Life in the West. Brian Aldiss

evocative ever since sea-bathing became fashionable last century.

      ‘You may believe that such images demean women. Perhaps you think they demean the Mediterranean or, in this case, the North Sea. I don’t. We are all symbols to each other as well as real people. The experience of the imagination gives life savour.

      ‘People have a down on advertising. Of course I can see why, just as I can see why they have a down on smoking. Yet people go on smoking and derive at least temporary pleasure from it. I derive a lot of temporary pleasure from advertising, and am practised at separating the commercial from the aesthetic side of it; it’s a trick I learnt from my children, who are connoisseurs of TV advertising. Adult moral disapproval of advertising spoils our enjoyment, just as the Victorians found that moral approval of a painting enhanced their enjoyment of it.’

      He and the girl were heading up the beach, splashing through a shallow lagoon. In the water lay a large beach ball with the word ‘NIVEA’ on it. Squire kicked the ball out of the way. Taking the towel wrapped like a scarf round his neck, he put it round the damp shoulders of the girl, talking cheerfully at the same time.

      ‘Some enemies of advertising claim that advertisements show a too perfect, too happy world against which reality can never compete. I disagree. George Bernard Shaw said that perfection was only achieved on paper; utopia is only achieved in adverts. We need to be reminded that it exists even if it is attainable only by purchasing Domestos or Horlicks. Enemies are, in any case, blind, and have not noticed how often adverts on television show things going wrong; catastrophe has become a new sales gimmick. Here’s a current advert for Andrex toilet paper or, as they put it more refinedly, toilet tissue.’

      Squire broke off and the cameras stopped. He and the Sex Symbol sat down abruptly on the hard sand. They looked at each other and laughed.

      ‘Just fine that time, Tom,’ Grahame Ash said, coming up from behind the cameras and removing his ear plug. ‘You must be exhausted. And you, Laura. Good day’s work, both of you. At that point we cut in the ad with the little dog running into the garden with the toilet roll in its mouth. Great. Thanks very much, everyone.’ The director waved his hands above his head. The crew moved nearer and doled out cigarettes.

      His PA, Jenny Binns, called, ‘Remember, nine o’clock tomorrow at Mr Squire’s house, without fail everyone, okay?’

      ‘We’re all going over to Blakeney to a hotel for posh nosh this evening,’ Ash reminded them.

      ‘Count me out of that, Grahame,’ Laura said. She scrambled to her feet and clutched her arms, rubbing them and shivering. ‘Ooh, this isn’t quite Singapore. I’ve gone all goosey.’

      Squire put an arm round her shoulder and kissed her ear.

      The men were talking about the good filming conditions as they gathered their gear together. Hartisham Bay stretched to either side of them, punctuated to the west by a low headland on which the window of a parked car glinted in the sun. To the east, the sand seemed to extend for ever. Some distance out to sea, a cluster of what looked like rocks were visible now the tide was low. It was the remains of Old Hartisham Priory, which had been overtaken by coastal erosion in the Middle Ages.

      ‘Let’s go,’ Ash said. ‘Forward march. Jenny, did you book us a table for this evening?’

      ‘Of course, Grahame,’ said his assistant, sweetly. ‘Haven’t I been booking you tables all round the world?’

      There was still half a mile between them and the path through the dunes. Squire and Laura Nye trudged along together, she gripping the crossed ends of his towel, still wrapped round her neck. The others straggled along behind, exchanging insults and laughing. They fell silent on reaching dry sand above tide level, where the going immediately became harder. The cameras were dragged on sledges. The equipment van, the generators, and their cars were parked on the other side of the dunes, in the shelter of some pines.

      As Laura went with the wardrobe girl to the caravan that served her as dressing-room, Squire stopped and waited for Ash. The four other members of the team streamed past them. Summer sun made their movements dazzle.

      ‘That all seemed to go well. All those hours splashing about in the water, and we never even took a dip. Amazing weather for June.’

      Ash smiled and shook his head. ‘You can keep your dips. I would never swim in the North Sea, never. My health is precious to me.’ He looked mock-solemn. Ash was a small round man, his fringe of long grey untidy hair sprouting round a freckled bald patch giving him a monkish air. By contrast, and possibly to prove he was a dedicated media man, he wore a gaudy flowered shirt that recalled Hawaii and British Home Stores, although Squire had been with him when he bought the garment in Orchard Road, Singapore, to the derision of the camera crew.

      On their many trips to locations at home and abroad, Grahame Ash had shown himself to understand perfectly Squire’s material, and had made contributions they had incorporated in the script. In particular, he had proved himself visually inventive. He was a north countryman, his soft-spoken vowels adding to a general impression of comfortable command.

      ‘It’s supine, Grahame, supine, that sea, a reformed teddy bear sea, promising never to play rough again.’

      ‘I never swim with teddy bears.’ He emptied sand from his canvas shoes. ‘It must be tea-time. I need a drink.’

      ‘What’s next in the script?’

      ‘A word about advertising supporting newspapers, television companies, colour supplements, sport, pointing out its virtues in a capitalist society.’

      Ash climbed into the Peugeot and pulled the script of the episode of ‘Frankenstein Among the Arts’ they were filming from the crammed glove compartment. Squire went to the sheltered side of the vehicle and pulled an old pair of slacks over his swimming trunks.

      ‘Okay. Perhaps we should scrap that as a bit didactic and say instead that advertising – like the Andrex ad – reinforces a rather dangerous Western obsession with cleanliness.’

      ‘My father served three years in the mud and trenches in World War I and was never the same afterwards, at least according to mother. Perhaps in reaction against the mud, his devotion to cleanliness spilled over into pacifism.’

      ‘Interesting,’ said Squire. He climbed into the passenger seat beside Ash. ‘How much is the unpreparedness of the West due to fear of war, how much to advertisements with perpetual stress on avoidance of dirt – meaning death as well as excreta.’

      ‘Bit difficult to avoid either if you ask me.’

      ‘Yes, but you can avoid thinking about them.’ It was seven months since his mother died, yet the loss was still with him. ‘I mean, do we see the shiny packaging of purchasable objects as guardians against evil, like Chinese temple dogs? Why is packaging so often of more durable material than the object being packaged?’

      Ash backed the car out onto the road. ‘That would fit more appropriately into Episode Twenty, “Shiny Surfaces”, where we’re dealing with Jasper Johns, Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, and the pop artists’ interest in commercial packaging.’

      Laura Nye came over to them. She had changed into a frilled blue shirt and jeans. The blond wig had gone, to reveal her own neat crop of chestnut hair.

      ‘Are you going to go to the pub?’ Squire asked. She was staying at The Lion in Hartisham, like most of the crew, for the four days they were working here.

      ‘No, darling, not tonight. I’ve got to dash to London. See you tomorrow, okay?’

      Her smile echoed the note of interrogation in her voice.

      He squinted against the sun in order to study her expression, shielding his eyes in an instinctive attempt to conceal his alarm.

      ‘You’ve got a hell of a drive from here all the way to London. Can’t it wait? We’ll be back in the Smoke in a couple of days.’

      She glanced unnecessarily at her wrist watch.

      ‘I’ll