Brian Aldiss - Life in the West

The French couple smiled and shrugged and expressed their sympathies with Squire. ‘It happens all the while in France,’ Jacques said. ‘Maybe with stabbing in addition.’

Broadwell went to the window, drew back the curtain, and watched to see Jarvis drive off. Uncle Will and Mrs Davies stood by the fireplace, holding hands without speaking.

‘We’d better leave after all that,’ Willie said, glumly.

‘I never thought she would actually go with him,’ Squire said. He felt his lips pale and sat down. ‘I never thought to see that. She sided with him… I need a drink.’

Mrs Davies began to weep. ‘Take me away, please Willie… I never expected to hear a daughter of mine treated like that by her husband. We ought to go after them. Oh, oh, how awful everything is… Tom, you’re so cruel… Poor Teresa…’

‘I’ll get you a drink, Mrs Davies,’ Ron Broadwell said. ‘We all need one. Big ones, at that. And — Happy New Year, everyone, by the way!’

It was midnight. Distant bells began to peel.

It was midnight; Thursday, 14 September, was passing into history.

The lights in the corridors had dimmed or had been switched off. Francesca da Rimini and Paolo, their nudity and guilty love shrouded in decent shadow, stood like sentinels over the dark foyer of the hotel, staring towards the Via Milano. Down that thoroughfare, last Fiats were fleeing, travelling all the faster in their comparative solitude, like the remnants of a school offish escaping from a vast maw.

In the bar of the Grand Hotel Marittimo, lights still burned, the skilled waiters still waited, smiling and polite, pocketing their small tips. The tables were still encircled by conference delegates, most of them drinking and smoking, all of them talking.

Herman Fittich, buoyed by the success of his talk that evening, was laughing as he compared teaching experiences with members of the French delegation. Rugorsky was at another table, arguing with Morabito and some Italians, though turning every now and again to pat the arm of Maria Frenza, who sat next to him, smoking and smiling exclusively into the night air.

Dwight Dobell sat with Frenza at another table, discussing the vagaries of the American academic system. Squire was at the same table, half-listening; he had sat through many similar discussions in his time, yet the American academic system remained incomprehensible to him. Each conversation added a mite more incomprehensibility. He got up as if to go to the toilets, but turned instead to the lift, and travelled to the second floor. It might as well be bedtime.

The long melancholy corridors with their high arched ceilings were dim; every other light was off. A few trays lay uncollected outside doors. The silence was as thick as a blanket on a hot night. A vacuum cleaner, entangled in metres of its own cable, stood awaiting morning; its heavy fake streamlining suggested that it was a survivor from the regime of Mussolini; with its jutting black rubber prow, it even looked like Mussolini.

Before he reached the corner of the passage, Squire heard voices. A woman’s first, sharp, protesting. Then a man’s.

He turned the corner. The first door on the left was open. Light poured into the corridor from a bedside lamp.

A man bent over a woman. He was in trousers and shirtsleeves. His jacket had been flung down on the bed. He was holding the woman fairly gently and speaking persuasively, not in English. She had reached the door, and was leaning backwards, to get as far away as possible. She saw Squire.

At the same moment, he recognized d’Exiteuil and Ajdini. D’Exiteuil turned, poking his little beard over his shoulder, looking extremely displeased by the interruption. Ajdini waved enthusiastically.

‘Ah, Tom Squire! I must simply have a word with you. There is rather an abstract question needing to be resolved.’

She moved fast, eluding d’Exiteuil, turning deftly to wish him good-night, smiling, linking her arm with Squire’s, adjusting her coiffure, thanking d’Exiteuil for his kindness.

D’Exiteuil stood at his door, his brows gathered darkly, pulling at his cheek as he folded his arms across his chest.

‘Good-night, Jacques,’ Squire said.

Squire walked briskly along to his room, unlocked it, ushered Ajdini in, followed her, and locked the door behind them. He was laughing more openly than she, as he stood beside her. She was a tall lady. Colour had mounted into the normal pallor of her cheeks.

‘I see that look in your eye,’ she said, pushing him with extended arm, ‘I hope I just didn’t step from the frying pan into the fire.’

‘What a gorgeous voice you have, Selina, and how lovely you look when a little ruffled. Was Jacques going to rape you?’

‘Of course not. Jacques? He is harmless. I simply changed my mind, that’s all. I simply changed my mind. Now I’m going to bed and I hope that you will be an English gentleman and not present me with any difficulty.’

‘Don’t insult me with the English gentleman bit. Regard me as Serbian, just for tonight. I’ve got you here and I won’t let you go till morning.’

‘I’m not insulting you, I’m praising you, for heaven’s sake. You’re not another little Enrico Pelli, I know that. Now, I’ll have a drink with you while you calm down a bit, for friendship, then I will go to my room.’

‘Your room’s not lonely. I am. You promised me that you would sleep with me tonight. You must keep your promises. You’ve whetted my appetite, Selina.’

The fine bone features became finer, turning almost to porcelain. She commenced to prowl about the room, looking about her, as if bored by the conversation. He stood and watched her slender buttocks moving under her dress.

‘My belief in the miraculous doesn’t extend to quite that extent.’ She sighed. ‘Let me go, Tom. I don’t like to be your captive. This is boring. How’d you like to be a woman and go through this same scene so often? I was going through it only just now with Jacques, except that as yet you have not laid a finger on me. But that will come, eh?’ She looked at him with contempt, yet with a half-smile; there was a coquetry she seemingly could not suppress.

‘You must continually plant yourself in the same scene, mustn’t you, Selina? The role must give you a little titillation and pleasure, isn’t that so?’ He heard anger and banter and lust, spiced with a mite of sympathy, in his own voice.

She stopped pacing and faced him. ‘Give me a cigarette.’

‘Don’t smoke.’

‘It’s so late.’

‘You look fresh.’

‘I will not have any of your phoney psychiatry such as you gave me this morning. That was an insult, I consider. That Freudian stuff… That’s why I avoided you and would not eat dinner with you this evening, in case you wondered.’

‘I didn’t wonder. I guessed. But my remarks weren’t meant to irritate. I simply had a moment of perception regarding some of your troubles, or thought I did. I don’t want to pry, why should I? But if I can help I’d be glad to.’

‘Because you think you can get me into bed that way.’

He laughed. ‘Does it hold such fears for you that you dread it? It’s pleasant. Precious, if done for its own sweet sake, not as some sort of — bargain. Often exciting, sometimes consoling, occasionally — miraculous.’

She flushed. ‘Okay. That’s enough. I’m not a kid, you know. I can’t be talked into what I don’t wish to do. I’m not just a bloody body, you know.’

‘True.’ He pulled the door key out of his trouser pocket by its plastic label, walked over to the door, and opened it.

‘You’re free to go if you wish.’