Life in the West

THE SQUIRE QUARTET

Brian Aldiss, OBE, is a fiction and science fiction writer, poet, playwright, critic, memoirist and artist. He was born in Norfolk in 1925. After leaving the army, Aldiss worked as a bookseller, which provided the setting for his first book, The Brightfount Diaries (1955). His first published science fiction work was the story ‘Criminal Record’, which appeared in Science Fantasy in 1954. Since then he has written nearly 100 books and over 300 short stories, many of which are being reissued as part of The Brian Aldiss Collection.

Several of Aldiss’ books have been adapted for the cinema; his story ‘Supertoys Last All Summer Long’ was adapted and released as the film AI in 2001. Besides his own writing, Brian has edited numerous anthologies of science fiction and fantasy stories, as well as the magazine SF Horizons.

Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society and in 2000 was given the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Aldiss was awarded the OBE for services to literature in 2005. He now lives in Oxford, the city in which his bookselling career began in 1947.

Brian Aldiss
Life in the West

Dedication

Life in the West is dedicated to other

Distinguished Persons

Chen, David, Iris, Maysie, and Michael

by no means forgetting Felix, Elena, Derek, and Janet

to show them what one of their number was up to

before we sampled life in the East

and walked the Great Wall together

Contents

Cover

Life in the West

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

Prelude

1 The International Congress

2 Flattery and Higher Foolishness

3 A View from the Beach

4 Conversation with ‘Drina’s’

5 She’s Only a Sex Symbol

6 Putting our Socialist Friends to Rights

7 Land Full of Strange Gods

8 Sublimated Coin Warfare

9 How to Get to Ostrow Lomelsky

10 Slatko

11 ‘The Strong Act as They Have Power to Act’

12 Tribal Customs

13 Illegal Currency Charges

14 An Ideological Decision

Acknowledgments

THE SQUIRE QUARTET

Copyright

About the Publisher

Epigraph

I walked beside a sea aflame,

An animal of land. The fire

Of stars knocked at my earthbound frame:

East of grapples West, man maid, hope Fate;

All oppositions emanate

From constellations of desire.

Burning below hair, flesh, and teeth,

An image of the Bright Ones lies,

A lantern hid in bone. Beneath

That vision, teeth and hair begin

Again; wolf grins to wolfish grin

As smile I in my lover’s eyes.

Too soon that love with false-bright hair

Is dead: the house stands silent. I

Fare forth across the world’s despair,

Its muteness, oratory, and banners,

To seek not truth but modern manners.

The head must win what heart let die.

Introduction

When I began to write the Squire Quartet my intention was to portray something of the world I was living in, from the 1980s onwards. I found most of that world exciting – enticing to experience and to record.

This, the first volume of the Squire Quartet, brisk and chatty, was published on March 6th 1980 – as a loving card from my wife, still tucked into her copy of the book, reminds me. We were living on a quiet North Oxford street and our younger children were seriously into education. We were always moving house, depending on our fortunes.

I had been attending a conference in Palermo – a conference with a strong Communist flavour, not particularly enjoyable. It was over. I was standing on the dockside, looking north over the sea. A story began to build up in my mind: the conference; the players from various countries, where the economic blocs seemed irreconcilable; and at the same time, a man’s – Sir Thomas C. Squire’s – difficulties at home.

Once I returned to our house in Charlbury Road, I launched into the novel. My mother died during that period; a melancholy event recorded when Squire’s mother dies just before Christmas. You have to go on, whatever happens. Maybe the army taught me that. Or maybe I had known it even as a small boy. Anyhow, Squire also has to press on. Trouble in Yugoslavia, where he is almost killed. Separation from Teresa, his wife. More human experience, more meditation. More striving to penetrate the thickets.

The novel opens with Squire in Ermalpa, Sicily, for a conference on the popular arts, dubbed ‘the arts of no refinement’. He claims that the pop art of one generation becomes the classic of the next: ‘Homer was, in his day, the Bronze Age equivalent of the TV soap opera.’ Squire is for the new, insisting we rise up to change.

Later, back at his Norfolk house, Pippet Hall, Squire is filming and being filmed. The traditional pretty girl in a swimsuit is with him. He remarks, ‘We are all symbols to each other as well as real people.’

It is the period of the Cold War – much discussion takes place. Squire and his wife quarrel bitterly.

Squire recalls a note given to him in Ermalpa, in which Vasili Rugorsky, the friendly Russian, proposes they visit Nontreale’s cathedral and that Squire pay the bus fare: ‘our government keeps us poor as saints.’

They get to Nontreale and enter the cathedral. Rugorsky praises the elaborate artwork. He says to the unimpressed Squire, ‘Without God, I can see no meaning in anything.’

‘Do you ever experience the feeling that you have come to a dead halt in your life?’ Rugorsky asks.

So the questioning goes on, the faltering marriage, the symbols, the seasons, life itself …

Brian Aldiss

Oxford, 2012

Prelude

Spring 1977

A period in the history of the West known as the late nineteen-seventies. One of the milder inter-glacial periods, when textbooks describe the North European climate as ‘pleasantly cool and damp’.

Over the European Economic Community, eight o’clock of a windy and rather chill spring evening. Television screens brighten everywhere, in flats, houses, and apartments stretching from Scapa Flow to the Gulf of Otranto. Hundreds of them, thousands, millions, the characteristic burning to ward off the terrors of ancient night. So characteristic that future historians will refer to this cultural epoch as the Rounded Rectangular. The global village enjoys its nightly catharsis of violence or Kultur.

The light brightens. Music, and the sight of a savage tropical landscape. The peaks of mountains covered with rain forest stand out against a fast-moving sky. The forest also appears to move, crawling across the screen as if its trunks were a myriad legs. It sweeps beneath the viewer. A river is revealed, dark-flowing, hemmed with sand.

As the viewpoint sinks, a long-boat is revealed, pulling in to one of the banks of the river. Six tourists climb ashore, gazing up at a towering and broken cliff face. From every cranny of the cliff, trees and creepers grow. At one point, tangled creepers hang down into the water.

The viewpoint moves in to reveal the boatman in close-up. He is a lean and aged Dayak, with a polished brown countenance, a wrinkled forehead, and hollows at cheeks and temples. He rests his hand upon a no less worn wooden post which marks the start of the ascent up the cliff.

Floating down, the viewpoint rests upon the Dayak’s arm and hand.

On his wrist is an LC digital quartz timepiece and calculator. Its case, finished in gold and stainless steel, glints in the sunshine. With its perimeter punctuated by studs, it resembles momentarily, in the dazzle of its reflection, some armoured insect from a much earlier period of Earth’s history. But a slight move of the boatman’s wrist, and the six square ceaseless digits are revealed. They grow larger, writhe into red letters. The red letters come swimming forward to fill the screen, forming the legend:

FRANKENSTEIN AMONG THE ARTS

The party moves from the boat, trudging through the sand with their heads down. They climb the cliff by a winding path from which lizards scurry. Cloud shadow comes and goes. The tourists walk along a raised plank walk through dense primary forest, often having to brush creepers aside. The detached voice of Thomas Squire is heard.

‘We’re in some of the oldest jungle in the world, older than the jungles of the Amazon or the Congo. Successive Ice Ages, which caused so much change elsewhere, had no effect on this luxuriance. Listen to its rich silence – you can hear the murmur of antiquity. Transitory-seeming things like silences and pollen have proved themselves capable of enduring over millions of years.’

As his voice lapses to allow the voice of the jungle to take over, another legend swims into view:

Episode One:

Eternal Ephemera

The party of tourists continues deeper into the forest, emerging suddenly under a ravaged hillside. They pause; they are seen to be of mixed race, two Caucasian, the others Mongoloid; all are dressed similarly, male or female, in comfortable travelling clothes. They walk towards a strangely-shaped cave resembling a whale’s mouth. Stalactites and fallen stone about its rim reinforce this impression and give the appearance of teeth, broken but still functional. One by one, the party moves into the great mouth.

‘We are entering the limestone mountains of a part of Malaysia called the Tinjar National Park. Few tourists from the West ever visit here. These caves are dangerous. Not only do they shelter snakes, bats, and a spiteful variety of centipede, but there are concealed abysses on the cave floors, down which an unsuspecting traveller can drop, sometimes for hundreds of feet. Despite these dangers, when we enter here, we are coming into one of the most ancient homes of mankind.’

From inside the whale’s mouth, the foliage outside appears pale and translucent, like spray off a sea. From a deep darkness into the light, bats begin to pour, more and more of them, flying like leaves in an October wind, ceaselessly.

‘Human beings, homo sapiens, lived in these caves 40,000 years BC, at a time when the last Ice Age had its grip on Europe, and the draughty caves of the Dordogne sheltered our remote forebears. In that long period of time, these bats have not changed in any way, as far as we know, while mankind has changed in so many remarkable ways that we often forget that we have also hardly changed at all.’

The bats continue to pour out into the daylight, thousands upon thousands of them, and still no cease to their numbers. The rustle of their wings follows the viewpoint into the throat of the cave, which is uncertainly illuminated by a floodlight.

‘In terms of centuries, a human life is ephemeral. The things we do, the things we make, our alliances and enmities, are even more ephemeral. These paintings were executed one forgotten day thousands of centuries ago.’

In the uncertain light, faces loom, bodies of men, animals, bright fish, plants, all in mysterious relationships and preserved under a glistening film of limestone. Then the light dies. Something can still be seen in the darkness; it is the liquid crystal display of the boatman’s watch, on which the seconds flit rapidly by.

‘These paintings were not intended to last. Perhaps they were intended to please or function – whatever that function was – just for a day. They are beyond taste. There is an old saying, it is “De gustibus non est disputandum”, meaning, “It’s useless to discuss questions of taste”; yet this series of programmes is designed to discover more about taste, and why and how taste changes.’

Further in the cave, the light reveals pictures of two lizards, curving their bodies round bosses of rock. One lizard is green, one red.

‘Did the prehistoric painter prefer green to red? Some gentlemen prefer blondes, some black-haired beauties. There is always a reason for our preferences, sometimes an important reason. We may prefer Beethoven to Burt Bacharach; there may be a political reason why we like rock’n’roll more than Ruddigore. Are the reasons why a church moves us more than a warehouse purely religious? What makes us read one sort of book in preference to another, or flip from one TV channel to a practically identical one?’

More lizards, and a strange creature that is a kind of man with a tail, or else an anthropomorphic lizard.

‘Nothing like this imaginative creature exists in the caves of Europe. Nor do we find in these paintings that emphasis on hunting which is so pervasive in the caves of Europe. It is almost as if a marked difference between the thought of the East and the West existed all those thousands of centuries ago, even as it exists today. Could the greater passivity of temperament in the East relate to the absence in this part of the world of large animals of the hunt which were common throughout Europe? We can as yet hardly formulate such questions, never mind answering them. In the middle of the twentieth century, we still stand in the middle of unfathomed mystery.’

Darkness, then light again, light moving into a larger cave, where stalactites and stalagmites come together in great folds, like closing teeth. One wall is covered with the outlines of human hands. The hands are all open, palms facing towards the spectator, hundreds of them, stretching up into the darkness, interspersed with strange squiggles reminiscent of intestines. The light moves slowly. The hands continue, palms glistening from their coating of limestone; countless hands, one gesture.

‘We don’t know what these hands mean or meant. They symbolize man – the prehensile fingers, the opposed digit. They reach out to us, as if in supplication. We cannot touch them.’

He places his hand against one of the painted hands. His own palm glistens when he withdraws it.

‘Time and limestone intervene between us. I know nothing more poignant than this wall of hands.’

The hands thin out at last. The wall becomes rougher. The light dims. Someone’s shoulder gets in the way. The music is sombre, romantic, cool, Borodin’s ‘Steppes of Central Asia’ strained through a synthesizer, with acoustics added. Crimson, such as hides behind eyelids, fills the screen; from it, a narrow corridor emerges, and large shattered stones which could have been brought here from outside.

Bones lie in a recess, in the wall. Squire’s hand reaches down and lifts up a skull from which the bottom jaw has dropped away. The forehead gleams, shadows lie in the eye sockets.

‘We can admire the aesthetic qualities of this extremely functional object. However, we would be less appreciative if we knew this to be the skull of a brother who had died only last week. Why is that? Are there degrees of being dead? Perhaps there are even degrees of being alive – we all know that some people are more lively and alert than others. Perhaps the life force is less democratically distributed than we suppose.’

A bright green beetle runs out of one of the eye sockets as Squire lowers the skull to the floor.

‘Let’s ask no more questions for the moment. I believe the answers to a lot of trivial-seeming questions to be profound, to concern politics, life and death, religion, and to lead directly to our imaginative perception of the world. A T-shirt advertising Coca-Cola holds a key to the wearer’s personality: we move from casual preference to the prevailing winds of the individual psyche.’

The viewpoint swings. Now we are returning to the light of day. The members of the party are revealed as six blundering figures, their hands touching the walls for security. This is the throat of the whale, through which bats still whistle like a dark outgoing breath. A patch of daylight ahead is an undersea green.

‘We like to imagine that the men and women who lived and died here 40,000 years ago were haunted by symbols, taboos, superstitions, omens. Yet the same must be said of us today, although our lives in the twentieth century are fortified by elaborate cultural superstructures. Interplay between superstructure and individual is complex. Do we like China because it appears friendly, fear it because it is large, mistrust it because it is communist, or idealize it because it is remote? An individual must choose between cultural superstructures.’

One of the party, a woman in jeans, has stumbled. She bends so that we see she has a badge pinned to her hip pocket. The legend on the badge reads, ‘Friends of the Earth’.

‘In the last two centuries, an infrastructure of man-made objects has proliferated. Mass-produced goods are everywhere, from badges to weapons of destruction, and we find it oddly difficult to pronounce upon them; their very plenty seems to ensnare judgement.’

The speaker produces from his pocket a slender box of matches. The box is black, simply embossed with a gold head in an antique-style Chinese hat and the one word, ‘Mandarin’. The box slides open. Inside lie some twenty matches with white heads. They fill the screen, rough wooden shafts culminating in smooth bulbs.

‘This is a give-away packet of matches from my hotel in Singapore. The matches are wood, the box plastic. It is a neat and beautiful product, and totally beyond the technology of our fathers. It is worthless. Can we then call it – beautiful? Because it is worthless, is it valueless?’

We are back in the mouth of the whale. The bats have all flown at last, the tourists have disappeared. The speaker is silent. There is no music. Just the ancient cave.

A great column of limestone stands at the cave-mouth, moulded by the forces of water. Orchestral strings wake in startlement as two figures mysteriously appear on either side of the column. One of them – she moves forward, smiling – is a golden girl in a bikini, her blonde hair bouncing about her shoulders. She goes barefoot. The other figure remains unmoving. With his back to the light, we see him merely as a brutal silhouette. He rests one arm nonchalantly on the limestone, waiting.

‘These two are our Sex Symbol and our Dark Figure. They represent the two poles of life and death, and will be with us as we explore the familiar. They both loom large in our minds, as they do in the world, and they dominate how we feel about those questions of tone, form, smell, and colour which shape our preferences.’

The caves are left behind. Sea glints through the trees. The viewpoint rises past mountain peaks remote in their encampments of cloud. Soon we are flying over the isle-spattered sea.

‘No part of the globe is more beautiful than South East Asia; nowhere can life be more pleasant than in Malaysia. The climate is tolerable, the food good, the scenery superb, and the people kind and friendly. What’s more, just south of Malaysia lies the most extraordinary city in the world – Singapore.’

As we rush across the waters of the South China Sea, we can observe Squire for the first time. He is a tall sun-tanned man in his late forties, with grey in his thin crop of sandy hair. His is what is called a strong countenance, but there is possibly little outstanding about him. Nor does he dress obtrusively. He wears only a blue short-sleeved shirt, rather faded, shapeless cotton trousers, and a pair of sandals. His manner is cool but sociable as he speaks to camera.

‘In 1818, Mary Shelley published her novel, Frankenstein. It was something more than the Gothic novel it superficially resembled. It portrayed the scientist in a role we recognize today, or at least we did yesterday, as a man who strikes out for himself, discarding old authorities, caring little for the social consequences of his inventions. The result is a reign of confusion by the creature that Frankenstein, the scientist, has created. The welter of mass-produced goods which surrounds us can be described as Frankenstein’s legacy.’

Singapore and its skyscrapers glitter beneath us. The river flashes a signal from the sun, then we are down.

