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

Staring at the rockery, he ceased to listen to what she was saying concerning the hanging of wallpaper. A woodlouse was climbing up the slope between two shoulders of stone. A miniature avalanche of soil sent it slipping to the bottom of the slope but, undeterred, it tried again and eventually disappeared behind a brown frond of fern. One snowdrop was flowering in a hollow beside a boulder of clinker.

Weeks passed. Billing and his lady hugged themselves frequently as the realisation of their fortune sank in. It seemed as if they could never discuss it enough. To have a house of their own gave them security and, more than security, dreams.

Rose rearranged her week so that she could take Saturdays off as he did. On Friday nights, they’d drive away to London in the Austin, taking with them such food as jam tarts, pork pies, cakes, and taramasalata, to spend all weekend in Shepherd’s Bush, refurbishing the house, picnicking, chatting, calling to one another.

At the far end of the garden, by the old bath, Billing made a bonfire of various tatty pieces of carpeting while Rose scrubbed the floors of the house with disinfectant. Billing turned off the water supply at the mains and extracted an ancient cast-iron hot water tank from the cupboard next to the kitchen, replacing it with a more effective copper cylinder plumbed into what had been the kitchen broom-cupboard. The cupboard that was now empty he painted with emulsion paint and filled with shelves; so they acquired a pantry. A good secondhand refrigerator fitted neatly into it. Another hug was required when that was in place, and much self-congratulation.

Asleep in the double bed with Rose that night, Billing had a bad dream.

He and Rose lived in a great house which seemed to fill a whole countryside. The corridors went up hill and down dale like mountain paths. They were happy until a stern personage in grey and white uniform came to separate him from her. Doors slammed, mysterious winds blew.

He was taken to a confusing garden, flowerless and a muddle of small constructions. At the far end of it stood a little rundown building, guarded by wooden fences and gates. The personage led him into the building, saying that henceforth Billing had to live here.

It seemed that the building had once been a poultry-house. Although Billing did not wish to enter, the personage would brook no protests. It was a low one-storey place. The doors were stuck and opened only with difficulty, creaking as they did so.

The interior was worse than could be imagined. All was in tones of grey. The frosted windows were clouded with cobwebs. Mould and dust covered everything. The atmosphere was dense and fusty, while the floor appeared to be paved with decaying cheese. Billing found he could scarcely walk.

The personage (now very faint) said, ‘It will not be too bad.’ It then faded away and Billing was alone, shut in.

His feeling was one of intense grief. He wandered about without any fixed intention or plan of escape. Worse was to come. He found himself in an interior room, more distressing than the others, more suffocating.

The room was ill-lit. Amid dark shadows, propped in one corner, sat Gladys Lee. She was shrouded in dust sheets and sunk in her final demented stage, her eyes red-rimmed. She beckoned Billing forward. Her mouth fell open with a terrible crack, revealing broken sticks of teeth.

Billing woke feeling sick and sat up in bed. The crack still rang in his head. He was convinced it was real.

Leaving Rose to sleep, he made his way barefoot downstairs. The staircase was presently uncarpeted. By the light from a streetlamp he saw that the glass in the front door had been shattered. Retreating, he went back to the top of the stairs and switched on the hall light.

A half-brick lay on the mat inside the door, with fragments of glass all round.

He went and woke Rose. ‘What time is it?’

‘It’s only half-past twelve. Who’d do such a thing, do you think?’

She pulled a face. ‘Bloody Dwyer, who else? My husband – George Dwyer, the drunken cretin. Him and that bird of his from the next street. He must have seen us coming and going round here. I wouldn’t put anything past him.’

They went down and stared at the damage. Hugh found a piece of cardboard with which to block up the hole, while Rose swept up the fragments of glass and had another swear.

‘It wouldn’t have been your George,’ he said, squatting down beside her. ‘No man would do a thing like that deliberately. It must have been a passing yob, hitting our door by accident.’

‘You don’t know George. Friday and Saturday nights especially, when he’s had a few.’

‘But how would he know where you were?’

‘Oh, he’d find out. Don’t forget he’s a taxi driver. He’s got friends crawling all round town, he has. One of them must have seen us in the street, unloading the car or sommink.’

When they had cleared away all the glass, they had a cup of tea before returning to bed. Going up the stairs, feet cautious of splinters on the rough treads, he suddenly said, ‘Friday and Saturday nights … You mean he might come back tomorrow night?’

‘Oh, I suppose he might. He can be a vindictive little bugger, can George.’

‘I must say you take this pretty calmly.’

‘Hasn’t nothing of the sort never happened to you when you were in the United States? Are the Yanks all that different? You picked up enough women there, by all accounts.’

The double negative irritated him. ‘Is that how the working class goes on? Bashing up property?’

‘We certainly don’t make a little tin god of it, like you posh fellers.’

He burst out laughing, partly in annoyance. ‘Oh, forget it. Let’s get to bloody sleep.’

Saturday evening saw Hugh Billing in a nervous state. It was dusk when he finished giving the side door and window an undercoat and swept the side passage with the