' CAN'T you tell me, Mr. Lumley, just what it is that you don't likc
about the rooms?'
There was no mistaking the injured truculence in the landlady's
voice, nor her expression of superhuman patience about to snap
at last. Charles very nearly groaned aloud. Must he explain, point
by point, why he hated living there? Her husband's cough in the
moming, the way the dog barked every time he went in or out, the
greasy mats in the hall? Obviously it was impossible. Why could
she not have the grace to accept the polite lie he had toId her?
In any case he was bound to stick to it. He looked into her beady,
accusing eyes and said as pleasantly as he could, 'Really, Mrs.
Smythe, I don't know what's given you the idea that I don't like
the rooms. I've always said how comfortable they were. But I
told you the other day, I really need something a little nearer my
work.'
' And where do you work? I've asked you that two or three times,
Mr. Lumley, but you've never gven me any answer.'
'What the hell has it got to do with you where I work?' he
would have liked to say. But after all he supposed it was, to some
extent, a question she had the right to ask. He had pusled her
from the begnning, he knew that; neither in speech nor dress
resembling the dapper young clerks and elementary-school
teachers to whom she was accustomed to let rooms. And yet it
had been out of the question to say, bluntly: 'I have just come
down from the University with a mediocre degree in History, I
have no job and no prospects, and I am living on flfty pounds I
happen to have left in the bank, while I consider my next move.'
No! he shuddered, as he had often shuddered, at the thought of
the demoniac eagerness with which she would have seized on him
and his problems ; the advertisements of ' Situations Vacant' she
would have found for him in the paper, the enquiries she would
have 'felt obliged' to make into the state of his finances. 'I shall
have to ask you to pay in advance, Mr. Lumley. Your money
won't llast for ever, you know.' He could hear her saying it, her
reedy voice full of suspicion.
'I don't understand it. You seem to have some objection to
telling me what you do for a living. It's not as if I was an inquisi-
tive person, not at all.'
He had been a damned fool not to think up something in
readiness for this situation. What could he be? A teacher? But
what blasted schools were there in Stotwell? He ought to have
made a note of one, somewhere about flve miles away so as to
support his orignal untruth. Well, what did he know about
Stotwell? There was a greyhound racing track. Could he be
employed there? Working the totalisator perhaps. He realized
with a start that he had never even seen a totalisator. Besides, he
had been at home in the evenings too often. Articled to a solicitor?
But she would ask him what solicitor, and where his office was;
and it would be useless to invent one, for her suspicions were
violently aroused and she would check his story with passionate
thoroughness. He must speak. He forced his tongue into action,
trusting that it would say something of its own accord, without
any help from him.
'Well, it's like this, Mrs. Smythe. You've heard of---of
Jehovah's Witnesses ? '
Her head swivelled round. She was trying to keep her startled
eyes on his.
'You don't mean to say you're one of them?'
'Well, not exactly one of <1them.>1 I mean, not <1one>1 of them.'
' Mr. Lumley. <1What do you do ?'>1
' I'm a private detective.'
The words jumped out of their own accord. This was it.
' Private detective? Jehovah's Witnesses? Just whatever do you
mean? And you'd better tell me, young man, you'd better tell me.
I've never had any lodger here but what I've known he was
respectable, yes, and in a steady job too, and here you come and
won't tell me what it is you do and now you come out with all
2
this, a detective, a man that has to mix with criminals, and
bringng them to my house before long I shouldn't wonder, that
is tF it's true what you're saying.'
Charles dragged out a packet of cheap cigarettes. 'Just a
minute,' he mumbled. ' Left matches in bedroom.' ' Never mind
matches now,' she shrilled, but he dashed out, slamming the door
behind him, and pounded up the stairs to his bedroom. On
reaching it his first impulse was to hide under the bed, but he
knew it was useless. He must steel himself. Lighting his cigarette,
he took a gulp of the acrid smoke and tumed to face the landlady
as she ran into the room. Then, suddenly, his mind cleared. She
had asked for an explanation, and he would gve her one. Before
she could speak he had launched into a long and circumstantial
narrative: how he was employed by the Central Office of the
Jehovah's Witnesses to keep his eye on one of the four regonal
treasurers, a Blackwall man, who was accused of bringng dis-
credit on the movement in various ways which---his voice dropped
to a confidential undertone---she would forgve him if he did not
specify. He invented a name for the agency in which he was a
junior partner. Did she remember the Evans case, the one that
got so much space in the <1News of the World?>1 But then, she did
not read the <1News of the World,>1 of course, she would not have
seen it: anyway, he, Charles, had been responsible for bringng
that man to justice. He talked on and on, thoroughly bored but
surprisingy calm. And now, to come back to his orignal point,
the suspected man had moved into a small hotel in the town (as
she opened her mouth to ask 'What hotel?' he forestalled her
by asking, gently, if she would mind not forcing him to reveal
its name) and he felt it to be his duty to move into the same
hotel.
'And so, you see, Mrs. Smythe, when I said that I needed to
move so as to be nearer my work, it was,' he smiled gravely, ' very
literally tme.' And for the flrst time in fifty-six years Mrs. Smythe
was speechless. She had taken in perhaps a third of his involved
narrative, and her mind was a swirling chaos. If she had one desire
in the world, it was to see the last of Charles Lumley. His point
was gained.
Suitcase in hand, Charles stumbled next moming over the
geasy hall mat for the last time, and lurched out into the July
sunshine. Lying awake in the night, he had dwelt lovingly on the
kick he would plant, scientifically and deliberately, in the dog's
mouth as it yelped at him; but to-day, for the first time since he
had entered the house, the animal was somewhere else, and his
exit was silent.
He was aware of Mrs. Smythe's gaze, half suspicious and half
impressed, from behind the yellowed lace curtains of the front
room, and tried to assume a swagger as he moved away down
the street. Yet it was clear to him that his three weeks at Stotwell
had been so much wasted time; twenty-one aimless momings,
stupefied aftemoons, and desperate evenings, during which his
thoughts had obstinately refused to be clarified. How often, in the
tumultuous muddle of his last year at the University, he had
congratulated himself on having found a way out of the familiar
<1impasse;>1 when the insistent question of where, after the few
fleeting months were over, he was to fimd a living wage had
intmded itself, he had shrugged it aside, promising himself that
he would deal with that and all his other problems in a few weeks
of quiet and solitude. ' Sorry,' he would say in answer to questions
about his future, 'but I'm not making major decisions just now.
One thing at a time, you know. At the moment I'm working for
an examination---and,' he would add pompously, 'trying to live
like a normal human being at the same time. When all this comes
to an end, I'll tum my attention to the problem of eaming a living,
without tring to ia-olate it from all the other big problems.' It had
all been very comforting. He had even held a modest ceremony at
his lodgngs, at which, in the presence of a few friends, he had
decided on the town to which he should retire for his all-impor-
tant spell of concentration. Asking them to write down the
names of a dozen or so towns on a sheet of paper, avoiding the
big cities where lodgings might be more expensive, he had then,
with a fine air of casualness, stuck a pin into the list at random.
'I'm quite indifferent,' he had said, loftily; 'a country village or
an industrial town---my gaze will be directed inwards.' By a ludi-
crous coincidence his first jab with the pin had landed on the
name of the one town in England that was useless for his purpose,
4
the town where he was bom and bred and where his parents lived;
it had been written down in all innocence by one of his guests. The
second jab had landed on the extreme edge of the paper, and was
voted inconclusive, but the third had unequivocally indicated
Stotwell. Full of hope, he had scurried across country to this
dingy huddle of streets and factories, only to spend his precious
weeks in nail-biting indecision. Nothing had been settled, not
even the obvious and simple question of a trade, certainly not the
deeper and more personal problems which he had shelved for
years on the promise of this tranquil interlude.
Why wasthis? Whyhad he failed? he asked himself as he dragged
the heavy suitcase down the main street towards the station. The
answer, like everything else, was fragmentary : partly because the
University had, by its three years' random and shapeless cram-
ming, unfitted his mind for serious thinking; partly because of
the continued naggng of his circumstances (' Go out this moming
or she'll <1know>1 you haven't a job---come to a decision to-day
before you waste any more time---look at the papers to see what
sort of jobs are offered'), and partly for the blunt, simple reason
that his problems did not really admit of any solution. At least,
he comforted himself, he had remained stationary ; if he had been
surrounded by the well-meant fatuity of those who had always
sought to 'guide' him, there was no telling what disastrous steps
might already have been taken. As it was, his position was
precisely the same as it had been before his attempt to face the
problems that hemmed him about; he had not yet realized, what
circumstances were soon to teach him, that his predicament was
not one that could be improved by thinking.
It was inevitable, then, that a sense of defeat should bow
Charles's shoulders and llne his forehead as he paid out his last
pound note for a ticket to the town where his parents, relatives,
and acquaintances were waiting to ask where he had been. If it
were not for Sheila, hethought grimly as he waited for the few
shillings' change that now represented his total resources, he'd
hold out somehow, sleeping on park benches, selling newspapers
5
for a living. But he had to see her, even though he had nothing to
bring her that would make sense of his silence, nothing that
would bring their marriage nearer or make it more attractive.
What a mess it all was! Charles sighed as he stuffed the ticket into
his waistcoat pocket and gathered up the change.
The train drew in, and he clambered indifferently into the
compartment that was facing him as it stopped, heaved his suit-
case on to the rack and slumped into a comer seat. With the
exaggerated reserve implanted in him by his upbringng he
studiously averted his eyes from the other two occupants of the
compartment, seeing them only as blurred forms, a middle-aged
couple without distinctive features. It was only when the train had
left the station and the broad fields of a Midland landscape were
streaming past the windows that he became aware that they were
studying him, timidly, but with an intense interest that was
obviously on the point of forcing them to break their silence. He
looked up and met their gaze. Yes! Where had he seen them
before ?
'It's Mr. Lumley, isn't it?' said the man at last.
'That's my name,' Charles assented cautiously, mumbling on a
rapid undertone, 'not sure where had the pleasure remember
face of course, let me see.'
The woman, who clearly did not share in the embarrassment,
leaned forward with an encouraging smile.
'We're George Hutchins's mother and dad,' she volun-
teered kindly. 'We met you when we came up to see him at the
College.'
At once Charles remembered a scene which he would gladly
have forgotten. George Hutchins, an unpleasantly dogged and
humourless young man, had lived on the same staircase and had
indulged a taste for lecturing Charles on the virtues of hard work.
'No system,' he would say contemptuously, looking round at
Charles's bookcase, 'just a random collection of texts, no real
system. You're just playing at it. Now I can't afford to play at it.
I go over each little plot of the subject carefully. Preliminary
survey, then a closer reading, and then, three months later,
revision. And the whole thing's tied up. That's how these men
like Lockwood have got where they are, and I'm going after
6
them.' Lockwood was a dreary whey-faced tutor of the college
for whom Hutchins had a deep and sincere admiration, and who
encouraged him along the road to complacent prigdom. After one
of these lectures, Charles would sit staring into the fire, inert and
crumpled ; the half-fantastic, half-shrewd gleams and pin-points of
intuition which serwed him as a substitute for intellectual method
damped and Gling out in the clammy atmosphere of Hutchins's
bmtal efficiency.
'I s'pose you've heard all about George's success,' said Mr.
Hutchins; his voice was bright and confident, but with a curious
undertone of bewilderment and pathos. ' He's got a Fellowship,'
he added, using the strange word in inverted commas, grafting it
like some strange twig on to the stunted tmnk of his artisan's
vocabulary.
For the next few minutes the conversation arranged itself on
purely mechanical lines ; a steady flow of ' deserve congratulation
worked hard for it now got it' <1cliches>1 from Charles, and an
answering dribble of 'Well it's what he's always wanted not that
it hasn't been a struggle' from the withered couple opposite.
Behind the mask Charles was genuinely sorry for them; it was so
obvious that they were even more bewildered than on the day,
two years ago, when he had walked into Hutchins's room with a
request for the loan of a toasting-fork, and found the three sitting
dumbly and stifly together. Hutchins has been so abjectly and
obviously ashamed of his parents' working-class appearance and
manner that he had tried to avoid introducing them, evidently in
the hope that Charles would not realize the relationship. But the
family likeness had proclaimed itself, and Charles had lingered,
chatting for a few minutes, partly out of a malicious pleasure at
Hutchins's discomfiture, and partly out of a genuine desire to
comfort these decent and kindly people, to show them that if
their son was an ungainly snob there were others who were not,
and to try to give them a few pleasant minutes in what was so
clearly a disastrous visit. They had never appeared again, and
Hutchins had never mentioned them. Charles, with no other
intention than to be pleasant, had once asked him if his parents
were keeping well, but the scowl he had received in answer had
made it clear that Hutchins had regarded the question as a simple
7
insult. The raw cult of suocess by which he lived could allow of no
tolerance of the couple who had spawned him; they were neither
prosperous nor celebrated, their Birmingham speech exposed in
an instant the unreality of his own diction (an unbelievably exact
reproduction of Lockwood's donnish snivelling), and, in short,
his resentment of them could go no farther. Amid all the prob-
lems that beset him, Charles found time to rejoice that he was not
as Hutchins was, that his soul, stretched as it was on the rack of
his ludicrous predicament, was alive. He was not given to quoting,
but a favourite fragment swam into his head, and he muttered, 'I
am one of those who have created, even if it be but a world of
agony.' 'Beg pardon?' said Mr. Hutchins, surprised, leaning
fomard. ' Just nothing, just nothing,' Charles replied; he wished
to sound airy and nonchalant, but the words rang out brassily
and the effect was one of impertinence. In despair he stood up,
dragged his case down from the rack, gabbled 'Must get ready
getting out next station,' and fled down the corridor in search of
a fresh compartment. The only one that appeared to have a
vacant seat was occupied by four blue-chinned men banging down
cards on a suitcase, who looked up at him with such hostility that
he retreated again, and, fearing to stand in the corridor lest
Mr. or Mrs. Hutchins should come out and see him, spent the
forty minutes that remained of his journey cowering in the
lavatory.
Despite this discouraging start to the day, by half-past four that
aftemoon Charles had negotiated a surprising number of
obstacles. Arriving at his destination, he had left his suitcase at
the station cloak-room, and, determined to put off his official
home-coming until it was forced on him, walked rapidly the
hundred yards from the station to the long-distance 'bus depot,
to wait for a coach to the village five miles away where Sheila
and her parents lived. The need to see her, which he had fiercely
repressed for months, flared up in his body and brain as the 'bus
crawled through the leaf-green lanes; it was so much what he
needed---a retum, a recognition, a point of rest, which yet
8
involved no recriminations and no immediate practical decision.
But this peace was still to be won, and the violence of his inner
tension caugTt and shook him fiercely as he walked up the garden
path.
But the situation, once again, was due to collapse into anti-
climax. In answer to his unnecessarily firm and prolonged ring at
the bell, the front door was opened by a plump, grave man of
about thirty-five. It was Robert Tharkles, the husband of Sheila's
elder sister Edith. His expression of gravity deepened into positive
melancholy, tinged with irritation, at the sight of Charles. This
fool again! And the fool had still not smartened himself up!
When was he going to smarten himself up?
'Sheila isn't here,' he said without waiting for Charles to say
anything, and without any greeting.
' Mind if I come in all the same? Come some distance,' muttered
Charles.
'There's only Edith and me here,' said Robert, as if warning
Charles that by coming in he was exposing himself to an
unpleasant ordeal; which was true.
Without answering, Charles levered himself past Robert and
went into the hall. Edith came out of the kitchen and confronted
him. ' Sheila isn't here,' she said. ' Know,' said Charles, speaking
too quickly to be fully intelligble. ' Robert told me. Mind if come
in perhaps cup of tea? Or when Sheila be back wanted to sec her
if I could.'
