Brian Aldiss - The Squire Quartet

The words took Squire by surprise. He sat down opposite his uncle.

‘Anger, disappointment, a trail of disaster,’ Willie said. ‘Sorry.’

‘Very well, Uncle, I am angry, I am disappointed. Laura gave me a great deal – qualities I don’t get elsewhere. I admit, I have admitted to Teresa, that I was in the wrong. I feel very bad about it. Yet Teresa still plays difficult, still will not come back. Do you know why not because, if so, I want to know too.’

Willie chewed his lower lip and looked embarrassed. ‘My dear Tom, Madge and I now naturally want you two youngsters back together again more than ever. You must understand that, and it’s more than sentiment. There’s the fate of the Hall and everything—’

‘I don’t wish to talk about the Hall. Answer my question, please. What is Teresa playing at?’

‘Don’t start bullying me. That won’t help, just because you’ve messed up your affairs.’

‘Give me a straight answer, then. Madge has just told me that Teresa’s business is virtually bankrupt, and that she and her partner are broke. All news to me – bad news. I didn’t even know she had a partner. Who is it? Who’s the partner?’

‘I thought you knew.’ Evasively.

‘Who is it? I’m asking you.’

‘Look, Tom, keep your voice down. Oughtn’t we—’

‘Who’s the partner, Uncle? Tell me. Not her mother?’

‘Vernon Jarvis, of course.’

‘Who’s Vernon Jarvis?’

‘You know who Vernon Jarvis is. You’ve met him. Teresa told me you’d met him.’

‘Jarvis? Christ, that little sod whose brother wanted to run in Moscow. Yes, he sneaked into the Hall once, one morning, shortly after I got back from Singapore. I bumped into him in the passage … Uncle, are you telling me that that fellow is screwing my wife? Is that what’s going on? Jarvis?’

Uncle Willie rose, put his pipe down and started shaking his head and rolling his eyes. ‘Tom, Tom, don’t get excited. You must already know all this. Why ask me? It’s none of my business, only what I’ve heard from Madge. Why pretend not to know? First you were away, then you went off and gave him a clear field.’

‘He has been screwing Teresa? He still is? That’s what she’s up to … God, I didn’t know. I never suspected – why should I?… Has that little bastard been in Malta with her? Oh, God, no … She was so bloody self-righteous, so bloody self-righteous about the way I carried on, spying on me with field-glasses, and all the while she was getting him up to the house. I can hardly believe it of her. Teresa. In our house, our rooms … God, I’d have killed them both, I swear, shot them like dogs, if I’d have caught them …’

He choked. A bottle of Bell’s whisky stood on Broadwell’s mahogany bookcase. Squire went over to it, poured a generous measure into his empty champagne glass, and drank it neat.

‘It’s too much. The husband’s always supposed to hear these things last. Why didn’t you warn me?’ His cheeks blazed red.

Uncle Willie was also flustered. ‘Damn it, I did try to warn you. In summer of last year, June or whenever it was you came up to my office in Norwich. And other times.’

Squire let out a long groan. ‘My guilt, I suppose; I remember – I believed you were warning me to watch my own behaviour. I thought you were laying on a few preachments. Why not simply say outright, “That little shit Jarvis is fucking your wife”? Then it might have got through to me.’

He stood calming himself, stretching his arms, gazing bitterly out at the darkness beyond the window-panes.

His uncle came behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘She doesn’t mean anything. She still loves you. She just needed comfort. Jarvis is what you’d call a temporary measure, I’m sure of that.’

Turning, Squire said, ‘So she doesn’t mean anything by it? A few fucks are neither here nor there, is that it? Well, I’d accept that theory, you see, I’d be bloody well prepared to accept that theory – but how come when I had a few fucks here and there she made my life such a misery? All that moral gush I had to wade through? And you damned well siding with her, you utter hypocrite, just because you’re planning to get your leg over her mother!’

‘Tom, Tom, I’m only saying—’

‘The bitch! There’s no excuse … God!’ He drank off the rest of his whisky and started pacing. ‘The promptness with which she must have got back at me. As if she was waiting for the excuse … You don’t have to be a male chauvinist to see through Women’s Lib and all that tripe. Biology takes care of that. There are biological and ontological differences in sexual behaviour between men and women which no cultural cosmetics can disguise. It’s a simple fact of existence that a man can father far more offspring than his mate can bear. A woman is limited in her potential for reproduction by her capacity to nurture her young – not to mention those long tedious months of gestation.’

‘But that’s—’

‘Throughout the history of the human species, males compete to fertilize the bloody females, and not vice versa. You may have observed as much yourself. Why else do men always look at women and women at themselves? We’ve got no instinctual investment in fidelity as a sex – we sow our seed whenever the opportunity arises. If it wasn’t so, the bloody rats would be strutting about in charge of the planet.’

‘Oh, calm down, Tom. She could be here any minute. She’s still your wife.’

‘Fucking well try telling her that!’

‘Don’t spoil New Year’s Eve! Think of these other people. I’m going. I’ve had enough of your Army language.’

Squire took to pacing again.

‘Take Teresa’s and my case. We married, we had children. We had four children. I suppose you remember Georgie, who died at the age of two – that was in 1956, of all miserable years – because Tess and I still do, if you don’t. We cared for them, educated them expensively – so that they could turn anarchist and bugger up the country and consort with the likes of Fred Cholera. All that represents a considerable existential investment on the part of this male!’ He struck his chest. ‘So I am under evolutionary pressure to protect myself against being cuckolded, and to reject other brats, fat devouring cuckoos, sired on my spouse by any passing male who fancies her, never mind some little shit whose brother plans to run the four hundred metres in Moscow.’

‘Don’t get worked up again. Where did I put my pipe?’

‘For these reasons, deep-seated, deep as artesian wells, the male has a far greater concern than the female in the fidelity of his mate. For these reasons, the male suffers from his partner’s infidelity more strongly than the female does. For these same reasons, the male often responds to external interference by shooting the unfaithful female and the offending interloper, if he can catch him. Aren’t most murders sexual murders? And I’ve bloody well been apologizing to my unfaithful female!’

In an attempt to mollify his nephew, Uncle Willie clasped Squire by his arms, and gazed at his dark face.

‘There now, no talk of shooting and killing people! You’re not in Yugoslavia now. It’s terrible to hear you carrying on like this at your age. I told you that renunciation was not good for the soul. You must forgive Tess – she wants to come back, despite everything.’

‘Take your hands away, Uncle. I’m not going to forgive her for your asking. Indeed, I’m not sure I can forgive her at all, after the way she went at me for a lesser offence.’

‘Well, dear boy, the same offence, the same offence. Be fair.’

‘I’ve told you why I think infidelity is a lesser offence in men. I don’t care what the libbers say – it’s subscribing to silly wishy-washy ideas like that, or opposing nuclear energy, or believing communism can solve human problems, which has got the country into its present rotten position. In any case, she’s now going to come running to me for money to bale her and her lover out of trouble, isn’t she?’