Brian Aldiss - Report on Probability A

When the rain began that afternoon, the time by the hands of G’s clock was almost ten minutes to eight.

The rain slid quietly down from the clouds overhead, making its first noise when it hit the panes of the two windows of the wooden bungalow.

G was looking at a black-and-white reproduction of a painting hanging slightly above and to the right of a cupboard of unpainted wood. The reproduction was mounted and framed in a frame of varnished wood. The subject of the picture was a rural scene. Sheep grazed, hay stood in stooks, wheat ripened. In the foreground, a country lad, possibly a shepherd, wooed a girl. The girl looked at the country lad doubtfully. Flowers grew, apples lay by the girl’s skirt.

‘Well, those were the good old days when.… It’s not the same today when you can’t.… It strikes me.…’

As G sat looking at the picture, his mouth came slowly open. His gaze became unfocused.

Still the rain persisted. It ran slantingly down the panes; when G got up from where he was sitting in his wheelback chair and gazed through the panes, they made a knotted visibility of the corner of the house that was available to his eyes.

He could see only one window on this side of the house. It was small bow window with yellow or cream curtains, and it constituted the side or lesser window of a room which G knew to be Mr Mary’s bedroom, although he had never entered it.

Almost directly beneath the window, the corner of the house met the wall in which was set the brown side gate, forming an angle in which lay a dull and damp part of the garden. In the days when he had attempted to make something grow in this portion of the garden, G had been repeatedly unsuccessful. The stretch of lawn enclosed between the triangle composed of wall, house, and path grew less luxuriantly as it got nearer the house, so that it became as worn as a carpet from which all pile had been trodden by constant usage, although in fact nobody ever trod there. Against the wall of the house, the grass faded altogether, and was replaced by ferns. G could see the ferns now as he forced his gaze beyond the streaming windows. He knew they would be getting wet, but so strongly did the rain flow over the window that he could gain no ocular corroboration of this.

With the rain came the darkness. Darkness fell early these January afternoons. Because the panes in the two windows of the wooden bungalow rested insecurely in their sockets, owing to the crumbling of the putty that surrounded them, and also because they had not been cut to make an exact fit to begin with, the rain soon began to trickle inside the sills. With the thickening of the light, it became impossible to see whether the rain came down on one or both sides of the panes.

Other features in the one room of the bungalow were also becoming submerged. On the calendar, the two men in period dress remained visible after the precipice below them had faded. The couch at the far end of the room failed to retain its shape in G’s sight. The cupboard and the bamboo table merged into one ambiguous object. The paraffin lamp, burning with its transparent door split into four gleaming panels, assumed a new character entirely; the circular holes perforated in two sizes on its top cast a pattern of oval lights on the sloping roof overhead.

For a short while, as the room darkened into obscurity, it seemed by comparison that the two windows grew brighter and glowed with their own light; then they faded to become two patches in the dark, and the man was left to be in his own universe.

G was active; his right hand felt its way down the lapel and edge of his jacket until it reached the top button. The jacket was old. Its edge was ragged. The button too was ragged. It was made of leather. G remembered that it had once been sewn on by an uncle. He pushed it through the equivalent hole in the left side of his jacket. Then he rose from the chair, and felt for a galvanised bucket. Edging it forward, he pushed it into the corner of the room under a stain that looked like a coral. He returned to the wheelback chair.

After only the slightest interval, a clear metal noise sounded in the dark. An identical noise followed almost at once, and another, and another, and another, until a point came in the sequence when G’s idly attentive ear could detect a change in the tones of the notes. They continued by a very gradual degree to alter until the metallic sound was lost altogether; in its place was a continuing liquid plop , as the bucket filled with rain water.

On his seat G sat, his shoulder-blades pressed against the four remaining supports, his legs stretched out before him, and his fingers curled under the seat of the chair. The fingers of his left hand came in contact with an irregularity on the underside of the chair seat; he identified the irregularity as the date 1912, carved on the chair when it was made. He rubbed his fingers back and forth across the four digits.

‘Are the fish glad to be caught?’ he said quietly.

The rain continued steadily outside. A gust of wind came, sending the water drops scattering. Some minutes later, another gust came. Soon it was blowing steadily. The outermost twigs of an elder tree which grew behind the bungalow scraped across the back wall.

Even with the increased noise in the bungalow, the drip of rain into the bucket was clearly audible. The heaviness of the note finally reminded G that the bucket was almost full. He got up, went over to it, felt for its handle, straightened up with it and made his way carefully to the door. As he went, he heard the drips from the roof fall to the floor.

He tugged at the door. It came quickly open and a gust of wet air blew into his face. Descending onto the one wooden step, he held the bucket by top and bottom, swung it, and sent its contents flying out towards the grass.

The bulk of the house was dark, except for a section of it that included the small bow window of Mr Mary’s bedroom. This section was lit by a street light that burned on the other side of the brick wall in which stood the brown side gate. This light threw the shadow of the wall slantwise up the side of the house; it gleamed on the bits of broken glass embedded in the wall and now washed by the rain, casting their shadows also onto the house.

G threw a look at the house and retreated into the bungalow with the empty bucket. He slammed the door. The door key fell out of the lock and dropped to the floor.

Without hurry, G took the bucket back to the corner and stood it down there. The clear metallic noise began again at once in the room.

Going over to the cupboard, G opened one of its doors and felt inside for a candle and matches. He located them, and stuck the candle, which was already partly consumed, in the candlestick. He struck a match with difficulty, hearing it grind too softly against the damp side of the box, and then transferred its small flame to the black twist of the candle’s wick. When the candle burned properly, he left it where it was and collected the ingredients for a kettleful of tea. Into his small kettle he put a handful of leaves of tea from a green packet, adding to them a splash of milk from a tin of condensed milk that bore two punched holes in its top. Taking up a tin mug, he dipped it into the bucket filling it with rain water and poured this liquid into the kettle on top of the tea leaves and the condensed milk. He did this a second time, wiped the bottom of the kettle with a rag, and set it down on the paraffin stove. Then he blew out the candle, closed the cupboard, and returned to the wheelback chair, taking the tin mug with him.

Several sounds were distinguishable in the wooden room. The wind could be heard outside making several distinct noises in its course over different obstacles. The rain could be heard, making different vibrations, a light one on the window, a heavier drumming kind on the wooden sides of the bungalow, and a muffled kind on the asphalt of the roof overhead. The leak from the corner of the roof still contributed its noise into the bucket. The elder tree still raked the back of the bungalow with its twigs. To all these noises, another was later added. It was only a whisper of sound when G first detected it, but he had been anticipating it, and held it steadily in his attention until it grew stronger. Eventually it was loud. It cheered G.