Comfort Zone. Brian Aldiss
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with her, but said nothing of that regret. The two guests who came to the meal were relations of Kate’s ex-husband, Eve and Jannick. They were in Oxford to attend a wedding on the morrow. ‘They’re just flashing through,’ said Kate. ‘It will be lovely to see them again. I’ve known them for donkey’s years.’ Kate was well connected. She had known everyone for ages. Eve and Jannick were important members of Oxfam and had recently married. Jannick was Danish. He heard what she was saying. Both were people Justin respected, both had worked in some of the danger spots of the world. Both knew of and praised the refuge at El Aiyat. Eve had returned from Aceh a few weeks earlier. The news that Eve was to visit this secretive part of the world had stirred Justin. He had lent the young woman a book on the history of Java and Sumatra, which had included a chapter on Aceh. Of course it was Sumatra, not Bali. His mind was going. Now, almost a year later, here she was and returning his book! It smacked of the miraculous. No one else ever returned a borrowed book, particularly books that had been halfway round the world …
Aceh had always been reclusive and hostile territory. Situated in North Sumatra, Aceh had been opened up by the great tsunami which swept the lands bordering the Indian Ocean in the new year of 2005.
To Justin, Aceh was not history, more a kind of myth. He stared at the photographs on Eve’s laptop, which she had brought with her, first at dark mountains fringing a new coastline, where a flooded road ran and not a single building was to be seen. Next he gazed upon a flattened, ruined land on which Oxfam personnel had built water tanks and green-painted toilets. An old man sat by the side of a track, holding his grizzled head in his hands. Here and there, tall palms, nature’s flags, still waved in the ocean breeze. The grand mosque still survived. But mainly all was desolation. Eve had photographed some of the brave people she worked with. Many women appeared, smiling stoically for the camera, women who had lost children or husbands and all their possessions. Women who clutched small children to their breasts. Many were homeless and living in hastily erected ‘barracks’. One woman was thanking Oxfam because they had given her new underclothes. All her old clothes had been lost to the great wave. Certainly reconstruction was in progress. But there was a difficulty. The Acehnese were Muslim and under strict Sharia law. One foreign aid worker, a French woman, had crossed a street from one Oxfam office to another without covering her head, and had been threatened with whipping by a local mullah. No ameliorating consideration that these Christians – or at least people from a nominally Christian country – had come freely to assist them through their catastrophe. Such was the kind of impediment which blocked their progress. ‘The blind prejudice against the female’, as Eve called it. Photographs of Nias were less depressing. High ground had formed a bastion for the mysterious island against the gigantic wave. Eve had found the people there gentler and more likeable than on the mainland. Justin gazed with reverence at these shots in particular. So unknown was Nias that he had once applied to work an Army wireless station – only to be turned down – there in that dot in the southern ocean, some fifty miles off the coast of Sumatra. Or was it Java? He was forgetting. Emotion – something grander than mere nostalgia – seized Justin at the sight of these photographs of distant lands, scarcely known in England.
‘You should visit Nias before you are too old,’ said Eve, on parting.
‘I’m already too old,’ he told himself. Perhaps he did not like Eve.
Wind was getting up as Justin made his way home. Maude was already in bed. As he went into his study to find a reference book, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, Janet running across the lawn. ‘Janet!’ he called, rushing to the back door, flinging it open, hurrying into the courtyard. ‘Janet, darling!’ Fitful gusts of wind played with his hair. No one was there, not Janet in her green summer dress. Only the wind blowing and a graceful syringa bending in the strengthening breeze. He stood there with arms spread, staring, tears in his eyes. Of course, she had left him. He was victim of an illusion. He returned to the study, to look out. To hope the illusion would return. Misery overtook him. Perhaps he had not made enough fuss of Kate. She seemed so preoccupied. He resolved that he would go and buy her a really nice chocolate cake the next day.
