Life in the West

by Brian Aldiss

  ‘You’ll get cancer, smoking. Where did you catch that habit? I’ve warned Deirdre but she takes no notice of me. No, as a matter of fact it’s not Laura, it’s you. The way you are. Only three years ago, you were having a mad love affair with that dreadful art-historian woman, Sheila Lippard-Milne. I never told anyone about that, not even mother and father. That hurt me bitterly, but you didn’t care. How could I escape what I felt? How could I escape? And what am I supposed to do this time? If it’s not Sheila or Laura, it’ll be someone else. Am I supposed to be sorry for you because you won’t grow up? What’s the matter with you? No, don’t tell me, I know you’ll tell me. All I really want’s your silence from now on…’

  ‘You know that Sheila — ’

  ‘Let’s not hear her name.’ Teresa raised a hand in caution. ‘I don’t intend to go into all that again. Your bloody sister downstairs and your uncle think that you’re at the male menopause. Did you ever hear anything so silly? I defy you to find that malady in a medical dictionary! They don’t know about Sheila Lippard-Milne. I never told anyone about you and precious Sheila Lippard-Milne. How long’s this male menopause supposed to go on for, eh, how many years? As long as it suits you? Till we’re all in our graves? My nerves are ruined, do you wonder I sought refuge with the first likely man who came along? I had to build up my dented self-esteem. No, don’t say it — I know he turned out a rascal, but you can laugh, you can laugh, my moral judgement was at zero, I paid in blood for every drop of pleasure I had.’

  ‘Yes, people do, you know.’

  Sighing, she went over to the window which opened on the front of the house. The lower part of the sash window had been pushed up to let in sea breezes, presumably in Deirdre’s desire to clear the house of its closed-up smell. Teresa leaned out with her forearms on the sill, as if she could not bear her husband’s proximity, and gazed towards the boat-filled harbour.

  She was wearing a flimsy summer dress, low-cut round the shoulders. Squire had a good view of her shoulder-blades. From behind, she looked slender and youthful, almost thin, for her cramped attitude made the shoulder-blades project. His fancy saw her as a member of a mutated species, developing wings and about to fly away from him.

  The tender bones, so functionally shaped, protruding under the flesh. The skin itself, clear and fair, roseate with a touch of the summer sun. The bumpy little tract of her backbone, leading down under the material of the dress, and there glimpsed in outline. The downy line of hairs following the track. The curve of her neck up into her dyed bright hair. At all these things Squire gazed during the silence, heavy with their frustration.

  And said to himself, ‘Whatever arguments I put up, however I attempt to reason, however unreasonable she is, she will win. Because she has that beautiful body.’ Biology was always going to win in the end.

  He walked round the room, and stubbed his cigarette out in Deirdre’s ashtray, hardly aware of what he was doing. Stuck into the side of Deirdre’s mirror, beside other treasures, was a card he had sent her from Tinjar Park in Sarawak, showing ancient supplicatory hands painted on a cave wall. He felt gratitude to his sister for caring enough to keep it.

  ‘Tess, I know how you must be distressed,’ he said to her back, moving unhappily behind her.

  She brought her torso in from the window and slowly drew the sash down.

  ‘Depressed! You’re joking.’

  ‘I said distressed. I’m trying to tell you that I understand. I won’t say what I think about Jarvis, but I have bought him off and paid the debt to your Italian packaging firm. I’ve settled all the financial side of things. Now I want to look after you and see you happy again. We are too old for this sort of emotional jag.’

  ‘Oh, Tom,’ she said wearily, brushing a curl of hair from her eyes.’ You’re being superior again.’ She sat down on the foot of the bed, her back to him.

  ‘Well, I’m trying not to be superior. I’m trying to keep my temper. Perhaps you think I’m complacent — that’s simply because mainly I’m happy, most of the time. Despite the male menopause… Or perhaps I’m not…’

  ‘You’re only interested in yourself,’ she said feelingly. ‘That’s more to the point.’

  ‘Did you drive over from Grantham just to insult me? If you won’t make our quarrel up, then what more do you want from me?’

