Brian Aldiss - Life in the West

‘All times in this realm of earth are troubled. Although it may seem to our eyes that the kinds of troubles vary, that we have to fight against various sorts of evil, that is only because our mortal lives are so short. Could we but look at matters with a wider scan, had we the vision of the Almighty, we would see that there is really only one sort of evil, that evil puts on many guises, yet remains itself, and that it is in us all. Patricia Squire worked all her life against evil…’

Limitations of intellect did not prevent the Reverend Rowlinson being a good vicar; indeed, perhaps they helped him. But what he said was only partly true, or only partly useful. For, given the brevity of life’s span to which he made reference (a snide but traditional way the Church had of making you depressed and therefore not so actively bad), one had to make ad hoc arrangements against evil; so it suited all and sundry to chop evil up into parcels and, by pretending it was divisible, remain able to divide and conquer it. Given a bit of luck.

For instance, there was the evil of ignorance, such as the young Tom Squire showed in his lack of sympathy for Hitler’s suffering Jews. That lack had been banished when he was in his teens and acquired knowledge. The dreadful revelation of Belsen and the other concentration camps, which almost coincided with the first flush of puberty, jarred him like the passing of a terrible express train. It had jarred him with knowledge. As an earthquake levels tall buildings, he felt whole edifices of ignorance fall within him. He saw the wickedness of the Nazi regime and — on a par with it if knowledge cannot be quantified, as old Rowlinson appeared to be claiming — his own wickedness. (Yet the wickedness lived even in its own ruins. How grateful he had been when he read Orwell’s words, ‘I could never find it in my heart to dislike Hitler.’ He wondered if all the British felt that way. Hadn’t they said, even at the sour end of the war, ‘We should have joined up with the Wehrmacht and smashed the Russians while we had the chance’… The things that were said, between individuals, between husband and wife, seemingly so transient, never forgotten… ‘I’ll be your little mother as well as your plump little wife…’)

As the sermon laboured on, Squire’s attention wandered. His younger brother Adrian sat on one side of him, Teresa on the other, in the family pews. In a niche on the wall just above them stood a bust in white marble of Matthew Squire, 1689-1758, one of the benefactors of the church. Anxious, in his nouveau riche state, to keep in with the Church as well as the local gentry, Matthew had endowed the church with a fine wooden pulpit, carved by William Kent, no less, probably from timber left over from the construction of the Hall.

Matthew’s bust showed a serious man — but who would not achieve seriousness whilst being carved in stone? The high forehead, the long nose, were echoed in a nearer, living, face: that of Adrian, whose gaze, fixed rigidly on the Rev. Rowlinson, was almost as stony as his ancestor’s.

Squire reflected that he probably spent more time thinking about the long-defunct Matthew than about his still-living brother. Although Adrian was rather a dull stick, that was a mistake; blood was thicker than marble.

Adrian was the only member of the family to subside into the civil service. He had been doing worthy and inscrutable things in Whitehall for a quarter of a century and, for most of that time, had owned a flat near the Fulham Road. Whatever his private delights and excitements, the only episode in Adrian’s life to stir the family had been when he went on a delegation to Bombay and returned with an Indian film actress on his arm, a lady by the name of Sushila.

That had been almost fifteen years ago. Well did Squire remember how he and Teresa had gone up to London to meet Sushila on Adrian’s invitation. In theory, Squire thoroughly approved of the match. He too had a taste for the exotic, but had never expected the same to manifest itself in his sober brother; perhaps Adrian’s infant imagining also had been stirred by the dark beauty of Rachel Normbaum.

Sushila was beautiful beyond imagining. Squire and Teresa both found themselves silenced before her elegance. ‘I wear saris here in London because it is expected of me,’ she said. ‘At my home, I am more comfortable in jeans.’

‘Have you visited London before?’ asked Teresa.

Her answer was a silvery laugh. ‘My family is pretty cosmopolitan, I’m glad to say.’

Squire had hardly been able to keep his eyes or hands off her, and had deeply envied his brother — an envy that Teresa had infallibly sensed. He remembered the terrible row after Adrian and Sushila were married, when he had acted as his brother’s best man. But the marriage was not to last. Perhaps Adrian was too set in his ways. A son was born to them but, within two years, the cosmopolitan Sushila was on a plane back to Bombay, with the child. Adrian had never spoken of her or the boy since in his brother’s hearing.

Since those exciting times, the profile had grown sharper, thinner, had acquired a moustache and spectacles with which to regard the changing world. Yet unhappily it seemed no more inclined to exchange confidences than the marble bust behind it.

The Rev. Rowlinson’s sermon came to an end, the congregation rose on frigid feet to unite in ‘Hark, the herald angels sing’.

After the service, all were cheerful. Everyone shook hands with Edward Rowlinson as he stood in his surplice, a tall and not undignified figure despite the loose false teeth, wishing everyone a Happy Christmas as they filed past him at the entrance. Purple-visaged Ray Bond — an Australian gentleman, some parishioners said — shouted out a ‘Merry Christmas’ before jumping into his yellow Porsche and belting off in the direction of the nearest whisky.

When the church was empty, the Rev. Rowlinson put on his blue raincoat and gloves. He and his wife and their grown-up daughter Matilda walked downhill with the Squire party to Pippet Hall. It was customary for them to eat their Christmas lunch at the Hall. The children, Ann, Jane, Grace, Douglas, and Tom, led the way, running and calling, keen to get back to their new toys and games, now that duty was done.

The hospitality offered the Rowlinsons was the last drip of a stream of Pippet Hall hospitality which had flowed over the centuries. The sheltering of the Normbaum family, though an act not without self-interest, had been in that good tradition; but taxes direct and indirect, and the winds of change, had dried it. All that was left was an impoverished squire offering a meal to an impoverished vicar. A turkey bone, a game of Consequences, and duty was fulfilled for another year.

The little Normbaums had soon shown themselves marvellous at games round the house. In no time, Rachel was talking a pretty variety of English, and Karl was hardly slower. Rachel was slender and had blue eyes and dark hair, a dashing, brilliant, affectionate child who became Tom’s first and unconsummated love. Oh, the delight of having her there, of coming back from school in the holidays and finding her awaiting him, long-legged, at Hartisham station (for in those days the old Great Eastern trains still ran). Those were the happy years, the years of sheltered childhood while the war played itself out below the horizon. And the end of the war — unwelcome in many ways, not least because suddenly the Normbaums were gone to Detroit in a new world, and Pippet Hall became empty and full of shadows, debt, dry rot, servants not returning, old order disappearing in shabbiness, damp, and tarnished silver. Then he had learnt — at the time of the Belsen revelations — that mother had taken in the refugees only to save the Hall being commandeered by the RAF for the duration.