No builders appeared the next day, a Wednesday. The business of getting up, showering and dressing, was always slow. Justin was looking forward to a visit from an old friend, Martin Sands, whom he had met in a television studio many years ago. Martin was coming down from London on the coach. The idea of the chocolate cake escaped Justin’s mind. Martin had attended Justin’s wife’s funeral, some years previously. Martin arrived punctually at twelve thirty. The two men took coffee together in Justin’s living room. Martin talked about the parlous state of publishing, and how the cult of ‘celebs’ and television told against regular authors, or even irregular ones such as he. ‘Highly irregular,’ he added. To cash in on TV and sport, publishers were now spending good money on flash-in-the-pan projects. ‘Autobiographies of people who haven’t been alive for ten minutes,’ Martin said, laughingly. In a thoroughly good mood, they walked together up the road to Headington’s finest feature, the Café Noir, where a table was booked in Justin’s name.
Justin’s legs were bad. He walked with the grand stick his friend David Wingrove had given him. ‘I’m partly ashamed, partly proud, to be walking with a stick. At least I can drive off any sheep that get in my way.’
‘They’re an ever-present danger,’ Martin agreed. The owner of the café and his wife were as always friendly and attentive. Both Martin and Justin chose the lamb dish, which they ate accompanied by a bottle of a good French Merlot. This was followed by crème brulée, after which they buttoned everything down with more wine. Justin paid the bill. The two men discussed many things, including past prime ministers. Both found a soft spot for Harold Wilson, who had withstood American pressure to send British troops to fight in Vietnam. If only, they said, Tony Blair had shown the same sagacity regarding Iraq. ‘“Iraq” will be the word on his tombstone,’ said Martin. ‘Preceded by the word “Bugger”.’
The two men had to part at four o’clock, Martin heading for the coach stop up the road, Justin hobbling home in the other direction, aided by his stick. His luck was in. He met no sheep on the way. It was then raining slightly. Birds sang under the street lamps. He had taken his furosemide tablets that morning, and the other diuretic, and had twice visited the toilet in the café. Now the urge, possibly prompted by the pain in his legs, came upon him again. He hobbled ever more slowly, whilst trying to get home as quickly as possible. When he reached the drive to the JR hospital, Invalid Walk, he had to give in to the demands of his bladder. Just inside the gateway was a short but steep slope on which chestnut trees grew. Beyond the trees, a little way off, stood offices in long huts. One had to gamble as to whether anyone would look out of a hut window, but Justin took refuge behind one of the stalwart chestnut trunks and there, to his great relief, let forth a stream of urine. He leant there for a moment, gasping. Turning, he started down the slope. Rain had made the grass slippery. He found himself rushing down the slope, out of control. He knew he would fall, crashing knees and possibly face against the inhospitable asphalt road surface. With quick thinking, he grasped an overhanging branch to stop his precipitate rush. It certainly saved him, but he swung round on the wet grass to find himself sitting, still clutching his stick in his right hand, on the edge of a muddy bank, close by the entrance to the side road. He was unable to get to his feet again, try as he might.
This inability to arise from a low sitting position was one Justin had found himself in before, though not in this outdoor situation with rain still falling. Ingenuity had previously seen him through. Sitting damp-bottomed, he summed up his prospects. Not more than a yard away from where he sat stood a large moss-covered stone. It might once have served as an old milestone. He shuffled towards it on his behind, hoping he might get enough leverage from the stone to raise himself to his feet. Shuffling quickly exhausted him. He was resting for a moment when a young man on a bike came from the direction of the hospital buildings. He stopped and got off his bike. ‘You all right, mate?’
‘I’ve just got a bit of a leg problem. I’m afraid I can’t get up.’
‘Let me give you a hand.’ He did so, but the pain when the leg bent was too extreme. The left leg Justin decided was impossible. Luckily – just by chance – another cyclist entered from the direction of the road. He too stopped and dismounted.
‘We