Читать книгу Comfort Zone - Brian Aldiss - Страница 8

Justin scowled at the message in puzzlement. ‘She’s gone? Left the village? Why so sudden? Is it a question of rent?’

Maude shook her head. ‘Has she just run off? Or was she abducted and forced to write this note? The more I think about it, the more worried I become.’

The phone rang. Justin picked it up.

‘Can I speak to Mr Haddock, please?’

‘Justin Haydock speaking, but I’m not in a buying mood. What do you want?’ He preferred the name Haydock, which was what he always used on his TV scripts. And not only there. Since his boyhood days, he had hated being called after a fish.

‘So sorry, Mr Haydock. We are not trying to sell you anything. We just happen to be in your area. We wondered if we could offer you a free modern-design kitchen. It comes—’

‘Sorry, no, I do not want a free kitchen. Bugger off!’ He put the phone down.

Maude looked enquiringly at him. ‘Should we call the police?’ she asked.

‘It’s probably perfectly innocent. Maybe she quarrelled with Deirdre Fitzgerald – she wouldn’t be the first to do so. Should we go and see the Fitzgeralds? They must know something about this. The girl didn’t even sign her name.’

‘I still think we should phone the police. She was not the sort of girl simply to disappear.’

‘You say that, but she has simply disappeared. Let’s go and see the Fitzgeralds first, then if there’s no joy we’ll phone the police. If they haven’t done so themselves.’

So they went together down Ivy Lane and used the formidable iron knocker on the front door of Righteous House. After a long pause, Guy Fitzgerald opened the door a little way. He nodded, with no change of facial expression. ‘Might we come in and have a word with you, Guy?’ said Justin.

‘What about?’

‘About the young woman who was staying in your summerhouse.’

‘She’s taken off – done a flit.’ He had a wheeze in his throat.

‘Precisely. That’s what we need to talk about.’

Seemingly with reluctance, Guy opened the door wider, and with a gesture invited them in. He was wearing some kind of green knitted waistcoat under an old jacket with brass buttons. Maude and Justin came into a house of gloom, where heavily framed engravings hung on walls covered with a heavy green wallpaper selected for its funereal qualities. They followed Guy’s bent back into a sitting room at the rear of the house, where most of the space was taken up by a table and a number of chairs upholstered with a material of a green similar both to the wallpaper and Guy’s waistcoat.

In one of these chairs sat Deirdre, close to an empty fireplace. Deirdre Fitzgerald appeared to be dressed in a number of garments, among which a beige wool shawl predominated. There was also a harsh-looking skirt, possibly woven by a long-dead Fitzgerald, which hung down to meet Deirdre’s button-up black shoes. They underwent the routines of greeting, at the end of which Deirdre said brightly, ‘I expect you would like some sherry.’ She had a small plump face with a sharp down-pointing nose which made her thin mouth almost invisible. Whereas her husband had clearly descended from a rather sturdy ape, Deirdre’s ancestry appeared to be more on the flightless bird line.

‘No, thanks,’ said Justin. He never drank sherry.

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Maude. She sat down on the nearest chair to look about her, smiling vaguely, in the manner of one who enjoyed green. Neither of the Fitzgeralds made any move towards a distant sherry bottle, let alone considering uncorking it. Guy was leaning against the wall by the door, his arms folded, mainly staring at the floor.

‘I see you have noticed the portrait of my mother,’ said Deirdre, nodding and smiling towards the oil hanging prominently above the fireplace, as if the woman it depicted was still alive. ‘You will notice she bears a strong resemblance to Lily Langtry, the Edwardian beauty. Everyone remarked on the resemblance. She went on a cruise to the Norwegian fjords once and was applauded all the way.’

‘The Haddocks have come about Om What’s-Her-Name, dear,’ said Guy, prompting her.

‘It’s a shame they never met my mother,’ said Deirdre, smiling forgivingly at Justin. ‘At one time she was notorious for her affair with Solly Joel, the South African millionaire. He gave her an invaluable diamond which I could show you. We Hawkes were of aristocratic descent, a little haughty, I’ll give you that, but fine people.’ She repeated the phrase for reassurance. ‘Fine people. Numbering among us an admiral and not a few poets. Colly Cibber? You probably have never heard of him but he remains a famous name. I have to say that Guy’s folk were of much humbler stock.’

