Free Life in the West by Brian Aldiss Page A

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 on to 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 be in town by seven, no bother. I’m looking forward to the drive. I must go. Sorry.’
    ‘Are you going to see Peter?’
    ‘I must, Tom. Besides, you’re going to see Teresa.’
    She smiled soberly across at Ash. ‘I’ll be back for work on time tomorrow, Gray.’
    The two men watched her retreating behind in silence. Sunlight glinted through the characteristic female crutch gap.
    ‘Let’s go,’ Squire said, with a sigh. ‘Pippet Hall.’
    Ash said nothing. He drove.
     
    The Norfolk coast road from Hunstanton meanders eastwards towards Sheringham and Cromer. On its way, it calls at a number of small towns which are never quite on the sea, whatever their intentions. Blakeney, for instance, gazes placidly across tidal river and marshes to its distant head, with scarcely a glimpse of the real sea. It once held fairs which were among the excitements of the Middle Ages; Muscovite ships visited it, with cargoes of silver, sable, caviar and bear grease. Three stout ships sailed from Blakeney against the Spanish Armada.
    Only at Wells-next-Sea is there still clear sight of the open waters leading on to Norway, the Arctic, or Ostend. At Wells tourists can walk with their ice creams and fish’n’chips straight across the road, to view little Egyptian freighters or the modern, hammer-and-sickle-flying descendants of the Muscovites who reached Blakeney, all moored peaceably against the quayside.
    Take one of the minor roads which turn southwards off the coast road between Wells and Blakeney. After a few miles’ drive, you will arrive at the pretty village of Hartisham. Hartisham is set half on a small eminence, half in a small valley, through which the small River Guymell runs. The higher village contains a manor house, a vicarage, and a fine church, dedicated to St Swithun, and refaced with knapped flint in the eighteen-eighties. The lower part contains most of the village, its dwellings (mainly cottages, built blind side to the street), a few shops, and Pippet Hall, through the modest grounds of which the River Guymell flows.
    The countryside is undulating hereabouts, rather than flat. It is very fertile, and must once have abounded in the deer for which the village is named. Pippet Hall estate consists of under one hundred acres since the Squire family had to sell land off to meet death duties. The modest farmhouse, now occupied by the manager of the estate, lies in a bend of the