The Squire Quartet. Brian Aldiss
It’s kind of you to put up with us and act as neutral ground.’
‘Oh, we’re not all that neutral,’ Belinda said.
‘Come on,’ Ron said, ushering Squire into the living room. ‘We can get in two good hours’ drinking before Teresa arrives.’
‘Don’t overdo the booze,’ his wife cautioned, adding to Squire, ‘Keep your eye on Ron. The doctor told him to cut down on those cigars, and on the whisky.’
‘I’m as fit as a fiddle, lass. Played a round of golf this morning, didn’t I?’
‘Just behave yourself, that’s all I ask. Tom, we have a couple of house guests, and I believe you already know each other. Come say hello.’
In the fireplace, a cheerful log fire burned. To one side of the fireplace sat a woman, painting. She was a petite dark-haired lady in her forties, neat, plump, magnificently groomed and manicured, with a gold ribbon in the back of her coiled hair. She wore a biscuit-coloured terylene lounging suit and amber rings on her fingers. She was painting a very small picture on a small sketching block, using acrylics from a tiny palette lying by her right hand. She used a brush as delicate as a grass snake’s tongue. As Squire entered the room, she smiled resignedly at her work and laid aside the sketchpad.
Her husband, sprawling opposite her on a chesterfield, was totally immersed in a newly published Webb Broadwell coffee-table book, entitled The Sower of the Systems, a collection of apocalyptic paintings through the ages, by Leslie Lippard-Milne. He wore a crumpled brown suit, with brown-and-yellow striped socks showing between trousers and slippers. Squire knew the couple well. The man was the editor of Intergraphic Studies, Jacques d’Exiteuil, whom Squire had last seen, with his wife Séverine, only a few months earlier in Paris.
Becoming aware of approaching bodies, d’Exiteuil jumped up abruptly, dropping the Lippard-Milne book on the chesterfield and beaming at Squire. For a small, thin man, he managed to convey a lot of stature. Squire shook his hand till d’Exiteuil’s coppery locks trembled.
‘You didn’t bring your son John along?’ d’Exiteuil enquired. ‘He was with you last time we met in London, if you recall. He impressed me with his knowledge of the music of the Genesis pop group.’
‘I saw him a few days before Christmas. This evening, he is seeing the old year out with Fred Cholera and the Pustules. They’re a bit more punk than Genesis. Tomorrow, he sees the New Year in with a demonstration outside a power plant.’
He laughed and crossed to hold and kiss Séverine d’Exiteuil – always a pleasurable experience. She smelt delicious, as ever.
‘Dear Séverine, you smell like an orchard!’
‘You are as always so conservative, Tommy,’ she said. She was one of the few women outside his family who addressed him with the diminutive. ‘Whatever are nuclear power stations for but to demonstrate outside?’
He pretended to look astonished. ‘I’ve never voted Conservative in my life, Séverine. Couldn’t bring myself to do so. In the sixties, that happy time, it was fashionable for everyone to be radical, whether they combined it with seriousness or frivolity, whether they worked for Apple or the Beeb. But Conservatism lacked chic.’
Séverine laughed; they liked to tease each other as a substitute for anything more earthy.
‘All the same, whatever you say … I’m sure that as a privileged landowner you are just an old Tory at heart!’
‘Yes, Séverine, if Ruskin was a Tory, if William Morris was a Tory, then I also am a Tory.’
She was silent for a moment, regarding him smilingly but absent-mindedly. In that pause, her husband said crisply, from his side of the hearthrug, ‘I’m not so surprised that you link yourself with the names of Morris and Ruskin, Tom, because there is something lordly about you. We’re products of our environment, and you’re owner of Pippet Hall. But, from my viewpoint, Morris and Ruskin are practically Tory. You remember Herbert Wells’s dismissal of them – in A Modern Utopia, I think – as Olympian and unworldly, “the irresponsible rich men of a shareholding type”. A good phrase.’
‘Don’t knock shareholding, Jacques,’ Belinda said. ‘It’s a responsible job.’
After a warning glance at her husband, who lapsed into his wine glass, Séverine remarked, ‘Jacques and I have always been Communiste, as long as we have known each other. It was once the smart thing in Paris, thanks to de Beauvoir and Sartre. Now the trendy people opt for anarchy instead.’
‘Well, I’ve voted Tory all my life, and I certainly don’t intend to change now,’ Broadwell said, laughing. ‘This is a Tory country until publishing is nationalized, and I’m the Last of the Small Time Capitalists.’
‘Yes, but you aren’t chic, darling,’ said Belinda affectionately, draping an arm round her husband’s shoulder. ‘You eat and drink too much to be chic. If all these strikes continue and we run out of food, that could be good for you. Now why don’t you get that gift we have for Tom – but fast – and then pour us all another drink?’
‘Don’t you long to go back to the States, with all this trouble in Europe?’ Séverine asked Belinda. ‘We had a strike on the Metro, and then when we arrive at Heathrow the baggage men are striking and messing up everything. Last time, it was the computer men. The excitement has been put back into travel with a vengeance … When Jacques and I spent our year in San Francisco, everything was so smooth and nice.’
‘England’s a very nice place for Americans, even when it takes on some aspects of a banana republic,’ Belinda said. ‘It still has civilized virtues you don’t find elsewhere, except maybe in France. I remember all that the country has suffered this century in two world wars, and how it has lost an empire – given it away in a fit of absent-mindedness, more like; that helps me remain patient with the economy. I just wish you’d speak to the Reds in the TUC who disrupt industry.’
‘Those poor men really only strike for a better wage. Wage rates in England are shockingly low.’
‘Well, I guess I’m just an imperialist at heart, Séverine. If I had my choice, I’d be reincarnated and marry Curzon.’
‘You have enough trouble managing me, darling, never mind India,’ Broadwell said consolingly. He started distributing drinks and passed his wife a Cinzano Rosso and Squire a vodka-on-the-rocks.
Squire was studying Séverine’s miniature painting. It showed part of the room, with Jacques sitting on the sofa with his feet on the arm. On his shoulder rested a gigantic parrot, with beak of stone and brilliant plumage.
D’Exiteuil came over to Squire’s side, grinning and smoothing his little beard. ‘She’s a talented painter, but that bird is slightly menacing, to my mind. Tom, you know why we’re here? Ron will publish a special selection from Intergraphic Studies, the best essays, and lots of illustrations. It could lead to publication of the magazine over here. The hope is that we’ll catch a little of the lustre emanating from your good works when they appear. We also hope to persuade you to write the Introduction. Of course we will also be including your Humphrey Bogart article in the book. Is it a possibility?’
‘I should think so. If I can find something useful to say, and not merely write a vague endorsement. I feel written out of things to say at present – you know I’m just an amateur in this field.’
‘Not at all. I told Ron that it might be possible as a commercial venture to produce a limited edition especially for members of the SPA.’
‘Are you getting any further with arrangements for the conference you mentioned when I was with you in Paris?’
D’Exiteuil clutched his head. ‘My God, the trouble I am having! I am trying to get a grant from the International Universities Foundation, which exists mainly to bestow grants. Will they cooperate? No! They say the subject is not a subject. I think their secretary is mad, judging by his letters … But just before Christmas I had a communication from a Dottore