‘We won’t go into that just now, dear, since it is not germane to the subject,’ said Guy heavily, ‘although my father’s father was a friend of the architect who designed the Titanic and its sister ship. These good people have come to enquire about the black girl.’

‘Well, she’s gone and that’s about it,’ said Deirdre. ‘I permitted her to stay in our summerhouse out of the charity of my heart, and she left without a word of thanks. She was probably an illegal immigrant. You know what these people are like.’

‘I know what Om Haldar was like,’ said Maude with spirit. ‘She was like a well-bred young woman, sweet-natured and considerate.’

‘But you cannot deny she has left without a word of gratitude,’ said Deirdre.

‘Yes, “done a runner”, in fact,’ said Guy, chuckling as he backed up his wife.

‘I do wish you would not use these slang terms, dear,’ said Deirdre. ‘They don’t suit you.’

‘Might we look in your summerhouse?’ Justin asked, turning to Guy. ‘Just in case she has left a clue behind.’

‘Er, I have had a look myself. Nothing. Nothing at all.’

Maude was already making for the door. ‘Still, if we could just have a peep …’

‘Of course. I’ll come with you.’ He slowly unfolded his arms, as if to demonstrate a lack of eagerness.

‘I too have had a search,’ said Deirdre, with some severity, twisting in her chair. ‘I wanted to see if anything had been stolen. I remember my mother telling me that an aunt of hers, who lived in Cheyne Row, quite close to the Carlyles, had her house broken into and all her silver stolen.’

‘You kept your silver in the summerhouse?’ asked Justin, deliberately misunderstanding her. They made their way across the immaculate lawn, Justin, Maude and Guy.

‘She was rather a liar,’ said Guy. ‘Devious, you know.’

‘That was not my impression. My impression was of a fine young character,’ said Maude. ‘Solitary, yes, and guarded. But there was a warmth about her somehow which I felt enhanced my life.’

Guy raised an eyebrow but gave no reply. Possibly the random enhancement of life was not his style. To Maude, the humble room seemed as it had always been when its gentle occupant was present. They looked about and found nothing. Everything was neat and clean. ‘She must be in some sort of trouble,’ said Maude, close to tears. ‘We really should call the police.’

‘I don’t think Deirdre would like that,’ said Guy. ‘At all.’

‘I’m sure she wouldn’t,’ said Justin.

They made their way slowly back up the hill towards home, passing the White Hart as they did so. A man on the other side of the street, walking on the cobbled stretch of pavement, was about to turn into the pub. He caught sight of Justin and Maude and made the drinking gesture of lifting his elbow with his hand near his mouth. ‘Let’s join George,’ said Justin to Maude. ‘I need a drink after all that.’

‘I can’t stand that man Guy. There’s something wrong with him.’

‘No, Guy’s all right. He has a lot to put up with. That dreadful wife, for one item …’

‘I am convinced they have separate bedrooms!’ she replied distinctly. ‘You go and have a drink, dear. I’m off. I need a rest.’

Justin followed George into the pub. George Ross was the local plumber. He also worked elsewhere, but the failures of ancient plumbing systems in Old Headington were sufficient to keep him in business for the rest of the century. He bought himself an Old Speckled Hen and Justin a glass of Australian Shiraz. They settled down comfortably behind one of the old wooden tables. The pub was almost empty. George had a round jovial face and a neat beard. Justin believed him to be amazingly clever, capable of thinking spacially in a way he could never manage himself. ‘I saw you were coming out of Righteous House,’ said George. ‘You friends with them?’

‘Far from it. George, you might know this. Do Guy and Deirdre sleep together? Maude would like to know.’

George grinned. ‘Plumbers know everything. Separate rooms. Deirdre’s room is thick with mementos of her family. At a guess it was last century when Guy last got his leg over.’

They started talking about women. While admitting how much they liked them and their company, complaint crept in like a hungry slug among lettuces. Justin complained about Kate’s frequent visits to Egypt, while George complained about a divorce that he had not really wanted.

