The Squire Quartet. Brian Aldiss
and I wonder if the dream doesn’t indicate something of the force of Tess’s obsession.’
‘Well.’ Uncle Willie shuffled with some papers on his desk, as though he had lost interest in Teresa. ‘I hope that now you’re back home you’ll both settle down, you and Teresa. She’s a good girl but she needs a bit of looking after, don’t forget that.’
Squire considered saying more on the matter, caught Dobson’s eye, and decided against it. He turned to other things.
His London firm had been understanding, and had allowed him maximum freedom during the planning and filming of ‘Frankenstein Among the Arts’; now he had to notify them that he would be away longer than anticipated. He wanted his uncle to draft a proper letter, waiving his salary. There were also some long-standing matters which needed attention, such as a protracted argument with the local authorities over a right-of-way across Pippet land. Dobson brought out his file, and they talked for thirty minutes.
‘Business over,’ Willie said at last. ‘Nicholas, leave the file out and we’ll go and have a coffee.’
Downstairs, at the side door, he made a great business of seeing that the security bolt was functional. Dobson directed a pitying look over his bent back at Squire. Then they sauntered over to a coffee shop almost opposite St Ephraim’s Gate, Dobson walking smartly ahead.
‘They’re still talking about putting a motorway through to Bury and Chelmsford,’ Uncle Willie said, as they selected a table, looking with some dislike at the holiday-makers who surrounded them. ‘Then they’ll continue it up here. It’ll mean the end of East Anglia’s isolation, and the end of Norwich and Norfolk as they have been for centuries.’
‘Don’t worry, Uncle,’ Dobson said. ‘In the present state of the country’s finances, they’ve stopped building roads. Norwich will be safe for this century.’
‘I’m not so sure.’ He picked up the menu with contempt. ‘Once a planner has planned, and lodged his plans in Whitehall, the abstraction seems to acquire an existence of its own … Well, you offer some consolation for our bad trade figures, if they help to protect tradition.’
As the waitress came up, he smiled at her and said, ‘I suppose you’re still making coffee here in the traditional way – with instant coffee?’
She was young and pleasant-faced. She leaned forward, smiling, and supported her weight by resting one hand on the table. ‘I know you’re very fond of our coffee, Mr Squire, and it hasn’t gone up this week.’
‘In that case, we’ll treat ourselves to a cup each,’ he said, looking up at her in a sprightly way. When the girl had gone, he shook his head and said to his nephews, ‘When I was a young man, you were not supposed to address remarks to the waitress. It was bad form. Rigid class structure. I prefer the way things are today. I discovered at quite an advanced age that I enjoy flirting with waitresses. They don’t seem to mind, so why not?’ He blew his nose on a large white handkerchief. ‘The war changed things. Changed everything. Of course, no one knows exactly what waitresses think, doing the job they do.’
‘Come on, Uncle,’ Dobson said. ‘No one knows what solicitors think about.’
‘Increasingly, waitresses,’ said Uncle Willie, with a laugh. ‘This place used to be a Red Cross shop during the war. Did I ever tell you that? Then it became an antique shop. That didn’t last.’
‘I remember the antique shop,’ Squire said. ‘I bought about ten garage signs from the dealer, including a Redline Glyco and a Pratt’s High Test, enamel on tin. We used them in the Pop Expo.’
‘Your father used to chase waitresses,’ Uncle Willie said, ignoring Squire’s remark. ‘There’s always been a sort of naughty streak in the Squire family, I’m sorry to say. That is why we don’t get on with the branch of the family at King’s Lynn – the Decent Dobsons. Except you, Nick. Do you take after your father, Tom?’
John Matthew Squire, his father, had been a countryman, like most of the family in that generation, involved in the affairs of the village and the county. John Squire seldom moved beyond those self-imposed boundaries except when, following the steps of the ancestor whose name he bore, he joined the Royal Norfolk Regiment and went to fight for four years in the assorted muds of Europe, returning home to Hartisham with the rank of major, saying, ‘It was quite a good scrap while it lasted.’
Somewhere along the way, John Squire acquired several tastes which led to his downfall. He acquired a taste for art. To the dogs and horses which were his life, he added the Norwich School of painters. They were local men, they painted local things and were faithful to them, not prettifying too much. With his favourite mastiffs at his heels, John Squire became a notable figure as he toured the country, attending markets and, just as assiduously, dusty old shops and attics. Where he went, his son Tom also went. Together, while the dogs prowled round them, father and son acquired a commendable gallery of watercolours and oils by Old Crome, Stoddart, the incomparable Cotman, and others.
‘Tractors may drive out Shire horses,’ John said, ‘but Cotman is permanent.’
Pippet Hall estate, in financial difficulties after the Great War, became more neglected as the art excursions ranged further afield. John’s red-haired wife, Patricia, was left to supervise the farm and bring up her other two children, Adrian and Deirdre.
John and his son Tom stayed overnight in country inns as they went on what John called their ‘Grand Tours’. The Morris and the mastiffs would be housed in the stables – very few Norfolk inns expected motor cars in the thirties. Tom would often be tucked into a wooden bed in some attic room; his cheek was scoured by a stiff military moustache as his father kissed him good-night, before disappearing below to join whatever company the bar offered; he disappeared with particular promptness if there were women downstairs.
Sometimes the boy would wake in the summer mornings early and run to the window of the strange room, to gaze out at a panorama of rushes and broads, busy bird life, and little boats already launching into the early golden haze over the waters. He always remembered an inn on Hickling Broad, where there was a tame magpie, and he and his father swam naked in the broad before breakfast.
John Squire had a taste also for jazz and popular dance music. Gramophone records began to accumulate at Pippet Hall. Patricia liked that. The records were played on a wind-up gramophone with a huge horn. When Tom and his brother and sister were small, many visitors came to the Hall, attracted by the happy-go-lucky nature of their parents. The visitors sometimes danced to the music of the gramophone, which Tom was allowed to wind. He watched his father as he took his beautiful wife about the waist and whirled her round the entrance hall, where the floor was good for fox-trots.
There was another taste, and one which slowly mastered the master of Pippet Hall. John progressed from being a heavy social drinker to being a heavy drinker. It was that habit which brought about his death, one rainy day in March 1937, when the rest of the family was out of the house.
Tom returned home in the afternoon. The solemn ticking silence warned him that something was wrong. He flung his cap down and ran straight to his father’s study. His father lay in one corner of the study, against a smashed picture frame, the glass of which littered the carpet. It was established later that he must have fallen over the mastiffs while the worse for drink. Both dogs had attacked him. They lurked in the opposite corner of the room, chops still bloody. Their master’s throat had been ripped away, and the flesh of his face torn off.
The dogs sulked behind John Squire’s armchair, knowing their crime. John’s son, aged eight, took down one of his father’s double-barrelled shotguns from the rack by the door, loaded it, and shot both animals through their skulls at close range. Blood and brains spattered in parabolas across the wallpaper. Then he dropped the gun and ran away into the plantation, where he huddled at the foot of a young oak until one of the farm labourers found him after dusk.
It was hard to tell where Uncle Willie’s remarks led, or indeed if they were intended to lead anywhere. He rambled as they drank their coffee, mainly about the ‘naughty streak’ in