Comfort Zone. Brian Aldiss
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lips. ‘You are such a prude, Enid, dearest … But – as you wish. Anyhow, I am trying to write another story. Possibly in an attempt to justify my continued existence.’ Eleanor had published a story for children long ago, when Enid was a child. ‘All I have managed so far is the opening line. Er … Oh yes, it goes somewhat like this: “In the snowbound Far North on a throne of ice sat a great personage, King Chilianus …”’
After this meeting, Justin went round with Ken and Marie to Logic Lane for a drink. ‘Old age in the Global Age,’ said Ken, in admiration of Lady Eleanor. ‘Can’t beat it. Not by much …’ Ken mixed the best gin-and-its in the world – or at least in Old Headington. They were all in a good mood, feeling they had done their bit for the day, although Marie often visited Eleanor.
‘What did you think of her?’ Marie asked Justin.
‘Sensible of her to have rejected religion. I was sorry to hear she was bored. You might think her memories would entertain her.’
‘Oh, she must have been over them dozens of times. She came from a wealthy family – Jewish. Did I tell you about her husbands? The first one was a manufacturer of Christmas cards and crackers, very prosperous – I forget his name. He was an atheist despite his trade. Somehow that marriage didn’t work. She was caught in the wrong bed, and they were divorced. It was in all the papers.
‘So then she married Ricky Grimsdale, whom we met once,’ said Marie. ‘He made a fortune from computers and a chain of retail shops selling everything electrical. Curry’s bought him up. Seemed a really nice guy. He was an atheist too. Or an agnostic. And I think she was happier with him than with her other husbands. It turned out he was a philanderer, and when he tried to bring a mistress in, she moved out.’
‘Who knows how many guys she had between times,’ said Ken with relish. ‘And she has had a whole clutch of offspring here or there, who have either been disowned or have disowned Eleanor. Only the brave if dull Enid has stayed with her till the end.’
Marie continued unabated. ‘She then took a leap up the social scale and married Harry Stevens, the Earl of Pembroke. He was quite well known as a gifted amateur astronomer and scientist.’
‘She seemed quite strong on science,’ commented Justin.
‘And against belief, although belief is very much a part of us. Earl Harry also liked horse racing. Had a stable in Newmarket. Never won an important race.
‘But she’s still quite wealthy,’ Marie added. ‘And amusing in her way, don’t you think? I mean, King Chilly Anus …’
Justin asked what happened to the Earl.
‘Oh, he died ages ago. Had a stroke and fell over the side of their yacht. Bit of rotten luck, really.’
Ken noted with compassion the struggle Justin had to get out of a low chair. He had to swing his torso back and forth in the manner – as Justin himself said – of an ancestral ape, before achieving the momentum required to bring him to his feet. Ken said that he had received a furniture catalogue with his junk mail that morning. In it were offered some ‘chair risers’, as they were called. ‘They might help a bit,’ he suggested.
‘How much do they cost?’ asked Justin suspiciously.
‘Oh, the usual thing. Buy four and get one free. Buy eight and save three pounds. Buy a dozen and they are delivered by a young female assistant of erotic propensity.’
‘Mmm, sounds worth looking into.’
A bright morning greets Justin as he lies in bed. He looks out on his garden and finds it brimming with blossom. The apple trees, plum trees, cherry trees, all blossoming. He is particularly fond of the cherry trees. He planted them as seeds and tended them, transplanting, then eventually planting out the saplings to form a short avenue. Something strikes him as odd about this spring and summer. Finally, while struggling to sit up, he realizes what it is: he has not heard a single cuckoo with its haunting call: once the very voice of early summer. He sits on the side of the bed, considering getting to his feet. He remembers that Eleanor yesterday had said something about Britain continuing. He could not remember what exactly she had said; indeed, he could scarcely remember yesterday. But after all, when you thought about it: To the East, President Putin turning Russia into a gangster state. To the West, at least thirty-two youngsters shot up on campus, victims of crazies and gun culture. Yes, with all its faults, there was much to be said for Britain. Then … that fatal madness of invading Iraq …
His thoughts drift as on a light breeze. Only rarely now does he conjure up the past. When his parents float into mental view, that view concentrates mainly on his plump little mother, with her good humour and generosity. Her kindness once had to centre on attempts to console Janet and him when their only child, David, was born with Down’s syndrome. His mother had wept with them. They had looked after and loved David. He deflected his attention from Janet’s illness and death as being still too painful. That deeper despair had lingered for years, remaining for ever as a quietly incurable regret. As counterpoint, his love for Kate Standish existed more as an atmosphere, an atmosphere embracing him, than as anything as individual as a thought. He gulped her love down without analysis. He thought of the pallor, the symmetry of her lovely buttocks. Dearest Kate Standish – the happiest chance ever to befall a man … Chance. The roll of the dice … His good fortune still enlivening him, he leans over and switches on the bedside radio.
Some mornings on, some mornings off, depending how he feels. This morning, the English cricket team is playing someone or other and losing – ‘because of bad fielding’, says the commentator. Putting on a pair of socks and a dressing-gown, Justin moves slowly downstairs to get himself a cup of tea. Legs are stiff. He goes down one step at a time. He tells himself he is not feeling lonely. He wonders what his old mother would say if she could see him, coping on his own. How long had she been dead now? He thinks again of Kate Standish, due to return from Egypt any day. He longs to see her again. Yet he is not desperate. They love – this is the miracle that continuously thrills him – they love each other so completely … but cannot verbalize it. He only knows that this love in old age is such a wondrous gift, beyond speech – yet he and Kate often talk about it, exclaiming how their lives have been changed, how each has changed the other’s life for the better. Though they are not slaves to their delight, yet a sense of joy prevails. They greatly care for each other’s looks, bodies, ways of speech … Their love, their particular love, makes them feel wonderful. They spend almost every day apart, alone. Both have work to do. Yet they meet together most evenings and sleep together most weekends. And he adores and admires his Kate Standish as much as he knows how – marvels, yet is certain – that she loves her Justin. Her early life had been one of difficulty. Kate had two brothers older than she was. A week before her third birthday, the three children and their mother had been turned out of their house. The father, Stan Standish, had sold the house over their heads in order to launch a hire-car business. They never saw him again, although Kate did think she glimpsed him once, helping an old woman out of the back of a cab. Kate’s mother established them in one room in Stoke Newington. She went out to work, comforting herself with a bottle of beer every evening. Kate looked after her brothers. They were sad and self-pitying. Justin made Kate laugh by claiming that when young lovers first got together, the sweet nothings they whispered to each other were complaints about their parents. Even older lovers did it. No doubt it was Kate’s hard-learned expertise with deprived children which had led her to set up the refuge in El Aiyat. Wonderful, wonderful Kate Standish! That this extraordinary woman should … Oh, everything … She had been rather formal, rather correct, rather spinsterish, at first. And he had dared to grab her, to dance with her in her kitchen and sing to her – ‘Oh, you beautiful doll, you great big beautiful doll …’ And they had become delighted with each other – and consequently themselves – for all of three years now. And that delight grew. And she was coming home. The radio in the