Life in the West

14. An Ideological Decision

The taxi-driver talked all the way from the airport. He was eloquent on the subject of immigrants, for which he did not care. Immigrants made London dirty and refused to work. They bred like rabbits and ruined the country. Squire made little response; he did not wish to be turned out of the taxi as had happened to him once when he tried to persuade the driver that ‘the blacks’ actually contributed something to Britain’s tottering economy.

‘You look tired, squire,’ said the taxi-driver, familiarly, as he pulled up in Bouverie Square.

Cheered by being thus addressed, Squire agreed he was tired.

‘What, been abroad then?’

‘That’s it.’

‘It is tiring abroad, innit? Dunno what people go there for.’

Squire stood on the pavement. The taxi-driver reluctantly lifted his two cases out of the vehicle and set them on the pavement, while glancing up at the building suspiciously.’ Can you manage them cases, squire? They look a bit posh for round here, don’t they? That’ll be twenty-five pounds, thanks.’

It was, if not nice, recognizable to be back in England.

As the taxi moved off in a cloud of exhaust, and Squire bent to pick up his luggage, a pudgy man, dragging a wheeled suitcase, came along the street and cried Squire’s name.

Squire responded to the man’s smile and shook his outstretched hand. The pudgy man wore a tight pair of faded jeans, a worn leather jacket, and a light blue silk sweater marked with beer or coffee stains. His long straggling grey hair surrounded a brown bald patch on the top of his head. He was perhaps sixty years old, and panted a good deal as he paused. He wiped his mouth on a blue spotted handkerchief.

‘Mustn’t stop. Just going to catch a train, but it’s lovely to see you. How’re you getting on?’

‘Fine,’ Squire said. ‘And you?’

The plump man flung his arms wide. ‘I’ve had it, really had it. Finished. The BBC didn’t get the increase it hoped for and they wouldn’t renew my contract. They’re broke, the bastards… I can’t get a job to suit me — me, of all people! The country’s going down the drain fast, it’s terrible. No room for people of talent any more.’

Suddenly the name came back to Squire. Grahame Ash, the director of ‘Frankenstein Among the Arts’, skilled, inventive, dedicated.

‘What are you going to do?’

Ash grabbed Squire’s arm. ‘Don’t laugh. I’ve accepted a job with Aussie television. They offered me something — not much. I’m on my way now, just going to say good-bye to an old friend first, then I fly to Sydney in a couple of days. Terrible, isn’t it?’

‘Very enterprising of you, Grahame. I wish you the best of luck.’

‘After all I’ve done… “Frankenstein” and all the rest of it. But the oil crisis isn’t going to go away. Inflation isn’t going to go down. I believe, if you ask me, that the Arab world is going to squeeze Europe and the US by the throat. Nothing’s ever going to be the same again. We’re going to go down the drain, till we end up like a lot of little Uruguays and Paraguays. This country’s had it, that’s my belief, I tell you frankly. We’ll have to team up with the Soviet Bloc in the end, just to keep going. Trading in furs again, before long. Well, I must dash.’ He looked at his wristwatch. Summer was closing, and the day; the light thickened in the narrow street.

‘I hope you find things better in Australia. They’ve got massive economic problems too.’

‘Don’t tell me. I’ll find out soon enough. But I’ve got a younger brother in Sydney, haven’t seen him for fifteen years. I’ll be okay. I’m talented, you know, Tom. I’ve got faith. Remember the times we had in Singapore, and Sarawak?’

‘Of course. All the best. I’d always be glad to hear from you.’

‘I’ll drop you a card. How’s Laura? See anything of her?’

‘Not lately.’

‘Lovely girl. All the best, then.’

‘All the best.’ Squire watched Ash’s departing back before taking up his cases.

The flat suited Squire well enough. He had no objection to the Paddington area. A Greek hairdresser worked at his trade in the basement of the house; sounds of clippers and bazouki music drifted up the stairs. On the ground floor was an old woman of mysterious nationality who occasionally walked a fat pug to the corner lamp post. The Iranian professor of metallurgy on the first floor was also very quiet. The young men in frilly shirts who visited him most evenings were also quiet, if not downright taciturn.

Squire rented the top floor. It was modest, and the furnishings were not even dreadful enough to be worth joking about. But the front room was large and had once been good. He found himself not displeased to be back. A sepia photograph of his parents, and a colour photograph of John, stood on the mantelpiece; otherwise the room was anonymous.

