The Squire Quartet. Brian Aldiss
men. He probably saw this fling as his last chance, as something to bolster his flagging libido. I don’t know, he doesn’t confide, but I can make intelligent guesses about the situation, and you should do the same. You should ask yourself why he needed that reassurance in the first place.’
‘Oh, stop it, Deirdre! Talk about clichés, you sound like an Agony Column yourself. A successful man like Tom needing reassurance from me …’
‘Of course he does! You’re his wife. Don’t be so blind. He kicked Laura out and returned to you, didn’t he? You turned your back. Agony! – You think he’s not lacerated by your unhappiness? Why aren’t you lacerated by his? And he bailed your business out earlier this year – to the tune of several thousand pounds, I heard.’
‘He was obliged to, Deirdre …’ She put her chin up. ‘I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but Tom was legally bound to sort that out. If I hadn’t been so upset, my business would have flourished. You think I don’t suffer? I just don’t make a fuss about it. After all, I was the one left at home alone. It’s humiliating to have your husband chasing some bit of goods, humiliating, and then you watch them laughing together on TV, and know everyone else is watching, admiring, too. And you expect me to catch the repeats … Do you think I can get over that? I’m disgraced.’
Deirdre stubbed her cigarette out in a shell ashtray. ‘Of course you were hurt. Okay, then you had your consolation and got back at him. Put your claws away, stop erecting all these items into an ideology of grievance, and be a proper wife.’
‘There’s just one difficulty you prefer to ignore …’
Teresa paused. Deirdre looked at her suspiciously. ‘What’s that? You’ve got another bloke?’
‘I don’t love Tom any more.’
Deirdre sat down. ‘Don’t say that to Tom.’ She got up again. She moved over to one of the windows and opened it a trifle wider.
‘You’re no chicken yourself, Teresa. You’re four years older than me. “You don’t love him …” That’s a bit more ideology of grievance, if you ask me. I mean, at your age, you and Tom should steadfastly continue to love each other. By rote, as it were. You’re not in your twenties. When a man goes a bit haywire at the male menopause, okay, his wife stays by him, supporting him through a year or two of rough water, and after that they become closer than ever; his gratitude will ensure that. But if you lose that chance – which you’ve already bungled … You’ve got the wrong idea about love, deserting him when he probably needs you more than ever.’
‘Deserting … Oh, Christ, it’s like being in a trap of words …’ said Teresa, moving unhappily round the room.
‘Don’t rush about. We’ve only got words since you’ve turned down actions.’
‘Tom’s fine, just fine. It’s only his pride that’s hurt – he’s mad because I actually dared to go away with another man to Malta for Christmas, because I pleased myself for once. He’s off to Sicily in September. He’ll probably find a woman for himself there.’
‘God, you bitch, what a mad round of pleasure you make it all sound!’
‘Look, Deirdre, maybe you hate me. He doesn’t need me. He needs me at home. That’s different. He just needs me at home, keeping Pippet Hall in order. The wife in her place. You know he is proposing to open the place to visitors, now he’s such a big success?’
‘Well, the bloody estate is broke. Be reasonable. You’re so vituperative: why should he want to forgive you?’
‘You can’t see that aspect of things as clearly as I can. After all, you’re a Squire too. Tom just wants me at Pippet Hall. That satisfies his love of order. He’ll forgive anything, anything, to get me back, because the Hall is the most important thing in his life. Any messy divorce, or anything like that, and he could lose the Hall. I’ve got him by the short hairs and he knows it. I’m being kinder than you think, driving over here today to see what he has to say, especially with my health delicate.’
She stopped before the anger in Deirdre’s face.
‘Don’t dare think that way. You’d even use his love of the Hall against him? Just watch it. Marsh and I may have been away, but we also have an interest in the Hall. I have witnesses to prove that you have been back there on several occasions, and have taken that little rotter Jarvis with you. And you had him over when Tom was away filming, before you found out about Laura.’
As they stood there confronting each other, they heard footsteps and voices outside in the back yard.
‘Don’t bring Vernon Jarvis into this,’ Teresa said. Her face and lips were pale. ‘He’s not around now. He had nothing to do with this quarrel—’
‘He has fleeced you and hopped it?’
‘I said, he is not around. Tom started the quarrel and Tom has to mend it. Money doesn’t mend quarrels, if you think it does. Tom’s the one in the wrong.’
‘Well, get him out of the wrong, then. You certainly owe him that.’
The ponies were hired from Old Man Hill, who had run a stable in conjunction with his fishing boat for longer than anyone in Blakeney could remember.
After walking along in the shallows of the sleeping sea, the animals were reluctant to be turned towards the land. Douglas and young Tom rode ahead, wearing only swimming trunks and trying to steer the animals with their knees. Tom Squire and Marshall Kaye followed behind.
For two summers in succession, Kaye had been digging in Greece. He was tanned a deep brown behind his spectacles, and presented a striking appearance. His drooping moustache was yellow, his eyebrows dark brown, his hair brown fading to blond on top, where the Aegean sun had bleached it. So the years had baked him, Squire reflected, from a brash young Yale graduate to a seasoned and renowned archaeologist. His eyes, fringed by dark lashes, were light blue. Above his shorts was a worn windcheater of a similar faded hue.
He was giving Squire an account of his and Deirdre’s stay on Milos, making both it and the excavations sound rewarding. Squire envied the stability of the younger man’s life.
‘Despite everything, despite that amazing sense of being surrounded by the history of your own culture, I find Greece and the islands depressing,’ Kaye said.
‘How’s that? I thought the Greeks were getting into their stride again, now that the colonels have departed.’
Their mounts negotiated low swelling dunes through which some first spears of grass appeared.
‘They are, kind of. I suppose I mean that the denudation problem is depressing, and the way nothing’s being done about it, or is ever going to be done, as far as I can see. Not more than two per cent of the entire country retains its original topsoil …’
‘Not more than two per cent!’
‘Nope. That’s the fact at the root of all Greece’s problems. From the Peloponnesian wars onwards, the forests have been ruthlessly hacked down and the timber used for ships or fuel. Rain and wind soon does for naked topsoil. You never see a damned bird in Greece. A few mangey sparrows round the tourist spots. Ravens. Nothing else. It’s a dead place, killed by man, his lust for war, and his domestic animals – mainly goats.’
He was silent, then he said, ‘Political stability is impossible until you get your agriculture right. I’d hate to calculate how many billions of dollars the US has pumped into Greece since World War II in order to keep it safe for democracy, without once worrying whether it was safe for corn.’
They were off the beach now, moving inland, the boys still leading. They travelled in single file along the top of a dyke, water and rushes setting up their perpetual rustle on either side. Where the land rose from the marshes ahead, there stood Blakeney, distinct in a medley of whites and umbers, its church crowning the rise and dominating all other buildings.
Squire rode at the rear of the file. Addressing his