Nothing In Life Is Ever Enough

by Brian W. Aldiss


My life  has carried  strange echoes  of an  old play.  It was early one morning
towards the end of winter  when I first set foot  on that magical island -  that
magical island where I  loved before I knew  love's name. The sun,  rising late,
dazzled my eyes and  cast gaunt shadows towards  me. I walked through  a maze of
alternating sunliglit  and shade  as I  made my  way along  a path  among trees,
leading  up from  the little  stone harbour  to the  one unruined  house on  the
island, a house or castle perched  on an eminence, yet protected from  the north
winds by a slightly greater eminence which hunched its shoulder above the ragged
rooftops and towers of the house.

As I went, a sound rose above the splash of waves breaking against the shore.  A
few steps more and  then I halted, listening.  A young woman was  walking by the
house, singing, singing  to please herself.  And how it  pleased me! Her  figure
moved in and  out of shadow.  That was my  first sight of  Miranda, and my first
time of listening to her lovely voice.

A  strange  prickling of  the  skin attended  my  approach to  her.  Conflicting
premonitions filled my mind. Was I to encounter a strange enchantment, or was  I
in fact coming home?


In the final year of the nineteen-sixties, life was quite different from what it
is now. I dropped out of school and left my parents. I was what was later to  be
called a hippie. My  intention, however, was to  live my own life  by myself, as
far as that was possible. I thought I might become a poet.

My wanderings took me far from home. Eventually, I found myself in the north  of
the country, in an  area where there is  little habitation. There I  fell ill. A
man and wife who ran  a small restaurant looked after  me until I was well.  His
name was Ferdinand Robson, hers Roberta.

These two seemingly  good-natured people told  me they had  also escaped from  a
life with which they had no sympathy, the life of the industrial towns. However,
when I saw how  hard they worked to  keep their restaurant going,  and the small
guest house  that went  with it,  I thought  they had  delivered themselves into
another form of servitude.

Robson seemed to think as much.  His air of melancholy suggested it.  He advised
me to go to the coast, where there was an off-shore island. He suggested I might
get some casual work there.

Who lived on the island? I asked.

He answered abruptly: Only an author. Otherwise, no one.

He turned away with a black expression on his face.

I cannot think why this information, that look, so troubled me.

As I was putting together my few possessions to leave, Roberta came to my  room,
with her round face and her angry look. She said that her husband was upset;  he
owed me some explanation for his abrupt behaviour. I protested, but she  ignored
me. This is what she said, staring at me with her dark haunted eyes.

'Never gamble, young lad.  Not with your possessions.  Not with your money.  Not
with people. Not with your soul. You understand?'

My reply  was that  no, I  did not  understand. How  could you gamble with other
people, I asked.

'If  you  are  mad  enough,  you  can  gamble  with  their  lives.  There's   no
recklessness, no wickedness, like it. Can you comprehend that, lad?'

Although I muttered  that I did  comprehend, I comprehended  neither her meaning
nor the intensity with which she spoke.

After a moment's silence, she seemed  to control herself. When she spoke  again,
her manner was calmer.

'How you will fare on that island remains to be seen. You are young. Perhaps you
do not yet understand that when we  take one path through life, we must  abandon
others. Those other paths will never be  open to us again. Later, we may  regret
the path we chose, but it is  impossible to retrace our steps. To attempt  to do
so spells disaster.'

I was puzzled  by this statement.  Perhaps I truly  was, as she  said, too young
then to understand. I asked if she spoke of love.

'Not only love but many other  elements which comprise life.' She thought  for a
while, then  went on  impetuously, 'Ferdinand,  my husband,  was once  extremely
rich.  He made  his money  as a  speculator in  the City.  He was  reckless.  He
contracted a mistaken marriage, in  which his then wife bore  a son - a son  who
grew into a wicked deceitful boy. When Ferdinand and I met, he sought to  change
his  life and  his lifestyle.  His divorce  cost him  dear. His  business  deals
collapsed. He owned the island to which you are going.'

'I see,' I said.

