Brian Aldiss - Life in the West

‘Yes, but you aren’t chic , darling,’ said Belinda affectionately, draping an arm round her husband’s shoulder. ‘You eat and drink too much to be chic. If all these strikes continue and we run out of food, that could be good for you. Now why don’t you get that gift we have for Tom — but fast — and then pour us all another drink?’

‘Don’t you long to go back to the States, with all this trouble in Europe?’ Séverine asked Belinda. ‘We had a strike on the Metro, and then when we arrive at Heathrow the baggage men are striking and messing up everything. Last time, it was the computer men. The excitement has been put back into travel with a vengeance… When Jacques and I spent our year in San Francisco, everything was so smooth and nice.’

‘England’s a very nice place for Americans, even when it takes on some aspects of a banana republic,’ Belinda said. ‘It still has civilized virtues you don’t find elsewhere, except maybe in France. I remember all that the country has suffered this century in two world wars, and how it has lost an empire — given it away in a fit of absent-mindedness, more like; that helps me remain patient with the economy. I just wish you’d speak to the Reds in the TUC who disrupt industry.’

‘Those poor men really only strike for a better wage. Wage rates in England are shockingly low.’

‘Well, I guess I’m just an imperialist at heart, Séverine. If I had my choice, I’d be reincarnated and marry Curzon.’

‘You have enough trouble managing me, darling, never mind India,’ Broadwell said consolingly. He started distributing drinks and passed his wife a Cinzano Rosso and Squire a vodka-on-the-rocks.

Squire was studying Séverine’s miniature painting. It showed part of the room, with Jacques sitting on the sofa with his feet on the arm. On his shoulder rested a gigantic parrot, with beak of stone and brilliant plumage.

D’Exiteuil came over to Squire’s side, grinning and smoothing his little beard. ‘She’s a talented painter, but that bird is slightly menacing, to my mind. Tom, you know why we’re here? Ron will publish a special selection from Intergraphic Studies, the best essays, and lots of illustrations. It could lead to publication of the magazine over here. The hope is that we’ll catch a little of the lustre emanating from your good works when they appear. We also hope to persuade you to write the introduction. Of course we will also be including your Humphrey Bogart article in the book. Is it a possibility?’

‘I should think so. If I can find something useful to say, and not merely write a vague endorsement. I feel written out of things to say at present — you know I’m just an amateur in this field.’

‘Not at all. I told Ron that it might be possible as a commercial venture to produce a limited edition especially for members of the SPA.’

‘Are you getting any further with arrangements for the conference you mentioned when I was with you in Paris?’

D’Exiteuil clutched his head. ‘My God, the trouble I am having! I am trying to get a grant from the International Universities Foundation, which exists mainly to bestow grants. Will they cooperate? No! They say the subject is not a subject. I think their secretary is mad, judging by his letters… But just before Christmas I had a communication from a Dottore Frenza, at the University of Ermalpa in Sicily. He’s a philosopher.’

‘Ermalpa! What do they know about future culture?’

‘No, no, the situation has possibilities,’ d’Exiteuil said, shaking his head sagaciously. ‘Ermalpa University has a Faculty of Iconographic Simulation, with a few bright young men like Enrico Pelli. They are determined to run a conference in September, just to put themselves on the international map, so we at IS may join in. I will send you details when anything tangible results. You will have to be there.’

‘Can you persuade people to go to Sicily?’ Broadwell asked, arriving with a brightly-wrapped package.

‘Anyone will go anywhere if you pay their air fare,’ d’Exiteuil said. ‘Ancient proverb of the nineteen-seventies.’

‘Present for you, Tom,’ Broadwell said, thrusting the package forward.

Squire unwrapped it. Inside the Christmas paper was a ten-inch 78 record, with Irene Taylor singing ‘Everything I Have is Yours’ on the Decca label. On the other side, she was singing ‘No One Loves Me Like That Dallas Man’.

‘Lovely, thanks very much, Ron. Taylor has a perfect period voice.’

‘Like to hear it now? I picked it up in Bristol market just before Christmas. I don’t think it’s been played.’

They were sitting round the fire peacefully, sipping drinks and listening to the Irene Taylor record. Elm logs crackled, drowning the surface hiss — it was apparent that the record was much beloved by a previous owner. Stereo made it sound as if the lady was singing in her shower.

Squire sat beside Séverine, basking in her delicious aroma while she continued to paint. Seville in summer — perhaps it was just the association of names. Oranges, sunlight, a bed for two in an attic.

The Broadwell living room was decorated in rather a florid taste, the perfect extension of Ron Broadwell himself. Three Piranesi Carceri were mounted with wide green mounts and framed in exuberant gilt. The wallpaper was green-and-gold stripe. At the rear of the room, sliding glass doors opened into an extensive conservatory, most of the work on which Ron had done himself, aided by a son; there, a collection of exotic finches fussed from bough to plastic bough. Beyond the birds, in a wintry garden, lay an oval swimming pool, floodlit — presumably more to impress than invite guests.

The Piranesis excepted, the pictures in the room were modern. Two nice Mike Wilks fantasy cities, an alarming Ian Pollock, an Ayrton minotaur, all framed in aluminium. They hung above a long bookcase filled mainly with Webb Broadwell books — Squire identified the spine of his own Cult and Culture; it was the book which had persuaded the despots of television to invest in ‘Frankenstein’. It and Against Barbarism were the only other books he had written or was likely to write. An Introduction for Jacques he could manage.

The fireplace was declamatory but certainly knew how to burn logs. The semi-pornographic nineteenth-century Japanese woodcut over the mantelpiece was not a good idea. On a side-table were silver-framed photographs of the children, mostly smiling, now grown up, and their children, mostly waving, and dogs, mostly begging, interspersed with little silver articles which must have had utility in one culture or another — say before the invention of side-tables. It would have been more fun for visitors to have a random collection of plastic mazes available; there were brilliant mazes and puzzles on the market now which had so far escaped serious comment. But that was not exactly the object of furnishings and bric-a-brac. They existed more to make the householder feel secure and the visitor insecure. Not that Ron and Belinda actively thought that way; they simply followed Vogue and Homes and Gardens , a rack of which stood behind the piano.

When they had played both sides of the record, Broadwell showed d’Exiteuil an advance copy of Frankenstein Among the Arts.

‘We are also doing a limited edition, five hundred copies, all signed, with one hundred extra plates, bound in full crushed blue morocco, in slip case. Sixty quid a time.’

‘All very elegant, Ron. How many examples of the ordinary edition do you publish?’

‘We have a first print run of sixty thousand, almost all already subscribed, and a reprint under way, and the book club have taken another fifty-five thousand. That’s how we managed to include so much colour and keep the price within bounds. Nice, isn’t it? Publication day, Friday, 3rd March.’