‘This marvellous city, too, is part of the legacy. It is as much a technological product as a digital quartz watch.’

A pleasant quayside, shaded by trees. The busy river beyond. In the background barges, boats, old buildings, a jumble of roofs, glittering high-rise structures beyond. In the foreground, a statue of a man gazing inland.

‘This is reputedly the spot where Sir Stamford Raffles first stepped ashore. It is decent and undoctrinaire of the Chinese to have left the statue in place when they took over from the old British colonial regime which created the city. But I find Singapore an enlightened place. Raffles landed here a year after Frankenstein was published, in 1819. He turned this island into one of the liveliest places on Earth. Just a few fishermen lived here when he landed. Now, in one of the cleanest and most prosperous of cities, there are two and a half million citizens. The principle of free trade which Raffles laid down is still observed. This is definitely a Chinese and Malayan and Indian city, not a Western one. They have our crazy worship of speed, but don’t share our veneration for open space, so they indulge neither in building sprawling suburbs, which are anti-city, nor in shooting men to the Moon; the Chinese in particular live happily in high densities, and the death rate is one of the world’s lowest.’

We are moving into the business centre of the city. The shops and hotels are bright, and sparkle with electronic clutter in a rapture of newness. The streets are lined with trees and flowers; they shimmer with well-nourished automobiles.

‘Singapore trades with the world. It survives on the principles of hard work and strict discipline. There are fines for dropping litter, imposed immediately, fines for contravening strict laws of hygiene, and the press is censored, like the press throughout most of the world today. Some find the Prime Minister of this city state, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, autocratic, and exercise their consciences on behalf of his subjects. In my opinion, anyone conversant with the history of this part of the world must admire what Mr Lee and his energetic subjects have achieved.’

He has stopped before an open-air food stall, and eats a sizzling satay from a stick. Beside him, the Sex Symbol appears and sinks two rows of white teeth into a similar skewer full of meat.

‘You can eat where you wish and not get ill from contaminated food. Good for trade.

‘We in the West no longer care so much for work and discipline. That is why places like Singapore represent the coming century, the twenty-first century, while the nations of Europe sink back towards the nineteenth. Singapore is winning the economic war, as work and discipline always do. Singapore plays globally something of the role played by London in the last century. I know which city I’d rather live in.

‘To my mind, Singapore is the dishiest workshop ever invented, where people are on the whole as happy and as handsome as people can ever be at our present stage of evolution. It is no utopia. What it is is a shining example of capitalism, unmatched in the communist world. It is a staggering work of man’s imagination. It is also the biggest mass-produced goodie in the history of the world. Whether or not you like it is a question – the sort of question we want to explore – a matter of taste.’

We are crossing Merdeka Bridge, driving along the fast Nicholl Highway in dense traffic. The sun is going down. The city lies in front of us, suddenly insubstantial as sunset brightens behind it.

1
The International Congress

Ermalpa, September 1978

Two men were walking in Mediterranean sunlight only four blocks from their hotel.

An observer following behind them would have learnt much from their backs. One was a comparatively small-built man, with thick heels on his shoes to compensate for a lack of height. He was thin almost to the point of being emaciated, so that, as he talked, which he did with a wealth of gesture, his shoulder blades could be seen moving beneath his jacket like two ferrets working back and forth in a cage.

He wore a brown suit with a faint yellow stripe, a neat suit light enough in weight for the climate, but somewhat worn. It was shiny round the seat. It was an expressive suit, the jacket flapping slightly as its owner vigorously demonstrated a point, or looked up sharply laughing, to see if his companion was also enjoying the joke. This sideways glance would have enabled an observer to catch a glimpse of a thin yellowish cheek belonging to a man slightly on the shady side of forty, and a neat beard shot through with grey.

The feature that announced the man in most companies, however, was his flow of copper hair. As if to compensate for the meagreness of his stature, the colourlessness of his cheek, his hair blazed. He wore it amply, down to his collar. In the sixties, it had trailed considerably further down his backbone. Now as then, it showed no white hairs.

The hands, when they appeared, were small and sharp, more useful in debate than games. They were the chief illustrators of gesture, and scattered words rather than spreading them evenly. Their possessor was a Frenchman by the name of Jacques d’Exiteuil, the chairman of the conference.

D’Exiteuil’s companion was taller and more solidly built than he, and stooped slightly, although he was at present walking briskly and with relish, smiling and nodding his head in a genial manner at d’Exiteuil’s remarks. The observer would not have seen a slight developing paunch, although he would certainly have noticed the bald spot below the crown of the head. The surrounding hair was decidedly sandy, with a crisp dry curl to it. The white hairs in it were no more plentiful than d’Exiteuil’s, though the latter was the younger of the two men by some eight or nine years.

The taller man wore slacks of light brown colour and fashionable cut, with a neat Scandinavian canvas jacket patterned with vertical stripes of red, brown, and white. The jacket fitted smoothly across strong shoulders. This man also gesticulated as he spoke, but his gestures, like his walk, were looser than his companion’s and less precisely aimed. When he turned his head, a powerful countenance was revealed, tanned of cheek, with heavy lines – not necessarily misanthropic – running from nose to chin, bracketing a full, square mouth.

He was guest of honour at the conference, and he signed his cheques Thomas Squire or, more impressively, Thomas C. Squire.

Although the scene and the city were strange to them, neither Squire nor d’Exiteuil paid much attention to their surroundings, beyond stepping out of the way of the occasional more aggressive pedestrian who refused to move out of their path. They were discussing the state of the world, each from his own point of view. Both had strong and opposed beliefs, and blunted some of the force of what they had to say in order to proceed without undue argument.

The first day’s business of the conference was about to start. The two men worked in different disciplines. D’Exiteuil was primarily an academic, with a good position in the Humanities Faculty of the Sainte Beuve University in Paris. He and his wife Séverine d’Exiteuil had made several experimental films. Squire was a small landowner, a director of a London insurance firm, and an exponent of popular aesthetics. He had become something of a national hero in the late sixties, when he planned and executed the Hyde Park Pop Expo in London. For that spectacular event, he had received the CBE. His more recent television work had reinforced his success.

The conference was d’Exiteuil’s brainchild.

D’Exiteuil and Squire had known each other for many years. They corresponded irregularly and met occasionally – the previous New Year at Squire’s publisher’s home outside London, or at conferences or symposia, once in San Francisco, once in Stockholm, once in Poland, and twice in Paris.

Though they were in some respects enemies, they shared close common interests. The Frenchman recognized in the Englishman knowledge and wit; the Englishman recognized in the Frenchman integrity and application. All these qualities both admired. Because they could also be useful to each other, they had discovered a way to talk to each other, which seemed, over the years, to function effectively.

The relationship, while not a friendship, had proved more durable than many friendships, and was valued by both men.

When they came to the bottom of the side street down which they had been progressing, they reached an entry to the harbour. Before them stood a low double wall, in the middle of which had been planted bedding plants and cacti. The two men stood by the wall, looking across at a desolate area which stretched between them and the water; it was given over mainly to cracked concrete, grass, and dull square concrete buildings left over from Cubist paintings. An old lorry moved slowly among cranes. In the distance were warehouses, wharves, warning notices. Then the sea, or a section of it, tamed by a confining wall which terminated in a lighthouse. Beyond that wall lay the Mediterranean.

‘Looks promising,’ Squire said.

‘I don’t mind sitting on a beach with a book,’ d’Exiteuil said, ‘but I can’t bear going on or in the sea. Are you a yachtsman?’

‘Not really, but I did once sail right round Sicily with a couple of friends. I wouldn’t mind doing it again. Shall we go and stand at the water’s edge?’

D’Exiteuil looked smartly at his wrist watch.

‘We’d better go back to the hotel. It is fourteen minutes to nine o’clock. You and I have to set a good international example, Tom. On the first day, if not later.’ His English was fluent and almost without accent.

‘As you say.’ A headland crowned with palm trees stretched out into the sea to one side of the harbour, and there a white sail could be seen.

As they turned away, a boy ran up carrying newspapers. D’Exiteuil bought a copy and scanned the front page.

‘The Pope sends a message to the peoples of Poland.’ He ran a finger further down the page. ‘Scientists forecast 20,000 cool years ahead. The glaciers retreated to their present positions about 11,000 years ago, but now the cooling is beginning again. During the next 20,000 years, we can expect that considerable depths of ice will build up over the Northern Hemisphere. They could reach as far south as Milan. The cause is irregularities in the Earth’s orbit.’

He looked up, grinning.

‘So says Oggi in Ermalpa. It means the end of England.’

‘Yes, and France. Not a political collapse but a geophysical one.’

They walked briskly up a side street, where men in aprons were sweeping shop fronts, brushing water into the gutter. The first side street they had tried was entirely blocked by parked Fiats, beached like whales on either pavement as well as down the centre of the roadway. The street they were traversing held a mixture of offices, apartments, shops, and a restaurant or two. Outside one of the restaurants, men in shirt-sleeves were unloading containers of fish from a cart. They paused to allow the two visitors to pass.

The top of the street formed an intersection with the broad Via Milano. The Via Milano divided its opposing traffic flows with narrow islands of green on which palm trees grew. Traffic was thick at this hour.

A short distance along on the other side of the road, the Grand Hotel Marittimo faced them. It had a heavy facade of lichenous stone, with a high portico imitating a grander structure. It was set back only slightly from the uproar of the road. Despite its name, it offered its guests no glimpse of the sea from its old-fashioned bedroom windows. Last century, perhaps, it had stood where it could command a splendid view of the sailing ships in the harbour. Since then, upstart lanes of banks, offices and shops had come between it and the water.

Above the entrance, a nylon banner hung. On it were the words:

FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF INTERGRAPHIC CRITICISM

Of the four doors of thick plate glass set inside its porch, only one opened. The two men bowed to each other and went through it.

The heat, light, and noise of the outside were replaced by a melancholy coolness.

The foyer of the Grand Hotel was extremely capacious. Its floors and balustrades gave an impression of marble, its reception desks of fumed oak. To either side, this effect tailed off into cloakrooms or petty chambers in which a man might wait for a mistress, or smoke a cigar, or pretend to write a letter. In one petty chamber stood a glass case offering Capodimonte pottery and other objects to the tourists’ gaze. A similar case (both with curly bronze feet, betraying their age) displayed a number of silk ties.

Such subsidiary matters did not detract from the chief glory of the foyer, a centrally placed white marble of Paolo and Francesca in the Second Circle of Hell, by Canova. Squire had identified it as soon as he entered the hotel the previous evening, recalling involuntarily the volume of Dante’s Inferno with Doré illustrations, which his father had bought, and the line where Dante comments on the fate of these lovers:

Alas! by what sweet thoughts, what fond desire,

Must they at length to that ill pass have reached!

When he had first read the passage, he had been too innocent to understand what the lovers had done to deserve such punishment. This morning at the hotel breakfast table, between pineapple juice and bacon and eggs, he had written a postcard to his daughters, referring to the statue jokingly as ‘two undressed people retreating from something rather nasty’. Whilst writing, he had averted his mind from the actual situation of Ann and Jane, who were in the care of his sister Deirdre in Blakeney.

The postcard had come from a temporary stall set up on the threshold of the conference hall. The stall had extended itself this morning, and was staffed by smiling students, two girls, presumably from the faculty of Ermalpa University involved with the conference. Prominent on the bookstall among other titles were the English edition of Frankenstein Among the Arts, published by Webb Broadwell, and the new Italian translation of the same, Frankenstein a ‘la Bella Scuola’ in its glowing orange jacket. Also on display was the American paperback edition of Squire’s earlier book, a collection of essays entitled Against Barbarism. It was published when television had still to make him famous, and had not achieved an Italian translation.

Standing by the bookstall was a white board announcing that the television series had been captured on videotape and would be shown in its entirety over the four evenings of the conference, Wednesday to Saturday inclusive, at twenty-three hundred hours. In the small conference hall. No admission charge.

Delegates were crowding round the stall, which did brisk business. A number of other delegates stood about the main foyer, in groups or singly. The sight of them was enough to remind d’Exiteuil and Squire, if they needed reminding, that they were fragments of a greater whole, and they moved away from each other without a word of parting.

The polyglot d’Exiteuil appeared to know everyone here. He could have been observed at breakfast, making a courteous round of the tables, welcoming his guests. Squire, who spoke no Italian, knew few people. He moved politely among the delegates, smiling and nodding.

‘Ah, Signor Squire. Good morning.’

Squire looked at the slender man who confronted him. He was fairly typical of what Squire regarded as the medium-young generation of Italians: born after the Second World War ended, but torn by the divisiveness of the peace. He had dark liquid eyes, which darted nervously about as if the foyer was full of enemies. He had a trim beard, kept his hair oiled and combed, wore a cappuccino-coloured suit, and was remarkably tidy. His manners were polite; he had a certain style; and there were many men rather like him.

This man Squire could identify. His nervous eagerness was familiar.

‘Carlo Morabito,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Animal Behaviour. You remember me? How nice to see you here, Signor Squire. I never dreamed you would be in Sicily. You have taken a walk already?’

As they shook hands, Squire said, ‘I was up early. I am a yoga freak.’ Seeing the other’s blank look, he said, ‘I practise yoga.’

‘Oh, you practise yoga, eh? I now work at the University of Ermalpa. Before, I was at Milan, when we last met at your Norwich Symposium, three years away.’

At that, Squire’s memory grudgingly yielded a few details. With help from the University of East Anglia, he had organized a symposium on Animals in the Popular Imagination, which had turned into a lot of fun for the local children, if nothing else. Morabito, already making his name in his field, had been invited to contribute, and had been almost as big a success as Desmond Morris.

‘That was a good occasion.’

‘You know, Signor Squire, best time for me was when we finished the symposium and you kindly drove me to your lovely house. We had tea on the lawn and your wife served it, helped by another lady. It was a perfect English place and I don’t forget it.’

‘I remember you achieved a perfect understanding with our Dalmatian, Nellie.’

‘And with your pretty daughters.’

‘Ann and Jane. Yes, they are lovely.’

The Italian sighed, cleared his throat, shuffled his feet. ‘One day I get married also. I also would like two lovely daughters. Your wife told me when I was at your house that every year you have a pop festival in your gardens, like Woodstock and Knebworth. Is it so?’

‘They were only small festivals. Nothing grand, but great fun. We had The Who one year and they were fantastic. We’ve stopped doing it now, I’m afraid. It got too complicated and too expensive … How do you like the university here?’

‘I take you round for inspection, if you like, one evening.’ Morabito looked anxious, fixing Squire with his luminous eyes. ‘About the delegates to this conference, I have some doubts. Do you know many of them personally?’

‘Only a few. You must know many more.’

Morabito made an expressive gesture and moved closer to Squire. ‘I tell you, maybe I shouldn’t tell this, but I think many are second-rate, and you will be disappointed. Another thing – they have here the Russians.’

‘A couple of them. We’re pretty safe – they’re outnumbered. You have to invite them these days if you want to seem international.’

‘For myself, I don’t like the Russians and just having them here will not make a crowd of provincials seem at all international. You will see how these small men bow to the Russians. Excuse my saying so.’

Squire smiled. ‘I’m glad of the information. Frankly, I’m a bit lost. Are you going into the conference hall now?’

‘Yes, yes. It’s time for the procedure to start.’ He gestured Squire in ahead of him.

‘We’ll have a glass of wine together later.’

‘I will buy you one, in return for that tea-time in your English garden.’

The conference room was situated at the rear of the hotel, through a marble gallery lined by busts interspersed with plants – an elegant place in which to saunter. Beyond the gallery, the chamber in which all sessions were to be held was walled by mirrors framed in gilt. Three large chandeliers glittered over the green baize hectares of the table. At the far end of the chamber behind arches, a small area was set apart for any members of the general public who might wish to attend. Above was a balcony, in which some members of the press were gathering.

In an adjoining chamber, reached by wide shallow steps, four glass booths had been built; inside the booths the interpreters sat waiting, ready to translate anything into, or out of, English, Italian, French, and Russian. Behind the glass, their expressions were apprehensive as they watched the delegates enter.

The delegates ambled round the table, looking for their places, pushing politely.

By each place was a name card, a microphone, a folder and pencil, a shining drinking glass with a sanitary paper lid, and a bottle of San Pellegrino mineral water still beaded from the refrigerator. Thomas Squire found his name looking up at him, and sat down, laying his briefcase before him. He was seated at the top of the table, with Jacques d’Exiteuil on his right and the secretary, Gianni Frenza, beyond d’Exiteuil. On Squire’s left was a place for a delegate from the Soviet Union, Vasili Rugorsky.