  She regarded the carpet, inspecting the grains of sand on it. ‘I want nothing more. Mother persuaded me we should look in here. I hoped… Oh, hell. I know I sponged off you, and that kept me quiet. I hate myself, it’s not just you. Life’s so bloody difficult. Everything’s gone wrong. Besides — you turned me out at New Year. A fine start to the year that was. Don’t deny it.’

  ‘You were with Jarvis, Tess. Don’t forget that. You were with Jarvis.’

  ‘That dreadful row. In front of the Broadwells… Now my business ruined on top of everything.’ She produced a handkerchief and wiped her nose. ‘You’ve paid up generously. I know. I’m supposed to be grateful and come creeping home. But you’re not really sorry. The truth is, you bought me. I’m another Squire acquisition, like the furniture. You just want me standing around while your life goes on.’

  He stood looking helplessly down at her, wondering what to do. ‘You needn’t stand around. Come back and start up your business again at the Hall.’

  She stole a glance at him. ‘Those dreams I used to have. A dark figure trying to break into the Hall… It was you all the time, breaking into my life.’

  ‘Or Jarvis, disrupting our lives?’

  ‘You would think that…’

  ‘Actually, I don’t think it. It’s too glib. If you remember, I used the dark figure in the TV series…’ But it was no good trying to talk to her about that, no good trying to cool the temperature. Like God, the dark figure was a part of the lives of all men and women; sometimes it merely waited in the wings, idly; sometimes it came marching in boldly through the french windows. Like God, it lurked in the attic at the back of the skull, the space created by generations of blood and perception; the trick was to acknowledge its existence and yet manage to live sanely. At the moment, Teresa could not bear to live sanely; and that was still his responsibility, whether he wanted it or not.

  She stood up, confronting him with slightly downcast face, regarding him through her eyelashes, one hand resting pensively on the brass bed-end.

  ‘You know I’m sorry, Tommy.’

  Unwished, the memory came back to him of their first encounter outside his tutor’s rooms in Cambridge, when he and Teresa were both undergraduates. Later, he had said to his friend Rotheray, reporting the meeting, ‘Either she was giving me the old come-on, or she has a slight squint.’ There the fugitive thing was again — rarely seen, the slight strabismus lent her helplessness in his eyes. He reached for her bare arm. Her hair had been dark in Cambridge days; she had been the first girl he knew to wear a sweater under a shirt.

  ‘Well, you’ll have to help me, Tess, or I can’t help you.’

  ‘That’s what you said three years ago.’ She shook her head.

  ‘It’s as true now as it was then. You bring up the name of Sheila Lippard-Milne. I admit I loved her, though amazingly I didn’t realize it at the time, but I gave her up, as I have Laura. I chose you. I’ve not seen Sheila since, or written to her. I felt at the time I was making a considerable gesture, proving my love for you. Yet it honestly seemed as if you never noticed.’

  ‘Oh, I remember how miserable you were. You made it pretty obvious.’ She was silent, and went to stare out of the window at the sunshine, resting her finger-tips on the glass. ‘Perhaps marriage is always a cage… What do you want me to do?’

  He stood up. ‘Let’s have a grand reconciliation. All back to the Hall, you, the girls, the dog, try and get John to come back, at least for a day or two. Celebrate, throw a party. Make love to each other. Both say we’re sorry — all that kind of thing. Start again, see if it’s possible, make it possible.’

  Still looking out of the window, she
said, ‘The horoscope in the paper this morning said I should look out for a betrayal by someone close to me.’

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’ Angrily.

  ‘Oh, I know you think they’re rubbish. Anything I believe in is rubbish. But they were right about Sheila. “A disruptive influence”, they said, and I remember it was that very day I discovered that letter she wrote you from New York. Don’t tell me there isn’t something in it. I date the start of my cancer from then, you’ll be interested to know.’

  ‘Perhaps tomorrow the horoscope will mention a grand reconciliation, then you’ll be convinced.’

  She said, turning to confront him, ‘Supposing I want to go off and get screwed by any man who happens to come along. How will you like that?’

