The Squire Quartet. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ job of being Tom’s wife. Now you’ve found someone of your own kind, perhaps Tom can find someone to make him happier. That’s what we all hope.’

      Ron laid a hand on his wife’s arm. She glared like a cat about to pounce, and then put an arm round him.

      ‘Such fun to be totally honest for once,’ she said: ‘Sorry, Teresa.’

      But Teresa had already turned back to her husband. ‘You of all people accusing Vernon of fooling around with me behind your back. Why can’t I invite him home? He only came for coffee and a business chat. I’ll invite in who I like. I wanted him to see my work. I’m not going to be cooped up while you do what you please with any woman you fancy.’

      Jarvis was also talking. Squire found he had ceased to listen. Before the spectacle of his wife attacking him and defending Jarvis, all the fight had gone out of him. He was thinking rather abstractedly about closing up the Hall, perhaps even selling up – why not? Maintaining it was just a struggle – and going abroad somewhere, living on capital and royalties. Maybe California. Or one of the Adriatic islands. Mali Losinj. But even if they were Yugoslav, they were still communist. Singapore? Malaysia. Without Laura?

      Jarvis was still talking, wagging a finger, maintaining a long self-righteous discourse, chiefly concerned with how his popularity with women was sustained because he treated them right, although he didn’t think it was fair to marry. Furthermore, he cultivated Teresa because she was good at her craft and they would make a success of the business they were developing if only their capital hadn’t run out unexpectedly. Even that was because of his generosity. He was too generous.

      Squire realized that Séverine and her husband were listening with fascination – the scent of her perfume reached him. Much as he hated this occasion, he recognized that he could laugh about it with her afterwards. Possibly rather a long time afterwards.

      He noted also that Teresa’s mother and Willie had made themselves scarce. His dry mouth reminded him how welcome alcohol would be.

      ‘Perhaps we should go and have a drink somewhere,’ he said, cutting in on Jarvis’s speech. ‘We’ll sort this false nonsense out once and for all. There’s bound to be a pub open in Ascot tonight. I won’t impose this disruption on my friends any longer. But if you are determined to consort with all and sundry, Teresa, then we must make arrangements accordingly.’

      ‘I didn’t say—’ Teresa began, but Jarvis silenced her. ‘I’m not drinking with you, Mr Squire. Not after the way you’ve insulted me in front of these people. And damaged my reputation. I intended you no harm.’

      Squire laughed with a poor parched sound. ‘You’d better understand that you’ve done me considerable harm – and Teresa also. If you don’t want to talk, why not simply blow back into the night, the way you came?’

      At this point, Ron Broadwell heaved himself forward, clapping his hands. Belinda took Squire’s arm and squeezed him. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said.

      ‘Did you two come in a taxi?’ Ron asked Teresa, flinging open the front door.

      ‘Of course not. Vern had his car at the airport. And where’s my mother? Tom, you’re turning me away – realize that, you’re turning me away. I warn you, I don’t like it, and I shan’t stand for it.’

      ‘Goodbye, Teresa,’ he called.

      ‘Terry, let’s scram out of here,’ Jarvis said, tugging at his coat. He added menacingly to Broadwell, ‘And I’ll plant one on you if you shove me.’

      ‘Do you wish me to turn the dogs on you?’

      The front door slammed. Broadwell ushered his wife and Squire into the living room to the fire, ostentatiously wiping sweat from his forehead.

      ‘I thought the blighter was going to attack me, I really thought he was going to hit me. You heard what he said? Well, Jacques, Séverine, you see how we English live. It’s all drama – the land of Shakespeare.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

      It was midnight. Distant bells began to peal.

      13

      Illegal Currency Charges

      Ermalpa, September 1978

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      He turned the corner. СКАЧАТЬ