Walcot. Brian Aldiss
Stevie dear.’ She bent and kissed you on the forehead. You were puzzled by this sudden display. You entered the bungalow to see your mother standing with her arms akimbo – always a bad sign.
While you were accustomed to your mother’s moods, there was another worry on your mind. Auntie Violet was staying overnight. Omega contained only two bedrooms and the spare bed was in your room. You would have Auntie Violet sleeping in the bedroom with you. You were unsure how you should behave in this situation. You knelt and said your prayers by your bedside every night, as your mother had taught you; somehow, instinct told you now that Auntie Violet did not kneel by her bedside to say her prayers. It might be advisable to skip prayers this evening. And you hoped that God would be understanding, although he did not seem to have been particularly understanding in the past. He seemed, like your mother, to be a bit moody.
Several years later, when your auntie was thinking of committing suicide, she told you a remarkable story, which was to haunt much of your life. She said that for an hour or two she and your mother were not talking to each other. She looked hard at you and said that she was in your bedroom until the storm blew over, when the phone rang in the main room. Your mother had picked up the phone. Auntie Violet had listened to the conversation, and concluded that it was your father, your cold and distant father, who was on the other end of the line.
According to Violet, your mother said, ‘Yes, high tide was at about a quarter-to-four today … no, no, he came back as usual … we hope for better things tomorrow … it is likely to be windier, so the sea should be choppier … I can’t do anything more, sorry … No, he doesn’t mind being alone there … no, no one … if he was you know, it would of course be a regrettable accident … Don’t worry. As you say, hope for the best. I don’t want to discuss it … Good-bye.’
That is what your Auntie Violet told you she overheard your mother saying.
Your Auntie Violet was alarmed by the deductions she drew from this one-sided conversation. She believed it meant you were in grave danger. She did not know what to do and so she did nothing.
You were called for supper. Your mother instructed you to behave as Valerie would have behaved. You sat quietly at the table and ate your mackerel, mashed potato and mange touts. Your mother and Auntie Violet drank white wine from South Africa. They made polite conversation. The brass lamp with the frosted white shade shed a comfortable glow over the woven tablecloth.
You had been taught not to hum with pleasure as you ate.
The dessert was pineapple slices and cream. You luxuriated in the taste of pineapple, although it sometimes made your lips rough. You lingered over it. The meal being finished, your mother made Violet and herself some tea. She unfortunately brought up the case of the golden thing she said you pretended to have seen on the beach.
‘I didn’t pretend. I did see it,’ you said.
‘There’s no such creature as this golden thing,’ your mother responded.
‘Perhaps he really did see something if he says so,’ remarked Auntie Violet, casting a smile in your direction.
‘You’ll just have to go back tomorrow and perhaps you’ll see it again,’ your mother said, rather snappishly. After a short while she suggested you go to bed.
As you lay in bed, you could hear the murmur of their voices in the next room. At last, the bedroom door quietly opened. You closed your eyes and pretended to sleep. Your Auntie Violet entered, carrying a candle in a blue metal holder with a broad rim, with which you were familiar. The candle flame flickered in the draught of her entry.
Your auntie set the candle down on the bedside table you shared between you. She looked over at you. You feigned sleep.
She undressed. Her fragrance came to you. There was a moment when she removed her panties, letting them slide to the ground, and you saw the smooth arc of her back shining in the candlelight, and the innocence of her buttocks. Something within you was obscurely touched. Then her nightdress slipped over her head.
As she climbed into bed, the springs of the bed squeaked. Her head was on the pillow. You imagined she was staring towards you, and squeezed your eyes more tightly shut.
‘Stephen,’ she called in a whisper.
In a minute, she called your name again. ‘Stevie.’
You sighed and turned over. It was very realistic. Then you sat up, to ask if she’d called you.
She said she knew you weren’t asleep. She invited you to go over to her bed and have a cuddle.
Although you wished to go, you protested that you wanted to get to sleep.
She laughed softly and told you not to be shy. Again she invited you across that narrow space between your beds.
You felt yourself blushing as you obeyed. She opened up the bed and you climbed in. She put her arms around you and hugged you. She blew out the candle. You were in darkness together, the two of you, with her fragrance and her body heat.
She kissed your neck. You felt her tender warmth and found it more beautiful than you could possibly imagine. Without knowing how you could dare to do it, you wriggled about and put your arms round her neck.
‘That’s more like it,’ she said. Her breath was adult, with flavours of nicotine and toothpaste.
You had no idea what to do next, although you felt something was required. She kissed you on your cheek, then lay there with her head on the pillow, her dark hair overflowing, and her lips against your cheek. You filled with happiness, only to find how like terror happiness is.
You blurted out that you loved her.
‘Good, my little darling,’ she said in a whisper. ‘And I love you.’
Slowly and gently, she fell asleep. You struggled to sleep for her warmth and beauty. But eventually you did sleep.
The next day, your bright and loving young auntie drove away from Omega. You stood with your mother and waved her goodbye. Because you were so young and dominated by your mother, you were unable to put your feelings into words; they swam in you like fish that never reached the surface. For that reason perhaps, you could never name them.
In the same way, this grave and joyful event became confused with the idea of the gold thing which came down from the sky, both events being seen as in someway ‘golden’. As time went by and you did not see anything more descending from heaven, you began questioning the truth of the experience, prompted perhaps by your mother’s disbelief. But you never doubted the truth of climbing into your auntie’s bed and being encompassed by her warmth and goodness. Indeed, in your adult life, whether consciously or not, you frequently sought to relive that transcendental experience in the beds of other women. It was only in those years of your childhood, when you were soon replaced by the baby girl to whom your mother shortly gave birth, that you sometimes wondered if your auntie had behaved out of a spirit of mischief, rather than a spirit of what you generally regarded as compassion.
Of course, as a four-year-old you were not clear about this matter. You never considered, as your aunt had done, that your parents had hoped to be rid of you by ‘accidental’ drowning. Only during Violet’s disquisition did you discover – and great was your dismay upon hearing it – that those long summer days of contentment, playing in solitude on the beaches of Walcot, were intended to be your last: for what caring parent would permit a small child to remain all alone for so long, in circumstances which by their very nature held danger for the unwary?
In your innocence, such thoughts did not occur to you. However, on one occasion they came close. You were playing in one of the warm pools that dotted the great beaches. Shrimps and little fish were floating by you. You tried to trap one fish with an idle hand. It stung your finger with unexpected intensity. The pain shot up your arm. You could not bear it. You needed your mother’s comfort.
Abandoning pail and spade, you ran back, nursing your hand, husbanding your tears, over the dunes, down Archibald Lane, to Omega. You ran inside, for the door was never locked.
Your