Brian Aldiss - Life in the West

She made a gesture, perhaps thinking he missed her point.

‘Matilda Rowlinson is looking in every day, to see it’s all shipshape… How’s Nellie?’

Teresa smiled. ‘A bit of a nuisance in mother’s flat. The girls love her… Oh, I’m looking after the girls properly and feeding Nellie regularly, don’t worry, while you’re playing the great successful man. I shop at the corner supermarket and talk to mother and play cards with her and her friends and all that — not at all the life you imagine I’m leading, I’m sure, while you’re being feted as Guru Number One all over London.’

‘The English critics have been a bit hard on “Frankenstein Among the Arts”. Didn’t you read the reviews?’

‘You know I don’t read reviews.’

‘Teresa, you can’t be jealous of my limited success. It’ll all be over soon, forgotten. But it is a sort of culmination of my life. I’m uncertain myself of its value but I want to share it with you. I have been able to express and demonstrate elements of popular culture in perspective, in such a way that it gives pleasure and — well, perhaps hope to a lot of people.’

‘Ha! It hasn’t affected us that way, has it?’

‘As a nation we’ve become defeatist. I hope I have somehow made us that bit stronger. Let everyone see how much we have, things precious to our day, how much we have to lose — how we should value the beauty of which technology is capable, the richness of an expendable plastic cup or a match-box, the visual delight of a traffic jam at night…’

She walked over to the door, looked out on the landing, and closed it. ‘Grace is such an eavesdropper. You don’t have to lecture me. You treat me as if I was stupid, do you realize that? Ever since we’ve been married, you’ve been telling me things, things I just don’t want to know, things about your damned family, about art, Pippet Hall…’

He broke in. ‘Tess, dearest, please do not say that. We need a grand reconciliation — talk like that will reduce me to silence, utterly.’

‘I want your silence. I’m sick of your talk.’

He stood and stared at her. ‘If I’ve talked to you…I don’t lecture you. I — of course I talk to you, I’ve always wanted to share everything. Isn’t that the purpose of marriage?’

‘All this talk about your book and your television series… It’s not my thing, any more than your farm is. You address me as if I was one of your viewers. Oh, I can see how you think the series in some way squares you in your father’s eyes, eases that chip on your shoulder, makes you famous, as you discourse so cleverly about things you imagine he would have enjoyed. Really, at your age, it’s pathetic!’

‘Why pathetic? My father remains a strong influence. Why be ashamed of that? He’d understand that there is idealism still today, waiting to be freed — ’

‘I’m sorry, I think that’s all rubbish. You see yourself as some sort of knight of old, a one-man crusader — ’

‘But that’s not true — ’

‘Tilting against nostalgia, or received values, or — I don’t know, and I didn’t want this conversation anyway. They’re always your bloody conversations, not mine. Damn and blast the art of today. God, if your father only knew… Your mother was lucky, she died just in time to escape the mess we’re in.’ She shook her head wildly, so that her hair flew. ‘It’s too late, Tom, it’s too late. I don’t know. You’ve hurt me, I do know that much.’

He moved towards her. She moved away. A box of Silk Cut lay on Deirdre’s side of the bed. Squire slid a cigarette from the packet and lit it. He never smoked.

‘I’m trying to make amends, Tess. Just let me try. You know Laura is out of the picture.’

‘You’ll get cancer, smoking. Where did you catch that habit? I’ve warned Deirdre but she takes no notice of me. No, as a matter of fact it’s not Laura, it’s you. The way you are. Only three years ago, you were having a mad love affair with that dreadful art-historian woman, Sheila Lippard-Milne. I never told anyone about that, not even mother and father. That hurt me bitterly, but you didn’t care. How could I escape what I felt? How could I escape? And what am I supposed to do this time? If it’s not Sheila or Laura, it’ll be someone else. Am I supposed to be sorry for you because you won’t grow up? What’s the matter with you? No, don’t tell me, I know you’ll tell me. All I really want’s your silence from now on…’

‘You know that Sheila — ’

‘Let’s not hear her name.’ Teresa raised a hand in caution. ‘I don’t intend to go into all that again. Your bloody sister downstairs and your uncle think that you’re at the male menopause. Did you ever hear anything so silly? I defy you to find that malady in a medical dictionary! They don’t know about Sheila Lippard-Milne. I never told anyone about you and precious Sheila Lippard-Milne. How long’s this male menopause supposed to go on for, eh, how many years? As long as it suits you? Till we’re all in our graves? My nerves are ruined, do you wonder I sought refuge with the first likely man who came along? I had to build up my dented self-esteem. No, don’t say it — I know he turned out a rascal, but you can laugh, you can laugh, my moral judgement was at zero, I paid in blood for every drop of pleasure I had.’

‘Yes, people do, you know.’

Sighing, she went over to the window which opened on the front of the house. The lower part of the sash window had been pushed up to let in sea breezes, presumably in Deirdre’s desire to clear the house of its closed-up smell. Teresa leaned out with her forearms on the sill, as if she could not bear her husband’s proximity, and gazed towards the boat-filled harbour.

She was wearing a flimsy summer dress, low-cut round the shoulders. Squire had a good view of her shoulder-blades. From behind, she looked slender and youthful, almost thin, for her cramped attitude made the shoulder-blades project. His fancy saw her as a member of a mutated species, developing wings and about to fly away from him.

The tender bones, so functionally shaped, protruding under the flesh. The skin itself, clear and fair, roseate with a touch of the summer sun. The bumpy little tract of her backbone, leading down under the material of the dress, and there glimpsed in outline. The downy line of hairs following the track. The curve of her neck up into her dyed bright hair. At all these things Squire gazed during the silence, heavy with their frustration.

And said to himself, ‘Whatever arguments I put up, however I attempt to reason, however unreasonable she is, she will win. Because she has that beautiful body.’ Biology was always going to win in the end.

He walked round the room, and stubbed his cigarette out in Deirdre’s ashtray, hardly aware of what he was doing. Stuck into the side of Deirdre’s mirror, beside other treasures, was a card he had sent her from Tinjar Park in Sarawak, showing ancient supplicatory hands painted on a cave wall. He felt gratitude to his sister for caring enough to keep it.

‘Tess, I know how you must be distressed,’ he said to her back, moving unhappily behind her.

She brought her torso in from the window and slowly drew the sash down.

‘Depressed! You’re joking.’

‘I said distressed. I’m trying to tell you that I understand. I won’t say what I think about Jarvis, but I have bought him off and paid the debt to your Italian packaging firm. I’ve settled all the financial side of things. Now I want to look after you and see you happy again. We are too old for this sort of emotional jag.’

‘Oh, Tom,’ she said wearily, brushing a curl of hair from her eyes.’ You’re being superior again.’ She sat down on the foot of the bed, her back to him.