Walcot. Brian Aldiss
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in a white-tiled cell, on a raised bed. He had been enjoying a last puff of a cigarette, clutching the cylinder in shaky purple hands. His countenance was the colour of the hospital pillow supporting his head. He suddenly raised that head from the pillow with a startled look, eyes bulging. ‘I mean to say –’, he began, only to fall back again, dead.
He had suffered from gastritis and lung cancer. He was sixty-nine years old.
Elizabeth clutched his cold, gnarled hand with both of her delicate ones. ‘Good-bye, my dear … my faithful husband,’ she said, in her clear, but hesitant tones. This was after she had suffered her stroke.
Elizabeth Fielding had a more distinguished look about her than the majority of her clan. It could not be said that this was because of any particular facial feature, although her high forehead and delicate nostrils and lips were attractive. Her pile of white hair, secured by a small black velvet bow, gave her an impressive air. But her distinction lay more in the way she held herself stiffly erect. She had always been a silent sort of person, which had made you, when you were a small boy, fearful of her. The impediment in her speech, a result of the stroke, had hardly made her more garrulous. The family had not been accustomed to taking much notice of Elizabeth. If she resented this attitude, she wisely did not show it. She had, however, begun to show some partiality towards you, as if recognizing in your small person someone whose potentials were also overlooked.
In need of a degree of security, Elizabeth had married Sidney Fielding knowing him to be intellectually her inferior, as well as some years older than she. She tried to conceal this knowledge from Sidney, but such knowledge leaks out in many ways.
Sidney was never entirely satisfied with his wife, finding her often critical. He failed to relish her criticism as a way of advancing his own appreciation of the finer points of life. And so to their children, Martin and his brothers and sisters, that hidden dissatisfaction had a way of working through and shadowing their lives also. As to Martin and Mary’s children, you often held beliefs that cast a shadow over what should have been your contentment, and their acceptance of you.
Various members of the family were summoned for Sidney Fielding’s funeral. So the funeral took place a week after his death, on the day when Mussolini, having annexed Abyssinia, invaded Albania. This fresh sign of the rottenness of Europe was scarcely noticed by the Fielding and Wilberforce families. Or by you, for at fifteen you were enmeshed in the agonies and joys of your first love affair. You were pursuing Gale Roberts, who was proving by turns joky and elusive, affectionate and indifferent. This female behaviour was totally inscrutable to you. What Gale desired from day to day remained baffling; whereas all you desired was to get a hand up her skirt.
This problem had to be shelved on the seventh of April, when you and your sister stood by your parents’ side at your grandfather’s grave. Your heads were bowed. You wished to be sad, but Sonia kept nudging and winking at you, and exclaiming ‘Shuggerybees!’ After the ceremony, the two families, together with friends and spouses, gathered in your father’s house for drinks and refreshments. They were greeted on the doorstep as they arrived by joyous barking from Gyp. Joy Frost, terrified of dogs, ran back to the car for refuge, and took some coaxing before she reappeared on the scene. ‘Shut the confounded dog in the greenhouse,’ demanded Mary. Although you loved Gyp greatly, you did as she ordered, smoothing his noble head before shutting him in.
Emma, the maid, served tea as soon as the guests came in. All were dressed in black, making family likenesses more apparent, the Wilberforces with their sallow complexions, the Fieldings with their aquiline noses, the Frosts with their tendency to be undershot, the Hillmans – or Claude at least – with their flushed faces and broken-veined cheeks.
Your parents’ house gave off a slight greenish tinge. There were thick old green velvet curtains at the downstairs windows, destined to serve as blackout curtains during the war then looming. The furniture was heavy, and some of it shabby. It had been bought on the never-never at Heal’s in London, shortly after Martin and Mary had married. The pictures on the walls of the living room showed Sopwith Camels and other ancient aeroplanes manoeuvring in clear blue skies. Mary had striven to brighten the room with bowls of flowers strategically placed, as advised in the pages of Amateur Gardening, to which she subscribed.
You were forced into the company of Joey and Terry, the two sons of Aunt Ada, your father’s sister. Ada was there, still rather weepy from the graveside, with her husband, Claude Hillman, who was at this time of his life a stockbroker. Claude, your father always said, was ‘a bit of a bounder’.
‘Cheer up, old ducks,’ Claude told Ada. ‘Old Sid’s time was up. He had a good run for his money, didn’t he?’
‘Oh, Claude, truly, “in the midst of life we are in death”.’
He thrust his rubicund face at hers. ‘Rubbish! In the midst of life we are in need of drink. Death’ll have to wait until I’ve got a noggin in me.’
There had been a time a few months earlier when you had gone to play with Joey and Terry. They had stuck their hands in the pockets of their shorts and put their round, sand-coloured heads together. They contemplated you before asking, in no friendly terms, ‘Do you know the system, sport?’
‘What system is that?’ you asked.
Terry had looked at Joey. Joey had looked at Terry. ‘He asks what system,’ they said to each other. Then, to you, ‘Why, mathematics, of course. Do you know what numbers are for?’
‘They’re for counting,’ you said, sulky under such interrogation.
And the two boys had laughed. They showed you a blackboard in their den. On the blackboard, cabbalistic signs mixed with numbers. Some signs were enclosed by chalk squares. Arrows indicated directions. You were impressed that they had various coloured chalks.
‘What’s all this “DOBD” in these red squares?’ you asked.
Terry sniggered behind a grubby hand. ‘Do or Be Done, of course.’
Summoning a protective indifference, you remarked that that was silly.
‘It’s our future. It’s our system. We don’t expect you to understand.’
But you had stayed for lunch in their house. Aunt Ada served cold stuffed veal with small new potatoes, cold, and a salad of crisp, sharp cos lettuce. Ada was a little woman with pale lips, very neat with her hair and clothes. Later on, not very surprisingly, Claude would leave Ada.
To see these two boys now in your own house, rapidly gobbling the snacks, aroused your hostility.
‘Are you two still playing about with your stupid system?’ you asked Joey.
‘Our dad met Bertrand Russell,’ Joey said, proudly.
It seemed unanswerable at the time.
Accompanying Claude and Ada were the Frosts. Joy Frost with pigtails, tied for the occasion with black ribbons, was Claude’s younger sister. Her husband, Freddie Frost, adolescent in appearance, was regarded by the Fieldings as being rather loud. He was being rather loud now, saying cheerfully to Archie over his shoulder, as Emma poured more wine into his glass, ‘Well, there’s another one fallen off the old perch, eh, what?’
He nudged his brother Archie in the ribs in order to encourage him to share in the joke – Archie being always, in Freddie’s judgement, too serious and quiet.
‘Show some respect,’ said Archie. ‘Try the sausage rolls and shut up.’
You heard a good deal of shutting up in those days.
Of these Frosts, Joy at sixteen seemed to suffer the most grief. Her nose had been reddened by constant applications of a small handkerchief during the funeral. She confided now to her Aunt Ada, ‘I’ve never been touched by death before – apart from the odd hamster.’ Ada pressed her niece’s hand. ‘I know, my dear.’ She repeated herself, saying, ‘“In the midst of life we are in death” – including hamsters.’
Meanwhile, Mary was welcoming in her stodgy older brother, Jeremy, who was looking about