Aftershocks

A. N. Wilson

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781786496058
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786496065
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

"It's unlikely that a more intelligent, amusing and yet disturbing novel will appear this autumn." Scotsman

On The Island, just as on many other islands, marriages are unhappy, people fall in love and the seasons pass. The town of Aberdeen is no different, until the earthquakes. These seismic ripples tear down houses, forge bonds, and shake the foundations of humanity and religion. And in the midst of it all, Nellie and Ingrid fall in love.

In Aftershocks A. N. Wilson offers a portrait of nature, death and morality. Moved by the real losses of the Christchurch earthquake, this is an extraordinary novel about a community profoundly linked to the land it lives on.

"Witty, erudite and artful." Spectator

Country & Townhouse's the best books for Christmas, 2018

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS ALWAYS THE TWO OF THEM, DIGBY AND ELEANOR. THE inseparables. Then came the Earthquake, and everything changed.

I don’t want to swank, but I was the only one in Aberdeen who saw this. An early sign of love, I suppose. True love, the full works, orchestra playing Puccini, blood coursing through your temples, inner certainty that this wasn’t some fly-by-night thing, but Destiny in the Person of the Beloved calling us to Newness of Life . . . But this is jumping ahead a bit, people! Sorry about that. Let’s go back to the Dyce, where I was wandering around in a bit of a daze that lunchtime, having just broken up with my tutor, Barnaby Farrell.

An art gallery’s a good place to go and think, specially if, like the dear old Dyce, it doesn’t really have any good pictures. Course, now the paintings in the Dyce have all been destroyed, I miss them, the Alma-Tadema of Aeneas at the court of Queen Dido; the Holman Hunt of ‘Caedmon tells St Hilda how he received the gift of song’ – in which the cowherd bard had those strange flesh tones which Hunt’s figures always have, as if they had been made up for American TV with loads of orange slap. No one would ever have sat in front of that picture and been lost in rapture, as you would if you saw a Vermeer for the first time. They are the picture-equivalents of background music, those middle-rank Victorian efforts, and so you can just wander round, have a look at them, smile a bit; or have your own thoughts; or spy on the other gallery-goers, who, during lunch hour on a weekday in our city, Aberdeen, tended to be a mixed bunch – some of them like the sad people wandering round parks in Larkin’s ‘Toads’ poem, and some of them there for reasons which a gossipy person, like me, would like to winkle out.

But I’d primarily gone there to think. To ask myself – what did you imagine you were DOING, sleeping with the man who is meant to be teaching you about tragedy? I mean, if I’d been nineteen, you’d have understood it, but I was twenty-seven. I’d been round the park, had a number of not especially satisfying relationships in the recent past, and I did not need to prove anything, to myself, or to him, by sleeping with Barnaby Farrell. Nothing against Barnaby. He’s very good-looking, in a classic hunk sort of way – thick curly dark hair, quite muscular, fine-boned face – and a lot of the women in the class fancied him. Well, I did – obviously, but why not just leave it at that? Now it was all going to be just a bit embarrassing, attending the class he ran with Digby. (She did the Greek tragedy stuff, he did Shakespeare and Hardy, it was a fantastic class – I’ll tell you more about it in a later chapter.)

He’d been really nice, said he wanted us to continue, said he wanted to see how it would go, but I could see how it would go a mile off – we’d sleep together about twenty more times; then one of us would start thinking they were in love, and the other would be going off the boil; then he’d say he wanted me to move in with him and look after his kid, and, thanks, Barnaby, that wasn’t my idea of a life. I’d taken a year off from an acting career which was going really well. But I was finding that when I was faced with a real challenge – like when I was Hedda Gabler at the Redgrave in Carmichael, which has been the high point of my career to date – I just did not know enough. Mum said, actors don’t need to know, they need to feel. I don’t agree. I know what she means, but – well, let’s pitch it really high, why be modest – Mrs Siddons or Sarah Bernhardt or Ellen Terry or Sybil Thorndike really knew Shakespeare and the Canon in and out. True, an actor’s perspective is different from an academic’s, but it is a form of intelligence. I’d rather hear Gielgud or Branagh talking about Shakespeare than read some middle-grade university lecturer on the subject. Barnaby and Digby, though, who gave our seminar jointly, were well above the middle-grade. Their seminar really fizzed. And I’d reached a stage of my career where I needed to think more – about the drama, about what I wanted to do in my theatre life – and I was in the fortunate position of being able to come back to Aberdeen, live at home with my mum, and go out to Banks University a few times a week for seminars and lectures.

I’d said quite firmly, when Barnaby asked why not just let’s see how it goes – no, we should stop NOW. Of course, I’d said, ‘before we get too fond of one another’. And at least he had not embarrassed me by making any declarations of love or anything like that. But I felt rather foolish all the same and, like I say, I was wondering what on earth a grown woman like me thought she was DOING behaving like that.

I think the answer was that, before I found True Love, I wouldn’t ask myself – when the question arose of going to bed with someone – why I should. Instead, I asked why I shouldn’t, and quite often I did not see the reason even if it was staring me in the face.

