Somewhere East of Life

by Brian W Aldiss

  “Bit surly,” Tarquin told his son in an undertone audible afar. “He’s lame but he does his job. Give him that. I tell him, better be lame than have no legs at all worth talking about. He agrees with me.” He gave a metallic chuckle. “He’s paid to agree with me. Daughter was shot by the IRA. Fancy that—in Norfolk. No one was ever caught. I don’t know what the country’s coming to.”

  His chair had whined him forward while he talked. They were near enough to some visitors, a middle-aged couple, neatly dressed, with a son of ten or so, to overhear their conversation. The boy, tow-haired and bespectacled, wore a sweater which said “Cambridge University” in variously colored letters across his chest.

  The roses in the main bed had ceased to flower. Black spot had taken hold and they had not been dead-headed. The ground beneath them looked cracked and dry. The circular bed was rimmed with brick, outside which lay a collar of stone on which a verse from the “Rubaiyat” had been carved. While the woman stood indifferently by, gazing into space, smacking her left hand with a folding umbrella held in her right, her husband and the boy walked round the bed, reading the inscription aloud to one another: the garden wears dropped in her lip—lap, from some once lovely head one sm—sm—’ ”

  “ ‘Sometimes’,” prompted the father.

  “ ‘Sometimes think that…’ ” continued the boy. After every few words they moved round a pace or two, frowning downward in concentration. “ ‘That never blows so red the rose as where…’ It don’t seem to make no sense, Dad.”

  “It’s a poem or something, isn’t it?” the woman called across the bed, with an extra punitive swack at her left hand. “Shall we go and get a cup of tea and a bun or somethink?”

  The man was not prepared to accept his wife’s hypothesis. “It’s probably a bit of old English writing,” he said.

  “But what does it mean, Dad?”

  “It’s something about roses, isn’t it? And their colors. It’s how people used to talk.”

  Tarquin Burnell yelled to his gardener, “Ray, get these intolerably ignorant folk out here, will you? Tell them we’re closing. No tea for them. Refund their money if necessary.”

  He set off in anger and a high intestinal whine of motor. Clementine and Burnell brought up the rear, not daring to look back to see if eviction was being attempted.

  So they returned to the house.

  Diddisham Abbey had served as an abbey for a short time only in its four-century-long life, since when it had been home to various branches of the Burnell family. The ruins of the original abbey could be visited; they stood behind the present house, and were supposedly haunted, a legend which drew in a few extra visitors every year. Tarquin kept peacocks there, the shrieks of which served to perpetuate the legend. The lands of the abbey had shrunk, chipped away over the years by penurious owners. A last hundred acres of arable land had been sold to Herby Hitchens during the recession of the 1990s. Now the house stood in a modest twenty-one acres.

  The bland brick frontage of the house faced south, its back turned to the village of North Elmham. Over the years, the structure had been much added to, neglected, restored, patched. It had been sold off and bought up; in the days of oil lamps it had caught fire. At various periods in its history doors had been moved from one side of the building to another, windows bricked up, rooms enlarged or divided, new wings added, conservatories pulled down, plumbing inserted, faulty central heating ripped out, roofs patched, old features resurrected, and yet older features desecrated. Anti-quarianism and modernism had fought hard battles over the bones of Diddisham.

  As fading afternoon light revealed, both the brickwork and the paintwork of the facade were dry and crumbling. The abbey toward sunset resembled an old wedding-cake, preserved beyond possible nutritional value, its surface crazed like a piece of porcelain, subject to a sentiment of squirearchy itself desiccating through age.

  On the top step outside the front doors, Burnell’s luggage stood awaiting him. He had not had time to take it into the house before his father buttonholed him. He had been met at Norwich airport by Laura Burnell and a driver in her car. His stepmother had listened to his account of his travels as they drove, smiling affectionately if automatically.

  Laura emerged from the house now, tinkling a little bell, raising it to the level of her dark svelte hair to do so.

  “Teatime, my dears,” she said, in her clear precise voice, as they approached. “You couldn’t have timed it better.” She smiled widely at them all, using the smile she turned to the cameras.

