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Remembrance Day
THE SQUIRE QUARTET
Brian Aldiss, OBE, is a fiction and science fiction writer, poet, playwright, critic, memoirist and artist. He was born in Norfolk in 1925. After leaving the army, Aldiss worked as a bookseller, which provided the setting for his first book, The Brightfount Diaries (1955). His first published science fiction work was the story ‘Criminal Record’, which appeared in Science Fantasy in 1954. Since then he has written nearly 100 books and over 300 short stories, many of which are being reissued as part of The Brian Aldiss Collection.
Several of Aldiss’ books have been adapted for the cinema; his story ‘Supertoys Last All Summer Long’ was adapted and released as the film AI in 2001. Besides his own writing, Brian has edited numerous anthologies of science fiction and fantasy stories, as well as the magazine SF Horizons.
Aldiss is a vice-president of the international H. G. Wells Society and in 2000 was given the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America. Aldiss was awarded the OBE for services to literature in 2005. He now lives in Oxford, the city in which his bookselling career began in 1947.
Brian Aldiss
Remembrance Day
Dedication
for
Doris Lessing
a bad terrorist
with love
Contents
Remembrance Day
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction
1 A Visionary
2 Displaced
3 Despatched
4 Adopted
5 Accepted
6 Salvation
THE SQUIRE QUARTET
Copyright
About the Publisher
Epigraph
Those who constantly recall their history are doomed to repeat it.
Hengist M. Embry
It is difficult to say to what extent a deeper understanding of the mystery of personality would ensure that these tragedies did not arise, since the still deeper problem of destiny itself is involved. We cannot say with any certainty whether it is, in the deeper sense, inevitable that certain persons should meet a certain time, and with certain results. A lifelong study of such mysteries indeed inclines to such belief.
The Nature of Genius
Dallas Kenmare
Introduction
This third volume in the Squire Quartet is probably the most complex, and least popular of the four. It may have too many characters in it for a lazy reader. Yet the critics liked it.
The Daily Express described it as, ‘a crisply philosophical novel on the topic of disaster.’
The Daily Telegraph called it, ‘an enjoyable companion piece to Forgotten Life.’
Unlike the earlier novels in the Quartet, in Remembrance Day we meet the rural poor: Ray Tebbutt and his missus, Ruby.
Ruby has a goat she loves, and raspberries she picks. Memories of their childhoods during wartime intrude on their lives. Peace is still troubled; better perhaps to live in a backwater.
They are getting by, living frugally. Ray has acquired a credit card; the card is used only for identification purposes. They never pay for anything with the card in case they fall into debt. But Ray is browbeaten into lending a considerable amount of money on his card, and has problems in getting it back from a more prosperous neighbour.
Both Thomas Squire and Clement Winter, protagonists of the earlier novels, put in appearances. Ruby and Ray Tebbutt live not far from Squire – who is now past his days of fame – in deepest Norfolk. There comes a prolonged supper of rabbit pie, at which the squires and the Tebbutts sit and discuss the current state of play. Squire remarks - giving their current spate of IRA bombing as an example – that when underdogs seize power they rule no more wisely than those they supersede. (Power is also a leading subject in the fourth volume of this series.)
The great going world is buzzing with actions and ideas. The IRA is active in England. Learning and ignorance advance cheek by jowl, as usual.
Eventually, Ray Tebbutt gets his money back. So Ray and Ruby decide to go for a stay in a quiet little hotel called the Dianoya, in Yarmouth.
I once came across a gravestone in a Yarmouth graveyard bearing the name of Embry, and this story ends with an American professor called Hengist Morton Embry – a man who seeks advancement, one way or another. He has prepared a report on a bomb outrage at the Dianoya Hotel where several people have died. He is going to see Professor Stern, the principal of Anglia University. The people killed in the explosion, and their moratoriums, fortify Embry’s theory that misery attracts more misery. He claims it is time for a new understanding of life.
Stern is left alone to think and decide. The TV is on in his room. It is Remembrance Day, with the ceremony at the Cenotaph. He reflects on the endemic wars being commemorated. England is a good peaceful place. But some things need changing …
Brian Aldiss
Oxford, 2012
1
A Visionary
Spring 1990
Professor Hengist Morton Embry was at the wheel, gliding along through Fort Lauderdale, pointing out the sights to his English visitor.
‘This is the place if you want to eat fish. Absolutely first rate. I was there two – three nights ago, with Bobby Strawson and her crowd. Try the dolphin. Not the mammal, the fish. Go upstairs for better service. There’s a waitress without a bra, and they serve a good Australian Shiraz.’
Gordon Levine was impressed. He would not have expected such information, so crisply delivered, from an English professor of Stochastic Sociology – even if there was such a thing – in an English town. Embry had facts spilling from his fingertips.
Fort Lauderdale slid by, malls, slummy bits, houses of the wealthy situated on well-tended canals. Levine was paying his first visit