  ‘Would you like it? Is that what you want? You could have been more enthusiastic with me.’

  ‘You were bound to throw that in my face sooner or later! I suppose you’ve forgotten that the doctor said after John was born that I was to take things easy and avoid exertion?’

  He began pacing about the room. ‘You went off with that sneak Jarvis, you brought him into my house when I wasn’t there, more than once. You’ve more than evened things up, Teresa. You’ve treated me like shit. There are historical and biological reasons why men are less likely to be faithful than women, less able to endure monogamy… I’ve done my best in that respect, so you can keep quiet and do your best. Otherwise we’ll get nowhere.’

  ‘Is that what you call a grand reconciliation?’

  ‘I hoped for something better.’ He regarded her narrowly, his expression closed. ‘When two countries are hostile, they make what peace they can. So with us. Do you wish to come back? Are you prepared to make a go of it? It’s now or never.’

  ‘Don’t start laying down conditions. Maybe it’s too late. My heart isn’t as soft as it once was. Things will never be what they were.’

  ‘How I wish it was possible to turn the clock back…’

  She asked, ‘What is this grand reconciliation you talk about, anyway?’

  He attempted lightness. ‘As I say, maybe a housewarming at the Hall, friends round, celebrations, flowers, champagne, Nellie going mad, the girls back in their own beds, you and I in ours, kisses, violins, apologies, forgiveness. You name it.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Tom, you’re being unreal. If you think that after what’s happened we can just fling ourselves into each other’s arms, you’re mistaken. It may appeal to your sense of drama but not to mine. I’m not one of your actresses, however much you may regret the fact.’

  That evening, Teresa and her mother were waved good-bye as they continued on their way to Norwich. Squire, restless after the fruitless encounter, decided to drive himself over to Pippet Hall. The Society for Popular Aesthetics was expanding rapidly; the secretary was even able to take on a secretary; and Squire needed documents relating to its foundation for an article he was writing. The Hall was only six miles from Blakeney.

  He had been staying permanently in London, either with friends or at his club, since the New Year, when the shock of seeing Teresa in the company of Jarvis had discouraged him from returning to Norfolk. London was more convenient, and provided more than enough work for him. So the Hall was closed down, and Matilda Rowlinson and the farm manager looked after it. He had been back only twice — once for a day, once for a solitary weekend — in the last half-year.

  The grass on the lawn looked rather long. The downstairs windows of the house were shuttered; that would be careful Matilda’s work. Caught by the peace of the evening and the surroundings, Squire strolled across the side lawn before entering the house, to gaze at butterflies circling round Teresa’s buddleia. Here The Who had once played to delighted crowds, and local rock’n’roll groups like The Bang-Bang. Pop was truly an international language.

  Teresa and he had had a language in common in those happier days. But now. Your silence is all I need from you.

  He tried not to resent the cruel things she had said that afternoon. She was, in her own way, uttering a cry for help.

  His shoes were damp from an early dew as he unlocked the front door and entered the hall. He stood, closing the solid oak behind him. No children called except spectrally. No dalmatian came up at a run, scattering mats. Only a cat appeared, yawning and stretching, to dissolve into the shadows.

  Light filtering through the tall windows on the staircase filled the hall with a dim beauty. He stretched his arms and walked about with pleasure. The portraits of Matthew and Charlotte looked benevolently down. His footsteps echoed.

  ‘All I need from you is your silence.’

  In his study, the darkness was so intense that he opened one of the shutters. Outside lay the meadows where once had nested the pipits who gave their name to the place; now only a few blackbirds hopped amid the grass, mechanically perky.

  When he had finished at his desk, and collected the papers he needed, he went over to his refrigerator, which stood on a filing cabinet under Calvert’s painting, and poured himself a vodka on the rocks.

  Her anger, her vindictiveness, had seemed so personal. He could not tell how much of it was impersonal — directed at some mysterious target before which he happened to be standing — yet what he hoped was reason told him that she nursed some grievance beyond any folly he had committed.