  Tarquin whizzed up a ramp at the side of the steps without speaking, and rode past her into the recesses of the hall.

  Clementine stooped to pick up her brother’s bags. When Burnell protested, she deferred silently to him, and led the way inside. Entering this house of memories, Burnell told Laura he would take his things to his room, wash, and then come down to tea.

  “Same old room, Roy,” she said brightly, making a slight theatrical gesture toward him, as if to touch him. She was immaculately dressed as ever in a black beltless dress with gold collar which recalled at once the twenties of the previous century and something into which Nefertiti might have slipped.

  Walking through the house, this old fragrant house, this dry house where his mother had died, he was surprised to find it so small. It had shrunk; for his recent memories of it had gone: what chiefly remained was a boy’s memory of vast rooms and corridors.

  His quarters were preserved as before, toward the rear of the house, on the second floor. This suite had been his since the age of four. An anteroom led into a bedroom, off which to one side were bathroom and lavatory; to the other side a small sittingroom containing a desk and computer. The main windows looked out on the ruins of the old abbey; shadows were drawing across their snaggle-toothed outlines.

  Burnell stood looking about him, making mental adjustments. He remembered his quarters from long past, without knowing how many times he had returned here over the previous ten years. The bedroom he remembered as spacious now seemed rather cramped.

  Without switching on any lights, he went into the sitting room. Here were rows of his architectural books, together with bound copies of Architectural Review and the WACH’s own journal. Also a shelf of history, the calf-bound Gibbon, and many travel books, among them two copies with faded spines of Douglas Freshfield’s Travels in the Central Caucasus. His mother’s intrepid relation would grieve to see what was happening in the Caucasus now, long after his death.

  Searching among his few novels for Hardy’s Hand of Ethelberta and not finding it, Burnell decided to buy a copy in a bookshop and send it to Dr. Hikmat Haydar in Ashkhabad as soon as possible.

  Some books he remembered, some not. There was no place on earth with which he was totally familiar—not even here.

  Among the framed photographs was one of himself with another man; mountains were visible in the background. Both men held the bridles of horses. Burnell thought dully to himself, so that was what Peter Remenyi looked like…

  He was disconcerted to think he remembered nothing of this good friend—and how many other good friends, he asked himself. The photo merely reminded him there was nothing to mourn; he feared that into the vacuum would seep a pervasive melancholy.

  “How much of my dislocation,” he wondered, “is mine alone and not part of a general global malaise. People rejoice everywhere in their youth: yet when all that fades, the general state of affairs is seen to be no better, the sum total of human happiness no greater. Why should I care for Steff if she has ceased to care for me? Perhaps it’s not she but simply my youth I am longing to regain.”

  Muttering to himself, he pottered about the room.

  “Still, I’m not old yet, not forty. I must go to Blanche before I miss the bus entirely,” he said aloud in the silent room. “Time enough to worry about the state of the world later—that’s an old man’s job.”

  With a wry smile he said to himself, “I get the feeling you’re always hanging about,
Burnell. How about doing something for the common good? Anything.”

  He avoided the photographs of Stephanie. Instead, he took a double snort of slap and went briskly to consider the oil painting of his mother, Vanessa. He smiled up at the sacred image. It hung over the mantelpiece. Its colors were brighter than he had anticipated, the brushwork more lively. It was—he had always regretted the fact—a portrait of no great distinction, showing her head and shoulders. Vanessa was looking wistfully over the viewer’s right shoulder. He had always considered that, while the picture had captured a likeness, it lacked any psychological understanding of its subject; yet, regarding it anew, he recalled the Madonna of Futurity. Here too, perhaps, was a woman looking with anxiety into the future. The portrait had been painted the year before she died.

  Walking with Clem and his father in the garden a few minutes earlier, he had noticed that his father, in a slightly old fashioned way, wore two gold rings on the fingers of his right hand. One was a wedding ring, the other a mourning ring. As Tarquin had clutched his stick on the bridge over the dried brook, Burnell had noted the engraved design of the mourning ring: a tomb with an urn on it and a woman standing by the tomb, while a weeping willow overhung the scene.