‘I go into a house to fix their toilet. I see at once that the works are all this plastic stuff. It doesn’t stand up to use. When I first went into the trade, it was all metal – copper mainly. Now this plastic stuff is perpetually having to be renewed. Marriage seems to have gone the same way!’ They both chuckled at the analogy. Justin told George about the Iraqi girl who had suddenly disappeared.

‘There must be a good reason for it,’ said George. ‘You don’t suspect Guy of doing her in, do you? Don’t go to the police, though, Justin, at least not yet. They’re no good at these racial things. Ask someone who might know. There’s a very nice Iraqi works here in the pub of an evening, calls himself Akhram. He worked with me for a spell. Akhram should know something about her. Maybe he met her. It wouldn’t be surprising – this is supposed to be a village, isn’t it?’

When it came to suppertime, Justin tried to assemble something edible to detain Maude, to whom he was determined to lecture. There was almost nothing worth eating in their pantry. He turned over a can of sardines, on the bottom of which was stamped the legend, Best Before June 1999. He replaced it on the shelf. A quiche with cheese and tomato needed only twenty minutes to warm up. The microwave had not been used since his wife died, as far as he knew. He popped the quiche into the gas oven at Mark 5. Two tomatoes looked edible. The last five inches of a cucumber had to be thrown into the swing bin. He spread two slices of a ‘seeded batch’ with a margarine named on the lid as Bertolli with the additional information that Bertolli was ‘The New Name for Olivio, with pure Bertolli oil’. Accompanying it, he put a jar of Frank Cooper’s Fine Cut Orange Marmalade on the table. He emptied the dusty contents of a sachet of Batchelors’ Oxtail Soup into a mug, pouring over it boiled water from the electric kettle, adding a generous dash of the sherry he had recently claimed to hate. He switched off the television set, which sat on the top of the extinct microwave. A man and a woman were collecting items from a house to put into an auction sale. They hoped to raise nine hundred pounds, so that the couple could take their paralysed daughter to Disneyland in Paris. As Justin plunged them into darkness, they had just found a nineteenth-century horse whip in a back bedroom.

When Justin bought No. 29, Clemenceau, the house was in a poor way. He had had every inch of electric wiring and every inch of plumbing pulled out of the house and new wiring and new pipes installed. He had directed George Ross to run the water supply from the mains through a water meter, and was glad now that he had had the forethought to do so. Janet had not been feeling well even then. The bell on the timer pinged as Maude appeared. She had assumed a silken dressing-gown. Justin struggled to get up from his chair and went to collect the quiche from the oven. As he served Maude, Justin said, ‘Now, dear mother-in-law, I fear I must put a case to you and ask you to be patient.’

‘I’m always patient, dear son-in-law,’ she replied, blinking at him, ‘but let me just say that this tomato has passed its sell-by date.’

‘Okay. That’s not important.’ He waved it away with a gesture. ‘Maude, the world is in a terrible state. It always has been, but these days we are better informed of that state. Over-population and their – our – usages are causing a potentially calamitous global heating. However, I do see at least two hopeful elements at work. The European Union is one of them. For centuries, European nations soaked every kilometre of land with blood and corpses, for dynastic, territorial and particularly religious reasons. Now, instead, we settle arguments by sitting round a table and arguing. It is a magnificent social experiment. The second hopeful element I see is the way in which women, having won the right to vote and thus to be included in our political system, have to a great extent been able to make all kinds of remarkable contributions to our—’

Her eyes had lit upon the booklet Justin had just acquired. ‘This looks interesting, Justin.’

‘It contains paintings by Heath Robertson. Did you hear a word I said?’

‘Oh, really, Justin, you would try the patience of a donkey. I know all this and on the whole I agree with what you say. Let’s eat this quiche in peace. I’m still recovering from our visit to – what is it? – Righteous House …’

Admittedly, the quiche was not of the best. Or of the hottest.

