The Twinkling of an Eye. Brian Aldiss
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a little less stiff. The preacher ventures a joke. Perhaps he ventures to ask if Mrs Aldiss would be greatly offended if he smoked a pipe.
Why, no. Of course. Yes. Do. By all means. She will fetch him an ashtray.
And would he by any chance like a little something with his pipe?
Well …
Well, it happens we have some elderberry wine in the cupboard. Home-made, of course. Bill finds a little sip now and again is good for him.
Well. If you’re going to have one … I don’t mind if I do, Mrs Aldiss.
Please call me Dot.
The Lord has spoken against all alcoholic drink but, in His mercy, has made an exception for home-made elderberry wine. The berries come from the tree in the garden under which the Red Indians lurk.
All this delicacy, this hesitation, these taboos, may sound amusing to a later generation. No funnier than violence on the streets and hooliganism at sport and aggressive coarse language today is going to sound to the citizens of AD 2050. Nothing is really funny about the life of past generations: they had their problems and their pleasures, as we do today. It is simply that the problems in small particulars are different.
The caution not to offend, the delicacy over drink, the hospitality my parents offered (under whatever social pressure), the prurience over the innocuous Radio Times, even the dedication of these men who came and preached week after week – all that was how it was in 1930 in East Dereham. Yes, I am amused now; but that is my entitlement because I lived through it. And through it all runs something tender, a sort of unguarded wish to be better, kinder, decent, God-fearing – virtue as well as hypocrisy.
Poor Bill and Dot, how greatly they care, how greatly they are bound to the mores of time and place, as we all continue to be. For the Zeitgeist largely glides snake-like through our mortal lives, sloughing a skin now and again. And how greatly one of them at least rejoices when it befalls that they are exiled from this small town where the mores are particularly exacting.
But that crisis lies on the far side of the Five Year Abyss.
The Passing Show, with its pleasing title, lies on the far side of another gulf, the World War II Abyss. Its day is done. There is no family magazine like it now. But then, the family itself has disintegrated, if you are to believe the higher journalism.
How much brighter magazines are today. How they proliferate. How they specialise. Six on yachting. Seventeen or eighteen on cars. Twenty, thirty, on cooking and dieting. Fifty or more on PCs. On the upper shelves, rows of tit, bum and cunt magazines. No family magazine. Don’t laugh at the thirties, okay? Among major gains, something has been lost.
Little conformist that I am, I do not mind the itinerant pastors, since my parents seem to like them. I come greatly to like Edna V. Rowlingson. I recognise in this bright, sparrow-like lady a real goodness; of course, at the time I do not phrase it in these terms. I know only that it is pleasurable to be with her. Although I am only one of her flock, she likes me. She cares about people. For this reason, she makes a splendid preacher. Perhaps if you really know her, you will find she is truly concerned to think we shall all go to hell. I am sorry when Bill jokes about her behind her back.
William Cowper is part of the mythology. The ugly little church that bears his name is built on the site of the old house in which he died. There is much in that very English poet to love – not only his poems but his letters, which display a gentle personality.
Cowper believed in eternal damnation, as I did. This is one way in which the national mentality has changed over the course of a generation. We can no longer believe that after death, if we have sinned, we shall enter hell. Hell has been acted out here on Earth in the time of Nazi Germany, when even the innocent went in their millions to a hell that beggars the imagination. A profound change in attitude has come about as a result.
The film continues, an 8mm epic. Year by year, I begin to discover more of East Dereham. At the far end of the market place is the Cabin. It stands behind the newly built war memorial. You climb a stair to it, hence its name. Inside, Dot and her son eat iced cakes. A few doors away, conveniently, is Mr Toomey, the dentist, who profits from the sale of the iced cakes. I am rewarded with lead soldiers whenever I visit Mr Toomey and do not make a fuss. I never fuss.
The reason why we all keep Mr Toomey in business is because of a habit of Bill and Dot’s. By their bedside stands a tin of Callard & Bowser’s Olde Mint Humbugs. At bedtime, they pop these corrosives into their mouths and their son’s mouth. By the time the son is twelve, both parents have to wear false teeth.
Just beyond Mr Toomey’s torture chamber is the entrance to the cattle market, past the Cherry Tree pub. On Fridays, this market fills with life. To me and my cousins, it seems to sprawl for miles. Some animals arrive by lorry, others by horse-drawn carts. Many are treated with cruelty, made to hurry, to be herded into metal pens. They slip, try to escape, are heartily beaten. Cows, bulls, sheep, ewes, a few goats, some with kid. All are kicked and cursed into appropriate pens. Blood, excrement, straw, fly everywhere.
Into small cages are crammed many kinds of living thing. Ducks, geese, hens, cockerels, several types of rabbit, stoats, ferrets, their cages marked with a warning not to touch. The ferrets fling themselves in a fury at their bars.
Perhaps rural life is always like that. Respect for animal life is not high.
My grandfather, The Guv’ner, is a JP in the time I know him. I like to go and play in the grounds of Whitehall, where my grandmother lies upstairs in bed. Whitehall looks vaguely Italianate. Wide eaves and a tower, sitting in the middle of the building, account for that. Its windows are large, their sills on the lower floor coming to within a foot of the ground. An ornate verandah runs along the front of the house. The place has a peaceful and generous air as it sits foursquare at the end of its long drive.
The gardens run a good way back, past the asparagus beds, the vegetable beds, the two sunken greenhouses, each of which is patrolled by age-old toads, the fruit trees, to a wide lawn fringed by sheltering trees and shrubs. Spinks is H. H.’s loyal gardener, and Spinks’s loyal companion is H. H.’s dog, Spot. Spot is a wire-haired terrier. Three enormous black cats live at Whitehall. H. H. spoils them and talks to them, lowering his habitual guard.
H. H. bought Whitehall before the First World War in his cool offhand manner.
He is travelling back by train from London on one of his buying trips when he falls into conversation with another passenger. This passenger says he is leaving Dereham to live elsewhere and intends to sell his house. The Guv’ner says he happens to be looking for a suitable house.
The passenger says his house is fairly large, with good gardens and a field, the recreation ground, attached.
The Guv’ner knows the house.
By the time the two men reach Dereham station they have shaken on it.
Grandma Aldiss, the farmer’s daughter, once Lizzie Harper, is bedridden for as long as I am about. Dot knew her when she was well, and cherishes some of her recipes. One favourite recipe is for Pork Mould, a dish made with pigs’ trotters. When cold, it is turned out of a mould rather resembling a child’s sand castle. We eat it with Colman’s mustard, and plain brown bread on the side.
I do not recall Bill ever going to Whitehall to see his mother. Dot often goes, and takes me with her. Dot will carry fruit or cornflour buns in her basket. She will be in her cheery mode.
We proceed upstairs to a room at the rear of Whitehall. Here long windows on two walls look down the length of the garden and across to The Rec, as the adjoining field is known. Lizzie lies patiently in bed, year after year. Self-effacing in the background, a nurse attends her, wearing a starched cap, uniform, and black cotton stockings.
Provided I do not make a noise, I am allowed a grape or two from the fruit dish by the side of the invalid’s bed.
Why do I remember the room so well, with its long curtains with wooden rings on mahogany rods, and a wash stand with basin and jug on it, and the swan-neck brass light fitting