Llnder their patronising and hostile stares he pulled himself to-
gether, walked into the kitchen, and sat down on a chair.
This was typical of all the interwiews Charles had ever had with
Robert and Edith. It was not because he was unsuccessful that
they objected to him; lack of success, in their eyes, was not a
punishable offence; one simply left such people alone. What
annoyed them was that he did not even seem to be trying. Though
they could not have put it into words, their objection to him was
that he did not wear a uniform. If he had wom the uniform of a
prosperous middle-class tradesman, like Robert, they would have
approved of him. If, on the other hand, he had seriously adopted
the chic disorder of the Chelsea Bohemian, they would at least
have understood what he was at. In their world, it was everyone's
9
flrst duty to wear a uniform that announced his status, his calling
and his ambitions: from the navwy's thick boots and shirtsleeves
to the professor's tweeds, the conventions of clothing saw to it
that everyone wore his identity card where it could be seen. But
Charles seemed not to rea~e the sacred duty of dressing the part.
Even as an undergraduate he had not wom corduroys or coloured
shirts. He had not even smoked a pipe. He had appeared instead
in non-committal lounge suits which were still not the lounge
suits of a business man, and heavy shoes which were still not the
sophisticated heawy shoes of the fashionable outdoor man. More-
over, all his tentative efforts to ingratiate himself with them had
been ill-judged. He had suggested to Robert, the first time they
met, that they might slip out for a drink before lunch. Robert
never slipped out for drinks, preferring to open half-pint bottles
of gassy beer which he took solemnly from a mahogany cabinet.
When he had helped Edith with the washing up on the maid's day
out, she had so fiercely concentrated on the probability of his
breaking something that in the end he had dropped and smashed
an irreplaceable gravy-boat. When Robert, playing up to his
position as the steady, responsible husband of the elder sister, had
asked this candidate for the hand of the younger sister, what he
intended to Do, and what his prospects were, Charles had respon-
ded in the fashion of the university with evasive and facetious
answers. He did not fit into their world or speak their language,
and after a perfunctory attempt to fit him into their prim, grey
jigsaw puzle they had disliked and rejected him; without, how-
ever, leaving him alone. As they stood and looked at him Charles
realized that he would have to accept, as the price of his cup of
tea, another lump of advice; as hard to swallow, and as useless to
the system, as the cotton wool it so much resembled.
It was Edith who began the offensive, fixing her absurdly small
eyes on him as she stood squarely beside the sink, a Woman on
her Own Ground, in her hideous dress and splashed apron.
'I suppose you wanted to speak to Father,' (thank Heaven at
least she did not refer to the yellowed scarecrow as 'Daddy')
'now that you've taken your degree you'll be wanting to put
everything into a bit better order, I suppose.' (An oblique, but not
too oblique, reference to his haphazard approach to life.) 'He's
10
been wondering when you'd show up.' (Implying that he had been
skulking out of the way of his responsibilities).
Charles foolishly let himself be hooked. 'I don't know that I
wanted to see your father exactly,' he said. ' I mean, there's nothing
immediately---er---'
He realized that he had been trapped. His last half-dozen words
would take so little twisting into a weapon against him Te had
'even gone so far as to say', 'seemed unaware of', etc.). Edith's
mouth had opened to yelp out the prepared condemnation, when
Robert unexpectedly cut in.
'I met your parents the other day. We had a few minutes' chat
about things in general. I must say'---his tone became firm and
brisk, the executive with a grasp of essentials---' I think you ought
to realize there's a pretty widespread dissatisfaction with the way
you're going on. for one thing the way you just disappeared
after taking your finals. Your father told me you hadn't even
gven them your address. They had absolutely no means
of getting in touch with you. I must say I think that's pretty
shabby.'
Charles had indeed made use of the obvious and only method
of keeping his parents from surging into his life, shaking it up,
wrenching it to pieces, and obscuring with a fog of emotion
everything that he was trying to study under his laboriously con-
structed microscope of detachment. But of course there was no
answer to this booby's conviction that a refusal to wallow, at
every crisis, in the emotional midden that his parents had spent
twenty-two years in digging, was ' shabby'. A suffocating sense of
utter inabiIity to communicate, as in those nightmares in which
the dreamer sees himself put away for lunacy, had already begun
to drench his mind.
The voices of Robert and Edith splashed on and on. Charles
tried to be oblivious of them, but the smug phrases, the pert half-
truths, the bland brutalities, ripped down his defences. It was
finally a remark of Edith's that brought him to his feet in a
sudden rush of anger.
'You never seem to want to repay any of the people who've
tried to help you.'
In a swirl of resentment Charles saw the faces of those who had
11
I0
'tried to help him' : and behind the faces flickered a radiance, the
colour of dawn on snow'capped hills, that might (he suddenly
knew) have been in his life if he had been left alone to makeit
without 'guidance': if all the people who had cloaked their
possessive fumbling under the words 'trying to help you' had
been, by a miracle, persuaded to leave him in peace. And now
she spoke, once again, of repayment!
On his feet, gripping the back of his chair, Charles sought for a
quick, devastating reply : a few words so swift and bitter that they
would scorch themselves into Edith's mind and live with her,
waking and sleeping, till she died.
It was no use, of course. Speech would never work with these
people. Indeed, it was inconceivable that anything could be got
across to them by means of language, unless one overpowered
them and left them gagged and bound in the presence of a gramo-
phone record endlessly repeating a short, concise statement. It
would have gven him pleasure to begn the composition, there
and then, of such a statement; to have outlined in a few simple
sentences the nature of the crime against humanity that they and
their kind were committing by the mere fact of their existence.
'Your shaft seems to have gone home, Edith,' said her husband.
'Our friend doesn't quite know how to answer you. It's reduced
him to silence.'
Charles focused with sudden clarity on Robert. All at once it
seemed to him that the stiff brown moustache which he wore to
gve dignity to his face was curiously non-human. It looked as if
it had been clipped from the face of an Airedale.
'I wasn't really thinking about what Edith had said,' he replied
half apologetically. ' I was just wondering why no one's ever found
it worth while to cut off that silly moustache of yours and use it
for one of those brushes you see hanging out of windows next to
the waste pipe.'
He spoke quietly and courteously ; nevertheless they realized,
after a short pause in which their minds groped for the meaning
of his words, that he was being definitely insulting. Edith's face
seemed to swell up to twice its size, her eyes bulged and she began
a loud and unsteady tirade, quavering with hysteria but heavy
with menace. Robert, on the other hand, had no difficulty in
12
selecting the basic attitude proper for him to adopt. His mouth
tightened, he squared his shoulders, and he moved forward,
lightly and yet decisively, like Ronald Colman. When his crisp
and well-timed 'That's enough of that sort of talk' had failed to
penetrate to Charles's consciousness, and Edith's cackle had
begun to take on a distinct flavour of tears, Ronald Colman
disappeared, and in his place stood Stewart Ciranger, dangerous,
alert, powerful. He grasped Charles by the lapel of his jacket. For
an instant surprise gripped Charles and held him motionless. How
quickly, how fatally, the situation had developed ! So now, finally,
he had put himself in the wrong. 'Quite abusive. In fact Robert
had to put him out. Impossible to have him in the house again.'
Robert's pouchy, inane face was thrust aggressively into his.
Hell! They could have it if they wanted it. With a sudden twist
he broke free, lunged across to the sink and snatched up the
washing-up bowl. Edith had just finished washing up when he
arrived, and for some reason she had not thrown the water away.
Hah of the scummy grey flood poured over Charles himself as he
dragged the bowl wildly out of the sink, but the other half cas-
caded gloriously as, with a tremendous sense of release, he swung
it round. Almost simultaneously three sounds filled the kitchen---
the water's gulping splash, Edith's loud squealing, and the clatter
of the empty bowl landing in a comer. It had hardly landed
before Charles clawed open the back door and rushed out. A
backward glance showed him Edith's face framed in wisps of wet
hair, and Robert trying to blink the soap from his eyes.
As the gate clicked shut behind him, and he stumbled forward
into the road, Charles suddenly realized the truth about what had
happened. It was not Robert and Edith he had quarrelled with:
it was Sheila. He had loved her with a passive persistence ever
since the burning, spinning evening, when he was seventeen, that
had taught him what love was, and she had entered his character
and become its core. After a reasonable period of vacillation, she
had agreed to marry him when this should be possible, and the
prospect had been the foundation of his life in thought and
action. Now, in the dusky street, his own footsteps beat into his
l3
- Moodily the landlord pushed the full glass towards Charles,
and swept his shilling into the till.
' Contracts, that's how he does it,' said the red-faced man. ' Does
it all by contracts. Goes to some big place, a block of office
buildings or a hoe-tel, and gets a contract to clean their windows
regular. Then he just sends the bill in to 'em every three months.'
'Bill!' the landlord burst out passionately. 'When he was
working for me you couldn't tmst him to pick up sixpence for half
a pint of mild. When they heard it was one of our busy nights and
he was behind the bar, we'd get all the riff-raff of the place in here,
just because they knew he couldn't add up. They'd order five
drinks and pay him for three. But now he's working for <1himself,'>1
he emphasized the word in tones of agonized loathing, ' he knows
enough to send in a regular bill. And with no mistakes in it
neither.'
'I didn't say that,' said the red-faced man. 'I expect he over-
charges 'em most of the time.' He laughed delightedly at his own
polished repartee.
Charles set down his empty gass and made for the urinal. When
he got back the topic had been changed; it was evident that the
landlord had been no more than mildly interested in the incom-
petent who had grown rich. What seemed like apoplectic bad
temper was merely the conversational style that made him a
'character': no doubt it was worth a thousand a year to the
brewery that employed him. ' Same again?' he shouted angrily
as Charles walked up to the bar. 'No, a whisky, please,' Charles
replied, for he wanted more than anything in the world to get
dmnk, and he had now only six shillings left. Perhaps if he mixed
his drinks sufficiently it might be enough. After the whisky he
could have a gn, and then, if he had any money left, a glass of
stout ought to finish him off.
Hitherto the three of them had been alone in the snug, but now
the place began to fill up. Half a dozen robust middle-aged
women, obviously regulars, entered within ten minutes and began
their evening ritual of Guinness and conversation. Quite by chance
Charles had seated himself in the exact centre of the half circle of
chairs which were sacred to their use, and they began by a barrage
of meaning glances and loud asides to tr to move him. But the
I6
mixture of whisky and beer, coming as it did on an empty stomach,
was begnning to take effect, and he sat with half-closed eyes,
oblivious of their angry gestures and comments. The landlord, a
rapidly blurring figure, moved a cloth over the surface of the bar,
and from the centre of his alcoholic mist Charles saw himself
with a cloth in his hand, passing it, not over a bar, but a window.
<14ets a contract to clean their windows regular. Sends the bill every>1
<1three months.>1
The women were frankly talking over, round, and through his
head; snatches of their speech mingled with the phrases that
insistently barked inside his brain.
'So I said, if you want to know why he's not at school, I said,
just you come round to the back,'
<1He could buy you up.>1
'and look at the word he's written on the coal-house door, I said.'
<1Twofellers who work/or his>1 . <1Double time>1 lf <1they want it.>1
'Well, where else would he hear a word like that? I said. A
nasty dirty word. If that's what they teach them, I said,'
<1Hisfingers was.all thumbs. He was no good when he workedfor>1
<1me.>1
'I hope for your sake, I said, that you're not suggesting that he
hears language like that AT HOME, I said.'
<1expect he overcharges them. Every blade of grass.>1
'School attendance officer or no school attendance officer, I
said.'
In Charles's breast pocket was a paper packet containing his
last cigarette. He took it out carefully, but it had somehow been
bent, and the paper was broken in the middle. He began to smoke
it, holding it so that one finger exactly covered the tom spot,
inhaling deeply. The hot storm-centre of alcohol in his stomach
rose to meet the smouldering pool of nicotine in his lungs, and,
the burden of guilt and fatigue slipping from his shoulders, he
breathed a silent prayer of gratitude to the twin deities of his
world.
Then, as his mind cleared momentarily, he became aware of
the stout-laden east wind of hostility that blew around him. Em-
barrassed and scared, he jumped up from his seat and went over
to join the dense crowd round the bar. The landlord and his two
17
- daughters were working hard filling gasses and taking money,
but he never seemed to get any nearer to being served. Several
times he edged his way to the bar, waiting until all those before
him had been attended to, but always he was curtly thrust aside
just as he opened his mouth to give his order. After twenty
minutes all the ebullience he had derived from the whisky and the
cigarette had been drained away, and all he felt was the fatigue of
standing for so long after a day without proper food. Deter-
minedly he held his gass out and rapped it on the counter. 'Gin,
please,' he shrilled. 'Four bitters, a Guinness, three rolls, and
Madha says have you got 'ny Weights? ' rapped out a stocky man
at his side. Charles tumed on him fiercely. 'Just a minute,' he
snapped, 'I was here long before you.' The man looked at him
coldly for an instant, but before he could reply, his order, com-
plete with a packet of cigarettes, was handed to him on a tray, and
he rapidly counted out the required money and departed. Charles
sank to the bottom of an Atlantic of fmstration. It was obvious,
even to a mind dulled, like his, by exhaustion and disappointment,
why he was getting nowhere. This establishment, or at any rate
this particular room of it, was predominantly working class in
atmosphere; consequently it was peopled by raw, angular
personalities who had been encouraged by life to develop their
sharp edges. His sharp edges, on the other hand, had been
systematically blunted by his upbringng and education. From
the nursery onwards, he had been taught to modulate the natural
loudness of his voice, to efface himser in every possible way, to
defer to others. And this was the result! He had been equipped
with an upbringng devised to meet the needs of a more fortunate
age, and then thrust into the jungle of the nineteen-fifties. The
hive was full of wasps, all workers and all identical; but he, who
differed from the others in nothing else, had been deprived of his
sting.
' Now then, move away from the bar when you've been serwed,'
shouted the landlord, leaning across the bar in his bullying way.
'I haven't been serwed! I want a gn and a glass of stout! ' Charles
shrieked with sudden violence. A silence fell, and everyone tumed
to look at him for an instant; then, indifferent, they tumed back
to their own conversations. In this way they succeeded in con-
18
veying, once more, the all-important fact---that he was imprisoned
in his class, not one of them, condemned to solitary confinement
if once he strayed from his own kind. And yet he hated his own
kind: Robert Tharkles, George Hutchins, Lockwood. He gulped
down the gin and immediately raised the stout to his lips. His long
wait at the bar had sobered him up, and it was important to jmix
his drinks quickly if he wanted release.
It was not long in coming. As the long, slow guIps of stout
followed the quick dash of gn into his stomach, his previous
drinks seemed to wake from their dormancy. One by one, the
familiar signs of approaching intoxication began to assert them-
selves. His tongue felt slightly numb; pressed against his lower
front teeth, it seemed to be covered with a sheath of flamel. The
bar, as he stared down its shiny length, began to rise and fall
gently. High in the ceiling, the three electric lights which glared
down through the clouds of smoke began to circle one another in
a solemn dance.
'Got a light, mate?' came a croak from beside him. Before
answering Charles raised his glass and, without hurry, poured the
last third of the stout down his throat. As it foamed and splashed
into the dancing ocean that awaited it, his sense of liberation
became complete. When sober he would have spun round, amxious
to be of service, to ingratiate himself; he would have dived for his
matches, probably spilling his drink as he did so. Now, he was
calm, insolent, able to live on the same level as the majority of his
fellows.