  For the first time, he realized that his father too, though silent on the subject, might also still secretly mourn Vanessa. This insight he found touching. Perhaps it would be possible to be on better terms with Tarquin in future. He could at least try.

  The daylight was at a low ebb. He switched on a table lamp on his old writing desk.

  In one corner of the room stood rows of video cassettes. Some were professional tapes, some he had filmed himself. Most of them he remembered: slivers of the past were recorded there.

  He saw by the date printed on one cassette that it contained a record of his mother’s funeral, filmed by his well-meaning Uncle Ben. He had only once had the courage to view it. Away at school on that solemn occasion, he was all unknowing even that his mother was dead. In the film, a small Clementine, then aged ten, stood by the graveside clutching her father’s hand, standing on one leg, looking up questioningly at Tarquin. The image returned poignantly to him now as he paused in the dusk of the old room.

  Poor sister, poor little Clem! She had suffered most from that death, and continued to suffer. He had got away. Clementine stayed, and had become her father’s vassal. He wondered if she had ever had a lover, had ever been kissed by a man, her father’s goodnight kiss apart.

  After the funeral of Vanessa Burnell, Tarquin had fairly promptly taken up with another woman, as if anxious to throw off the lingering months of his wife’s cancer. Great excitement had animated peaceful Diddisham when an American film unit moved in to make a film called Kindred Blood, with the abbey as its main setting. Not only had the location fee paid for repairs to the main roof, Tarquin had encountered a younger woman.

  Involved in the plot of Kindred Blood were two sisters. The more beautiful sister was played by Laura Nye, an actress then blossoming in her early thirties. In spite of the discrepancy in their ages—Laura saying that she preferred older men—she and Tarquin had married in 1990, while Roy was at university. Again he had been absent at a crucial date in his father’s life. He had come down from Cambridge for the Easter vacation to find the new wife—his step-mother—installed in all her glory.

  “She’s famous. Ain’t she beautiful? You’d better get on with her somehow.” Thus had his father introduced the shy student to the attractive actress; tact had never been a strong point with Tarquin, even before his accident.

  Among the old video cassettes were the two or three films in which Laura had acted. Burnell had also kept recordings of her first appearance, in along television documentary series made in the 1970s, called “Frankenstein Among the Arts.” She had then played an almost heraldic role, as Sex Symbol. Very appropriate, Burnell thought.

  That tiresome quest for happiness… Well, it had eluded his father. It would elude him unless he pursued it. He must ring Blanche in Madrid this very evening.

  Dimness had piled up, flooding in from the corners of the room. Outside, night made its meditative approach over the ruins of the abbey, shutting down the world for another day. A peacock cried.

  When someone tapped at his door he called to them to enter.

  Laura came in, closing the door softly behind her. She stood in the main room, hands slightly extended as if bewildered to find the room unlit. With Laura, Burnell found, there was always a slight “as if”; not for this reason alone, their relationship had always been full of approaches and retreats. “You’ve no light, Roy, dear. I came to see if you were comfortable. Is everything to your liking?”

  “Nothing’s changed. Thanks.” He caught the fragrance she was wearing. In the dusk, backlit from a glow on the landing, Laura looked no more than twenty. Her figure had remained trim although she was approaching her fiftieth birthday. He distinguished the oval of her face, her lips, her eyes; the power radiating from her, which had first overwhelmed him as a student, came strongly to him. She was a magical person; allured by her, he fought against the allure. That allure, he told himself, as he had ineffectually done many times before, was synthetic.

  “You’re feeling somewhat strange, I expect. May I put a light on?”

  The light eroded the illusion of youth. The power remained of a woman who had always been attractive to men.

  As they regarded each other, she told him that he had lost some weight, which made him look more elegant than ever. Since she had made a similar remark when they met at Norwich airport, Burnell was embarrassed. He told her he was preparing to go downstairs and join the company.

