Brian Aldiss - The Squire Quartet

‘Oh dear, I’m afraid that I am such a silly,’ sighs the smaller child, prettily. ‘Cos I thought that astrology was a science. Perhaps I’m guilty of Left Wing sympathies. Anyhow, I think I understand the picture quite well now. Only—’

‘Well, dear? Only what?’

‘Why does it all have to be so nasty?’ She opens her eyes wide in a winning way, causing dimples to form in her cheeks.

‘It’s about bloody power, isn’t it? And power is nasty, isn’t it? Cos someone always gets hurt, don’t they?’ She reinforces the lesson by swinging her parasol savagely against the younger child’s head, until the muslin is stained red and the little smiling face no longer recognizable. Blood covers children and cartoon alike.

Singapore, Spring 1977

The shooting in Singapore was finished; tomorrow, the unit would be flying on a Singapore Airlines jumbo jet back to the UK.

Grahame Ash and his team were taking it easy by the swimming pool of their hotel, or shopping in Orchard Road. Squire had hired a power boat which, like a taxi, came with a driver, a Chinese called Sun.

The boat cut through the waters of the harbour, skimming between ocean-going freighters in an exhilarating mingle of spray, sun, and shadow. Squire and the Sex Symbol, Laura Nye, laughed with enjoyment as the warm winds of speed fanned their cheeks. They roared past industrial islands. Ahead were the Roads, the glittering waterways which had brought wealth to Singapore, peppered with islands, many of them crowned with a ragged top-knot of palm trees.

Sun brought them to a small island, curving the power boat in so that a feather of water grew behind them and the craft touched silver sand broadside on. The two Europeans jumped out.

‘Oh, it’s gorgeous,’ Laura exclaimed. ‘Just gorgeous!’

‘Paradise. Shall we do a Gauguin and stay for ever?’

‘I can’t believe we’re flying home tomorrow. Let’s have a swim straight away.’

They had not got the beach entirely to themselves. A large group of Chinese was sitting by rocks some yards away, laughing and eating ice cream. In the other direction, a noisy crowd of Caucasians, men and women, were kicking a football about. Just off the beach, embowered in brightly flowering trees and shrubs, a beach café stood; the sound of its music drifted faintly down the beach. Frank Sinatra-type music.

Squire and Nye went behind a thicket of bamboos and slipped out of their clothes. A minute later, they were yielding to the embrace of the waters. More intensely than on land, they merged with the amniotic flow which pervades and unifies all life. In the cells of their bodies, surges of current corresponded with the waves that broke above their heads.

After the swim, they nestled together in a hollow in the sand. He pressed himself to her.

‘My tits are still a bit painful from the sunburn.’

‘I’ve got to see you when the series is over, Laura. Things aren’t just going to end. I need you too much. We’ll work out something.’

‘You know we won’t, Tom. There’s your wife and children, and I’ve got Peter. This is just an episode out of time. Don’t let’s spoil this precious day. Make love to me, go on.’

‘At least we’ve still got the Los Angeles trip ahead of us.’

He rubbed the sand from his hand on his chest and felt her welcoming vagina. Sighs of pleasure escaped them both.

‘Never mind a bit of sand. It’ll add to the pleasure.’

‘Oh, you luscious creature, I could fuck you for ever.’

He slid into her and they lay side by side, scarcely moving, mouths together, tongues linked. He swung a leg over her upper thighs for a better grip, and began to work, feeling sweat run in little channels between their arms and bodies. Flies tickled their burning skin. Little rivulets of sand trickled under their buttocks and shoulders.

They were moving powerfully when something struck Squire in the small of his back. He swung round. A black-and-white beach ball lay beside them.

‘Bugger!’ he said.

Laura sat up and grabbed for a towel just as a man with a stomach protruding from a Bermuda shirt ran up panting to reclaim the ball.

‘Sorry to disturb you,’ he said, laughing. He scooped up the ball, booting it down the beach and calling to his friends, ‘Look where you’re kicking, will you? You’re ballsing up other people’s romances.’

Squire and Laura looked at each other and laughed.

‘Australians,’ he said. The football party had moved nearer.

They were sitting up and had come apart. She held his juicy penis in her hand and gave it a few rubs, smiling down at it.

‘I’ll deal with this later. It was nice while it lasted, but that sports fan has broken me mood.’

He grabbed her suddenly, rolling her in the sand, giving her a playful bite in the crutch and coming up with his chin bearded with sand.

‘Come on, cover up all the delicious steaming flesh and I’ll buy you a drink.’

Holding hands, they trudged through the yielding sand to the café. On the tiled floor, shade and light lay tied together like smouldering twigs, as rattan screens overhead fended off the brilliant sunshine. They sat companionably together at the bar, and ordered drinks from the barman, a gin and Seven-Up for Laura, a Tiger for Squire.

The bar was unoccupied except for a bald man in shorts smoking a cigar and drinking lager. He scowled as he drank. The only other person present was a woman. The woman sat alone at a table by the bald man. Stripes of light and shade ran over her. She had dyed blonde hair and wore red checked slacks and a black bikini top from which plenty of puckered pink flesh bulged. From her attitude of complete boredom as she stared out at the sea it was apparent that she was married to the bald man. She smoked. Her smoke rose up in stripes and filtered through the rattan bars. Frank Sinatra on cassette sang ‘The Good Life’, with plenty of backing from Nelson Riddell.

The man at the bar leaned forward and pointed the hot end of his cigar at Squire.

‘I can know from your voice that you are not from Australia,’ he said.

‘True.’ To Laura, Squire said, ‘I saw a likely-looking Malay restaurant just two blocks from the hotel where we could have lunch. Then a siesta?’

‘I don’t believe that I could eat any lunch.’

The bald man said, ‘Maybe you can know from my voice that I am from Sydney. You from America, you two?’

‘Wrong guess, chum. England.’

The bald man was astonished. ‘England, eh? You don’t sound English, does he, Tinka?’

This last remark was addressed to the semi-blonde woman. She turned her head slightly, waved a slow hand by swivelling it on her wrist, but did not deign to answer.

‘What you do in a place like this?’ the bald man asked Squire. ‘You live here? Your girl – you English too, darling?’

‘Where are we having the party tonight, Tom?’

‘Grahame’s got an open-air place in mind which someone recommended to him. Jenny’s booked a table.’

‘Grahame’s an old sweetie pie.’

The bald man moved over and said, ‘Mind if I join you? Can I buy you some drinks? I always am glad to speak with English people. My sister has married an English man in the Air Force.’

Seeing that the man was not going to be put off, Squire and Laura turned their attention to him.

‘Were you born in Australia?’ Laura asked.

He groped in the pocket of his shirt, brought out a cigar case, took a card from it with clumsy fingers and offered it to them.

‘Is me,’ he said proudly, as they read ‘Andrej Joachimiak: Computers, Micro-Processors’. ‘Andrej Joachimiak. I and my firm make the only Australian computer in the world. No one else.’ Over his heavy mid-European accent a few flimsy Australian vowels had been laid.