Brian Aldiss - Somewhere East of Life

‘Don’t be superior. I hated it when you were superior. You used to treat me as if I was a child.’ She said he must have heard of Stuckmann Fabrics. Stuckmann fabrics and ceramics were famous world-wide. People worked for him in Scotland and even in Central Asia. Humbert, she did not mind saying it, was a genius. OK, so he was a bit older than her but he was a magical personality. Real genius. Loved colour. Always surrounded by admirers. Full to overflowing with occult knowledge which he beamed into his creations.

When her outpourings had ceased, he spoke again.

‘This guy’s rich, Steff? Is that what you’re saying?’

Stephanie brushed the envious question aside. She spoke of how a certain phase of the moon had led Humbert to design the pattern which crofters were now weaving for him in the Orkney islands.

He interrupted to pose the question which could no longer be postponed: as to whether he and Stephanie had children.

‘Of course not.’ Her tone was cold. ‘I have a son by Humbert. And you may recall I have fought all my life to be called by my proper name of Stephanie. Not “Steff”. No one calls my man “Humb”. He’d kill them if they did. And by the way I have reverted to my maiden name of Hillington. I’m Stephanie Hillington.’

And I don’t know you, Burnell thought. Nor do you wish to know me any more. He remarked on something else that must have changed: she had picked up an American accent. She gave him no answer.

Looking defiantly at him, she made him drop his gaze. With a mixture of compassion and spite, she said, ‘Poor old Roy! So much for the past. Maybe you’ll find you’re better without it, as I am. I never think of it. Life’s rewarding and I live right smack in the present day.’

She stood up as if to leave. In his confusion, he could think of no way to try to bridge the gulf between them.

‘This must be difficult for you, Stephanie. You must find this strange. Me, I mean. A crime has been committed against me. Apparently it happens. It’s a new sort of crime – people can always think up new ways to offend against decency … Tell me, when did we first meet?’

‘What a vile smell of paint. In the States, paint has no smell. What are they doing?’

‘When did we first meet?’

She spoke gently enough and gave him a kindly glance which transformed her face. ‘We met in your father’s offices, one day in April, nine years ago. I was being interviewed for a job I didn’t get. You took me out to lunch.’ She smiled. ‘You ordered champagne.’

‘And we were in love? We must have been. Please …’

The smile went. She was on her guard again. ‘Look, Roy, you’ve had other women since we split up. Laura tells me. You were a great chaser of women. But yes, if it satisfies your male pride, yes, we were in love. Quite a bit. It was fun while it lasted.’ Her laugh was uncertain. ‘I’ve got a car waiting outside.’

Keeping very still, he asked her how it had ended and what spoilt it. Even, more daringly, if the break had been his fault. She evaded the question, giving every impression of a woman about to take to her heels, saying it was foolish of her to have come. Perhaps she had been driven by … But she withheld the word ‘curiosity’. She should have mailed Burnell a photocopy of the divorce certificate. Her flight back to Los Angeles had been delayed. As he had probably heard, someone had put a bomb aboard one of the 777s flying on the LA–New York–London route and blown it clean out of the skies. No one had yet claimed responsibility, though a terrorist group in the Middle East was suspected. She regarded Europe as an unsafe place nowadays. It was terrible what was happening in the world.

She ran out of things to say, to stand there looking downcast, half turned away from him. A silence ensued in which Burnell felt he could have crossed the Gobi Desert.

He managed to make himself say, ‘But I’ve not remarried – I mean, as far as you know?’

Stephanie attempted to laugh at the idiocy of the question, then sighed. ‘You’re always travelling the globe on your World Heritage errands … You never wanted to go any place glamorous. You liked the tacky dumps where no one had heard of American Express. Well, you were always the self-contained type, didn’t like shopping. Life’s just fine for me in Santa Barbara. Lots of friends, lots of fun …’

‘Do you realize how self-centred you sound? Is that what spoilt things between us?’

‘You’re being superior again. I must go. I have to protect myself, don’t you understand that? The divorce …’ A shake of the head hardly disturbed her elegantly styled hair. ‘Of course I’m sorry about – you know, what’s happened to you, or I’d not be here, would I? I don’t mean to sound unkind but I don’t wish to know about you any more. What’s past is past.’

‘Oh, no, never!’

‘Yes, and for you especially. Start again, Roy.’ Now she was half laughing. ‘You keep sending me postcards from some of these dumps you go to, you know that?’

‘Postcards? What postcards?’

‘Sure. Draughty old churches some place or other. Town squares. I don’t need them. The kind of dumps you used to drag me into.’

‘You can’t beat a draughty old church.’ He forced a smile, which was not returned.

‘It happens I’ve a couple of your cards along in my purse.’ She placed her handbag on the window sill and began to rummage through it. As she did so, he thought, ‘She must care something for me if she takes these cards up to the Orkneys with her …’ He said nothing, conscious of his own heartbeat.

She produced a card, glancing at it before handing it over between two outstretched fingers, as if she suspected amnesia was catching.

She caught his eye as he took it. ‘Too bad. Just the one card. Arrived the morning I left home. The others got torn up, I guess.’

Steff didn’t have to say that, he told himself. Either she was protecting herself or being deliberately cruel – to hold me off? What if I grabbed her and kissed the bitch? No – I’m afraid to do so …

The postcard carried a colour picture of a church labelled as St Stephen’s Basilica. Something informed him that architecturally it was not a basilica.

He turned it over as she watched him intently. ‘You don’t recall mailing that?’

He recognized his own handwriting. The card was addressed to Stephanie Hillington in Santa Barbara. He had known. The memory had been stolen.

The postcard bore a Hungarian stamp. His message had been written only sixteen days before. It was brief. ‘Budapest. Brief visit here before returning to Frankfurt. Making notes for a lecture. As usual. Need some florid Hungarian architecture. Trust you’re well. Have met ghastly old friend here. Just going round to Antonescu’s clinic to do him a favour. Weather fine. Love, Roy.’

He jumped up and kissed Stephanie.

Stephanie found her way back to the car park and climbed into the Protean she had hired, startled to find how upset she felt. She sat grasping the steering wheel, unable to do anything. To her disgust, tears welled up in her and poured forth.

Why am I crying? What could have provoked it? My life has changed. I’ve grown away from him. I feel nothing for him any more. I live in an entirely different climate.

Of course he looked awful.

EMV must be a new thing in this country – we’re freer in LA. We’ve got everything. Everything. Humbert goes for it, says he’s lived a hundred lives, shooting EMV.

Yet she was angry and could not understand her own mood. While the divorce was pending, she had flown out to California, hired a camper, lived in Palm Beach with a stud of whom she soon tired. She hated the memory; perhaps it meant she had hated herself at the time. Sex may be the cure for many things but it is no cure for misery; not in my case. Oh, no, Steff – cease this soul-searching. You know it’s sick.