Walcot

by Brian Aldiss

  ‘It is part of our nature to eat meat, Caleb.’

  He squared up to you across the grimy old table. ‘Does it occur to you all these animals could know that they are to be eaten? Suppose they know. Suppose the knowledge has been inherited. But they can’t say anything, they can’t escape, so they just have to live on and wait for the fucking chop, all the while bearing intense hatred of we humans. Just as we all feel intense hatred and fear, knowing we’ll get the fucking chop one day soon … Buy us another pint, will you? God, I’m thirsty. How I loathe this sodding pub.’

  You admired Caleb’s despair. You admired Caleb’s independence of mind. But you took to avoiding the evenings’ boozing with him. You pursued your studies, and welcomed the Avon lady when she called. You still worked in the warehouse – until your grandmother’s money came through.

  The pigeons, rising with a great clatter of wings, still enjoyed their daily flight above the square. Some Pakistanis moved into the house next door. You tried to make contact with them, but they were shy of it. Every morning, they would leave the narrow-shouldered house, leap on the saddles of their push-bikes and cycle away to the factory where they worked. They were as regular as the pigeons.

  At three o’clock one winter morning, there came a hammering at your room door. It was Caleb, in a bad state.

  ‘Let me in, Steve. Have mercy on me! I’ve got the bloody DT’s!’

  You sat up in your bed, rubbing your eyes. ‘For Christ’s sake, go back to bed, Caleb! Sleep it off.’

  He banged again. ‘I know you hate me. I know I am a social leper. I am dying. Let me in! Have some mercy on a poor Steppen fucking wolf, for Jesus Christ’s sake!’

  You put the light on and let him in. Caleb was shivering. He wore nothing but an old grey shirt and a dirty pair of underpants. You sat him down on your chair and threw the rug from the bed over him for warmth. ‘Why weren’t you a fucking Catholic, Steve? Like my mother, for God’s sake.’

  You tried to soothe him, to some effect. Lighting the gas ring, you boiled him up a cup of tea. He drank in noisy sips, groaning meanwhile.

  ‘You’re a true friend, Steve. I know I’m a bastard. I’m scared to go back to my room. Let me sleep here with you.’

  ‘You can’t do that. There isn’t room for one thing. What the fuck’s the matter with your sodding room?’

  He looked ghastly. He stank. He buried his face in his hands, to pull the hands away at once as if they burnt his skin.

  ‘Suppose I was fucking Jesus Christ, would you turn him out?’

  ‘Jesus was not a fucking drunkard, as far as we know.’

  He flung his scraggy arms up in supplication.

  ‘Let me stay here. I’m safe here, you shit. I won’t throw up, I promise. I never throw up.’

  ‘Sorry, but you can’t fucking well stay here. I keep telling you.’

  ‘My light’s gone out in my room. It’s all dark. I’m scared. I thought General Franco was in there, the bastard.’

  ‘You need to lay off the booze, Caleb, old pal.’

  ‘Remember what Schopenhauer said? “Do your best for your fellow men, and if that’s not good enough, then fuck ’em!”’

  ‘If your bulb’s gone, I’ve got another.’

  So you took the bulb out of your overhead light. It left only the dim, 40-watt light burning by your bedside. You eased Caleb out of the chair and helped him upstairs through the broken-down night. He alternated groans with imaginary quotes from Schopenhauer, together with obscene ramblings. ‘Just suppose I was bloody Jesus, just got in from Belgium or wherever, fat lot of good speaking to you in Amoniac, you so bloody inch – angular – East Angular, trying to sneak sanctuary … insular I mean, how many more stairs are they in this goddammed billet?’

  You propped him against the wall on his landing. By leaving the landing light on, you could see into his room. You untwisted the old bulb from his overhead light. Since he had wandered in after you, you handed it to him. He flung it impatiently on his bed as you inserted your functioning bulb.