‘All right. To my main point. The progress I have mentioned applies to the West, not to the Middle East – or to much of the rest of the world, including Africa, but it is the Middle East I want to talk about. There, the religion prevailing is the Muslim religion. Do you doubt that? Do you doubt that women subjected to this religion suffer greatly?’

‘I do think things are getting better there.’

Justin said, ‘Let me tell you a personal tale. I was flying back from New York, where I’d been shooting some documentary footage. Ayatollah Khomeini had just been installed in Iran. You remember they’d kicked out the pro-Western Shah? I flew back to Britain by Iran Airways, thinking I might find a subject on the flight, okay?’

Indulgently, she said, ‘You’ve told me all this before.’

‘I watched the passengers coming aboard. I was the only Westerner. The Iranian men all settled comfortably in the rear seats. Then there was a gap before the front seats, where all the women sat. There was no communication between the two groups. The kids were supposed to sit in the middle. Instead, they ran about in the aisle, shrieking. No one did a thing – no control.’

‘Couldn’t you have complained?’ Maude asked.

‘No. I was the one Englishman on board. Drink was forbidden. But it happened there was an English stewardess aboard, so there was a natural bond between us. She smuggled me a gin – a bottle which had somehow eluded capture when the rest of the booze was offloaded. This young woman was full of hatred and anger. Her Iranian husband had just divorced her. No apology. No explanation. He simply walked round her three times and that was it. Of course she was hurt and furious. She couldn’t wait to get back to the UK, where she hoped never to see an Iranian again.’

Maude, looking down at her plate, sighed deeply. ‘You condemn a whole nation on the strength of this one anecdote?’

‘Maude, dear, perhaps you are getting old and losing your judgement, but scores – hundreds – of woman have now fled these male- and religion-dominated countries because of what they have suffered. Do some research, please. But forget this whole mad idea of becoming a Muslim.’

She dropped her fork and stood up, clutching the side of the table for stability. ‘I have no plans to live in a Muslim country. I just admire their dignity, and I don’t need your perpetual harrying me. You’re as bad as the Muslim men you describe. I was benefit-ing from my relationship with that charming young Om Haldar, and I shall miss her.’ She marched out of the room. He knew from past experience that Maude would not speak to him for two days at least. Justin sighed and poured himself another cup of tea. He took a sip, replaced the cup in its saucer and was at once asleep.

He seemed to be halfway up a steep hill. A goat was following him. He knew the goat. He stopped. The goat stopped. It put its head to one side as if to enquire what was going to happen next. ‘I am looking for a particular flower,’ he said. The goat had a wise and doubtful look, as if it knew Justin was lying. ‘It grows in Egypt,’ he said. The goat shook its head. Not knowing what to say, Justin stood where he was. He woke. He had not had a proper sleep or a proper dream. It worried him. This could be how Alzheimer’s began. He felt the cup. It was cold. He took the tea out to the kitchen and poured it down the sink. He poured himself a glass of wine instead.

On sudden inspiration, Justin dialled his builder’s number. Only the answerphone responded. Justin cut it off and tried the builder’s mobile. His call was not answered. He felt a sudden dread of being alone. If only Kate would come back, dear clear-sighted Kate. Fortunately, Ken rang. He and Marie were going over to Elden House to visit a remarkable elderly lady they thought Justin would like to meet. Would he care to come too? He recognized it was their way of looking after him while Kate was in Egypt. ‘Ken, I’m worried about this young refugee girl. She’s disappeared.’

‘Yes, I heard she’d hopped it. Dodging the rent? … Did you hear that some yobs smashed most of the windows of the Anchor in the night? Anyhow, come on over and meet Lady Eleanor.’

