Brian Aldiss - Pale Shadow of Science

Our dress uniforms and dress hats went. Books went. I was left with only a World Classics Palgrave’s Golden Treasury and the copy of Astounding Science Fiction . Life in the army was full of abandoned things; we adopted an Urdu word for it, ‘pegdo.’ Our pegdoed kit, books, uniforms, musical instruments, had to be piled up at the door of the quartermaster’s stores.

We were informed that a truck would come immediately and we would be shipped back to the RTO at Howrah. I took action I could hardly believe myself to be doing; without telling the others, I stepped into the captain’s tent, saluted, and volunteered to go to Chungking.

‘Who are you to volunteer? You’re fresh out from England, haven’t even got your knees brown.’

‘I passed first class as a 19 and 22 set operator, sir. And can work a line instrument.’

‘I didn’t ask you that. I asked you what category you were. Are you A1?’

‘No, sir, I’m A2, sir. But that’s only because of my specs. I can see perfectly well with them on. I’ve had commando training, sir.’

‘A2s are no use to us. This is a real fighting division. Get out. Dismiss.’

My old dream of getting to China had triumphed over a sensible concern to stay with my mates. I read every word I could find on Chungking, the muddy, isolated much-bombed capital of Chiang Kai-shek. I longed for its Chinese squalor. Throughout my time in the East, I kept volunteering for China; Hong Kong was the nearest I got.

Before the three-tonner bumped us out of the compound, we had the mortification of seeing the captain and his thugs descend on our pegdoed treasures and begin to divvy them up.

Back to Tinsukia. There, hanging about the sidings waiting for a train, Monks and I were accosted by an ancient Indian and a small boy. The old man would sing to us, good British songs, sir, for only one rupee. As it happened, we had only two rupees in small change between us. We gave him half a rupee and he began to sing, accompanied by the small boy on a flute, a garbled version of ‘Tipperary.’

It’s a long long the Tipperarip,

It’s a way ago.

It’s a long long the Tipperarip,

To the Swedish, ah no.

Go try to pick a lilly fair

Well let’s scare …

Monks and I stood among the maze of lines and roared with laughter. We pressed more money on the old boy, forcing him to sing his song again. His words grew wilder. He was overjoyed by his success, bewildered by his reception. He went on singing until we had given him our last anna and his metre ran out. Long after, three years later in Sumatra, Monks and I could make each other laugh just by singing in a creaking nasal voice, ‘It’s a long long the Tipperarip.’

We never got back to Calcutta. At Gauhati, on the Bramaputra, we were caught by another RTO, and directed to the 2nd British Division. This entailed getting a train of a different gauge, heading eastwards. This time, there was no escaping our fate. We were heading for Dimapur, Kohima, and the Jap-infested fastnesses of Burma.

At Dimapur, we de-trained. We were not expected. We checked into a fearsome camp, and one or two of us were immediately collared for fatigues.

This consisted of climbing into the cargo hold of a Dakota aircraft and sitting among the stores, hanging on grimly as the plane took off, to fly low over the hills of Nagaland and drop supplies to British and Indian troops. When a flying type with a clipboard shouted ‘Now,’ our job was to boot supplies put of the open door of the aircraft as it banked over the target. Such was my first experience of flying.

The next morning, a lorry arrived at the camp and the nine of us climbed in. We were driven eighty miles along the famous Dimapur Road. The road climbed steadily, twisting and turning to follow the convolutions of the mountainside. Sunlight and shade swung about our heads. Parts of the road were still being built or rebuilt. Over the sheer drop, we could see in the valley below burnt out carcasses of trucks which had been carelessly driven.

We reached Milestone 81 rather pale and shaky, and were assigned officially to the British 2nd Division. Our sixteen-day journey was over. A journey into war lay ahead.

THIS IS A TRUE STORY, AND A GHOST STORY. YET I DON’T believe it myself.

What is a true story? It is a tale whose lies you cannot detect.

What is a ghost story? It is this – and with it comes entangled much of my life.

Earlier this year, I had the responsibility for carrying out the last wishes of my grandfather’s second wife. That is to say, of my step-grandmother whom I called (for simplicity and other reasons) my Aunt. She died in the spring, almost fifty years after my grandfather, at the age of ninety-five.

My Aunt Dorothy was the reason – or one of them, for life is never that simple – why our family broke up in a spectacular way. My grandfather was a strong-willed, self-made man, to whom his descendants owe a great debt. When he took a young second wife at the age of seventy, everyone was scandalized. In those days, in a country town in the mid-thirties, such a step was regarded as little short of treasonable. Particularly by a family which stood to lose financially by the union.

As a child, and as an adult, I loved my Aunt. She was among the best people I ever knew. I was glad to honour her wish to be laid to rest beside my grandfather’s bones, although to do that entailed a journey half across England to the dark dull heart of Norfolk.

Few people attended the funeral service. I spoke a short encomium over the grave. Then our little party climbed back into the cars to head for the only presentable hotel, where I was standing everyone lunch. I had reached that time in life, that position in the family, where it was taken for granted I would provide. How different from when I had lived as a boy in this miserable little town, when I was neglected and allowed to run wild.

On the way to the hotel, my wife dropped me by the council offices. The rest of the party went on their way while I went to pay the gravediggers’ fees.

Afterwards, on a whim, I walked to see the house where we had lived before we left the town in disgrace. The house stood down St Withburga Lane and was in fact called Withburga House. It faced across to the churchyard and to the church with its square tower.

There was the house still, much altered, covered with a thick stucco, and half the size I remembered it. It was now the HQ of the Brecklands District Council, or some such absurd name. The house and I confronted each other, to see how we had fared over forty years. Its fate was no worse than mine. We both survived, in our fashion.