' Ciot a light? ' the voice husked again, but without resentment;
thirty seconds' wait is no inconvenience. Charles carefully tumed
and did his best to focus on the man's expanding and contracting
face. Without a word he took out his matchbox, and, with extreme
care, drew out the inner compartment. As it was upside down, the
matches cascaded to the floor. Immediately Charles stooped to
gather them up, violently thmsting against the legs of someone
standing at the bar. The man staggered, protesting vehemently,
but with no thought of apologizing Charles concentrated doggedly
on his task of collecting the matches. Whether they were in fact
swimming in a puddle of spilt beer, or merely appeared to be
swirling and writhing to his disordered wision, he could not tell;
but it was some minutes before he had picked up the last one, and
replaced them in the box with their heads all pointing the same
way. Erect once more, he tumed to the man who had asked for
the light, and whose face was no longer expanding and contracting
but altemately coming close and receding to an immense distance.
Again he opened the box, and selecting a match from its circling
nest, struck it and held it out. But at that instant the face, which
had been unbearably close to his, rushed back into the distance.
With a muttered exclamation of annoyance, Charles thrust the
buming match out to the full extent of his arm.
Immediately the face ceased to be a face, and became a purple
sphere of fury with two vast coloured eyes. As the match sank
sisling into his limp moustache, and the flame flickered for an
instant up his nostrils, the man started back with a hoarse cry of
pain and anger. Charles, too, lurched backwards, unnerwed by the
sudden noise. Since the bar was by now too full to allow of any
sudden movement, elbows were violently jogged, jets of beer shot
out in several directions, and a loud volley of oaths rose above the
general rumble of conversation.
In his normal condition, nothing could have exceeded Charles's
terror and shame in such a situation. He had been the cause of a
disturbance! He had broken the sacred law of self-effacing, mute
compliancp---he had made, the phrase ran, an <1exhibition of him->1
<1self!>1 Normally, he would not have waited, except to stammer out
his apologies; the bumt man's injured shout of 'It's 'is fault!
Throw the clumsy bastard out! Had too much he has!' would
have found him half-way to the door. But now the healing mist of
aIcohol, half gentle detachment and half fierce arrogance, pro-
tected him even against the menacing approach of the landlord.
Instead of quailing before the hailstorm of abuse that swept at him
from behind the bar, he merely blinked benignly for a moment at
the landlord's whirling facp---now dominated by the out-thmst
nose, now grotesquely reoeding under the overhangng eyebrows -
---and then, tuming coolly on his heel, calmly opened the door
and went out, to be greeted by the warm silence of the summer
night, and the village street opening and closing like a huge oyster
shell.
Leaning against a wall, he waited for it to make up its mind, and
20
soon it had settled down to a gentle heaving over which it was
possible to walk. He had nowhere to go, no money and no plans,
but the night was warm to the point of oppressiveness, the moon
shone powerfully, casting deep shadowsi and he had enough drink
inside him to protect him from his anxiety. Unsteadily, but
happily, he began to wander down a side tuming between the
gardens of cottages. And as he walked his mind gathered speed,
until it was racing at the frantic speed which he had leamt to
associate with dmnkenness.
Charles had, indeed, often amused himself by pouring scom on
the conventional representations of this state in fiction, as a lazy
and lethargc state of semi-paralysis. On the contrary, in his case
the state of his reasoning faculties was precisely that of a motor
engne accelerated to the maximum point with the clutch held out.
Ereed from its usual responsibilities---not only the responsibiV-ties
of fear and guilt and the cmshing load of his ingrained conven-
tionality, but even the basic duties of physical balance and direc-
tion---his mind raced and was capable of reaching major decisions
in a few minutes, decisions which he seldom felt the need to
reverse when his 'normal' incapacity was restored. Now, as he
sank down on a grassy bank where crickets chirped and leapt
daily in the moonlight, the experiences of the last few days
merged with the lessons of his lifetime, and amid the circling,
surging landscape the new adjustment began.
But not coolly, not analytically; for here, where analysis of his
situation would have been deceptively easy, and would probably
have led to a weary, half-cynical recapitulation, a decision to go
back, to adapt himself, to take up the broken threads of his
cocoon and glue them together again, his new clarity came to
him as a series of cleanly etched visions and a rapid re-living of all
the major emotions of his life in a series of sharp bursts. It was
very simple : he saw himself bowed over books, listening to instruc-
tion, submitting to correction, being endlessly moulded and
shaped; edgng his way for years between the delicate areas of
other people's sensibilities. One step too far in any direction and
some one or other of them will be 'hurt', offended, disappointed.
His schoolmasters shaking their heads, his father perplexed and
angry, his mother wheedling or sulking, down to Mrs. Smythe's
21
leading questions and Edith's yapping reproach---how they had
all trampled over him! His mind accelerated still more; he rolled
over on his back, so that he could see the moon-silvered spire of
the village church wavu-ng h-ke a reed in thc quiet sky, and the
images crowded in faster and faster. Sheila leaned towards him,
her eyes tenderly seeking his, but her hairline suddenly slumped
down to within half an inch of her eyebrows and her face became
that of the landlord, coarse and domm- eew- g. A Iine from a
modem poem he had recently read fell like a pebble into his mind;
<1And S a twister love what J aDhor.>1
C~eorge Hutchins appeared, kicking savagely at a football: it
sailed away towards the goa, where Lockwood stood wearing a
seen jersey and cap; as it revolved Charles suddenly saw that it
was no ordinary football, but the head of Mr. Hutchins, senior.
'Don't mind me, Mr. Lumley,' it said deprecatingly in a Black
Country accent, ' our Cr'eorge has worked so hard for his success.'
The line of verse boomed out again, but this time in an altered
form : it was, with him, one of the usual features of intoxication.
<1And t a lover twist what S abhor.>1
Charles jerked himself upright, and forced himself to walk on.
It was easier to think when one was covering ground. Think of
what? There was only one question: how to use thc first twenty-
two years of his life as a foundation for the next fifty. If, indeed,
there was to be a next fifty; and the mushroom-shaped cloud that
lived perpetually in a cave at the back of his mind moved forward
for a moment to blot out everything else.
<1And tw~ter>1 S, <1abhorring what r love.>1
Still, one must behave as if there was going to be. Any other
assumption led only to suicide.
Thc ditch by the roadside ran out and seized hirn by the ankle,
and he fell forward into a dry bed of leaves, which began to sway
back ad forth determinedly. Charles knew that he would soon be
sick; but his mind remained clear and unimpeded. The bed of
leaves rolled completely over him, yet in the midst of his physical
wretchedness he felt a new clation, a new freedom. He had inside
22
him a few pints of liquid, and possibly a few undigested scraps of
his last meal, eaten many hours earlier. In a minute or two he
would get rid of them.
<1And t a whore, abtwisting what S love.>1
Could he not, just as easily, cast up and be rid of his class, his
<1milieu,>1 his insufferable load of presuppositions and reflexes? He
climbed to his feet again, and stood for a moment staring up into
the spinning centre of the sky that gyrated above him.
<1Love eye and twist her and what S aDhor.>1
Why should it not end here, and he be reborn, entering the world
anew, to no other music than the chirping of the crickets and his
own retching?
THE wash-leather made a pleasant noise, half slosh and half
squelch, as Charles dipped it in the pail of water and then wrung
it out. The feel of it in his hand varied greatly with its condition:
sV-ppery when it was wet, and tenacious, almost corky, when it
was dry. He went over the panes once more, this time with the dry
wash-leather. Then he dropped the wash-leather into the pail, and
left it there while he took a dry duster out of the pocket of his
overalls, and gave the panes a final polish. The hot sun, beating
direcUy on to the Mass, dried up the last traces of moisture and
showed how clear and transparent it had become. The windows
were really clean.
That was the lot. The last window of the last house he was
going to do that moming. And as it was Saturday, that meant
that work was over for the week. He had worked, he had eamed
his living for a whole week! His heart gave a great leap ofjoy as
he climbed backwards down the ladder, holding the pail expertly
in his left hand. He seemed to have been doing it all his life: per-
haps, in all but a literal sense, that was true. His life had only
really begun a week ago. Until then he had merely been an off-
shoot, an appendage, a post-script, to the lives of several other
people. This new life was really his own.
Not, perhaps, entirely his own, he reflected with a sudden
flicker of hard canniness, until he had paid back the five pounds,
But he would very soon be able to do that. He had borrowed it
from an uncle who was a solicitor; ironically, he had found it very
easy to get the loan, by pretending that he needed it to settle some
gambling debts left over from his student days. If he had told the
old fool what he really needed the money for---this pail, ladder
24
and handcart, these rags and overalls---he would never have
unbuttoned his pockets in a thousand years. But 'a few pounds
lost to his friends at the cards!' That was a different matter. His
uncle always said 'the cards', instead of simply 'cards', thus
showing that he approved of the pastime; he had even used the
expression 'Debts of honour'! Charles had hardly been able to
repress a sneer as he took the five pounds. Already his new job,
though he had not yet eamed a farthing at it, gave him the feeling
of being miles above the world of small snobberies and appear-
ances, as represented by his uncle. Still, the old ass had behaved
decently, according to his standards, and he should have his
money back. Charles went to the back door of the house and was
handed his money: seven and sixpence. It had taken him about
half-an-hour to eam it. Left to himself, he would never have asked
for so much, but he had taken the precaution of finding out the
usual rates of pay.
Even there, the directness characteristic of his new situation had
made itself felt. In the 'old days'---up to a week ago, in fact---to
what evasions, what roundabout routes would he not have been
driven, in his efforts to get this piece of information! How he
would have circled and hinted, asking half his question here, the
other half there, driven into wilder and wilder lying, until the
situation became finally impossible! But now, he had merely gone
straight to the Warden of the Y.M.C.A. hostel where he was
staying, and asked him directly what he usually had to pay to
have the windows of the place cleaned. And equally directly the
old man had replied, 'It works out at about sixpence a window.'
Very well! Sixpence a window it should be.
Everything had cleared itself up, fallen into perspective, assumed
a new and saner proportion, ever since the chill summer dawn
when he had risen from his bed of leaves with the knowledge that
his old life was over. With one bound he had leapt clear of the
tradition of his class and type, which was to see molehills as
mountains and mountains themselves as a mere menacing blur on
the horizon: and now, even the mountains had come closer and
revealed that easy and well-trodden paths led to their heights;
even, it seemed, to their glittering snow-crowned summits.
Decisions had to be taken at once, because he had no resene of
25
money and therefore none of time. So he took them qnickly. Five
minutes' reflection had led him to the choice of a relative from
whom he should borrow the money, and to the resolve to make
it the smallest sum he could possibly manage with. As it was, he
had found that a good ladder was too expensive, and was
managng with an old one with several rungs missing, whose
joumey to the scrap-heap or the bonfire he had halted until, in a
week or two, he could afford a new one. It was the same with his
' hand-cart' ; the five pounds would neve~ have run to a good one,
and he had found a rag-and-bone man willing to sell him the ruins
of an old pram---it had no coachwork, just the frame and wheels
---for five shillings. Only his pail and his various cloths were of the
$est quality that money could buy. He may have shed all other
middle-class attributes, but the ideal of fine quality, of a good job
well done (always a bourgeois rather than working-class ideal)
had accompanied him into the new world.
Again, the choice of a town to live in had been an easy one.
It must be a place where he had no relatives; it must not be too
small, or there would not be enough business; nor too large, for
he disliked the city atmosphere; and perhaps it would be as well
to choose a place where he might start with some advantage, or
possibiIity of advantage. Where did he know of any large institu-
tion whic~ might see fit to gve him a <1contract?>1 (That was his magc
word, for the remarks of the red-faced man in the pub constituted
his whole professional training.) At first he toyed with the idea of
going back to his university town, and trying to get a contract
from his college; but he immediately reflected, not only that they
would be unlikely to gve him one, but also that he could never,
now he came to think of it, remember having seen a professional
window-cleaner at work in a college. Probably the authorities
preferred, with characteristic narrowness, to include window-
cleaning among the duties of the college serwants. Where else?
Well, he could always go back to Stotwell; and besides, as he
suddenly remembered, not ten miles away his old school stood
among its willage. A contract! Now was the school's chance to
live up to some of the pious platitudes about <1esprit de corps.>1 He
remembered how powerful and how genuine had been the emo-
tions that ran through him on his last moming at school, when
26
he had stood with the other furry-faced gawks in the Sixth Form,
droning out for the last time the termly intercession for 'those
who here shall meet no more':
May their seed-time past be yielding
Year by year a richer store.
The store referred to was, of course, an inexpensive one of
associations and loyalties, taken out of the drawer with the House
tie for the annual Old Boys' shower-bath of nostalga and falsity;
but here at least was the school's chance to provide one granary
with something substantial. A contract! The holy word echoed
through his mind as he clambered out of the 'bus in the market
square and walked up the hill to the school.
Complete and joyous as his rejection of the past had been, he
still could not walk into this ivy-clad red building---a fake Rugby
like so many minor schools of its period---with the sang-froid of
one who had never been there before. Although the eight years
he had spent here were part of a former life, that former life had
the power, at least, to cause him discomfort enough to pierce his
new-found calm. To be recognized by the janitor ; to be conducted,
in the aftemoon drowsiness, down the corridor past that row of
dingy form-rooms where the pitiful farce of his childhood had
been played out act after endless act, and where the dragons, gods,
and wizards who had peopled that fantastic regon sat now, even
this minute, building their endless crumbling structure in the
minds of a fresh generation. It was uncomfortable; but the dis-
comfort dropped away when he was left alone in the headmaster's
waiting-room, for with solitude retumed the consciousness that
he had cut away the tentacles that bound him to the kind of life
that this place represented. So soon after his seed-time, he was
here to ask for a limited and definite harvest. A contract!
At last he was ushered in to the headmaster's study: that room
which, with its careful arrangement of the 'traditional' props of
leather armchairs, classical busts, glass-fronted book-cases, had
been the scene of the utmost disasters and triumphs of his boy-
hood, though he had been too average a boy to enter it more than
four or five times during his eight years. And there was the
familiar sardonic face wryly hovering behind its thick lenses.
27
'Well now, Lumley; and what can I,' here he paused for an
instant, and spoke the next three words with unnecessary distinct-
ness, as if to parody them, 'do for you?'
'You could look straight at me, to start with,' Charles almost
replied, for Scrodd was up to his usual game of peering ironically
in his direction, vaguely taking in with his short-sighted gance
the general area within which his interlocutor might be found,
like one who has seen a tiny insect on the wallpaper, lost it again,
and is half-interestedly looking for it. But annoyed as he felt at
this habitual, perfunctory insolence, he refrained from any sign
of impatience, for, in the three years during which he and Scrodd
had not met, he had become familiar with the peculiar psycho-
logcal burden under which the schoolmaster was sinking. Fresh
from the world of Hutchins and Lockwood, he could read the
bland imbecile like a newspaper: the early ambitions, the resolve
to apply half his energies to his ordinary duties and half to the
studies that were to lead him to the limelight, and finally the
fading of his dreams, leaving him rigidly set in a travesty of his
original position, with half his attention focused on whatever he
was doing or whomever he was talking to, and the other half
feebly glinting out from the paralysed area of his mind, focused,
with terrible obstinacy, on nothing.
'I thought you might be so kind as to help me professionally,
sir,' Charles said briskly.
Scrodd gave a slight twitch that brought his wandering gaze to
within three inches of Charles's shoulder. A sneer appeared on
his face.
'I could have saved you trouble, Lumley, if you had mentioned
in your letter what it was you wanted to see me about: I could
have told you that this school is fully staffed, and that I have no
influence elsewhere.'
Charles leaned forward in incredulous pity. The scarecrow
actually thought that he, a free human being, wished to enrol in
his shambling regment of pedagogues.
'My intention is not to enter the teaching profession, Mr.
Scrodd. My vocational requirements are,' he hesitated, 'simpler
and easier to fulfil.'
