Brian Aldiss - Life in the West

With surprising force, amounting almost to anger, he turned suddenly on his heel to look down at Squire, who sat in a worn cane chair. ‘So here you are, lurking in a seedy flat in Paddington. I don’t understand, Tom — this must be some brand of British behaviour that eludes me. What the hell goes on?’

‘It was so damned uncomfortable at the Travellers’. My room was half the size of this. It made sense to move here.’

Kaye tugged his moustache down over his mouth. ‘You know what I mean. You don’t belong here. This isn’t your thing. Is it the mid-life crisis, have you got a black woman stashed away in the jakuzzi, or are you in search of God?’

‘Come on, Marsh, there are other explanations for living in Paddington. And there’s nothing wrong with this flat. I’ve always imagined that if anyone goes looking for God they can find him easily — he’s only an image in the mind. Do you know, one of the most interesting places we went to while we were making the TV series was the Tin jar National Park in Sarawak. We visited a cave where there were some paintings made over forty centuries ago — you may remember it from the first episode, ‘Eternal Ephemera’. There was a whole wall covered with paintings of hands, hands facing palms outward, hundreds upon hundreds of them.’

‘I remember. You sent Deirdre a postcard of it. What about it?’

‘I often think of that wall. It may be the earliest human painting that survives. Those hands aren’t making supplications to God. In all religions, people making a supplication to God turn their palms either upwards, unconsciously indicating thereby that God resides in their skulls, in the uppermost part of their anatomy, or else inwards, thereby unconsciously acknowledging that he is an inward quality.

‘Those hands were extended outward, in supplication to other men. It’s a pity that throughout human history God has got in the way of that gesture. Even as I say it, I become aware that Rugorsky would perhaps relish the perception. I can’t get him out of my mind.’

After a moment’s thought, he asked,’ Do you believe in God when you’re doing one of your digs?’

‘Never. I believe in history and logical deduction. And any palms I saw outstretched to me in Greece, or on Milos, belonged to beggars.’

Silence came between them again. Squire looked at the shabby carpet, Kaye stared into his glass. At last, Kaye cleared his throat, a look of discomfort on his brown capacious face.

‘Well, er, I’d better tell you what I’m here about, Tom. I’m here in the thankless role of peacemaker.’

‘Thanks.’

‘It was June of last year that you and Teresa fell out, right? That’s fifteen months. A long time. Your friends feel that if the two of you don’t team up again soon, you’ll never make it. So we’ve agreed to get together and try to push. I couldn’t have some more whisky, could I?’

He stood up as Squire gestured to the bottle.

‘Switch the light on too, will you? It’s getting a bit dark. What makes you think I any longer want Teresa to come back?’

‘Cigarette?’

‘I’ve got my own.’ He reached into the open suitcase and fished out a half-empty packet of ‘Drina’ cigarettes. He lit one without offering the packet to Kaye, who smoked his own.

‘You’ve caught the habit? Those things’ll kill you, you know that? I’ve figured out that you do want Teresaback. Just one look at this apartment convinces me. I’ve heard of a hair-shirt economy but this is ridiculous. The famous Tom Squire dossing in some dump in Paddington, for Christ’s sake? The gesture is too ostentatious, too obvious. You’re punishing yourself, Tom, you’re displaying your sores.’

‘It’s cheap here. I can get my hair cut in the basement.’

‘Don’t be difficult. Things are difficult enough. Teresa wants to come back to you.’

‘That’s a decided policy change. Has her lover-boy deserted her?’

‘That’s what’s difficult. Yes. He has. And she’s broke. But that’s not her primary motivation for wanting a reunion.’

Squire smoked the Yugoslav cigarette and waited for Kaye to continue.

‘Look, Tom, I know that she doesn’t want to come back just because the Jarvis guy walked out on her. She loves you. You hurt her pride, that’s all, and she had to show how independent she can be.’

‘She’s always known how independent she can be.’

‘You know what I mean. Hell hath no fury and all that.’

‘Marsh. She was not scorned. I know I upset her with the Laura affair, but I never deliberately insulted her feelings. She then set out to make me feel as bad as possible. She succeeded.’

‘Shit, I’m no good at this. I’m going to put my foot in it. I told Deirdre that she should have talked to you, but she sent me instead.’

‘Oh, why’s that?’

‘Well, er, Deirdre’s round the corner in the pub, The Plumes, I think it is. She’s looking after Teresa. The plan is for us to go down and join them. Talk things over. Feel up to it?’

‘Deirdre’s keeping Teresa from making a fast exit, no doubt.’ He stood up and went to the window. Mr Ali Khan’s lights were on in the corner shop. ‘I will smoke this cigarette and in that time decide whether a) I will come down and speak to Teresa and b) I will accept her back. If the answer to b) is nyet, then plainly the answer to a) is nyet , since there’d be no point in seeing her.’

He stood looking out at the street. Kaye examined the toy Sicilian carts.

‘Think of the Athenians at Milos, Tom. “We have concluded from experience that it’s a law of nature to rule whatever one can.” Teresa is surrendering after her tiny revolt. You must reclaim her and Pippet Hall and the family as part of your domain, though I know it sounds chauvinistic. Rule what you can. That’s what you must do — and make her surrender as palatable as you can.’

Not turning round, Squire said remotely, ‘I am thinking of the Athenians at Milos. I am also thinking of Vasili in Moscow. They should be getting the first punches in on him about now.’ He lapsed into silence, smoking with folded arms.

Quiet lay in the room. From below came the faint sound of bazouki. Somewhere a man was shouting. Marshall Kaye sat tight and sipped his malt.

Finally, Squire turned and walked across the room to stub out the butt of his cigarette in an ashtray. He breathed the last lungful of smoke into the air, watching as its spirals moved across the stained ceiling.

‘Okay, Marsh,’ he said briskly, rubbing his palms against the seat of his slacks.’ I’ve come to an ideological decision regarding Teresa. Maybe we in the West make too much of our personal problems.’

As he spoke, screams and furious barking broke out below stairs.

‘Hang on, that’s Deirdre’s voice,’ Kaye said, running over to the door in alarm and throwing it open. Angry female voices rose from the dimness, punctuated by the shrill yaps of a dog.

‘You keek my dorg, I report you at the RSPCA!’

‘Is it a dog or a shark? It nearly bit my leg off!’

The two men hurried downstairs, bumping into the Iranian professor of metallurgy, who shuffled out of his room, clad in a yellow silk dressing-gown, to find out what the noise was about. On the ground floor, the woman of mysterious nationality was bundling her pug-dog out of the door; each, in its fashion, maintained a continuous complaint as they disappeared. Deirdre Kaye began to ascend the stairs, stumbling in the thick dust.

‘Marsh, that you? Tom? What is this place? Doesn’t it possess any lights? Gas lights? Candles? Where are you? Who was that dreadful creature with the captive coyote? Is she a denizen of this — ’ by now she was face-to-face with the Iranian professor of metallurgy — ‘ this multi-national lodging-house?’