Brian Aldiss - Walcot

It makes me unbearably sad when you bring up that forgotten past again. What is the point of it, unless to make me miserable? Let the dead bury the dead.

Everything is recorded here, sorrowful or joyful .

But why? Why record?

Because it was enacted in the first place .

Then why was it all enacted, that everlasting artistry of circumstance?

‘I expect you’ll do reasonably well in your adult life, Smollett,’ your headmaster said on your final day at school.

‘It’s Dickens, Sir,’ you responded wittily, well aware of the head’s flimsy grasp of names.

He peered at you through his rimless glasses, encompassing his ginger moustache with his lower lip, making that curious sucking noise which was the subject of so many imitations. ‘So sorry, Dickens. I always confuse you with what’s-his-name. He’s also in the First Eleven. But you are bound to do quite well in the great world. Most of our boys do. I remember your father.’ He added, ‘I think.’

He shook your hand with a gentle resigned motion. You thought with some affection about this mild man when you were in the army and word came to you that your school had been evacuated to a place on the edge of Exmoor. You imagined the headmaster making his way across the quad in a heavy downpour. ‘Oh, is it raining, Bronte? I hadn’t noticed.’

You walked into town and caught a train home. Your trunk would arrive later by PLA. You were taking a break on your way to the Officers’ Training Unit in Catterick, Yorkshire. You found your mother sitting in her conservatory, enjoying tea and cigarettes with a friend. She affected to be surprised by your appearance.

‘How strange! And you’re in uniform, Stephen. Good job Sonia isn’t here. I was reliably informed that you were going to Catterick.’

‘I am going to Catterick, Mother. I’m only here overnight. I’ll get the nine-fifteen tomorrow morning, if that’s okay by you.’

‘It’s rather inconvenient. The maid has yet to get your bed ready. And she’s leaving next week, to work in a factory of some kind. We’ve been so busy.’

‘Where’s Sonia, Mother?’

‘I think you know Mrs Thompson?’ She indicated her friend, who was sitting tight, with a teacup poised halfway to her lips, her little finger pointing halfway to heaven. ‘You might say hello to her,’

‘Hello. Where did you say Sonia was, Mother?’

‘Sonia is at RADA. I’ll tell you about it later.’

‘And Valerie?’

‘Don’t try to be funny.’

You retreated to your room and lay down on the unmade bed. You tried to think why Sonia had left school and why she was at RADA, where she might learn how to act but would not learn anything about – well, about all the other subjects of which the world was full.

You suffered the customary dismay at the indifference of your parents. Later, at the evening meal, you learnt that Sonia had been in some kind of trouble at school and had thrown an inkwell at her maths teacher. She had asked to leave school, to learn to act instead. This wish had been granted, although your father grumbled at the expense.

‘I shall be leaving England soon, I expect,’ you said. ‘Soon as I get my pips.’

‘Is that wise?’ your father asked. He was still wearing an Aertex shirt.

‘What do you mean, “Is it wise”? There’s a war on, Pa. I’m going to fight for my sodding country. I have my OTC Certificate. What else am I supposed to do?’

‘But you wanted to go to university and become a geologist, dear,’ said your mother. ‘It’s silly to give all that up, isn’t it?’

You became slightly peevish. ‘It seems your pretence to Sonia that there’s no war going on has affected your thinking. We’ve got to fight the Germans, see? The bloody Third Reich. It’s a matter of priority.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t swear,’ Mary complained. ‘It’s so lower class.’

Ignoring her, ‘That’s all very well,’ said your father. ‘But you have enjoyed an expensive education. You’ll throw all that away in the army. The army’s no place for education.’

‘Not at all. I expect to become an officer.’

Your father pulled a lugubrious face. ‘Officers get shot, you know, old boy. If you must serve, why not serve in the ranks? You’d be safer there.’

‘I intend to become an officer, Father. I want to be able to shout at people.’ By now you were six feet two inches tall and well-developed for your age. Entirely ready to shout at people.

Martin made a gesture of exhaustion, with which you were familiar.

So it was a fine March day in the year 1940. I was being told of my mother’s psychoanalyst. Butter, sugar and bacon were already rationed, to Mary’s disgust. ‘We’re cutting down on food. We’re slimming. Your father’s getting too fat,’ she said angrily to Sonia, but already what was wearing thin was the pretence she had created for her daughter that there was no war.

Mary’s psychoanalyst was leaving the district and moving to Exeter for safety. Mary went to her for one final session. By this time, she was on informal terms with Wilhelmina Fischer.

‘I shall miss you, but I hardly think I need any more consultations,’ she said, stretching out the final word.

Wilhelmina Fischer sat by an empty grate. She had changed her name and wore pale Lyle stockings under her heavy linen skirt.

‘We all encounter obstacles in facing the realities of life,’ said Wilhelmina Fischer, removing her pince-nez to gesture widely with them. ‘But, après tout , realities are real and fantasies must not become real. The German peoples have fallen victim to an anti-Communist belief in their own powers, largely finding reinforcement in an Aryan myth of Götterdämmerung . It is a destructive myth which –’

‘We’re not like them, thank goodness,’ said Mary hastily.

‘But the British believe in the fantasy of white superiority, which may prove to be equally damaging.’ Wilhelmina shook her heavy head so that her heavy cheeks wobbled.

‘I can’t see how that applies in my case. It’s a generalization.’ Mary realized, as she rose and thrust her right arm into her coat sleeve, that she had never liked Wilhelmina Fischer. Wilhelmina Fischer had contributed considerably to the miseries of the last few years. She made one feel one was mentally disturbed.

The women shook hands and bid one another farewell on the doorstep of the clinic.

‘God speed,’ said Mary, feeling, directly she had pronounced the words, that they were inappropriate.

While Wilhelmina Fischer was moving towards Exeter and extinction, you marched along Park Street, Southampton, towards Number 19, where Uncle Bertie Wilberforce and his family lived. You hoped that your uncle would be away.

Before you presented yourself on your Aunt Violet’s doorstep, a young, chubby boy, of pink complexion, appeared from the back garden, round the side of the house, blowing a tiny silver trumpet of the kind to be found hanging off pre-war Christmas trees. The trumpet emitted a shrill note as the boy marched right up to you. ‘Being carefree,’ he said, addressing your Sam Browne, ‘Being carefree is a thing like a motto, but I don’t know what. I’m always being something. Not a motto, though. Ha ha ha.’

‘Hello, Dougie,’ you said. ‘Is your mother in?’

‘She’s in charge of the Virol. Mistress of Virol! Know what Virol looks like? Like the mess what Lillie Reader made in her nick-nacks when our form were in the gym, swinging on the handlebars. We all laughed except Lillie.’

That silly forgotten scene … As he was speaking, another figure emerged from the back garden, pushing aside the buds of a hazelnut tree. It was your Uncle Claude. He looked somewhat disconcerted to see you standing there, but covered his embarrassment quickly.