Kitabı oku: «Remembrance Day»

Remembrance Day

THE SQUIRE QUARTET

Brian Aldiss, OBE, is a fiction and science fiction writer, poet, playwright, critic, memoirist and artist. He was born in Norfolk in 1925. After leaving the army, Aldiss worked as a bookseller, which provided the setting for his first book, The Brightfount Diaries (1955). His first published science fiction work was the story ‘Criminal Record’, which appeared in Science Fantasy in 1954. Since then he has written nearly 100 books and over 300 short stories, many of which are being reissued as part of The Brian Aldiss Collection.

Several of Aldiss’ books have been adapted for the cinema; his story ‘Supertoys Last All Summer Long’ was adapted and released as the film AI in 2001. Besides his own writing, Brian has edited numerous anthologies of science fiction and fantasy stories, as well as the magazine SF Horizons.

Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society and in 2000 was given the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Aldiss was awarded the OBE for services to literature in 2005. He now lives in Oxford, the city in which his bookselling career began in 1947.

Brian Aldiss
Remembrance Day

Dedication

for

Doris Lessing

a bad terrorist

with love

Contents

Cover

Remembrance Day

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

1 A Visionary

2 Displaced

3 Despatched

4 Adopted

5 Accepted

6 Salvation

THE SQUIRE QUARTET

Copyright

About the Publisher

Epigraph

Those who constantly recall their history are doomed to repeat it.

Hengist M. Embry

It is difficult to say to what extent a deeper understanding of the mystery of personality would ensure that these tragedies did not arise, since the still deeper problem of destiny itself is involved. We cannot say with any certainty whether it is, in the deeper sense, inevitable that certain persons should meet a certain time, and with certain results. A lifelong study of such mysteries indeed inclines to such belief.

The Nature of Genius

Dallas Kenmare

Introduction

This third volume in the Squire Quartet is probably the most complex, and least popular of the four. It may have too many characters in it for a lazy reader. Yet the critics liked it.

The Daily Express described it as, ‘a crisply philosophical novel on the topic of disaster.’

The Daily Telegraph called it, ‘an enjoyable companion piece to Forgotten Life.’

Unlike the earlier novels in the Quartet, in Remembrance Day we meet the rural poor: Ray Tebbutt and his missus, Ruby.

Ruby has a goat she loves, and raspberries she picks. Memories of their childhoods during wartime intrude on their lives. Peace is still troubled; better perhaps to live in a backwater.

They are getting by, living frugally. Ray has acquired a credit card; the card is used only for identification purposes. They never pay for anything with the card in case they fall into debt. But Ray is browbeaten into lending a considerable amount of money on his card, and has problems in getting it back from a more prosperous neighbour.

Both Thomas Squire and Clement Winter, protagonists of the earlier novels, put in appearances. Ruby and Ray Tebbutt live not far from Squire – who is now past his days of fame – in deepest Norfolk. There comes a prolonged supper of rabbit pie, at which the squires and the Tebbutts sit and discuss the current state of play. Squire remarks - giving their current spate of IRA bombing as an example – that when underdogs seize power they rule no more wisely than those they supersede. (Power is also a leading subject in the fourth volume of this series.)

The great going world is buzzing with actions and ideas. The IRA is active in England. Learning and ignorance advance cheek by jowl, as usual.

Eventually, Ray Tebbutt gets his money back. So Ray and Ruby decide to go for a stay in a quiet little hotel called the Dianoya, in Yarmouth.

I once came across a gravestone in a Yarmouth graveyard bearing the name of Embry, and this story ends with an American professor called Hengist Morton Embry – a man who seeks advancement, one way or another. He has prepared a report on a bomb outrage at the Dianoya Hotel where several people have died. He is going to see Professor Stern, the principal of Anglia University. The people killed in the explosion, and their moratoriums, fortify Embry’s theory that misery attracts more misery. He claims it is time for a new understanding of life.

Stern is left alone to think and decide. The TV is on in his room. It is Remembrance Day, with the ceremony at the Cenotaph. He reflects on the endemic wars being commemorated. England is a good peaceful place. But some things need changing …

Brian Aldiss

Oxford, 2012

1
A Visionary

Spring 1990

Professor Hengist Morton Embry was at the wheel, gliding along through Fort Lauderdale, pointing out the sights to his English visitor.

‘This is the place if you want to eat fish. Absolutely first rate. I was there two – three nights ago, with Bobby Strawson and her crowd. Try the dolphin. Not the mammal, the fish. Go upstairs for better service. There’s a waitress without a bra, and they serve a good Australian Shiraz.’

Gordon Levine was impressed. He would not have expected such information, so crisply delivered, from an English professor of Stochastic Sociology – even if there was such a thing – in an English town. Embry had facts spilling from his fingertips.

Fort Lauderdale slid by, malls, slummy bits, houses of the wealthy situated on well-tended canals. Levine was paying his first visit to Florida, and liking it. The month was March, the temperature was warm. He had already taken a swim in the hotel pool and exchanged a few words with the influential Bobby Strawson, organizer of the ASSA conference. He was impressed by the air of efficiency and glamour exuded by la Strawson. Equally, he was impressed by the charisma of this important professor, who had taken time out to show a stranger the town.

Embry was the sort of scholar referred to as outgoing, though Levine had glimpsed a more thoughtful person beneath the surface. He had already given Levine some insights into other members of the ASSA, the American Stochastic Sociology Association.

Embry was an untidy man, moderately massive, given to large ties which hung over one shoulder of his cotton jacket like the tongues of wolfhounds. Academically, he was considered brilliant; yet he could schedule a neat eight-stream conference in a matter of moments, totting up all the scholars involved, friend and foe, like columns of figures. So why was this paragon accepting a sabbatical year in England at the Anglia University of Norwich, opening a new department? This was the question Levine put to his companion as they surveyed Fort Lauderdale.

‘This mansion with the laburnums we’re coming to, that’s the Florida home of Jeff Stackpine, the Stackpine Trucks man. You think I’m side-tracking my career trajectory by taking off for a year? I don’t read it that way. The US needs a breathing space from me. I can do wonderful things in England. They’ll name the department after me.’ He ground to a belated halt at a red. ‘Traffic lights always see me coming. When did I last get a green? It’s nature’s way of telling me to slow down, I guess.