'No, you don't see.' She turned away  from me, and leaned on the window  sill to
stare out at the empty  countryside. 'In the end, he  had to sell the island  to
buy this place - to  which we are now chained.  In truth, he gambled his  wealth
away, the imbecile. He has hopes that we can make enough money to buy back  what
he still believes is  his island. It is  beautiful - though whether  we would be
happy there is another question... He hopes we may live there before we are  too
old.'

'And your hopes, Mrs Robson?'

She stared hard at  me. I saw she  thought the gulf between  our experiences was
too great to bridge by any confidence. 'Never mind my hopes,' she said. 'Off you
go to yours.'

She patted my cheek.


When I arrived  in the early  morning on the  island, the eastern  sky was still
barred with red and gold cloud. Miranda  had been milking a goat. She carried  a
pail of milk. As  I approached, she stood  stock still, clutching the  pail. She
spoke little, hardly replying to my greeting, and led me by a back way into  the
kitchens. So I entered  Prosperity House - as  it was ambitiously called.  There
were  few signs  of prosperity  or modernity.  Among other  tenants, monks   had
occupied the castle in the seventeenth century, and had built on a small chapel,
now unused.

The girl -1 found it hard to judge  her age, but reckoned she was still a  child
led  me  to  her  father,  through corridors  where  most  of  the  windows were
shuttered; only at one  window was the sunshine  allowed to break in,  to spread
mystery rather than light throughout the  long corridor. At a far door,  Miranda
knocked timidly on its worn panels. A muffled voice bid us enter.

She pushed me in ahead of her.

I entered the sanctum sanctorum of Prosperity House, a vast dull room, the walls
of which, hung with  tapestries of various design,  made it seem vaster  and yet
stifling. In one  corner of this  room was a  large desk, at  which sat a  large
heavy man, bearded and past middle age. A stack of untidy paper lay before  him.
He  uttered no  greeting, but  sat and  regarded me  with a  remarkable lack  of
interest.

His daughter, likewise, wasted no time on courtesies, but went to a heavy fabric
and dragged it back to reveal a north-facing window. The light entering,  rather
than mitigating the suffocating darkness of the room, made the desk lamp seem to
burn more dimly.

Advancing to the desk, I announced myself,  saying I had come to work as  casual
labour on the island.

The large  man rose,  leaned over  the desk  and extended  a large hand, which I
shook rather tentatively. 'Eric Magistone,' he said, in a deep voice.

He contemplated me from under his eyebrows before saying that his daughter would
show me my duties. Then he slumped back in his chair.


Miranda seemed rather  perplexed about what  I should do.  "You could chop  some
wood for a start,' she said.

I  did as  I was  told. It  was strange  taking orders  from a  child, though  a
beautiful one, particularly since I was not long past childhood myself.

The house  had once  been a  castle, built  to defend  the coast  from marauding
nations, the  Danes in  particular. Its  previous owner,  Ferdinand Robson,  had
extended it, throwing out a wing and  a conservatory. A shutter, blown off in  a
violent storm some years ago, had shattered the glass of the conservatory  roof.
The  conservatory  was in  consequence  shut off,  given  over to  decay.  I was
installed in a room in the tower, where I slept.

Work was not arduous. Once a week,  a small boat came over from the  mainland to
deliver supplies.  On me  devolved the  business of  taking down  to the harbour
money in payment, and lugging the box of supplies back to the house. I also took
over the milking of the  goat, and searched for the  eggs the hens laid near  or
sometimes in the house.

I took to roving the island when not actively employed. To the south was a small
pool or corrie, in which I could  swim. I found many other delights. The  monks,
when the building had served as  a monastery, had planted orchards, which  still
survived. Later  owners had  attempted a  vegetable garden.  Here and  there, in
unexpected nooks, grew fruit bushes, as well as nut and fruit trees, their seeds
presumably  dropped by  birds, with  which the  island was  well-stocked;  birds
seemed  to  call  from every  tree.  As  well as  birds  of  flight, there  were
pheasants, partridges,  and some  peacocks, which  pierced the  night with their
cries. Wild cats also flourished, and rabbits by the score.

