Somewhere East of Life

by Brian W Aldiss

  “I told you I don’t speak Spanish.” But he regretted the old joke as soon as he’d made it, and added swiftly, “I’ll ring you after dinner this evening. I want to hear more about the excavations. They’ve unearthed wooden platters, you say? It’s amazingly rare for wood to be preserved that long. So we shall have to revise our opinion of Neanderthal culture.”

  “I ask myself, have Neanderthals been victims of racist thinking?! Maybe that maligned subspecies sat up at table and ate breakfast cereal like the rest of us…”

  “Maybe they said grace before meals. When your team finds wooden toys in the cave, you’ll—”

  “Roy, forget the past.” He heard the tinkle of laughter in her voice. “Are your family making you suffer? Norfolk sounds so Neanderthal. I don’t want you to be there—I want to see you here. We can discuss Neanderthal breakfast cereals in bed together. Madrid’s gorgeous. So are the mountains.”

  “So’s your bed, I’m sure.”

  She pantomimed excessive relief. “Thank the heavens! You haven’t forgotten our last meeting, then, have you?”

  He laughed. “I’m quite clear about that, and the way you look and smell and feel and clasp me. And if I were an archeologist, I’d be digging into you immediately, potholing, exploring every nook and cranny of that inconceivable structure.”

  “Not literally inconceivable, darling. Nor impregnable.”

  “Well, I certainly didn’t mean unbearable.”

  “Ring me this evening, tell more to me, you flatterer. Go and play your absurd family game.”

  Burnell set the phone down, to stand where he was, gazing abstractedly out of the window. The colder turn of the weather this morning rendered the countryside uncertain, subdued, awaiting a plunge toward winter. Before so long, the chill east wind would be blowing off the North Sea.

  I did not have my memory stolen, he told himself. It’s sickness that makes me believe such nonsense: a sickness brought on by the failure of my marriage. People fall ill when relationships die. I have lost the will to know what to do. Wishing to erase the past, a part of my mind has raised up a barrier which cuts me off from my earlier self.

  He knew it was nonsense. Or did not.

  When he phoned Blanche in Madrid, he had set down beside the instrument, delicately, as if it were a fallen leaf, an old diary. There, in its hastily scrawled pages, he had read something of the deterioration of his life with Stephanie. It was another person’s existence which rose before him. He saw no faces, not even his own. He did not hear his own voice echoed in the writing.

  He could not interpret what the mind behind the pen had been thinking. Such revelations as there were merely twitched at the curtain of what had passed. If there had been a week when Steff had not spoken a word to him, as a May date indicated, no hint was given as to what had caused her silence, or where the blame had lain. Or even if he had spoken to her during that week. “Read Carpentier’s The Lost Steps” was all it said on that issue. Whose had been the blame? How much had he cared? Why was the date 23rd May ringed about in red? The diary threw up questions, not answers.

  What he felt was something more than guilt, more than loss. He wished to get hold of Stephanie and shake the truth out of her. Who were we? Why did we do what we did?

  Where exactly were we mistaken—about ourselves as well as each other?

  So to press the pages shut was to seal up an Egyptian tomb full of inscrutable personages and attitudes. Only then, with the diary closed and put away, had he phoned Blanche.

  From the hall below, distantly, came the second gong for “Newcasde.”

  Reluctant to face the rest of the family, Burnell left his room and walked to the front stairs. As he descended to the floor below, dragging his steps on the thick carpet, letting the palm of his hand squeak against the balustrade as he had done when a boy, he heard the faint strains of music, and paused. Lively and exuberant, it teased him to be identified.

  The music came from the room his Aunt Sheila was occupying. He tapped and walked in. “Auntie,” he called. “Time for the game!”

  Sheila Lippard-Milne was nowhere in view. He remembered what a pleasant room this one was, with its windows facing out over the parched garden embrasured in deep recesses, their shutters still functional. The room was predominantly white, with lemon cushions pillowing the window seat. This had been his mother’s, Vanessa’s, favorite room, where she had painted. Some of her watercolors hung framed on the bamboo-patterned wallpaper, where direct sunlight could not reach them.

