The Twinkling of an Eye. Brian Aldiss
the tyrannies of Nazi Germany and the more firmly entrenched regime of Stalin’s Soviet Union were busy at their gruesome tasks of enslaving and killing whole populations.
But the British Empire was safe, the colour bar securely in place in its colonies. Tea was still served at four, while the Yankee dollar was worth only two half-crowns.
Betty and I were happy in Gorleston. When I fell ill and was confined to bed, I wrote and illustrated a long verse drama set in Victorian times. The story moved freely from a stage play into real life and back. Where I got the idea from I do not know; now it is a commonplace of deconstructionists – a word unknown in the thirties. It was my first sustained piece of writing. Its subject was the question of appearances: something was happening but – wait! – it was merely being acted!
From the local Woolworth – then still ‘The 3d and 6d Stores’ – Betty and I bought issues of McGlennan’s Song Book. In triple columns, it published the words of the latest popular songs. Betty and I sat in bed together, singing songs made famous by Hutch, Dorothy Carless, Gracie Fields and others: if not melodiously, enthusiastically.
Being mere children, Betty and I were not privy to Bill’s plans. One day, we were hauled in from the beach and told we were going on holiday to the West Country, to Devon.
The Bernard Road house was closed up, our beloved cat Tiny was left in a neighbour’s care. We then undertook a trek across the south of England, arriving eventually at Witheridge, in the middle of Devon. Norfolk born and bred, we were impressed by, or perhaps a little contemptuous of, the hills and valleys; we had grown to prefer a flat world. In Witheridge we stayed on Thorn’s farm, where the young farmer’s wife fed us enormous breakfasts and evening meals. My fourteenth birthday occurred on the farm; my parents gave me a watch.
The sights, sounds and smells of the farm absorbed all our attention. In Witheridge, they had never heard of Hitler. Bill had his gun, went out shooting rabbits, was a countryman again, trying to forget his recent disasters in East Dereham.
The time of childhood was not entirely over. Whatever my new watch said, hours and days were still dawdling by. On the farm we had for company other creatures who did not live in the brisk adult time flow: the calves, young sheep, kittens and the Thorns’ two dogs. We measured out our days in Wellington boots. It was a timeless time – less than a month away from the declaration of war.
We left the farm and drove to a place called Pinhoe, on the outskirts of Exeter, where Father bought a caravan. We had to live in it for two days on the sales area by a busy road until Bill’s cheque was cleared by the local bank.
Towing the caravan, we drove to Cornwall, sleeping overnight – sensation – in a farmer’s field. Next day, we arrived at Widemouth Bay, to the west of Bude. Betty and I had yet to realise that that caravan was actually our home.
Widemouth was a beautiful wild place, not far from Tintagel, legendary home of King Arthur. Sheep had grazed the grass short to the very edge of the cliffs. Contained in the bowl of pasture was a small whitewashed cottage which served as the only shop for miles; it sold milk, bread, and – more importantly as far as Betty and I were concerned – Lyons’ fruit pies, 4d. Just beyond the shop was a sheer drop of cliff to the rocks below, all vastly different from the tame seasides of the Norfolk coast. We climbed the rocks, ventured into deep pools, caught small fish, watched the waters of the Atlantic wallop into barnacled fissures in the cliff face. Whatever I did, my small sister followed faithfully.
Close by the whitewashed cottage, one other caravan stood. From our caravan window we enjoyed a panorama of the Atlantic. How quiet was the Atlantic in those brassy August days! And I ventured at last to pluck up courage and ask Bill, ‘Will I go back to Framlingham?’
He answered casually, as if everything had long been settled in his mind. ‘We’ll find you a school near here.’
Oh, the joy of it! The relief!
War had presented me with an escape from a fate I feared more than anything else. I firmly believed that Framlingham College spelt spiritual death for me. Every day of my three years there was spent in dread.
To give an instance of the teaching, which was Gradgrindian in temperament: our French lessons were devoted to learning irregular verbs, we were not taught to speak French, or to enjoy the beauties of French literature; long lists of irregular verbs offered better opportunity for chastisement. Days were spent moving from classroom to classroom, carting books about, learning how to escape punishment.
Hardly surprisingly, by reflex we punished each other. Carrying those books about, we always put our Bibles on top of the pile. One boy allowed a Latin textbook to lie on top of his Bible. We beat him up.
And the foul hours of night. Arriving within those walls at the age of eleven, I was unaware of sex, except as a sort of game we had innocently played. Sex had been unknown at St Peter’s Court, my preparatory school. That first week in the junior dormitory at Framlingham, the head boy of the dormitory crept into my bed. I was overwhelmed with disgust and shame at his advances, and I feebly pushed him away.
From then on, this sneering bully was always about, always leering at me. Salt in the wound was that his first name was the same as mine. I hated his stupid face, his staring eyes, his winks and jeers, and would have killed him if I could. But he was twice my weight.
That first loathing of homosexual acts remained with me. Rather worse, it left me with a distaste for the flesh for some years.
Perhaps my story-telling in that dorm, at which I became so successful, protected me from further insults of the kind.
So Betty and I played light-heartedly in the rock pools, while time and tide dawdled. It did not bother us that we knew no one else in the world. The sun dazzled on the water, the little crabs scuttled at the bottom of our rubber buckets. We cared as greatly for the events in Europe – the Panzers, the sabres, the fruitless cavalry charges, the Stukas – as did the crabs.
Noon on 3 September. The summer had crumbled away, along with peace. Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany, only twenty-one years after the last war had run its course. Dot was preparing lunch in our new caravan. Bill and I stood with our neighbour, outside his caravan, where his large wife was frying up. Neville Chamberlain’s voice mingled with the gurgle of sausages wallowing in their fat.
I see it all as if it were a photograph. The world has faded to sepia, along with much else. I described the scene in my novel Forgotten Life. Fiction is often the best medium for such drama, when momentous and meagre clash.
At that solemn time, with Britain plunging ill prepared into war, I went about in a state of sin, secretly rejoicing, I don’t have to go back to bloody Framlingham! May all those bastards there rot! Thank you, God, thank you, Hitler!
That night, we blacked out the tiny square window in the caravan roof, some with fury, others with shrieks of laughter which served to ripen the adult anger.
We woke on the 4th and went running out across the green while breakfast was prepared. There was the wonderful view, the sea, the cliffs, the white cottage. Sheep grazed by the wheels of our car. Wartime!
We were to all intents and purposes homeless. Bill drove into Bude, to return with a key. A bungalow stood empty on the cliffs just above Widemouth. We went to look it over with a builder. Bill was agreeing to rent it by the month, Dot was chirping with pleasure.
Betty danced in the empty rooms. Bill shouted, ‘Come here! Behave!’ Sunlight poured through the front windows. The bungalow was unfurnished, as neat as new, and bereft of everything except a copy of Fantasy, lying alone on a window seat.
On the cover of that 1939 issue, Fantasy: A Magazine of Thrilling Science Fiction, was an imaginative painting of fire engines drawn up in the centre of London, in Piccadilly, fighting off giant caterpillars with jets of plaster of Paris. In a year’s time, the brigades would be dealing with another kind of invasion from the sky.
We moved into the bungalow behind Widemouth cliffs. A few sticks of furniture were bought in Bude. Autumn held its breath: days remained calm and brassy. Looking out