At meetings elsewhere, Squire would have taken his jacket off and hung it over the back of his chair, as much to make other people feel comfortable as for his own ease. He saw that the delegates here preferred to be formal. He sat down, content to be there before his neighbours arrived; an element of ascendancy enters into everything.

He opened his folder. In it was a ballpoint pen, clipped to a timetable of the sessions of the conference with a list of speakers. Tucked into the pocket of the folder were some foil-wrapped perfumed tissues for refreshing the face and hands, and a map of the city of Ermalpa and surroundings, presented by courtesy of the local tourist board.

A separate dossier, on variously coloured papers, presented biographies of the main speakers, with Squire’s heading the list. He looked it through idly. It had been copied and abridged from Who’s Who or some similar work of reference; he reflected on how curiously little the curt sentences told of his real life.

Squire, Thomas Charles. C.B.E. (1969)

B. July, 1929. Educ: Orwell Park, Ipswich, 1937–42; Gresham School, Holt, 1942–45 (First XIV); King’s College, Cambridge, 1947–50.

Mar. Teresa Rosemary Davies, 1951. Ch. John, b. 1953; George, b. 1955 (d. 1959); Ann, b. 1965; Jane, 1966.

Nat. service. Royal Mendips, 1945–46.

BIA, Belgrade, 1946; Exhib. ‘Restoration of Serbian Monasteries’, Wellcome Hall, 1950; ‘American Noises’, Newnham College, Camb., 1950; ‘Microgroovey: Style in L.P. Record Covers’, Verlaine Gallery, London, 1954–55; ‘Piranesi Goes Pop’, ICA, 1962; ‘On the Road Roadshow’, ICA, 1965.

Regal Insurance, dir., 1951-

Lect., Univ. of East Anglia, 1958-

Prs., Anglo-Yugoslav Assoc., 1964-

Ch. and dir., Hyde Park Pop Expo, 1968. Founder, Soc. For Pop. Aesthetics, 1969. Lect. in Pop Aesthetics at Berkeley (1971), Bahrain (1973), Austin, Texas (1975) Univs. Ch., Animals in the Popular Imagination Symp., Norwich, 1975.

Pubs. Against Barbarism, 1960; Cult and Culture, 1975; Frankenstein Among the Arts, 1978.

Fellow, King’s College, Cambridge; Wolfson, Oxford.

T.V., How Serbia Served the West, 1965. Frankenstein Among the Arts, 1978.

Clubs, Travellers, Arts,

Home, Pippet Hall, Hartisham, Norfolk, England. Tel., Thursford 336.

The desiccated facts were followed by extracts from an interview published in The Times some years earlier. There was also a photograph, reproduced in green on yellow paper, but nevertheless distinct. It was, in its way, quite a famous photograph, having served as a still to advertise ‘Frankenstein Among the Arts’. Squire was dressed in a flapping canvas shirt and swimming trunks; beside him was Laura Nye in a bikini, hair streaming, in her role as Sex Symbol of the series; they were jumping through the shallow waves of the North Sea. The photo, more than the potted biog., said something about Squire’s life style.

Also included in the presentation folder were envelopes and a pad of A4 paper of good quality, handsomely decorated with the name of the Faculty of Iconographic Simulation, University of Ermalpa, Sicily. Below the inscription was the symbol of the conference, five red tulips on parallel stalks – or they could be lollipops or hearts – the iconography was deliberately ambiguous – with one stalk, the longest, branching off sideways at right angles, with a spearhead – or was it a rocketship with vapour trail? – neatly piercing a red sun. At the top of the paper on the other side, was another symbol, the symbol of the organization of which Thomas Squire was founder and president, SPA, the Society for Popular Aesthetics, with the S and the A buttressing the big P with a wide eye in its centre. Squire recognized the placing of this hieroglyph as at once a tribute to him and an insinuation. They wanted his organization.

One hundred and fifty delegates from fifteen countries were listed in the programme. The seating round the table, as a rapid computation showed, allowed for only half that number to appear. Fairly standard practice.

Squire watched the delegates seat themselves, observing their various ploys. An arrangement of pens. A watch removed from wrist and prominently displayed – LCD digital quartz most likely, to judge by its brutal shape, possibly new. A manly and immediate attack on the mineral-water bottle. Earnest writing of notes. Intense communication with one’s next-door neighbour. A deliberate stare towards the ornate ceiling. Someone whistling. Smiling. Frowning. Everything equally effective, really, in asserting one’s individuality, if one needed to do so.

Gianni Frenza, the secretary of the conference, said hello to Squire before sitting down. He was a decent solid man with a heavy face and thick shaggy hair which curled over his heavy spectacles. Probably a good family man.

Vasili Rugorsky entered with a colleague. Both bowed formally to Squire before sitting down. Rugorsky had written a curious book on Shakespeare and Evolution, which ranged Shakespearean characters on a sort of evolutionary ladder, starting with the ‘youth heroes’ like Romeo and Hamlet and proceeding through Mark Antony and Julius Caesar to Lear and Prospero. A curious work for a Russian critic. His book had been translated into French but not English. Rugorsky was a handsome man in a rather porcine way, his white hair brushed back over a good broad brow. He wore a blue double-breasted suit, with a white handkerchief protruding, neatly folded, from the breast pocket. A bit like a nineteen-forties big bandleader, thought Squire.

Rugorsky’s compatriot, according to the notice before him, which he was examining with blunt figures, was Georgi Kchevov. He was listed in the curriculum simply as ‘Leningrad critic’. Nobody knew his name. The editor who had been invited, a distinguished academician well known in the West, had not materialized; Kchevov had materialized instead. That too was fairly standard. Kchevov could be a truck driver, judging by his muscles and rugged looks. The gold-rimmed spectacles contributed a parody of a Weimar professor.

The Russians were escorted into the conference hall by one of the vulpine young academics from the University of Ermalpa who played some part in the organization of the conference. Squire observed that Kchevov spoke fluent Italian to this dignitary; Rugorsky maintained a watchful silence, blinking as he gazed about the room. He hardly looked up as the Ermalpan delegate bowed himself away.

When Jacques d’Exiteuil entered through the double doors, his copper hair gleaming, the chatter in the large room was slightly hushed. His arrival was a signal that business was about to begin. Slight but important, he smiled at all and sundry as he advanced, slipping easily from one language to another according to the nationality of the delegate he addressed. Even to the Greek …? Well, it sounded remarkably like it.

Using the biography list, Squire started to make a nationality count. Three quarters of the delegates were Italian, over half of them from the University of Ermalpa, which gave the proceedings the provincial air of which Morabito had spoken. There were ten French, five Americans, including the youthful Albert Russell Cantania, who had already made a name for himself in academic circles with his large structural work, Form Behind Formula. Had he been invited because he was likely to make a real contribution or because he had an Italian surname? Then a rabble of nationalities, including Squire himself, the only Englishman present. He was sorry to see there was no Yugoslav delegate.

The Americans, two Canadians, and two Australians, who were very young and studying in Ermalpa (and apparently invited along for the ride), all dressed in sloppy style, without ties or jackets; one Canadian wore an old T-shirt with an advertisement for something across his chest. They all seemed to be heavy smokers, lighting up as soon as they slumped into their chairs.

‘Are we going to be too hot in here, Tom?’ d’Exiteuil asked as he passed Squire and took his seat.

‘Temperature’s fine as far as I’m concerned.’

‘No windows, you notice. Poor psychological effect. Well, we will proceed. We can always scream for ice, I suppose.’

He dropped his head, looking at his watch; his hand rested on his knee. He studied it so hard that Squire looked at his own watch. Nine four on the morning of Wednesday, 13 September. It was the same time in Britain. And where was Teresa and what would she be doing? The possibilities which swam to mind in response to that question made him sigh. He took a deep breath and held it, diverting his attention. D’Exiteuil would not be studying the time but gathering his thoughts for his opening speech.

Something like calm settled round the table.

Frenza whispered to d’Exiteuil and then began speaking into his microphone without standing up. He sounded amiable and relaxed.

Putting on his headphones, Squire twiddled with the translation box. Instructions said Dial 3 for English. He switched to 3, but nothing happened. He noted that the other English-speakers were having trouble.

Then a girl’s voice entered his ear, saying in a foreign accent, ‘Sorry, he is saying some general words of welcome to delegates, from a number of important people – like the mayor of Ermalpa, I think he said, or maybe – yes, the mayor couldn’t be present. The Faculty of Icon – Iconographology Stimulation – well, yes, all from the great University here. The first ever of such international affairs on such a subject and of such an importance. To be in keeping with the modern age and find a way of accessing all the productions of all the mediums generally regarded as of little weight, which is in fact where culture, it begins. So first he’ll let Mr Sagrado from the Azienda Autonoma di Turismo di Ermalpa e Nontreale give his address to us.’

Squire glanced covertly at d’Exiteuil, but the chairman was staring ahead, following everything without headphones.

The man from the tourist office rose to his feet and spoke at some length. He praised the conference, its delegates, its objectives. He welcomed everyone to Ermalpa, and hoped that, despite the brevity of their stay, they would be able to forget work for a short while and see something of the beautiful coastline and the city and provinces which were, he could assure them, stuffed with antiquities, not only from Roman times but Norman, Arab, and Gothic periods. On the Sunday, at the close of the conference, there would be an excursion for delegates, in special luxury coaches provided by the Board of Tourism. He also expected that they would have a marvellous discussion in this room where Garibaldi was known to have been, and was only dismayed that he was unable to stay to hear their words of wisdom. He thanked them for listening and sent the mayor’s regrets.

Delegates clapped. They murmured among themselves.

The two Russians sitting on Squire’s left had remained looking straight ahead, arms folded, not even exchanging a word with each other. The Englishman was conscious of the bulk of Rugorsky in the next chair, and so prepared when the Russian turned to him and remarked, in French, ‘The speaker did not mention the cathedral at Nontreale, which is only some kilometres from here. Yet it is famous even in my country for its mosaics.’

‘I’ve heard the mosaics are very fine. I’ve not been there.’

‘Perhaps it will prove possible to go there. Perhaps one can get a coach.’

The impact of his gaze was considerable. For a moment, Squire received the impression that he recognized Rugorsky. The man’s eyes were hazel, with a golden gleam at their centre; they were fortified behind marked folds beneath the eye and cheeks positioned high on the face. Looking at Rugorsky, Squire remembered the old Russian saying, ‘Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tartar.’

‘Possibly we may talk together later.’

‘I’d be glad to. I enjoyed your book on Shakespeare.’

D’Exiteuil rose, clutching his beard.

He began to speak in English, then switched to his native language, then, with a small joke, to Italian. He spoke for about half-an-hour, about the nature of the conference and about what they should strive to achieve during the conference. He reminded delegates that they would not be allowed to talk for more than thirty minutes, because of pressure of time, but full or extended versions of their papers would be published later in the proceedings. There was tremendous interest all over the world in what had been termed ‘arts of no refinement’, the instant clichés and iconophilism in various media given off like radioactive particles by the bourgeois societies of the West. Whole genres were being born which invited categorization and scholarly attention, since these reservoirs of the dystopian imaginary were where we could go to learn most about the social dimensions of contemporary mondial life.

Changing tack slightly, and putting a small restless right hand into his trouser pocket, he went on to praise the University of Ermalpa for having established the Faculty of Iconographic Simulation, and for its foresight in setting Dottore Gianni Frenza at its head. Even better, the University had agreed – not without a couple of years of prompting from the present speaker in his watchdog role as editor of Intergraphic Studies – to host this present vitally needed conference. They had secured monies from the International Universities Foundation, for which they were most grateful. And the Ermalpa Tourist Board had been extremely helpful also. The Faculty felt that it was following parameters set down almost a decade ago by that doyen of popular culture, Thomas C. Squire, whose series of TV programmes, ‘Frankenstein Among the Arts’, had done much to further interest in a vital study area. They esteemed themselves very fortunate to have Tom Squire with them as guest of honour.

Squire appeared pleased at this, nodded to both sides of the table, and restrained himself from reaching for the water glass.

The small hand returned from its trip to the pocket and took a slow circuit through the air in a clockwise direction as d’Exiteuil explained that they hoped this First International Congress of Intergraphic Criticism would first of all promote deeper interest in polyvalent media throughout Italy, and then throughout the rest of the world, including the socialist countries.

He knew that the socialist countries had already begun to express interest, and even to study the subject academically.

As he said this, he turned slightly, to smile beyond Squire at the slightly bowed white head of Vasili Rugorsky.

‘I feel bound at this point to inject the personal note,’ the interpreter of d’Exiteuil continued. ‘I have been personally involved on this issue, and I know that all my colleagues are in general compliance that we have reached significance here only because we have taking part members of one of the foremost nations or I should say states on the planet today. It’s the home of most powerful coinages, achieved nowhere else, followed everywhere. Let’s just say without emotion how we welcome very much the two colleagues from the USSR, Vasili Rugorsky and Georgi Kchevov.’

D’Exiteuil started to clap his hands, and most of the Italian members joined in. So did the Americans. Other delegates followed suit. Squire, sitting next to Rugorsky, joined in. The applause mounted. The two Russians rose from their chairs, and stood there smiling amiably. Everyone was clapping now, smiling and nodding in agreement to each other.

‘Merci mille fois,’ said Rugorsky. There was general laughter as if a witticism had been delivered. The clapping died. The two Russians sat down. D’Exiteuil raised his left hand, palm inward, letting it drop to a horizontal position as he inclined his head with a similar movement, and then sat down himself. It was not entirely a modest gesture, not when linked with a sly little smile which chased itself into his beard. It appeared to say, ‘Well, there you are, I gave them to you. It’s what you all wanted.’

After a pause, Frenza spoke into his microphone, and the English voice in the earphones said, ‘Now our first formal speaker of our first formal session, our guest of honour, Mr Thomas Squire, will address us. Afterwards, just fifteen minutes, please. Thanks, Mr Squire, if you would …’

Squire removed his earphones, placing them on the table before him as the clapping died. He regarded the faces round the table. Sharp, intelligent, youthful, for the most part. An audience he, like d’Exiteuil, had worked for.

‘Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, I must address you in my native tongue, and trust that the interpreters will carry my meaning to you. Will the interpreters please stop me if I go too fast?’ His mouth was slightly dry, his heart beating strongly. He was used to the effect; it gave him power and his voice resonance as he breathed deeply. In any case, it would pass as it always did when he got into his stride.

‘It’s not for me but for our hosts to say “Welcome to Ermalpa”; what I can say is welcome to a select band, the band of people who attack that great open conspiracy, critical contempt of popular culture. That band comprises not only critics but readers, viewers, and general doers. Everyone benefits from popular culture, and a reasoned critical view should be to wish to survey it, not condemn it. The pop art of one generation becomes the classic of the next; Homer was, in his day, the Bronze Age equivalent of the TV soap opera.

‘I will remind you of the simple and seminal idea of my founding of SPA, the Society for Popular Aesthetics, which has led to our present encouraging situation here, with the Faculty enjoying IUF support. As a child in the thirties and forties of this century, I was addicted to the cinema, the great popular art form of the period. I went as often as I could in the small town in which I lived. I kept lists of the films I saw, of the actors in them – not only the stars but the minor players – and of the directors and companies who made them. I could tell by the sets and the lighting whether I was watching a film made by MGM or Warner Brothers or Gainsborough.

‘All this activity was opposed by my parents. They regarded the cinema simply as a repository for trash, as too many people today regard television. In particular, they disliked the way in which I settled on two actors as my heroes. Those actors were Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart. Flynn was at first my particular favourite, then I shifted to Bogart. The bitter and wise-cracking character Bogart played, on whichever side of the law, spoke to me of something enduring in human nature, and personified the man who lives his life battling in obscurity, often against forces of which the rest of the world has no knowledge.

‘Although I was quite inarticulate about it, I revered Bogart. For himself and for what he symbolized. My parents came to hate him. To them, Bogart was just a gangster and, if I followed him, I should go the same way. It may sound ridiculous, but so it was; nor is that kind of unthinking opposition to living symbols defunct today. There will always be a vocal minority against whatever is vital in our culture; it prefers what is safely dead.

