Brian Aldiss - The Twinkling of an Eye

BRIAN ALDISS

Or

My Life as an Englishman

Harper Voyager

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

This ebook first published in Great Britain by Harper Voyager in 2015

Copyright © Brian Aldiss 2015

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2015

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com (glasses on books); Mayang Murni Adnin (wood texture)

Brian Aldiss asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 978-0-00-748258-0

Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN: 978-0-00-748259-7

Version: 2015-07-01

If we apply to authors themselves for an account of their state, it will appear very little to deserve envy; for they have in all ages been addicted to complaint…Few have left their names to posterity, without some appeal to future candour from the perverseness and malice of their own times. I have, nevertheless, been often inclined to doubt, whether the authors, however querulous, are in reality more miserable than their fellow mortals.

Samuel Johnson:

The Adventurer, No. 138

It was on 15 November, 1990, in the gloom of winter, as I sat in the car with my wife, a tape of old Jugoslav folk music playing, that I beheld the town where I was born, much changed, and decided to begin the toils that would result in my creature, my book.

The story of my life – to me so individual, yet objectively so commonplace! Myself now subject to decay, I have witnessed the decay of countries, empires, and ideologies; to counter-balance which, I have enjoyed the growth of my own family and survived to see the continuation of my line…

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

BOOK ONE: Necessitations

Chapter 1: The Voyage

Chapter 2: The West Country

Chapter 3: The School

Chapter 4: The Old Business

Chapter 5: The Small Town

Chapter 6: The Parents

Chapter 7: The Exile

Chapter 8: The Decision

Chapter 9: The Refuge

Chapter 10: The Transcendence

Chapter 11: The Ghost

Chapter 12: The Enchanted Zone

Chapter 13: The Advance

Chapter 14: The Forgotten Army

Chapter 15: The Bomb

Chapter 16: The Renaissance

BOOK TWO: Permissibles

Chapter 17: The Funeral

Chapter 18: The Homeless

Chapter 19: The Jugs

Chapter 20: The Sixties

Chapter 21: The Writer

Chapter 22: The Future

Chapter 23: At Large and Leisure

Chapter 24: The Global Dance

Chapter 25: The Sicilian Yacht

Chapter 26: The Wilderness

BOOK THREE: Ascent

Chapter 27: The Fog

Chapter 28: The Secret Inscriptions

Chapter 29: The Two Suns

Chapter 30: The Hill

Chapter 31: The Years

Chapter 32: The Black Desert

Envoi

Picture Section

About the Author

Also by Brian Aldiss

About the Publisher

Our anchor has been plucked out of the sand and gravel of Old England. I shall have no connection with my native soil for three, or it may be four or five years. I own that even with the prospect of interesting and advantageous employment before me it is a solemn thought.

William Golding

Rites of Passage

‘Where the hell are they taking us?’ It was a good question.

No one could answer. The troop train wound its slow way northwards through England. The troops, crowded close in every compartment, set up a clatter as they divested themselves of their FSMOs (Field Service Marching Orders), their rifles, their steel helmets, their kitbags. Then silence fell. Some men read whatever was to hand. Some stared moodily out of the window. In the manner of troops everywhere, most men, when not being ordered about, slept. They had been up before the July dawn and parading by sunrise.

Nobody knew where they were going – ‘not even the driver,’ said one cynic. ‘The driver has sealed orders, regarding his destination, labelled NOT TO BE OPENED TILL ARRIVAL.’

The young soldiers, Scottish, Irish, English and Welsh, were dressed in drab khaki uniform. Although they had been trained not to feel – in the manner of soldiers through the ages – the high spirits of youth showed through: the wakeful ones smoked and joked. Nevertheless, knowledge that they were going abroad to fight induced a certain seriousness. When the round of jokes had died and the stubs of their Players and Woodbines had been stamped out, they seized on the opportunity to put their booted feet up. It would be a long journey.

Reveille had sounded in Britannia Barracks at four thirty. By the time it was light, platoons of newly trained soldiers were marching down to Norwich Thorpe Station. The ring of their steel-tipped boots echoed in empty streets. They piled into the waiting train, goaded on like cattle by their sergeants.

When the train pulled out of the station, wartime security ensured that it was for a rendezvous unknown. Also unknown to the men, impervious even to their imaginations, was how the operation in which they were involved was mirrored by another more sinister operation, taking place even then on the mainland of Europe. In the dawn light of many European cities, cattle trucks standing in railway sidings were being filled with Jews, men, women and children. Shrouded in secrecy, German cattle trains were pulling out towards destinations with names then unknown to the outside world, Auschwitz, Belsen, Treblinka, Sobibor.

Some time during that long English day, the troop train drew into Lime Street station in Liverpool. More troops were crammed aboard. The train continued its sluggish journey northwards, crossing into Scotland. Towards the end of the afternoon, it wound through the poor suburbs and peeling tenements of Glasgow, crawled at walking pace as if exhausted by its journey.

Here citizens turned out to wave and cheer and toss buns and ciggies to the troops. Improvised banners hung from slum windows, saying GOOD LUCK LADS and similar encouragements. Women waved Union Jacks. Bright of eye, the troops jostled at the train windows, waving back. No one on that train would ever forget those warm Scottish hearts.

At Greenock docks, security gates opened, to close behind the train. The train halted with a whistle of expiring steam. With a great bustle and kicking of everything in sight, the men about to leave Britain de-trained. Sergeants gave their traditional cries of ‘Get fell in!’ The troops stood in ranks, rifle on one shoulder, kitbag on the other, now isolated from civilian life.