‘Now we’re heading for Mount Lauderdale. Have you heard of Mount Lauderdale? It’s the highest point in the city, snow on it in the winter. Coaches lose their way and have to be dragged out.’

Levine expressed surprise. But, just as the Americans had their own views of what English weather was like, he had his views on the extremes of the American climate.

They turned into a less elegant road and were passing the Everglades Motel, faced with fake logs. The sign was supported by two fibreglass alligators.

‘There you see the real unreal America, Gordy,’ said Embry, gesturing. ‘The wish to get on, the wish to get off, the longing to have you on, the longing to have it off. See how one of those gators is female – mammal female, with boobs and blond hair? It represents some sort of displacement in time as well as space. You clear the Everglades, then you fake ’em to get ’em back. Consider the diversity of mentalities in these so-called United States, the sheer diversity of mentalities. Some of us are living, or attempting to live, in the next century, and face up to the demographic conundrums ahead. Others – don’t construe this as an ethnic remark in any way, Gordy, but some of us are still living and thinking last century, and the centuries before that, way back to primitive times, when tribes first wandered into North America.’ He knocked significantly at his forehead.

As Embry exchanged an unscholarly word with a driver proceeding in the opposite direction, Levine said, by way of agreement, ‘I saw in a recent poll that fifty-five per cent of the population believe the sun goes round the earth, rather than vice versa.’

Embry shot Levine a glance, half-smiling, one eyebrow crooked. ‘You mean the other way round, surely? The earth going round the sun?’

‘Fifty-five per cent believe it’s the other way about. Maybe it was sixty-five.’

‘You mean the sun going round the earth?’

‘That’s what fifty-five per cent believe.’

Embry gave a snort and concentrated on the traffic ahead. Levine saw a muscle in his cheek working, one of the muscles he used for talking; maybe it never rested, even when no speech was forthcoming.

Levine experienced a pang of doubt, sudden as toothache. Could it be that Hengist Morton Embry, founder, president, of the ASSA, was himself one of that fifty-five per cent? Or sixty-five? It couldn’t be. Could it?

‘Astronomy was never a subject I specialized in,’ Embry said. ‘But I do know that one American in seven carries a gun in his or her car.’

Levine wanted to explain to him that you did not have to go to university to learn that the earth went round the sun, taking a year to make a complete orbit, because this was one of the known facts you imbibed with your mother’s elderberry wine, if not her milk. That there was a whole raft of things, a skein, a web, a map, a safety net, you absorbed like your native language itself, if you were normal, by the time you made your first date, and that that safety net was an indispensable component of – well, of Western culture. Yet here was this professor of a distinguished Illinois university – a whole lot of them managed to get down to Florida in March – who appeared to have doubts regarding a cardinal fact known to ancient Greeks. Levine had on his safety belt in the Toyota; but in the other world, that great nexus of circumstance we call life, there was no safety belt. He was sitting next to an eminent academic who believed the sun was in orbit about the earth.

‘Right, Gordy,’ Embry said, ‘here’s Mount Lauderdale coming up.’

He gestured grandly and chuckled. The car was heading up a slight incline. There were trees on either side of the road, expensive properties, a neat waterway, and the slight rise in the road.

‘Mount Lauderdale. How d’you like it? All of eighteen feet above sea level. We’re a great country for making mountains out of molehills.’

‘I see.’

Embry chuckled again. ‘Just kidding you before, Gordy. Exercising your British sense of humour … We’d best head back to the conference.’

Embry was a Happy American. It was easy to appear Happy. It was patriotic to be Happy. It was also good business to be Happy. Good business and patriotism went together, and their lubricant was the kind of good humour in which Professor Embry specialized.

Returning to the conference, he drove Levine past The Fronds, a gigantic shopping mall built on adventurous lines, with undulating façades and interior waterfalls. It had been standing half a year, and was due to be pulled down, Embry said, in eighteen months. The carpark beside it was full of cars. Embry took it in with a gesture.

‘See that? The Fronds. A fad of yesteryear, but still making millions for a guy I used to know. Sold wallpaper in Denver. We were talking about people wandering into North America thousands of years ago. That’s what they came for – the shopping.’

He told Levine you could eat a good hotdog in The Fronds. Hotdogs went with the good business and the patriotism; hotdogs marked a guy out as a good, average joe, even if he was a professor and president of ASSA.

Levine asked himself why he was thinking in this vein on this Florida afternoon, when palms waved their leaves against the ever-enfolding walls of commerce. Didn’t I eat hotdogs myself and without being self-conscious about it? Didn’t I succumb to the unconscious pressure of society and present a cheerful demeanour? Wasn’t it true that that demeanour became more and more my real self?

Punching a tape into the radio-cassette player, Embry filled the car with quadrophonic sound. Male voices sang: stately, assured, harmonious.

‘Recognize it?’ Embry asked. ‘My passion! Medieval French Gregorian chant. Latin, as you know. A capella. I bought fifty tapes of the stuff when I taught a semester at Toulouse University, France. Can’t get enough of it. They say the world lost something when instrumental music was introduced into churches, and I believe ’em. Listen to this “Veni, Redemptor” now …’

Levine listened. He knew nothing of the subject, had never specialized in it.

They were back at the Hilton in time for the cocktail reception. Traffic was moving steadily up and down Highway One. Planes were landing on time, bars were doing good trade, yachts were docking in expensive marinas. Barbecues were sizzling in yards, evening soaps bubbling on TV screens. Day’s end was calm, but alert with promise all over the Sunshine State, even in the senior citizens’ condos: time for fun unobtainable in England: the sort of evening you feel you deserve, with the sun skiing through a sky containing only one decorative cloud, positioned so as to grow more golden as the hour slipped by. Happy Hour. Most of the delegates to the conference were already gathering in the pool area, where a quartet discreetly played Mozart and drinks were served by lynx-eyed Hispanic barmen.

Palm trees, music, warmth, light-coloured clothes, Hilton service. No hassle.

Embry was greeted on all sides. A lot of shaking hands and embracing went on. You couldn’t tell when people were not glad to see each other. Levine went along with Embry some way, moving into the heart of the crowd with a glass in his hand, exhilarated. Crazy to exchange all this for England! Here were people he knew, if only by reputation, creative people, alienists, scholars, fermenters of society, men and women, involved in one branch or another of stochastics and/or education.

