Comfort Zone. Brian Aldiss
1945–46. By Richard Macmillan. Routledge/Curzon. Seventy-five pounds.’
‘Heavens! Seventy-five pounds!’ Justin exclaimed. ‘I’m going to have to look at it in a library before I stump up seventy-five pounds for it. Keen though I am to read it.’
‘It is a bit steep,’ the assistant agreed. ‘And no paperback available.’
But when the troops disembarked at Padang Docks, he said to himself, they had no idea that this was Indonesia. To them, it was just Bali. Sixty years ago, still vivid in mind … Bali! Had it been Bali and not Padang? He was unsure. And supposing Om Haldar had lost her memory and was wandering lost somewhere nearby? He ought to do something. Even though it was not exactly his business.
Making his way slowly to Queen Street, Justin stopped at the Gents in Market Street to relieve himself. In Queen Street, he went into Marks & Spencer to buy a packet of their Rich Tea Fingers. He invariably ate one Rich Tea Finger with his early morning mug of tea. He picked up one or two other things on the way. That was how stores made their profits – from human greed. He also bought a Lemon Loaf Cake. One of the things he disliked about capitalism was the way in which it encouraged greed. All commercial television was founded and funded on greed. With that profound thought, he crossed the road and climbed on a No. 8 bus for Headington. His left leg was painful today, both above and below the knee. It still hurt even when he was sitting down. He wondered how many other people on the bus were concealing aches and pains. Perhaps you keep quiet about it in the hope of arriving at an imagined Heaven after death, when aches and pains are swept away, along with the Oxford Bus Company and all.
When he entered his house, he found the phone was ringing. He rushed for it.
‘Oh, you’re there! Thank goodness! Justin, dear, I am back early and I’ve had a shock. Can you come round?’
‘Kate! Are you okay, Kate?’
‘Yes, yes, please come round.’
‘I’m on my way.’ As he dumped his plastic bag full of Marks & Sparks goodies, he caught sight, through the kitchen window, of Maude wandering about the lawn. Like a lost soul, he thought, with some distaste.
Kate’s house was brick built, probably about 1875, in an imitation cottage style. It had a rustic porch, covered by honeysuckle, and a smart kitchen at the rear, recently added and installed by Kate. The house was approached by a shingled drive, fringed by pyrocantha and laurel. Before Justin had reached the door, Kate came out on the drive and flung her arms round him. She was a fair-haired woman in her early seventies, sturdily built, grey-eyed, her face showing a few wrinkles and browned by the Egyptian sun. She was wearing a light khaki suit, crumpled from her travels.
‘I had a fright,’ she said, when they had finished kissing. ‘I’m really being silly about it.’ She hugged him. ‘Oh, good to see you again.’
‘And you, darling. I have missed you so much.’ As always there was an air about her as if something pleasant was about to happen, even as if there was something pleasant happening at that very moment. He marvelled at it; it was an air he never quite achieved. Kate explained that a taxi had brought her to her gate. As she was walking up the drive with her luggage, she saw a black dog lying sprawled by the porch. It wagged its tail in a lazy way. The shock came when she got up to the porch and found a man sitting on the bench there, in the shade. He gave every appearance of having settled in for good. ‘He seemed apologetic, but did not move. He asked me if I wanted a gardener.’
‘Oh! Don’t tell me …’ Justin enquired what the man looked like. Kate said he was nondescript, untidy and dirty, wearing a yellow jacket with torn jeans. Justin said his name was Hughes. He seemed to be a wanderer. A vagabond – and a nuisance.
‘That would be he,’ Kate said. ‘He said he liked the look of my house, and had never had a house of his own. He said that hundreds of people were murdered for their houses every year. That did scare me, and the way he looked at me. I told him I needed to get indoors because I had an appointment with a police inspector. He did then get up and move out of the porch. As I was picking up my luggage, he said that his dog – who was tied on a length of rope – needed a drink of water. Could he bring it in?’
‘I hope you didn’t let him in!’ said Justin.
‘I certainly didn’t!’ Kate said she had bundled in with her luggage and hastily locked the door behind her. Hughes stared in the window. She got a cereal bowl, filled it with water for the dog, and offered it through the window. He took the bowl with one hand and tried to grab her wrist with the other. She remembered him saying, ‘Let me in – I won’t hurt you. I never hurt no one.’ But she managed to bang his wrist against the edge of the window and then slam it shut.
‘Very nasty for you, darling,’ Justin commented. ‘But he didn’t threaten violence, did he? Did he clear off then?’
‘He sort of hung about and then he disappeared.’
‘Did you ring the police?’
‘I rang you!’
They went inside. Kate sat on his knee and they kissed and cuddled each other.
‘It’s so good to have you back.’
‘Oh, I missed you. But I was busy.’ And so on.
‘How’s David?’
‘As usual. It’s time I went to see him again.’
‘I’ve heard you say that before.’
He looked down at the ground. ‘For once, things have been happening here,’ he told her. ‘A woman from Saudi or somewhere has disappeared. And they are beginning to demolish the Anchor.’ He paused before saying with a laugh, ‘And Ken and Marie took me to see a strange old lady in Elden House. It’s been a full life, despite your absence.’ He was determined not to tell her how much he missed her. That would seem wimpish.
‘And how’s Maude?’
‘She’s okay. Could become – well, Muslim.’
‘Couldn’t she go into Elden House?’
‘Can’t afford it.’
At length, Kate remarked that Justin was looking rather pale and unwell. He hated such observations coming from anyone, and in particular when the observations came from those on whom he depended; he needed them to see him looking as far as possible from either pale or unwell. ‘A spot of eye trouble, that’s all. In the hall, for instance. I thought I saw a headless being, confronting me in a rather headless way. It was just my raincoat hanging on a hook. Really ought to get to the optician. It’s been three years since I last went … How’s your hearing, by the way?’
How curious life was, full of chances, coincidences, serendipity! The Fortuitous reigned. That evening the subject of Bali emerged again. No, not Bali. Sumatra. Of course, Sumatra. Kate had no sooner returned from El Aiyat than she was working again. She had much to say about the refuge she had founded, as she and Justin sat together on her blue sofa. The condition of some of the poor children they took in to the shelter was appalling. Many were orphans and needed a hug almost as much as they needed food. ‘It breaks your heart,’ she said. ‘We need a million pounds to increase the work on hand.’
He could well believe it. He sorrowed for the poor. He sorrowed for Dave, his son – his son suffering from what he had been persuaded to call ‘learning difficulties’. More like Learning Impossibilities, poor dear … He started to tell her about Dave, and his worries for the boy, but she cut him off. Although she admitted she was tired, Kate was now busy preparing supper for friends who were coming. ‘So the Anchor’s been sold off? Why’s that?’ she asked over her shoulder.
‘It didn’t pay. They sold it firstly to some Russians. It’s being demolished.’
‘It was a rowdy place. There’s still the White Hart. Much nicer.’ As they talked, he studied Kate’s profile. To him, she was not old; her face bore the proud irreplaceable weather of experience. Seventy? It was