The island became my  delight. It was the  paradise I always hoped  to find, yet
never expected to come upon. It  was particularly rich in small wild  plants, of
which I learned the names from a  book in the library. I took delight  in naming
the poor man's  weather glass,  which came  into flower  in May,  the white dead
nettle,  with  its  heart-shaped leaves,  the  beautiful  and invasive  Japanese
knotweed,  beneath whose  tall bamboo-like  stems sheltered  lily-of-the-valley,
with its sweet  scent, the bush  vetch and greater  celandine, the pretty  white
bryony which  carries red  berries in  season. Many  more. Ferns  too, and  tall
daisies with small imitation suns at their hearts.

I came on a sheltered place where stood a ruinous hut, almost entirely hidden by
bramble. This I called  Paradise Gully. Here I  would lie for hours  on end when
not called upon  to work, reading  books I found  in the library,  old-fashioned
books: romances by Dumas and Jules Verne, novels by Thomas Hardy and Dostoevsky,
and the plays of Shakespeare - one  of which in particular took my fancy,  since
it was set on an island.

At the same time, I learned something about Eric Magistone from his daughter. He
had been born Derek Stone, of  modestly wealthy parents who, from an  early age,
had encouraged his love of learning. Although he went into the family  business,
his ambition was to become a writer. At the age of twenty-one, he published  his
first book, A Pain in the Necromancer. It was a comic novel which sold extremely
well. He followed it with more of the same, Getting it in the Necromancer.

And then the first novel was bought by Hollywood.

I protested when I learned this history, piece by piece, from Miranda. Could  it
be that  that grim  and solitary  man, who  rarely left  his study,  wrote comic
novels?

It was so - or had been so in his youth. But more than that. Eric Magistone  (by
this time his pen  name had become his  legal name) flew to  Hollywood, where he
wrote the screenplay of his novel.  Even more, the film was a  tremendous comedy
success. Even more, it spawned a series of comic magical adventures, for all  of
which Magistone was well-paid to  write the screenplays. He became  fashionable,
and  a favourite  with the  ladies. From  one of  those liaisons,  his  daughter
Miranda was born.

The event  changed his  way of  life. He  bought the  island, I  was told,  from
Ferdinand Robson,  whose financial  affairs were  in disarray,  and came to live
here with his mistress and their daughter. Life on the island, after the glitter
of Hollywood, did not  suit the mistress; one  fine morning, Magistone woke  and
found her gone, leaving  behind not only a  daughter but an ill-spelt  letter of
farewells and pathetic excuses.

'Is he still writing his comedies?' I asked Miranda.

She shook her pretty black curls. 'He is writing a huge book, very serious, very
long, very deep, which will explain everything in the world.' She stretched  out
her arms to show me how big everything was.

I was taken with this idea. There was much that needed explanation. Now I  could
understand why Magistone was  so stern and solitary;  he had undertaken a  grave
responsibility.

'Will he  explain about  the Moon?  Will he  explain why  water freezes? Will he
explain why we  see colours? Will  he speak about  the various seasons?  Will he
tell us why we die? Will he say why boys and girls are different?'

Such questions we discussed together, Miranda and I, in Paradise Gully, huddling
together when the spring days turned chill.

I had discovered that Miranda had never explored the island on which she  lived.
Indeed, she barely  went out of  the house, except  to visit the  goat shed. Her
father had  forbidden her  access to  the island,  on the  grounds that  unknown
dangers lurked there. She  was at first terrified,  but I clutched her  hand and
lured her on. To my  and her intense delight, I  was able to unfold for  her the
beauties of the island,  the patches of gorse,  the beds of heather,  the cherry
trees  in  flower, the  daffodils  that shook  their  heads in  the  breeze, the
primroses that  spread their  bright and  humble petals  nearly to  the southern
shore, all the pleasing and modest details of nature, and the flowers of summer,
as summer came in with its bumble bees and sweet smells.

I taught her  a skill I  had only recently  learned, of fishing  for fish in the
corrie. These captives we cooked over a wood fire we built in the Gully, to  eat
them by the light of the flames as evening closed upon us.

