by Brian Aldiss
As you recognized her, she waved you over. ‘Uncle Steve! Come and meet my friend, Paul Patel.’
You shook hands with Paul and gave Joyce a kiss, all the while trying to come to terms with the fact that this young woman was so clearly Violet’s daughter. ‘By this token,’ you said to yourself, ‘you must understand how you yourself have aged.’ This was another time that it sank in upon you that you were no longer growing up but growing old. You would shortly turn fifty.
Dismissing the thought, you sat down with Joyce and Paul Patel. As you did so, Sonia strolled over with a distinguished grey-haired man who had in tow a younger chap dressed all in yellow. Sonia threw her arms round you, kissed you on both cheeks – that was a new continental fashion – and introduced Adrian Hyasent and another actor, Ralph Lyngstad, the yellow-clad fellow. On being introduced, Lyngstad pulled a yellow handkerchief from his breast pocket, flourished it, and dabbed at his narrow forehead. ‘Enchanted,’ he said.
‘Here on a quick break,’ Sonia said. ‘England seems terribly small. On the other hand, the US seems terribly big.’
You were astounded to see that your sister’s affair with Hyasent still continued, while you were prepared to dislike on sight anyone who dressed all in yellow; but they sat themselves down at a nearby table and all began talking at once.
A waitress came immediately and served them champagne.
‘Oh yes, I have let my life drift,’ Adrian declared, wrapping an arm round Sonia’s waist. With his free hand, he made a drifting gesture in the air. He wore a bracelet tight on his wrist. ‘Trouble is, I listen to too much popular music. Abba is a drug, wouldn’t you say? It saps the will.’ He gave a gesture of wry apology, exonerating himself. ‘One is allowed to drift. It requires a particular talent.’
‘I adore Chubby Checker!’ exclaimed the yellow fellow. He started to sing Let’s Twist Again, with appropriate shuffling movements. ‘Surely they must have a record of it here, even in this endearingly old-fashioned place? I’d entirely lurve to dance.’
‘Oh, Chubby Checker!’ Sonia exclaimed. ‘It’s the happiest music since Schiller wrote his Ode to Joy!’
You noted how attentive were the men to your sister. She seemed somehow to have gained stature, not to mention a taller coiffeur.
‘Who’s Schiller? I haven’t heard of him,’ said the yellow man. ‘Is he with Dire Straits?’
‘Oh, Fred Schiller,’ said Sonia, pretending to be cross.
‘But you notice that even in that twist,’ you said, attempting a more intellectual note, ‘the element of nostalgia creeps in. “Do you remember when things were really humming?” – isn’t that one of Checker’s lines? The happier past! Nostalgia is like a virus creeping into modern life.’
‘Don’t you suffer from it, Steve?’ Joyce asked. ‘You must suffer from something.’
‘I hate the past,’ you replied. ‘It’s where all one’s mistakes are stored.’ You drank from your glass. It was the sort of afternoon for which Sauvignon Blanc had been invented. You secretly preferred it to champagne.
You sensed that the men were coldly uninterested in what you had to say. You swung directly to face Sonia, saying, ‘So what about this film you were going to be in? Haven’t heard another word about it. Jocasta?’
‘Where have you been, dear?’ she answered pertly. ‘It’s now in post-production. It’s going to be big.’
‘Yes,’ said Adrian Hyasent, jostling you. ‘You want to get out more, chum. Out of the slammer, for instance …’
‘You want to get out of my way, you tick!’
Paul Patel spoke up swiftly, moving between you and Hyasent. You had sensed that he and Joyce did not greatly care for Ralph Lyngstad. ‘We can link nostalgia with immaturity. A longing for the past and the womb.’
‘Oh, that’s all garbage,’ said Ralph, touching his cheek for some reason. ‘Chubby would so laugh to hear that. I met him once, in New York. Brief encounter. A dear, a so fun man.’
Patel gave a ravishing smile. ‘Fun or not, nostalgia is a contemporary problem, one of several that evolution has dealt us. Let me remind you that since humankind became bipedal, a narrow pelvis was a good structural adaptation. But we have endorphin-thirsty large brains –’
‘Oh, look here –’ began Adrian, but Patel was not to be interrupted.