From the window, he could see the corner shop, a grocer’s run by a Pakistani family which remained open most hours of the day and night. Mr Ali Khan was the only acquaintance Squire had made in the neighbourhood; the two men now knew each other well enough for Mr Khan to confide his suspicions concerning the Chinese who ran the ‘Hong Kong Restaurant and Take-Away’, only three doors from his shop. They worked too hard and were secretive.

Having dumped his suitcases in the middle of the room, Squire went back downstairs to collect his mail, which had been thrown into an old Bovril box on the hall floor. Most of the letters were re-addressed from Pippet Hall in the firm round handwriting of Matilda Rowlinson. He had given the flat address to few people.

There was no letter from Teresa. Most of the mail looked like circulars or fan mail. He opened one letter as a kind of spot check. It came from a gentleman in Carlisle who claimed to have spent twenty years in the RAF. He had watched the ‘Frankenstein’ programme (sic) on television, and was disappointed to hear no mention of Irving Berlin, the best song-writer of this or any other century. It was time some sort of justice was done.

Squire was carrying clothes about in a rather helpless fashion, sorting out dirty items to be taken to the launderette in Praed Street, when his doorbell rang. He went to the door and dragged it open.

His brother-in-law, Marshall Kaye, stood there, bronzed, slightly ragged round the moustache, and smiling.

‘Hi, Tom, glad to find you back home. I rang your number several times. From a news item I caught, I feared the flying saucers over Ermalpa had got a hold of you.’

‘Marsh, come in.’ They shook hands. Squire indicated the muddle in his room. ‘As you can see, I’m just back. Care to sample some eight-year-old duty-free malt?’

‘Try me.’

Whilst Squire was breaking open the whisky carton, Kaye asked him about the flying saucers.

‘I saw one, Marsh. I’m convinced. I saw it, yet I still don’t believe it.’

‘Okay. It’s like seeing a damned ghost — it may scare you, but it can’t affect your life in any way. Just suppose whole squadrons of flying saucers landed, and we were up to here in little green men. It still wouldn’t affect our inner lives one bit.’

‘You think not? Would you say that as you scavenged through the ruins of London?’

‘What I mean is, some people are toppled into misery by what may seem minor factors. Others triumphantly survive the most terrible tragedies and come up smiling. Like some of the characters in Solzenhitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.’

They drank, exchanging more idle remarks. Kaye asked about the conference, and Squire gave him a brief account of the Rugorsky affair.

‘Sounds pretty hairy!’ Kaye exclaimed. ‘Was the guy flying back to Moscow today?’

‘Yes. I bought him a drink and a meal at Rome airport before we went our separate ways. Kchevov was with him, keeping close, so I had to stand him a meal too. Rugorsky was naturally cagey, because he was not absolutely sure that his friend was unable to understand English. Otherwise he was calm. He was convinced that he was going back to Moscow to face absolute destruction. He didn’t think he would see his wife — who’s in Leningrad — again.’

‘Can we do anything from this end?’

‘We can and will send letters, stressing his international importance. D’Exiteuil will help too; he has powerful friends in government, and the French, as you know, exert a bit of a pull in Moscow. But fraudulent currency transactions are a criminal offence.’

‘Guys who defraud criminals are not necessarily themselves criminal.’

‘A point of view it would be rather difficult to sustain in a Moscow court of law… Someone, probably Solzenhitsyn, spoke of the lack of character among men in the West, and the corresponding stature of so many characters in the USSR under that oppressive system. Of course, the remark is one of prejudice and can have no statistical validity, but I thought of it when parting from Vasili. He is a terrific guy. Good to have in a slit trench with you when the shit’s flying.’

‘Not so good on a cliff edge.’

Squire looked down at the worn carpet and rubbed his knees.

‘You know what I was thinking in Rome airport? He and I between us could have clobbered Kchevov in the toilets, and tied him up like a mummy with strip towels. Then I could have brought Vasili back here. The uncertainties over Pippet Hall deterred me — that’s my excuse. He would have been safe there for a while, and then we could have found him somewhere a bit more secure, in Canada, or the good old US of A.’

‘You’d have been mad. Would he have played along?’

‘Oh, probably.’ Squire looked at his watch. ‘He did his share of toilet-fighting as a young man, I’m sure… He’ll be in Moscow by now, poor sod. I feel like a worm for doing nothing.’

‘But he did try to knock you off?’