Hi there to Dale Marsh, plump and genial, wearing only a T-shirt above gaudy shorts, though most of the guests had adopted more formal attire. The legend on Marsh’s T-shirt said ‘Squint when you look at me lest you be blinded by my beauty’. Marsh was English, but had lived eight years in the States, teaching Urban Relationships in an Eastern seaboard university.

Levine was not all that enthusiastic about meeting another Englishman, but stood to chat politely for a minute or two. With Marsh was a pretty blonde woman called something like Polly Ester – Levine did not catch the name and, unlike Americans, was afraid to ask for it to be repeated.

‘Funny Hen Embry should elect to spend a year in Norwich at AUN,’ he said.

‘Is that anywhere near London?’ Polly Ester asked.

‘Not really.’

‘A year out at pasture and he’ll come rushing back Stateside into a government post at zillions per month salary,’ said Marsh, in a lordly way. ‘That’s how it works. That’s how the system works.’

‘Besides,’ said Polly, lowering her voice and sliding a bare arm through Levine’s, ‘Hen’s got big trouble brewing here with the ASSA. It pays him to make himself scarce a while.’ In response to Levine’s surprised look, she whispered into his ear. ‘Cooking the books.’

The phrase, he thought, was like some secret sexual signal, releasing a flush of testosterone through his arteries as he felt her warm aromatic breath in his ear. That sod Dale Marsh had always been known as ‘Lucky’ Marsh. He knew how to pick the birds.

After the reception came dinner. They drove out, a dozen of them in hired cars, to a seafood restaurant someone had recommended up the coast in Boca Raton, where stone crabs were the juiciest.

Embry was in good form throughout the meal, drinking heartily, expounding a blueprint for a better world.

Levine, as a hard-pressed administrator at a university increasingly under financial pressure, did not believe in better worlds. He turned to Marsh, who happened to be sitting next to him, to express his cynicism, expecting Marsh as a fellow Englishman to respond similarly to Embry’s plans.

‘Things are different in the States, Levine,’ Marsh said, condescendingly. ‘In London, psychotics are guys who have discovered how life really is. Over here, that bit of luck goes to mountebanks. They can capitalize on their discoveries in ways valuable not only to themselves but to the public at large.’

‘Embry?’

Marsh sucked on a crab claw. ‘You should read Embry’s book on transpsychic reality – and not just because it’s sold a million. Basically, what he says – I’m wedging his argument into a nutshell – is that the nature of self, and hence of our perceived world, is – or can be – up for grabs. He says everyone has visions, sees ghosts, or whatever. Parapsychic phenomena … Such things are dismissed as childish – which they may be – or disgraceful in our Western societies, and so are repressed or misinterpreted … well, something like that. But actually such so-called delusions are pleas from an inner self for change. Urgent communications. We must all change.’

‘Nothing very new there.’

‘OK. That’s no objection, is it? But Embry states that our early experiences can cause us to fix on a mental model of the world which we may need to junk. Like some disaster early in life can set us on disaster courses later. “Circumstance-chain” is his phrase. Pass along the pitcher, “old chap”.’ He put his mode of addressing Levine in humorous quotes, as if recalling a phase of life he had jettisoned.

Marsh’s friend, Polly Ester, sitting on his far side, had hitherto contented herself with reading the legend on Marsh’s T-shirt over and over. She bestirred herself to lean forward and say smiling to Levine, ‘Dale’s forgotten the part of the argument I like best. It’s not just individuals whose memories of disaster can lead them to further disaster later in life. There’s a brilliant chapter on how the individual is a microcosm of the nation. Hen shows how certain countries are ruled by – ruined by – memories of disaster.’

Several places away, engaged in argument, Hengist Embry nevertheless caught the mention of his own name and roared down the table, ‘Alpha for you, Polly. Examples include Georgia, Serbia, many Latin American countries, maybe China, and, of course, Ireland.’

Marsh formed a circle of thumb and forefinger and made Embry a cheerful ‘spot-on’ sign as the latter plunged back into his own noisy conversation.

‘Whether all that’s true or not …’ Deciding against completing the sentence, Levine returned to his platter of crab.

Rather to Levine’s surprise, Embry paid him renewed attention as the group left the restaurant. In the carpark, he took Levine’s arm in a friendly way and led him apart from the crowd, his mind evidently still full of his dinner conversation.

‘Remember that lovely “Veni, Redemptor”? Well, man has to be his own Redemptor, to my way of thinking – but fast.’

‘Most human plans for improvement come to grief.’

‘There opinions differ. Look what the US has become. This was all wilderness two centuries ago.’

While Levine was feeling ashamed of his English remark, Embry deftly changed the subject. ‘As a successful man, I have my enemies here, Gordy,’ he said. ‘Some are not above spreading lies about me. You find the same kind of thing in every community. Now, let’s get to the crunch. I’m a visionary but I’m also a practical man. I was hoping you could maybe give me a few introductions back in England, to ease my path in the new post.’

Levine said he did not entirely understand what line of work Embry was planning for the AUN.

‘Gordy, I will be more than happy to inform you. What I mainly require from you is a warm personal intro to Sir Alastair Stern, principal of AUN. He’s your uncle, right?’

‘Father-in-law, actually.’

‘How I relish that British “actually”. I didn’t know you were still using it.’

‘I’ve heard the word on American lips.’

‘Now, in a few sentences, I’ll explain the project I have up my sleeve. It’s a real beaut. I am eager to be working in Norwich. It’s the capital of the County of Norfolk, right? See, I have some Norfolk blood in my veins. My great-grandfather sailed over to New England from Norfolk, back in the 1830s. That was a terrible time for the poor. The legend in the family is that the last great-grandfather saw of England was a line of hayricks burning on the horizon.

‘My proposed project involves the analysis of an incident which occurred in the Norfolk port of Great Yarmouth. Do you know Great Yarmouth, Gordy?’

‘Yarmouth. Yes, I’ve been there more than once. It’s a seaside resort.’

‘It so happens that there are Embrys buried in Great Yarmouth cemetery.’