‘The Hollywood system as it was in its hey-day has passed away. In the hour of its downfall, critics suddenly found good things to say about it, where before they had done nothing more than sneer. As soon as Bogart had died, they did the same for him. They pretended they had always praised him. He became – as Elvis Presley did a few years ago – a great cult hero. He was dead, and safe. You recognize one of the themes of Frankenstein Among the Arts: praise only for the dead; exile, cultural exile, for the living.

‘What we hope to bring about here, and hereafter, is a much wider appreciation of what it is in popular culture which had genuine vitality, and how its roots are always based firmly in the fertile soil of the past, even when that is by no means easily apparent.

‘Which brings me to my paper. You will see from your programme that it is entitled “Since the Enlightenment”. Because of the time limit sensibly imposed on speakers, I can give only a résumé now. The full paper will be published in our proceedings, and also in the next issue of our friend Jacques’s Intergraphic Studies. Am I going slowly enough for you, interpreters?’

He caught a flash of smile in one of the boxes, and continued.

‘The subject we study is admittedly amorphous. It must often seem even to us that we are all studying different, even conflicting, subjects. I believe that not to be the case, and expect that conferences such as this one will bind more closely together not only our interests but us ourselves. To that end, I hope you will consider a proposal that we should adopt a common term for our diverse subject matter. My suggestion is, “Future Culture”. FC for short. Or perhaps you prefer “Symbols Future”. SF.

‘Under some such heading, we can consider the arts which interest us, the arts of today, the arts scorned by higher criticism in whatever field. You see them listed in your programmes: pinball machines, movies, prophecy, TV, pop art, rock’n’roll, the Top Twenty, science fiction, design, and the rest. Everything from make-up to metropolises. I have nothing against higher criticism, but its analytical tools are honed towards the objectives of its dissection. It has shown itself unable to discuss effectively our Future Culture.

‘Because Future Culture is something, according to my definition, which has sprung up since the beginning of the last century. It is either affected by, or the product of, mass-production. The machine has transformed it. A paperback novel, for instance, can be purely a product of the mass-market, designed as a unit package with its cover to sell this month at check-out point in a million supermarkets and never be seen again; or it can be a newly edited edition of Henry James’s The Ambassadors. What are the differences and similarities between a James novel and the latest catastrophe novel? It’s rich ground for investigation.

‘Some of our subjects do not claim to be art or even folk art. Car bumper-stickers. I know a man in Toronto studying them now. Are they ripe for something more than sociological study? Some subjects are simply commercial ways of doing traditional things. But are T-shirts a modern equivalent of sandwich-boards or a way of legitimizing graffiti? We have to improvise questions and answers as we go along. Virtually all arts have been touched by the change-compelling system of mass-production and mass-consumption.

‘We believe that precisely in this amorphous situation lies a hope for future acculturalization. Improvisation and spontaneity are still possible, contrary to what is sometimes argued. Older arts tend always towards formalization or even fossilization, and never more so than now, as we move towards the eighties, when global change is swift. The fluidity of non-art may become one of the staples of the future. It’s up to us to forge a methodology to help direct it constructively.

‘I see from the noticeboard in the foyer that some ingenious person on the Faculty of Iconographic Simulation has videotaped my television series, “Frankenstein Among the Arts”, and will be showing it in the adjoining small hall for the next three nights. You’ll excuse me if I stay in the bar while it’s showing – I lived with the series for so long, I almost know it by heart. Of course, it does relate closely to the subject of our discussions. But I must remind you, for all the kindness you have done me, that I am an amateur in a field where you are experts, and I took as my text for the series a tag from the philosopher Gurdjieff, which I discovered long ago in Ouspensky’s fascinating book, In Search of the Miraculous.

‘It’s a tag which many authors could use at the front of their books as a warning. Gurdjieff says, speaking of his work, “The object I had in view was to produce an interesting and beautiful spectacle. Of course there is a certain meaning hidden beneath the outward form, but I have not pursued the aim of exposing and emphasizing this meaning.”

‘Nor have I, because I am unable to. I only know that the traditions of the West, strong and honourable though they are, are insufficient to live by. We have to embrace the new and rise up to change.’

2
Flattery and Higher Foolishness

Ermalpa, September 1978

On checking into the Grand Hotel Marittimo, conference delegates had received small books with meal vouchers in them. One voucher had to be presented at every meal, the meal being understood to include a bottle of red wine and half a bottle of mineral water.

Squire entered the dining room of the Grand Hotel a little late for lunch, and found himself with no choice of table. He had been detained by one of the American delegates, Selina Ajdini.

Following the coffee break, four speakers had delivered papers on various aspects of popular culture: Enrico Pelli on ‘Psychiatry and the Popular Understanding of Prehistory’, Marianne de Suffren on ‘Horror Films in Catholic Countries’, Geo Camaion, the Romanian delegate, on ‘Symbolic Cognition’, and finally Selina Ajdini on ‘Aldous Huxley as Failed Prophet’.

Since only the last paper had been received in English, rather than in the language peculiar to the interpreters, and since Squire had once met the subject of the paper, and admired his writings, he had paid particular attention to Selina Ajdini.

There was another reason to attend. There were few women at the conference, and only three actually delivering papers. Of those, the most immediately striking was Selina Ajdini.

She carried herself with a defiant air, as if aware of the covertly predatory glances of the young Italians. A heavy brown leather travel bag over one shoulder gave her the air of a soldier – perhaps a soldier in a comic opera. So Squire reflected, seeing her move with the encumbered shoulder thrust forward, one red-nailed hand about the bulk of the bag. She wore a fine blue corduroy suit with a white shirt beneath. Where the blouson jacket gripped her waist, she wore a large-linked gold chain, the end of which jangled as she walked. High leather boots tight to the calf completed the comic opera soldier effect.

Ajdini’s face suggested something different. Although she was slenderly built, this slenderness was masked by her clothing; the quality emerged nakedly in her face. It had a bare keenness like a hare’s breastbone found on a windy headland, eroded of flesh, robbed of formed associations. The simile occurred to Squire as the woman rose to speak; there was something remote and inhuman, he thought, about that proudly sculpted profile, which the scrupulously coiffed black hair did little to counteract. The remoteness made her age difficult to estimate.

She put spectacles on her nose to read her paper. The paper proved to be littered with references from a dozen languages. Her thesis, as far as it could be distinguished, was that Aldous Huxley’s life typified the end of one great strand of English and European bourgeois Romantic thought. The Huxley family typified the nineteenth-and twentieth-century culturally privileged elite, with its Darwinian connections. And that elite typified a repressive class structuralism cloaked by a veneer of scientific and humanistic enlightenment.

It was Ajdini’s contention that Huxley’s ‘life parabola’ from Eton and Balliol to the scoured coast of California represented at once a despairing attempt to escape the autocratic vengeance of late capitalist society and a further plunge into a deeply destructive hedonism masked as asceticism (but betrayed by use of drugs).

Although she spoke brightly, Ajdini’s summing up was equally dusty in content. Huxley’s life represented to pop culture, one of whose idols he had been, a Janus-faced bourgeois prophet with nothing to pronounce upon but the collapse of his kind. While assuming to speak ostensibly for preservation of values such as ecology, Huxley found himself forced to act out prophetically the effete culture of the West. That culture was running into suicidal acts and self-destructive deserts. Prophecy could no longer function under capitalism; there was no science of the future since that future was about to terminate. The picture of laissez-faire sexuality and technology in Brave New World was an inadvertent portrait of a way of life already doomed.

It was not even a clever paper, decided Squire, pencilling the words ‘Higher Foolishness’ on his programme; yet it was tricked out with cleverness. Ajdini’s reference to Romanticism came adorned with learned references to European Romanticism, wherein was pointed out (in parentheses) that, although English and German Romanticisms were well propagandized, in reality the great Manzoni of Italy, and of course the Russians with Pushkin and Lermontov, not to mention other East European figures working in Slav, Hungarian, Romanian, Georgian, and other languages extending as far as the Caucasus and further, where the authenticity of folk poetry and (for example) the romantic letter had become truly popular, much more tellingly represented the Romantic tradition at grass-roots level.

When Ajdini sat down, a French delegate asked a lengthy but footling question, to do with the relationship between Huxley’s Brave New World and the ‘plays of protest’ of Shakespeare – or, as he believed, Lord Bacon – particularly The Tempest, as interpreted through the monopolistic tendencies of late-nineteenth-century scientism. Ajdini answered quite briskly, smiling and making an unscripted joke, in which it was apparent that she had been misled by the interpreter and missed the drift of the question. Frenza then intervened, thanked the main speakers for their contributions, and adjourned the meeting until sixteen hundred hours.

As delegates poured from the hall, Selina Ajdini was waiting among the ferns of the marble gallery. She advanced towards Squire, travel bag thrust forward, smiling and holding out her hand. Her big blue-rimmed spectacles still on her nose made her eyes – of a much more elusive shade of blue – look large and defenceless.

‘Mr Squire, we have not met and it is my great pleasure that we do so now; I attended your Pop Expo in London a decade ago, and marvelled like everyone else. It is wonderful that you came to Ermalpa. My name is Selina Ajdini and I am Associate Professor in Comparative Stylistics at the University of the Gulf in Galveston, Texas. This year I have a sabbatical in Europe East and West, with a roving commission for the Frankfurt-am-Main magazine Die Spitze.’

Seen close to, she looked older than Squire had estimated. Probably in her forties.

‘I used to know Ted Zold, head of the English department at Gulf.’

And no less attractive for that.

‘Ted’s retired just this year. He’s working on the Yale edition of the correspondence of Howard Dean Efflinger.’ She spoke English without an American accent, rather with some kind of European intonation Squire could not place. Her voice was pleasant – if ‘pure and clear as a mountain stream’, then the associations with the hare bone picked bare on the headland were still present in Squire’s mind. Her lips were thin and coral pink; they moved delightfully, whatever she was saying. He transferred his gaze to the blue eyes; the diatribe against Huxley had left him too affronted for any ready supply of conversation.

She was presenting her credentials in a sophisticated way, chatting about an acquaintance of his whom she had met in Budapest. She punctuated her talk with ‘Thank you’, and ‘You’re very kind’ to delegates who, passing by, felt compelled to offer her congratulations on her speech. This she did without in any way dissipating the impression that she was deep in conversation with the man she regarded as most important. The leather travel bag, turning gently on the left hip, touched Squire’s right thigh; the slender hand with the scarlet nails, adorned additionally with a slender silver and a fat amber ring, remained grasping the callipygous leather.

‘You are part of the reason I am in Ermalpa, Mr Squire, and I hope that maybe we could get together this evening and you would allow me to interview you for Die Spitze? They plan a special number for the spring on Contemporary Thinkers. You probably know that “Frankenstein Among the Arts” has been running on German television earlier this summer.’

‘I never give interviews,’ he said, smiling to break the force of the words.

She yielded gracefully, smiling in return so that the coral lips parted on pretty white teeth. ‘I understand. Perhaps we could talk anyway and I could indulge in a little hero-worshipping over a drink or two.’

‘That would be pleasant.’

The slender hand came out. ‘Seven o’clock then, in the bar.’

He made off towards the dining room palming his hair into place, gripping his briefcase tightly under one arm. ‘Acting out prophetically the effete culture of the West …’

Most of the tables in the dining hall were already fully occupied.

Courtesy demanded that he should not appear to show preferences at this early stage of the proceedings. He made himself sit at the nearest table. In some respects, it looked the least inviting, in that the two Russians were seated there with the secretary, Gianni Frenza, and two other delegates whose names Squire did not know.

He took hold of the back of the spare chair and smiled questioningly, with a gesture of the hand. All five rose or just failed to rise in polite fashion. As he seated himself, Frenza introduced him formally to the two Russians, Georgi Kchevov with the gold-rimmed spectacles and rugged looks – close to, his rough red skin and blunt nose made him look even more an inhabitant of trucks rather than classrooms – and the white-haired Vasili Rugorsky.

Frenza then introduced the other two men as delegates from the Federal Republic of Germany, Frank Krawstadt and Herman Fittich. Both smiled and shook Squire’s hand. Krawstadt was an untidy wiry man of perhaps thirty-two with a straggle of yellow beard and a raw spotty face, the very opposite of the spruce young Italians.

Herman Fittich was a more comfortable figure in his early fifties, with white sideboards to his hair; he wore a neat grey suit. Although his face and manner were bland, Fittich gave Squire an appraising look as he shook hands. Apparently satisfied with what he saw, he remarked in perfect English, ‘This is a time when we are apt to lean a bit heavily on compliments, but I’m perfectly genuine when I say that I have long appreciated many aspects of your work. You’re learned but you’re also kind to your readers. You permit us the luxury of a low boredom threshold.’

‘Good of you to say so. If you like whisky, never get a teetotaller to write about it.’

Fittich chuckled. ‘I’m sure Humphrey Bogart couldn’t have put it fairer than that. Let’s call the waiter for you. The food’s good.’

‘It smells good.’

‘The dining room is as grand as the conference hall – a token of the esteem in which the sensible Italians hold the arts of the stomach,’ Fittich replied.

In honour of the conference, vases of flowers stood on small tables round the sides of the room. Carnations in silver vases stood on every table, next to the glasses containing upright packets of grissini.

Any formality these arrangements might have induced was dispelled by the waiters. They were encouragingly numerous, and in general broad-stomached middle-aged men with oiled black hair and docile countenances; they were supported by young eager men learning this most rewarding of trades. They moved with fatherly dignity, aware of their importance, and in no time a delicious soup was set before Squire, a roll of warm brown bread provided on his side-plate, and red wine and mineral water poured into the two glasses by his right hand.

‘We met once before in the Tate Gallery in London during March of 1970,’ said Rugorsky to Squire in slightly majestic French, as his Russian colleague, Fittich, and Krawstadt were picking up the threads of their previous conversation. ‘It was during the Richard Hamilton exhibition, and Leslie Lippard-Milne was showing me round. You have forgotten it.’

He regarded Squire steadily.

Although he had forgotten, Squire found the memory returned, so that he said, ‘Why, yes – and I even remember that we met in front of …’ Teresa had been with him then, wearing a smart new suit they had acquired in Mayfair, where they were staying at Brown’s Hotel; she had been so pleased with it that she had worn it immediately and had her old suit sent round to the hotel.

‘We were introduced in front of “Hugh Gaitskell as a Famous Monster of Filmland”, one of the early landmarks of pop art,’ Rugorsky said. ‘We talked about the insights to be derived from the commonplace – as you say, the feeling behind a banal phrase, or, as I say, the sense of evolution even behind very static things such as a multinational company or a bureaucracy.’

His eyelids were heavy and fleshy, in common with his face; they descended slightly as he spoke, masking his glittering eyes which nevertheless firmly maintained Squire’s gaze.

Squire remembered both the gaze and the man now, chiefly through his sly and testing sense of humour. Good mood restored, he said, ‘There’s also the emptiness behind a banal phrase to be considered. We may have problems, I think, in understanding the difference between banality and sincerity.’ The soup was delicious.

‘D’accord. Just as insight is not always found behind complex phraseology. There again we see the spoor of evolution – mankind invents all its many languages not only for communication, but also as anti-communication devices, to keep out strangers.’

It was always a good idea to test Russians out with George Orwell, whose works were banned in the Soviet Union. ‘Orwell said that even the art of writing is largely the perversion of words.’

‘I know it. But Orwell also says that the whole meaning of a word is in its slowly acquired associations, and that is untrue – or is no longer true, or not if you believe that it is the duty of those who still can to distinguish between true and false to do so continuously. One of the attractions of words these days – this I observe mostly in the West, by the way – is that they should be new, fresh, mysterious, and therefore carry thought forward. “Escalation” was a fashionable word last time I was in London. Now, even in Paris, “Trade-off” is very popular. There is also something called “The Crunch”.’

‘The Crunch is what you get from a good grissino,’ said Squire, suiting action to words as one of the fatherly waiters took his empty soup plate away, and substituted a generous helping of lasagne. ‘I seem to think that after our meeting in the Tate we had a drink in the bar.’

‘Or,’ said Rugorsky, again fixing a veiled scrutiny on Squire, to see how his remark went down, ‘to speak more precisely, several drinks. Mr Lippard-Milne became quite merry. Remind me please of the name of his attractive wife.’

‘Sheila.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Rugorsky smiled to himself. ‘Sheila.’

