Walcot. Brian Aldiss

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      Sidney had done what he could to sort out his sexual confusions. He had persuaded a small girl called Rose Brackett to come into the garden shed with him. Sid had kissed Rose and she had pulled her panties down. Sidney had his shorts off, when the shed door opened. Jeremy stood there, forehead drawn in a frown.

      ‘You dirty little tacker,’ he exclaimed. Grabbing Sidney by the collar of his shirt, he dragged him from the shed – poor Rosie Brackett was quite ignored and ran home crying – dragged him up the garden path and into the house, calling angrily for Flo.

      As Jeremy explained briefly what he imagined was taking place – shaking Sidney by the collar meanwhile – he gave the boy the odd cuff. With each cuff, he asked, ‘Where did you get that filthy habit from?’

      ‘It wasn’t filthy,’ cried Sid. ‘I never even touched her.’

      Another cuff.

      Flo, in her apron, wrung her hands as she had so often done over her problem son, asking him, glaring down at him, ‘What are we to do with you?’

      What they did with him was send him to public school. That meant he would be away from home for most of the year.

      One great interferer in family affairs was Claude Hillman. Claude had married your father’s sister Ada, your neat little Aunt Ada. It had been another of those post-war marriages. You had heard Claude say once, when in his cups, ‘Marry in haste, repent in leisure.’ Both of your parents looked askance at Claude; their motto might have been, ‘Judge in haste, disapprove in leisure.’ But you liked lumpish old Uncle Claude, with his forced jollity, as with any jollity, however forced.

      On this occasion, you thought he came out well, by saying, ‘Sid only wanted a feel, didn’t he? What’s the harm in that?’

      To which your mother had responded, ‘The trouble with you, Claude, is you are mucky-minded.’

      He laughed, unoffended. ‘That’s true, m’dear.’

      You too could see the attractions of getting Rose Brackett into the garden shed and ‘having a feel’, as Claude put it.

      But poor Sidney was in disgrace for some while. Jeremy drove Sidney through the college gates. To Sid’s eyes, the great expanse of parade ground and forbidding buildings, all seemed to swarm with noisy boys, some running mindlessly about, some fighting, some standing still and moving their arms as if in semaphore.

      Sidney, being brave, not crying, turned to give his father a farewell embrace. Jeremy became involved with the car’s gears, staring ahead.

      ‘Well, toodle-oo, old boy! Off you go!’

      Sidney went.

      Sidney had a troubled and delayed puberty. Puberty did not visit him until he was almost sixteen. He then became briefly known as ‘Flasher Sid’. On his seventeenth birthday, when his parents gave him a pair of boxing gloves as a present, Sidney went to the bottom of their garden and hanged himself without fuss from a branch of an old apple tree.

      The suicide caused shock waves all round the family.

      ‘He was a nice, quiet boy, mind you,’ said your mother.

      ‘But he was a bit, you know, funny, mum,’ Sonia exclaimed. ‘He asked me once if I wanted to see his willy.’

      ‘I hope you didn’t say yes,’ said your mother, keen that her daughter should remain unsullied.

      ‘I did just have a quick look, but I didn’t touch.’

      You could see that Sonia was teasing your mother, but Mary was clearly shocked.

      ‘Valerie wouldn’t have looked, would she?’ you said, teasing in your turn, with a sidelong glance at Sonia.

      ‘Oh, you’re so jealous of your poor sister,’ Mary exclaimed. ‘It’s a horrible trait in you!’

      Uncle Claude Hillman gave your father a wink. ‘The kid was queer, wasn’t he? ’Nuff to make anyone hang themselves.’

      Your Auntie Violet had her own slant on the matter, saying to Bertie, ‘Well, plants die from lack of sunlight. The poor kid died from lack of love and understanding, didn’t he? They aren’t exactly elements in which your flipping family specializes, are they, Bert?’

      You can understand that at this time your mind was a confusion of ill-digested thoughts. You were of an age when your perceptions were extended, when it seemed to you that every day you climbed a new metaphorical hill. You had anxieties about what was truth, what false. You were keen to bring a possible life as a geologist into line with probity of character. Many connections had to be made, many decisions confronted you.

      After leaving school, you went up to Birmingham University to study the new discipline of Earth Sciences. You knew of no other university offering such a course. You were proud to be an early student, and worked hard.

      During your first term in Birmingham, your Aunt Violet came to visit you, to see how you were getting on. You were ashamed to take her to your digs, but Violet seemed not to mind. ‘I like the poster,’ she said, admiring the portrait of Che Guevara hanging on your wall. There she stood, perfectly at ease in the scruffy room. Your Aunt Violet was brightly clothed in something beaded and flowing. Gipsy earrings swung from her ears. She wore silk stockings and red, high-heeled shoes. You were overwhelmed by her appearance and hoped all your new friends saw you with this illustrious relation.

      She removed, with meticulous care, your soiled shirts and pants from your rickety chair. She pushed aside some paperbacks and scribbled-on pieces of paper, to make a space on the table.

      ‘I’ve brought you some plonk, Steve, dear,’ she said, setting down on your table a brown paper carrier bag containing a bottle of red wine. ‘I assume you drink?’

      ‘Of course.’ You did not wish to appear other than adult before this sophisticated aunt. The fact was that you had tasted beer and had not liked it, and the group of young men you mixed with proclaimed themselves Communists and were abstemious (and saw no contradiction in that).

      Violet gingerly settled her behind down on your chair, tipped it back, put her feet up on the table edge, showing an extent of shapely leg as she did so, and eased off her high heels, so that they hung loose from her stockinged toes. She asked you what you were getting up to, now that you were free of parental control. You replied, ‘I’m considering disowning my pater. I have already disowned God. My pater has been a bad and repressive influence. I reject his way of life. You know him, auntie, and I am sure you dislike him.’

      ‘No, I don’t really dislike Martin. I feel a bit sorry for the old blighter.’

      ‘Feeling sorry for people does no one any good.’ How grown up you were being.

      ‘And your mother has a bit of a mental problem, as I suppose you know. Well, like poor old Bertie, in a way.’

      Bertie was her husband, your mother’s younger brother. But you were uninterested in Violet’s troubles. You spoke instead of your own troubles.

      You addressed her as if she were a meeting.

      ‘You see, auntie, I have reached the conclusion that money should not be inherited. When a person dies, СКАЧАТЬ