‘Quite a coincidence.’

Embry stopped his strolling and looked hard at Levine. ‘A coincidence – or something more? Is it not what I term a circumstance chain? Is the universe of human affairs random – stochastic – or pre-ordained, or ruled by God? Or what? That is precisely the question I mean to research. It’s a big question, with large implications.’

Looking as if for inspiration towards the distant neon sign proclaiming JUMBO STONE CRABS, Embry began to recite. ‘“What of the Immanent Will and its designs? It weaves unconsciously as heretofore Eternal artistries of circumstance, Whose visions – wrought in wrapt aesthetic rote – Seem in themselves its single listless aim, And not their consequence.” Thus the poet … Well, we are going to diagnose those artistries of circumstance for the first time. Ingenuity lavished on space technology will now confront Fate. Pardon the expression.’

The wine had somewhat clouded Levine’s perceptions. He felt they should drive back to the Hilton, where he could lie down, or perhaps have another drink.

‘I don’t follow. A diagram of circumstance? I mean, couldn’t you pursue such research more effectively in the US? Why Yarmouth, for heaven’s sake?’

‘It so happens that Great Yarmouth presents us with precisely the contained situation required, the kind of laboratory test case.’ He smiled benignly. ‘I’m an optimist, Gordy, and, what’s more, I have the future good of humanity in mind. I see – I do believe I see – a way in which poor suffering mankind might be made happier, safer. And I’m not talking about SDI or anything like that.

‘Ask yourself why we are always running towards disaster. Just when you might think affairs were straightening out, along comes a fresh crisis. It happens in individual life, it happens in international affairs. I can remember back to the aftermath of World War II. Just when we were sorting out the peace and trying to put everything together, along came the threat from the Soviet Union, and the Cold War descended upon us, warping millions of lives for decades.’

‘That may be so, but it doesn’t have much to do with Yarmouth.’ He should have known that such a remark would not have ended the discussion.

A sagacious finger was wagged at him. ‘I hope it has everything to do with Yarmouth,’ Embry said. ‘There I shall test out my hypothesis of transpsychic reality …’ He repeated the phrase thoughtfully, as if more for his benefit than his listener’s. ‘Transpsychic reality … If I’m right, then a new epoch in human relationships will dawn. I shall father a revolution in how we view the physical world around us …’ He took a deep breath and then said, suddenly, ‘I should have gone to the john before we left the restaurant.’

‘We’d better get back to the hotel.’

The bladder problem evidently wasn’t too serious. Embry dismissed it with a grand gesture. The physical world was going to have to wait.

They had come to the end of the carpark. Beyond some smart new plastic warehousing, masts of dinghies could be seen. Music of the swing era could be heard.

‘I may as well admit it, Gordy. It’s an ambitious plan, and it will need a whole heap of moral support from Sir Alastair Stern, not least because of the depressed state of the British economy in 1990. I want your father-in-law on my side.’

He outlined the circumstances of the case as clearly as if he was lecturing a class.

One of the depressants afflicting British life was the situation in Northern Ireland, which cost the British taxpayer many millions of pounds sterling a year. The Irish Republican Army, the IRA, although not politically effective, existed as a disruptive force in social life. In the mid-eighties, it had attempted a major coup when it planned a series of bomb outrages in English seaside towns during the holiday season.

Scotland Yard had got wind of the plan. Bombs of Czech-made Semtex were detected and defused in six towns along the South Coast. Three men had been arrested, including a high-ranking IRA officer. Unfortunately, one bomb had escaped detection. It exploded in a small hotel in Yarmouth.

‘Four people were killed in the Great Yarmouth explosion,’ Embry said as they climbed into his car. ‘I am not concerned with the IRA. Though I may say parenthetically I do not approve of American support for the IRA. They can be described only as terrorists, killing and maiming innocent people. My AUN unit will investigate the lives lost.

‘Who were those four persons killed that day? What were their lives like? What brought them to that hotel on that date? Was their presence merely stochastic, or had it to do with, say, economic conditions?’

‘Or the hand of God?’ hinted Levine, smiling.

‘We are open-minded. We rule nothing out. Not even the Immanent Will. “Veni, Redemptor”. I do not go into this project with preconceived ideas, Gordy. I want to establish whether the random was at work, or were those deaths circumstance-chain deaths – with submerged social causation of the same kind that draws me back to ancestral ground?

‘It’s going to be an original and epoch-making sociological field exercise. Who exactly were the four who died that day in the Hotel Dianoya in Great Yarmouth?’

2
Displaced

Midsummer 1986

The car was an orange Hillman which had seen better days. Ray Tebbutt drove it with the kind of care he devoted to most matters, slowing to corner, braking gently to stop, signalling whenever humanly possible. He left the main Fakenham–Cromer road and turned north in third gear. Although the side road was empty of traffic this summer evening, he handled the wheel as cautiously as if in one of the city traffic jams to which he had previously been accustomed.

Clamp Lane was a narrow strip between high banks. History had split it open to the sun like a walnut. Within living memory, the lane had been shaded by elms, their woody topknots havens for birds. The trees were all that remained of extensive forest which had once choked this region of Norfolk before the Enclosures Acts of the previous century had begun a process of denudation. Then Dutch Elm Disease, spread through the importation of cheap foreign timber, had wiped out the last grand sentinels. Three summers and they were gone, and the birds they sheltered gone with them. Clamp Lane was now bathed in impartial summer sun, banal, no longer secret, me-andering between unfrequented wheat fields, easy going for orange Hillmans.

Tebbutt slowed still further where the road sloped into a depression which provided some shelter from the wind for two cottages, solitary in the landscape. Like the landscape, these two Victorian cottages, close yet apart, built for farm labourers, were dominated by the socio-economics of their time. Machinery had superseded the labourers; they and their families were gone long ago, as the birds had gone.

The cottages contemplated each other across the roadway. The building on the left, No. 1, never distinguished for its beauty, was tumbledown, many of its windows broken; it had remained empty for some years, a little too distant from the coast to attract speculative builders. The garden had run riot in a tangle of weeds, while clawed arms of bramble reached up to the bedroom windowsills. Ivy had gained the chimney pot. On the front bank, a wattle fence had collapsed, but marigolds still flowered there, year after year.