‘Such new words are usually generated by small groups,’ said Fittich, breaking from his own conversation in German with Krawstadt and Frenza and speaking in English across the carnations to Squire and Rugorsky. ‘So there is always a certain cachet in using such words, implying one is an insider. In consequence, they pass quickly through the social system. We live in a world of bottlenecks, chain reactions, different ballgames, and indeed “different ballgame situations”. And we are constantly hoping that things are going to gel.’

Squire explained the word ‘gel’ in French to Rugorsky. ‘A situation that has not gelled is considered to be a liquid rather like hot jelly. As it cools, it goes through a phase-change, setting into a definite form. Would you say that this conference has yet gelled?’

Rugorsky, who had turned his scrutiny on Fittich, asked the latter, ‘Excuse me, you are a philologist?’

‘I’m sorry, I do not speak French.’

‘Then I suppose I must speak in English. We have only a few days here to make ourselves understood to one another.’

As the waiters brought in steaming dishes of fish and macaroni, which Gianni Frenza said was a local speciality, Fittich observed, ‘My belief is that the cuisine is gelling into rather a success. Too much of this pasta and I may undergo a slight phase-change myself in the region of my middle.’

After the meal, the Russians excused themselves and Frenza slipped away to consult d’Exiteuil. Squire and Fittich decided to take a turn in the street; Krawstadt crossed the foyer with them and excused himself at the doors. He had no English, as Squire had no German worth mentioning.

They walked in silence along the Via Milano, or exchanged small talk about the goods on display in shop windows.

‘It must be important to you that this conference succeeds,’ said Fittich, as they waited to cross the next intersection. ‘Although I believe – or I’m given to understand – that many of the Italians are well-known in their own specialized fields, yours is the only celebrity name. I wondered why you chose to associate yourself with the proceedings.’

‘I’ve known Jacques d’Exiteuil for some years. And his wife, Séverine. That’s one answer. Another answer is that I am not an academic so, unlike the academics here, I have little at stake. Also – third reason – well, I am rather at a loss at home.’

‘I should not have thought that to be possible.’

After a silence, when they turned down a side street towards the sea, Fittich said, ‘Sorry, you may have thought I was probing. Perhaps I was. My expression of admiration over lunch for your work was not idle. I forget you probably will not know of me, since my work goes on in Germany, and is in any case not on the scale of your “Frankenstein Among the Arts”.

‘I should tell you that I am a rather old-fashioned teacher of literature at the University of Bad Neustadt, which is not all that far from Würzburg and rather too close to the frontier with the so-called German Democratic Republic.’

‘Of course I know Würzburg, and the Residenz with its beautiful Tiepolos. For that matter, I know the GDR … What literature do you teach?’

‘German and English. Mainly old-fashioned literature, before this century. But as a matter of fact I am not averse to the contemporary forms of fiction, and have held courses on the masters of crime, such as Hammett, Chandler, and Bardin, a personal favourite. I’m also devoted to science fiction, on which topic I am to deliver my paper tomorrow.’

When they were half-way down the steep little street, Squire pointed ahead.

‘There’s the Mediterranean, still looking inviting. Well, I’m looking forward to hearing your paper, though the interpreters will do their best to make sure that we all hear something other than your intention.’

‘Isn’t it awful? The German translation is terrible. Well, it isn’t even German. However, I shall do my best. You may sight a few dim landmarks here and there, through the fog. For instance, I shall have an opportunity to mention the writings of Aldous Huxley rather more favourably than was done by the American lady this morning.’

He shot Squire a quick interrogative look, a mild smile playing about his lips.

‘You could hardly speak more adversely. “Acting out prophetically the suicidal tendencies of the West …”’

‘Exactly.’ Fittich exhaled. He walked with his arms hanging relaxedly by his side.

They came to the bottom of the street and paused. Ahead, beyond a double line of traffic, were flats, walls, and then sheds, shutting them off from the Mediterranean which, from farther up the steep side road, had been visible as an inviting strip of blue.

‘The entrance to the harbour’s farther along. This is about as near as I got to the sea this morning.’

‘Oh well, we must resign ourselves,’ said Fittich, in the tone of one well-accustomed to resigning himself. ‘At least we had our sight of the sea, and a little exercise. Now I shall return happily to the hotel. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance.’

‘The next session is not until four o’clock. We could walk along this way.’

‘I wish to have a siesta, thanks all the same.’ He smiled apologetically and tugged at his neat grey sideburns.

‘Then I’ll walk back with you. I flew in rather late last night, and an hour’s snooze will help keep me awake through the afternoon papers.’

They turned, walking side by side.

After a silence, Fittich said, ‘My considered opinion is that it really requires more delicacy to form critical opinions about the popular culture of today which we find all around us than it is to deal with the illustrious dead, such as Beethoven or Goethe. One needs an open mind and a specific vocabulary.’

‘We got a lot of Marxist-Leninist vocabulary this morning, didn’t we?’

‘Are they only talking to themselves? Do they not enjoy what they speak about? Well, I shall console myself with your remark – “If you like whisky, never get a teetotaller to write about it.”’

They laughed. ‘Let’s have a whisky together this evening,’ said Squire. ‘I have to go out for an hour or two, but will be back by about ten o’clock.’

‘Fine. A great pleasure.’ They had reached the doors of the hotel. ‘I want to talk more with Vasili Rugorsky. He seemed a decent enough chap.’

‘I thought so too.’

‘Of course, the decent ones generally turn out to be KGB men, don’t they?’

In the foyer, Squire checked his stride and went to look at the rack of postcards.

‘We shan’t see much of the island. Might as well buy a postcard.’

‘Well, I will detain you no longer. Some of the more important people here will wish to speak with you.’

‘Oh, don’t say that, Herr Fittich. I’m delighted to have your company. Look at this, the Villa Igiea. Beautiful, eh? I’d like a villa right there, pitched on the cliff.’

He waved a postcard of the ruins of a Roman dwelling, reduced to no more than half a dozen columns, set on the edge of the sea among pines, looking out to distant islands.

‘You also have a pleasant house in England, Pippet Hall,’ said Fittich.

Squire turned to face him. ‘Why do you say that?’

Fittich looked nervous. ‘My apologies, I should not have made the silly remark. To be honest with you, in the spring I visited your home in Norfolk. Pippet Hall. It was when your television series was actually being shown and your name was everywhere. I happened to stay with an English friend who, like me, is an admirer of your series. Well, we passed by your gates. I was astonished to find such a grand house visible from the road, not hidden, and close to the village, unlike most fine houses.

‘To be frank with you, I stuck my camera through your gates. You will think it a terrible cheek. And as I was about to snap, a charming lady appeared in my lens, strolling along with a young man towards the gate. It was exactly what I needed to complete the composition. I opened the gate for her. She smiled at me and said she hoped I had got a good shot. Back at my friend’s car, I looked at the photograph of you with your family on the back jacket of your book. It was your wife I had passed a word with. We drove off, I in great delight. And it turned out to be a good picture. I should have had the decency to have posted your wife a copy of it.’

‘I’m glad it turned out well. Excuse me, I’ll see you later.’

Looking slightly puzzled at Squire’s abruptness, Fittich said, ‘My apologies for detaining you. But knowing you would be here as our star guest, I brought you a copy of the photograph. Please allow me.’ As he spoke, he was bringing a leather wallet from the inner pocket of his jacket. He removed a colour print from the recesses of the wallet and, smiling, passed it to Squire.

The house in its mellow red brick appeared to nestle among trees and the giant rhododendron bushes which served as windbreaks on its east side. All looked serene and peaceful in the spring sun. In the foreground was Teresa Squire, wrapped in a warm coat, her head on one side with a gesture of suspicion directed at the intrusive photographer; it was a look Squire knew well. By her side, but hanging back, perhaps also in response to the sight of a camera, was a lean young man in jeans, his narrow face notable chiefly for sharp side-whiskers.

As a look of pain passed across Squire’s face, Fittich said, ‘Did you wish to keep this print? I trust that your wife is well, Mr Squire?’

‘We were parted when you took this shot. Thanks, but I don’t want it – not because of her.

‘Because of him.’

Upstairs in Room 143, Squire locked the door and took off his shirt and trousers. He sat by one wall in the lotus position, gazed at the wall before him, and practised pranayama. A yogi in Southall had once told him that, through correct breathing, modern man could regenerate himself; Squire, who liked to hope, partly believed the yogi.

Nevertheless, when he rose to his feet twenty minutes later, he was left with a desire to phone England, and to be informed. He put through a call, not to his wife or his sister, but his London publisher, Ron Broadwell of Webb Broadwell Ltd.

After an hour’s wait, the number rang, and Broadwell’s secretary came on the line. ‘Hello, Mr Squire, I’m afraid Mr Broadwell’s out. Can I help?’

‘Oh, I just wondered if Ron had any news for me.’

‘Yes, we heard this morning that your American publisher has put a reprint of 20,000 copies in hand. So that’s good, isn’t it?’

‘Splendid. Is Ron at lunch?’

‘Yes, he’s still at lunch. He should be back by four. I’ll tell him you rang.’

The genial Ron Broadwell was lunching – unknown to the world – with Squire’s sister, Deirdre Kaye. They lunched together once a year in the Hyde Park Hotel, Knightsbridge, and had done so ever since the fifties when, as undergraduates at Cambridge, they had consummated a brief love affair in the hotel. Since then, both had married Americans, and the affair was long over.

They remained good friends and still enjoyed their secret annual meeting. This year it was Deirdre’s turn to pay. A delegation of Chinese in sober business suits was eating Dover sole in unison at a nearby table. Deirdre and Broadwell had both ordered cotelettes d’Agneau Madelon, and were drinking a claret with them.

‘I saw your mother’s obituary in The Times,’ Broadwell said. ‘Tom didn’t expect me to come up to Hartisham for the funeral, did he?’

‘Good God, no. But we’ve met since then. That was the Christmas before last.’

He looked embarrassed. ‘I lose account of the time nowadays. So it was.’

‘You’re not having an affair with another woman, are you?’

‘I promised always to be faithful to you. The lamb’s good.’

‘Looking back, I can see what a snob she was. I suppose that generation were. The Hodgkinses do tend to be. I remember mother’s advice to me on my twenty-first. “Always look first-rate,” she said. “Dress becomingly, wash thoroughly, particularly between the legs, always hold yourself properly. Keep a fit expression on your face at all times. Remember you’re a Squire, gel.”’

She had given a precise imitation of her mother, and Broadwell laughed. ‘She was rather grand. “Always look first-rate.” I like that. She did look a bit first-rate.’

‘Oh yes. Those hats. Drank like a fish towards the end. Tom preferred not to notice. Tom likes to maintain the family image.’ The cutlets were tiny, delicately done, and served with a sauce Madère; she cut one in half and raised it to her mouth.

‘It’s quite a relief to be married to old Marsh. As an American, he doesn’t grasp all the implications of being a Squire gel, so I’ve escaped all that. More or less.’

Broadwell gazed at her over his glass. In her late forties, Deirdre Kaye had grown rather like her brother. There were the same strong features, the same marked lines beside the mouth, even the same way of carrying the head. He enjoyed their relationship, and was not sorry that it was no closer. He also reflected that she was more Squire-like than her brother.

‘Belinda simplifies my life. “Cut out all that English bullshit,” she’ll say. Not that she hasn’t plenty of bullshit of her own. By the way, she informs me that The Times may cease publication. Staff troubles – the unions, of course. Can you credit it? Life won’t be the same. I’m one publisher who’ll suffer if the TLS goes.’

‘Belinda’s fun for you, Ron. What you deserve. They are tasty, aren’t they?’

‘Was Tom very upset by Patricia’s death?’

‘You know Tom. Nothing upsets him. One of his worst characteristics. Now he is head of the family, etc. We don’t see much of Adrian, except at Christmas. I guess being a Squire boy is a bit of a responsibility. Notice Tom always looks first-rate. Ideal telly fodder.’

‘He came over very well on the box. More wine? How is his relationship with Teresa? I daren’t ask him, not after the great bust-up at my house last New Year’s Eve.’

‘I’m getting such an alcoholic in my old age. It’s all a mess. I suppose you know he’s not actually at Pippet Hall any more? First he stayed at his club, now he’s got a flat somewhere in Paddington, of all places.’

‘I know. Chops were good. He could have stayed with us. The dogs are worse than children, though. Mind you, the first meal we ever had here was the best.’ He wiped his lips on his napkin and grinned at her. She had grown softer over the years – not to mention plumper.

‘There was a woman Tom had the hots for a while back. He thought Marsh and I didn’t know, but I happened to find out. Sheila Lippard-Milne. Rather a saucy bit of goods, saucier than Teresa by a long chalk.’

She drained her glass and beckoned the waiter over.

‘I know Sheila. I published a book by her husband. He’s a bit of a wet, but quite a sound art historian. What about sweet? Our Hungarian tart as usual?’

‘Two Dobos Torta,’ she told the waiter. ‘I think the waiters change every year. This chap’s a Cypriot or something. The chef seems permanent, thank God. They’d make a good pair.’

‘The chef and the waiter?’

‘Tom and Sheila Lippard-Milne. He needs jollying up.’

‘We’d make a good pair. Then your Marshall could marry my Belinda.’ He reached out and took her hand.

‘My God, Belinda’d eat Marsh …’

‘Missed you while you were in Greece.’

‘You never think of me. It was nice to escape the strikes, I suppose. The hotel on Minos is dreadful, not even picturesque. I took along my watercolours, like a good Squire gel, but never used them.’

‘The sign of an irredeemable nature,’ he said, beaming at her.

The sweet trolley arrived. The Dobos Torta looked and tasted as delicious as in previous years.

3
A View from the Beach

Pippet Hall, Norfolk, June 1977

The world underwent one of its amazing simplifications. First and nearest was the great band of beach, decorated in bas-relief with a complex ripple pattern; then a sliver of sky-coloured lagoon left by the retreating tide; then a band of lighter sand, then a drab donkeyish strip of distant fern and grass; then a band of dark green, formed from the long line of Corsican pines which stood guard between land and beach, allowing pale sky among the colonnades of its trunks; then the enormous intense blue summer sky, sailing up to zenith, beyond capturable reach of camera.

The equipment and human figures were reduced to toy scale by the expanse of beach.

Thomas Squire was wearing a blue canvas shirt and a pair of brown swimming trunks. He was up to his knees in almost motionless sea, moving steadily towards the shore.

Beside him was a gorgeously tanned girl in her mid-twenties. Her thick fair hair streamed over her shoulders in the light off-shore breeze. She wore a black bikini with artificial white roses stitched round the line of her breasts. She was laughing and vivacious, the very embodiment of seaside girls on posters everywhere, and paid Squire no attention as he acted out his part.

‘The sea is always close to our thoughts in Europe, because it has played such a part in history. It may also have played a considerable part in pre-history, if mankind reverted to marine life at a stage in its early career. I think of that theory whenever the annual summer pilgrimage to the nearest strip of beach begins. The human race then shows a tendency to cluster like penguins on the shores of the Antarctic, as if we were all about to revert to the sea again, having found life on land a little too complex.’

He and the girl were almost ashore. There were no waves, only the purest warm ripples of water which glided up the beach like liquefied sunlight.

‘The sea that most possesses the European imagination is the Mediterranean, the sea at the middle of the Earth. It’s the cradle of our culture, the home waters of Greece and Rome. This is not the Mediterranean but the North Sea. I love this stretch of the North Norfolk coast, and the docile summer North Sea, not only because it is much less crowded and despoiled than most of the Mediterranean coast, but because I happen to live within ten miles of this particular beach. As you see, the water in late June is entirely warm enough for our Sex Symbol to sport in.

‘If I mentioned the name of the beach, that advertisement would cause it to become crowded within a year.

‘Such is the power of advertising. Advertising in various media frequently makes use of the sea and, of course, of sex symbols such as this young lady by my side. If I mentioned her name, she would become a character, not a symbol; such is the power of names.

‘Her skin is really white, not brown, but she has applied suntan oil to satisfy tradition. The image of brown girl in blue water has proved strongly evocative ever since sea-bathing became fashionable last century.

‘You may believe that such images demean women. Perhaps you think they demean the Mediterranean or, in this case, the North Sea. I don’t. We are all symbols to each other as well as real people. The experience of the imagination gives life savour.

