Brian Aldiss - Remembrance Day

Tebbutt knocked quietly, starting the dog barking again. After an interval, the battered door was opened by Alf, smallest of the three Linwood boys. He let Tebbutt in without a word.

The scent of the house hit Tebbutt. He had tried to analyse it before when he and Ruby had been here. Damp dishrags, watercress, and woodlice, with perhaps a hint of the cheap perfume Jean used. Not unexciting.

The house, standing in an exposed position, had for years withstood the cold winds blowing in from the coast. About its interior was a feel of erosion; the draughts of winter, even when copper strips had been tacked round all the doors, had licked at corners, scoured floors, and whistled into every last nook with a flavour of salt.

The six-year-old had been sitting alone in the dark, antiquated kitchen, into which Tebbutt now followed him, looking round hopefully as he did so. The room, as previously, was in utter disarray. He spared a second glance only for a pair of panties hung up to dry on a line. Jean’s, no doubt of it. He thought of what they usually contained.

A heavy black retriever came bounding up, thrusting its blunt nose into Tebbutt’s crotch. ‘Down, Felonious,’ Tebbutt said, pushing the brute away. He refused to pronounce the animal’s real name, which was Thelonius. Too pretentious to be spoken.

And who had named the dog Thelonius? The same person who, on the insubstantial grounds that it would provide them with a good start in life, had insisted on the three boys being christened Alaric, Aldred, and Alfric, overwhelming the boys’ parents, presenting them with such a puzzle of nomenclature that they addressed their own sons as Aye, Bee and Alf respectively: none other than Mike’s father, Noel Roderick Linwood, retired arms dealer with connections in the Middle East.

The scantiness of the kitchen furnishing was emphasized by an oil painting of a younger Noel Roderick Linwood, hanging above the unlit grate. Bearded he stood, stern and bushy of eyebrow, in a double-breasted suit, regarding a palm tree and a much smaller mosque. He clutched a diagram of a fighter plane, an emblem of his profession. A heavy gold frame surrounded him.

This was the presiding spirit of St Giles House, old Noel – at once the saviour and ruination of his son Michael and Michael’s wife and their three boys. Battening on to his progeny, he had more than once saved them from destitution by selling off a painting or a Persian miniature.

Alf observed Tebbutt’s gaze on the portrait. ‘Wanna buy it? That’s Gramps.’

‘I know. I’ve met him.’

The lad snorted. ‘He’s mad. So’s Auntie April. Barking mad. Madness runs in our family. I expect to be round the twist myself before next term.’

‘You shouldn’t think things like that.’

The boy hauled his right leg up on his chair and bit his knee. ‘Do you think loonies are generally religious? Was Christ bonkers, for instance?’

Shortly after the Linwoods had acquired the old house, Noel Roderick Linwood had descended upon them. He was in transit, he said, seeking a house of his own. He would not be staying. He regretted the inconvenience. But if he could borrow the top floor for his treasures, that would be splendid. Couldn’t the boys sleep all together in the breakfast room? Two years later, old Noel, well into his cantankerous seventies, was still searching the county for a house for himself, still burdening Mike and Jean with his presence, his conversation, his complaints.

Ray had heard Jean’s monologues on this subject. Noel had gradually spread like a cancer through the house, taking over attics as well as top floor, and then, in a coup, a little study on the ground floor. He had even entertained old colleagues for days on end in his quarters. Jean had raged. Mike had withdrawn into his shell. Noel had sailed on, untroubled.

In an endeavour to persuade the old man to move, Mike and Jean had arranged a dinner for him the previous month; Ray and Ruby had been invited, together with a local estate agent. Jean had opened up the unused dining-room. Although the ploy had not worked and Noel stayed put in St Giles House, plenty of Bulgarian wine had been served.

Before the meal, Jean had taken Ray’s hand and whispered to him aside, ‘Do be charming to the old blighter. He can be so difficult.’

The old blighter had set himself out to enthral. Tucked into the open neck of Noel’s white flannel shirt was a cerise cravat. That and his untidy white hair gave him a theatrical air. He kissed the hands of the women guests.

With calculating eye, he surveyed the other people gathered round the oak table (since sold). He splashed his soup and grumbled about the beef and discountenanced Jean. But what he did mainly, in a rather argumentative way, frequently resting his left elbow on the table and waving his fork accusingly at Ruby, who sat next to him, or Ray who sat opposite him, was to dilate on his successful career as a military advisor to the Shah of Persia – a fine man by his account – before the disastrous turn of events which had ended in the expulsion of the Shah, leaving him to wander homeless on the face of the earth, while his country was taken over by a bunch of religious Muslim maniacs.

Noel swallowed down wine before repeating the last phrase in case someone had missed it. ‘Religious Muslim maniacs.

‘Not much fun for estate agents,’ he said, braying with laughter, gesturing at the local specimen of the breed.

Ray’s unease during this long discourse, which drove all other conversation from the table, was considerable. He knew little of Iran, and did not greatly like what he knew, but he understood that Noel Roderick Linwood was presenting a prejudiced view of events – the view in fact of a parasite, who had self-confessedly made a fortune selling arms to a despotic leader, at the expense of the leader’s people. That there had been a violent reaction against the Shah’s materialism was hardly surprising.

Since no one round the Linwood table had ever come within dreaming distance of the fortune Noel Linwood had accumulated, everyone listened to his tirade with varying degrees of respect or patience, some nodding or smiling in agreement. Not understanding the situation in Iran, they accepted his boasting for truth. No one disputed that the Ayatollah Khomeini, who had replaced the Shah, represented the greater of two evils. Noel’s claim that Muslim fundamentalism was a threat to the West met with no argument round the table. Instead, the men reached solemnly for their wine glasses. The wine came from the Suhindol region of Bulgaria; they knew no harm of it. The estate agent said he drank it by the crate at home.

Ruby appeared to be enjoying the glimpse of the world beyond Norfolk provided by Noel. To Ray’s mortification, she showed an unexpected understanding of Iran’s internal affairs. ‘They chop off people’s hands in Tehran,’ she said.

‘They amputate the hands of thieves,’ Noel Linwood elaborated, in a schoolmasterly tone, as if correcting a pupil. ‘At the wrist.’ He did not fail to demonstrate the action on himself, smiling fiercely at the company as he did so, showing his too-white teeth. ‘The work is done by a criminal élite who were, under the late Shah, respectable surgeons, many of them trained here in England, at Bart’s and elsewhere.’

Guests expressed their disgust and said it should not be allowed.

‘It’s barbaric!’ exclaimed Ruby, gazing admiringly at her neighbour’s wrist, which he still clutched as if in agony.

Prodding her under the table with his foot, Ray said, ‘Better to have a surgeon do it than a butcher.’

A dessert spoon was pointed across the table in his direction.

‘They’re butchers. You have to understand that, if you’re to understand the first principles of the present intolerable regime. Let me repeat – Muslim extremism, and there’s no other word for it, Muslim extremism has ruined many a good honest English businessman. I tell you, I transferred to Iraq. Saddam Hussein is a man who understands the West.’