The opposite cottage, No. 2, to the right of the lane as Tebbutt approached, presented a more cheerful aspect. Though its original denizens had been packed off, and it had endured years of emptiness, it was now occupied and maintained. Its windows, which were open, shone brightly; all paintwork and guttering were spick and span. Its rather poky aspect had been improved by a small front porch. Its neat little garden, with stone garden seat, was planted out with flowering annuals, while the gravel drive leading to a lean-to garage was weeded and lined with box.

A small black and white cat sat alertly on the sill of one of the upper windows, as if anticipating its master’s arrival.

Turning in at the white gate, Tebbutt brought the car to a gingerly halt in order not to disturb the gravel, and tooted the horn.

A comfortable-looking woman came bustling immediately round the side of the house. Her hair was dyed brown. Over her thin form she wore a handwoven red blouse, jeans, and a pair of sandals, country garb which did not entirely disguise her look of being a displaced townee.

Removing her spectacles from her nose, she kissed Tebbutt on the lips as he emerged from the car.

‘Hello, Ruby love, how’s the day been?’ he asked, squeezing her narrow bottom as he embraced her.

‘Naughty Bolivar caught another bird this morning,’ she said, glancing up accusingly at the cat on the sill. ‘A poor little corpse was waiting for me on the back doorstep when I got home.’

‘Little devil,’ said Tebbutt indulgently. ‘Not another thrush? Bolivar must have killed every thrush in Norfolk by now.’

‘A robin this time,’ replied his wife, linking her arm in his. ‘I warned him that one day a dirty great eagle would fly down and carry him off to be fed to baby eagles.’

‘That should have a tonic effect on his morals.’

Laughing, they went together by the narrow way between fence and garage, and turned in at the back porch.

The porch was built of breezeblock topped by insecure rustic work. It had been added to the main structure by previous occupants of No. 2 Clamp Lane. The Tebbutts had camouflaged the crude wall by nailing a trellis to it and growing a Russian vine up the trellis. The vine had threatened to cover the entire cottage until Ruby took shears to it; now it was regularly clipped.

The kitchen which they entered stretched across the rear of the building, and overlooked farmland. The view from Ruby’s sink was pleasant, but curtailed by rising ground, above which could be seen a line of treetops and one chimney, belonging to the Manor Farm in Field Dalling. The ground floor of the dwelling consisted of kitchen, toilet, a passage doubling as hall, and a front room. This living-room had once been two rooms, a tiny parlour and a smaller dining-room. When newly installed in the cottage, soon after Ray had lost his Birmingham job and they were still optimistic, the Tebbutts had removed a rusty solid-fuel stove and knocked the two rooms into one. The stove they sold for five pounds to a scrap dealer from Swaffham.

‘Cup of tea, love?’ Ruby asked, continuing without awaiting an answer, since she knew what it would be. ‘You look a bit tired.’

Ray sank down on one of the two chairs they had managed to cram in the kitchen beside the small table where most of their meals were eaten. He was a small wiry man in his early fifties. What remained of his hair was dyed black. His bullet-head gave him an aggressive aspect, though the expression on his red-tanned face was amiable. His large feet were crammed into boots which he now proceeded to remove, sighing heavily as he did so. He dropped them on the matting on the floor, paused, then arranged them under the table.

‘That bugger Greg made me dig the upper field all afternoon,’ he said. ‘He’ll never grow anything on it when it’s dug. It’s far too dry under the shade of that line of poplars.’

‘He should get a thingy on it.’ She was four years younger than her husband, but occasionally forgot the names of objects. ‘A mechanical digger.’

‘It’s full of couch-grass. You can’t make any progress.’

Tut-tutting in agreement, she passed him his mug of tea. As he thanked her, she nodded and pointed with elaborate pantomime in the direction of the front room, while silently mouthing the word ‘Mother’.

Tebbutt nodded and smiled and mouthed the words ‘I’m going’ in return. After a noisy sip at his tea, the mug of which carried a picture of a sheep wearing spectacles and the legend ‘I’ve been fleeced’, he rose to his stockinged feet and padded dutifully into the front room.

His mother-in-law sat in a big wicker chair, her chin resting on her chest. A wisp of scanty white hair had fallen over her face. She was a small frail woman in her seventy-fifth year, retaining her position in the chair only by dint of four large colourful cushions which, like sandbags round a beleaguered building, served to bolster her morale.

Although Agnes Silcock gave every appearance of being asleep, she spoke distinctly as Tebbutt approached. ‘Early tonight then, are we?’

‘Excuse my stinking feet, Ma. It’s gone seven. Usual time, thereabouts.’

‘So it is. I must have been wool-gathering.’ She raised her head to observe the clock with the loud tick, an old wind-up relic from better days standing on the mantelpiece, and then let it fall again.

He told her the events of his day, while Ruby stood behind him, listening, in the doorway.

Tebbutt knew that both Agnes and her daughter had a passion for small detail; Agnes had been a jigsaw addict before her eyes had failed her: the accretion of the small pieces, each to be accommodated in one place only in the whole picture, had greatly satisfied her. Ruby had shared this hobby.

But for Tebbutt it was precisely the small accretion of incident which pained him. His day, like all days now, had been passed in manual labour at Yarker’s garden centre. Though he liked to please his mother-in-law, it was with no great pleasure that he recalled its details for her. But to see her listening thirstily to the details of the outer world was rewarding. And it pleased Ruby.

His boss, Greg Yarker, had driven to Hunstanton to collect a consignment of plants, leaving Ray in charge of the centre until noon. Yes, he’d been quite busy. Despite the hot weather and the recession, people were still buying plants. He had sold four nice tamarisks to a woman who said she was from South Creake. Never seen her before. Some people still had money to spend.

‘Don’t know where it comes from,’ Agnes said, with a cackle.

Pauline Yarker had issued forth from her caravan and brought him a coffee at about noon. He had chatted with her for a while.

‘Awful woman,’ Ruby said.

Then he’d shifted bags of peat. Yarker had returned with the plants. He had done a deal over some furniture with some people in Hunstanton who were having to sell up. Yarker was more interested in furniture than plants; he would sell up the centre if anyone would buy. He had brought Tebbutt a pasty for lunch from a new bakery in Hunstanton. So Tebbutt had saved Ruby’s sandwiches and brought them home again. She could fry them up for his supper and that would save the rest of the ham for tomorrow.