‘Maybe.’

They drank in silence for a while. Kaye rose and ambled about the room. Something in his bearing told Squire that he disliked the flat with all its shabbiness, and felt caged within it; layers of time in a Paddington room held less appeal for the American than the thicker strata of an old Greek palace.

With surprising force, amounting almost to anger, he turned suddenly on his heel to look down at Squire, who sat in a worn cane chair. ‘So here you are, lurking in a seedy flat in Paddington. I don’t understand, Tom — this must be some brand of British behaviour that eludes me. What the hell goes on?’

‘It was so damned uncomfortable at the Travellers’. My room was half the size of this. It made sense to move here.’

Kaye tugged his moustache down over his mouth. ‘You know what I mean. You don’t belong here. This isn’t your thing. Is it the mid-life crisis, have you got a black woman stashed away in the jakuzzi, or are you in search of God?’

‘Come on, Marsh, there are other explanations for living in Paddington. And there’s nothing wrong with this flat. I’ve always imagined that if anyone goes looking for God they can find him easily — he’s only an image in the mind. Do you know, one of the most interesting places we went to while we were making the TV series was the Tin jar National Park in Sarawak. We visited a cave where there were some paintings made over forty centuries ago — you may remember it from the first episode, ‘Eternal Ephemera’. There was a whole wall covered with paintings of hands, hands facing palms outward, hundreds upon hundreds of them.’

‘I remember. You sent Deirdre a postcard of it. What about it?’

‘I often think of that wall. It may be the earliest human painting that survives. Those hands aren’t making supplications to God. In all religions, people making a supplication to God turn their palms either upwards, unconsciously indicating thereby that God resides in their skulls, in the uppermost part of their anatomy, or else inwards, thereby unconsciously acknowledging that he is an inward quality.

‘Those hands were extended outward, in supplication to other men. It’s a pity that throughout human history God has got in the way of that gesture. Even as I say it, I become aware that Rugorsky would perhaps relish the perception. I can’t get him out of my mind.’

After a moment’s thought, he asked,’ Do you believe in God when you’re doing one of your digs?’

‘Never. I believe in history and logical deduction. And any palms I saw outstretched to me in Greece, or on Milos, belonged to beggars.’

Silence came between them again. Squire looked at the shabby carpet, Kaye stared into his glass. At last, Kaye cleared his throat, a look of discomfort on his brown capacious face.

‘Well, er, I’d better tell you what I’m here about, Tom. I’m here in the thankless role of peacemaker.’

‘Thanks.’

‘It was June of last year that you and Teresa fell out, right? That’s fifteen months. A long time. Your friends feel that if the two of you don’t team up again soon, you’ll never make it. So we’ve agreed to get together and try to push. I couldn’t have some more whisky, could I?’

He stood up as Squire gestured to the bottle.

‘Switch the light on too, will you? It’s getting a bit dark. What makes you think I any longer want Teresa to come back?’

‘Cigarette?’

‘I’ve got my own.’ He reached into the open suitcase and fished out a half-empty packet of ‘Drina’ cigarettes. He lit one without offering the packet to Kaye, who smoked his own.

‘You’ve caught the habit? Those things’ll kill you, you know that? I’ve figured out that you do want Teresaback. Just one look at this apartment convinces me. I’ve heard of a hair-shirt economy but this is ridiculous. The famous Tom Squire dossing in some dump in Paddington, for Christ’s sake? The gesture is too ostentatious, too obvious. You’re punishing yourself, Tom, you’re displaying your sores.’

‘It’s cheap here. I can get my hair cut in the basement.’

‘Don’t be difficult. Things are difficult enough. Teresa wants to come back to you.’

‘That’s a decided policy change. Has her lover-boy deserted her?’

‘That’s what’s difficult. Yes. He has. And she’s broke. But that’s not her primary motivation for wanting a reunion.’

Squire smoked the Yugoslav cigarette and waited for Kaye to continue.

‘Look, Tom, I know that she doesn’t want to come back just because the Jarvis guy walked out on her. She loves you. You hurt her pride, that’s all, and she had to show how independent she can be.’

‘She’s always known how independent she can be.’

‘You know what I mean. Hell hath no fury and all that.’

‘Marsh. She was not scorned. I know I upset her with the Laura affair, but I never deliberately insulted her feelings. She then set out to make me feel as bad as possible. She succeeded.’

