Somewhere East of Life. Brian Aldiss
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daringly, if the break had been his fault. She evaded the question, giving every impression of a woman about to take to her heels, saying it was foolish of her to have come. Perhaps she had been driven by … But she withheld the word ‘curiosity’. She should have mailed Burnell a photocopy of the divorce certificate. Her flight back to Los Angeles had been delayed. As he had probably heard, someone had put a bomb aboard one of the 777s flying on the LA–New York–London route and blown it clean out of the skies. No one had yet claimed responsibility, though a terrorist group in the Middle East was suspected. She regarded Europe as an unsafe place nowadays. It was terrible what was happening in the world.
She ran out of things to say, to stand there looking downcast, half turned away from him. A silence ensued in which Burnell felt he could have crossed the Gobi Desert.
He managed to make himself say, ‘But I’ve not remarried – I mean, as far as you know?’
Stephanie attempted to laugh at the idiocy of the question, then sighed. ‘You’re always travelling the globe on your World Heritage errands … You never wanted to go any place glamorous. You liked the tacky dumps where no one had heard of American Express. Well, you were always the self-contained type, didn’t like shopping. Life’s just fine for me in Santa Barbara. Lots of friends, lots of fun …’
‘Do you realize how self-centred you sound? Is that what spoilt things between us?’
‘You’re being superior again. I must go. I have to protect myself, don’t you understand that? The divorce …’ A shake of the head hardly disturbed her elegantly styled hair. ‘Of course I’m sorry about – you know, what’s happened to you, or I’d not be here, would I? I don’t mean to sound unkind but I don’t wish to know about you any more. What’s past is past.’
‘Oh, no, never!’
‘Yes, and for you especially. Start again, Roy.’ Now she was half laughing. ‘You keep sending me postcards from some of these dumps you go to, you know that?’
‘Postcards? What postcards?’
‘Sure. Draughty old churches some place or other. Town squares. I don’t need them. The kind of dumps you used to drag me into.’
‘You can’t beat a draughty old church.’ He forced a smile, which was not returned.
‘It happens I’ve a couple of your cards along in my purse.’ She placed her handbag on the window sill and began to rummage through it. As she did so, he thought, ‘She must care something for me if she takes these cards up to the Orkneys with her …’ He said nothing, conscious of his own heartbeat.
She produced a card, glancing at it before handing it over between two outstretched fingers, as if she suspected amnesia was catching.
She caught his eye as he took it. ‘Too bad. Just the one card. Arrived the morning I left home. The others got torn up, I guess.’
Steff didn’t have to say that, he told himself. Either she was protecting herself or being deliberately cruel – to hold me off? What if I grabbed her and kissed the bitch? No – I’m afraid to do so …
The postcard carried a colour picture of a church labelled as St Stephen’s Basilica. Something informed him that architecturally it was not a basilica.
He turned it over as she watched him intently. ‘You don’t recall mailing that?’
He recognized his own handwriting. The card was addressed to Stephanie Hillington in Santa Barbara. He had known. The memory had been stolen.
The postcard bore a Hungarian stamp. His message had been written only sixteen days before. It was brief. ‘Budapest. Brief visit here before returning to Frankfurt. Making notes for a lecture. As usual. Need some florid Hungarian architecture. Trust you’re well. Have met ghastly old friend here. Just going round to Antonescu’s clinic to do him a favour. Weather fine. Love, Roy.’
He jumped up and kissed Stephanie.
Stephanie found her way back to the car park and climbed into the Protean she had hired, startled to find how upset she felt. She sat grasping the steering wheel, unable to do anything. To her disgust, tears welled up in her and poured forth.
Why am I crying? What could have provoked it? My life has changed. I’ve grown away from him. I feel nothing for him any more. I live in an entirely different climate.
Of course he looked awful.
EMV must be a new thing in this country – we’re freer in LA. We’ve got everything. Everything. Humbert goes for it, says he’s lived a hundred lives, shooting EMV.
Yet she was angry and could not understand her own mood. While the divorce was pending, she had flown out to California, hired a camper, lived in Palm Beach with a stud of whom she soon tired. She hated the memory; perhaps it meant she had hated herself at the time. Sex may be the cure for many things but it is no cure for misery; not in my case. Oh, no, Steff – cease this soul-searching. You know it’s sick.
But her recent freer past – her past since the divorce – rose up against her as if in accusation. There seemed no way of stopping it.
In a seafood restaurant in Santa Barbara one day, she had come across an older woman called Ann Summerfield, tanned like everyone else at the white tables. They drank margaritas together and talked. Ann had divorced and not remarried. She had a lover who was on the fringe of the film world, Sam de Souto. Ann too was English, despite her American accent. She and Stephanie became friends. Initiating her into West Coast ways, Ann taught her to sail.
Only a block away from Ann and Sam’s apartment lived Ann’s younger sister, Jane Barrieros. Jane was undergoing a divorce of unusual bitterness, and fighting for the custody of her son.
When Stephanie was introduced to Jane, the latter was a pale worried creature dependent on a then fashionable shrink, plus every known drug. She was, however, well established in a software company, Micromanser. Neuroticism fuelled her drive to excel. When at last she won her battle in the courts on grounds of cruelty, and collected several million dollars, Jane bought into Micromanser and married the boss.
Stephanie and Ann looked on in admiration – and cared for Page, the disputed son – as Jane’s fortunes spiralled upwards in truly Californian fashion.
Jane bought a small computer company, building it up rapidly with the latest technical advances, slanting it towards the greying end of the population, and producing a revolutionary new game series, Loveranger, laced with plenty of VR sex. Loveranger soon became the leading trade name across the nation. The ladies lived a life of sun, fun, and success.
Loveranger computers came in tough ceramic cases. It was during a party at Ann’s new place that Stephanie met the ceramics designer, blue-jowled Humbert Stuckmann. And fell for his line of talk … Humbert, too, with a name practically synonymous with quality fabrics, was also a part of the good life of sun and success. That he had already run through three wives seemed to Stephanie, at the time, to be a part of Humbert’s charm.
They were married in Hawaii the next New Year’s Day.
Humbert flew in his favourite group, Ceren Aid, to sing at the wedding.
And poor scholarly Roy has nothing to do with all that. I’ve just left him behind, as I’ve left England behind. Everything over here seems so small and drab. I ask myself how I ever …
She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, staring out into the deserted car park.
Why am I going on at myself like this? I need to get back to the sun and the beaches. I must lose a pound or two – I’m getting too hefty for those glittering shores. Roy – I don’t know him any more. It’s a different life …
Then a traitorous thought, unexpected. And do I know myself any more?
But she swiftly negotiated that thought, not wishing to remind herself how she had once been a tidy little English housewife, doting on her husband and her house … She had even enjoyed ‘doing the ironing’. The old-fashioned