  “Is it pleasant to be home again? The rooms are spring cleaned. Your bed’s aired. And, Roy, dear—I’m so worried about the theft of your memory. You should have returned to Diddisham when you left that hospital in Swindon, instead of rushing off back to the Continent.” Her sentences were delivered lightly, robbing them of real involvement.

  Before he answered, she took a step nearer. With an attractive gesture of invitation, she asked him to escort her downstairs. “We’re still friends, aren’t we, dear?”

  Looking at her seriously, trying to reach her, he explained how much at a loss he felt at present. “I know,” she agreed—too facile an answer to please Burnell. Impatiently, he said he found all relationships difficult when he hardly knew who he was talking to; who, for instance, was Tom Squire? What had he to do with their family?

  To which Laura replied that yes, she had acted with Tom in her first TV appearance. Had he seen any TV in Central Asia?—if so, what on earth was it like? He said it was “Dallas,” and they both laughed.

  “Yes, we are friends, I see. I’m so glad. I care about whatever happens to you. You know that, dear. What did Tom have to say?

  “Oh, he just said that to review the last ten years would be painful.”

  “Was that all?” She sounded disappointed. “Anyhow, this weekend is going to be such fun.”

  Laura explained that a few guests were staying at Diddisham. Friends and family. His Uncle Ben was due soon, as well as his Aunt Sheila with her friend. It was nice to have the house filled; they had so many empty rooms. She had run out of dustsheets. She expected Burnell knew what this special weekend was all about. Tomorrow was Tarquin’s seventieth birthday.

  He closed the door behind them as they moved together on to the rear landing. As they made for the stairs, Laura paused to pull the curtains across a landing window. Outside in the darkness, a peacock shrieked.

  “As it happens, I’ve brought Tarquin a present from Germany.”

  “How exciting! He will like that!”

  “Doesn’t he dislike Germans?”

  “You’re such a good son, Roy! It’s sad about Adrian. Tarquin is so pleased to have you home, if only for a little while. Are you planning to stay with us for long, dear?”

  “How is he, Laura?” It was absurd that he should still take pleasure in pronouncing her name, and
in feeling her warmth against him as they descended the stairs; almost as many years lay between Laura and him as between her and his father.

  “Oh, Tarquin is quite well, don’t worry. You know he has equipped a little gym for himself, where he exercises to keep fit and not grow too heavy. Of course, he’ll never walk again.”

  “And you?”

  She faced him, giving a pert little smile and fluttering her eyelashes. “You’re a tease, Roy. We really must join the others in the drawing room, what Vanessa used to call the Cream Room. Tarquin and I stick together like two old… chums. We’re not like you and Stephanie, you know, dear!”

  Trying to negotiate her evasive responses, he said, “How’s Tarquin really?”

  In her usual calm voice, she said, “Tarquin hates everything, including himself. He’s often suicidal. What the hell do you expect? Now, come and meet everyone. Some you’ll know, even if you don’t remember them… I’ll prompt you.”

  They had paused outside the doors of the Cream Room. Burnell caught hold of Laura and said, angrily, “Why did you mention Stephanie? Have you seen her lately? I hate all this secrecy…”

  She lifted a finger in a dated gesture, and shook her head slightly. “Now, now! There are some nice people for you to meet. Remember, the great secret in life is to behave properly—whatever you really feel inside.”

  29

  Newcastle

  “ ‘Newcastle’, everyone! Time for ‘Newcastle’!” The cry rang out through the front hall of Diddisham Abbey, accompanied by the vigorous beating of a gong.

  Burnell said to Blanche, “I shall have to hang up. It’s Tarquin’s birthday. He’s had his presents and now we’re all going to have to play our dreadful family game. I must go.”

  Her voice came clear from Madrid via satellite. “Ring me again tonight. I’m sorry I wasn’t in yesterday to take your call and I’m glad you’re safe back in England. I’m longing to hear about the horrors of Ashkhabad. You’re going to fly down and be with me, aren’t you?”