  A door to the left hung open, giving a view of the bedroom. Two single beds could be seen; both had been slept in, their duvets thrown carelessly back. As Burnell took in these details, his aunt emerged from the room, securing a comb into the back of her hair, which was drawn into a bun. He realized he had never seen his aunt looking less than immaculate.

  She gave him one of her sharp looks, not unkindly but certainly taking his measure.

  “Roy, we had no chance to talk last night, and probably will get none today. Why did you come in here? I’m a late riser, as you see. Are you better? You look—may I say it?—weary, forsaken. Possibly even Godforsaken.”

  “Perhaps you’d like a turn outside, Auntie? Before we join the others. I heard your music.”

  “Switch that thing off, will you?” But as she spoke she crossed to the machine and silenced Rimsky-Korsakov herself. Her way of speech was similar to her brother’s, her bossy manner only a slight modification of Tarquin’s. She was dressed in what he considered a London fashion, her blouse and jacket set off by black velvet trousers.

  “Do get your hair attended to. Lawns look better for cutting. Weren’t there any hairdressers where you were? Where exactly were you? Tarky didn’t seem to know. What are you doing with yourself?”

  He laughed. “How you do go on at me! Everyone gets lonely at times. I’ve been stung by a scorpion and survived.”

  “How unpleasant. You do go to some rum places.”

  Round her neck she wore a pair of spectacles on a gold chain. These spectacles Sheila perched on her nose, the better to scrutinize her favorite nephew. She nodded to herself, as if a private suspicion was confirmed.

  “Vanessa dying when you were so young. That’s half the trouble. It’s upset your whole life, just as it has ruined—absolutely ruined—Clem’s. We’ll say nothing about poor old Adrian. It’s tragic, really. If you don’t mind my saying this, Roy—” she turned away, as if not wishing to see the response her words might waken in him—”I don’t think Stephanie was understanding enough. Of your situation, I mean. Find someone else, vitement.”

  Shaking his head, Burnell tried out a small chuckle. “Don’t criticize Steff, please, Aunt. We all make—you know the old saying—we all make mistakes. You probably know I’m hoping she’ll—”

  She turned back toward him and held one of his hands. “I’ve often intended to say this to you, so I’ll say it now, before we play that stupid game. I should have stood in for Vanessa and mothered you a bit more than I did when you were young. I’m sorry about that now. After all, you are the son I never had. Never wanted, come to that. Dreaded the very idea of pregnancy.” She spoke hastily, looking at him through her spectacles. “I was quite mixed up until I was middle-aged. Bad upbringing. Unfortunate friends. Mad lovers. All the…all the usual excuses people like me make.”

  “Oh, there are no people like you, Aunt.” To himself he thought, “But that’s exactly how people are: intending to give comfort, they talk about themselves instead. I suppose it’s pain more than egotism.”

  “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I’ll have to be off again soon,” Burnell thought. “Diddisham’s too full of memories I don’t need…”

  The gong rang down in the hall for a third and final time.

  Still conscious of the two rumpled beds in the adjoining room, Burnell said, as he and his Aunt Sheila made to leave the room, “So how’s Uncle Leslie? Why hasn’t he come with you?”

/>   His aunt’s expression changed. She dug sharp nails into his hand. Just for an instant, he saw in her face a savage bird, a vulture, something about to alight on carrion. Then she smoothed the look away, hid it from him, from the world.

  In a harsh voice she said, “Oh, God, you don’t remember, do you?” She backed away from him. “This is spooky… It’s like suddenly finding you’re conversing with a corpse. You must surely remember that tender sympathetic letter you wrote me when Leslie died! No…” She gestured in despair. “I shouldn’t be angry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry I was angry. It’s not your fault. Your old aunt—well, the others will tell you if they haven’t already. Your old aunt has gone gay.”

  “What are you talking about, Auntie? Is everyone in the family mad?”

  “I’m only telling you what you might have guessed.” Involuntarily, she glanced through the door at the rumbled beds. “I’ve found myself, Roy. Late in life, I’ve found myself. Like Nora in Ibsen’s Doll’s House, you know? I walked out on your Uncle Leslie four years ago. It’s over four years. And, well—I had tried to made him happy. I did, I loved him in my way, but perhaps I never made him happy—left something unsatisfied. And he went and drowned himself when I walked out. I never for a moment expected…”

  “Oh, Auntie, dear, I didn’t know.”