  Light flooded the room, revealing a scene of Dostoevskian squalor. There was no furniture other than the stark bed, beside which old hardcover books were piled. No curtain hung at the window to keep out the shabby night; no rug lay on the floor to cover the nakedness of the floorboards. Ranged round two of the walls were old milk bottles. Some of the bottles contained rotted milk, some a curious yellowish-orange mixture, which indicated what they had been used for.

  Seeing your glance, Caleb gave a guilty grin. ‘It’s a long way down to the loo,’ he said.

  With that, he flung himself on the bed. Quickly following a crunching noise came his agonized screams.

  You read everything that Dr Fraser had to say, and felt the better for it. You sensed within you what he called ‘the operation of incomprehensible powers’. The change that had taken place in prison was still working within you.

  You went to see Gerard and Helge. You happened to arrive at their office a week after their daughter Brenda gave birth to a baby girl in the nearby hospital.

  ‘It’s the Great Chain of Being, Steve, my friend,’ Helge said. ‘What a blessing it is to have a granddaughter! That we should live so long …’ She raised her right hand and gazed upwards. She had assimilated several gestures that you thought of as ‘Jewish’.

  Brenda clasped her baby, gazing down on her with love, as if nothing else mattered. The infant murmured contentedly to itself.

  When I told Gerard and Helge about the proposal to demolish Blackall Square, Gerard spread his hands in resignation.

  ‘No formal announcement has been made as yet, my dear friend; it could be only a rumour. But let us suppose they do demolish the square … To be honest, it needs pulling down. The dilapidations! I should be compensated for the destruction of my property, since this is a country that believes in legality. Maybe I can find you a better place, but whatever happens, it will be for the best, I’m sure. We trust English law.’

  ‘You’re the only ones who do.’

  ‘Steve, we shall see what happens.’

  What happened was that a general election was called. The Conservative Party returned to power under Prime Minister Edward Heath. Harold Wilson and the Labour Party lost power. Martin Fielding lost his post in Housing.

  It looked like a reprieve for Blackall Square, but Prime Minister Heath retained the housing plans drawn up by the previous government. Bulldozers moved in. The square was demolished; the inhabitants were put into old folks’ homes, just as Caleb had warned.

  By the time Harold Wilson returned to power in 1974, the year you became fifty, a brutish multi-storey car park had been built on the previous site of the square.

  You bought Helge’s granddaughter a blue teddy bear.

  5

  Some Family Conversation

  A year may pass almost without notice; it is the weeks, those small slices of a year, which are felt to go by so quickly.

  The passing weeks, with their accumulations, were full of work and study. You built a stable life for yourself. Your aims became more modest than they had been; the acquirement of knowledge became an increasing pleasure, as you tried to put away the old questions which had plagued you for so long. However, the question of Walcot sands remained; was it simply by a lucky accident that you had not died then? What would it be like to die aged four? What meaning would such a death have held for others – for your parents, for instance?

  Dying in France during the war would have been quite a different matter, almost to have been expected. Almost to have been accepted.

  Such reflections recurred with decreasing frequency. In your studies you delved deeper into a far more distant past, as if the answers to your ontological riddles might be buried there.

  Your parents’ old house in the Southampton suburb underwent changes; the modest porch was pulled down and a grander new one built, with Corinthian pillars to support it. Once you went inside, you encountered more change.

  The chande
lier which had hung lopsidedly in the hall had gone. Instead, new tracking lights had been installed. And the living room, which your mother had always called ‘the lounge’, had been extended into a large conservatory. A grey fitted carpet had replaced the old Axminster, and new pieces of furniture stood in new places. Gone was the old leather sofa you remembered. Gone was the old radiogram. Instead, a flashy cocktail cabinet stood at the entrance to the conservatory.

  The conservatory itself was choked by rubber tree plants in pots. Your father’s Russell Flint watercolour (‘rather risqué’ had been the judgement in the old days), had gone; in its place on the long wall of the living room were two large repro oils of African elephants, posed as if about to charge the visitors who thronged beneath them.

  It was almost ten years since you had set foot in your parents’ home. Of course things change, you told yourself. How natural that the place should be modernized.