For a moment as he faced the enormity of the task in hand,
28
Charles felt a renewal of his old confusion, guilt, and blankness.
His tongue stiffened so as to choke all utterance, and he became
the same ludicrously insecure figure he had been during all his
previous visits to that study. Then, immediately, the mists cleared,
and the sanity he had so dearly bought swept him forward on its
powerful current until his feet were once more on solid ground.
'And in what way,' demanded Scrodd insolently, looking
ironically past him, 'are they easy for <1me>1 to fulfil?'
Charles leaned back in his chair, and fixed his eyes on the thick
lenses opposite.
'This school has windows. Someone must have to clean them
from time to time; either someone from outside, or one of the
school servants who could be better employed about his ordinary
duties. Now this, as you yourself once remarked to me, is the age
of the specialist. '
Scrodd seemed to have fallen into a trance: his eyes were
groping in Charles's direction as if searching for an invisible
opponent.
'So why not gve the job regularly to one of your old boys? I
could make a joumey over here, without any reminding, say at
the begnning or end of each term, and make a couple of days'
job of it, and of course my charges would---'
Scrodd was on his feet, and the miracle had happened. He was
looking directly at Charles.
' I am still hoping,' he articulated distinctly, ' that this will tum
out to be some foolish joke on your part.'
'---be less than whatever it is you're having to pay now.'
'Perhaps a touch of the sun. It has been hot lately.'
'Look at it this way. Suppose you don't get anyone in from
outside, who is there who can do it decently? No one. Smith's too
fat and rheumatic to get to the top of a ladder, and as for Bert,
you must know that he can't be spared from the coke-shovel-
ling--- '
'Lumley! Spare me the trouble of ringing for the janitor and
having you taken out of here by force!'
'---except during the summer, and then he has to act as grounds-
man. I could take the whole thing off their hands, and make the
windows a credit to the school.'
29
Scrodd's hand jerked to the bell, and pressed the button, holding
it feverishly down. Charles stood up. He had about one minute,
the time it would take Smith to plod back down the corridor, in
which to say his last words to Scrodd. It was inconceivable that
they should ever meet again. And yet he had not the slightest
urge to say anything, either cutting, furious, or conciliatory. The
time for summaries was over. He had no breath to spare for his
past life and its debris.
Oddly, it was Scrodd who felt the need to elaborate.
'I can only conclude, Lumley, that you felt some kind of
grudge against me that impelled you to come back and waste my
time with this foolish joke. Window cleaning! I suppose the
implication is that your education has unfitted you for anything
worth doing, and you seek to drive the point home by coming
here with this foolish talk about having turned artisan. You need
not have spoken in parable.'
Charles turned away as Smith opened the door. He felt no wish
to comment on Scrodd's reading of the case. He merely said, over
his shoulder, ' Why not in parable? I spent eight years here being
taught to think m phorically.'
And as Smith held the door for him to go out, he broke
suddenly into the drowsy quiet of the corridor with a rendering,
as musical as he could make it, of lu-s obsessive fragment :
' May their seed-time past be yielding
Year by year a richer store!'
Smith, scandalized, hustled him down the service stairs and out
into thc sunshine.
Real leisure is a blessing granted only to those who have
definite working hours, and when Sunday moming dawned calm
and bright, Charles awoke with the blissful taste of idleness on his
tongue for what seemed the first time in his life. He had spent the
cntire week in unremitting work, for he felt justified in counting
the afternoon's visit to Scrodd as work, and even Saturday after-
noon had seen him effecting some overdue repairs to his 'cart';
30
reflecting as he did so that if he could only trace the present
whereabouts of the first baby to be wheeled in that pram, he
would present it to him for the use of his grandchildren.
So there he was, out among the idlers in the town's one main
street at half-past nine, with the day his own except for the six
o'clock gathering for hymns and prayers which the Y.M.C.A.
exacted, and quite rightly, as a form of spiritual rent. In other
days the prospect of so many hours without formal employment
would have filled him with a desire for companionship: but he now
recognized this for what it was, the subterfuge of a mind unable
to face the prospect of doing <1nothing:>1 talking was a fake occupa-
tion to soothe the confused brain in its dread of vacancy.
He thought, as he leaned on the parapet of the town's bridge
and watched the tiny brown river drifting beneath it, of all the
expensive young men of the Thirties who had made, or wished
to make, or talked of making, a gesture somewhat similar to his
own, tuming their backs on the setting that had pampered them;
and how they had all failed from the start because their rejection
was moved by the desire to enter, and be at one with, a vaguely
conceived People, whose minds and lives they could not even
begn to imagne, and who would in any case, had they ever
arrived, have made their lives hell. At least, Charles thought with
a sense of self-congratulation, he had always been right about
<1them,>1 right to despise them for their idiotic attempt to look
through two telescopes as the same time: one fashioned of
German psychology and pointed at themselves, the other of Rus-
sian eoonomics and directed at the English working class. A
fundamental sense of what life really consisted of had saved him
at any rate from such fatuities.
Meanwhile there was the problem of avoiding contact. He
must form no roots in his new stratum of society, but remain
independent of class, forming roots only with impersonal things
such as places and seasons, or, in the other end of the scale,
genuinely personal attachments that could be gently prized loose
from all considerations involving more than two people. The first
thing to do was to get out of the Y.M.C.A. hostel, for it involved
him in a certain degree of corporate life, and he had already
drifted dangerously close to the dreaded state of becoming a
31
sprang suddenly to its feet with a hoarse cry of ' Lumley, I dreamt
about you last night! '
Spinning round to peer into the bloodshot eyes that glowed
behind the lank hair, Charles recognized a College acquaintance,
Edwin Froulish.
Without knowing Froulish particularly well during their under-
graduate years, Charles had known a good deal about him;
inevitably, for Froulish had exploited his natural gift for self-
advertisement with tremendous perseverance and zeal. From early
adolescence he had seen himself as the boy who, though as yet
undistinguished in the eyes of the world, would reveal himself in
due season as a great novelist. His whole life was lived in the
pages of that monumental biography which was to be written, after
his death, by some short-sighted silver-haired professor: every
incident in his profoundly ordinary existence was already trans-
lated, in his mind, into the professor's stately academic prose. He
saw the running titles at the head of each page: 'A Hampshire
Boyhood', ' Passion for Butterflies', 'Early Unconventionality',
'A Tyrant Defied' (the last heading would refer to his refusal, at
the age of thirteen, to do an imposition unjustly set by the Physics
master: it was the one courageous action he had to his credit, and
he had been caned and the imposition doubled as a result). Long
before leaving school he had sought out and read attentively any
accounts of the boyhood of great writers. Most of them had
shown an uncanny skill in the business of providing material for
quotable anecdotes. Pope had been expelled from his first school
for writing a satire on the master, Southey for declaring-himself
opposed to corporal punishment; Tennyson lived in thousands of
hearts as the wild-eyed boy crouching in a deserted quarry and
staring, long and incredulously, at the stone on which he had
scratched the words ' Byron is dead'. Film! Pure film! Try as he
would, Froulish never succeeded in rivalling the Hollywood-
sense of his idols. And even if he had descended to actual
plagarism it would, he knew, have been useless. Whose name
could he scratch on a stone? The only famous author to die at a
33
suitable time for such a demonstration was Rudyard Kipling, and
he was sure it would be quite out of keeping for him to be foumd
staring, wild with misery, at the words 'Kipling is dead'. His
friends would simply have laughed at him, the contemptuous and
barely tolerant laugh that Tennyson probably never heard in all
his life.
And so the very earliest pages of the professor's biography
seemed likely to be rather bare of anecdotes : though there was no
reason, Froulish often reminded himself, why he should not
invent a few in later life. But at the University everything had
been easier. The machinery of self-display was so much more
accessible; within three weeks of his arrival he had managed to
get himself talked about, and by his second term he was a recog-
nized eccentric. And all done so easily! merely by a few random
pantomime tricks, such as carrying a grey parrot in a cage
wherever he went, wearing a bowler hat indoors, standing motion-
less for hours on end in the exact centre of the quadrangle, and so
forth. His contemporaries, being typical undergraduates and
therefore inhabitants of a hinterland of indecision, had scoffed
readily enough, but had soon formed the habit of accepting him
at his face-value, listening almost respectfully when he read papers
to literary societies on such topics as 'The Alleged Inversion of
Surrealist Psychology'. In short, he had become a figure. Looking
now at Froulish's fat, dough-coloured face and his twitching
hands, Charles realized for the first time the extent to which he,
too, had been hoodwinked. Without ever pausing to think it out,
he had accepted the legend of Froulish's genius for years, and now
it was too late to change. Out of the abandoned tangle of his
earlier life, he could at least pluck a ready-made attitude to this
fellow-creature, which was less artificial than the attempt to see
him as if for the first time.
And so he relapsed, mechanically, into the tone of half jocular
admiration which throughout the years he had reserved for his
conversations with Edwin Froulish, as he said:
'Why, hello. I didn't expect to see you in this place. Looking
for local colour, I suppose?'
'We can't talk here,' Froulish muttered furtively, ignoring the
question. ' Let's---' his face contorted and he clutched at his right
34
ear---'go and have a drink somewhere preferably so h
quiet.'
Once in the bar, Froulish made straight for the darkest comer
and slumped down, leaving Charles to get the drinks. Betraying
no surprise at this---and, indeed, feeling none---Charles carried
over two watery pints and set them down. The interview was free
to begin.
'You asked me what I was doing here,' muttered Froulish in
the intervals of gulping at his beer with a characteristic mixture of
avidity and distaste. ' Of course I'm not looking for local colour---
I'm not that kind of novelist, I don't go in for reactionary photo-
graphic stuff.'
' All right, spare me the catchwords---you'll be calling yourself
non-representational and all the rest of it in a minute,' said
Charles with a sneer. He was a window-cleaner and above all this
sordid intellectual chatter. 'And tell me, unless you've decided to
keep it a secret, what you <1are>1 doing in these parts.'
'Well, the fact is,' said Froulish, twitching and jerking his
stubby fingers, 'Betty found a place for us here, and as far as I'm
concemed I don't care where I go while I'm writing The Novel.
It's quiet enough here.'
'Betty?' said Charles, groping amid the miscellaneous
memories that were stacked in the back of his mind waiting their
tum to be thrown out.
' Surely you remember Betty. She used to go to Alan's parties.'
Charles had only been once to a party gven by the unsavoury
young man referred to, and had on that occasion withdrawn
before the amatory stage was reached, but something stirred amid
the heaps of debris in his memory, and he had a mental glimpse
of the principal omament of that party---tall and stringy in slacks
and flowing hair down to the shoulders.
'I didn't know you had,' he searched vaguely for the word,
'linked up with her.'
Froulish guffawed, swaying his thick-set body backwards and
forwards. 'Linked up! We were living together all through my
third year.'
35
'I suppose that helps to account for your going down without
taking a degree?' As the words passed his lips Charles marvelled
at himself---how direct, how splendidly coarse and uninhibited he
had become. How, in the old days, he would have suffered any
fate rather than say anything so crudely personal and challenging,
even to one as self-centred and egotistic as Froulish; who, of
course, was not embarrassed.
' Oh, degree ! ' he groaned thickly, blinking rapidly through the
strands of hair. 'What's the use of a thing like that to me! I'm a
Novelist. All I need is a table and chair, pen and paper, a woman,
food and---' here he eyed his empty glass---'drink.'
The old Charles would have jumped up and scurried to the bar
at once on a hint as broad as this: the new Charles sat calmly
lighting a Woodbine.
'You can wait till I've finished mine. And where is this place
where you and Betty live? Is it a house?'
' Well, no,' Froulish admitted, 'one can't have everything, of
course. Actually it's a sort of shed that used to be used as part of
a builder's yard. The bottom part consists of just one big room,
without any partitions---that's where the timber used to be kept.
The upper floor---you go up to it by a ladder---was divided into
small rooms as offices. Betty's managed to rent the upper part for
us. Look here, if you've got any money, why don't you buy me a
drink, you mean bastard?'
Charles cmshed out his Woodbine and went over to the bar.
This might be what he was looking for; it would be ideal for
storing his equipment, and no doubt for cheapness. But there was
something else more important: an escape that seemed to be
offering itself from the problem of environment, of the clash of
outlook and status. He, who had rejected and been rejected by
both the class of his orign and the life of the 'worker', might
find the classless setting of his dreams in sharing a roof with a
neurotic sham artist and a trousered tart.
When Froulish had been pacified with a fresh pint and a
Woodbine, he leaned forward and continued his confidences.
'It seems the place hasn't been used as a builder's yard for a
good many years. The concem moved to a bigger place, but kept
this one going to store odds and ends in. Finally the old man who
36
ran it died, and the widow sold the other place, the real head-
quarters of the business, but couldn't sell this. The purchaser
wouldn't look at it because they hadn't kept it in repair. So she
had no way of making anything out of it except letting it for
human beings to live in---the old bitch.'
'Sounds a nice old party. What does she charge you for it?'
Froulish groaned, and a look of intense misery appeared on his
face.
'A guinea a week! I ask you: twenty-one bloody shillings for
every seven days in that hell! Of course, it's about the least you
could possibly pay anywhere for a lodgng for two people, and the
old cow would like to charge more, much more, except that it's
illegal to have anyone living there at all---it has to be strictly on
the q.t. or else the sanitary authorities would probably send the
lot of us to prison.'
'What exactly is the sanitary position? Any running water?'
'No, but there's a well quite close by, with water that hasn't
been declared unfit to drink, as far as we know. And a kind of
rough-and-ready jakes down in the yard, surviving from the days
when there were men working there.'
The place was filling up. A labouring man walked over from the
bar with his pint, and sat down on the bench next to Froulish.
Taking out a plug of twist, he began to cut shavings offit with a
knife and collect them in the palm of his hand.
'Now look here,' said Charles in mounting excitement. 'Who
pays this guinea a week? Surely you---I mean---'
Among the nameless crimes he had seen hinted at in news-
paper reports, or half-heard as a child in whispered conversations
among scandalized elders, was one known as Living on Women.
The phrase evidently embraced the whole range of possibilities
from the full-scale organization of prostitution to the regular
accepting of valuable presents from rich old ladies. Where did
Froulish fit in? he wondered as he looked across at the twitching
mask of dough with its pink deep-set eyes. At what point along
the scale should he be placed? For surely, he was Living On A
Woman.
'Oh, yes, I dare say it shocks your bourgeois feelings,' sneered
Froulish bitterly. 'I know what you're thinking. Yes, Betty pays
the guinea a week. And the two pounds odd it costs us for food
37
and fuel every week. And it's not nearly enough. We need more
now and God knows what we shall need in the winter. But she
pays it. And I suppose you, with your blasted conventionality---'
His tirade was drowned in an attack of choking, for the
labourer next to him, after arranging the shavings of twist in a
clay pipe, had actually gone to the length of lighting them. Dense
blue smoke gathered around Froulish and forced its way into his
eyes, nose, throat, and lungs. Charles started back before he, too,
should be overwhelmed. Getting up, he took his drink and stood
about six feet away from the evil-smelling volcano.
'You say to yourself,' came Froulish's voice in a strangled
shout, "What a spineless swine he must be to let a woman keep
him! Why doesn't he work for a blasted living like me?" Again
he collapsed into helpless coughing. The labourer puffed serenely
on. ' But you and your damned smug kind don't care, oh blast this
smoke, whether Art lives or dies. I've only got to finish this
novel and I'll be famous; then I'll give her it all back with interest.
And anyway, oh, God, I feel sick! Are you still there? Anyway,
never mind the material aspect of it. Betty's glad to help Art! She
really cares, I'm going to faint any minute, whether the Novel---
whether Literature lives or not! Damn this filthy smoke ! Lumley!