‘And those big brains really require a wide pelvis for the comfortable delivery of babies. So there is a conflict; wide pelvis or narrow pelvis? Intelligence or dimness?’
‘Terribly boredom-provoking question!’ exclaimed the yellow-clad one.
‘Oh, so you opted for dimness, did you, you little prick?’ said Patel, with sudden venom.
‘Chill out, dear!’ was Ralph’s response.
‘He’s saying all this because I’m pregnant,’ Joyce interposed, directing this remark at you.
‘The narrow pelvis,’ said Paul Patel, stroking Joyce’s behind; he was pleased to have silenced the opposition, ‘imposes an unfair burden on women.’
‘Still, the evolutionary solution to the problem is rather neat. Our babies are born before they are really ready, before the cranium grows too large and hard to pass through the neck of the womb. A neat development. Of course, it does lead to later societal problems, such as a protracted immaturity.’ He directed a dark gaze at Adrian. ‘The evidence for which being such groups as the Sex Pistols and rock and roll. Reflect on how long it takes a human child even to toddle, whereas the progeny of wild animals, particularly grazers, is up and running five minutes after being born.’
‘What’s all this about, chum?’ asked Adrian, looking offended.
‘Hence the institution of marriage – at least for those not gay. A matrimonial pair staying together provide best protection for the baby’s protracted immaturity.’ He looked challengingly at Adrian and the yellow-clad Lyngstad. ‘If you chums can understand all that –’
Before he had finished speaking, a young man wearing a floral shirt came up, clutching a glass, trying to conceal the fact that he was drunk. It was Douglas, Joyce’s brother, full of cheer as well as wine.
He grasped Ralph Lyngstad’s hand and shook it vigorously.
‘I say! You’re a picture! What are you advertising? Colman’s Mustard?’
A little later, you were strolling with Joyce and Paul. Joyce was saying how amusing her brother was; Dougie was now a prominent DJ on Radio Caroline.
Paul was saying he regretted that he had been impolite to fellow guests. ‘I can’t stop swanking,’ he said. ‘The awful thing is, I always have a sense that there is a part of myself standing apart, aloof, watching the action. Not disapproving exactly, although in this case –’
‘Disdainful?’ you suggested, trying to remember where you had heard similar remarks before.
‘Yes, more that.’
Joyce said, ‘We all have that feeling at times. Detached from our actions.’
‘I have it much of the time,’ you said. ‘If I stop and listen, as it were, it’s there.’ But you were feeling slightly tipsy. ‘Read the Upanishads –’
‘No, thanks,’ said Paul.
‘That sensation of something remote at your elbow may be what makes people believe there is a God watching over them,’ Joyce suggested.
‘Or vice versa,’ you said, with a sudden inspiration for something to say. ‘Maybe there is a God watching over us and we just mistake it for a part of ourselves.’
‘Do you believe in Doppelgängers?’ Joyce asked.
‘In which case,’ said Paul, ignoring her question, ‘He – or possibly She – will have to look away for a while, because I intend to visit the toilet. Excuse me.’
As he departed, sauntering elegantly, you seized the chance to ask Joyce how her mother was.
‘Violet and Dad quarrel hideously. And they don’t much like the fact that I love my gorgeous Hindu. Do you like Paul, Steve?’
‘Oh, massive approval. Loved the way he put Lyngstad down. And are you really preggers? It doesn’t show.’
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‘Not yet. Give it a chance. Steve, you are a real bastard, you realize! I do know you were humping mum that time, when I was just a nipper. Maybe later, too. You shouldn’t have taken advantage of her. She was in a bad emotional state.’
You were not displeased to have that happy occasion mentioned.
‘Hang on, Joyce! I didn’t take advantage of her. It was mutual. Maybe we were both in an emotional state, but what’s that got to do with it? That’s when you need a shag or two! For comfort, if nothing else.’
She gave a half-laugh and squeezed your hand. ‘Well, I wanted to tell you I know what you were up to. It made a great impression on me as a kid.’