Anyhow, the Barnaby thing was over now, and there I was in the Dyce. I’d had the embarrassing conversation with Barnaby the previous day, and we’d been all very ‘civilized’ about it, and kissed one another on the cheek and given a little hug after breakfast (I’d been staying over at his place) and then I’d slipped out of the flat before Stig, his kid, woke up.

It was nice, always, that day or two after you’d broken up with a lover. Even if you’d been in love (which Barnaby and I certainly weren’t) there was always also this feeling of being free, and wondering what you’d seen in him. (Very unlike NOW, when the thought of splitting up with the one I love would be totally unthinkable, and I’d quite honestly rather die than suffer such a thing. Luckily we both feel the same, and I am sure I have found True Love Forever and Ever Amen.) But this is to leap ahead. That’s what this story is about. How an earthquake helped me find True Love. My lover, my East and West, said I should call this book The Earth Moved for Me – How About You? But I’m settling for Aftershocks.

Anyhow. There’s me in the Dyce. And another good thing about wandering around an indoor public place like that is noticing all the other people and speculating on what they are up to. Of course, you get the odd pest, wondering if you are on for it, but as I have told you, I was twenty-seven, a big girl, capable of looking after herself. By big, I do not mean heavy (in spite of someone later in this narrative describing my face as ‘fleshy’!), but I mean grown-up. And quite tall. I don’t know if that is a disadvantage in my profession. Most theatrical people are smaller than average – Judi Dench, Laurence Olivier, Garrick . . .

It was while I was ambling about idly that I heard her voice.

Maybe before we hear her together, I should explain that when I heard that voice, I never knew if it was Digby’s or the Dean’s. Different as they were, they both sounded exactly the same.

I saw more of Digby, ’cause of my course. Already, by this stage, she was coming to fascinate me. I loved her mind. Her grasp. Her sure-footedness. The way she really loved that Greek stuff, knew it backwards, and had not merely mastered it in an academic way, but lived with it. The Dean was a frostier, much less passionate person, or so it seemed to me when I sometimes accompanied Mum to the Cathedral. As I stood there in the Dyce, though, a second or two of listening assured me that it was the Dean’s voice I could hear. The Dean’s name was Bartlett, Eleanor Bartlett.

—I know we’re not supposed to like this sort of thing, but gosh, I DO. Always HAVE ever since I was nine.

—How did you see this picture when you were nine? You were in England, surely.

—I grew up in England, but Mum was a Huia. She taught at St Hilda’s here. Science. Came to England one summer to stay with relations. Met Dad.

It would be hard to find a voice which was less ‘Huia’ than this. It was real old-fashioned English. It put me in mind of the old St Trinian’s films. Joyce Grenfell. ‘Gossage, Call me sausage.’ You hardly ever hear a voice like this on the Island, and I’d guess it is dying out in England. Yet she was only forty. Course, when I heard her dad’s voice, all was explained.

The pair were certainly closely absorbed in one another. They did not see me. I wasn’t hiding, and I wasn’t in disguise, but I was wearing shades. OK, I may as well admit this, as well as being a relief, breaking up always made me a bit red-eyed. I wasn’t in love, course I wasn’t, but I felt I’d made a fool of myself. Again. I was wondering why I’d got to twenty-seven without getting this love business straight, perhaps no one can get it straight, and . . . well, anyhow, that made me just a little weepy. I was wearing a white tee-shirt, jeans and white Converse with red piping.

Why would pairs be wandering round an art gallery at lunchtime on a weekday? Think about it, and there can only be a few answers. The lonely singletons have a whole variety of reasons, no doubt. Some were like me, still a bit stunned from breaking up. Some might have been bereaved, fearful of going into a café or a pub in case they suddenly found themselves crying. Some were just depressed, drifting about in a daze. Some of them were genuine enthusiasts for second- – no, let’s be honest – third-rate painters such as Gilbert Rhys, or for the poorish pictures by good painters like G.F. Watts, which was all the Dyce could muster. If you’re European, reading this, you probably are used to going to galleries which have Titians and Rembrandts and Picassos by the score, but don’t mock Aberdeen. We did our best, and the Dyce was all we had.

But back to the pairs who went there at lunchtimes . . . I don’t mean the pairs of seniors, ’cause they have usually become ‘Friends’ of the Gallery, partly because they no longer have many real friends of their own, and partly in the hope that they can get free coffee in the Friends’ Room, or find reliably clean toilets.

Pairs which are real pairs, though, they wouldn’t come to a place like this at 1.40 p.m. on a weekday. They’d wait till they had finished work and meet up for drinks in some bar – there were plenty of good bars in central Aberdeen before the Quake – or go home together. And those who were in the middle of some irresistible adulterous passion – they wouldn’t be ambling about the Dyce, they’d be in a hotel or some flat somewhere. The point is, think about it. Only those whose relationship had not started, or was in a state of crisis, would have chosen to come here at this point of the week. So if you sit still and wait, in a place like the Dyce, you’ll see a lot of drama.