  “You did know.” Again she drew back, but the anger had gone from her tone. In her ordinary voice, she said, “You did know. You sent me that wonderful letter. Very sensitive and understanding.”

  “Shit. I’m sorry. Auntie, I—” He clutched his head, lost for words.

  “I wrote back to you. Later on, you sent me an obituary of Leslie from one of the newspapers. ‘Author of The Sower of the Systems,’ and all that. Surely you must remember? Your own uncle’s death?”

  He pressed fingers up to his temples, protesting. “That’s enough. I’m maimed, can’t you get that? I’m full enough of guilt as it is.”

  “So we all damned well are. I tore up the obit you sent me. It must have been rage or grief or something, but I tore it into shreds. I’ve always felt bad about that—like killing Leslie twice.” She took Burnell’s hand. “Come on, let’s go and play Tarquin’s bloody game… And I’m hanging out with Jenny now, in case you hadn’t gathered that.”

  As they went downstairs he said, almost in a whisper, “I’m sorry, Auntie, dear.”

  “To think you can’t remember… Do you imagine I can forget?”

  The way to the Dairy led through the rear hall, past the kitchen/breakfast room, the cloakrooms, the Flower Room, and the Gun Room—the latter nowadays bereft of all but two sporting-guns, though well stocked with Wellington boots, riding boots, hard hats, riding crops, and Barbours.

  Tarquin wheeled about excitedly in his chair, in and out of the Dairy. Burnell apologized for lateness as he and his Aunt Sheila entered the room. His father reached up and patted him in the small of his back.

  “We’re waiting for Laura. Don’t know where she’s got to. Where’s the woman? Start without her in a minute.”

  Other guests at the abbey, obedient to the gong, were already assembled. They were sitting with various degrees of expectancy in old battered Lloyd Loom chairs, as custom demanded. Sheila Lippard-Milne’s friend, Jenny, was Jennifer Binns, a short fat lady with heavy eyebrows, fidgeting in her chair. After many years working in the film industry in England and Australia, Jennifer Binns was currently enjoying some success as a film director. She had reserved the chair next to her for Sheila, and patted it enticingly with a beringed hand as Sheila entered the Dairy. She blew Burnell a kiss.

  “I’m no good at games,” she told Sheila, and giggled, as Sheila settled herself among the limp cushions. “But I mean to win this crazy thing. I can be ruthless, as you know, darling.” The two women had worked together for some years. Sheila had begun her career as an art historian before becoming a professional set designer. She had designed the interiors for Jennifer Binn’s latest movie, Smoke in the Streets—in which Laura played the vital role of the psychotic mother, under her stage name of Laura Nye.

  On Sheila’s other side sat Clementine, wearing slacks and one of her father’s old cricket blazers. She spoke to no one and clutched the wicker arms of her chair while following her father’s every gesture with her eyes. Burnell took the seat beside her and exchanged a few words. His sister was, as ever, uncommunicative.

  “Are you prepared to play a tough game?” he asked in an undertone. “Looting ports? Cheating customs officials?”

  “We’ll see,” she replied—not without a note of grimness in her voice. “Newcastle” was traditionally one way in which she got her own back on a hard world. Of the nine players, Clem and her father were always the keenest participants.

  Ranged along the opposite wall were the other four people waiting to play “Newcastle:” Tarquin’s younger brother, Ben, and his grand malevolent wife, Violet; a journalist and critic, Frank Krawstadt; and a hard drinking poet and musician, Jack Gibson, busily running his fingers through his lank dark hair. Only Gibson lived nearby, in the village. The rest had driven up from London for Tarquin’s birthday weekend.

  Krawstadt, yellowy of complexion, withered of cheek, was dressed in an old faded blue shell suit. He had been talking rather loftily about the art of the cinema, pitching his sentences across the room at Jenny Binns. He was buttering her up.

