The Squire Quartet. Brian Aldiss
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reminiscent of Teresa’s more usual creations. A paraffin stove radiated warmth beside the tree, compensating for the uncertainties of the central heating in this area of the house. From a radio in the sitting room came the sound of Bethlehem bells. The thing lying upstairs would not hear those bells this year as, when living, it had done every Christmas since the invention of the wireless. Soon, there would be no one left who remembered cat’s whiskers and crystal sets; to Squire himself, they were only stories.
As Uncle Willie came into the hall, smiling, to wish them all a Happy Christmas, the children disappeared into the morning room to play with Tom Kaye’s new Scalextric motor race track. The adults, after removing their coats and scarves, went through into the living room, Squire ushering the Rowlinsons hospitably before him.
‘Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without the bells,’ Madge Davies said. ‘Do you remember how funny it was in the wartime, when the churches were not allowed to ring their bells? I expect you remember that, Mr Rowlinson? I feel so sorry that poor Patricia isn’t with us this year – she was quite a campanologist. One can’t help wondering who will be taken from us by next Christmas.’
‘Don’t say that, dear,’ Ernest said. ‘It’s morbid. Besides, we are all in the pink.’
‘What about your back? And Teresa says …’ But she decided not to complete the sentence.
Although the living room struck rather cold, all agreed that it would soon warm up. The room was decorated with boughs of pine tucked behind the pictures on the wall, and with red candles, half-used, which would be lighted again at dusk. To make the fire in the wide hearth burn up, Squire threw onto it elm logs which he had sawn himself. They all stood round the hearth, exchanging idle conversation, except for Adrian Squire, who was silent as usual. He smoked a cigarette unobtrusively, and coughed a little.
‘That is one blessing of the Dutch Elm Disease,’ said the Rev. Rowlinson. ‘It has provided everyone with more wood fuel than they have ever known before. In these days of spiralling prices, it is very welcome.’ He shook his head, as if contradicting his own words.
‘Wood-burning stoves are very fashionable again. Ray Bond told me so,’ said his wife. Dorothy Rowlinson was a large but timid woman with a sharp nose and a memorable amount of grey hair which, though apparently natural, brought to these remote reaches of Norfolk a reminder of the Afro hair-styles affected in Notting Hill Gate. Dorothy Rowlinson’s parishioners claimed that spirits could frequently be smelt on her breath; some said brandy or, the more charitable, sherry; otherwise, none had any complaint about this shy and dedicated woman.
‘It’s fortunate for the look of the countryside that there’s more oak than elm in the region,’ Marshall said, his sharp Bostonian voice in contrast to the rather woolly tones of both Rowlinsons. ‘Northampton and Bedfordshire have been practically denuded of trees. Entire landscapes have changed character in just these last two years.’
Looking mysterious, Uncle Willie took himself off to the morning room, bearing envelopes. He was going to make his annual rather cheese-paring distribution of record tokens to the Squire and Kaye children, and to receive in return their well-simulated cries of grateful surprise.
‘People make a lot of fuss about the elms,’ said Adrian. ‘They’ll grow back again.’
‘I’m damned sure they won’t,’ Marshall retorted. ‘People don’t have time for trees any more.’
‘Oh, surely that’s not so,’ Rev. Rowlinson protested. ‘Dorothy and I are very fond of trees.’
Teresa and Matilda entered, bearing trays of glasses and hot negus. Deirdre followed with crisps in bowls. Grace, now thirteen, slipped into the room to try her aunt’s drink, and tasted it appreciatively. ‘It’s lovely, Aunt Teresa, and not at all alcoholic.’
‘You just take care,’ Deirdre warned her. ‘One alcoholic in the family’s enough.’
When all present were clutching a glass, Squire went and stood at the far end of the room away from the fire, unconsciously framing himself against a window where a landscape in white and blue-grey led towards distant Walsingham. He took a slim book from a shelf and read Journey of the Magi aloud.
‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year …’
His voice faltered only once. He kept his thoughts away from the figure of greys and browns lying under the roof with its eyes now always closed, concentrating instead on the magi’s account, and on his discomfort at finding – as many men had done – that after returning from a long journey, one’s native land was also full of strange gods.
He had read this poem every Christmas morning since returning from Yugoslavia in the late forties, before he married Teresa. His mother would have liked him to continue what had become a tradition. He realized how deeply the words still cut, words of an Anglican poet so much crisper, more uncompromising, than the sentimental consolations Rowlinson ladled out. The real Christian message – which went beyond Christianity – was here, that birth and death were hard, conditions between always unsatisfactory, vision intermittent. Christianity must have been a great religion when it belonged to the underdog.
‘Why would you be glad of another death, Uncle Tom?’ asked Grace, when he had closed the book and set it back in its place in the bookcase. ‘Isn’t one enough at present?’
Grace was his favourite niece. She had her mother’s fair hair but was going to be taller and slimmer. He smiled at her and said, ‘That line isn’t a reference to your grandmother. It’s spoken by one of the magi, as I suppose you realize.’
‘But why did he want another death?’
‘I’ve always supposed he referred to his own death.’
She said lightly, ‘I think about God a lot, these days, but I don’t know many people who believe in him.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Of course, the Rev. Rowlinson and Mrs Rowlinson and Matilda all believe in him, but that’s their job, isn’t it? Of course, I suppose it’s easier to believe at Christmas. Do you believe, Uncle Tom, or do you mind saying?’
He hesitated, and immediately felt her interest slip away, saw it in her eyes as they switched their gaze to something happening at the other end of the room. He was tempted to lie to shield her, to say that he did believe. He was tempted to fudge the question, to say that it was a question of perspective. He found himself inarticulate, unable to reply. A thousand answers rose to his mind.
Still with her attention on the other end of the room, where mince pies were appearing, closely followed by the other children, Grace said, ‘Someone at school told me that God existed, but he left Earth at the end of the Stone Age because he could see that mankind was getting on pretty well without his help. But I guess that doesn’t explain Jesus, does it?’
With a polite smile, she made for the mince pies.
How were Jews treated in the Stone Age? He sipped at his negus.
The question of God was a matter of perspective. It was easier to believe as a child, just as it was easier to believe in Santa Claus. The mere fact of having parents to care for you made a parental God plausible. Then one acquired knowledge, and worse succeeded.
He had a disturbing memory of his mother, throwing a cup down on the flagstones in the kitchen, angry because she was having to do her own washing up. Time, one of those grey years in the late forties when, the tide of war having withdrawn, people were still coping with the effects of the flood. People like Patricia Squire expected the servants to come back after the war, expected that life would return to what it was in the thirties. But the young people of Hartisham did not intend to work at menial jobs any more. They saw their chance: they left Norfolk and went to earn good wages in the car factories of the Midlands. The thirties had been reviled in their time; money was short and nothing was as it had been in grandfather’s time, before the Great War. Now, after another war, the thirties were suddenly seen as halcyon. Time gilded them.
The seventies. Everyone complained, comparing them unfavourably