‘Raspberries and cream for seconds,’ Ruby promised.

He plodded on with an account of his banal day. The old woman was now fairly lively, her wrinkled face turned to Tebbutt’s. Ruby, smiling, polished her spectacles and adjusted Agnes’s cushions.

‘I need a new pair of corsets,’ Agnes announced, before Tebbutt’s account was done. ‘Can you buy me a pair in Sweeting’s next time you’re over there?’

‘You don’t need corsets, Ma,’ Ruby said from behind the wicker chair. ‘Besides, you’ve only had that pair you’ve got on six months. We can’t afford another pair when it isn’t necessary.’

‘Corsets help my poor old back,’ Agnes said. ‘Ray knows, don’t you, Ray?’

Tebbutt laughed. ‘Corsets aren’t my speciality, Ma. Excuse me, I’m going to get my slippers on and milk the goat. Then it’ll be supper and your bedtime.’

The goat, Tess, was tethered in the back garden in her own enclosure. She had not been the money-saver the Tebbutts had hoped when they had bought her on their arrival at No. 2 Clamp Lane. She needed supplementary feeding over the winter. But it was reassuring not to have to buy milk from a supermarket, and they were fond of the animal. Tebbutt talked soothingly to her as he milked her into a bowl, his capable hands moving gently on her teats.

Ruby Tebbutt never wasted a drop of Tess’s milk. If the milk ever went sour, she would make cheese of it and serve litle round pats of the cheese, grilled, on toast with a sprig of parsley. It was one of her husband’s favourite dishes.

Any surplus milk Ruby took to Fakenham market to sell. Having bought the cottage when house prices were high, even in a relatively cheap region like Norfolk, they now put aside every penny they could to restore their fortunes.

After supper, when Ray had eaten his fried sandwiches, followed by raspberries from the garden, and drunk a mug of tea, Ruby got her mother upstairs to bed. The old lady had all but lost the use of her legs. Fortunately, she was light and amenable, ready to be tucked up between the clean sheets. As yet, she was not incontinent every night. Ray went up in his socks and kissed her goodnight. It was nine o’clock and almost dark in her little room with its sloping roof. By her bedside she had a photograph in a silver frame of her dead husband and her two daughters when they were small.

Downstairs, Ruby and Ray sat together on the sofa, holding hands a little and watching an hour of television. They could not afford a daily newspaper. Wine was one of their luxuries, and they sipped half a tumbler each while watching some news and the weather forecast. At ten, they switched off to prepare for bed. Tebbutt had to rise at six in the morning. Matters had been rather different before he lost his job as a printer. In the mid-eighties, many people were losing their jobs, as he often said, consoling himself.

‘Perhaps we could get Ma a medical corset on the National Health,’ Ruby said, as they were washing up their supper dishes.

‘We’ll ask Dr Fowler on Monday. I’ll see if Bolivar wants to come in.’

Ray looked about the garden, but the cat was nowhere to be seen. The animal could always sleep in the garage.

The stairs were shut off from the living-room, cottage-style, by a door with a latch. Ruby and Ray were about to go upstairs when the phone rang. Ruby’s foot was on the lowest step. She withdrew it, hastily closing the stair door so that her mother would not be roused by the ringing.

‘Who can it be at this time of night?’ she asked.

‘Fuck knows,’ Ray said.

For the Tebbutts, the telephone was a silent, baleful instrument. Certainly, they sometimes received calls from their daughter Jennifer or, even more infrequently, from Ruby’s sister Joyce. But by and large the instrument was used only for emergencies. For reasons of economy, it was rare for the Tebbutts to phone out. And to receive a call at this time of night could only mean bad news of some kind.

Ray crossed to the window where the phone lay on the windowsill. As he lifted the receiver to his ear, he looked out over the garden to the lane and beyond it to the forlorn façade of the cottage opposite, just visible in the light from the living-room.

‘It’s Jean here, Ray,’ said a female voice in his ear, continuing without pause, ‘and I have a little favour to ask you. Mike can’t – you know how he is. I’m sure you won’t mind, and it’s only a little thing, but it’s about the car …’ Her voice trailed away.

‘Has it gone wrong again?’ Ray asked, signalling with his left hand to Ruby, who stood anxiously by, that everything was all-right-ish. ‘Jean Linwood,’ he whispered, momentarily covering the mouthpiece.

‘It broke down on the A148 and it’s in Stanton’s garage – you know Joe Stanton, I expect.’ The Linwoods always assumed other people knew things.

‘No, I don’t. We always take the Hillman to the garage in Fakenham, where we—’

‘Anyhow, as I was saying, Stanton phoned a couple of hours ago to say the Chrysler’s repaired, and Michael was wondering if you’d kindly drive him over to Melton Constable in the morning on your way to work so that he can pick it up.’

‘Er – well, Jean … I mean, Melton isn’t really on my way to work. In fact it’s in the opposite direction.’

‘It’s not far.’

Silence on the line. Then he said, ‘Er, Jean, what about Mike’s father? Wouldn’t he drive him over?’

He heard the anger in her voice. ‘Noel? We never ask him for anything, not the slightest thing. We’d never hear the end of it. I thought you understood our situation, and how difficult it was.’

‘But in this case …’

‘Oh, OK, Ray, forget it, then. Never mind. We knew you lived near Melton. I just thought you might like to do a friend a favour, but please forget all about it. Poor Michael will just have to go on his bike and it’ll take all morning.’

Ray pulled a face at his wife as he said, ‘Yes, yes, I see that. It’s just that I’ve got to – well, never mind that, of course I’ll drive him over to Melton. Be glad to. You know I’m an early riser – in fact Ruby and I were just going to bed – but I’ll be over to pick Mike up, tell him, at seven thirty. Don’t worry.’

Jean’s voice, which a moment earlier had brimmed with indignation, sounded a note of dismay. ‘Couldn’t make it eight, could you? We aren’t early birds like you and Ruby. Eight or half-past would be better. More civilized.’ Tebbutt had heard her laying down the law on what was civilized before.