  “Your successful career won’t help you win ‘Newcastle’.” Krawstadt warned Jennifer. “There’s stormy weather ahead, and dirty work on the quarter deck.” He tittered.

  The Diary had ceased to function in its original capacity for about sixty years. It consisted of three rooms leading one into the next. From the farthest room, a door opened—or had once opened—into the stable yard, where a dozen semi nomadic poultry still strutted. In these damp rooms, the clang of milk churns had once competed with the cries of milkmaids locked in the arms of robust prayerful men. The Burnells had been known for their robust qualities. Now all lay silent. Wooden shutters closed off the windows. The old days had gone, and milk was not likely to stage a comeback.

  The two inferior rooms were clogged with old metal machineries and deep stone sinks. Wooden dollies rotted in bathypelagic damp. But the largest room of the three, in which the company assembled to play, had been wired for light and heat and converted into the “Newcastle” room.

  Vinyl flooring formed an important element of the game. It was blue and squared, each square representing a league of sea. Newcastle itself was represented by a sea chest in one corner of the room. Each of the players had a port at their feet, variously designated “Genoa,” “Aden,” “Bombay,” “Singapore,” “Bilbao,” and so on. A bucket full of coins stood in the middle of the room. The coins were pennies and silver threepenny bits dating from the early years of the twentieth century. They served as the game’s currency. “Newcastle” had been invented by Roy Burnell’s great-grandfather, in part to keep his children amused in those prosaic years round about the old Queen’s death, in part to commemorate the drowning at sea of his beloved brother, Gabriel.

  A man-servant brought in a box full of old shoes. Tarquin asked Jack Gibson to distribute them.

  “ ‘I must go down to the seas again,

  To the lonely sea and the sky,’ ”

  shouted Tarquin, excitedly.

  “And all I ask is an old boot

  And no cheating on the sly…”

  “Here you are, Roy,” Gibson said, pushing a green-and-white tennis shoe over to Burnell. The tennis shoe would serve as his ship. Some of the shoes were almost a century old, laceless and polishless, to be dragged out every year, at Christmas and on Tarquin’s and Ben’s birthdays.

  “Do you think the general public will understand Smoke in the Streets?” Krawstadt asked Binns, keen to show his lack of interest in the unintellectual aspects of the game, which were many.

  “My movie represents the imperfections of life, and therefore is itself designedly imperfect,” Jenny Binns replied, acc
epting an old brogue as her ship. “Life has become a great deal happier since we rejected the idea of perfectionism. The craze for EMV proves, I’d say, just how unsatisfactory is the linear event of life as normally experienced.”

  “So you set out deliberately to make an unsatisfactory film? Come, now, Jenny, darling, you’re not saying that? The critics won’t love you for it.”

  “Critics have no love of love,” Jack said, handing Clementine a velvet slipper.

  “Oh, art doesn’t have to mimic life—” Jennifer Binns began.

  But she was cut short by Tarquin, who said, “No, but ‘Newcastle’ mimics life in all its ghastly unfairness. I’m going to swing the Albert clock and we’ll start without Laura. Remember, you have three items to trade in the port of Newcastle, stones, apples, and ELCs.”

  Although the game had changed little since his grandfather’s day, the goods to be traded had been altered by family consensus. Where once coal, eggs, and empty cartridge cases had represented the exports, now stones were substituted for coal and apples for eggs. The cartridge cases had been replaced by Empty Lipstick Cases, always referred to as ELCs.

  The Albert clock on one wall, together with the Winifred clock on the opposite wall, governed various moves that could be made. Some players loaded their shoes with goods and set out across the squares of sea, knowing that a cross-reading on the two dials could mean their cargoes were declared contraband and impounded, their captains imprisoned for two whole turns. Another danger was that of hurricane-force winds, which blew every five turns, sinking all ships loaded with cargo.

  “Art doesn’t have to mimic life,” Binns repeated, stubbornly. “At its best it creates it own umwelt, a parallel world recognizable but distinct. Films, novels, surely do that. We now know—thanks to EMV—how subjective are all our interpretations of events in the real world. One may find it attractive to incorporate the sheer untidiness of life into one’s work…”