Forgotten Life. Brian Aldiss
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‘Green Mouth Sez It All’. As he passed the stall, Clement saw a middle-aged woman in a smart ice-blue suit take a copy over to the checkout point. She did not even glance at the price. The volume, bulked up as it was, resembled a glutinous box of chocolates.
No one could mistake Green Mouth. She sat upright in her plastic seat, a dowager duchess at least, her ample mouth that brilliantly repellent green, the same shade echoed about her eyes, her eyelashes tinted gold. He sat beside her, tucking the vodka into a carrier. Her distinctive hand-luggage, bearing its open green mouths, came between them.
‘Sheila,’ he said.
The name, he considered, was like a projectile, a component of some vast SDI programme of the mind, bursting into her personal umwelt, carrying with it unwelcome news of her ordinary humanity. She responded only with a grunt, possibly a grunt of pain, completely ha-free.
‘You were wonderful,’ he said. Using the past tense on her like a can-opener. She had to start getting back sometime. There was jet-lag. There was reality-lag. Best to keep them separate.
‘Wonderful,’ he repeated, choosing more of a dying fall this time. And then their flight was called in an electronic voice as soft as the cooing of doves.
On the Boeing, muzak was playing: ‘Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina’. As Clement hung the green cloak on a rail, he glanced through into Economy, where the hordes were fighting to stash away liquor in overhead lockers, mussing each other’s hair and tempers in the process. Every year, as civilization ticked by, thousands of gallons of alcohol were ferried back and forth across the Atlantic, each precious bottle of the stuff requiring a human attendant. It was one of the paradoxes of modern living which kept living modern.
Clement hoped that when the hostesses had seen to his wife’s minor problems, which always cropped up, and preferably had recognized her, and more preferably had read all her books, she would remove the viridian lipstick and deflate back into being Sheila Winter again. She always said she liked to travel anonymously; and that was fine, as long as everyone knew who you were.
Sure enough, as he returned to his seat, or armchair as Pan-Am liked to call it, the hostesses were flocking round with the champagne, professing to be fans of Kerinth, every one. 1.5 million copies hardcover certainly wasn’t hay. And to think the first Kerinth novel, Brute of Kerinth, had been published originally in a paperback edition of no more than sixty thousand copies. Not so much wonderful as a miracle – their personal miracle.
Green Mouth was gracious as always. Sure, she’d love to visit the flight deck after dinner. Sure, she always flew Pan-Am. Champagne was poured again. They drank. Clement drank. Good for Kerinth; it stood between him and Economy.
She still retained her Green Mouth face even when her eyes closed. She must be tired after four days in Boston of constant limelight and the tour before that. Never more than six hours’ sleep a night. Much drink, taken without flinching. Saying nice things about Swain. Hearing nice things from Swain. All energy-sapping. But never a word of complaint.
Her face, under its paint, was large, brown, homely, and lightly creased. The teeth had been fixed so that she did not look as once she had like something that had just run in the Grand National. Sheila Winter was rather a handsome woman, though there was a heavy jaw, speaking of determination, perhaps of rather a glum kind. In her ears were little mazooms of emerald, designed for her by a French fan in California. Not so little, either. They threatened to execute a pincer movement along the planes of Green Mouth’s cheeks, just as – how often – mazooms had menaced the World of Kerinth before brave Tazz had tamed one of them.
Without opening her eyes, she ran her green nails along his jacket sleeve. ‘Wonderful,’ she said.
Once the plane was airborne, the captain spoke over the intercom, telling the passengers at what height they would be travelling and at what time they were due to hit the coast of Ireland – at which announcement all the English passengers looked alarmed. But the champagne came round again, and the feline hostesses, and Green Mouth began to talk without looking at Clement. She was delivering a monologue. Clement felt no need to reply; he understood. The weary brain was off-loading like a computer. Sheila had been travelling round the States for twenty-three days, promoting the latest Kerinth novel from coast to coast in eighteen cities. And for the last four days she had been incarcerated in the Luxor Hotel in Boston (where Clement had joined her), as Guest of Honour at the XIX Fantacon, known in her honour as the Kerincon, the constant target of attention for five thousand fans, many of them attired only in leopard skin and sword.
She had gone without sleep. She had lived on pills. She had rarely ceased drinking or talking. She had given interviews. She had answered endless questions – often the same questions – with good grace. She had received gifts. She had signed many of the 1.5 million copies of her book. She had made a two-hour-long speech, full of attractive pathos about her happy childhood and not lacking in ha-quota either. She had thrown a wildly expensive party in her hotel suite for publishers, friends, and special fans. She had been laid more than once by her diminutive Hispanic editor, all in the spirit of fun. She had posed for photographs for Locus and anyone else who asked. She had smiled her grim smile most of the time. She had smoked almost incessantly, showered often, and accepted with an amusing speech the High Homeric Fantasy Award for being Top Priestess of Epic Fantasy.
No wonder her brain wanted to talk. The sump had to be drained, the gurge regurgitated.
High above the grey and tedious Atlantic, she paused once to emit a simultaneous yawn and belch.
‘But how are you feeling?’ Clement asked.
Her hand sought his, and then she looked at him through cloudy eyes. ‘Fucking awful, darling,’ said Green Mouth.
She was returning to reality. He summoned the hostess for some more champagne.
Monday morning. Home again. Shoes off time. Safe. Secure in the Victorian brick wilderness of North Oxford. Their square-windowed house in Rawlinson Road was shielded from the gaze of passers-by by an enormous horse chestnut tree which some absent-minded builder had forgotten to destroy while he had the chance, possibly during the celebrations attendant on Queen Victoria’s Jubilee.
The hired chauffeur stacked their luggage in the hall and left.
Sheila went into the front room and reclined with care on the sofa under the lace-curtained window. Her green lipstick and eye shadow had been removed in the toilet of the 747. She now looked merely pale, merely enervated, merely English.
‘Are you going to make us a cup of tea?’ she called.
Clement was taking the cases upstairs.
‘Good idea. Hang on a moment.’ Michelin, who lived with them, was out.
The time was 10.50. Or alternatively, 5.50, New York time.
His head rang.
In their bedroom, he set down the cases and opened one of them. In it, approved by Customs, lay Green Mouth’s latest prize, the High Homeric Fantasy Award, sculpted in fibre glass.
To please her, possibly to revive her, he took it downstairs and placed it on a table before her. She smiled wanly.
‘Oh, that!’ said the Top Priestess of Epic Fantasy. It is magnificent. It consists of a bust of Homer with two little cupid wings sprouting from his grey locks, just above his ears. This is no mere ha flim-flam. This is a literary award, bestowed by earnest young judges of the various sexes. On the back of the revered Greek story-teller’s head are etched the titles of the ten Kerinth novels and the one collection of short stories, with their dates of publication.
What’s more, this award is electronic. Inside the skull is concealed a lithium battery smaller than a dime. Clement switches on. Homer’s blind eyes light up. The wings flap at a dignified pace. Homer nods.
Sheila smiled. ‘Wonderful, but … tea?’
He brought her tea in her Libra mug, accompanied by two Hedex, and sat on the edge of the sofa clutching his own mug.
‘You could go up and