Another face to Ruby, who waved her hands in silent mime of caution. Ray scratched the back of his head. ‘Look, Jean, you see, I promised Yarker I’d be there early tomorrow. I want to get on with my work before it’s too bloody hot. I hope you understand?’

The tone of her voice told him she did not entirely understand. ‘There’s no point in leaving at seven thirty, Ray, dear, because Stanton doesn’t open up the garage till nine, if then.’

‘I’m a slow driver, as Mike knows of old.’

‘I wouldn’t have asked, Ray, if I’d thought it was going to be such a hassle.’ Her tone was that of a woman dealing with a difficult man. ‘He’d take a taxi but you know things are a bit tight at present. The boys need new school clothes. Mike’s Auntie April needs looking after. As for Noel – he’s not too well. He’s still looking for a house. Or so he says. Meanwhile we’re stuck with him. So make it eight o’clock then, all right?’

‘I’ll be there,’ Ray said, and put the phone down. ‘Manipulative female,’ he said. Then, ‘Still, I suppose we do owe them a favour.’

Though they would never admit it to each other, the Tebbutts felt disadvantaged by the Linwoods. Michael and Jean Linwood behaved as if they were slightly above everyone else; yet their situation was similar to that of the Tebbutts. Both couples had met with financial misfortune in a cold economic climate; both were struggling to make ends meet; both had an elderly parent living with them. Whereas the Tebbutts had only one daughter, currently working as a public relations officer with a technical development company in Slough, the Linwoods had three youngsters still at home.

‘Trust them to use a garage so far away from their place,’ said Ruby, feelingly. She was well aware of Ray’s warmth for Jean.

There was one considerable difference between the two families, thought Ray Tebbutt at seven fifty-five the next morning, as he drove to Hartisham and turned cautiously into the drive of St Giles House: the Linwoods, for all their poverty, lived in a grand if tumbledown home.

He drew up neatly in front of the substantial brick building, hearing, as he switched off the engine, the Linwood dog bark somewhere at the rear of the house. Then silence fell. Curtains were drawn across the windows of the upper front rooms, where lived Mike Linwood’s rather terrifying father, Noel.

St Giles House had once belonged to Pippet Hall, the manor house of Hartisham. In the difficult days following the Second World War, the Squire family of Pippet Hall had sold it off in dilapidated condition. Successive private owners had patched things up as best they could, but the value of the property had declined. By the early eighties, the house had deteriorated to a point where Michael Linwood was able to afford it – probably with a grudging loan from his father. Tebbutt knew that he was hoping to make a profit by selling off a parcel of land at the rear, thus enabling him to repair the leaky roof, and was engaged in lengthy and so far unsuccessful negotiations to that end with the local council.

When his watch read eight o’clock, Tebbutt got out of the car. The driver’s door needed a good slam to make it shut properly; he left it hanging open in order not to wake anyone. He walked about, biting his lip. He was dressed in what he called his Working-Class Gear, with a denim jacket, bought at a car boot sale, worn over a dark blue shirt. His trousers were of thick donkey-coloured corduroy. As he often remarked to Ruby, he was ‘got up to look like a character from Hardy – one of his minor novels’.

At five past eight, he went round to the Linwoods’ back door. Various pieces of junk Mike had collected lay about in long grass. Washing had remained hanging on a line overnight in their weed-choked garden. In Mike’s old Toyota truck, long defunct, were stored his paints and other necessities of an occasional decorator’s trade.

Both Tebbutt and Linwood, after their displacement to Norfolk, had been forced to take up odd-jobbing. Tebbutt had some small success, and was hoping to save enough to buy into Yarker’s garden business. Linwood was less able to adapt to reduced circumstances; he barely scratched a living working for Sir Thomas and Lady Teresa Squire, the owners of Pippet Hall, or doing part-time jobs for the religious community in Little Walsingham.

Tebbutt knocked quietly, starting the dog barking again. After an interval, the battered door was opened by Alf, smallest of the three Linwood boys. He let Tebbutt in without a word.

The scent of the house hit Tebbutt. He had tried to analyse it before when he and Ruby had been here. Damp dishrags, watercress, and woodlice, with perhaps a hint of the cheap perfume Jean used. Not unexciting.

The house, standing in an exposed position, had for years withstood the cold winds blowing in from the coast. About its interior was a feel of erosion; the draughts of winter, even when copper strips had been tacked round all the doors, had licked at corners, scoured floors, and whistled into every last nook with a flavour of salt.

The six-year-old had been sitting alone in the dark, antiquated kitchen, into which Tebbutt now followed him, looking round hopefully as he did so. The room, as previously, was in utter disarray. He spared a second glance only for a pair of panties hung up to dry on a line. Jean’s, no doubt of it. He thought of what they usually contained.

A heavy black retriever came bounding up, thrusting its blunt nose into Tebbutt’s crotch. ‘Down, Felonious,’ Tebbutt said, pushing the brute away. He refused to pronounce the animal’s real name, which was Thelonius. Too pretentious to be spoken.

And who had named the dog Thelonius? The same person who, on the insubstantial grounds that it would provide them with a good start in life, had insisted on the three boys being christened Alaric, Aldred, and Alfric, overwhelming the boys’ parents, presenting them with such a puzzle of nomenclature that they addressed their own sons as Aye, Bee and Alf respectively: none other than Mike’s father, Noel Roderick Linwood, retired arms dealer with connections in the Middle East.

The scantiness of the kitchen furnishing was emphasized by an oil painting of a younger Noel Roderick Linwood, hanging above the unlit grate. Bearded he stood, stern and bushy of eyebrow, in a double-breasted suit, regarding a palm tree and a much smaller mosque. He clutched a diagram of a fighter plane, an emblem of his profession. A heavy gold frame surrounded him.

This was the presiding spirit of St Giles House, old Noel – at once the saviour and ruination of his son Michael and Michael’s wife and their three boys. Battening on to his progeny, he had more than once saved them from destitution by selling off a painting or a Persian miniature.

Alf observed Tebbutt’s gaze on the portrait. ‘Wanna buy it? That’s Gramps.’

‘I know. I’ve met him.’

The lad snorted. ‘He’s mad. So’s Auntie April. Barking mad. Madness runs in our family. I expect to be round the twist myself before next term.’