Where are you? I can't see anything!'
Froulish dragged himself to his feet; his figure could be dimly
made out through the fog. 'This way ! ' shouted Charles. They had
become characters in a film trying to escape from a jungle fire, or
convicts breaking away in a Dartmoor fog. Clawing the air in
front of him, his face green and soaked in perspiration, Froulish
emerged ; and Charles, swiftly catching his swaying figure, seized
him by the arm and dragged him out into the clear air.
It seemed natural, though Froulish uttered no word of invita-
tion, for Charles to accompany him to his dwelling; once he had
recovered from the fumes, the novelist slouched rapidly away
down a side street with the air of one who expected to be accom-
panied. Neither spoke as they moved through the tangle of little
streets at the edge of the town, where amid the drabness of back-
38
yards and terrace houses the countryside made small incursions,
thrusting a green tendril here and there, a bank of nettles, a hedge,
a tall tree. Presently they drew near a long wooden shed with an
empty yard in front of it. As Froulish led the way across this yard,
they heard the sound of female voices raised in angry dispute.
There were two of them talking at once, so that it was difficult to
gather what they were saying, but after a moment it became
clearer that the shriller of the two was repeating over and over
again, 'Not another hour! Not another hour!'
' Hell fire!' exclaimed Froulish, stopping dead. 'It's her! We'd
better not go in.'
Evidently the burdens which Betty had shouldered on behalf of
Literature included facing the enraged landlady single-handed;
for Charles felt no doubt that it <1was>1 the landlady; the passion in
that voice told him plainly that the subject under discussion was
money. Froulish had tumed away and was beginning to scurry
back across the yard, when a window flew open above their heads
and a seamed malicious face, the face of a witch, surmounted by
thin grey hair drawn back into a bun, was thrust out.
' Mr. Froulish! ' screamed the widow, ' Don't you think you can
get away! I've seen yer---come up here!'
Twitching hideously, the man of letters hesitated. Flight
seemed so easy, surrender so repellent.
'It's yer only chance,' shouted the harridan in triumph. ' Either
yer do business with me or there won't be anywhere for yer to
come back to---you and yer WIFE,' she scoffed, packing a world
of incredulity, hatred, and envy into the last word.
At that, another head appeared at the window, several inches
above the widow's vibrating bun. It was a long, haggard face, with
high cheekbones, a scarlet mouth, and one eye just visible through
cascading hair. It spoke with a voice as far below the other's as
its position in space was higher.
'You'll have to come up, Ed,' it croaked. 'She's got us where
she wants us. Who's that you've got with you?'
Without a word Froulish shambled into the building and began
to climb the ladder which led to the upper floor. Charles, tense
with excitement, followed. Before he was half-way up the ladder
he had occasion to wish that he had been cautious and allowed
39
Froulish to get right up before beginning to climb, for the storm
of abuse that broke round the latter's head as soon as he poked
it up above floor level was so intense that for a dizzy instant it
seemed likely that he would release the ladder and slide down
helplessly. However, after a short and perilous pause, he dragged
himself up the remaining rungs and stood safely within the room.
Charles would have followed, but the sight that greeted him when
his head cleared the floorboards was such as to freeze him to the
ladder.
The room was large, occupying about half the length of the
shed. Three windows illuminated one wall, and, since they lacked
several panes, ventilated it also. In one comer was a large old-
fashioned bed, evidently picked up in a junk shop; it was heaped
with clothes and, for some reason, piles of newspaper. In another
corner was a stove, and beside it a rough shelf holding saucepans,
a few plates and cups, and some tins of food. Between the two
biggest windows, in what was evidently the place of honour, stood
the only solid piece of fumiture in the room---a substantial oak
table, with two drawers underneath it. On it was a typewriter half
concealed by a mass of papers. The litter that cluttered the rest
of the room was pushed carefully away from this shrine. Charles
felt a surge almost of awe. This was the dwelling of a dedicated man.
At the moment the dedicated man was shrinking back against
his table feebly trying to fend off the old vixen who owned this
palace. She had grasped him by both lapels, and, with her wizened
face almost touching his fat, damp one, was squalling her refrain.
'Not another hour! <1Not->1--<1another->1--HOUR do you stay in this'
---she could hardly say 'house'---'do you stay 'ere without
paying my rent. Two weeks overdue! You may have yer 'ead full
of fine ideas, you may be able to live on air and big talk, but the
rest of us 'ave to pay our way---and pay it with MONEY!'
She was drawing breath for the next instalment when she felt a
sharp tap on the shoulder. Charles was standing beside her with
his wallet in readiness. All the fear he might once have felt when
confronted by this toothless virago had utterly vanished from his
ken. He no longer came of the class that treated women with
deference; he was her superior in physical strength, and he had
the means to pay her what she was owed.
40
'Two weeks overdue,' he said curtly. 'And you're chargng a
guinea a week, is that right?'
'What's it to you if I am? These---' the widow was beginning,
but he put his wallet back in his pocket and turned away in so
loutish a manner that she realized that she was dealing with one
of her own stamp and would have to talk sense. So she said simply,
' Yes.'
Charles, still with his back to her, opened his wallet and got out
three pound notes. To these he added a half-crown and a sixpence
from his pocket, and tuming, handed them to her.
'There's three. One week in advance. Now leave us in peace.'
She glared at him, and seemed inclined, now that she had her
money safe, to gve herself the luxury of a little more scolding. So
he tumed on her with a bullying gesture, and snarled, 'You can
go down the same way as you came up.'
In silence, the widow departed. Peace retumed, seeping in with
the summer air through the broken windows, radiating from the
silent typewriter on Froulish's table.
The August evening sunshine slanted on to Froulish's matted
locks as he sat pounding on his machine, while Betty stood like
some gaunt bird, brooding over the saucepan that spluttered on
top of the stove. Charles leaned back in utter contentment, a glass
of beer at his elbow, and watched them. Inwardly he felt, as he
had felt so often in the past month, a surge of delight that formed
itself, silently, into the words:
' It's working! It's working better than I ever thought it would ! '
Nothing showed so clearly the wisdom of his new policy of
taking life as it came, as this miraculous stumbling upon a ready-
made <1menage.>1 It answered perfectly to his simple needs; while
neither comfortable nor clean, it served as a place to store his
few possessions, to take his meals, and to sleep in at night. The
notion that Home was an idea to be respected, an object to be
slaved for, did not trouble him; he had cast it aside with the other
relics of his upbringng.
' Supper's ready, if you wouldn't mind laying the table, Charles,'
41
came Betty's deep croak. As he obediently rose to spread clean
newspapers on the uptumed packing-case, and put out three
plates and an assortment of cutlery, Charles reazed that these
were the first words any of them had spoken since he came in an
hour ago. They seemed from the first to have dispensed with
speech; for different reasons, none of the three felt the need of
conversation. Froulish was preoccupied, moodily silent except
when one of his dormant grievances happened to be aroused,
when he became vehement and oratorical. Betty was too stupid
to wish for conversation, and too much wedded to her <1femme>1
<1fatale>1 manner to keep up the normal chatter of the silly young
woman. Charles was physically tired and contented when he
retumed after his day's work, and was in any case full of thoughts
which neither of his companions would have understood or
wished to share.
They drew up their chairs, Froulish merely swivelling his round
from the writing-table, and Betty brought over the saucepan from
the stove. Her cookery was of the simplest; it consisted merely of
mixing together in her one saucepan every kind of food available,
and subjecting the mixture to the uncertain heat of the paraffin
flame. It seemed to work, and, if there were occasional failures,
Froulish never noticed what he was eating and Charles was
always hungry.
Even as they sat so close together, almost touching, the three
seemed remarkably oblivious of one another's presence. Charles
realized for the first time how odd it was. Betty sat opposite him,
hunched on a soap-box in her baggy slacks and a dirty flowered
smock, peering abstractedly through her cascading hair at the
newspaper under her plate; she was trying to read it upside down.
Froulish, slumped in the only comfortable chair, scowled ab-
stractedly into his plate, twitching and dropping food into his lap
and on to the floor. The two seemed to have absolutely no
contact; she never asked him about his work, and he would talk
of nothing else. Yet he knew that they were happy together; it
could not be said of either of them that they were capable of
not permit it, his being too self-centred and hers too bovine.
Yet to both the idea of a life which did not revolve round some
42
kind of <1liaison>1 would have seemed fantastic, and the suggestion
insulting. The traditions of the 'Bohemian' artistic life, as lived
in the Latin quarters of English industrial cities, were too strong
to be questioned. One felt that they had not singled each other
out, but merely come together by chance, and stuck.
At first Charles had anticipated a good deal of embarrassment
in the situation of a <1menage a trois.>1 He had arranged for his bed-
room to be at the other end of the loft, and had fixed a second
ladder from the yard so that if he retumed late at night he might
be able to get to it without entering their main living-quarters,
where Froulish and Betty slept. He had also felt rather nervous in
Betty's presence for the first few days; he had little experience of
the particular type of slut she represented, and was afraid that if
given any encouragement she might offer him a share in her
favours---the last thing he wanted either in the present or in any
foreseeable future.
He need not have worried. Betty seemed wholly wrapped up in
Froulish. While taking no apparent notice of him for days on
end, she gave so little attention to anything else that Charles was
finally convinced that this was the case. She had no recreations,
and, except for half-an-hour's shopping each moming, never even
went out, except on the one day a week when she absented herself
on a visit to some vaguely-defined relative in the neighbourhood.
As for the elaborate pains he took to safeguard their privacy, they
were repaid with an attitude of mingled amusement and indiffer-
ence. Froulish even unbent so far as to inform him that his trouble
was unnecessary and that if he did chance to come in at night he
would find them peacefully sleeping, since most of what he chose
to describe as 'the funny stuff' took place in the aftemoon when
Charles was out. All in all, it was obvious that the item he had
often placed at the head of his undergraduate list of topics to be
thought over and got straight---' Sex'---was still capable of being
coolly thought over; he was not going to be mshed into any
decisions. And for the moment, emotionally satisfied and physic-
ally tired by his work, he felt no need of action in that sphere.
On the whole, money was his biggest worry. After his
triumphant begnning, when to eam a few shillings had seemed
miraculous, he had soon discovered that the town was already
43
quite well provided with window-cleaners, who had comered the
really profitable markets---the big stores, hotels, and so forth---
leaving only the residential quarters. And even here it was
noticeable that most householders seemed to have decided to do
without professional care for their windows. How often he
crunched his way up the gravel drive to some prosperous-looking
house, with two cars in the garage, only to have the door-bell
answered by the lady of the house---evidently there were no
servants---and to be told that they ' already had a regular window-
cleaner'! He knew who that regular window-cleaner was: it was
Daddy on his aftemoon off from managng the bank.
Even worse than the shortage of work was his constant feeling
of being an outlaw, on the run from an unseen but powerful
organization that sought to crush him. He knew nothing about
his fellow window-cleaners; he had never had the opportunity to
leam a reliable fact about any kind of manual worker; but he had
always gathered that they belonged to sinister societies known as
Unions, and that anyone who tried to eam a living with his hands
without the blessing of the Union was in a very dangerous
position. Whenever he saw in the distance another figure wheeling
a cart with a ladder and buckets, he fled in panic down the
nearest turning, taking it for granted that any other window-
cleaner could feel nothing for him but hatred and resentment. In
spite of this it never entered his head to make any move towards
joining the Union or regularizing his position; that would have
meant official enrolment as a member of the working class, and
his aim was to be outside the class structure altogether.
Nevertheless, there were lean weeks when he was very glad of
Betty's 'allowance'. This was $2 10s. a week, and it seemed
never to dry up. It was, he gathered, given to her by an elderly
maiden aunt, living about twelve miles away. The old lady must
have been decidedly eccentric, for, while the supply never dried up,
she always insisted on Betty's calling to see her once a week, when
she handed the money over in cash. On the day this happened,
Charles and Froulish usually took any money that remained from
the week's budget and spent it on a drinking bout, so that she
retumed, at midnight or later, to a penniless household. Her
'allowance', though too small to leave a margn and thus unable
44
to prevent difficult situations such as the one Charles had
orignally found them in, was sufficient to keep them going in the
bleak spells when Charles's weekly eamings came to less than
a pound. It was curious to reflect that, but for his meeting with
these down-and-outs, he would never have been able to continue
in his new life.
And he wanted to continue in it, for he passionately prized it,
and honestly thought that no humiliation could overtake him now
that he earned his bread at an honest, useful craft that he had
taught himself without being helped, and minded his own
business, and looked the world in the eyes.
Wherever could he have got hold of such an idea?
FROULISH did not often leave the loft; a week or more might see
him go no further than the impromptu wash-house in the yard
below. But sometimes he went out for long solitary walks, and on
this Saturday aftemoon Charles, settling down in the warmest
comer for an after-lunch nap, was not surprised to see the novelist
struggling into his tattered overcoat.
' I suppose you go out for these walks ofyours to get ideas,' he said.
'Ideas, nothing,' sneered Froulish. 'All you people ever think
about is ideas. I suppose it never struck you that in a work that
has a certain chromatic range---that is, chromatic, somatic, vatic,
any of the catch-words you prefer---different physical states are
necessary in the artist at different times.'
'You mean there are some passages you can only write when
you're tired, or hungry, or have a cold in the head?'
' More or less, yes,' said Froulish seriously. 'I have to write six
pages expressive of intense weariness just now. So I'm going out
supposed to have a certain repose: muscular fatigue is what 1
need. I shall walk at least ten miles and then write this evening.'
Betty said, 'And when you've made yourself ill I suppose I'll
have to look after you.' She looked at him morosely. 'You big
ape, Ed, you silly big bastard,' she said in a voice that Charles
had not heard before. It was hoarsely caressing: her mating call.
With a start he realized that some kind of genuine emotion must
be forming in the breast of this knobbly slattem.
'Why don't you come out and clean windows with me? I'll
make you tired,' he said to Froulish.
'If that's meant as a joke it's pretty comy,' was the writer's only
46
rejoinder as he clambered painfully down the ladder. His overcoat
reached to his ankles. He must have taken it from a big scarecrow.
When he had gone, Charles dozed, smoked, and sprawled.
Betty sat dully and quietly opposite him, engaged in some incom-
prehensible work with a needle. She seemed to be sewing lengths
of old Sacking together. Perhaps Froulish needed a scarf. At four
o'clock she put the kettle on the paraffin stove, and Charles sat
forward, happy and lazy, anticipating a cup of tea. This was
peace, this was comfort.
Footsteps clacked across the courtyard; not Froulish's shuffle,
but a brisker tread. A man's voice mumbled. A woman's voice
sounded clear and bell-like.
' No, I think this is the place. Probably up in that loft. Anyway,
let's go up.'
Charles looked in alarm at Betty. A change had come over her.
She was sitting upright, quivering and tense, like a gun dog
pointing. But instead of happy eagemess she was regstering
hatred and anxiety.
'What's up, baby?' he asked, surprised into an unwonted
familiarity by his concem for her.
'The bitch,' she said slowly.
The head and shoulders of a young woman appeared at the top
of the ladder. Fair, short hair in a fringe; a square, determined
face with large steady eyes.
'Does Mr. Froulish live here?' the head enunciated clearly.
Something in the calm impudence of the voice penetrated inside
Charles and shook him.
Betty did not answer. After a pause Charles said, ' Yes, but he's
not in at the moment. Won't you come in and leave a message?'
The young woman climbed up the remaining mngs of the ladder
and stood facing them.
' Oh, yes, of course,' she said, looking at Betty as if she were a
gall stone on an X-ray plate. 'We've met, haven't we?'
' Once,' said Betty laconically. ' Pity it had to happen twice.'
A young man climbed up the ladder and stood in a curious
attitude, half arrogant and half obsequious, by the grl's side. It
was George Hutchins.