  His behaviour to her was, in a sense, the opposite of hers. He tried always to respond to her as a person, personally. Yet he was aware of the impersonality of his and of all experience. That was where mysticism crept in: he saw how he was not only living but being lived. Well, that was not necessarily a mystical perception so much as a biological one. He was not only an individual but a link in the totally impersonal chain of life, a torch-bearer for the selfish gene.

  Which did not by any means absolve the individual from morality. It made the individual important beyond any influences in his own brief lifetime, for by his behaviour for good or ill he helped shape (yes, in a small way) the needful moral improvement of the human race in time to come. Improvement of the whole damned species could only come through the striving of each individual; at that point moralities and biologies met.

  He could not seem to explain to Teresa — though he had tried in happier days — that his appreciation of her as an individual was enhanced by his awareness of the impersonal forces in her, that his life experience was most directly read through her being, that it was precisely their sexual and mental closeness that enabled them to explore the richness of being alive. However mistakenly, he had concentrated his life increasingly on that exploration in recent years; both ‘Frankenstein’ and his fatal love affair sprang from it. It was a quest for that richness of experience, an intensification of it before it died from beyond his clutches, which turned him to Laura: and Tess’s subsequent rejection of him that had left him isolated.

  The vodka was cool in his throat. He was not acutely unhappy. Isolation was nothing new to him. Perhaps he could soon face the fact that reconciliation was not possible between him and his wife.

  In which case — he would have to sell up Pippet Hall.

  He closed the shutter and walked from the room, taking the papers he needed with him.

  ‘All I really want now is your silence.’

  Silence had a sinister quality. He equated it with death, and only rarely with spirituality. The silence Teresa demanded from him was death, not spirit. And silence was unique in this respect: it was something one could demand and unfailingly receive. Ultimately, inevitably, he would become silent under her indifference.

  If he dreaded silence, there was something he dreaded more: forms of language which masked silence, the absence of feeling. Teresa still felt intensely; he could still hurt her. So there was hope. But all around him he encountered defensive lack of feeling. Official language, the language of the military or of bureaucracy, Marxist jargon — all these were enemies of simple human experience. Instead of conjuring experience, they annihilated it in their repressive
structuring.

  At least Teresa had spoken to him directly. The worst thing was a woman talking Marxism or one of those other dessicated male languages. One good reason for continuing to love women, even when the going was rough, was that, on the whole, they stayed too human to go for ideological language.

  He climbed the stairs, hesitated before their bedroom, and went instead down the passage to the old nursery. He opened the door, half-expecting to find the interior a glowing brown, as he remembered it from childhood, with the warmth of the stained floor and walls enhanced by a coal fire. Instead, he was greeted by Dulux high gloss white paint.

  John’s old red wooden fire-engine stood on top of one of the cupboards. The dolls’ house stood on the table by the window, where he and Adrian had played for long hours with their Meccano.

  He gazed blankly out of the window. A rabbit had joined the starlings on the lawn. What would become of the old place if he gave up? Fall into ruin? Wrenched from its purposes and turned into an institution?

  Laura had visited Pippet Hall only twice. Once with the film team, before there was anything between them, to play the Sex Symbol in the Georgian House episode. Once last autumn for a weekend, just before they separated for good, following the party at Claridge’s.

  As Teresa complained, he had managed to defer that inevitable parting for a month or two, but only because work on ‘Frankenstein’ had continued for longer than anticipated. The break had been final. He could not bear to see her again, to speak impersonally to her. He had dived back to work, she had gone on to play a more interesting role; he had watched her on television recently, as an injured wife in a Play of the Week. Damned good she was.

  And when they had parted, nine months ago, she’d been damned good then. Nothing to complain about.

  Delays and hesitations inseparable from creativity occurred. Some incidents had to be re-shot. Some of the scenes involving the CSO process had not worked as well as expected. A model had to be re-made. ‘World Dream Design Centre’, the episode they filmed in Hollywood and Los Angeles, had its troubles. Ash fell ill. August turned into September. Definite boundaries became blurred. An electricians’ strike further delayed progress.