Remembrance Day. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ we went to live with Auntie Flo down the road from us. Poor old Auntie Flo, I liked her. She was fun. It would be 1917. Yes, that’s it, because she had lost Uncle Herbert the year before, fighting in France, so there was plenty of room in her house. I was as proud as punch, telling the kids at school as we’d been bombed out.

      Years later, perhaps that was after I married Bill, Mum heard me telling someone we’d been bombed out when I was a kid, and she corrected me, saying it was a gas main blew up and not a German bomb at all. But I always somehow connected it with the Germans. The entire wall, gone like that, and the sun shining in, lighting up the room …

      Bill and I had a lot of fun … Purser on a P & O liner, so he was away a lot of the time, and I pretty well brought up Ruby and Joyce on my own. But when he came home, well, we always had parties and presents. The thirties … Looking back, I reckon they were the best time of my life. Somehow, after the war, the second one, Bill wasn’t quite the same. He used to be very depressed at times … I suppose we were getting older by then …

      Ruby was always our pet. We ought to have made more of Joyce, but she was more difficult. I suppose she’s paying us back now by never having me to stay with her and her husband in their posh house in Norwich … Still, things could be worse. It’s quite nice here, and Ray really isn’t such a bad chap. At least Ruby likes him, and that’s half the battle …

      Although Ray had dismissed Agnes’s remark over breakfast, he took her advice and went to his bank.

      He always felt apologetic in the bank. Even the modest Fakenham branch oppressed him with its pretence that money was easy to acquire, easy to spend. He looked at the posters on the wall, offering him huge loans so that he could buy a new car or house, or take a holiday in Bermuda; immune to such seductions, Ray nevertheless felt that he was the only man banking here who could not afford to take advantage of such offers.

      It had to be said, however, that none of the other customers looked particularly rich, though some wore suits and ties. I’m glad that someone’s keeping up the country’s standards, he told himself and, slightly amused, went up to one of the girls behind the counter. She explained to him in some detail why it was impossible for the manager to interfere with any credit card transaction, which did not go through the bank but through a central accounting system in Northampton.

      Was she sympathetic or condescending? he asked himself, returning to the comfortable anonymity of the streets. The little bitch had probably just come off a training course in Purley or somewhere.

      He drove slowly out of town and along the road to Hartisham but stopped before reaching East Barsham. Other traffic roared by as he pulled up in the gateway to a field.

      By the side of the road a phone-booth stood knee-deep in cowparsley and alexanders. From it he could ring Mike. It would save him the embarrassment of a personal encounter. He sat for a while, thinking over what he would say. As he walked back to the booth, he could hear Mike’s voice clearly in his head. Oh, hello, Ray. I’m sorry you had to ring me. Jean and I were just going to pop over to see you and Ruby – you know Jean has always had a bit of a crush on you. Yes, I’ve got the money, of course. I had a slight problem or I’d have been in touch sooner. We’ll be over in about an hour, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for getting me out of a hole. You know what an awkward cuss Joe Stanton is – trusts no one.

      The Linwood number was ringing. It was Jean who answered.

      Immediately she spoke, the sound of her voice, the intonations she used, conjured up her face, her figure, and the way she stood. Ray saw in inner vision her dark old kitchen with the portrait of her father-in-law above the grate, and Jean with her dark hair about her cheeks. He also heard the change in her voice when he announced himself.

      ‘Oh, Jean, hello. How are you? Could I speak to Mike?’

      ‘Mike’s still over at Pippet Hall. What exactly do you want?’

      ‘Well, it’s something really between the two of us.’

      Her tone was unyielding. ‘It’s about the money, is it?’

      ‘Jean, it’s about the three hundred quid I lent Mike at the beginning of the week, and I didn’t want to bother you—’

      ‘I’ve got quite enough problems here, Ray, thanks very much, without being pestered for money just now.’

      ‘Look, Jean, it’s not a case of—’

      In the same undisturbed voice, she cut in, saying, ‘Michael will repay you that money next week, OK? Does that satisfy you, because right now we’re involved with the suicide at Pippet Hall. Goodbye.’

      Suicide? Tebbutt said to himself, as he replaced the receiver. What was the cheeky woman on about? Inventing excuses not to pay, rather as he had invented excuses not to stay with Noel Linwood; but at least he’d been drunk on that occasion. What a misery! She was lying – well, forced to lie, of course, because the Linwoods were dirt poor and still keeping up a middle-class façade. Bloody suicide, indeed: ‘bankruptcy’ was the word she was looking for.

      Ray took a walk in the field to try and calm down. The sheep moved grudgingly out of his way, as if, he thought, they too had borrowed money from him.

      He could write a book about being poor, except that it would be so awful that no one would read it. The poor would not read it. They could not afford to read, they had an increasing contempt for reading, being slaves to the video machine; in any case, they knew all about the miserable subject. The rich would not read it. Why? Because being rich they did not want to know. And why should they?

      Every day, almost every hour, brought a humiliation unknown to solvency. He did not want to have that conversation with Jean. Moreover, looked at coolly, the situation was such that she probably did not want to have that conversation with him. She liked him, and maybe more than that, though not a word on the subject had ever passed between them. She too was in bad financial straits, poor dear.

      He did not want to be walking about this field, trudging through sheep shit. He did not want to be wearing these clothes – in particular, not these boots and these trousers. He did not want to be wearing his patched underclothes. He would not want to eat whatever it was he was going to have to eat for lunch (nor did he want to call it ‘dinner’, as did most of the people with whom he associated). He did not want his poor wife to work in a cake shop, a sign of genteel poverty if ever there was one.

      This evening, he would most probably go out and get pissed at the Bluebell. He did not particularly want to do that, but there was little else to do in North Norfolk on a Saturday night if you had not got two pence to rub together.

      When he had walked round the field three times, he went back to his car. He did not want to be driving this clapped-out old Hillman.

      What he really wanted was a brand-spanking-new red BMW from the dealer in Norwich. He would whizz over in his sporting clothes to see the Linwoods in their eroded old house in Hartisham. Mike would be out, taking holy orders or something they could laugh about. Noel and the boys would be out of sight. Jean would be there on her own. And he’d say, as he put his arm round her waist, Sorry about this morning. Just testing. Look, forget about that three hundred. Have it as a present. And now you and I are going to scud down to Brighton for a dirty weekend.

      That Saturday evening he went as usual to get pissed at the Bluebell. As he left home, Ruby kissed him tenderly and said at the gate, ‘Don’t have too many, darling. Remember Jenny’s coming with her Czech boyfriend СКАЧАТЬ