We were spontaneous together, this beloved girl and I. We kissed each other  out
of happiness, and with no other  thought. The fresh air changed her  countenance
from pale to ruddy, and she grew. She was as agile among the rocks as I. In  the
bay  on the  southern side  of the  island, we  trawled the  shallow water   for
shrimps, which we later boiled  in a can and ate.  No one supervised us. No  one
told us what to do or what not to do.

One evening, when we  lazed upon the little  beach, having dined on  shrimps and
crabs,  we took  off our  clothes and  swam in  the warm  sea. We  splashed  and
laughed. When we emerged, we became solemn, gazing, marvelling, at each  other's
body, made ruddy by the setting sun. I ventured my finger into her little crack,
above which a few dark hairs had  begun to sprout. She touched and then  held my
little winkle, which responded  readily to her grasp.  Then we kissed with  some
knowledge in the kisses. My tongue found the sweet ribbed roof of her mouth.

It would be too easy to  say that it was then we  had fallen in love. We had  no
word for how  we felt about  each other. And  I believe that  I had always loved
her, since I had first come upon her, standing in shadow with the pail of goat's
milk held protectively in front of her.

We were then always in each other's company, and made love frequently, as  fancy
took us. I taught her how to catch rabbits and skin them, and how to tame a cat,
which we called Abigail.  Abigail, fed regularly on  a diet of fish  and rabbit,
followed us everywhere like a dog, but  would not enter the house. At the  door,
it arched its back and hissed in fright.

These were the days and weeks, even months, of our happiness. Miranda could read
after a fashion.  I often read  to her, or  we read together.  We cried together
over Alain-Fournier's  lovely book:  for we  well understood  that our happiness
existed perilously in  a world of  misfortune and sorrow.  Sun or Moon,  we were
together, interrupted only by occasional demands from her overbearing father.

In particular,  I taught  her to  appreciate the  music of  Shakespeare's island
story, on which there lives another Miranda. We likened me to a sort of  Caliban
and her  father to  a sort  of Prospero,  while our  island was, of course, that
magical island in the still-vexed Bermoothes.

Did time pass? I suppose it did.  The Lord of the Island continued to  write his
great treatise on the improvement of mankind, while his daughter and I continued
to live our lives as  free spirits, enjoying - no,  no, being part of -  nature.
Living our magical lives on the island.


There came the time when the silence of our nights was broken. A noise awoke me.
I lay in Miranda's arms - for now we would not be separated even by sleep -  and
disentangled myself. I  went to the  window and stared  out. The rain  which had
fallen earlier had blown away elsewhere. I looked down from my tower window upon
the Moon reflected in a puddle on a worn flagstone.

Its pure image was broken by tramping feet.

Hammering sounded at a door far below. Miranda jumped up on the bed in a fright.
I kissed the  scanty patch of  damp hair on  her mound of  Venus, trying to calm
her. But she could  only repeat in a  frenzy, 'Oh God, it  is the morning of  my
thirteenth birthday! The morning of my thirteenth birthday!'

Dressing hurriedly, I descended the winding stair. Already a pre-dawn light  was
fading vague shapes back into the world. On the ground floor, lights flashed  on
and off. Eric Magistone  stood there, immobile as  a statue, throwing his  giant
shadow on the  wall. Near him,  pacing fretfully, were  two rough men  in reefer
jackets, swinging torches and muttering to each other in tones of complaint. The
great door stood wide to the outside world, letting in its chill breath.

'Fetch down my daughter,' said Magistone, on seeing me. 'These men are here  for
her.'

'Why? What has she done?'

'Fetch down my daughter, I tell you, boy!' This order delivered in a roar. I ran
to obey.

On the upper landing  I met her, dressed,  her hair still uncombed,  clutching a
small canvas bag. In the half  light, her face was pallid, even  ghostly. Though
she shed no tear, her expression was one of extreme anguish.

In a choking voice, she said, 'We must part for ever, my dearest love.'

Downstairs, the brutish  father kissed her  before handing her  over to the  two
men. 'Come on, miss,' one said. 'The tide is running.'

Then, with  a backward  glance towards  me, she  was gone  from the  house, gone
between the two men.