Elden House stood at the end of St Andrews Court, a fine dull edifice which housed the elderly rich. Justin supposed he would have to enter there as a resident, if he could afford it, at some unspecified time in the future. Many of the occupants of Elden House rented one- or two-room flats. They could share a dining room. In effect, the institution was like a hotel for the over-nineties. Lady Eleanor Grimsdale was ninety-two. She sat in her room with a peignoir wrapped about her, reclining in an upholstered wicker chair. Her daughter, Enid, a mere seventy years old, was there, looking after her mother. Eleanor’s withered facial skin was not disguised by powder or rouge. She used no lipstick to brighten her lips. She wore a wig of straight brown hair, with diamond earrings in the lobes of her ears. She was clad in a rich silk dressing-gown, which served her as a dress, thrown over the peignoir. It was difficult to know how to position oneself in the room, where comfort had taken second place to trophies of various kinds. One edged through the door past a bulky armoire. Small tables predominated, some with tops adorned with pietra dura. Sharp-edged birchwood dining chairs of a Chippendale-type constitution protruded; their primary function had been usurped by bric-a-brac, such as a canister containing a jigsaw puzzle of a Monet painting, a silver candlestick, a decorative china pomander, various baubles, including shepherdesses of Sèvres porcelain; while hanging from the backs of chairs were various kinds of necklace, silken scarves, and a chatelaine. Nothing of any great value or much interest. As a final deterrent to visitor comfort Regency furniture was aligned along one wall. The general effect was of an upper-middle-class shipwreck. Ken and Marie settled themselves on the edge of the bed, while Justin was given a kind of folding chair with arms. Daughter Enid served them all cups of coffee and a biscuit each from what appeared to be a cupboard. Eleanor kept a glass of gaseous mineral water by her side. She sipped from the glass occasionally.

‘The vicar did his rounds this morning,’ Eleanor said. She spoke slowly and clearly in a quiet, uninflected voice. ‘While I do not dislike Ted Hayse, he does talk the most awful bilge. He attempted to console me with talk of the life to come. I really had to stop him. “Vicar,” I said, “you are an intelligent man and I realize that religion is your trade or profession, but do you not understand that all you say is based on a false premise?”’

Marie laughed. ‘How did he take it?’

‘He is accustomed to this kind of talk in Elden House. We’re all such intellectual snobs.’ Eleanor sipped her glass of water. ‘By false premise I meant the notion that one man dying on a cross could somehow absolve us all from sin, generations later, when new sins had come into fashion. Not to mention the notion of the – what? – yes, the Resurrection.’ She gave a dry chuckle and drowned it in mineral water.

‘So what do you figger happens after …’ There Ken paused, although he knew Eleanor’s opinion on the subject. His manner was almost deferential; perhaps, like Justin, he was awed by great age.

She turned her gaze upon him, cleared her throat in a surreptitious manner and said, ‘You are from America, are you not?’ Rather surprised, Ken admitted that that was so. ‘You must find England terribly dull after the excitements of – where was it, now?’

He sighed. ‘I was born in Utah, ma’am. Near a township a few miles west of Beaver. Not particularly exciting, I guess.’

The old lady appeared to be suppressing a smile. ‘Beaver, eh? An odd name to bestow on a town …’ Then, possibly to evade any elaboration from her visitor, she returned to the main drift of the conversation. ‘Don’t be afraid to say “death”, dear boy. I’m looking forward to death in a way. I’m so bored. People bore me. Books bore me, these days.’

‘This missing black girl is quite exciting,’ said Marie. ‘For a little place like Old Headington, I mean.’

‘Oh, this girl from Afghanistan? How kind Deirdre Fitzgerald is … They come and they go, but England goes on for ever.’ Dismissing the subject with a fragile wave of her hand, she returned to her previous line of discourse. ‘The brain was never designed to work for so many years … I’m too fragile – well, too fragile to get up to anything. It’s long ago that I fulfilled my biological function and reproduced my kind. Not that I can claim that was a great –’ with a spiteful glance at Enid – ‘success … There’s something hideous about such industries as Elden, dedicated to protracting the lives of the useless, such as I.’

Enid butted in, saying, ‘Domestic violence is the biggest single killer of women aged from nineteen to forty-four – precisely the most fertile years. After that, life becomes more peaceful. Old age is surely given to us as a time to find God.’

‘I’m still waiting for God to find me, dear,’ said Eleanor with a sob resembling mirth. ‘I’m on his Gone Missing list, so it would seem … You see? With a daughter like Enid …’

Justin ventured to speak. ‘So, Lady Eleanor, do you regard the sole purpose of life as to reproduce our kind?’

