Brian Aldiss - The Brightfount Diaries

Cross Street seemed to dream in the sun. In the church next door, someone was playing the organ superbly. With the sound and the sun and the books and Miss Ellis, life suddenly achieved a pattern, rich and satisfying – and how old the pattern was, though the organ pipes were but recently installed and the books fresh from their authors’ hearts.

Or are books written mainly from the head?

Anyhow a feeling of tranquillity permeated the air. As we lolled on the counter, Dave recounted his most exciting moment in a bookshop. The war was on, and he was alone in shop with a nervous evacuee woman who came to work afternoons only, name of Flossy. The time for closing was drawing near; there were no customers within miles.

It was a soaking wet November night; out of the blackout came a wild-looking giant who commenced to prowl up and down the shelves. He wore no raincoat and his suit was saturated, but he paid no heed, merely dashing water out of his hair. Totally ignoring the two behind the counter, he marched round the shop like a being demented.

Flossy was alarmed. Did Dave think he had escaped from anywhere? Dave said nonsense; but the big man was certainly behaving queerly, leaping from section to section, pulling out a book here and a book there. Some he crammed back on the shelves, some – almost without glancing at them – he formed into a pile on the floor.

‘See what sort of stuff he’s going to buy,’ Flossy hissed; she was all for phoning the Home Guard. When the odd man’s back was turned, Dave sneaked over and glanced at the top book which had been selected. Its title made his hair stand on end: The Criminal Responsibility of Lunatics .

He had just informed Flossy of this when there was a power failure. All the lights went out. Dave was nonplussed, but not Flossy; she started to scream. Fortunately, the electricity reappeared in a minute. The stranger was gone.

Miss Ellis, who had been listening raptly, breathed, ‘Had he stolen any books?’

‘Of course not,’ Dave said. ‘That dream Flossy must have terrified him. He ran out in a panic!’

FRIDAY

Postcards arrived from Gudgeon, who spends his precious fortnights fishing in Norfolk. He sent me one this year for the first time – makes me feel quite important member of staff! Mr B. and Rexine got sober views of Lowestoft, Dave and I got broad behinds and red noses.

Gudgeon being away, Dave has to do the Clique , a duty conferred on him by Mr B. as if it was an honour. Perhaps it is, but this is difficult to determine from Dave’s demeanour.

The Clique is one of the instits. of the book trade. Every week, at a thousand bookshops scattered over the British Isles, people pop in and ask for books which are not in stock. Not only are they not in stock, they are frequently out of print, often are completely unheard of, and are entirely fictitious. The only method of obtaining these phantoms is to advertise for them in the Clique . To the non-bookselling eye, Clique has little to attract: it contains over a hundred pages blackly printed in double columns. These two hundred odd columns consist of authors and titles required by the scattered and hopeful booksellers. This means some nineteen thousand common or scarce books in all, and all ordered! There is a fortune waiting for anyone who could supply them all. But in a week’s issue we rarely report more than a dozen titles, and rarely get answers to all our requests.

All the jokes in Clique (and there are few) are accidents, and not very funny. To see someone advertising for Henry James: The Golden Bowel , is amusing only after thirty pages of dull and correctly printed titles.

SATURDAY

Work.

Poor old Peggy does very well for a beginner really: but today Edith discovered she has been entering everything up wrong in the day-book. Rexine amazingly patient – if Dave or I had done anything like that we should have been hanging by now from the sign over the entrance.

SUNDAY

Over to Graves St Giles. House in slightly better order.

Uncle very quiet during lunch, vanished afterwards without drinking his coffee. Aunt Anne looked very depressed, so asked her when we were washing up if I could do anything.

She shook her head and said, ‘He’s getting so eccentric .’

‘Is it because Derek and Myra are coming home next week?’

‘No – only indirectly.’

She looked as if she might have said something else, but at that moment I happened to let go of a plate, which changed the subject. Before taking her usual rest, she had a sherry, a bad sign.

Went for rather aimless walk hoping perhaps I might see Julie Howells, returned to find Uncle still away and Aunt in orchard, slashing vaguely at some nettles with a sickle. She looked up and began speaking before I could so much as greet her.

‘There’s something I ought to tell you, Peter,’ she said. ‘I think you ought to know, although we’ve always kept it even from your mother and father. Come and sit in the loggia.’

Obeyed, thoroughly alarmed.

‘You know D. H. Lawrence had scores of collaborators?’ she began.

‘Yes,’ I said, not committing self.

‘Well, he had anyway.’ Long silence. ‘You know your uncle is a literary character?’

‘I know he’s known Mr Brightfount a long time.’

‘My dear boy, your uncle used to be a reviewer.’

Said I had not heard this before.

‘I am afraid your mother and father have never been very booky people … However, that’s nothing against them. Mr Brightfount has never told you anything of this?’

Forced to ask Of What?

‘That your uncle once collaborated with D. H. Lawrence?’

At last the bomb was dropped! Of course was wildly excited by news, although furious to think of years wasted without knowing of this. What would Mrs Callow say when I told her?

‘Sit down and don’t behave so childishly …’

Begged her to tell me all about it, how it had happened, what they had written.

‘It was early in 1922,’ Aunt said, ‘and your uncle reviewed Aaron’s Rod in the local paper — it used to run a literary column once a fortnight until the old editor died. About a week later, Lawrence appeared at Newspaper House and asked to see your uncle.’

‘How marvellous! Had Uncle given it a good review?’

‘Far from it. We were living in the little house at Lower Wickham then. Lawrence arrived in time for tea.’

Seemed to me to be most wonderful thing I had ever listened to! Asked if they fought like dogs.

‘Not at all. He stayed eleven days. I did not care for him – we had only been married a little while – your uncle and I, that is. You could hardly tell at times that he was in the house – Lawrence, I mean.’

Asked what they wrote.

‘Oh, nothing that was ever published , of course. They were working on an idea that was going to be called ‘The Gypsy and the Virgin Kangaroo’, but it all fell through, and afterwards Lawrence made two other books out of it.’

Asked why on earth Uncle and Aunt had been so quiet about all this.

‘Well, it was not long after that Lawrence published Lady Chatterley’s Lover , and your uncle had always been well thought of locally, so …’

Uncle appeared at that instant through the side gate, bearing in his arms an enormous bundle of bulrushes, so that I never heard what effect Lawrence’s visit had upon his eccentricity.

Write this all carefully down now not just because it is the only important thing which has ever happened in our family, but because it is valuable scrap of history in its own right. Can’t think why Uncle did not write book on Lawrence; lots of other people did.