The Squire Quartet. Brian Aldiss
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Teresa had developed a withdrawn look.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,