The Twinkling of an Eye. Brian Aldiss
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an exciting incident when the red wooden scooter-affair has plunged with its rider down to the half-landing. On that half-landing stands an object of chinoiserie, an octagonal table with sharp legs, ebony, inset with slivers of mother-of-pearl, some of which have fallen out, others of which can be picked out.
In the front room, looking up Norwich Street, stands an iron-frame upright piano, given to Dot by her father on her wedding day.
This front room has a pleasant window seat from which to gaze at life as it moves in and out of the shops of Norwich Street – the butcher’s, the grocer’s and Mr Fanthorpe’s music shop. We do not discover until later years that Mr Fanthorpe also has a son, Lionel, who will grow up to be another science fiction writer.
The most interesting features in this room are its pictures. Framed in gold, here and in the long corridor, are desert scenes. Palm trees wave. Steely-eyed Bedouin gaze over dunes into scorching distance. Camels gallumph in camel-like fashion across the Sahara. Everywhere is golden sand, exactly the colour of the frames. Bill has been in Egypt during the war, that war to which constant reference is made.
Before I am very old, I find this home imprisoning. As I go from room to room, I am followed, talked to, instructed. Dot still lives out the nightmare of having lost her previous child, that paragon of daughters; this may explain the tense family atmosphere. I struggle against the unremitting surveillance under which my mother places me. I know that all about us, unseen, the necessities of commerce, the intense life of the shop go on, crammed with people, circumstances, adventure.
The window of the room which is sometimes a breakfast room, sometimes a bedroom, has a special attraction. I can slide it open silently without Dot hearing, and climb out on to a slippery roof. From there, proceeding with care, I can make my escape across a second roof. A jump, a swift heave, and I enter an open window some distance away from the flat: a small forgotten window …
Ah, now this is exciting – forbidden and therefore, of course, naughty … I am standing inside a room stacked full of big cylindrical cardboard boxes. Nobody knows where I am. In fact, I have arrived just above H. H.’s millinery department, situated over the drapery, the very hub of my grandfather’s dominions.
The millinery department comes to hold an irresistible fascination. This room into which I have climbed was once the sitting room of a person or persons unknown. Beyond the room is a little uncarpeted staircase. Breathless with bravery, I creep up the stairs. The boards creak beneath my sandals. The stair twists up to two attic rooms.
The shop fades away. The tide of its boxes has not reached this high. A little sad narrow deserted house remains. Its walls are covered with floral paper, much faded. On one wall, a framed sentimental print still hangs; a girl clutches roses to her satin breast. Each room permits views of unknown roofs. Each possesses a grate with a mantelpiece crowned by a cloudy mirror. If I drag a horsehair chair over to peer into one of the mirrors, I can see myself, pale and interesting, ghostly. Who am I? Am I a different person for being in this phantom place?
The chair is black and leathery, punctuated with big leather studs. There are gas mantles beside the mirrors. The whole place must have come out of History!
And no one lives here!
Over the years, I often visit this phantom house. It becomes one of my secret refuges.
Occasionally, one of the young ladies from the millinery department tiptoes up the twisting stair and catches me. She likes to give me a scare. This is a skittish slender teasing type of person, wearing a neat black velvet dress and shining patent leather shoes. Everything about her is pretty. She has black hair and red lips. Her eyes are dark and lustrous.
When she catches me, I pretend greater alarm than I feel. She seizes and embraces me. I am pressed against her gentle velvet-clad bosom. While I am small, she sits me on her knee. Later, we will cram together into the big chair. She kisses me, teases me intolerably, kisses me again. Ah, her kisses! Everything about her I admire. This diversion will continue for some years; what is mainly her amusement certainly becomes mine as well. The power she has over me is the power women have over men.
Was I ever again, in all my years, so tortured and delighted, made sad and raised to ecstasy, encouraged to dream, to pursue a scent, to feel more than myself, caused to sing and run about, and to cry – was I ever again to be so over-brimmed with emotion, so excited, so enchanted, or so crazed with longing, as I was by that dark-haired young lady from the millinery? Oh yes, indeed I was. Many a time.
As the slow years pull their compartments along, I learn that this little phantom house, almost entirely devoured by trade, is where Bill and Dot first lived when they were married. This knowledge adds to the attraction of the silent rooms: they are part of the secret life my parents led before I was even thought of …
Dot always said that when they were first married, she and Bill used to lie in bed between those walls with the floral paper and the cloudy mirrors and listen to the rats running – ‘like greyhounds’ – overhead.
The union of Wilson and Aldiss families resulted in a commission for my uncle Herbert Wilson. H. H. employed him to reshape and reface the shop. A thorough restyling of H. H.’s premises resulted. This would have been in 1921. Bert was responsible for the comfort of my parents’ new flat, above Bill’s outfitting department. Their first flat became absorbed by the millinery. He created a graceful façade for the shop. It featured large windows of curved glass, while an ‘Aldiss’ legend was set in mosaic at the entrance. Although the shop was eventually sold and carved up, Bert Wilson’s façade has been preserved.
Dot tends towards shortness and plumpness, is fond of saying she ‘suffers from Duck’s Disease – bottom too near the ground’. This contrasts with Bill, who remains tall and thin throughout life. Dot has brown hair. She keeps it under a hairnet at night because it is always trying to escape her.
Dot is a homebody, content to remain indoors or at least to linger in her garden, tending her mignonette. Bill, on the other hand, retains a longing for outdoor life. There is always this dichotomy, he wishing for the Great Outdoors, she for the Small Indoors. Many a time, when Betty and I are drawing happily at the dining-room table, Bill in passing will say, ‘Why don’t you go outside?’ His way of bringing up children is largely admonitory.
In her East Dereham phase, Dot is generally ‘poorly’. Dr Duygan arrives briskly with his black medicine bag, to prescribe whisky-and-soda and a lie-down after lunch. Teetotal though she is, Dot obeys to the letter. She keeps cachous in her handbag for when she goes out. This is another way in which you tell the sexes apart: men never suck cachous.
Suffering from teeth problems, Dot’s face becomes swollen. Gazing at herself in the glass, she complains, ‘I look more like a pig than a woman.’
Four-year-old son, brightly, placatingly, ‘You make a very pretty pig.’ Flattery will become his stock-in-trade.
Dot is amused. All is well, therefore.
Later in life, I come to realise not only that Dot suffers from depression at this period, but that she combats it by a method her son unconsciously imitates: she cheers herself up by making others cheerful, by jokes which often include making fun of herself. It is a kindly fault.
My role in life, according to Dot, is to remain by her side until I am old enough to be sent to Miss Mason’s Kindergarten, where middle-class Dereham kids are instructed. Yet I can easily give her the slip, to escape into the shop, becoming lost on the premises and beyond.
Downstairs in our hall are two doors, one to the outside world, where the step is scrubbed white with Monkey Brand, one into Father’s outfitting department. This department is immense, a cavern filled with many places for a young subversive to hide.
Rows of coats and suits, enormously high; ranks of deep drawers, oak with clanky brass handles inset; long counters; islands of dummies wearing the latest slacks in Daks; disembodied legs and feet displaying Wolsey socks; heavy bolts of suitings, wrapped about a wooden core; a repertoire of felt hats; much else that is wonderful.
And, above all, the staff. I have complete confidence in their entertainment, as they