‘People have a down on advertising. Of course I can see why, just as I can see why they have a down on smoking. Yet people go on smoking and derive at least temporary pleasure from it. I derive a lot of temporary pleasure from advertising, and am practised at separating the commercial from the aesthetic side of it; it’s a trick I learnt from my children, who are connoisseurs of TV advertising. Adult moral disapproval of advertising spoils our enjoyment, just as the Victorians found that moral approval of a painting enhanced their enjoyment of it.’

He and the girl were heading up the beach, splashing through a shallow lagoon. In the water lay a large beach ball with the word ‘NIVEA’ on it. Squire kicked the ball out of the way. Taking the towel wrapped like a scarf round his neck, he put it round the damp shoulders of the girl, talking cheerfully at the same time.

‘Some enemies of advertising claim that advertisements show a too perfect, too happy world against which reality can never compete. I disagree. George Bernard Shaw said that perfection was only achieved on paper; utopia is only achieved in adverts. We need to be reminded that it exists even if it is attainable only by purchasing Domestos or Horlicks. Enemies are, in any case, blind, and have not noticed how often adverts on television show things going wrong; catastrophe has become a new sales gimmick. Here’s a current advert for Andrex toilet paper or, as they put it more refinedly, toilet tissue.’

Squire broke off and the cameras stopped. He and the Sex Symbol sat down abruptly on the hard sand. They looked at each other and laughed.

‘Just fine that time, Tom,’ Grahame Ash said, coming up from behind the cameras and removing his ear plug. ‘You must be exhausted. And you, Laura. Good day’s work, both of you. At that point we cut in the ad with the little dog running into the garden with the toilet roll in its mouth. Great. Thanks very much, everyone.’ The director waved his hands above his head. The crew moved nearer and doled out cigarettes.

His PA, Jenny Binns, called, ‘Remember, nine o’clock tomorrow at Mr Squire’s house, without fail everyone, okay?’

‘We’re all going over to Blakeney to a hotel for posh nosh this evening,’ Ash reminded them.

‘Count me out of that, Grahame,’ Laura said. She scrambled to her feet and clutched her arms, rubbing them and shivering. ‘Ooh, this isn’t quite Singapore. I’ve gone all goosey.’

Squire put an arm round her shoulder and kissed her ear.

The men were talking about the good filming conditions as they gathered their gear together. Hartisham Bay stretched to either side of them, punctuated to the west by a low headland on which the window of a parked car glinted in the sun. To the east, the sand seemed to extend for ever. Some distance out to sea, a cluster of what looked like rocks were visible now the tide was low. It was the remains of Old Hartisham Priory, which had been overtaken by coastal erosion in the Middle Ages.

‘Let’s go,’ Ash said. ‘Forward march. Jenny, did you book us a table for this evening?’

‘Of course, Grahame,’ said his assistant, sweetly. ‘Haven’t I been booking you tables all round the world?’

There was still half a mile between them and the path through the dunes. Squire and Laura Nye trudged along together, she gripping the crossed ends of his towel, still wrapped round her neck. The others straggled along behind, exchanging insults and laughing. They fell silent on reaching dry sand above tide level, where the going immediately became harder. The cameras were dragged on sledges. The equipment van, the generators, and their cars were parked on the other side of the dunes, in the shelter of some pines.

As Laura went with the wardrobe girl to the caravan that served her as dressing-room, Squire stopped and waited for Ash. The four other members of the team streamed past them. Summer sun made their movements dazzle.

‘That all seemed to go well. All those hours splashing about in the water, and we never even took a dip. Amazing weather for June.’

Ash smiled and shook his head. ‘You can keep your dips. I would never swim in the North Sea, never. My health is precious to me.’ He looked mock-solemn. Ash was a small round man, his fringe of long grey untidy hair sprouting round a freckled bald patch giving him a monkish air. By contrast, and possibly to prove he was a dedicated media man, he wore a gaudy flowered shirt that recalled Hawaii and British Home Stores, although Squire had been with him when he bought the garment in Orchard Road, Singapore, to the derision of the camera crew.

On their many trips to locations at home and abroad, Grahame Ash had shown himself to understand perfectly Squire’s material, and had made contributions they had incorporated in the script. In particular, he had proved himself visually inventive. He was a north countryman, his soft-spoken vowels adding to a general impression of comfortable command.

‘It’s supine, Grahame, supine, that sea, a reformed teddy bear sea, promising never to play rough again.’

‘I never swim with teddy bears.’ He emptied sand from his canvas shoes. ‘It must be tea-time. I need a drink.’

‘What’s next in the script?’

‘A word about advertising supporting newspapers, television companies, colour supplements, sport, pointing out its virtues in a capitalist society.’

Ash climbed into the Peugeot and pulled the script of the episode of ‘Frankenstein Among the Arts’ they were filming from the crammed glove compartment. Squire went to the sheltered side of the vehicle and pulled an old pair of slacks over his swimming trunks.

‘Okay. Perhaps we should scrap that as a bit didactic and say instead that advertising – like the Andrex ad – reinforces a rather dangerous Western obsession with cleanliness.’

‘My father served three years in the mud and trenches in World War I and was never the same afterwards, at least according to mother. Perhaps in reaction against the mud, his devotion to cleanliness spilled over into pacifism.’

‘Interesting,’ said Squire. He climbed into the passenger seat beside Ash. ‘How much is the unpreparedness of the West due to fear of war, how much to advertisements with perpetual stress on avoidance of dirt – meaning death as well as excreta.’

‘Bit difficult to avoid either if you ask me.’

‘Yes, but you can avoid thinking about them.’ It was seven months since his mother died, yet the loss was still with him. ‘I mean, do we see the shiny packaging of purchasable objects as guardians against evil, like Chinese temple dogs? Why is packaging so often of more durable material than the object being packaged?’

Ash backed the car out onto the road. ‘That would fit more appropriately into Episode Twenty, “Shiny Surfaces”, where we’re dealing with Jasper Johns, Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, and the pop artists’ interest in commercial packaging.’

Laura Nye came over to them. She had changed into a frilled blue shirt and jeans. The blond wig had gone, to reveal her own neat crop of chestnut hair.

‘Are you going to go to the pub?’ Squire asked. She was staying at The Lion in Hartisham, like most of the crew, for the four days they were working here.

‘No, darling, not tonight. I’ve got to dash to London. See you tomorrow, okay?’

Her smile echoed the note of interrogation in her voice.

He squinted against the sun in order to study her expression, shielding his eyes in an instinctive attempt to conceal his alarm.

‘You’ve got a hell of a drive from here all the way to London. Can’t it wait? We’ll be back in the Smoke in a couple of days.’

She glanced unnecessarily at her wrist watch.

‘I’ll be in town by seven, no bother. I’m looking forward to the drive. I must go. Sorry.’

‘Are you going to see Peter?’

‘I must, Tom. Besides, you’re going to see Teresa.’

She smiled soberly across at Ash. ‘I’ll be back for work on time tomorrow, Gray.’

The two men watched her retreating behind in silence. Sunlight glinted through the characteristic female crutch gap.

‘Let’s go,’ Squire said, with a sigh. ‘Pippet Hall.’

Ash said nothing. He drove.

The Norfolk coast road from Hunstanton meanders eastwards towards Sheringham and Cromer. On its way, it calls at a number of small towns which are never quite on the sea, whatever their intentions. Blakeney, for instance, gazes placidly across tidal river and marshes to its distant head, with scarcely a glimpse of the real sea. It once held fairs which were among the excitements of the Middle Ages; Muscovite ships visited it, with cargoes of silver, sable, caviar and bear grease. Three stout ships sailed from Blakeney against the Spanish Armada.

Only at Wells-next-Sea is there still clear sight of the open waters leading on to Norway, the Arctic, or Ostend. At Wells tourists can walk with their ice creams and fish’n’chips straight across the road, to view little Egyptian freighters or the modern, hammer-and-sickle-flying descendants of the Muscovites who reached Blakeney, all moored peaceably against the quayside.

Take one of the minor roads which turn southwards off the coast road between Wells and Blakeney. After a few miles’ drive, you will arrive at the pretty village of Hartisham. Hartisham is set half on a small eminence, half in a small valley, through which the small River Guymell runs. The higher village contains a manor house, a vicarage, and a fine church, dedicated to St Swithun, and refaced with knapped flint in the eighteen-eighties. The lower part contains most of the village, its dwellings (mainly cottages, built blind side to the street), a few shops, and Pippet Hall, through the modest grounds of which the River Guymell flows.

The countryside is undulating hereabouts, rather than flat. It is very fertile, and must once have abounded in the deer for which the village is named. Pippet Hall estate consists of under one hundred acres since the Squire family had to sell land off to meet death duties. The modest farmhouse, now occupied by the manager of the estate, lies in a bend of the Guymell. The manager frequently eats trout for his supper. The Hall itself stands on a slight eminence. It is mentioned and often pictured in all the guide books of the area, and also in Nikolaus Pevsner’s architectural guides. It was named after the meadow pipits which used to nest abundantly hereabouts.

The house is visible from the front gate, but to reach the front porch the drive curves elegantly and crosses an ornamental stone bridge over a small lake which was created by a Squire ancestor with advice from Thomas Repton. The cedars Repton planted, the blue cedars of Lebanon, still stand in a noble group of four on the north side of the lake. It is tradition that, when the weather is cold enough and the ice will hold, the local population enters the grounds of Pippet Hall and skates or slides on the frozen lake.

‘I love this place,’ Ash said, as he braked the Peugeot in the drive outside the porch. ‘I’ll buy it off you.’

A dog barked somewhere in an offhand manner.

‘Let’s see if Teresa’s at home.’

The house was early Georgian, built of brick cornered with stone. It replaced a smaller building on the same site which had been destroyed by fire. It owed its existence to an earlier Squire, the vigorous Matthew, born in Norfolk in 1689, in the reign of King James II.

Matthew Squire bought himself a commission in Marlborough’s army and served as liaison officer between Marlborough and Prince Eugene at the battle of Oudenarde in 1708, in which the French were defeated. Matthew’s bravery, his dash, and his command of the German tongue, commended him to Eugene.

The bravery must have been inborn; the command of German was acquired from young Matthew’s mistress, Caroline, the illegitimate daughter of a Westphalian captain of dragoons. With Caroline following behind, Matthew joined Eugene’s army to fight at Peterwardein in 1716. There the Turks were defeated for the last time on European soil.

As victory bells pealed throughout Christendom, Matthew found he had lost a finger and gained a reputation. He was decorated and rewarded by Eugene. He acquired a substantial train of Ottoman booty. Whereupon he retired with his beloved Caroline to his native village, Hartisham. There in the seventeen-thirties he had the present house built and, it is claimed, was the first man to introduce coffee to North Norfolk. Despite lavish expenditures, he ensured the modest fortunes of the Squire family for the next two and a half centuries.

Caroline’s sturdy Westphalian loins provided for the continuance of Matthew’s line. She outlived her husband. He died, a slightly dotty old man with a cork finger, in his seventy-first year, and was buried in St Swithun’s churchyard at almost the same time as Horatio Nelson was entering the world, only a few miles away across the Norfolk meadows.

As the two men climbed from Ash’s Peugeot, a Dalmatian bitch came bounding from the rear of the house and flung herself at Squire.

At the same time, a female voice was heard calling, in hopeless tones, ‘Nellie, Nellie, good girl!’

A plump white-haired lady appeared, carrying a trug in one hand. She paused, then came up smiling, saying, ‘Tom, your dog is quite uncontrollable.’

Squire introduced her to Ash as Mrs Davies, his mother-in-law. She was recently widowed.

‘Where’s Teresa?’ he asked her, patting Nellie’s back.

‘This sunny spell we’re having is beautiful, and yet you know I get so hot,’ she told Ash, with the confidence of one who has regularly enjoyed the attention of men. ‘I never used to get so hot. I mustn’t do any more, but I couldn’t resist pottering. All the poor plants need water. Tess feels the heat too, and I would not be surprised if she hasn’t retired to her own room for a shower and rest. You must have found filming on the beach intolerably hot today, Mr Ash.’

‘Don’t forget that Mr Squire and I were filming in Singapore three months ago,’ said Ash, smiling. ‘It was really warm there.’

They paused on the lower step of the house, Ash slouching, smiling in his flamboyant shirt, hands in his pockets, Mrs Davies shortish but erect, her white hair carefully tended, talking but keeping an eye on Squire, who stood square-based, legs apart, twiddling his bunch of keys. The dog disappeared into the cool of the house.

The symmetry of Pippet Hall was emphasized by its red brick and its white paint, with the plum-coloured door centrally placed. The complete entablature of the doorcase, with a pediment over it, in turn emphasized the sensible centrality of this feature. It was a three-storeyed house, the four sashed windows of the ground floor running almost from floor to ceiling, but diminishing in height floor by floor. A brick parapet ornamented with recessed panels rose above the second-floor windows, half-concealing the truncated pyramid of roof. The chimneys were grouped at either end of the roof, emphasizing the symmetry of the whole.

Five shallow steps rose from the level of the drive to the front step (for the meek Guymell had been known to rise up and flood). Squire led the way up the steps to the panelled door.

‘My husband flew out to Singapore,’ Mrs Davies was telling Ash, ‘by air in the thirties, in a seaplane. I went too. It was very comfortable and we slept on board. I wouldn’t care to go now. Flights are so terribly crowded nowadays, I don’t know how people can bear it. Yet I saw in The Times just yesterday that they’re planning even bigger airliners. Where it will all end I don’t know.’

Squire was edging his friend into the hall. He waited while Mrs Davies talked to Ash. The interior was cool, and silent, apart from the click of the Dalmatian’s claws on the stone tiles as it circled him. This hall was Pippet Hall’s grandest feature, designed to make an immediate impression on guests before they were led to the relatively cramped reception rooms. Stairs led to the upper floor in a graceful double curve; portraits of Matthew and Caroline hung in heavy gilt frames on the half-landing.

‘Where are Ann and Jane?’ he asked sharply.

‘The girls have gone over to Norwich with Grace and their Aunt Deirdre. They’ll be back later,’ said Mrs Davies. ‘They’re wearing their jeans. I told them that dresses were more suitable for Norwich but, no, they would go in their jeans. Ugly things. Do you have children, Mr Ash?’

‘I think I’ll get Grahame a drink, Mother,’ said Squire. ‘Would you like one, too?’

‘I could make you some tea if you liked, and there are some doughnuts from the Crooked Apron. Do you like doughnuts, Mr Ash? They’re terribly fattening …’

Squire manoeuvred Ash and his mother-in-law into the living room and poured both Ash and himself large vodkas-on-the-rocks. Leaving Ash to his conversation, he went off in search of his wife. The dog sat at the bottom of the stairs, watching him mournfully, knowing well that Dalmatians were not allowed upstairs.

Music sounded faintly along the upper corridor. Teresa had taken over the room at the south-east corner of the house. Squire tapped lightly at the door and went in.

The room was shaded. The curtain at the long south-facing window had been drawn to keep out the sun; but a thin beam, shining through the window set in the other wall, painted a line of gold across the white-and-green carpet, as if to emphasize the shadow into which the rest of the room had been plunged.

Teresa had furnished the room with rattan chairs and sofas, each with a white cushion, and all recently purchased from an artistic shop in Fakenham. There were several large plants, two monstera delicosa reaching almost to the ceiling, a rubber plant, and an aspidistra. The general effect was that an attempt had been made to recreate a Malayan environment, but the sofa had been pushed aside to make room for a white formica desk and a work table at which Teresa now sat.

The table was littered with rolls of plastic and wire and a cluttered miscellany of paint pots on a tray. Beneath the table were boxes and litter. On the walls hung the results of Teresa’s labours, fantastic insects of all sorts, beetles with amazing horns, moths with wings of gold, butterflies with eyes in their wings. These exotic creatures of wire and plastic glowed with the light from the floor, the unusual angle of illumination giving them an unexpected and even sinister aspect.

‘Tess! Are you all right?’

She had been sitting looking through the window, holding a paint brush in one hand. Although she turned to look at Squire, the end of the brush remained between her teeth, slightly wrinkling her upper lip.

‘Hello, Tom, I didn’t expect you back yet.’ As if making a decision, she dropped the brush abruptly and stood up. Teresa was a plump, soft-looking woman of under medium height. Now in her mid-forties, she had lines under the large doe eyes which were such a striking feature of her face. Her hair was piled neatly on her head and dyed with gold tints. She had taken recently to wearing plenty of make-up and false eyelashes. Her smock was stained with plastic paints; beneath it she wore crimson slacks. Crimson-nailed toes peeped from golden sandals.