When I made to follow, Magistone grasped my arm. 'Whatever you two have been  up
to, you don't follow. She's gone from us now, curse it. Curse my folly.'

Only slowly  did I  come to  understand that  Miranda was  the victim of complex
history. At one time, Magistone and Robson had been friends. They were  gambling
men. They lived together when Magistone was back from California, and shared the
woman whom Roberta Robson had  described as Ferdinand's first wife.  Roberta had
told me lies, as, it seemed, they all did, profound adult lies. The son born  to
this woman had been,  not Robson's but Magistone's.  Nor had he been  wicked and
deceitful, as Roberta had claimed. With  irony, he too was called Ferdinand.  He
was beaten and abused by the two men.

At last they came to a falling out. Eventually, financial ruin meant that Robson
had had to  give the island  to Magistone, now  his enemy, in  order to pay  his
debts. He had,  however, extracted from  Magistone one vital  condition: namely,
that Magistone would hand over his daughter Miranda on her thirteenth  birthday,
to be married to his (as he claimed) unfortunate son Ferdinand the Second.

I had not met this younger Ferdinand  during my brief stay with the Robsons.  He
was away, working in the nearest big town.

It could be said that Magistone  acted honourably in fulfilling his side  of the
bargain and handing over his daughter. Yet he did not consider what misery  this
pact would cause her. What he undoubtedly did consider, relishing its irony, was
that the marriage would be incestuous, with his daughter marrying his son.

Or was that also a lie? I could not determine that as, night after night,  until
summer rotted away into autumn, I was forced to attend on Magistone, to  provide
him  with  some  kind of  company,  as  he talked  while  drinking  himself into
oblivion.

But I too had my secret. On that day when the men had taken Miranda to her fate,
I had finally broken free of Magistone and had run down to the water's edge - in
time to see Miranda - my Miranda!  - carried away across the morning waves  in a
speedy boat.

That was the last I ever saw of her. Something inside me was shattered for ever.
From a youth I became old. Without  her fresh and pure body, my own  body seemed
to decay. How terrible is the learning of wisdom!

With my  mainspring broken,  I had  no thought  of leaving  the island where our
happiness had been lived  out. By day, the  sullen sodden hulk of  Magistone - I
glimpsed him through  the window of  his study -  sat in the  gloom, writing his
unending, awful book. While I - I lay in Paradise Gully, rewriting Shakespeare's
masterpiece to accommodate my grief.

Shakespeare had made a great mistake. Shakespeare had not understood. I say this
of the great dramatist,  and perhaps thereby invite  scorn. But he who  had said
'Ripeness is all'  forgot his own  words. Now I  knew how his  drama should have
ended.


It is Caliban's story. The company of men who have been shipwrecked on the  isle
proceed to the shore, among them Ferdinand, Prince of Naples. Prospero has burnt
his enormous impossible book and is also to leave the island. He takes with  him
his daughter Miranda, who  must marry the foppish  Ferdinand. She has no  say in
the matter. Marriage is what her father has decided upon.

They all gather on the shore, while  sailors make ready the boat that will  take
them out to the galleon anchored in  the bay. Soon Caliban will be alone  on the
island that is rightfully his.

And then - this the  Bard did not foresee -  Miranda slips her little hand  from
Ferdinand's and runs! Runs for her life!  Hides in a gully in a great  spread of
knotweed. The soldiers search for her. But night comes on, the concealing night.
Besides,  the  ocean  tide  turns  against  them.  All  have  to  leave, without
Ferdinand's future bride.

When it is entirely dark, save for the stars overhead, and she is sure that  all
have sailed away, then  Miranda comes from her  hiding place. She calls  through
the oak grove for her Caliban, that  nature boy who made her girlhood rich,  who
taught her all  the secret pleasures  of the island,  the fresh springs  wherein
they  bathed  together  naked,  the rabbit  warrens,  the  mushrooms  that, when
nibbled, turned their world into a golden place.

He came to her, a burly figure wrapped in darkness, but reassuring, and took her
to his cave. There they lived, free of all constraint.

Caliban sings a song to his lovely prize.