  Your parents had grown old. You had returned because Martin and Mary had decided to, as they put it, ‘patch things up’; to celebrate your degree in Geological Sciences and your appointment as Geology Master in the private university of Ashford. What you did not tell your parents was that Elizabeth’s kind donation had come through, and you had thought it advisable to make a contribution to the renovation of the Geological classroom there.

  With the signs of encroaching middle class modernity went graver indications of the passage of time. Mary had shrunk and her face had withered. Her right arm and hand were never still, vibrating slightly in warning, so you feared, of worse to come. Martin had put on weight again and was being treated for diabetes. His cricketing days were long over; the bats that once lined the old hall had been given away to charity. He had grown a moustache.

  He remained a member of the Labour Party; but had invested in farmland, the source of his mild prosperity. As is commonly acknowledged, the possession of acres of countryside induces conservatism and a tendency to be defensive when discussions of equality among men are raised.

  As you shook hands with Martin, he congratulated you on your degree and your new position. ‘The spell in prison must have stimulated the old brain cells,’ he said.

  You were peeved that he should bring up your term in prison. You replied to the effect that he had ruined several lives by executing the plan to destroy Blackall Square.

  ‘You have to move on,’ he declared. ‘We all have to make sacrifices.’ His old catch phrase: you smiled to hear it again. He said, as you might have expected, that the square was beyond salvation. He went on to remark that ‘an old companion’ of yours had been arrested in an illegal squat in Hammersmith.

  ‘People like him should be kicked out of the country,’ he said. ‘He’s just a parasite on society.’

  ‘Who do you mean?’

  ‘A troublemaker friend of yours. Arthur Blake, or Arturo Blake, as he likes to call himself.’

  ‘Of course he likes to call himself Arturo; that’s the name with which he was christened. He is also known as Caleb – his writing name, okay?’

  ‘Steve, dear man, now you have a fresh chance in life, do stay away from such riff-raff.’

  You felt a flush flood your face.

  ‘Father, would it surprise you if I told you that Caleb is one of the best guys I ever met? I’m only sorry I lost touch with him.’

  ‘You’ve also lost touch with your own wife and daughter. It seems rather to be a habit of yours.’

  ‘Abby is not my wife. She’s my ex-wife.’

  Your father sighed heavily and turned away. He marched straight over to a serious-looking group of four men and a silent woman and began immediately to talk about the national water shortage. His parting shot had struck home. You had reason to feel bad about not seeing your young daughter. As ever, you had been swept along by events. There was also the knowledge that you would be highly unwelcome on Birdlip Hill, where Abby and Geraldine lived.

  The family constitution as represented by those attending the party had changed as much as the furnishings. Claude Hillman, the erstwhile Justin, who had deserted your father’s sister, Ada, had evidently been forgiven his sins. There he was, looking rather more subdued than previously, though he gave you a cheerful salute, standing with a younger woman called Phoebe – in your eyes not at all attractive, a thin woman with drab hair. Ada, however, was also present, though in a different corner of the room, drinking with a jolly young academic, often to be seen on TV – Beavis Bernard Gray. She was brightly painted and extremely cheerful. Her hair was short and streaked with scarlet.

  According to your mother, ‘Oh, serve old Claude right! Ada’s better off without him.’ A more tolerant remark than you would previously have expected. ‘Beavis is an absolute dear. They’re off to Jordan next week. He’s doing a programme from there.’

  You asked what the programme would be about.

  ‘King Hussein, of course.’

  ‘What about Joey and Terry?’ you asked. She replied defensively that they were doing well.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. And Abby and Geraldine?’

  Mary shot you a quick look before turning her gaze to the party. ‘I do keep in touch with Abby – for your sake, although I never liked her. I felt she was bad for you. She’s become rather grand. Mind you, the Cholmondeleys were always rather grand, weren’t they? I understand your little girl’s doing well. Go and see them, why don’t you?’

  ‘I can’t face it.’

  With uncharacteristic spirit, your mother said, ‘You can face anything if you’ve a mind to, however long it takes.’

  Claude came over and shook your hand. ‘Good to see you again, Steve. I’d like you to meet Phoebe, my new girlfriend.’ You noticed he tinted his hair.