Squire moved forward, clutched her, patted her chubby bottom.

‘We’ve finished filming for the day. Grahame’s here. Come down and have a drink with us.’

‘Where are the rest of them?’ In her regard was the slight suggestion of squint which he had once found so attractive.

‘Of the company? They’re mostly putting up at The Lion. Is anything the matter, Tess?’

She looked hard at him and said, ‘No, no, nothing’s the matter.’ With one sandalled foot she moved a cardboard carton out of the way.

‘Good. Come on down then.’

‘I’ll be there in a minute. I can’t come downstairs looking like this.’

‘Of course you can. You look lovely. Grahame won’t mind.’

She frowned, as if concentrating on resolving the contradiction in what he said.

‘If you go down, I’ll join you, if you really want me.’

‘Naturally we want you. Mother tells me the girls are in Norwich with Deirdre. I thought we might all go over and have supper in Blakeney with the film crew. It would be fun and the hotel cuisine’s not bad this season.’

With a lack-lustre air far from her normal manner, Teresa turned away, saying, ‘You go if you wish. I don’t feel like going out this evening.’

‘There is something the matter, isn’t there? Have you got business troubles?’

‘Not at all. On the contrary.’ She waved her hand over the cluttered table. ‘Vernon Jarvis is convinced I can make a great commercial success with fantasy insects. He says I shouldn’t bother to sell in England. He can get massive orders from Germany and New York which will pay much better. He thinks we should start an export company.’

‘Who’s Vernon Jarvis?’

‘A young man with flair and very good business connections. You met him before you went to Singapore but I daresay you were too busy to take any notice.’

‘I think I do remember now. Funny side-whiskers? Well, if all’s going well, don’t be gloomy, come down and have a drink.’

Going back to his vodka downstairs, Squire found Ash still in the conversational embrace of Mrs Davies, who was showing the director photographs of the three children, John – now grown-up and living in the murkier reaches of Manchester – Ann, and Jane. Prising Ash away, Squire took him into the study, where separate scripts and story-boards of each episode of ‘Frankenstein Among the Arts’ were arrayed on a trestle-table brought in for the purpose.

As Ash strolled with his drink to look out of the french windows at the sweep of lawn and meadow beyond, Squire said, ‘I’d better warn you that Teresa is in rather a peculiar mood. Probably her horoscope upset her this morning.’

‘Mine always upsets me. “Chance of financial advantage …” – and a tax form arrives with the postman. Never fear, I’ll be at my jolliest tonight.’

They switched on the video-cassette machine and flipped through a few items which might yet be fitted into the series. One showed a collection of hundreds of pepper-and-salt cellars, all different.

Both men laughed. ‘One function, diversity of forms. Condimental evolution,’ Ash said.

‘This array tells you a lot about the imagination of mankind. I think it should go in, if we can fit it in.’

‘It would have to go in Four, “Animals from Machines”. I’ll see what can be done.’

When Teresa appeared, she had changed into a summery blue dress which set off the artificial gold of her hair. She sailed into the study smiling, her mother and Nellie the Dalmatian trailing her. Greeting Ash warmly, she demanded a gin-and-tonic from her husband, and then chatted to the director. He invited her to join the party at the Blakeney Hotel.

‘Do we pick up your crew, if that’s what you call them, from The Lion?’

‘Yes, Mrs Squire. That’s where we are all staying. It’s picturesque.’

She accepted the drink from Squire without a glance in his direction. ‘You should have stayed with us. There’s room. This place has been like a nunnery with Tom away so much … Is your “Sex Symbol”, about whom I’ve heard so much, also staying at The Lion?’

‘Laura Nye? She’s in London overnight. Everyone else will be there. You’ll like Jenny Binns – she’s held us all together. Laura’s a good girl, too – as sweet as she looks. The series is her first television job. She’s had plenty of stage experience, worked with Ralph Richardson at one time.’

Teresa had developed a withdrawn look. Nellie flopped on the hearthrug.

‘Perhaps I’ll come,’ Teresa said.

Squire got the Jaguar out. It and the Peugeot drove into the village to collect the crew. Then they headed for the coast. The sun still shone, though cloud gathered. The evening appeared motionless. The tide was still out. The dinner was good.

Tom and Teresa rolled back to the Hall after midnight, leaving the car outside the house. They staggered indoors and Squire chained the door behind them. He went through to the kitchen to make tea while Teresa went upstairs to see that the girls were in bed. When he carried the mugs up, slopping tea on the carpets, Teresa was already undressing. A particularly brilliant dragonfly, with outstretched wings of crimson and viridian, glittered in a block of perspex on her side of the bed. She kept her gaze on it instead of looking at Squire.

‘Pleasant occasion, darling. Multo conviviality, as father used to say. I hope you enjoyed yourself as much as you appeared to be doing.’

‘It was all too apparent you weren’t enjoying yourself. That dreary doomed way you toyed with your Chicken Kiev …’

‘What do you mean? You could see I enjoyed myself. It was visible to all. And I ate up all my Chicken Kiev.’

‘Absent-mindedly.’

He removed his blazer, saying controlledly, ‘I drank a bit more than I intended. Grahame was well away, wasn’t he? Think he’d get back to The Lion safely?’

She made no answer. Instead, she disappeared behind her Chinese screen, in the shelter of which, since she had decided she was ‘getting too fat’, she preferred to undress.

‘Oh shit,’ he said, ‘if you’re refusing to talk to me, I’ll go downstairs and get myself another whisky. You’re brewing up for something – I know the expression “bottled fury” when I see it in the flesh. Tell me what the matter is, tell me what bloody mortal sin I’ve committed now.’

‘Don’t start swearing, Tommy.’ Her voice, heavy with reproof, from behind the gold-limned outline of a Cathaian mountainside. ‘It’s always a sign of guilt.’

‘Why do you damned well say I didn’t enjoy this evening? Any reason why I shouldn’t have enjoyed myself, apart from those hang-dog looks you kept giving me?’

‘You never even glanced at me, so how would you know?’

‘I did look; I was enjoying myself. I told you.’

Her face partially appeared, as if to get a sight on him, then withdrew behind the screen again. ‘You know what I mean. There’s enjoyment and enjoyment. Absent friends and all that …’

‘What absent friends, for heaven’s sake?’ He put his blazer on again. ‘You’re not insinuating that we should have taken your mother with us?’

‘I’ve long ago ceased to expect you to be decent or even civil to my mother. I mean, it wasn’t quite the same for you, was it, without that – that girl of yours, that Laura.’

‘If you’re referring to Laura Nye, I’ve not a clue what you’re talking about. You were told, she’s gone to London. Grahame told you.’

‘That’s what makes her an absent friend, isn’t it? Gone to sleep with some young stud of hers, I suppose. That’s what models are all about, isn’t it?’

He strode round the bed and dragged the screen back. Teresa stood there in her powder-blue dressing-gown, drawn to her modest full height, unmoving.

‘Come out of there if you’re going to insult me and Laura. She’s not a “model”, as you sneeringly call her. She has worked with Peter Brook and was in Shakespeare at the Old Vic for three years.’

‘I’d never trust anyone who was in Shakespeare for three years.’

‘Oh, this is just stupid, Tess. You’ve had too much gin. Let’s get to bed and go to sleep, and perhaps you’ll talk sense in the morning.’

She said, ‘I suppose you were playing Shakespeare on the beach this afternoon. What was it? You’re a bit long in the tooth for Romeo …’

It was very quiet outside. He went and peered through the curtains, over the balcony, at the garden and fields beyond, faintly visible in the starry night. Mist was gathering.

‘Come on, Tess, give it up. You’re spoiling for a fight and I’m not. You’re just making us miserable.’

She sat down on the side of the bed and selected a cigarette from the silver box she kept there. Lighting it with a shaking hand, she said, ‘How typical of you to pretend that I’m making the misery. You’ve been away all over the world, I’ve hardly seen you from one month’s end to the next. You come back, and I find you’ve got a new girl in tow. After all the trouble we had three years ago, I thought you’d learnt wisdom.’

He made to speak but she raised a hand. ‘I’m talking, aren’t I? You can have your say afterwards, though I’m not sure if I’ll listen. I’m fed up, Tom, utterly fed up. What sort of marriage is it? If you want to know, I drove up to the headland this afternoon and watched you with that woman through binoculars. I saw you mauling her about, cuddling her, kissing her, feeling her tits – in front of the others, too. How do you think I liked that, eh? You bastard!’

‘Christ!’ He ran the palm of his hand up his forehead and into his hair. ‘Teresa, you’re just being tiresome and exercising that suspicious nature of yours. Neither you nor I are anything to do with the world of television or show biz or whatever, and once “Frankenstein” is finished and in the can at the end of August, that will be the end of it as far as I’m concerned. I shall go back to work as usual.

‘But we both know about show biz. Different pressures, different moeurs. Sure, I did put my arm round Laura’s shoulder. It was breezy, she was cold, and she needed cheering up. Nothing more to it than that. So just drop the whole subject right here and now. Did you feel good, spying on me?

‘I admit I’ve been away a bit, but we agreed that this was my chance and I took it. “Frankenstein” is a marvellous opportunity and a new subject and I’m proud of it. But this period will shortly be over, then we’ll live a more normal sort of life. Simply let me sail through it without having emotional problems with you.’

Teresa came round the bed, shuffling her bare feet into fluffy slippers as she walked.

‘Men are such bloody liars. I tell you I saw you with her through the binoculars. Now you expect to jump into bed with me and screw me, don’t you? Whatever’s to hand, eh, Tommy Squire? You’ve been fucking that bitch in Singapore and all over the map, haven’t you?’

‘No.’ He regarded her woodenly, head down, face heavy, the flesh of his jowls creased as he faced her charge, his eyes defensive, angry.

His monosyllable – or his pose – stopped her before she reached him. She coughed furiously over the cigarette, fist to her mouth.

‘You bloody liar! Sagittarius woman with Cancer man – I should have known all along it would never work out. You’re a philanderer, you philander even with your mind, you’re rootless, you live only for yourself, don’t you? Well, why don’t you go back to Yugoslavia and live the way you used to live there?’

‘Don’t be silly, dear, you’re working yourself up for nothing. I’ve no wish to return to Yugoslavia. I’m too old, I want a peaceful life.’

‘A fine way you go about it. I suppose you’ll tell me you’re undergoing the male menopause next. That girl must have loved all that sort of thing – a case of Much Ado About Nothing, wasn’t it? Get out! I’m not having you in this bedroom with me. Go and sleep in one of the guest rooms. You’re no better than a guest.’

He moved slowly, like a man in a dream, picking up his pyjamas, his brass carriage clock from the bedside table, and his mug of tea.

‘The stars may be moving against us, Tess, but that is not my wish. We have to make our own decisions and not pretend we are helpless. You must behave less cruelly to me.’

‘It’s your behaviour not mine that’s at fault.’

Squire wandered for a while through the vacant rooms of the Hall, unable to rest. He was familiar with the dimensions of the house from childhood, could walk them unhesitatingly with his eyes closed. In the dead of night, this familiar substantial presence was doubly comforting. Every room held for him a different ambience; by its temperature, its smell, its silences, the very texture of its air or the creak of its oak floorboards, he could tell which room he was in, and respond to its character.

She had her difficulties, finding her way through life. All the astrological nonsense which recently had preoccupied her was simply a means by which she tried to manoeuvre round the hidden obstacles of her existence.

He thought back to an evening only three nights ago, before Grahame Ash, Laura Nye, and the crew had come down to Hartisham to film – only three nights ago, but now, separated from the present by the quarrel, a long way in the past. It had been so peaceful, so domestic: Tess and he, and the two girls, and Tess’s reliable friend, Matilda Rowlinson, sitting drinking coffee in his study after supper. Yet even then he had been dreaming of someone else …

Teresa was painting, copying a large butterfly. She used acrylics on a large pad, and worked deftly, occasionally looking up and smiling at Ann and Jane, who lolled by the fire with Nellie, the Dalmatian. Ann was just thirteen, her sister eleven; the sandy gene had run out with their elder brother; they had inherited their mother’s mouse, and their father’s enquiring nature.

‘You girls ought to be going to bed,’ Teresa said, as the grandfather clock in the hall struck ten.

‘We’re watching you,’ Ann said. ‘We’re fascinated, aren’t we, Nellie?’

‘You’re not.’

‘What sort of butterfly is it, anyway?’

Teresa appealed to Squire. He had bought the spectacular insect in its frame in a Singapore shop as a homecoming present for her.

‘It’s called a Bhutan Glory.’

‘You’re ruining the ecology of Singapore by buying that poor butterfly, Dad,’ Jane said. ‘There soon won’t be any left. How’d you like it if they came over here and bought all our butterflies?’

‘We’d have to exercise some controls.’

Teresa said in his defence, ‘Daddy helps to preserve the ecology of the Norfolk Broads, because they are our local responsibility, but you can’t expect him to butt in on Singapore’s affairs.’

‘It’s a pity we didn’t manage to stop the council pulling down the old almshouses,’ Matilda said. She was the vicar’s daughter, a tall pale woman in her early thirties and, with her plain looks and self-effacing manner, an embodiment of the traditional vicar’s daughter, until one became aware of her lucid way of thought.

‘They were tumbledown,’ Teresa said, ‘but the semi-detacheds that Ray Bond is building in their place are quite out of keeping with the rest of the village.’

‘I know, why don’t they build houses with green bricks instead of red ones?’ Jane said. ‘Then they’d merge with the landscape.’

‘Who’s ever heard of green bricks, Stupid?’ said her sister.

‘Well, they could invent them … Only I daresay they’d fade after a year and turn the colour of dog shit.’

‘I heard that Ray Bond was having an affair with two women at once,’ Ann said. ‘Both of them married. Isn’t that beastly, Dad?’

‘Beastly complicated.’

‘It’s disgusting. You girls shouldn’t listen to village gossip,’ Teresa told them.

Ann rolled onto her back, and pulled Nellie on top of her. With evening, a chilly wind was blowing in from the coast, and the big old electric fire was burning. She rested a slippered foot on top of it and announced, ‘I think I shall have affairs when I grow up. I’d like to have people gossiping about me.’

‘What, affairs with people like Ray Bond? You are nauseating,’ Jane said. ‘That’s just about your style.’

‘Oh, you can stick to your boring old ecology. You think caterpillars are more important than love, but I don’t. Grownups think love is important, don’t you, Mummy?’

‘Yes,’ said Teresa, and nothing more; so that Matilda, who sat quietly on a large Moroccan pouffe just beyond the compass of the light falling on Teresa’s paper, added, ‘Love can be a way of perception, like science or art, Ann, provided you don’t use it for power over people.’

‘To think I once used to be in love with that odious Robert Mais! I was only six then. I’ve got better taste now …’ Ann thought a while and then asked Squire, ‘Were you in love when you were very young, Dad?’

‘I don’t remember being in love at six. But I was at nine.’

Ann sat up. ‘Go on, don’t just stop there! True confessions … Who was she? Do we know her? I suppose she must be pretty ancient now.’

He laughed. ‘That’s true. Her name was Rachel. She lived here during the war. I loved her dearly.’

‘She lived here!’ Ann laughed. ‘I smell a rat! Did you have an affair with her, Dad? I mean, you know, a real flaming affair?’

‘Oh, shut up, Ann!’ Jane exclaimed. ‘You’re embarrassing poor Daddy, can’t you see? Nellie, eat her, go on, eat her! This conversation is getting too carnal entirely.’

They rolled together, shrieking. Teresa called to them ineffectually to stop.

‘Was it carnal, Dad? Tell us, we won’t tell anyone!’

He broke into laughter. ‘I just loved her, that’s all.’

Matilda, smiling, said, ‘Even carnal love can be a sign of someone’s yearning for Unity, though one can only really achieve unity with God.’

‘You’re bound to say that because you’re the Reverend Rowlinson’s daughter,’ said Ann, derisively. ‘I bet you’ve never had carnal knowledge – not even with Ray Bond, have you?’

‘That’s very rude, Ann. Apologize and go up to bed at once.’ Squire joined his wife with a shout of ‘Apologize!’

‘We’re only talking, Mummy,’ Jane said, soothingly.

But Ann had already shifted back to her original target. Jumping up, laughing, she demanded again, ‘Were you carnal, Pop – even when you were only nine?’

