Remembrance Day. Brian Aldiss

      When he was getting ready to go, he gave her a light kiss. Pauline did not attempt to follow it up, though she made grateful cooing noises. At heart, she was a decent woman and he did, after a fashion, owe his job to her.

      She pinched his buttocks and gave him a juicy wink. He nodded and went back to his digging.

      Arriving home tired after seven that evening, his first question to Ruby was whether Mike Linwood had come round with the money.

      Ruby said no, and looked rather tight about the lips. She had heard the whole story from her husband the evening before, and secretly blamed him for being weak enough to lend money to anyone. Her moods being transparent to him, he perceived this without her uttering a word.

      ‘You’ll have to go to Hartisham to get it back,’ she said now, lighting one of her rare cigarettes. ‘You’ve got us in a real doo-dah. Supposing he refuses to pay us back?’

      ‘Don’t be silly. ’Course he’ll pay us back. Mike’s no crook. Besides, you know how that household works. Difficult though his father is, he bales them out in a crisis. Jean told me once that he’s got a heap of loot stashed away in those rooms of his – stuff he acquired in the Middle East. Every now and again he flogs something off in the London auctions.’

      ‘When did Jean tell you that?’

      ‘Ages ago. She told you, too.’

      ‘No, she didn’t. I don’t remember.’

      ‘You’re getting forgetful.’

      The evening passed rather silently. Like the silence, the sum of money owed seemed to grow and smother them. It was a sin, a squandering. It represented the amount they might hope to set aside for Christmas for themselves and Jenny, Ray’s wages for three weeks, earned by the sweat dripping into Yarker’s arid soil. He could no longer believe he had been credulous enough to pay Stanton’s repair bill.

      That night, he lay next to Ruby in the double bed, listening to her quiet breathing, wondering what he should do. Ruby always slept well. Owls cried about the chimney tops of the ruinous cottage opposite, a partridge croaked in the hedgerow. Still she slept. From across the landing came the downy snore of his mother-in-law; they never closed her door at night in case she should need something.

      Agnes in her little wooden room became woven into his anxieties. Fond though he was of the old lady, who represented herself as having had a fairly dashing past, she was in her present decrepitude a burden, one more factor requiring attention every day, like a goat with no yield. Yet, meanly, they made a tiny increment of money from her: Agnes wanted little, corsets apart – another of her sudden whims, easily deflected – and a tithe of her old-age pension flowed weekly into the shallow family coffers.

      He tried to shut the stale thoughts out. Come on, cocker, Mike’s a friend and he’s got a job. He’ll pay up. Sure to. Jean will insist, won’t she?

      After a while, Ray sat up in bed, staring at the dim curtained square of their window. He hated to think that he, in his fifties, should be dependent on a few coppers from his mother-in-law’s pension; that he and Ruby now lived so near penury they could not afford a daily paper; that she should have to work part-time in a shop, leaving her old ma alone in the cottage; and, above all, that he should be worth so little on the labour market.

      They were caught in the poverty trap. They had come to Norfolk from Birmingham because property was cheap in East Anglia, not realizing that jobs would also be scarce, and wages in consequence low.

      In only a few hours he would be obliged to get up and go back to those bloody poplars.

      Perhaps he had always been a failure. His thoughts trailed back to the palmy days in Birmingham with the Parchment Printing Company. Parchment had been founded by his uncle, Allen Tebbutt. When Allen had died prematurely, Ray had taken over, and greatly extended the company, which had gone public. He had then lost control of the company in a famous boardroom battle, but stayed on in an executive post. The company had weathered technological change well, installing new plant in 1979, mainly because of impressive new orders from one firm, Summpools. Summpools was a rapidly expanding firm of swimming-pool installers. They owned a subsidiary, Summserve, specializing in conservatories and house extensions. Both companies wanted expensive coloured literature. It all looked fine at a time when conservatories were suddenly fashionable.

      Both Summpools and Summserve were owned by a man called Cracknell Summerfield, known familiarly as Charlie. Charlie was Ray’s contact, which greatly improved his standing with Parchment. Charlie owned a large manor house near Iver and Heathrow, which Ray Tebbutt once visited for a conference. He was impressed by what he saw. Only weeks later, Cracknell Summerfield went bankrupt with debts totalling £24 million, almost £6 million of which was owed to the Parchment Printing Company. With unemployment mounting and the country undergoing one of its regular recessions, Parchment was forced into liquidation. Ray and many others were thrown out of work.

      Cracknell Summerfield sold up his manor house to a yuppie from the city, one of a new breed. After his wife left him for a sacked Summpools salesman, he started up other companies, selling double-glazing and replacement windows. Ruby stayed with Ray when they too were forced to sell up their home; taking their daughter Jennifer, they moved to Norfolk. Ray often asked himself why hadn’t he joined that rascal Charlie? He could have been rich by now.

      Born to sink. Born to be a sucker …

      When greyness seeped like dust round the bedroom curtains, he rose and crept barefoot downstairs. He had been one of three million unemployed. In a way he was lucky to find a job; they did get by and, after all, the countryside was lovely, at least in summer.

      That lie about being a Muslim … well, it would make a change …

      He sneaked carefully through the door closing off the stairwell, in case the cunning Bolivar was on the other side, awaiting a chance to rush upstairs and jump on Agnes’s bed. But the cat was nowhere to be seen.

      He stood in the kitchen. Could he afford an extra cup of tea at this early hour? Don’t be self-indulgent, he told himself, letting himself out into the garden. The honeysuckle by the back door smelt like something from a picturebook childhood. He wandered up the path and went to see Tess, grazing peacefully. She looked up, shook her ears, and went back to her nibbling.

      He returned to the cottage, and to an aroma of last night’s fried potatoes lingering in the passageway. In the front room, he stretched out wearily on the sofa, and was immediately asleep. Then Bolivar jumped up on his stomach.

      Ruby went to work as usual on the Wednesday morning. Her habit was to cycle from home an hour later than her husband, after she had organized her mother. She concealed her bicycle in a hedge near the main road, caught the bus on the main road, and was in Mrs Bligh’s cake shop by nine fifteen, in time to pull down the awning over the shop window and put the wooden sign saying CAKES out on the pavement.

      Mrs Bligh herself turned up laden with two heavy wicker baskets shortly after half-past nine, before the baker delivered. She set them down on the counter, gasping. ‘Heaven helps them as helps themselves but not all that bloody much,’ she said.

      Bridget Bligh was a self-contained lady in her forties, generally to be seen in a black Guernsey sweater and denim skirt.

      The cake shop specialized in a line of Cornish pasties and sausage rolls which sold briskly at this hour. As Mrs Bligh said on numerous occasions, ‘Fakenham folk are funny eaters.’ The lady herself retired into a back room to prepare a range of sandwiches which would be on sale from ten thirty onwards.

      Ruby had always liked Bridget for her sense of humour. Once when she had asked her why she had left the North of England to come to Fakenham, of all places, Bridget had pressed hands to bosom and said it was to forget.

      ‘To forget what?’ Ruby asked.

      ‘I’ve forgotten,’ Bridget said. Ruby had often repeated the joke, even when she suspected Bridget had borrowed it from a TV comedy. Perhaps the joke also expressed something unconfiding in Mrs Bligh’s nature.