Charles looked at him sympathetically. He was obviously rather
47
ill at ease. None of the lessons he had leamt in the normal context
of his life were of any use in this situation; least of all his canny
orderliness and slick social climbing. Charles felt like an ex-con-
vict who goes back to the prison on visiting day and sees the others
still there and hates himself for getting pleasure from the com-
parison between his freedom and their imprisonment. He stared at
Hutchins through a grille: you'll never come out, yours is a life
sentence. How are they all at home? Never mind about that. This
is your home now.
' Hello, George,' he said. 'Won't you do some introducing? The
ladies don't seem to know one another's names.'
'I know her name all right,' said Betty. 'I just don't use bad
language, that's all.'
Hutchins swayed slightly on his feet. He was broadshouldered
and plump, so that the effect was of a sack of meal on a shifting
floor. His red face glistened.
'This is Charles Lumley, June,' he said to the young woman.
Charles waited for him to complete the introduction by telling
him her name, but some kind of inhibitory tension prevented him.
He did not seem able to speak her name. Perhaps he was in love
with her.
'I'm June Veeber,' said the girl to Charles. She looked at him
gravely and impudently. He had been feeling calm, but suddenly
his kneejoints turned to water and he felt glad he was sitting
down. Being a window-cleaner, he did not need to stand when
introduced to a lady. He was not attractive to women, but never-
theless it had happened to him now and again to receive sultry
looks and the rest of the pre-bedroom signals from them. No
doubt they had been doing it to keep in practice. No doubt that
was what Miss Veeber was doing it for, though in her case he
divined that it was probably automatic and involuntary.
He clutched the tattered arms of his chair with damp palms
'How do you do?' he muttered. She ran her eyes over him. His
spine felt like a row of cotton reels strung on a wire. Then the
wire became red hot and melted and the cotton reels clattered to
the ground.
Betty spat out, 'You don't mean to say you didn't know her
already ? '
48
' No,' he said limply, shifting his eyes to her flushed, angry face.
She had gone a dull brick red, so that for once the texture of her
skin was in harmony with its colour.
'I can't believe it. What did you do with your spare time when
you were at the University?'
'I played indoor games,' he muttered idiotically.
'Well, there must have been one you didn't play, or you'd have
played it with her. They all did.'
Hutchins stirred restlessly. June Veeber said, frosting the air, 'I
came here on business.'
'I never knew you go anywhere for anything else,' said Betty.
'You've been on overtime ever since I knew you.'
' I shall have to ask you to be more courteous,' George Hutchins
said to her. His tone implied that it was a good thing June
Veeber had a man to look after her. Charles nearly laughed out
loud.
' And I shall have to ask you to take a mnning jump at yourself,'
Betty told him. 'If you've come on business, why don't you spill
it and go back to the cage?'
'Perhaps I'd better leave a note,' said June Veeber distinctly.
'I hardly feel you could be trusted to hand a message on.'
'Not if it's your usual kind of message. I don't know enough
dirty words.'
Charles stood up. 'Look,' he said, 'I'm getting tired of this. I
can't offer you a cup of tea or anything, Miss Veeber, because
this isn't my home. I'm only the lodger. But if you'll gve me your
message for Edwin Froulish I'll see he gets it. And stop looking
at me like that,' he nearly added.
'I've come on behalf of the Stotwell Literary Society,' she said.
'Of which she is President,' put in Hutchins portentously,
feeling himself back on more familiar ground.
'I knew Mr. Froulish slightly at the University,' she went on.
'It was well known that he was working on a remarkable novel.
When I heard that he was living here, in'---she glanced at Betty---
'in retirement, and getting on with completing it, I thought it
would be interesting if he would come and read some passages to
us one evening. The next meeting is in five days, next Thursday
evening. It isn't much notice, but would you tell him we'll assume
49
he can come unless he telephones me?' She gave him her number.
'We meet at the Girls' High School at eight o'clock.'
Before Charles could answer, Betty croaked, ' All right. That's
your message. Now let's see the back of you and your boy-friend
as well. Poor fish,' she added venomously, garing at Hutchins.
'I think she wants you to go,' said Charles apologetically.
Hutchins tumed and went down the ladder. June Veeber stood for
a moment looking from one to the other. Then she said to Betty,
'You really mustn't worry, my dear. I shan't make a pass at him.'
'Why not? ' Betty asked. ' He wears trousers, doesn't he?'
They faced each other. The contrast between them was an
unforgettable sight: one gaunt, unkempt, trousered, ready to
scratch or bite at the drop of a hat, the other sleek, feminine, a
purring dynamo with any number of lethal jolts in reserve.
Charles felt sorry for Hutchins, sorry for Froulish, and---some-
how, obscurely---sorry for himself. Was he really safe? Could he
go on standing where they had fallen?
June Veeber got her feet on the ladder and began to climb down
it. When she was hidden from the waist down, her breasts seemed
unusually pronounced as they jutted above the floor level. Betty
bent down so that their faces were close together.
'I've kept my hands off you this time,' she said. 'But don't
come back here bringng trouble. I wouldn't know where to store it.'
Without answering the visitor left them.
It was October. The first high wind had filled the gutters with
yellow leaves, and it was dusk as Charles pushed his cart home-
wards that aftemoon. His mind still full of Betty's outburst, he
wondered whether it would have blown over or whether the
atmosphere in the loft would still be tense when he got there;
and, being tired, decided to fortify bimself with a cup of tea.
' Harry's Snacks ' was open. He parked the handcart in the pool
of light outside the front window, and went in. Collecting his
chipped mug of dark brown swill from the counter, he sat down
at the nearest table, heavily, loosely, tired and indifferent to his
surroundings. The place was nearly empty.
50
' Wud that be yoor cart outside?'
The flat Lancashire voice startled him. A thick-set, short man in
a cap and muffler, his fallen cheeks indicating near-toothlessness,
sat in the comer nearest him.
' Yes, that's my cart,' he said levelly, sustaining his character as
the self-sufficient man, giving nothing away, asking for nothing.
But the mere fact that he answered was enough to impart a new
familiarity to the man's tone when he spoke again.
'Work all on your own, eh?'
' Yes.'
'Like it best that way?'
' Much the best.'
'Find it pays better, eh?'
Charles stood up, on his way to the door. 'I said I liked it best,
let's leave it at that.'
But the stocky man was on his feet, too, with a note of urgency
in his flat confidential voice.
'Nay, nay, don't get in a 'uff. A've got a perfectly sensible
reason for me questions. Sit down. 'Ave another cup.'
' I don't want another cup.'
'It's on me,' said the stocky man with the air of explaining a
difficult point and making all plain; the implication being that no
one in his right mind will refuse a cup of tea if it is free, even if he
has already had enough.
So Charles was chained to the table by another scalding half-
pint. In his old life he would have felt obliged to sip it slowly, and
gve the donor another fifteen minutes of his company out of
politeness, as a way of paying for the tea. Now he saw no shame
in draining it immediately and starting for the door. But it was
too hot. And even his new code would not allow him to walk out
and leave it untouched. He was trussed.
'A'll come straight to t'point,' began the stocky man, silently
accepting a Woodbine from the tin Charles held out. 'A've seen
you going up and down with your cart and things. And A've said
to meself, "That feller's working a one-man business. And very
nicely he's doing. But," A've said to meself, "he'll never get no
farther." '
'What if I don't want to get any farther?'
51
The other smiled toothlessly at this pleasantry. It needed no
answer. It was just a joke.
'So do you know what else A said to meself?'
'How could I? I wasn't there at the time.'
'A said,' and he nodded his head deliberately in time to the
words, "What that feller needs is a partner. A partner as could
help to put it on a bigger futting."
Charles sat back and stared at him sourly. He did not reply,
for several reasons. For one thing, while his soul recoiled from
the idea of admitting any other person inside the stockade of his
independence, it was also true that the idea had begun, lately, to
cross his mind more and more frequently. His clientele was still
rather small; new work was slow in presenting itself, and the
coveted 'contracts' simply had not materiazed. A partner who
could tap fresh sources of work, and help him to carry it out,
certainly had seemed the best solution.
'A bigger futting,' the toothless man repeated with grave self-
satisfaction. Woodbine smoke poured out of his mouth and nose.
Charles still did not speak.
'Now look at it this way,' said his adviser, leaning forward.
' You're yung. You've not 'ad a lot of ecksperience. When it come
to running a business, you're all right while it's just a matter o'
taking the cart round and doing a winder here and a winder there.
But you can't stay like that for ever.'
For ever! But the whole idea of doing anything <1for ever,>1 of
thinking in terms offor <1ever,>1 was something that belonged to his
old life, not his new. This Manchester voice was speaking the
wrong language.
'Now, Ah could do a lot to 'elp. A'm not a local man'; there
was no need to state this, but, like most men with strong regonal
accents, he was oblivious of it ; ' but A know a good many Stotwell
folks. A've been 'ere a yeer or two.'
'To put it in a nutshell,' said Charles slowly, 'You're willing to
come in with me because you think my business could be built up.'
'That's it. That's just it. Now, what d'ye think of the idea?'
'It beats me, that's what I think about it.' Something, perhaps
the unstilled protests of his inward soul, caused Charles to speak
defiantly.
52
'Beats yer? What beats yer?'
'I can't make it out, that's why. Here you are, at a loose end
for some reason, and you decide to take up window-cleaning, and
then instead of starting off on your own, you decide to join up
with me. But why? I've got nothing to offer you---no money, next
to no equipment, not much trade. What do you stand to gain?'
'It's not what Ah stand to gain. It's what we both stand to
gain,' said the stocky man with sudden energy, crushing out his
Woodbine. 'Ah'm a business man at 'eart. We all are, up in Mann-
chester. And the essence o' business,' he repeated the phrase with
great emphasis, 'the essence of business is to com-<1bine.>1 Suppose
Ah 'ad started on me own? There'djust a been two of us cutting
each other's throats, and neither of us able to expand at all.
Besides, you've got it all wrong. A didn't sit down and think to
meself, "A'll go in for winder-cleaning," and then look around
for an opening. A did it t'other way round. A was at a loose end,
as you call it, and A looked round for somebody as could use my
organizing ability and initiative.'
The last few words were so obviously the result of brooding over
the ' Let Me Be Your Father' type of success advertisement, that
Charles felt an acute twinge of distrust. The man was a curious
mixture, and besides, Charles had little or no experience of the
type he represented. A Lancashire accent, to him, was something
associated with music-hall humour. And yet it was always some
special kind of humour, he suddenly realized; always the flat,
puncturing kind that relished an attack on the pretentious or the
far-fetched. The humour of practical men. And of Philistines.
Well, what of it? He needed help, and here it was offered. A
young man running a window-cleaning business single-handed
couldn't have all the world to choose from when it came to
finding a partner.
'It's a deal,' he said seriously.
The stocky man's face creased into what was, after all, a very
attractive grin, in spite of the yellow stumps it revealed. (Why did
the canines resist decay longer than the molars or incisors?
Charles had often wondered before.)
The stocky man held out a square hand. The finger nails were
ragged and black.
53
' Em Ollershaw,' he said.
Charles took the hand and gravely pronounced his own name.
They were partners.
They were to go back to Em's lodgngs to begin detailed
arrangements. Ern moved off to the back of the cafe, either to go
out to the lavatory or to have a word with Harry or some member
of his family, and Charles, rather than wait any longer in the
greasy atmosphere, stepped outside. His cart was waiting by the
kerb, and he moved over towards it. Suddenly a violent shove
carried him almost off his feet. Staggering, he crashed into a dark
doorway next to the entrance to Harry's. A huge hand gripped
the front of his jacket. A heavy body leaned against him, making
it hard to breathe. A bald head geamed in the lamplight.
'Just a minute, son. Feel like getting yer bloody neck broke?'
Silence.
'Answer. D'yer feel like getting yer bloody neck broke?'
Why didn't Ern come? 'No.'
'Then keep yer bloody mouth shut. That's your cart, ain't it?'
The second time he had been asked that question! But this
time he couldn't please himself whether to answer or not.
'Yes, it's mine.'
'It's yours. And yer run a nice little winder-cleaning business,
all on yer own. Well, listen to me. See this?'
The hand that was not gripping him was bunched. Something
gleamed palely on the fist. It so happened that Charles had never
seen a knuckle-duster before, but he recognized it. The bald-
headed man considerately turned it this way and that, so that he
could get a good look at it. The brass studs reflected dim rays of
light from the yellow street-lamp. It made him think of murder.
'Just keep on takin' the bread out of other folk's mouths. The
first time I catch up with yer, yer'll get this. The second time,
yer'll get yer bloody neck broke.'
Footsteps. Someone was coming along the pavement.
' Keep still.'
The knuckle-duster pressed against Charles's windpipe. It was
54
dark in the doorway. The man who happened to walk past saw
nothing. Either nothing, or just two drunks affectionately leaning
in a doorway together.
Where was Em?
Charles did not think of himself as a coward. Since reaching
adult life he had not actually been involved in a fight, but he had
always imagned that if it ever came he would give a good account
of himself. But then he had imagined it differently. His mental
picture had been of a clear space, two men facing each other,
fists whirling and plenty of light to see by. Not of a dark doorway
with his arms crushed against his sides, a vile breath forcing its
way up his nostrils, and a knuckle-duster held against his throat.
'Go back where yer bloody came from,' advised the bald-
headed man earnestly. 'Yer won't last a week from now if yer
don't.'
The door of Harry's opened.
'Keep still,' and the knuckle-duster in the throat again.
It was Em. Glancing neither to right nor left, he stood for a
moment outside Harry's, then began to walk with an even pace,
towards and past them. Charles's heart stopped beating, from
sheer disappointment and fear. Then, when Em was exactly in the
right spot, he slid his arm, still without looking, round the bald
man's face, forcing his head back viciously. The bald man could
either let go of Charles's coat and let himself be dragged back-
wards, or have his neck broken. He let go. Ern still did not look
at him.
The bald man suddenly spun round in a violent twist, flailing
his fist through the air. He wanted to smash the knuckle-duster
into the back of Em's head. In the same instant Em crouched and
drove his shoulder into the bald man's stomach. Their combined
weight and impetus sank the shoulder sickeningly far in, and the
bald man hung tottering, winded. His stomach muscles were
contracted with the agony into a mass of iron; he could not even
retch. Em's fist smashed into his face. He fell down.
Charles moved out of the doorway, shivering. He wanted to go,
to be somewhere where they could sit down and be quiet. Em was
nearly ready to move off, but he had not quite finished with the
bald man yet. Stepping over to where the knuckle-duster gleamed
55
palely on the outstretched right fist, he stamped on it with his
heavy boot.
As they walked away, Em said calmly, 'He'd better get that
dooster off quick if he wants it offin the next week or so. Before
that 'and swells up good and proper.'
Charles did not say anything.
'And so, for our first meeting of the winter session,' said June
Veeber's bell-like voice, making the words sound like an invita-
tion to some kind of orgy, 'we welcome Mr. Froulish, who will
read extracts from his Work in Progress.'
She sat down. George Hutchins jammed his chair against hers
and surreptitiously took her hand under cover of a newspaper.
Froulish leaned forward, his face a blind, twitching mask. He
jerked his arm and knocked over his glass in a gesture so unnatural
it must surely have been intentional---yet for that very reason
Charles put it down to genuine nervousness.
Everyone waited for him to speak. He stared at them, fingering
the top sheet of his pile of typescript, jerking his left leg spas-
modically. A man cleared his throat with a noise like a cavalry
carbine being fired in a railway tunnel. It was the society's bore:
Mr. Gunning-Forbes, senior English master at the local grammar
school. Charles had once cleaned his windows.
