The Twinkling of an Eye. Brian Aldiss
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cot is brought over from Gordon’s furnishing department and rigged up as for a girl, with pink ribbons.
More and more of my time after school is spent among our maids.
Our maids are always of interest and sometimes of discomfort. Behind the respectable façade of church-going Dereham lurk many strange things. People sprout lions’ heads.
Our cleaning lady is a Mrs Rushden. She hails from Baxter Row, an old part of town, considered by all at Cowper Congregational Church as a Tobacco Row. Mrs Rushden is a dignified woman with a sharp face and sharp tongue. She has two children. Her motto, often quoted by Dot, is Nothing’s a trouble for the stomach.
She announces to Dot, early in their acquaintance, that she is not a washerwoman. She is a lady wot obliges people. Another one for the repertoire.
In later years, when Dot is older and wiser and we can discuss sex, she tells me that the father of all Mrs Rushden’s children is in fact Mrs Rushden’s father. ‘That’s Baxter Row for you,’ she says.
Much younger is Abigail. Perhaps she is only sixteen, teetering on the verge of middle age. She is pale, blue-eyed, of scrubbed appearance. She is the maid on whose privacy in her lavatory I intruded. I am curious about her in a way I cannot articulate. Possibly this is reflected in her attitude to me. She takes me out for walks. Something between us makes me edgy, part attracted, part repelled.
It is hard to tell whether she likes or hates me. I am Master Brian to her, keeping me at a distance, yet there is … whatever it was. Something like an unwilling conspiracy which neither of us needed.
Relationships are usually subject to development. Sometimes, though, they seem to exist beforehand, snapping full-grown into being when a pair meets. Only a glance is needed. It is this kind of decision, made without intellect, that leads people to believe in Fate. You may prefer genetics; an inexplicable thing still remains between people, luring us on.
One day, Abigail takes me for a walk and directs our footsteps towards her home in Baxter Row. I am reluctant. The row is very narrow. We enter a small house. I am unsure whether it is Abigail’s home or someone else’s.
Other people are there. They leave. They look back over their shoulders as they go. I have an impression of a bare room, through the window of which the house opposite looks too close. A girl remains in the room, younger than Abigail, blue-eyed, mischievous. Perhaps it is her younger sister. Perhaps I never knew. The younger girl endeavours to make herself pleasant. I remain alert. Abigail tells me to take my shorts down.
I say I do not want to.
She takes me gently by the arm and tells me to do as she says or she will tell my mother.
So I take my trousers down.
The younger girl comes near and stoops close to see what I have to offer. She does not touch. After a moment I am allowed to pull up my trousers.
It is curious to feel simultaneously humiliated and powerful.
To write of East Dereham with nostalgia would be easy. Yet it was no paradise. The shop was my marvellous playground, full of friends and enticements; for years I was to miss it dreadfully. On the other hand, there remained the abattoir, with the blood running in the gutter, where cows, like Jesus himself, were giving their lives that Man should live.
And what of that crude doctrine of punishment by eternal fire then being preached? Had anyone in Dereham ever had a new idea since George Borrow decided to speak Romany? And there remains the case of the Michelin man.
The Michelin man is dropped by van into Dereham market square. He parades about, advertising those excellent tyres. He is encased in the familiar Michelin trade mark. He’s a little fatty made of white tyres, with old-fashioned motoring goggles for eyes. All he can do is strut, or rather waddle, from one end of the town square to the other. A gaggle of boys, of which I am one, follows him about.
The man grows nervous and tells us to clear off. We persist. One of the bigger boys throws a stone. It bounces harmlessly off the pneumatic waistline. At this signal for violence, all the lads begin to shower stones at the unfortunate man.
He tries to run. We follow.
At first it seems like fun. But the man’s terror is palpable, as perhaps hounds pursue a stag because they scent its fear. The man runs into a cobbled side street. Here is a better supply of stones. I never throw one, but wait to see what happens next – the writer’s guilty role in life.
The boys have the man cornered. His fat arms wave helplessly.
They close in like a wolf pack. Bigger boys appear from nowhere, as at any unpleasant scene bigger boys have a habit of doing. They kick the man until he topples over. Boyish laughter, cackles, more kicks.
He lies in a corner, rolling from side to side on the cobblestones, like some unutterable crustacean washed up on a Permian beach.
‘Quick! Someone’s coming!’ A shout from one of the lads.
The boys clear off. I stand there. No one comes.
I make no move to help the Michelin man, indeed am frightened of him. I clear off in my turn.
I never speak of this unsettling incident to Dot, any more than I can tell her how Abigail made me expose myself. She might leave home if I did so.
But no. Dot is in the last stages of pregnancy, wandering heavily about her bedroom, sighing, applying eau-de-Cologne and cachous. A nurse is engaged to tend her for a fortnight or two. It is Nurse Webb again, sober as a judge, starched from stem to stern. And I have a misfortune that is to cost me dear.
I catch whooping cough from someone at school.
Whooping cough was common in the days before there were inoculations against it. It is extremely infectious. If babies catch it, they may suffer brain damage or die.
It is somehow typical of me to be ill at a crucial time, when Dot is about to give birth. It is the last day of April, the next best thing to the Ides of March.
The maids keep me in the back room. Trying to stifle my coughs, I listen as they read Alice in Wonderland to me. I am more or less aware of people in the rest of the flat, tramping about as if this were a boarding house. Nurse Webb, of course. Doctor Duygan, with his black bag. Bill, up from the shop. The baby is delivered in the middle of Chapter Six.
Alice caught the baby with some difficulty, as it was a queer-shaped little creature, and held out its arms and legs in all directions, ‘just like a starfish’, thought Alice.
It is a girl! Praise the Lord! This time, it is a girl! No tears from the mother this time. Our united prayers have been answered with unusual efficiency.
Bill enters the back room, flustered and uttering a series of short, sharp edicts. I must get some shoes on. He is going to take me to Grandma Wilson immediately. I cannot stay in the house in my infectious state.
A little suitcase is already packed.
I am bewildered.
But why—?
I just told you. Come along.
I am allowed as far as the threshold of the maternal bedroom. Dot is in bed. She lifts up in triumph a little wizened howling thing. A cursory glance suggests it is much like Alice’s starfish. Its mouth is open and bright red. Scarcely less red is the rest of it.
Elizabeth Joy, my sister Betty, has emerged successfully into the world and looks none too pleased about it. She sums up what she sees in a shrill bawl.
Only a glimpse is permitted me. It is enough. Peering back into the past, you find some episodes are written in mist, some on stone. Here is stone enough to last as long as life. The overheated room, those windows looking out to blank walls, the nurse in the background with her starched bosom, the rumpled bed, the triumphant, sweating woman in the bed, the scarlet babe, howling as it is held aloft like a banner – only a glimpse is needed. The tableau is going to remain for ever.
I have no