‘Shit, I’m no good at this. I’m going to put my foot in it. I told Deirdre that she should have talked to you, but she sent me instead.’

‘Oh, why’s that?’

‘Well, er, Deirdre’s round the corner in the pub, The Plumes, I think it is. She’s looking after Teresa. The plan is for us to go down and join them. Talk things over. Feel up to it?’

‘Deirdre’s keeping Teresa from making a fast exit, no doubt.’ He stood up and went to the window. Mr Ali Khan’s lights were on in the corner shop. ‘I will smoke this cigarette and in that time decide whether a) I will come down and speak to Teresa and b) I will accept her back. If the answer to b) is nyet, then plainly the answer to a) is nyet, since there’d be no point in seeing her.’

He stood looking out at the street. Kaye examined the toy Sicilian carts.

‘Think of the Athenians at Milos, Tom. “We have concluded from experience that it’s a law of nature to rule whatever one can.” Teresa is surrendering after her tiny revolt. You must reclaim her and Pippet Hall and the family as part of your domain, though I know it sounds chauvinistic. Rule what you can. That’s what you must do — and make her surrender as palatable as you can.’

Not turning round, Squire said remotely, ‘I am thinking of the Athenians at Milos. I am also thinking of Vasili in Moscow. They should be getting the first punches in on him about now.’ He lapsed into silence, smoking with folded arms.

Quiet lay in the room. From below came the faint sound of bazouki. Somewhere a man was shouting. Marshall Kaye sat tight and sipped his malt.

Finally, Squire turned and walked across the room to stub out the butt of his cigarette in an ashtray. He breathed the last lungful of smoke into the air, watching as its spirals moved across the stained ceiling.

‘Okay, Marsh,’ he said briskly, rubbing his palms against the seat of his slacks.’ I’ve come to an ideological decision regarding Teresa. Maybe we in the West make too much of our personal problems.’

As he spoke, screams and furious barking broke out below stairs.

‘Hang on, that’s Deirdre’s voice,’ Kaye said, running over to the door in alarm and throwing it open. Angry female voices rose from the dimness, punctuated by the shrill yaps of a dog.

‘You keek my dorg, I report you at the RSPCA!’

‘Is it a dog or a shark? It nearly bit my leg off!’

The two men hurried downstairs, bumping into the Iranian professor of metallurgy, who shuffled out of his room, clad in a yellow silk dressing-gown, to find out what the noise was about. On the ground floor, the woman of mysterious nationality was bundling her pug-dog out of the door; each, in its fashion, maintained a continuous complaint as they disappeared. Deirdre Kaye began to ascend the stairs, stumbling in the thick dust.

‘Marsh, that you? Tom? What is this place? Doesn’t it possess any lights? Gas lights? Candles? Where are you? Who was that dreadful creature with the captive coyote? Is she a denizen of this — ’ by now she was face-to-face with the Iranian professor of metallurgy — ‘ this multi-national lodging-house?’

‘Come on up and stop complaining, Deirdre,’ Kaye said, seizing his wife by the arm and dragging her past the Iranian professor. ‘You just encountered another tenant, that’s all.’

‘Tenant plus wolf-hound, thanks. Tom, what on earth are you doing in these squalid surroundings? I need a drink. Plus a tetanus injection.’

They sat Deirdre down in the best-upholstered of Squire’s armchairs, and Kaye tenderly inspected her ankle while Squire poured them all whisky.

‘No ice, I’m afraid,’ he said, handing his sister a glass.

‘Plenty of dog biscuits, I’m sure,’ Deirdre said.

Deirdre was dressed for summer and the city, in a smart spotted dress and jacket in pure silk. She was heavily made up. When she had calmed down slightly, she said, ‘I wondered what had happened. You’ve been so long, Marsh. I had to come and see, little thinking this place doubled as kennels. Here you both are, sitting boozing, while I’ve been stuck with Teresa in the pub.’

‘Also boozing, I hope,’ Squire said.

‘Frankly, your wife is not my favourite company. She’s been a bitch to you, and I don’t mind saying so.’

‘Funny you should say that, Deirdre. Tom was just about to tell me that he is going back to her.’

Deirdre pulled a face and clutched her ankle, as if hoping that injury might excuse her speaking out of turn. ‘There is the Hall and all that to think of. Don’t take any notice of anything I say.’

