Remembrance Day. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