The Squire Quartet. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ after all, can never belong to reactionaries like you. We have to shape them to the needs of society. You will be out of it from now on, as I expect you will discover after the conference.’

      11

      ‘The Strong Act as They Have Power to Act’

      Blakeney, Norfolk, July 1978

      Two women stood at a window looking out, one intently, one restlessly.

      The house was low-built of red brick, with seven bays and two storeys. It dated from the Regency period. Even in the sunny days of this fitful Norfolk July, its rooms remained shady.

      Pink flowers of tamarisk pressed against the window, growing in sandy soil. The house stood on a spit of land at one end of Blakeney quay, with long perspectives of sea and marshes to both the back and front. The rear of the house was sheltered against winter winds by trees and a high wall.

      In the front of the house, the windows were square casements, low to the ground, with white-painted shutters on the inside. The two women stood together at the living-room window, Deirdre Kaye with her arms folded, Teresa Squire with binoculars to her eyes, searching the distance.

      The linked circles of Teresa’s vision passed over the lively scene of the harbour, with its porcupine-quill quota of masts of dinghies, with near-naked children fishing for gillies at the harbour-edge. They lifted slightly and passed beyond the main channel to the distant sea, the glittering mud of low tide where terns fed, the bars of sand, the marshes and dykes, to a pale stretch of beach backed by the blue North Sea. On the stretch of beach four ponies moved.

      Even from this distance, the glasses enabled Teresa to distinguish the copper heads of Deirdre’s two boys, Douglas and Tom, Deirdre’s husband, Marshall, and her own estranged husband, Tom, riding in a line by the water’s edge. She stared for a long while at Tom’s image, wavering in the heat rising from the land. He resembled a phantom progressing underwater. He had drowned in heat and absence.

      ‘Well, I’ll go and knit a doormat or something,’ Deirdre said.

      ‘They’re out on the point – coming back here, I expect,’ Teresa said, lowering the glasses and turning to her sister-in-law. ‘The boys look terribly brown. So do you, Deirdre. How long have you and Marshall been back from Greece?’

      Deirdre went over to a low table and lit a cigarette from the lighter standing there. ‘A week. Sorry I didn’t send any cards. The house still smells shut up, doesn’t it? It’s almost as hot in Norfolk as it was on Milos. I can’t believe it.’

      ‘There was nothing but rain and cloud here all June.’

      Deirdre swung round to confront Teresa.

      ‘Look, let’s not beat about the bush, Tess. How much longer are you going to keep the children over at Grantham with your mother? It’s bad for them and for everyone. You know Tom’s still willing to have you back. I think you should stop acting up and return to Pippet Hall at once.’

      ‘That’s really our private business and nobody else’s.’ The words were said defensively. Teresa clutched the binoculars and looked anxiously at Deirdre, who was a head taller than she. Deirdre promptly wreathed herself in smoke. ‘It’s not simply a question of his “having me back”, as you put it. I just can’t take his unfaithfulness any longer. Sorry, but I just can’t.’

      Grace came into the room, carrying a large cat.

      ‘Get out, will you?’ Deirdre told her oldest child. ‘I’m having a row with your aunt.’

      As Grace faded from the scene, pulling a face, Deirdre said, ‘I wanted to say this to you before they return and Tom finds you’ve arrived. I personally am baffled, completely baffled, by how you are behaving. This talk about Tom being unfaithful – I mean, you realize that’s old-fashioned for a start?’

      ‘You’d probably call it by a nastier name. It hurts me, as it does most women. Men think they can get away with too much.’

      ‘Well, Tom doesn’t think that because Tom isn’t that kind, though he may have had a bit on the side occasionally. I want to say two things to you. First of all, you ought to try and realize that he’s experienced difficulties in life – well, so have we all; but last year and this are in a way his great years. As I see it. They’ve come a bit late, but they’re wonderful for him. Last year, the excitement of conceiving the “Frankenstein” series and getting it filmed and the book written; then, this year, the tremendous success of the book and the series. The book’s reprinting and they’re now re-running the series, in case you haven’t bothered to watch the box, with all your other enterprises. It’s a triumph for Tom and for the family. You realize that he thinks he’s doing something for England, for the West – silly though you probably find that. And in the middle of it all, you – you have to muck everything up, so that he’s left Pippet Hall in despair and gone to live in his club in London. How do you think he feels? You’re his wife – haven’t you more sense of him as a person than to let him drift like that?’

      ‘I didn’t make him leave Pippet Hall, did I? Nor did I make him go with that woman.’

      ‘Laura Nye, do you mean?’

      ‘Oh, I expect he’s brought her here often. You probably know her well, which is why you take her side.’

      ‘Don’t be cheap. That’s my role. I met Laura twice last year. But that’s all past – you’ve been told it’s finished, over and over again. That was your excuse to muck about yourself, wasn’t it? My God, how you grabbed it with both hands! So what if Tom did have it off with Laura Nye? She was one of the actresses in his drama. She was literally a passing fancy. He’s got to do something while he’s travelling to all these fancy locations, Hollywood, Malaysia, and so on. If I were in Singapore now, I’d be having it off with the nearest Chinaman, I can tell you!’

      Teresa put the binoculars down on the window sill, carefully, to conceal her trembling. ‘I don’t want to have this discussion, Deirdre, sorry. I came over here to see Tom, not you. How you would behave in Singapore is nothing to do with it. Tom obviously preferred the girl to me. He’s old enough to be her father. You speak as if the tragedy’s all his, but believe me it’s mine too—’

      Coughing angrily into her fist, Deirdre said, ‘What thought processes do you use? Your mind is stuck on clichés. “He’s old enough to be her father”, indeed! Just try and understand what that may mean in real terms. Tom’ll be fifty next year. That’s not a very comfortable age for men. He probably saw this fling as his last chance, as something to bolster his flagging libido. I don’t know, he doesn’t confide, but I can make intelligent guesses about the situation, and you should do the same. You should ask yourself why he needed that reassurance in the first place.’

      ‘Oh, stop it, Deirdre! Talk about clichés, you sound like an Agony Column yourself. A successful man like Tom needing reassurance from me …’

      ‘Of course he does! You’re his wife. Don’t be so blind. He kicked Laura out and returned to you, didn’t he? You turned your back. Agony! – You think he’s not lacerated by your unhappiness? Why aren’t you lacerated by his? And he bailed your business out earlier this year – to the tune of several thousand pounds, I heard.’

      ‘He was obliged to, Deirdre …’ She put her chin up. ‘I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but Tom was legally bound to sort that out. If I hadn’t been so upset, my business would СКАЧАТЬ