‘So you’ve gone to the bad ever since!’
‘What, me? Me with a career in job placement? That’s where you see a whole country going to the bad. If we join the EU, it might save us. Here comes Paul. Glad you’re not racist.’
‘Count on me. Tell me, Joyce, did that little wretch Terry ever –’
But Paul was returning, strolling past Adrian & Co.
‘What were you two talking about?’ he asked you.
‘Oh, I was saying I wondered if I could make a synthesis of my life. And I was wondering what a synthesis was.’
‘Are you drunk?’ he asked you, peering into your face. ‘Let’s get drunk, shall we? Do you think any of the folks here would notice if we three fell into a flowerbed?’
So you did, and they did.
6
Over Jurassic Sand
You stood at the casement of the room which was now your refuge, the place where you could pursue your new occupation, gazing out into the night. Beyond the walls of Ashbury University lay the Oxfordshire countryside, the landscape of which had been fashioned by countrymen over many centuries.
The great clump of trees which stood to one end of a broad meadow grew there by courtesy of mankind, of generations of farmers. Darkness turned it into a black mass which might have been mistaken, by anyone who had not seen it in daylight, for a gigantic and impregnable rock. The aspect of the land was transformed by the dark into something entirely more remote; the hand of man had vanished, leaving behind a footprint of wilderness.
Something here was real and true, but it proved elusive.
You were familiar with, comfortable with, your mood – mild melancholy being your prevailing mental weather. It did not vary with age. Indeed, it had lightened after your epiphany in prison: though the unresolved question of Walcot and its sands remained.
The night was now at full flood as you stood motionless. Countless points of light which lighted nothing were strewn like grains of sand above the old building in which you stood. A full moon had risen at this small hour and hung low over the horizon; it shone on a dew-soaked stretch of ground which, being level, gleamed as if it were the line of a calm sea, the tide of which had withdrawn far from any shoreline.
Your newly trained geologist’s eye carried you to a greater isolation, as you reflected that this setting before you resembled a far more ancient scene. Your sleeplessness, your very consciousness, would have had no place four billion years previously, when that same moon was sailing much closer to its parent planet. Earth itself, as geologists understood, had then rotated more rapidly. Land areas would have been swept by powerful tides flooding miles inland, only to withdraw rapidly, and then as rapidly to return, to retreat again, in ceaseless repetition. Those tidal forces may have enabled early DNA to form in tidal pools, thus providing the very basis of life.
You stirred and sighed. The gentler tides at Walcot were but tepid imitations of those more ferocious floods played out in the early days of the planet, before anything lived.
And now here you were, on dry land, in the heart of rural Oxfordshire, at a small private university, discovering how little talent you had for teaching.
Even the Rector of the university, Dr Mathew Matthews, had seemed doubtful when he employed you. However, your donation towards a new classroom had had its influence. ‘We live in troublesome times, Dr Fielding,’ he had said, placing his hands together, with his fingers pointing upwards. He was a small, bustling man with a ruddy complexion, the sort of man, you felt, with whom you could never be really at ease. ‘I speak as if there were times which were not troublesome, which I believe not to be the case. However, industry is not expanding, inflation is rising. Tell me how you see our prime minister, Mrs Thatcher.’
An interview question. ‘Well, she is certainly upsetting the trades unions … Not exactly a popular woman …’
‘I’m asking for your personal opinion, Dr Fielding, not for a report on public opinion.’
‘She certainly has her convictions. As a result, the working class is in trouble. Well, it’s being broken up, because Mrs T is a tough lady when dealing with the unions …’
Matthews leant forward over the polished table. ‘There you hit the nail on the head. We do not allow trade unions here at Ashbury. We are strictly private and do not permit outside interference. After the Winter of Discontent –’
‘The oil price shock,’ you pointed out, ‘was hardly the fault of the trades unions.’
A black Labrador dog, lying by the table, rose and shook himself, as if the mention of trades unions worried him too.