The noise of a woodcock roused Squire. For a moment he had a vision of happier things, imagining that his father was alive and moving about in his room; then his waking senses returned. His bladder was full. His body felt cold. Sighing, he sat up.

Light of another day filtered through the long windows. His carriage clock pronounced the time to be five-twenty. He was lying cramped on the chesterfield in his study, with a quarter-full glass of whisky standing on the carpet beside him. His head ached. His mouth was dry.

The pallid light seemed to cast a veil between Squire and a painting on the wall on which his sickened gaze rested. The painting dated from 1821, and had been executed by a nineteenth-century artist whom Squire had collected consistently over the past quarter century, Edward Calvert. Entitled ‘The Primaeval City’, it showed a scene which charmingly mingled the rural with the urban. A bullock cart trundled among trees into a city of thatch and domes and ruin, where figures could be seen in cameo, a bucolic pressing wine, a nun entering the church, a woman hanging out washing, a man pulling a donkey. In the background, garlanded with leaves, a gibbous moon rose like a planet above the crumbling rooftops, and a shepherd tended his sheep. In the foreground, dominating everything, stood a nude maiden in a leafy bower of pomegranate trees, having climbed from a brook. She looked over one shoulder without coquetry at the viewer, a bewitching mixture of flesh and spirit.

Recalling the previous evening, Squire turned his regard from these symbols and yawned.

Painfully, he got to his feet and staggered across to the french windows. When he twisted the latch, they opened with a squeal. He walked stealthily across the terrace, arms enfolding his chest to ward off the chill. He went on tiptoe down a gravel path and made his way barefoot over damp grass to the nearest clump of rhododendrons.

Down by the Guymell, faintly, he could see cattle standing without movement. Steam attended their flanks. All was still, artificial. The nearby cedars stood in a mist which rendered them as outlines. As a painter reduces a tree to a symbol which will function within his composition as a real tree does in a real landscape, so these outlines rendered the awakening world artificial. They and it had been sponged, as if Cotman were temporarily God.

As Squire turned after relieving himself, he saw the Jaguar standing at the front of the house, half-hidden by a corner of the building. Its two doors hung open. Something on the driver’s side had fallen out onto the gravel; a travel atlas, possibly.

In the mist-blurred wall of the house, fluorescent light spread towards the garden, where he had left on the kitchen lights when getting tea.

Looking up at the damp eaves as he picked his way back to the study, he observed that the bedroom light also was burning. The bedroom curtains had been pulled half-way back. The light spread a faded orange wash across the ceiling, a glow belonging to midnight rather than dawn, an ominous shade boding no good.

So she had not slept, or would not sleep, or could not sleep. Or was already prowling about the house. It had only been a minor tiff. He must eat humble pie, reassure her. All would be well again in a day or two.

He entered the study, shivering. As he turned from securing the windows, he discovered with a start that Teresa had entered the room while he was out of it; she stood in her dressing-gown, drawn up to her full height, by the door into the rear hall, in shadow. Her motionlessness was unnatural. She regarded Squire with fixed intensity.

‘You startled me, Tess. A Lady Macbeth act? Couldn’t you sleep?’

In a tone different from her usual tone, she said, ‘You have been getting into bed with that piece of goods, Laura, haven’t you?’

‘Yes. Yes, Teresa, I have. I’m sorry if it hurts you. It means very little to me but I could not resist the temptation. I have been to bed with her.’

Teresa said, as if that was the really important matter, ‘You lied to me last night, you rotten bastard.’

4
Conversation with ‘Drina’s’

Ermalpa, September 1978

Darkness had fallen. The first-floor corridor of the Grand Hotel Marittimo was littered with silver trays, lying forlorn with a mess of coffee-pots, used cups, and tousled napkins. As Thomas Squire left Room 143, a guest was in another room playing a violin behind locked doors.

After a half-an-hour suspended in sarvangasana, followed by a cold shower, Squire was feeling alert and ready for the evening. Downstairs, before turning into the bar, he took a stroll in the busy street. One of the Canadian delegates, seeing him walk towards the swing doors, said, in honest horror, ‘You’re not going out alone in Ermalpa after dark, Mr Squire? You know this place is the headquarters of the Mafia?’

Surviving a turn in the muggy air, Squire went to fulfil his seven o’clock appointment in the bar.

Selina Ajdini was there already. Several young Italians were talking to her, pressing round her armchair. She had changed her clothes, and now wore an ankle-length white jersey dress with long sleeves and edged with gold braid, its only decoration being a criss-cross pattern of braid with loose tassels which covered the bosom. Several thin gold bracelets hung at her slender right wrist, three rings glittered on her rather cruel-looking fingers. Her neat black hair, gathered into a thick tail, hung asymmetrically to one shoulder. She still carried her bulky bag.

The bar was full of the cheerful noises characteristic of a popular time. Three barmen in smart uniforms moved freely behind their gilded pallisades, smiling, exchanging jokes with each other and their customers as they worked; glass chinked against glass; the cash register whirred; wallpaper music played softly in the background; a waitress bustled among the customers, collecting glasses; and a murmur of many languages grew from all sides. A female voice called Squire’s name.

He turned and there was a small dark Italian lady he had watched earlier in the day. She was an efficient messenger for Frenza, the conference secretary, and spoke a little English. She had a minor administrative detail to sort out with Squire and, as she talked, he realized that she was Frenza’s wife; her well-turned ankles and heavy gold hair were immediately recognizable. Her name was Maria. She wore a neat black dress, had one bracelet on her wrist and two rings on her fingers. The smile she gave him was tired.

When they had settled the matter, he moved towards the bar. Ajdini had dismissed her retinue and sat smoking through a long holder, awaiting him. Although the bitter herb of her Huxley speech still flavoured his memory, he could not help smiling as he joined her, sinking into an armchair facing her.

The eroded bone was softened in artificial light. She said, ‘These Italians are so sociable, that we would talk with less disturbance in one of the rooms off the foyer. I have spoken about it to one of the barmen, who is very kind, and he will serve us with drinks as long as we are there.’

‘Very well.’

‘Let’s go, then.’

The room she referred to led off the passage where the case of silk ties stood. It was small, containing by way of ornament only a large marble bust of a general, whose remarkable cranial development alone was worth commemoration. Some earlier occupant of the room, perhaps idly waiting a tryst, had pencilled in the general’s pupils, making him appear cross-eyed.

‘This is a privilege for me,’ she said, lightly arranging the white dress as they sat down. ‘I suppose that any university in the capitalist world – and not only there – would be delighted to be able to address you face to face, Mr Squire. Your television series, and the book, which is a delight in its own right, does for the culture of today what Lord Clark’s Civilization did for the past.’

‘The series was the work of a team. They made it work – Grahame Ash, the director, in particular. Ash is a genius. He has a way with people and he thinks in pictures.’

‘Your work in general. Since the Hyde Park Expo – and before. What you do enables the various artists of today, and those who would not presume or care to call themselves artists, to go ahead with more confidence, as one always can when one sees oneself working within some kind of a tradition. You generously defined a revolutionary tradition. However, I must not embarrass you, a modest Englishman, with my praises, although I am aware they can have no significance for you.’

‘That is a mistaken assumption. I am delighted to have your good opinion. You have a higher opinion of the series than some critics. What man does not desire the good opinion of an attractive woman?’

She smiled, and the bangles rattled as she stretched out a hand. ‘Nor will I ask you if you are finding enjoyment in your world-wide success, since you must surely have become tired of such a question. Do you mind if I smoke?’

She was more striking than pretty, with a sharpness about her features which suggested wary intelligence. The sharpness, a quickness in her movements, a fleck of green in her irises, suggested wolf to Squire. He admired wolves; wolves were good to each other.

Her hair moved about her cheeks as she reached into the clumsy leather bag and brought out her cigarettes. He noticed immediately, with surprise, that they were Yugoslav, ‘Drina’ brand. He knew the name.

Whilst he was leaning forward to give her a light, the friendly waiter arrived. He cast an envious and distinctly unfriendly look at Squire. Squire stood his gold lighter on the table as he ordered drinks. After the waiter had left, dismissed by a brilliant smile from Ajdini, she picked up the lighter and inspected it as it lay in her narrow palm before pressing it into Squire’s hand.

‘What I respond to personally in your work is your humanity. It gives your criticism what the rest of us lack, a creative depth. No, I’m not praising now, merely stating. To prove it, let me be a little critical, if you will permit, and say that I find the humanity the more impressive since you do come, do you not, from a deeply privileged background?’

He regarded her through her protective cloud of smoke, admiring her breasts and thinking of the benefits her beauty must bring her, unasked.

‘Almost anyone, in North America or Western Europe, must admit to a privileged background.’ Seeing her expression, he added, ‘And that is not intended as an evasion of your question. We must use that privileged background to carry not only our materialism but our liberalism and awareness to the rest of the world. We must hope that ultimately those values will prevail.’

‘Liberalism doesn’t carry much priority, even in universities.’

‘No, or in an ant heap. But we have to resist the idea of the world as ant heap.’ He could catch the distinctive smell of Balkan tobacco.

‘Well, I know what you mean, but only people from backgrounds of privilege can afford the luxury of fine sentiments. Your series, when all’s done, was admirable as display …’

He laughed. ‘Display? Give me credit for keeping my politics out of it.’

She looked down at the table, sharply up at him, down again. ‘I found it loaded with politics.’

Music was playing, perhaps in the room overhead. The atmosphere of the room was oppressive; having the general listening stonily to all that was said did not increase comfort.

‘I don’t see any worth in a world in which individuality has been lost or relinquished,’ he said. ‘On an evolutionary scale, mankind strove for many generations to become a conscious individual being, instead of a unit in a tribe or a herd or an ant heap. In our generation – or generations, I should say, since there is a considerable difference in our ages – we have seen a menacing move in the opposite direction, and individualism crushed by the power of the state.’ In fact, there probably was not more than eight years between them.

‘In a world threatened by fascism, where parliamentary democracy has failed, the state must protect the individual, and the individual submits for his own good.’

‘Perhaps you mistake the implications of what I say. I would deny that parliamentary democracy, for all its faults, has failed; being a consensus, it offers its citizens a freer life than the despotisms of either Left or Right. Nor is the world threatened by fascism; individual countries, perhaps. But fascism is always a ramshackle thing which cannot perpetuate itself, whereas the great communist bureaucracies prove to have longer life.

‘However, the point I was trying to make goes beyond politics, to forces moving through our evolutionary lives, if I may use that phrase. Evolution still shapes us. Compare Islam and Christianity with the conceptually primitive Aztec religion, where mass-salvation could be achieved by mass-sacrifice. Souls were interchangeable. The Old Testament is a drama of man becoming aware that souls are no longer interchangeable.’

She smiled. ‘You speak of the soul, whatever that may be. Yet you are not a religious man?’

‘We are all religious. In our day, the Left has all the dialectic, the Right none. Yet lying to hand is the supreme argument that souls are not interchangeable. It is perhaps too universal a truth for the Right to use, too true a truth to fall to the service of any party. Nevertheless it is the vital factor through which the present world struggles towards the future, whether capitalist or communist, Caucasian, Negroid, or Mongoloid. It’s our one hope, because undeniable.’

They paused as the waiter brought in their drinks, a cinzano for Ajdini, a vodka for Squire, on a silver tray also bearing two bowls of nuts and olives. The waiter slid the bill to Squire as if performing a conjuring trick.

‘I find yours an elitist argument,’ Ajdini said. ‘Naturally, evolution has no party. People are too busy trying just to live, to survive, to worry over evolution. Who can worry over evolution? Surely you don’t?’

‘Well, “elitist” is just a worn-out Marxist term of abuse, isn’t it? Designed to banish thought. I’m trying to establish some sort of historical perspective.’

‘Historical perspective is itself a luxury. People with empty bellies care nothing for yesterday or tomorrow.’

He sighed and raised his glass to her, without sipping, lowering it again to say, ‘We are not people with empty bellies, you and I, so we must cultivate those perspectives. Don’t try to bludgeon me with fake compassion for the starving. You call my background “deeply privileged”; I see it as carrying deep responsibilities – responsibilities for civilized enjoyment as well as duties. Yes, I have good fortune. That is because I have spent most of my life maintaining those values I live for.’ He made a dismissive gesture. ‘I do not expect you to accept those values as worth maintaining; perhaps you would rather destroy them, since they are those shared by many in my social stratum – among them, during his lifetime, Aldous Huxley.’

He had made his point. Now he drank.

Looking down at her hand resting on the table, she said, ‘You evidently did not care for my paper this afternoon.’

Making a slight effort, he said, ‘We’re off duty now.’

She put fingers to her delicate lips and said, ‘I see you do not want to argue. I wonder why that is?’

‘I see you want to argue.’

As they both chewed olives, she said, ‘However beastly you may find my politics, I am not a dedicated Women’s Libber. Not exactly.’

He said nothing to that, having learnt that either approval or disapproval of such statements provoked argument.

After a short silence, she said, ‘Before I was into stylistics, I worked in neurosurgery in Los Angeles. That was when I was fresh out of college, apart from a trip to Mexico, where I saw for myself the poverty and injustice suffered there under American imperialism.’

She went on, and he continued to look at her, but her words no longer penetrated to his senses. He thought about her being a neurosurgeon, and saw her character differently, regarded her not just as a woman parroting ideology, but as someone vulnerable and dedicated. About her remarkable face, the sharp planes cutting back from her nose, there was something of the scalpel; but he detected a sensitivity previously hidden from him, perhaps a sensitivity to things to which he remained blind. Her priggish phrase about Mexicans suffering under American imperialism represented some genuine experience of pain and distancing which she could interpret only in terms of political theory.

She was saying, ‘Perhaps you know the name of Montrose Wilder. He was very distinguished in his field. It was a privilege to work with him. A good surgeon. Also a good man.

‘When I began as a trainee under him, he had a patient aged about forty, who had been involved in a shooting accident and was suffering from a parietal lesion of the brain. Her name was Dorothy, and she was severely dysphasic.

‘Montrose stimulated her hippocampus with an electrode. Dorothy suddenly cried out. She told us that she saw her mother in an orange dress – she relived that forgotten time – her mother in an orange dress walked down a hillside towards her, carrying a basket full of apples. The mother was smiling and happy.

‘Afterwards, Dorothy cried a lot. Her mother had died when she was five, and she had lost all conscious memory of her. The electrode had allowed her to relive that fragment of life when she was an infant, untouched by trouble. She was grateful. The memory was a gift from a happier world. A land of lost content …’

She looked down at her hands. ‘I think I can see now, as I’m telling it to you, that Dorothy perceived a linkage between the mother’s death when she was five and the attempt of a drunken and jealous lover to murder her at the age of forty. All succeeding messes flowed from that first mess …’ She bit her lip.

He said something sympathetic. Ajdini ignored him, lighting another ‘Drina’ and gazing up into the recesses of the room.

‘I thought of Dorothy when you spoke about souls. If you have looked into living brains, seen the vulnerable exposed hemispheres, you think ever after in terms of electrical impulses, not of souls.’

‘Supposing you look more deeply and see both physiological apparatus and electrical impulses as God’s handiwork?’

‘Do you do that?’

He laughed. ‘No. But I wish I could. I am in the anomalous position of believing in souls yet not in God.’

‘So art’s a comfort, eh?’ She was smiling. ‘Not that we don’t need comforting.’

‘Art’s many things, isn’t it? A comfort for me, a source of argument for you?’

A warmth in her smile, as she responded to his teasing, touched something inside him. ‘In the face of such large questions, really art in the twentieth century has little to say. After Kafka – nothing worth having. The Theatre of the Absurd.’

She indicated the bust which impersonally supervised their conversation. ‘Do you think this cross-eyed general is elevated to the Absurd? Just a few pencil lines make a difference.’

‘They do to any of us.’

‘Will you have dinner with me, please? If I promise not to convert you to Marxism.’

‘I’d love to, but I have to go out.’ Looking at his watch, he added, ‘Now.’

He noted her immediate curiosity, and added, ‘I have an appointment. Perhaps tomorrow evening.’

‘Are you going to a brothel? I hear there are plenty in Ermalpa. Because of the poverty.’

Laughing, he said, ‘No, nothing like that.’

‘Oh, don’t be all English and bashful. If you are going, can I come with you? I won’t spoil your enjoyment, but I’d like to talk to the women.’

‘Die Spitze might like that but I wouldn’t. I’m not in the habit of taking ladies to brothels. For one thing, it’s too much like taking coals to Newcastle …’

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