Ruins by Brian Aldiss (best novels to read txt) 📕

on his good knee beside her and clutched the skeletal hand in her lap.

‘Take me in,’ he said. ‘Please take me in. I’ll just have to be free to come and go, that’s all. There’s a woman I must see again.’

The lane was long. In his dream he seemed to have been walking for ever. He did not recognise the curiously distorted trees that grew on either side of the way.

Yet the ruin ahead was familiar. It had been an ecclesiastical building in time gone by and now bore a crown of grass and ferns growing from the remains of the roof and the broken window-sockets. The evening sunlight bathed it in a ruddy glow.

Two people stood in the middle of the road, waiting for him. He felt hostility in the air, before realising that it was his hostility towards them.

The strangers escorted him round to the back of the ruin. There, in contrast to the general decay, stood a modest dwelling built from fallen masonry. He recognised that he was in exotic country; yet the occasion held a haunting sense of home-coming.

Washing hung in a small courtyard, strung between old and new walls. They walked under its damp folds in order to enter by the front door, which stood invitingly open. The elderly couple moved aside to allow him to go in first, their hands extended in a gesture of welcome.

He hesitated for a moment, looking round uncertainly, seeing for the first time how wild the country was all about. The setting sun filled it with mist and shadows. He turned. This time he entered the dwelling.

Restorations

‘I shall never be able to look back on the funeral with any pleasure,’ Rose said, gloomily. ‘This just about ruins the day.’

She had been standing beside the car, the poor defunct car, with her arms akimbo; now she climbed into the back seat and closed the door firmly, not slamming it but shutting it loudly enough to express a finite but not negligible amount of disgust.

Billing made no answer. He stood where he was, hands in pockets in front of the car, regarding the scenery.

The stretch of road was deserted, apart from an occasional lorry growling by. They were stuck somewhere north of London. No building was in sight. Trees lined the road, with fields beyond. They were waiting on the northbound side of the road, in a lay-by into which they had pushed the Austin. Tall trees, firs and ruinous pines a century old, formed themselves up into untidy woodland beside them. It was almost dark. Minute by minute the air thickened.

The breakdown people should arrive at any time. Hugh did not permit himself to say the words, knowing that he had spoken the sentence aloud before. It would only annoy further the woman he wanted to console. But the garage was being a long while coming. He had had to walk three miles to a phone box to summon them.

He made an effort now to stay in touch with Rose, strolling over to her window and saying, in firmly cheerful tones, ‘I’m sorry, I’m no good at dealing with car engines. I expect it’s the armature again.’

Rose remained looking down. ‘I know, Hugh. You’re the dreamer.’ She had flattened all nuances from the remark, so that only the words remained, spiritless between them.

Billing turned his back, resuming a contemplation of the roadside copse. It was a chilly February day and the sun had already set behind the trees. While the man and woman waited by the car, the hectic colours of day’s end had died from the sky. Now only muted tones remained: shades of oyster, lemon, pearl and then, nearer the horizon, a series of greys and tones neither grey nor blue. The rough trunks of the trees presented themselves in silhouette against this backdrop, providing an avenue towards the distance.

It seemed to Billing that from this arrangement of colours and space something spoke to him, addressed him gravely yet comfortingly. He felt an answer arising in himself. Outwardly he was mute, his usual unkempt self contained within the dark suit he had bought especially for Gladys Lee’s funeral.

He thought, I’m a funny fellow. I wonder if Rose feels all the sensations I do? He was too shy to ask her directly, suspecting that the answer could be deduced – the answer he had found throughout life, that no one felt things as he did. Of course, old Gladys had done, no denying that. But she had become quite gaga towards the end.

It grew darker yet. He watched the great drama through the trees as if it would never happen again. Rose climbed out of the car and begged him to get in, in tones the over-strained patience of which suggested a mother’s tact with a wayward child.

‘I bet it’s the armature. And the fan belt,’ he said.

They sat in the back seat, holding hands.

Darkness had closed in definitively when headlights appeared and a vehicle pulled into the lay-by. Billing jumped out and went over to the cab.

‘Watson’s garage?’

‘I’m Watson.’ The driver was a nondescript man in overalls with a mass of uncombed hair, his plain face made more shapeless by the cigar wedged into one corner of his mouth.

‘That smells like a good cigar,’ said Billing.

‘It’s a Fischer Florett, mate. You can’t buy them in this country. I buy a supply of them when I go on holidays in Switzerland.’

‘It makes a change to see a man smoking a good cigar nowadays.’

‘What’s the problem with your vehicle?’ As Watson spoke, he emerged from his cab. He was a disappointingly small person, his round head hardly coming up to Billing’s chest. Without waiting for an answer to his question, he stomped off to look at the car for himself.

Rose had emerged from the rear of the Austin and said hello to Watson.

‘You two been to a funeral, then?’ he asked, opening up the bonnet, again without waiting for an answer.