Comfort Zone. Brian Aldiss
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you are getting old and losing your judgement, but scores – hundreds – of woman have now fled these male- and religion-dominated countries because of what they have suffered. Do some research, please. But forget this whole mad idea of becoming a Muslim.’
She dropped her fork and stood up, clutching the side of the table for stability. ‘I have no plans to live in a Muslim country. I just admire their dignity, and I don’t need your perpetual harrying me. You’re as bad as the Muslim men you describe. I was benefit-ing from my relationship with that charming young Om Haldar, and I shall miss her.’ She marched out of the room. He knew from past experience that Maude would not speak to him for two days at least. Justin sighed and poured himself another cup of tea. He took a sip, replaced the cup in its saucer and was at once asleep.
He seemed to be halfway up a steep hill. A goat was following him. He knew the goat. He stopped. The goat stopped. It put its head to one side as if to enquire what was going to happen next. ‘I am looking for a particular flower,’ he said. The goat had a wise and doubtful look, as if it knew Justin was lying. ‘It grows in Egypt,’ he said. The goat shook its head. Not knowing what to say, Justin stood where he was. He woke. He had not had a proper sleep or a proper dream. It worried him. This could be how Alzheimer’s began. He felt the cup. It was cold. He took the tea out to the kitchen and poured it down the sink. He poured himself a glass of wine instead.
On sudden inspiration, Justin dialled his builder’s number. Only the answerphone responded. Justin cut it off and tried the builder’s mobile. His call was not answered. He felt a sudden dread of being alone. If only Kate would come back, dear clear-sighted Kate. Fortunately, Ken rang. He and Marie were going over to Elden House to visit a remarkable elderly lady they thought Justin would like to meet. Would he care to come too? He recognized it was their way of looking after him while Kate was in Egypt. ‘Ken, I’m worried about this young refugee girl. She’s disappeared.’
‘Yes, I heard she’d hopped it. Dodging the rent? … Did you hear that some yobs smashed most of the windows of the Anchor in the night? Anyhow, come on over and meet Lady Eleanor.’
Elden House stood at the end of St Andrews Court, a fine dull edifice which housed the elderly rich. Justin supposed he would have to enter there as a resident, if he could afford it, at some unspecified time in the future. Many of the occupants of Elden House rented one- or two-room flats. They could share a dining room. In effect, the institution was like a hotel for the over-nineties. Lady Eleanor Grimsdale was ninety-two. She sat in her room with a peignoir wrapped about her, reclining in an upholstered wicker chair. Her daughter, Enid, a mere seventy years old, was there, looking after her mother. Eleanor’s withered facial skin was not disguised by powder or rouge. She used no lipstick to brighten her lips. She wore a wig of straight brown hair, with diamond earrings in the lobes of her ears. She was clad in a rich silk dressing-gown, which served her as a dress, thrown over the peignoir. It was difficult to know how to position oneself in the room, where comfort had taken second place to trophies of various kinds. One edged through the door past a bulky armoire. Small tables predominated, some with tops adorned with pietra dura. Sharp-edged birchwood dining chairs of a Chippendale-type constitution protruded; their primary function had been usurped by bric-a-brac, such as a canister containing a jigsaw puzzle of a Monet painting, a silver candlestick, a decorative china pomander, various baubles, including shepherdesses of Sèvres porcelain; while hanging from the backs of chairs were various kinds of necklace, silken scarves, and a chatelaine. Nothing of any great value or much interest. As a final deterrent to visitor comfort Regency furniture was aligned along one wall. The general effect was of an upper-middle-class shipwreck. Ken and Marie settled themselves on the edge of the bed, while Justin was given a kind of folding chair with arms. Daughter Enid served them all cups of coffee and a biscuit each from what appeared to be a cupboard. Eleanor kept a glass of gaseous mineral water by her side. She sipped from the glass occasionally.
‘The vicar did his rounds this morning,’ Eleanor said. She spoke slowly and clearly in a quiet, uninflected voice. ‘While I do not dislike Ted Hayse, he does talk the most awful bilge. He attempted to console me with talk of the life to come. I really had to stop him. “Vicar,” I said, “you are an intelligent man and I realize that religion is your trade or profession, but do you not understand that all you say is based on a false premise?”’
Marie laughed. ‘How did he take it?’
‘He is accustomed to this kind of talk in Elden House. We’re all such intellectual snobs.’ Eleanor sipped her glass of water. ‘By false premise I meant the notion that one man dying on a cross could somehow absolve us all from sin, generations later, when new sins had come into fashion. Not to mention the notion of the – what? – yes, the Resurrection.’ She gave a dry chuckle and drowned it in mineral water.
‘So what do you figger happens after …’ There Ken paused, although he knew Eleanor’s opinion on the subject. His manner was almost deferential; perhaps, like Justin, he was awed by great age.
She turned her gaze upon him, cleared her throat in a surreptitious manner and said, ‘You are from America, are you not?’ Rather surprised, Ken admitted that that was so. ‘You must find England terribly dull after the excitements of – where was it, now?’
He sighed. ‘I was born in Utah, ma’am. Near a township a few miles west of Beaver. Not particularly exciting, I guess.’
The old lady appeared to be suppressing a smile. ‘Beaver, eh? An odd name to bestow on a town …’ Then, possibly to evade any elaboration from her visitor, she returned to the main drift of the conversation. ‘Don’t be afraid to say “death”, dear boy. I’m looking forward to death in a way. I’m so bored. People bore me. Books bore me, these days.’
‘This missing black girl is quite exciting,’ said Marie. ‘For a little place like Old Headington, I mean.’
‘Oh, this girl from Afghanistan? How kind Deirdre Fitzgerald is … They come and they go, but England goes on for ever.’ Dismissing the subject with a fragile wave of her hand, she returned to her previous line of discourse. ‘The brain was never designed to work for so many years … I’m too fragile – well, too fragile to get up to anything. It’s long ago that I fulfilled my biological function and reproduced my kind. Not that I can claim that was a great –’ with a spiteful glance at Enid – ‘success … There’s something hideous about such industries as Elden, dedicated to protracting the lives of the useless, such as I.’
Enid butted in, saying, ‘Domestic violence is the biggest single killer of women aged from nineteen to forty-four – precisely the most fertile years. After that, life becomes more peaceful. Old age is surely given to us as a time to find God.’
‘I’m still waiting for God to find me, dear,’ said Eleanor with a sob resembling mirth. ‘I’m on his Gone Missing list, so it would seem … You see? With a daughter like Enid …’
Justin ventured to speak. ‘So, Lady Eleanor, do you regard the sole purpose of life as to reproduce our kind?’
She gave him a severe look. ‘So we once believed. So I once believed. Why should this whole notion of what one believes be so important to us?’ She thought about it. ‘I’ve long ago given up believing in anything.’ They sat there waiting for Lady Eleanor to speak again. Marie fidgeted stealthily on her chair. ‘Be that as it may, I now believe that we are – one must use the word programmed – programmed to protract, not ourselves, but our DNA.’
‘I have heard you say that before,’ Marie remarked. ‘But it seems to me unlikely, if you don’t mind my saying so.’
‘I don’t care what you say! Why should I?’
‘Well, you make DNA sound like a kind of virus.’
‘Perhaps it is a kind of virus, Marie. It seems to me it is a better – more functional – reason to continue to propagate than to have a God plotting our sins and circumstances. Speaking of sins, one of our youngest occupants here, an over-painted young hussy still in her sixties—’
‘Oh, don’t go into that, Mother!’ Enid exclaimed. ‘That’s scandal.