' Ladies and gentlemen,' Froulish whispered hoarsely. Smoke
began to curl upwards from where he had dropped his cigarette
on to the hearthrug. Hutchins moved forward officiously and
stamped on the smouldering patch.
'I'll start without any preamble by reading the opening para-
graphs of the work.'
'What's the title of your book?' demanded Gunning-Forbes
suspiciously, resting his hands on the stained knees of his flannels.
'No title,' said Froulish impatiently. 'Just a dark blue binding.
No lettering, no title-page.'
'What's the idea of that?' growled the schoolmaster, with
increased hostility. 'Thought becomes impossible if things
haven't got names. Thought, in fact, <1consists->1--'
56
' I should have thought it was obvious,' cried Froulish passion-
ately. 'I should have thought it was axiomatic. No title---
impossible to give in a few words any idea of what it's about.
About things that <1can't>1 be put in a nutsheIl. About human life.
Just a book---you want to know what it says, you read it and find
out. Resisting the idea that things of any importance can be
labelled and fitted into categories.'
Gunning-Forbes was on his feet, but June Veeber leaned across
and put her hand on his sleeve. He tumed and stared at her, then
slowly sat down, his steel-rimmed spectacles flashing grimly.
' First few paragraphs,' said Froulish, taking off his collar and
tie and throwing them into the fire---surely a contrived effect, but
impossible to be certain. 'Nothing to do with the actual <1action>1 of
the book. Just a melodic and oblique stroke or semantic prepara-
tion.'
' Say that again,' rapped out Gunning-Forbes.
'I said,' Froulish repeated, 'a melodic and oblique stroke or
semantic preparation.' There was a silence.
'A king ringed with slings,' began Froulish without more
ado, 'a thing without wings but brings strings and sings. Ho, the
slow foe! Show me the crow toe I know, a beech root on the
beach, fruit of a rich bitch, loot in a ditch, shoot a witch, which
foot?'
Hutchins stirred uneasily in his seat.
'Clout bell, shout well, pell-mell about a tout, get the hell out.
About nowt. Court log wart hog bought a dog.'
Gunning-Forbes's glasses sparkled with fury. The school-
teachers and bank clerks stared in bewilderment. Hutchins caught
June Veeber's eye and smiled lasciviously. Charles took deep
breaths of cigarette smoke. Froulish droned on.
' Deep in the grass, a cheap farce, glass weeps for Tom Thumb,
a bum's dumb chum. That's the end of that part,' Froulish con-
cluded. His audience retumed to life. Drooping heads came
upright.
' Well, if that's the preamble, what about the story? Why don't
you outline the plot?' demanded Gunning-Forbes.
'Outline the what?' sneered Froulish. He seemed itching for a
quarrel with the old man.
57
'The plot. Outline the plot and then read us a few extracts to
show how your characters are developed.'
'Don't make me laugh, I've got a split lip,' said Froulish con-
temptuously. Opposition had braced his fibres : thanks to its tonic
effect he was alert, happy, even gay. Gone was the usual neurotic
unrest and goom; he was a living proof that every man is
biologcally equipped with marvellous reserves of power to be
called on when defending what he really believes in. Charles, from
his comer, saw the transformation and was humbled, thinking of
Betty's ferocious defence of her mate. So much, so much that he
had never guessed at!
'Nevertheless, Mr. Froulish,' June Veeber cut in frostily,
before the brawl could develop any further, 'do read us some
more. Couldn't you pick some passage that illustrates a central
theme or tendency of the book?'
' Now you're talking,' replied the novelist, who was quite docile
so long as the word 'plot' was not uttered. 'I'll just explain the
central situation. Six people are trapped in a lift between two
floors of a skyscraper---a musician, a surgeon, a charwoman, a
conjurer and his female assistant, and a hunchback carrying a
small suitcase.'
'Containing some sandwiches, I hope,' chuckled the local
curate. 'They're bound to get hungry before long.'
'You can fill in the details for yourself,' said Froulish, not
realizing that the man imagned himself to be joking. ' Where was
I? Yes, these six are in the lift. Part of the book consists of a
series of flashbacks, every one twice the length of the average
novel, over the previous life of each of them. Not their physical
lives, just the psychic currents that flowed through them. It's
expressed chiefly through pattems of imagery.'
' God help us,' said Gunning-Forbes loudly.
'Meanwhile,' Froulish went on, 'they're trying to send a
message to the chief electrician, who lives in the basement, to do
something about getting the lift going. At least, there's a door
marked "Chief Electrician", but no-one's ever seen it open or
seen anyone go in or out. Messages have to be written in a ritual
code and slipped under the door.'
Gunning-Forbes had begun to take an interest. 'Not a bad
58
touch that,' he commented. ' Illustrate the way the working classes
have got above themselves since the war, eh?'
Fortunately Froulish ignored him.
'They don't seem to be able to get a message through. At first
they pass the time trying to keep cheerful. The conjurer draws
billiard-balls out of the musician's ears, the surgeon diagnoses
everyone's physical condition and says what operations he recom-
mends, the charwoman sings Edwardian music-hall songs. The
hunchback is the only one who doesn't do anything. He doesn't
speak either.'
' Doesn't seem much point in having him there,' from Gunning-
Forbes .
' A couple of days pass, and gradually they're being driven mad
with hunger and thirst. Finally, when they're in the last stages of
exhaustion and despair, the hunchback offers to put them out of
their misery. He takes a hand-grenade out of his suitcase. Ex-
ploding in that confined space it's quite enough to kill them all.
Then they have a long debate as to who shall pull the pin out to
make the thing go off. There's a theologcal point there, among
others. The one who does it will be guilty of both suicide and
murder.'
He paused. His audience looked at him apathetically. Betty's
eyes never wavered from June Veeber's face.
'Finally the conjurer comes to their aid. He <1conjures>1 it out.
Makes it jump out without seeming to touch it. Before he could
be shown to be guilty of suicide, it would be necessary to <1prove>1
that he'd touched the pin, and that's not possible.'
'Oh, come,' cried the curate from the back row. Froulish, in
his stride, ignored him.
'Anyway, now they're all dead. The blast frees the lift, and it
drops down to the ground floor. So the corpses are taken out.
Naturally, in laying them out, any papers they have about them
are removed and studied to help in identification. That's how they
find out,' he paused dramatically, 'that the hunchback was the
Chief Electrician.'
There was a silence.
' Well, go on,' said Gunning-Forbes encouragngly.
'That's the end,' scowled Froulish.
59
There was a scraping of chairs.
'So that's your plot, is it?' said Gunning-Forbes judicially.
'D'you want to know what I think of it?'
'No, but you evidently want to tell me.'
'I think it's got the makings of a fairly good yam, provided of
course that you cut out this verbal tomfoolery and make it clean-
cut. Except for one bad flaw.'
He waited for Froulish to ask what that was, but the novelist
was rolling himself a cigarette and showed no sign of hearing, so
he went on.
'That man wouldn't have had a hand-grenade in his suitcase.
People don't. It's just not true to life.'
'Couldn't he have been a traveller for a firm that made hand-
grenades?' asked the curate. Charles wondered whether he was
mad or just drunk.
'Not possible,' Gunning-Forbes shook his head. 'He was
supposed to be the Chief Electrician. He couldn't have combined
the two jobs. No good novelist would bring in anything as far-
fetched as that. A course of Thackeray, that's my prescription---
soon weed out these little faults. Then you might make some real
headway.'
He sat back benevolently. Froulish flushed scarlet. He began to
sway backwards and forwards in his chair, feverishly flicking his
short fingers: the usual sign that he was violently agitated.
Charles held his breath for the outburst. But it was forestalled.
Hutchins had hitherto been mercifully silent, dividing his
energes between fawning on the thick-set siren beside him and
looking superciliously round the room; but now he decided,
evidently, that the time had come for him to put on his act and
dazzle the company. He took out a pipe and filled it. Charles
could see from the light colour and stringy texture of the tobacco
that it was some kind of very mild mixture; he was not surprised,
for Hutchins, though needing a pipe for the successful acting of
his part, was handicapped by a weak stomach. Even now he did
not light the pipe, but stuck it in his mouth, pulled it out again,
twiddled it in his fingers, and finally jammed it between his front
teeth and spoke in an exaggeratedly precise, high-pitched voice.
' I suppose, Froulish, that what you're doing there is something
60
that might be described by an ordinar chap like me---' he smiled
boyishly, to show that they were not to believe him---'as a retum
to allegory. Would you place yourself in a direct line of descent
from Kafka?'
He waited for Froulish's reply with the calm, condescending air
of a man who is accustomed to examining ideas and putting them
in order, but is nevertheless prepared to have patience with those
who habitually leave a mass of tangled loose ends. The young
scholar doing a little intellectual slumming.
' No,' replied Froulish shortly. ' My masters are Dante, Spinoza,
Rimbaud, Boehme and Grieg.'
Hutchins champed agtatedly on his pipe-stem. His face lost a
little of its buoyant expression; he was not sure whether his leg
was being pulled, and it was important for him, having entered
the lists under the eye of his lady, to come off best.
' Grieg, now that's a very interesting point,' he said. He pointed
at Froulish with his pipe. 'What made you put a musician into a
list composed otherwise of writers? You may think it's only a
small point' ('Not a point at all,' from Gunning-Forbes) 'but
what we're all interested in here, is how the minds of chaps like
you work. Our own minds,' he smiled again to indicate that they
need not think he meant all their minds were as good as his, ' work
by the ordinary methods, travel by, I think I could say, the
ordinary routes. But chaps like you seem to have discovered, er,'
he did not want to say short cuts, it sounded too trite, so ended,
' short-circuits.' Hell, that was wrong. Short-circuits was wrong.
Froulish told Charles afterwards that he been on the point of
replying, ' I refer, of course, to Aloysius Grieg, the seventeenth-
century Abbot of Helsingfors, author of the <1Tractatus Virorum>1
<1et Angelorum,>1 and particularly to the spurious third book,' but in
fact, he contented himsclf with saying stiffly, ' Of course, I didn't
expect everyone to pick that point up, though I expect most
people would see it all right. I mean, of course, Grieg's tone
colours, and particularly his handling of the wood-wind. I regard
the vowels "e" and "u" as the wood-winds of the verbal or-
chestra, and an accurate count would reveal, as you doubtless
noticed, that they predominate over the rest in what I might call
the slow movements of my work.'
61
Hutchins summoned all his dwindling reserwes. June Veeber
was looking at him in a way that did not help much.
' Well, no, I can't say I did notice,' he said, jolly and aggressive,
the manner of the don when he tells you he does not understand
something so as to convey that he thinks you a fool for pretending
you do, 'you chaps do tend to give the rest of us credit for per-
ceptions about your work that we don't, I think, always have.'
He looked round the room for support, but they stared at him
stonily; the discussion had gone on too long. 'Was that, for
instance, the bit you read us just now---was that a slow move-
ment ? '
'No,' said Froulish calmly. 'It was a cadenza.'
Meeting Hutchins's bewildered gaze, he stared at him trium-
phantly, at the same time taking out a pocket comb and running
it through his hair. A shower of dandruff was plainly visible under
the electric light.
June Veeber rose. She was determined, evidently, to end the
proceedings before the society should be permanently crippled.
Besides, she wanted to get George Hutchins by himself and gve
him a few remarks on making a fool of himself in public. June's
young men were kept up to the mark.
'Coffee will be served in a few minutes---Miss Wotherspoon,
would you be frightfully kind and do your usual? Thank you so
much.' Miss Wotherspoon's 'usual' was to trudge down to the
school kitchen, make the coffee, and carry it up. ' And meanwhile
I'm sure we all thank Mr. Froulish very much for a most stimu-
lating evening, and we look forward with great interest to the
time when his book will be published.'
'You look forward a damn long time, then,' retumed Froulish
curtly. 'This is only the first draft. The thing probably won't be
finished for fifteen years. My name isn't --- Trollope.'
He pronounced the last word with so much deliberation, and
looked so fixedly at June Veeber, that Charles could have swom
the insult was intentional. His feeling seemed to be shared;
startled by a sudden low neighing sound, he looked round. Betty
was laughing.
62
WlNTER had come, and with it the pace of life had slowed down.
Wheeling his cart out every moming, Charles felt solid, respec-
table and habit-ridden. Of course, working with Em had a lot to
do with it, for Em had introduced method and regularity into the
business. Everything was organized. Part of the time they worked
separately, but for ' big jobs'---shops, hotels, or tall buildings that
required complicated ladder-work---they combined. And at the
end of each day, whether they had been together or not, they met
for a formal sharing-out of the money they had eamed, and a
close investigation into whether it was the full amount they had
reckoned on when planning the work in advance.
'Isn't it rather a fag seeking each other out every evening? ' said
Charles once, tentatively, after a two-mile trudge back to Harry's
from an outlying job. But Em had been firm.
'Not on yoor life. It's the first principle of mnnin' a business
like this. Quick tum-over, quick share-out. Level it up while
there's nobbat a few bob in it.'
'But surely we can trust each other?'
'Why shudd we?' Em had returned with something like a
sudden vehemence. 'What do you want to go trustin' <1me>1 for?
You don't 'ardly know me from Adam.'
This was unanswerable. Not only did Charles know nothing
about.his partner, he seemed never to get any closer to him as the
months went by. Em was not tacitum; he talked freely, com-
menting on all that went on around them, elaborating new ideas
for the mnning of 'the business' (for so, under his guid-
ance, Charles came to think of it), and, as they sat over their
63
sandwiches and tea in Harry's, reading out passages from the
newspaper with comments.
'Spindle Operatives to Go Slow,' he would announce; 'never
knew 'em do anything else. Earl Leaves Estate to Actress---" My
Dear Friend." Well, I expect she 'ad to work 'ard enuff for it.
'Ere's a good wun. Swans Served in Restaurant. Chef denies
Knowledge. T'menu must a been in French.' And so he would
ramble on. But the talk was never personal. This suited Charles.
He had always resisted the idea of collaboration, for he had not
dared to hope for a partner who would be without the simple,
heavy curiosity of the provincial working class; he had imagined
himself being pumped, and dreaded having his dead past raked
up as a spy in an enemy country dreads interrogation. For the rest
of his life he was to travel without a passport, and it was important
not to be held for questioning.
Ern, however, was perfect. Not once, in the months during
which they worked harmoniously together, did he ask how Charles
came to be eaming his living by cleaning windows. Nor did he
volunteer any reason why he himself came to be out of a job, or
say what had brought about his decision that evening in Harry's.
He seemed to regard it as the most natural thing in the world that
they should do this work and do it together. And since the episode
of the bald-headed man, Charles was in no mood to disturb what
seemed to him an excellent arrangement. Nothing like that
had happened since; a cautious investigation had indicated that
thebald man was neither a window-cleaner himself nor likely to
have been incited to his action by one. He was just a rough, well-
known locally, who had never had a job for long and seldom
stayed out of gaol for twelve months together. His attack on
Charles had probably been either inspired by a fit of semi-insane
jealousy or part of some roundabout scheme for extorting money
out of him. He did not represent a permanent menace, particularly
as for the next four months he could be seen every Tuesday and
Friday attending the Out-Patients' Department of the local hospital
with a dirty bandage over his right hand.
And so, while admitting to himself that Em was a mystery,
Charles valued the bond of non-inquisitiveness between them.
And it comforted him, too, to know that if Em should ever start
64
asking questions, he could ask a few embarrassing ones in his tum,
What was a capable, confident artisan in early middle life doing
in a back-water like Stotwell, scratching a living at window-
cleaning? And why, after each day's work, did he go straight back
to his dingy lodgngs, never (after the first time) inviting Charles
there, and never emergng till it was time to work again? Was it
for pure love of the life of a robot?
