When the Feast is Finished. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ here, in Headington Cemetery.’ (She did not want to go alone to East Dereham.)

      East Dereham was the small Norfolk town in which I had been born. In Margaret’s and my palmy days, I had bought a plot adjacent to my grandfather’s grave in the town cemetery. Why had I done it? As a joke? Or was I prompted by an absurd longing to return to the town I had left at the age of twelve?

      Of course I heeded what Margaret said. If she wished to be buried in our local cemetery, so it should be – and I would follow her there. I tried to sell my Dereham plot to Betty, my sister living in Norfolk, but she turned down the offer. She did not think it a good idea, any more than Margaret had done.

      My poor darling! This was one of her few indications of worry. In the night, I dreamed that she was driving on the wrong side of a fast road. We witnessed an accident, where it seemed that a man, possibly a cyclist, was killed; but he got up and walked away.

      I drove her round to the John Radcliffe Hospital this morning. We were there before eight. She was installed on Level 5c, private ward 16. She gives me her dear sweet smile – as ever, she is calm and collected, maybe too collected. I feel that her delicacy of character permeates and informs the family. We would all be lesser people without her presence.

      Although I hated to leave her, she sat on the bed, radiating confidence. Angiograms are minor exploratory ops, but hardly comfortable.

      During an angiogram, a dye is inserted into the coronary arteries, so that they are clearly outlined in X-rays. It causes some discomfort and may possibly bring complications, but it does provide clear evidence of disease.

      I left Margaret because I had to go to see Andy, a carpenter working on the extension of the house. The builders were with us for a year.

      Later, I walked back to the hospital at 1 p.m. There was my darling, in bed, alert, looking quite rosy. The angiogram all over, with positive results. No arterial deterioration, merely an enlarged left ventricle, which could be cured by exercise and dieting. I tell her, next week we can swim in Spain.

      She must lie flat, then semi-flat, and I may be able to collect her by six, and bring her back home.

      Rang my sister Betty with the news.

      5th July 1996

      Margaret seems fine. A bruise on her groin, otherwise lovely. We’re relieved, of course.

      Wendy brought her some freesias.

      6th July 1996

      She really seems happy with the weight off her mind. We strolled round Headington and bought some art materials. Then a wardrobe for the guest room, for Clive and Youla [Clive’s wife] when they arrive from Athens next month. It’s Youla’s birthday. We phoned her in Prigipou.

      Moggins [my pet name for Margaret] now takes pleasure in organising Twinkling of an Eye [my autobiography]. Has provided excellent index. Now she separates chapters, in preparation for submitting disks to publisher. As ever, we work amiably together.

      Walking about in the sun, we admit to each other that we don’t relish the day, sure to come, when we can no longer stroll about the world freely, as now.

      At this time we were light-hearted, happy in each other’s company. Nevertheless, we were under some strain. The builders, good though they were, were constantly about us. Until the new study was built on to the north of the house, Margaret and I operated in a small room, each with our computers on our desks, crunched together in a space eight by fourteen feet. The enlarged ventricle seemed a small matter, curable by cutting down on cream teas in Norfolk, by walking daily to the shops and bank.

      I wonder now why we were so carefree, why we purchased with hardly a thought a house which initially caused us so much trouble and expense. Well, houses in Oxford were hard to come by but, above that, we enjoyed each other’s company, found life fun, and did not think much beyond the day. And we took it for granted that I, six years Margaret’s senior, would die first.

      So our mainly sunny life continued, with trips to Spain, Portugal and Greece. This last Greek visit was in May 1997. Before we left England, we had had some anxieties regarding the heat factor and Margaret’s energies. Our problems were eased by Clive and Youla who, ensconced in Athens, made many preparations which smoothed our way.

      After relaxing on the island of Aegina with Clive and Youla, we headed northwards, to the Meteora, which we had been hoping to visit ever since the mid-sixties, and then into the wilder northern Greece. Northern Greece is very different from the Classical Greece which existed to the south; here one traffics with the ghost of Byzantium, where several transitory tinpot empires ruled. When we arrived in Thessaloniki, Margaret was tired, although still game. I booked us a room in the Elektra Palace Hotel in Aristotelious Square, looking out to sea. ‘Delighted to see how happy the touch of luxury made dear Moggins’, says the journal I kept. ‘Perhaps the journey – this gorgeous idle journey! – has been a bit tough on her.’

      Now I see how she felt unwell much of the time, saying nothing. She became impatient with my nostalgie de la boue at one point. We were strolling in a quieter part of Thessaloniki, as far as there is a quieter part, when we saw a pretty side street in which pseudo-acacias grew on the pavement. A little rickety hotel stood in the street. If you took a room up on the sixth floor, high above the pedestrians, you could stand on a balcony with green railings and look out on sun and the tops of the trees. It was so romantic, I longed to be there.

      Saying as much started an argument. Margaret said we were too old for that kind of thing. It would be a sordid little room, up too many steps. We needed comfort at our age.

      She was right. It might have been squalid up there, perched in a cheap Greek hotel. Her diary reports the incident thus:

      B goes on about small romantic hotels in crummy side streets. I finally shut him up, saying I’m not up to travelling that way any more. We argue. It’s unusual.

      Later, as a gesture, he buys me a pretty candle.

      Although I found nothing to complain about, and much to interest us, I was not ill. Now I’m sorry I did not see how little she enjoyed the northern part of the trip.

      ‘You must think I’m an awful person to take out,’ she says. She smiles and takes her supper pill. She has left her food again, as invariably she does. She has the appetite of a sparrow.

      Privately, she had more serious complaints. Her diary entry for the 14th of May reads:

      Dreadful night, noisy music from lobby, noisy lorries setting off up hill, wild dogs barking in garden. And an empty stomach. This is something of an endurance feat and I will never agree to another trip with such hardships – Greece is such a difficult place.

      It comes hard to acknowledge that my responses were so different. My journal speaks quite fondly of the hotel we were in at this time. It was called the Hotel King Alexander, and stood on a hill on well-kept grounds just outside the city of Florina. As well as the customary Greek flag, the hotel flew EU and Australian flags. We were installed in Room 104. I report it as being clean and comfortable, with a balcony, overlooking the red-roofed outer town and the mountains. I note that Margaret was pleased with it.

      I was writing my notes out on the balcony at dusk. Dogs were barking in the hills and a bird occasionally gave out one beautiful liquid note. The scent of lilac lingered in the air. I wrote, in my naïve way:

      I adore – am excited by – Florina. СКАЧАТЬ