The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s. Brian Aldiss
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clutched my hand. A great shadow, a wave of night, came racing across the park towards us. We were enveloped.
Had this shadow been water, we would have drowned. But I had been reassured that there would be no harm for us.
Well well … My life has held many excitements, but I believe that that eclipse, experienced there in Milton Park, is possibly the most exhilarating incident of my life. No fear was involved, because I had had everything – a lesson in astronomy – explained to me beforehand.
My illness was finally gone and forgotten. I was returned to Dereham. Once there, I fell into a strange neurotic state, kicking furniture, breaking dishes, yelling and crying.
Parents with a new born child were not having any of that nonsense. I was immediately sent away again, this time to a prep school. Indeed, to Mr Humphrey Fenn’s Preparatory School for Boys.
Humphrey Fenn … A perfect Dickensian name for what we found there!
January Birdlip spread his hands in a characteristic gesture.
‘Well, I’m a liberal man, and that was a very liberal party,’ he exclaimed, sinking further back into the car seat. ‘How say you, my dear Freud? Are you suitably satiated?’
His partner, the egregious Freddie Freud, took some time to reply, mainly because of the bulky brunette who pinned him against the side of the car in a festive embrace. ‘Vershoye’s parties are better than his books,’ he finally agreed.
‘There isn’t a publisher in Paris does it more stylishly,’ Birdlip pursued. ‘And his new Twenty Second Century Studies is a series well worth a stylish launching, think you not, friend Freddie?’
‘This is no time for intellectual discussion. Don’t forget we’re only taking this babe as far as Calais.’ And with that, Freud burrowed back under his brunette with the avidity of a sexton beetle.
Not without envy, Birdlip looked over at his younger partner. Although he tried to fix his thoughts on the absent Mrs Birdlip, a sense of loneliness overcame him. With tipsy solemnity he sang to himself, ‘There was a young man in December, Who sighed, “Oh I hardly remember, How the girls in July Used to kiss me and tie –”’
Moistening his lips, he peeped through the dividing glass at Bucket and Hippo, Freud’s and his personal romen sitting in the front seats, at the dark French countryside slinking past, and then again at the brunette (how good was her English?), before softly intoning the rest of his song, ‘Daisy-chains round my sun-dappled member.’
Then he started talking aloud, indifferent to whether Fred answered or not. It was the privilege of slightly aging cultural publishers to be eccentric.
‘I found it consoling that Paris too has its robot and roman troubles. You heard Vershoye talking about a casino that was flooded because the robot fire engine turned up and extinguished a conflagration that did not exist …? Always a crumb of comfort somewhere, my dear Freud; nice to think of our French brothers sharing our sorrows! And your ample lady friend: her robot driver drove her car through a newsvendor’s stall – through stationary stationery, you almost might say – so that she had to beg a lift home from us, thus transforming her misfortune into your bonchance. …’
But the word ‘misfortune’ reminded him of his brother, Rainbow Birdlip, and he sank into silence, the loneliness returning on heavy Burgundian feet.
Ah yes, ten – even five – years ago, Birdlip Brothers had been one of the most respected imprints in London. And then … it had been just after he had seen the first four titles of the Prescience Library through the press – Rainbow had changed. Changed overnight! Now he was outdoor-farming near Maidstone, working in the fields with his hands like a blessed roman, entirely without cultural or financial interests.
The thought choked January Birdlip. That brilliant intellect lost to pig farming! Trying to take refuge in drunkenness, he began to sing again.
‘How the girls in July Used to kiss me and tie –’
But their limousine was slowing now, coming up to the outer Calais roundabout, where one road led into the city and the other onto the Channel Bridge. The robot driver pulled to a stop by the side of the road, where an all-night café armoured itself with glaring lights against the first approach of dawn. Fred Freud looked up.
‘Dash it, we’re here already, toots!’
‘Thank you for such a nice ride,’ said the brunette, shaking her anatomy into place, and opening the side door. ‘You made me very comfortable.’
‘Mademoiselle, allow me to buy you a coffee before we part company forever, and then I can write down your phone number. … Shan’t be five minutes, Jan.’ This last remark was thrown over Freud’s left shoulder as he blundered out after the girl.
He slammed the door reverberatingly. With one arm around the girl, who looked, Birdlip thought, blowsy in the bright lights, he disappeared into the café, where a roman awaited their orders.
‘Well! Well, I never!’ Birdlip exclaimed.
Really, Freud seemed to have no respect for seniority of age or position. For a heady moment, Birdlip thought of ordering the car to drive on. But beside the wheel sat Bucket and Hippo, silent because they were switched off, as most romen were during periods of long inactivity, and the sight of them motionless there intimidated Birdlip into a similar inertia.
Diverting his anger, he began to worry about the Homing Device decision. But there again, Freddie Freud had had his way over his senior partner. It shouldn’t be. … No, the question must be reopened directly Freud returned. Most firms had installed homing devices by now, and Freud would just have to bow to progress.
The minutes ticked by. Dawn began to nudge night apologetically in the ribs of cloud overhead. Fred Freud returned, waving the brunette a cheerful goodbye as he hopped into the car again.
‘Overblown figure,’ Birdlip said severely, to kill his partner’s enthusiasm.
‘Quite agree, quite agree,’ Freud agreed cheerfully, still fanning the air harder than a window cleaner as he protracted his farewells.
‘Overblown figure – and cheap behaviour.’
‘Quite agree, quite agree,’ Freud said again, renewing his exertions as the car drew off. With a last glance at the vanishing figure, he added reminiscently, ‘Still, the parts were better than the whore.’
They accelerated so fast around the inclined feed road to the Bridge that Bucket and Hippo rattled together.
‘I regret I shall have to reverse my previous decision on the homing device matter,’ said Birdlip, switching to attack before Freud could launch any more coarse remarks. ‘My nerves will not endure the sight of romen standing around nonfunctioning for hours when they are not needed. When we get back, I shall contact Rootes and ask them to fit the device into all members of our nonhuman staff.’
Freud’s reflexes, worn as they were by the stimulations of the previous few hours, skidded wildly in an attempt to meet this new line of attack.
‘Into all members – you mean you – but look, Jan – Jan, let’s discuss this matter – or rather let’s rediscuss it, because I understood it was all settled – when we are less tired. Eh? How’s that?’
‘I am not tired, nor do I wish to discuss it. I have an aversion to seeing our metal menials standing about lifeless for hours on end. They – well, to employ an archaism, they give me the creeps. We will have the new device installed and they can go – go home, get off the premises when not required.’
‘You realise that with some of the romen, the proofreaders, for instance, we never know when we are going to want them.’
‘Then, my dear Freud, then we employ the homing device and they return