‘You’re misjudging Tess,’ Squire said. ‘She has her harpylike aspects, but I understand how she feels; her life has been thrown out of kilter. That’s my responsibility, in part at least, unless I kick her out — which I’m not disposed to do. You must help by sympathizing with her position. It is not characteristic of Teresa to get mixed up with little shits like Jarvis.’

His sister took a large gulp of her whisky. ‘Glenfiddich — saved! Tom, you idiot, you don’t have to go through with this goody-goody altruistic stuff for our sake. Be yourself. Kick her out, call up Laura. Laura’s smashing. Obey your impulses. No renunciations. Uncle Willie told you that ages ago.’

Kaye said, ‘You realize we have witnesses to prove that Teresa invited this guy Jarvis up to Pippet Hall on several occasions when you were away. Photographic evidence, as a matter of fact.’

Down in the bowels of the house, bazouki music started again, louder than before. The Greek hairdresser’s evening was hitting its stride. Squire went over to the window and leant against the sill, looking inward at his sister and brother-in-law, arms folded.

‘Everyone’s so involved with their little transient private lives. Perhaps as sucklings of a materialist culture we really do try to possess each other too much. Perhaps we really are flabby and deserve to go under.

‘You come up here and tell me Tess still loves me, Marsh. Now you say you have photographic evidence of her carrying-on. You can’t make up your own mind where you stand. But I’ve made up my mind. Let me quote the Athenians right back at you — “It’s a law of nature to rule whatever you can.” Teresa’s making a fresh approach. So I am going to take her back to the Hall — tonight, if possible. On such good terms as we can contrive.

‘I will try to retain the Hall and my wife. It would be foolish to lose either, just because one primitive part of my brain wants me to get revenge on her for ill- treatment. At the Hall, I can work my best. I have to protect my society, SPA, and to fight for the various things I find myself capable of fighting for. Ermalpa’s taught me that even quite everyday things need to be defended.’

‘Well, you have made up your mind,’ Deirdre said. ‘Seeing you standing there, I can’t help thinking of mother’s old advice to us — “Always look first-rate.” You’re doing your Squire stuff again and being first-rate — I hope it makes you happy.’

‘Well, Deirdre, I am basically pretty happy. I’m puzzled why that’s regarded as such a strange statement these days. Don’t drink any more; take me down to the pub and let me chat with Tess — if she’s still there. We can drive up to Hartisham this evening, if she feels so inclined. She has to behave not too impossibly with me, and recognize herself as a native of Milos, in the capitulating position.’

Deirdre stood up and smoothed down her dress. She made a wry face at Kaye. ‘Life goes on. That’s the silly thing about it.’

‘I’ll put on a sweater,’ Squire said. ‘It’s cooler here than it was in Ermalpa.’

Exotic Iranian odours greeted them as they made their way down the dim stairs. Kaye paused on the landing and looked back at Squire.

‘Tom, I want you to know I respect what you’re doing.’

‘Marsh — don’t go all American on me. Having let my enemy off the hook, I can hardly do less for my wife…’

‘I know it’s not going to be easy for you, Tom. But Teresa’s horoscope said this was a good day for reconciliations, you’ll be glad to know.’ He grinned. ‘Make it all happen.’

‘That’s what’s known as looking for the miraculous.’

Kaye rubbed the back of his neck.

‘Maybe what’s always needed is an act of faith.’

The way to the front door was impeded by push-bikes. In the basement, the Greek barber was singing loudly. Deirdre walked diligently, on the alert for foreign ladies and fat dogs.

Daylight still lingered in the street. Squire, Kaye and Deirdre walked along together. They turned the corner by Mr Ali Khan’s shop.

The Plumes was in front of them, doors open to admit the summer air and emit smoke. The interior looked welcoming, with its oak panels and dim lights. Black men and white, in

T-shirts and jeans, stood out on the pavement, talking and lifting pint mugs of beer to their lips. As Squire approached, he saw Teresa sitting waiting alone inside at a little table, with a drink in front of her. Teresa saw Squire.

She waved. The smile that accompanied the flutter of the hand was hesitant. She had a new hair-style.

He waved in response. He knew, as he entered the lighted space and became merged with the bustle of early evening drinkers, that Teresa — and Deirdre, and he, and everything of which they were a part — were changed. Things would never be as they had been; that must be accepted.

Even to speak to her, so familiar, so loved for all she was and symbolized, a new language was required.

‘How was Ermalpa?’ Teresa asked, as he sat down beside her, looking at him slightly squint.