‘You shouldn’t think things like that.’

The boy hauled his right leg up on his chair and bit his knee. ‘Do you think loonies are generally religious? Was Christ bonkers, for instance?’

Shortly after the Linwoods had acquired the old house, Noel Roderick Linwood had descended upon them. He was in transit, he said, seeking a house of his own. He would not be staying. He regretted the inconvenience. But if he could borrow the top floor for his treasures, that would be splendid. Couldn’t the boys sleep all together in the breakfast room? Two years later, old Noel, well into his cantankerous seventies, was still searching the county for a house for himself, still burdening Mike and Jean with his presence, his conversation, his complaints.

Ray had heard Jean’s monologues on this subject. Noel had gradually spread like a cancer through the house, taking over attics as well as top floor, and then, in a coup, a little study on the ground floor. He had even entertained old colleagues for days on end in his quarters. Jean had raged. Mike had withdrawn into his shell. Noel had sailed on, untroubled.

In an endeavour to persuade the old man to move, Mike and Jean had arranged a dinner for him the previous month; Ray and Ruby had been invited, together with a local estate agent. Jean had opened up the unused dining-room. Although the ploy had not worked and Noel stayed put in St Giles House, plenty of Bulgarian wine had been served.

Before the meal, Jean had taken Ray’s hand and whispered to him aside, ‘Do be charming to the old blighter. He can be so difficult.’

The old blighter had set himself out to enthral. Tucked into the open neck of Noel’s white flannel shirt was a cerise cravat. That and his untidy white hair gave him a theatrical air. He kissed the hands of the women guests.

With calculating eye, he surveyed the other people gathered round the oak table (since sold). He splashed his soup and grumbled about the beef and discountenanced Jean. But what he did mainly, in a rather argumentative way, frequently resting his left elbow on the table and waving his fork accusingly at Ruby, who sat next to him, or Ray who sat opposite him, was to dilate on his successful career as a military advisor to the Shah of Persia – a fine man by his account – before the disastrous turn of events which had ended in the expulsion of the Shah, leaving him to wander homeless on the face of the earth, while his country was taken over by a bunch of religious Muslim maniacs.

Noel swallowed down wine before repeating the last phrase in case someone had missed it. ‘Religious Muslim maniacs.

‘Not much fun for estate agents,’ he said, braying with laughter, gesturing at the local specimen of the breed.

Ray’s unease during this long discourse, which drove all other conversation from the table, was considerable. He knew little of Iran, and did not greatly like what he knew, but he understood that Noel Roderick Linwood was presenting a prejudiced view of events – the view in fact of a parasite, who had self-confessedly made a fortune selling arms to a despotic leader, at the expense of the leader’s people. That there had been a violent reaction against the Shah’s materialism was hardly surprising.

Since no one round the Linwood table had ever come within dreaming distance of the fortune Noel Linwood had accumulated, everyone listened to his tirade with varying degrees of respect or patience, some nodding or smiling in agreement. Not understanding the situation in Iran, they accepted his boasting for truth. No one disputed that the Ayatollah Khomeini, who had replaced the Shah, represented the greater of two evils. Noel’s claim that Muslim fundamentalism was a threat to the West met with no argument round the table. Instead, the men reached solemnly for their wine glasses. The wine came from the Suhindol region of Bulgaria; they knew no harm of it. The estate agent said he drank it by the crate at home.

Ruby appeared to be enjoying the glimpse of the world beyond Norfolk provided by Noel. To Ray’s mortification, she showed an unexpected understanding of Iran’s internal affairs. ‘They chop off people’s hands in Tehran,’ she said.

‘They amputate the hands of thieves,’ Noel Linwood elaborated, in a schoolmasterly tone, as if correcting a pupil. ‘At the wrist.’ He did not fail to demonstrate the action on himself, smiling fiercely at the company as he did so, showing his too-white teeth. ‘The work is done by a criminal élite who were, under the late Shah, respectable surgeons, many of them trained here in England, at Bart’s and elsewhere.’

Guests expressed their disgust and said it should not be allowed.

‘It’s barbaric!’ exclaimed Ruby, gazing admiringly at her neighbour’s wrist, which he still clutched as if in agony.

Prodding her under the table with his foot, Ray said, ‘Better to have a surgeon do it than a butcher.’

A dessert spoon was pointed across the table in his direction.

‘They’re butchers. You have to understand that, if you’re to understand the first principles of the present intolerable regime. Let me repeat – Muslim extremism, and there’s no other word for it, Muslim extremism has ruined many a good honest English businessman. I tell you, I transferred to Iraq. Saddam Hussein is a man who understands the West.’

Ray, who had had to listen to his daughter’s arguments on the subject, was against the armaments trade; he said no more, recalling Jean’s caution earlier.

At the end of the meal, following coffee, the estate agent was already rising unsteadily from the table. At that juncture, Noel turned beaming to Ruby. Laying a hand on her arm, he said, ‘You and your husband must come and stay with me in my little eyrie for a few days. I could show you some of my treasures from the East, since these two’ – indicating his son and daughter-in-law – ‘aren’t much interested.’

Ray read a look of horror on Mike’s face at this summons and a look of bemused delight on Ruby’s. Before there was any chance of Ruby’s fatal acceptance, before he could stop himself, he leaned across the table and said, ‘Oh, I don’t think you’d like us at close quarters, Mr Linwood. You see – Ruby and I have no manners.’

The old man turned to him, thrusting his neck forward as if to make sure he was hearing correctly. ‘You’re not a barbarian, man, are you?’

‘Our table manners are very obnoxious,’ Ray continued. ‘And we’re dirty. I’m sorry to have to admit it, but we’re dirty. Ruby especially.’

‘Ray!’ she exclaimed, but he pressed on as excitement welled in him. The other guests, about to leave the room, turned to listen in fascination.

‘You see, a few months back we decided to become Muslims, so we’d never agree with your views as expressed this evening … It’s Mecca five times a day. We’re not fanatics – we just hate Christians.’ He rushed on. ‘And in my case – it’s shaming to admit this, Mr Linwood, but in my case it’s a medical problem – an intestinal incontinence. And if I forget to take my pills – help, help, an attack coming on! Goodness, oh – excuse me—’