She gave him a severe look. ‘So we once believed. So I once believed. Why should this whole notion of what one believes be so important to us?’ She thought about it. ‘I’ve long ago given up believing in anything.’ They sat there waiting for Lady Eleanor to speak again. Marie fidgeted stealthily on her chair. ‘Be that as it may, I now believe that we are – one must use the word programmed – programmed to protract, not ourselves, but our DNA.’

‘I have heard you say that before,’ Marie remarked. ‘But it seems to me unlikely, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

‘I don’t care what you say! Why should I?’

‘Well, you make DNA sound like a kind of virus.’

‘Perhaps it is a kind of virus, Marie. It seems to me it is a better – more functional – reason to continue to propagate than to have a God plotting our sins and circumstances. Speaking of sins, one of our youngest occupants here, an over-painted young hussy still in her sixties—’

‘Oh, don’t go into that, Mother!’ Enid exclaimed. ‘That’s scandal. Tell Marie about the new story you are writing.’

Again the sob resembling mirth, again the glass lifted to the feature resembling lips. ‘You are such a prude, Enid, dearest … But – as you wish. Anyhow, I am trying to write another story. Possibly in an attempt to justify my continued existence.’ Eleanor had published a story for children long ago, when Enid was a child. ‘All I have managed so far is the opening line. Er … Oh yes, it goes somewhat like this: “In the snowbound Far North on a throne of ice sat a great personage, King Chilianus …”’

After this meeting, Justin went round with Ken and Marie to Logic Lane for a drink. ‘Old age in the Global Age,’ said Ken, in admiration of Lady Eleanor. ‘Can’t beat it. Not by much …’ Ken mixed the best gin-and-its in the world – or at least in Old Headington. They were all in a good mood, feeling they had done their bit for the day, although Marie often visited Eleanor.

‘What did you think of her?’ Marie asked Justin.

‘Sensible of her to have rejected religion. I was sorry to hear she was bored. You might think her memories would entertain her.’

‘Oh, she must have been over them dozens of times. She came from a wealthy family – Jewish. Did I tell you about her husbands? The first one was a manufacturer of Christmas cards and crackers, very prosperous – I forget his name. He was an atheist despite his trade. Somehow that marriage didn’t work. She was caught in the wrong bed, and they were divorced. It was in all the papers.

‘So then she married Ricky Grimsdale, whom we met once,’ said Marie. ‘He made a fortune from computers and a chain of retail shops selling everything electrical. Curry’s bought him up. Seemed a really nice guy. He was an atheist too. Or an agnostic. And I think she was happier with him than with her other husbands. It turned out he was a philanderer, and when he tried to bring a mistress in, she moved out.’

‘Who knows how many guys she had between times,’ said Ken with relish. ‘And she has had a whole clutch of offspring here or there, who have either been disowned or have disowned Eleanor. Only the brave if dull Enid has stayed with her till the end.’

Marie continued unabated. ‘She then took a leap up the social scale and married Harry Stevens, the Earl of Pembroke. He was quite well known as a gifted amateur astronomer and scientist.’

‘She seemed quite strong on science,’ commented Justin.

‘And against belief, although belief is very much a part of us. Earl Harry also liked horse racing. Had a stable in Newmarket. Never won an important race.

‘But she’s still quite wealthy,’ Marie added. ‘And amusing in her way, don’t you think? I mean, King Chilly Anus …’

Justin asked what happened to the Earl.

‘Oh, he died ages ago. Had a stroke and fell over the side of their yacht. Bit of rotten luck, really.’

Ken noted with compassion the struggle Justin had to get out of a low chair. He had to swing his torso back and forth in the manner – as Justin himself said – of an ancestral ape, before achieving the momentum required to bring him to his feet. Ken said that he had received a furniture catalogue with his junk mail that morning. In it were offered some ‘chair risers’, as they were called. ‘They might help a bit,’ he suggested.

‘How much do they cost?’ asked Justin suspiciously.

‘Oh, the usual thing. Buy four and get one free. Buy eight and save three pounds. Buy a dozen and they are delivered by a young female assistant of erotic propensity.’

‘Mmm, sounds worth looking into.’