The two likeliest dramas are: ‘Are we falling in love?’ or ‘Shall we break up?’ And I did not think this pair were about to break up.

It was clear that he was nuts about her. I’ll describe her first, though my ways of describing her will change as this book goes on. I’m trying now to recollect exactly what I saw, WHO I saw, that day in the gallery. Tall, like me, taller than me, nearly six foot. Thick dark hair, cut quite short, so you could see the nape of her neck. The swan-like, truly beautiful neck. It was so beautiful that it took my breath away. Deep blue eyes which had not yet seen me. Eyes only for him, seemingly. A short nose. Creamy complexion. Apparently no make-up. That toothy smile, instantaneously beguiling.

He was a bit older. Or maybe being so worried, and so in love, made him look older. Long face with black hair which flopped over his forehead, cut short at back and sides. Raven black eyes. Hollow cheeks and the sort of blueish chin which he’d have had to shave at least twice a day if he wanted to keep it smooth.

By the way, in case you’re thinking all the people in this book are going to have dark hair – and there would be no reason why they shouldn’t – I have mousey-blondish, very thick hair, quite long, cut with a fringe over my brow; brown eyes, freckles. But back to Charlie.

His voice was Huia, but of the old world – a bit like Mum’s. We – my generation – speak with much stronger ‘accents’ – whereas they sound more English. He was wearing a smart suit and highly polished shoes, but you wouldn’t have been surprised to see his lean face sticking out of Victorian costume – an earnest Mr Rochester or Mr Dombey.

The woman was telling him more about the year her mum, a young teacher from Aberdeen, had been to England, stayed with some cousins near Birmingham, and been introduced to her dad who was a young clergyman in a place called Dudley. Mr Dombey’s facial expression suggested that this conjunction, of the woman’s parents, was the happiest thing which had occurred in the history of the world. I was asking myself how much he’d paid for his shoes. Hundreds of dollars.

—Mum had intended to stay in England for the summer, but she stayed for good! And about a year later I arrived on the scene!

—She bucked the trend. Normally, it is the Huia men who go abroad. Meet an American or an English woman, and stay; whereas Huia women have a homing instinct. So it has now been shown. Hence the Man Drought.

—The Man Drought?

Her question came out as a schoolgirl hoot.

—What on EARTH?

—Surely you knew? The proportion of women to men on the Island is something like sixty to forty. And the gap is widening, among the graduate classes, aged between twenty and fifty.

—What accounts for that, I wonder?

—Some people think it explains our having so many lesbians.

—I hadn’t noticed.

I liked that reply. I even more liked the suddenly peremptory tone in which she said it. It’s not a word you’ll be reading much in this book. I don’t know about you, I’m against labels, and find it really bizarre that people want to be categorized as black, white, LGBTQI, etc., rather than being individuals. She did not let him expand on his generalization, but plunged on with the autobiography.

—Anyhow, Mum brought me back three times when I was a child, and we always used to come to the Gallery. I know we aren’t supposed to believe in colonies any more – well, of course we don’t believe in them – but it does not stop me having a soft spot for this sort of thing. And it is such a lovely pair of pictures. Dear old Gilbert Rhys!

A whoop of schoolgirlish mirth. The Madcap of the Remove.

They were standing in front of Gilbert Rhys’s The Death of George Pattison.

Since it no longer exists – it was pulverized by the Quake, and was in any case lucky to still be hanging on the walls of a public gallery, given its content – I’ll describe it for you, in case you never saw it.

It was one of his most famous landscapes – famous on the Island, that is. It evokes with great love the wooded hillsides which still rise majestically above the western suburban shores of our city. Perhaps it was the sheer topographic accuracy of it which allowed its survival, in spite of the fact that no historians believe in the scene depicted. It was said that Obadiah Fairbrother – the lawyer whose family had grown so rich through wool – attended the death-bed of the greatest Tangata chieftain, Tamihana Huli, from whom he had leased vast tracts of fertile land. ‘George Pattison’ was the name adopted by this proud tribal chief after he had not merely formed land agreements with the Europeans, but had also been baptized as a member of the Church of England.

Fairbrother allowed it to be known that ‘George Pattison’, in his dying breath, had not simply given his land to the Europeans, but that he had done so in perpetuity. He is supposed to have gasped out, ‘Remain here after I am gone – ake, ake, ake – forever’. Even the most fervent admirers of the Victorians take this story with a pinch of salt.

After the signing of the Treaty in the 1840s, the growth of population following the gold rush, the development of Waikuku Harbour into an industrial port, it was almost inevitable that our colonial forebears should wish to build a city. They climbed over the ridge beyond the site of present-day Pakenham Street to the vast plain which sits behind the harbour. Here, for five hundred years and more, the Tangata had pursued their watery lives, paddling in the wetlands, fishing, and gathering reeds which they used for clothing and artefacts.

When they became aware that the Malahi intended to build their...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Aftershocks
• Title
• Copyright
• A Note
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Acknowledgments
• Copyright Information