The Rector tapped on the table with the sharp nail of his index finger. ‘We try not to air our personal political preferences here, but I say this to you; England has gone through a ghastly period – the Sick Man of Europe. This university was almost forced to close. I believe that now, under Margaret Thatcher, the tide will turn. We shall see no more trade union bosses hanging about at 10 Downing Street – Vic Feather and all that bunch. Common sense, elected government and prosperity will return … Do I see you flinch, Dr Fielding? You are not afraid of prosperity, I trust?’
‘No, Sir. Simply not used to it.’
‘Well, let us hope that shortly practice will make perfect.’
‘Excuse me, Sir, but we do have prosperity. The seven leading capitalist countries, which include us, have three-quarters of all the cars, passenger cars, in the world. That’s prosperity, surely.’
‘And three-quarters of the world’s traffic problems.’
You reflected that you should not have argued with the Rector on that point, but he said mildly that if you were inclined to argument, you should meet Myrtle Eddington, the deputy head.
Myrtle Eddington was a woman of medium height, in her forties. Her hair was dyed a dull bronze; she wore an authoritative grey suit, and her manner was friendly, but brisk. You judged that she was unmarried. As she entered the room, the Rector’s Labrador rose, shook himself, and went over to sniff her leg in a friendly way.
It was George Orwell’s year of 1984, when you were almost sixty, though looking younger. You now tinted your hair, and kept yourself reasonably slender. You shook hands with Myrtle, summing her up as she summed you up.
‘The Rector enjoys talking like a hard man,’ she said. ‘You will find he is a gentle person. We really don’t fear the trades unions any more, he just likes to pretend he is fending them off.’
‘I employ women but not unionists, Myrtle,’ said Mathew, with a slight smile. ‘Here we are labour-intensive. If we can be said to labour at all.’
You remarked that there was mass unemployment elsewhere in the land. The old working classes had fallen victim to new technologies, where mass-production lines were now run by computer and other machines. Privatization and increased prosperity had broken up working-class solidarity. ‘As you can see by the gentrification of pubs,’ you added. ‘No more straw on the floor, no more spittoons.’
‘More than that,’ said Myrtle. ‘Access to education. I was the first person in my family to go to university, but I come from the Birmingham working classes and I know what I’m talking about.’
‘And you’re always talking about it,’ said Mathew, waggishly.
Ignoring him, beyond making a face at him, she said, ‘I know how things have changed, how quickly, how dr
amatically. Remember segregation by clothing? Now everyone wears jeans. That’s Americanization, in part – or globalization, I should say, since you are probably wearing pants made in Thailand or China – but when I was a kid, everyone had lower expectations. We lived in different places from the middle classes, even in different towns. We had different voices, different jokes. All stand-up comedians come from places like Liverpool, from terraced houses, from back-to-backs. You never see a duke treading the boards, do you?’
‘When and if we do, we can celebrate true democracy,’ said Mathew.
The word ‘democracy’ confirmed your view that this was a time of heavy conversation.
‘I agree with you, Myrtle,’ you said. ‘Another way in which things have changed is that workers are more scattered and now live more privately than they did – in part because of television and videos. In the old days, I remember, the poor were forced to live in old railway carriages or pokey houses – rented houses – tied cottages in the country – so that their free time was conducted mainly in public; in pubs, on street corners, at football matches. Now old working class districts have been destroyed, including the one I lived in for a while. Destroyed, or gentrified – or ghettoized with workers from abroad.’
Mathew set his elbows on his desk and made a pyramid of his hands once more, fingers pointing upwards.
‘Are you lamenting or rejoicing about all this?’
‘Rejoicing, of course,’ you and Myrtle said at once.
‘Well, I preferred the days when everyone knew their place.’
Myrtle had the last word on this occasion. ‘I knew my place and was eager to get out of it. Little did I know it would entail working for you at Ashbury …’
Your first friend at Ashbury was a man who had been seconded in to run the Earth Sciences class until you arrived. He was a tall, shaggy fellow with a lumbering gait. He came forward, rather round-shouldered, with a big skull, a man of fifty but looking older, to greet you as you climbed from your taxi. He was wearing tight jeans and an old cricket blazer, to signify that if his heart was in the past, at least his legs were in the present.
