Brian Aldiss - Life in the West

As Squire drove towards the Broadwell house, he recited a poem aloud:

He had once been able to recite the whole poem; now parts were gone from memory. He had recited it long ago to a Serbian girl called Roša — who had laughed heartily — as they stood on the steps of the Avala memorial outside Belgrade, one midnight, drunk. He smiled at the recollection. When Squire was at Cambridge, Donne and Eliot had been the fashionable poets, and he had never lost his love of them. There were no poets like them.

The Broadwell mansion, ‘Felbrigg’, was visible from the road, sprawling tentatively behind its paddock and a white ranch fence. A tarmac drive with real old-fashioned street- lamps burning at each end led to the house. Lights blazed in the windows. As he drove up, he caught the twinkle of lanterns on a Christmas tree; it held promise of a pleasant evening ahead.

Both Ron and his wife Belinda came to the door to greet him. Ron was a large solid man with a cheerful florid face, a crop of shaggy dark hair tinged with white, and a predeliction for the good things of life. He appeared with a big cigar in his mouth. Belinda was a tall lady running unhurriedly to fat, a smiling woman with a miller’s face who, despite many years of marriage to Ron, still spoke with a slight Virginian accent. She wore a long black velvet gown with the air of one humorously aware she was doing something typical of her.

Belinda had previously been married to Ron’s partner in the publishing house of Webb Broadwell, but that marriage had lasted no more than a year. ‘Webb was great stuff as a publisher,’ she confided to Squire once. ‘But not so damned hot when it came to handling a shy virginal wife. I guess he performed better between bawds.’

They greeted Squire heartily, as he handed over to Belinda’s safe-keeping an enormous box of Swiss chocolates. In the large bright hall, the Christmas tree glittered. Ron’s dogs barked excitedly in a distant part of the house. The air was spiced with the flavour of good things.

Squire gave Belinda a big kiss. ‘Mmm, good old Virginny — I feel better already.’

‘Very pleased you could make it,’ Broadwell said, hanging up Squire’s coat. ‘All the Broadwell tribe cleared off the day after Boxing Day, having eaten us out of house and home. So this evening we have plenty of room for the Squire tribe. Teresa phoned me from Malta this morning, and she hopes to join us about nine.’

‘Fine. At least there’s no fog to delay flights.’ They stood in the hall, smiling at each other.

‘Teresa said Malta was pleasant,’ Belinda said. ‘We hope that you and she will get things together again this evening, Tom. If she can enjoy Malta, she can put up with you.’

‘New Year’s Eve — ideal time for New Year resolutions,’ Ron said. ‘I’ll get her to one side and tell her about all the royalties you’re going to earn.’

‘Forgive our tribal customs. It’s kind of you to put up with us and act as neutral ground.’

‘Oh, we’re not all that neutral,’ Belinda said.

‘Come on,’ Ron said, ushering Squire into the living room. ‘We can get in two good hours’ drinking before Teresa arrives.’

‘Don’t overdo the booze,’ his wife cautioned, adding to Squire, ‘Keep your eye on Ron. The doctor told him to cut down on those cigars, and on the whisky.’

‘I’m as fit as a fiddle, lass. Played a round of golf this morning, didn’t I?’

‘Just behave yourself, that’s all I ask. Tom, we have a couple of house guests, and I believe you already know each other. Come say hello.’

In the fireplace, a cheerful log fire burned. To one side of the fireplace sat a woman, painting. She was a petite dark-haired lady in her forties, neat, plump, magnificently groomed and manicured, with a gold ribbon in the back of her coiled hair. She wore a biscuit-coloured terylene lounging suit and amber rings on her fingers. She was painting a very small picture on a small sketching block, using acrylics from a tiny palette lying by her right hand. She used a brush as delicate as a grass snake’s tongue. As Squire entered the room, she smiled resignedly at her work and laid aside the sketchpad.

Her husband, sprawling opposite her on a chesterfield, was totally immersed in a newly published Webb Broadwell coffee-table book, entitled The Sower of the Systems , a collection of apocalyptic paintings through the ages, by Leslie Lippard-Milne. He wore a crumpled brown suit, with brown-and-yellow striped socks showing between trousers and slippers. Squire knew the couple well. The man was the editor of Intergraphic Studies , Jacques d’Exiteuil, whom Squire had last seen, with his wife Séverine, only a few months earlier in Paris.

Becoming aware of approaching bodies, d’Exiteuil jumped up abruptly, dropping the Lippard-Milne book on the chesterfield and beaming at Squire. For a small, thin man, he managed to convey a lot of stature. Squire shook his hand till d’Exiteuil’s coppery locks trembled.

‘You didn’t bring your son John along?’ d’Exiteuil enquired.

‘He was with you last time we met in London, if you recall. He impressed me with his knowledge of the music of the Genesis pop group.’

‘I saw him a few days before Christmas. This evening, he is seeing the old year out with Fred Cholera and the Pustules. They’re a bit more punk than Genesis. Tomorrow, he sees the New Year in with a demonstration outside a power plant.’

He laughed and crossed to hold and kiss Séverine d’Exiteuil — always a pleasurable experience. She smelt delicious, as ever.

‘Dear Séverine, you smell like an orchard!’

‘You are as always so conservative, Tommy,’ she said. She was one of the few women outside his family who addressed him with the diminutive. ‘Whatever are nuclear power stations for but to demonstrate outside?’

He pretended to look astonished. ‘I’ve never voted Conservative in my life, Séverine. Couldn’t bring myself to do so. In the sixties, that happy time, it was fashionable for everyone to be radical, whether they combined it with seriousness or frivolity, whether they worked for Apple or the Beeb. But Conservatism lacked chic.’

Séverine laughed; they liked to tease each other as a substitute for anything more earthy.

‘All the same, whatever you say…I’m sure that as a privileged landowner you are just an old Tory at heart!’

‘Yes, Séverine, if Ruskin was a Tory, if William Morris was a Tory, then I also am a Tory.’

She was silent for a moment, regarding him smilingly but absent-mindedly. In that pause, her husband said crisply, from his side of the hearthrug, ‘I’m not so surprised that you link yourself with the names of Morris and Ruskin, Tom, because there is something lordly about you. We’re products of our environment, and you’re owner of Pippet Hall. But, from my viewpoint, Morris and Ruskin are practically Tory. You remember Herbert Wells’s dismissal of them — in A Modern Utopia , I think — as Olympian and unworldly, “the irresponsible rich men of a shareholding type”. A good phrase.’

‘Don’t knock shareholding, Jacques,’ Belinda said. ‘It’s a responsible job.’

After a warning glance at her husband, who lapsed into his wine glass, Séverine remarked,’ Jacques and I have always been Communiste , as long as we have known each other. It was once the smart thing in Paris, thanks to de Beauvoir and Sartre. Now the trendy people opt for anarchy instead.’

‘Well, I’ve voted Tory all my life, and I certainly don’t intend to change now,’ Broadwell said, laughing. ‘This is a Tory country until publishing is nationalized, and I’m the Last of the Small Time Capitalists.’