, nor its singers.
Dropping the subject, Mrs Walker explained why there was indeed a certain amount of gloom about. It had been announced that what she called a big self-service shop was to be opened on the market square. It would undoubtedly take trade away from nearby shops, such as hers.
‘Surely not!’ exclaimed Mary. ‘People will always want someone to serve them. They won’t wish to have to serve themselves, certainly.’
‘They’ll get used to it soon enough,’ said Frances. Then, possibly realizing that she had gone too far, remarked admiringly on the fur about Mary’s neck, which the chilly morning had provoked her to wear.
Mary was pleased. ‘Do you like it? It’s rather old-fashioned for today. My mother always wore a fur; she had a lovely silver fox stole.’
‘Goodness!’ exclaimed the assistant. ‘Did she ever get the poor creature back?’ A few months on and Frances was working at the new Tesco’s, earning good money and going out with a young man from Saffron Walden.
It was 10.53 when Martin Fielding was admitted through the door of Number 10, Downing Street. He was shown into a waiting room, where a Beatles record was playing, presumably to indicate that the dull days of the previous prime minister, Alexander Douglas-Home, were over, and a new, livelier epoch had dawned.
Martin had hardly sat down on a hard, Regency chair, before a brisk and smiling young secretary entered and announced that the prime minister would speak with him now. He followed her upstairs, past the portraits of the illustrious dead who had once occupied the premises.
He was shown into a long room, the walls of which were covered with a green flock wallpaper. A portrait of the Queen hung on the far wall, behind the prime minister’s head. An open window let in gusts of rather fresh air. The room appeared full of young men and women, some of them engaged in stacking files on shelves. An older woman sat at a typewriter of an old-fashioned kind. At the other end of the table at which she sat was the prime minister himself. He was talking to another man who was standing beside him. In front of the prime minister were a pile of papers and a cup of tea. He was in his shirtsleeves. He nodded in a friendly way to Martin and waved a hand to indicate he should sit down, while he went on talking to the standing man. Af
ter a few minutes, he gave the man a folder and the man then departed. Martin recognized him as Jim Callaghan. He too gave Martin a friendly nod as he left.
Harold Wilson then turned his attention to Martin.
‘Thank you for coming to see me, Martin,’ he said. A slight trace of a Huddersfield accent remained in his voice. ‘How’s the wife?’
‘She’s fine, thank you, Prime Minister.’
‘And your cricketing book is doing well, I hear?’
Martin was delighted.
‘Yes, Prime Minister. It’s reprinting.’
‘Reprinting, is it? Good. It’s an excellent read. A fine game, cricket.’ He leant forward, elbows on table, and assumed a different tone of voice.
‘Now, Martin, you’ve been looking after the nation’s kids while we’ve been in Opposition. As you know, the nation’s housing is in a deplorable state. To be frank, a worse state than the kids. My predecessor did nothing about it’ – he smiled – ‘just as well he has now retired to his rolling acres.
‘It is of paramount importance that we pursue an anti-inflationary policy; show ourselves friendly to business. Nevertheless, we must build and be seen to build. Never forget that we’re a modernizing government. We need to knock down a few slums here and there for a start; high rises look good. People see high rises, take note of them.
‘It was one of the weaknesses of the Attlee government that Clem’s house-building policy, ambitious although it was, was not implemented speedily enough. That must not be allowed to happen with us. We must build new towns in the North as well as down here in the South. Not forgetting Scotland – Cumbernauld’s an example.
‘Good shopping centres; to please the ladies, God bless them. We must aim for an additional ten thousand houses, mainly, but not exclusively, in the lower income bracket, up and going concerns by 1966 at the latest.’ As if by afterthought, he added, ‘And all with indoor lavs.’
