Brian Aldiss - Remembrance Day

Ray, who had had to listen to his daughter’s arguments on the subject, was against the armaments trade; he said no more, recalling Jean’s caution earlier.

At the end of the meal, following coffee, the estate agent was already rising unsteadily from the table. At that juncture, Noel turned beaming to Ruby. Laying a hand on her arm, he said, ‘You and your husband must come and stay with me in my little eyrie for a few days. I could show you some of my treasures from the East, since these two’ – indicating his son and daughter-in-law – ‘aren’t much interested.’

Ray read a look of horror on Mike’s face at this summons and a look of bemused delight on Ruby’s. Before there was any chance of Ruby’s fatal acceptance, before he could stop himself, he leaned across the table and said, ‘Oh, I don’t think you’d like us at close quarters, Mr Linwood. You see – Ruby and I have no manners.’

The old man turned to him, thrusting his neck forward as if to make sure he was hearing correctly. ‘You’re not a barbarian, man, are you?’

‘Our table manners are very obnoxious,’ Ray continued. ‘And we’re dirty. I’m sorry to have to admit it, but we’re dirty. Ruby especially.’

‘Ray!’ she exclaimed, but he pressed on as excitement welled in him. The other guests, about to leave the room, turned to listen in fascination.

‘You see, a few months back we decided to become Muslims, so we’d never agree with your views as expressed this evening … It’s Mecca five times a day. We’re not fanatics – we just hate Christians.’ He rushed on. ‘And in my case – it’s shaming to admit this, Mr Linwood, but in my case it’s a medical problem – an intestinal incontinence. And if I forget to take my pills – help, help, an attack coming on! Goodness, oh – excuse me—’

And with that he rushed from the room, Ruby following.

Outside the house, he had collapsed over the car bonnet, helpless with mirth, while she clouted him about the head, calling him a drunken brute.

‘You stupid bloody liar!’ she yelled.

Thinking over that occasion now, Ray could not repress a smile. The tyrannical old man had steered clear of him since. Mike and Jean, too, had been a while before they saw the joke. After a short stand-off period, Jean had congratulated him on confounding her father-in-law.

Turning his back on Noel’s brooding portrait, Ray checked his watch, vexed that Mike had not put in an appearance.

Alf had returned to a piled bowl of cereal. The boy sat at a bare scrubbed pinewood table, doing major work with both elbows as he spooned the food into his mouth. Near to his hand stood a small radio, transmitting what Tebbutt assumed to be Radio One. Above its blare, Tebbutt asked the lad where his father was.

‘Upstairs, of course. Praying or something boring.’

‘Go and tell him I’m here, will you?’ As he spoke, he leaned forward almost unthinkingly to switch off the noisy radio.

‘Hey, leave that alone, bugger you!’ the boy yelled, with unexpected vigour, and snatched the instrument out of Tebbutt’s reach.

‘Well, bloody well go and tell your father I’m here and waiting for him.’

Taking a look at Tebbutt’s face, Alf slid down from his chair. He went off complaining, carrying cereal bowl and spoon with him. The dog followed, claws clicking on the bare flagstones. After thinking things over for a minute, contemplating the panties, inspecting the unwashed dishes piled in the sink, Tebbutt went to wait outside and stood and breathed in the morning air, gazing towards the roofs of Hartisham.

‘Muslims,’ he said aloud, and laughed. ‘It would make a change …’

Only a few minutes later, Michael Linwood appeared, struggling into a jacket, breathing hard, his eyebrows arched with effort.

‘I thought it was half-past eight,’ he said, whether by way of apology or explanation Tebbutt could not determine.

As they went round to the front of the house to the car, Tebbutt leading, he said, ‘Hop in, Mike, and I’ll try to make up for lost time.’

‘I know what a scorcher you are, Ray.’

Michael Linwood was ten years younger than Tebbutt. He was a small, broad-shouldered man, to whose evident strength was married an incongruous uncertainty of manner. In his well-tanned face, under a pair of furry dark eyebrows, was set a pair of round blue eyes, whose appearance of innocence was not entirely illusory.

He was dressed today in an old shiny suit, about which Tebbutt refrained from making comment.

‘It’s good of you to pick me up,’ Mike said. ‘Charity begins at home. I thought you were very rude to my father when you and Ruby last came round for supper. What did you mean by telling him you were a Muslim?’

‘Let’s not get into that. I was drunk. How’s the work going?’

Mike was silent before answering. ‘I dislike people who make fun of religion, Ray. Please don’t do it again, eh? My father was quite deceived by what you said. It was very hurtful to all concerned.’

‘For fuck’s sake!’ Ray exclaimed.

‘There’s another thing I object to,’ said Mike, eyebrows beginning to work, but he refrained from naming it. Instead, he said, ‘I’m at a spiritual turning point in my life, Ray. Light is dawning. We live in a wicked world … I’m cutting down on my work for Sir Thomas Squire at Pippet Hall. I’m going to work two days a week for the Fathers at the Abbey in Little Walsingham. They need reliable help, which I believe I’m in a position to provide.’

Tebbutt found it difficult to keep his attention on the road. ‘But Tom Squire pays well, over the odds? He’s a generous employer.’

‘Sir Thomas Squire is a very worldly man. Just because the market is difficult, he’s closing down part of the estate – not that that affects me … Doubtless you recall the words of the poet, “The world is too much with us, late and soon”. I prefer the reverential world of the Abbey to Squire’s privileged life.’

‘But will it pay, man?’

In a voice of utter calm, as if he were addressing an aspidistra, Linwood said, ‘You have saved me half a day’s work by playing the Good Samaritan on this journey, and don’t think I’m not grateful. There’s little enough gratitude in the world. We have been friends in adversity … There are considerations other than the material. At the Abbey, I shall clear up after the pilgrims and do whatever else I am called upon to do. I shall assist Father Herbert, who is getting a bit doddery, poor dear fellow. “Groundsman”: that will be my rank and station. “Groundsman”. I appreciate that. It’s a sign. “The man who looks after the ground”. To my ear it has a Biblical sound about it.’

‘So does “pauper”.’ He saw the round blue eyes upon him and regretted his hasty tongue, softening the remark by adding, ‘We’re both paupers, Mike, old lad. We have to earn a crust where we can. I’d have thought Pippet Hall was a good place to work. Better than Yarker’s lousy nursery.’

Tebbutt and Linwood had met at Pippet Hall, the big house in Hartisham, a few miles west of the Walsinghams. Both had been employed by Sir Thomas Squire, redecorating and restoring farm cottages on the estate which the Squires intended to let out to the holiday trade. Even then, he remembered, Mike had undertaken odd jobs without pay for the religious community in Little Walsingham.

As if catching his thoughts, Linwood added, ‘Of course, the salary isn’t much. I don’t know what we’ll do over the winter, but no doubt the Lord will provide. Day by day I become ever more aware of His goodness.’

The reluctant provider in the Linwood household, as far as the Tebbutts were aware, was Mike’s crusty old father, acting as combined saviour and bête noire.