	The nightingales are singing in
	    The orchards of our mothers,
	While wounds that plagued us long ago
	    Mayhap fester on others.

	Summer cozens our repose.
	How we live here no one knows!
	Sea nymphs hourly plight our troth
	Where the gladsome waves do froth.
	    Ding dong! Ding dong bell!


Miranda  bore  him  children.  Thus did  the  words  that  Shakespeare put  into
Caliban's  mouth come  true; for  when Prospero  accuses Caliban  of seeking  to
violate the honour of his daughter, Caliban laughs and says, 'Thou didst prevent
me - I had  peopled else the isle  with Calibans'. Now the  act is accomplished,
with mutual consent and entire rapture.

The little ones played among the peaceful  dells of the isle, or sported in  the
sea. Several swam before  they could walk. This  was the golden age  for Miranda
and Caliban,  there on  the island  where both  had spent  their early days, and
found each other.

So ten years passed. Until one day, Prince Ferdinand returned. All those  years,
passed with whorish women, had not dimmed his desire for Miranda. He had  become
rich upon inheriting the crown of  Naples. He dressed well. With hard  exercise,
he had kept a trim figure. Only his face was now mapped with lines that told his
youth was almost spent.

So on his fortieth  birthday he came armed  with jewels to regain  his old love,
and fulfil an old dream.

He and she stand  facing one another. Miranda  holds her latest daughter  by the
hand and remains defiant, saying nothing.

Ferdinand is quite discomfited. Reality has met his dream. She is no longer  the
slender maiden whose image has remained frozen in his mind throughout the years.

'Miranda, think you that your brow  is still unwrinkled? Your bulky limbs  still
virginal and slim? Your eye still clear with innocence? Your sweet  enchantments
now  are faded,  much as  the baseless  fabric of  a dream  is torn  by  waking.
Sleeping  with renegades  hardly improves  your shape.  Why should  you have  my
gifts?'

To which Miranda meekly makes response.

'Sir, look at me, and feast your  eyes upon fulfilment! I am a wife  whose whole
experience derides that thing which you affect to prize - my chastity! Eros  has
a gentler touch  than Time, more  kisses to the  minute. I've been  fatted up by
love -  you boast  a deficit  of flesh.  What eats  you, royal Naples prince, so
profligate and thin? Desire, ambition, hate? I see the blow-fly in your glance.'

He brings up an arm to hide his face.

In a while, he asks her brokenly why she left him, that day when they were about
to sail to Naples, to be wed in a cathedral and live in a palace. The misery  of
that day still haunts him.

Her answer is mild,  but definite. 'I am  not ceremony's bride who  was informal
nature's child.'

She goes on to tell him that at first she had admired him, with his swagger airs
and clothes, his flattery. She would be Queen of Naples and she'd wear - oh, she
forgets quite what. But when she grew to know him better, she saw how robes  and
rings and thrones were pageants, mere material things. And in that moment on the
shore, about to leave the isle, she saw that she was taking a wrong path through
life.

She thought of Caliban...

For  he it  was, despised  and beaten,  who was  her own  true friend,   without
pretence. He it was taught her to laugh,  and play a flute. He tamed a hare  for
her, amused her by turning cartwheels. He named for her the natural treasures of
the isle, the fresh springs where they bathed together nude, the rabbit warrens,
mushrooms that, when nibbled, quite transformed their world.

'And what's more,  foraged in my  crack such joyous  feelings I had  never known
before. Before sex had a name we lay together - not once but countless times. So
in that moment of decision, I knew I did not need your promises. The island held
my happiness, not Naples.'

In misery, Ferdinand  flings his presents  down. He turns  and runs back  to the
beach. Miranda and  Caliban follow, linking  hands, to watch  him go. He  climbs
into his boat and starts to row away.

Then he stows the oars and stands  up recklessly, to call in a choked  voice, 'I
loved you once, Miranda...'

And Caliban answers, in his pride, 'Then that must be enough.'

His cry returns, now faint beneath the splashing of the waves, to haunt us  till
our dying day, 'Nothing in life is ever enough...'

The gleaming distance bears his boat away.


But that is just what I wrote. And what I lived is quite another thing.