  You shook hands with Phoebe. She smiled and said that Claude had told her all about you. Rather hastily, Claude asked you what you thought about all the Jamaicans coming over to Britain. You had given this matter little thought.

  ‘They fought for us during the war, didn’t they?’

  Phoebe said she had been looking for digs and one landlady had said to her, ‘You’re all right but I don’t want any racial people here.’

  ‘There you are!’ Claude exclaimed, as if his girlfriend’s experience confirmed all he dreaded. ‘I phoned our Tory MP, I said to him, “They may be black, but we have a duty to let them in.”’ He lowered his voice and held you by the sleeve. ‘You know Joyce has got a black boyfriend. I don’t know what you make of that.’

  ‘They’re here,’ whispered Phoebe. ‘He seems ever so nice, but still …’

  ‘Yes, but he’s not Jamaican,’ Claude said. ‘Been over here a while, I understand.’

  To change the subject, you asked him about Joey and Terry. ‘I hear they’re doing well.’

  He pulled a face. ‘I don’t know who told you that. They fell out over some financial deal. Had a bit of a scrap, so Joey told Phoebe.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Phoebe. ‘Cos Joey had a black eye and I asked him about it.’

  ‘Silly buggers,’ said Claude. ‘Anyhow, the long and the short of it is that Terry has up and offed to Canada. I can’t think why Canada – Australia would have been so much warmer than Canada.’

  You remarked, ‘So Joey’s still hanging around, is he?’

  Claude said, lowering his voice, ‘I gather he didn’t do you any favours. He was bragging about it. I was sorry to hear it.’

  ‘So what did you do about it, Uncle?’

  ‘Told him to shut up, of course. Him I brought up properly …’

  Several people whom you did not know were present to celebrate your degree and the new post at Ashbury. Uncle Bertie was talking to a few of them. Violet was not present; however, her daughter was. Joyce had arrived with her father and her boyfriend, who was more-or-less black, as Claude had said. Even at a casual glance, Joyce’s resemblance to her mother was strong.

  You accepted a glass of Sauvignon Blanc from the waitress, evidently a village girl, and talked for a while to you
r Aunt Belle, who had married a sportive Monty Pepler while you were in prison.

  ‘Don’t know why we’re being so cheerful,’ said Monty, grinning. ‘Inflation at twelve per cent and rising, I mean to say.’

  ‘Still, a space probe is on its way to Mars,’ said Belle, winking at you, to establish the fact that she knew her husband’s false gloom. ‘That’s progress, isn’t it?’

  ‘Probably going there to escape inflation.’ Monty could not stop laughing at his own joke. You laughed politely too, for a second.

  Belle sighed. Turning to you, turning her back on her husband, she deliberately changed the subject. ‘Have you seen Easy Rider? Fantastic film! Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda.’

  ‘I was locked up, remember.’

  ‘Drugs, bikers, rock ’n’ roll, sex … I’d say it was your thing.’ She gave you an old-fashioned look.

  ‘You’re very frivolous, Belle.’

  ‘I’ve had a couple of glasses, sorry. I take life very seriously, let me tell you, don’t I, Monty? I’m a civil servant now, with the prospect of being posted to Brussels.’

  As you passed Mary and the group of women she had joined, including her sister-in-law, Flo, you overheard your mother saying, ‘Yes, would you believe it, gave away half her fortune to Steve, on a whim, mind you, and now she’s gone to live in Venice, of all places …’

  Evidently that absurd phrase, ‘of all places’, rankled with Flo as much as it did with you, for she remarked, challengingly, ‘Why not? Ruskin did! Byron did!’

  But Flo was always inclined to be superior.

  Smiling to yourself, clutching your glass, you wandered into the garden, where various guests were sitting talking under sunshades. It was gloriously hot and sunny. The grass looked dry. Among the ladies in summer dresses was a younger woman in a T-shirt, chatting to an Indian youth whose face seemed to radiate beauty. They had recently been sitting on a bench, and were now strolling about with glasses of kir in hand.