Christmas came and went. The days lengthened microscopically,
and became colder and wetter. Apart from this, nothing altered.
Charles began to wonder what had happened to his life. Regu-
larity seemed to have claimed it.
'What you need is a change,' said Froulish one evening,
sitting back and looking at him attentively for the first time for
weeks. 'Your life's too narrow, that's your trouble.'
He himself had not been out of the loft for more than a couple
of hours at a time since he first moved into it, and neither given,
nor received, hospitality. But then he was a dedicated man. He
did not need a change.
'Too narrow,' he repeated, dragging his fingers through his
matted hair.
Charles was impressed. If the self-absorbed monomaniac had
noticed a difference in him, and been moved to comment and
advice, it must be serious indeed. He determined to irrigate his
life a little. The dismal winter months must be made to pass more
cheerfully.
So the next evening he set himself the task of stretching the
resources of his limited wardrobe as far as they would go in the
direction of everyday respectability. The dark suit he had been
wearing when he first entered his new life was, fortunately, not
too wom; he had soon given up wearing it for work. And he had a
shirt and tie that were scarcely wom at all. His shoes were old
and cracked, but they would pass muster, and he had nothing
else except the Wellingtons he wore on his daily round. Dressed
once more in the uniform of the class he had renounced, he
surveyed himself critically in Betty's looking-glass. Apart from
65
the fact that bis frame had broadened, gving him something of
the characteristic heavy-shouldered carriage of the manual
worker, he still looked much the same. A cheap haircut had left
him with an ugly match-stick-length crop, but that was the only
class badge he was wearing, and it was not a conspicuous one.
Thus equipped for a raid into enemy territory, he pushed
through the swing doors of the town's Grand Hotel at dinner-
time, determined to live at the rate of a thousand a year for the
next few hours. Although he had, on occasion, cleaned the hotel's
windows, no one recognized him; nor did he feel any fear that
they would; and in any case they could not tum him out. Settling
himself near the imitation log fire in the Oak Lounge, he sipped
at a gass of good sherry and broke into a packet of expensive
cigarettes. This was enjoyment.
The door of the Oak Lounge swung softly open on its easy
spring, and a smooth, fleshy man padded in. He was plump, but
not yet mnning to seed ; aged about forty-five to fifty. His well-cut
dark suit, neat bow tie and hom-rimmed glasses marked him as a
prosperous business man of some kind. A few years earlier he
had had luxurious fair hair, and he still had most of it now. He
held the door open with a soft, gentle hand.
A grl came in. She was small and dark, miraculously neat,
with tiny fragle bones and an oval face. Her clothes were
expensive and simple, with the kind of simplicity that carries
within itself a hint of the extravagant. Huge dark eyes smiled up
at the smooth man. Charles knew that he would never get that
smile out of his mind again.
She sat down on the other side of the fireplace while the smooth
man went over to the bar for their drinks. Charles realized that he
must swivel his eyes away from her face. To continue staring at
her would be sheer impertinence. He tried to drag his gaze away,
but the muscles would not move. He was paralysed into stillness
with his eyes staring fixedly.
She must have felt it, for she slowly tumed her dark head,
looked at him coolly for an instant, and then, without hurry but
with utter finality, tumed away again. Charles felt sick. He hated
himself for his mawkish behaviour, but could do nothing to alter
it. He lowered his eyes to his glass, still half full of that good
66
sherry which, a moment before, had been gving him so much
pleasure. He drank it quickly. It tasted like urine. His expensive
cigarette smouldered between the fingers of his other hand. He
threw it savagely into the fireplace.
The smooth man brought two glasses over and set them down.
In agony, Charles got to his feet and started for the door. He
knew he ought to get out of the hotel altogether, to breathe the
cold night air and feel the hard pavement under his feet. But the
obstinate demon that had forced him to keep his eyes trained on
that oval face, forced him now to stumble along to the dining-
room. As long as he stayed in the hotel, there was a chance that
he might see her again.
He rationalized it as pride. He had come here for dinner, and
he would <1have>1 dinner. Still, he had the sense not to keep up any
imbecile pretence of actually enjoying it. His pride, hoping to
conceal the still more unpalatable truth, told him to see the thing
in terms of a face-saving ordeal. Mechanically he ordered random
dishes from the menu; the wine-waiter placed the list before him,
and he forced himself to look through it and choose a sound claret.
Ritual gestures, to clutch at the rags of his self-respect! All the
time he felt certain that he would never again see any experience
as meaningful unless it were connected in some way with the grl
in the Oak Lounge. He recalled, wryly, the callow scom he had
once poured on the irrational and 'romantic' obsessions---the
death-wish, the dream-world, love at first sight, and the rest---
for, like all the immature, he had looked down on romanticism
for its immaturity.
How many more of his failures in comprehension was he
doomed to expiate? Did this happen to everyone, that their
errors swung back upon them and crushed them? He lifted his
eyes questioningly, as if some answer to his problems might be
written in code on the wall, but they met only the expressionless
eyes of the waiter who was coming over to serve him with a dish
of ice cream and plums, though he had ordered cheese and
biscuits.
The ice cream tasted of soap. The plums were sour. Charles
pushed the dish aside with a despairing gesture; despairing
because he knew that even if the food had been delicious he would
67
have been unable to swallow it. His throat muscles had been
tightening and tightening until, by now, he would have felt
unequal to swallowing a sip of water. His mouth was dry. His
heart hammered. Dragging out one of his expensive cigarettes, he
lit it, and took a great draught of the smoke. Feeling a little better
as the nicotine muflled the keenness of his nervous anguish, he
exhaled and watched the smoke spread out like a fan in front of
his face. Through it he saw the door open gently. The smooth
man, reflecting the shaded lights in a benign radiance from his
glasses, padded in. He held the door open again. Again the grl
walked through. Again she looked up at him with big dark eyes,
and again she smiled. But this time she spoke.
' Thank you, Uncle'---he heard her clearly.
As she passed his table Charles saw that there was no ring on
any of her fingers.
Somehow he must have paid his bill and got out, because,
although he remembered nothing about it, he was back in the loft
later that evening. His companions did not seem to notice any-
thing unusual about him. Froulish asked him if he felt better for
having broken the monotony.
"Rector Denies Assault Charge",' Em read out from the
crumpled newspaper. ' "Choir Outing Allegations." Give 'em
summat to sing about.' Hc paused, then looked up. 'You 'aven't
been yourself lately, Charley. Anything on your mind? '
' Oh, just what it says in the advertisements,' Charles jerked out
with a feeble attempt at lightness.-'A traffic jam somewhere in
those twenty-eight feet of digestive tract. I'm going to get myself
a guinea's worth of pills.'
He could see that Em, though forbearing to pursue the topic,
was not convinced, and for a moment regretted that he had
rejected the invitation to confide in the older man, in whose look
and voice there had been a new hint of gentleness and concem.
But the regret passed; nothing must shatter the sacred mle of
silence between them on personal topics. Amd in any case, what
was there to confide that woulld not make him look absurd? 'I
68
saw a grl having dinner with her uncle in the Grand ten days ago,
and I can't forget about her.' He might as easily have explained to
Mrs. Smythe, that moming in the lodgng-house, why it was that
he had no job.
It was not that he had succumbed without putting up a fight.
On the very first moming after the fatal vision, he had set out
briskly in the frosty air, determined to immerse himself in the
simple realities that had already saved him from so much folly.
When lunch-time came and he realized with a shock that he had
not succeeded for five minutes together in banishing the image of
that small dark head, he had put it down to a temporary derange-
ment. But that evening it was just as bad. And the next moming,
and the next evening, and every morning and evening till he felt,
in despair, that his carefree life was being poisoned. All its
pleasures had become savourless. As he went about his work, or
sat smoking in the loft of an evening, or reeled back from the
weekly drinking-bout with Froulish, a voice inside his head would
nag, 'Yes, but this isn't bringing you any nearer to HER'. And
what else had any meaning?
And yet, how empty was any aspiration, however faint, in her
direction! He did not even know who she was or where she lived.
And it would profit him nothing to find out. Whoever she was,
she clearly moved in circles that demanded money as a condition
of entry---money, good clothes, social position. Men he despised,
men like Robert Tharkles and Hutchins, would stand more chance
than he did. Any crawling vermin who happened to have his
pockets well lined could leave him standing in the race. He began
to think increasingly about money. The poison was doing its
work.
Still he fought back, and there were even moments when he
felt, fleetingly, the old symptoms of vitality and spiritual health.
He threw himself into his practical concems, toiling hugely at the
job, and perpetually carrying out improvements in the heating
and lighting of the loft, till in the end it was almost comfortable.
When the thick, smelly heat of the oil-stove, and the mellow glow
of the well-trimmed lamps, made the loft friendly on a stormy
winter night, and he could stretch out his legs and allow his mind
to sink into vacancy, while Betty sat patching up some garment
69
and Froulish dozed in his comer or bent over his stack of type-
script, Charles almost felt secure.
Almost, but never quite, even at his best moments. And his
worst were unspeakable. Sometimes the sense of desolation
would flow over him so deeply that his being would cry out, not
for relief, not for the achievement of his desire, but merely for the
choice of some other kind of suffering. How he would have
welcomed a chance to exchange his mental torment for some
painful physical ailment!
At last, on the evening of the day of Em's question, he capitu-
lated. He put his best clothes on again and went off to the C-rand
Hotel to see if he could fimd anyone to gve him information about
her.
It proved surprisingy easy. The barman in the Oak Lounge
readily accepted a couple of gns and, in retum, came out with
the facts.
That was Mr. Roderick and his niece. They were often in here.
Mr. Roderick was managng director of a local factory; he had
only recently moved into the district, after having travelled
extensively on behalf of the firm and managed their affairs in
America and on the Continent. The niece was an orphan, whom
Mr. Roderick, as befitted a rich, benevolent bachelor, had brought
up, and now that her education was over, she lived in his house.
Charles left the hotel saddened, and yet strangely elated. The
hopelessness of his position was underlined still further; he could
never gain access to Mr. Roderick's social sphere, and certainly
not to his house; besides, the barman had indicated that the
Rodericks spent much of their time in London and Paris, Switzer-
land and Capri. Whence, then, the curious elation? Partly because
the very futility of his task stimulated a curious beating rhythm in
the depths of his mind, hammering out faintly but persistently,
' Stranger things <1have>1 happened. Stranger things <1have>1 happened.'
Snow fell, froze, thawed, and fell again. The aching darkness
within him matched that without, as the dormant seed of intoxi-
cating joy in his spirit paralleled the motionless hidden forces of
70
the spring, waiting their tum. Experimenting with various
anodynes---drink, the cinema, detective stories---Charles found
that the only solace with any power to assuage the fever that
gripped him was to lose his identity in lonely contemplation of
nature. So the old sentimental rubbish was true after all! Once
again he found a grim amusement in the ironic lessons that life
was teaching him. The intolerable prosings of Wordsworth, and
the namby-pamby dribblings of Shelley and the others, contained
a tmth that stood out as vital and important now that he was
really in trouble, when the 'advanced' writings he had once
admired faded and dissolved from his mind.
He had acquired a rust-eaten bicycle, and increasingly took to
pedalling into the countryside to dull his pain with the mon-
otonous grind at the wom-out pedals and the peacefully bitter
silence of the fields and woods. Heedless of route or destination,
he would tum his handlebars at random; when night fell he lit
his lamps and moumfully pushed on. It was a powerful drug, and
he tumed eagerly to it whenever his daily toil allowed.
So it was that he came to be cycling doggedly, one Saturday
afternoon, on a country road slightly too big to be called a lane,
about ten miles from home. The image of the dark head and oval
face had been particularly obsessive and cruel for some days past,
and he had almost reached the stage of deciding on some course
of action, however desperate. He was revolving a few ideas as
the bicycle creaked and cranked its way between the sodden
hedges. Apply to Mr. Roderick for a job---work fantastically
hard---become managng director with the social <1entree>1 into the
Roderick household---carry off the niece in legitimate courtship?
The furrowed lines of his brow relaxed into a gentle sneer as the
foolish notion unrolled itself. Even apart from his temperamental
inability to rise to the top in an industrial concern, or even to get
himself employed in one, there was the impossibility, even at this
stage of his agony and despair, of swallowing the last hard kemel
of his pride, and admitting that the life-of a Tharkles was prefer-
able; besides, he could hardly have become an important figure
in the firm in less than ten years, by which time the girl would be-
safely matched, leaving him with the altematives of walking out
of the job or staying to witness the hateful complacency of the
71
successful suitor. As he squirmed with disgust at the prospect, his
machine wandered towards the middle of the road, and at once
a motor hom sounded its hectoring note behind him. Some
blasted plutocrat! Some hog with enough money to get at the
Roderick grl and have a chance to impress her! He, who had
vowed independence of money and social position, tumed
angrily to scowl at the man behind the wheel as the car drew out
to pass him, trying to convey how much he hated him for being
able to afford a car instead of a scrap-iron bicycle.
He tumed, but instead of scowling he gaped in utter bewilder-
ment as the two faces were carried past him. They did not look at
him; the man was keeping his eyes on the road, and moving his
mouth in a way that indicated that he was talking; the girl by
his side was looking attentively into his face.
The grl was Betty. The man was Robert Tharkles.
Charles stopped pedalling. The bicycle came to a standstill. He
got off and leaned it carefully against a tree. He needed to stand
still, at once, and think. He leaned over a gate. Two cows stared
at him suspiciously.
This was Betty's 'day'; the weekly occasion when she visited
her aged and eccentric relative to draw her ' allowance'. Of course,
now he looked at it, the story was ludicrously implausible. Why
had he swallowed it? The answer came at once. lt was because
she had retumed with the cash. lt never crossed his mind that,
if she were to deceive Froulish, her unfaithfulness would take the
form of simple <1guidpro quo>1 prostitution. And yet he could see it
all so clearly! Betty had a simple, literal mind; or, to be more
exact, the system of refiexes and elementary perceptions that
served her instead of a mind was simple and literal. She and
Froulish had to live, to be fed, sheltered, and warmed. She had in
some way run across Robert Tharkles and decided, as many a
young woman has decidcd every day throughout human history,
that here was a source of material advantage. He, on his side, no
doubt found the sour-faced shrew in his lawful bed too mon-
otonous and noxious a diet. The only difference between this affair
and all the countless similar ones going on all over the earth, lay
in Betty's simplicity and directness. The average girl of her type
would have recoiled from the hand-to-hand passage of Treasury
72
notes, but seen nothing amiss in accepting payment in forms only
slightly less direct---the rent, meals, clothes, expensive gfts---and
no doubt Tharkles would have made an attempt to start her off
in this direction ; probably the fool had been scandalized when she
insisted on a straight cash arrangement, and told him---as she
was sure to have done---that she needed it to support the shamb-
ling eccentric for whom she really cared. But she had carried the
day, and the trio in the loft had benefited.
It was this last thought that struck Charles so immediate and
so disabling a blow. It never entered his head to be seriously
shocked or disapproving at Betty's action; the amiable slut had
never pretended to be anything else, and her life was on the same
moral level as those of thousands of women who would have
called her an unseemly name. What shook him, what caused the
sweat to bead his forehead in the cold air of the winter aftemoon
was the realization that his own attempt to break out of the net
had failed utterly. He had turned his back resolutely on the world
represented by Robert Tharkles; he had declared that he wanted
none of it, that he would manage without its aid or approval; he
had abruptly ended his courtship of a girl whose memory, even
now, could at times signal to him a clear and potent message,
because she was a part of the Tharkles world---and the first thing
he had done was to enter his name on the Tharkles payroll.
Unbeknown to either party, doubtless, but he had entered it. He
had become a parasite on the world he detested.
Perhaps it was not true. He seized his bicycle and pedalled
madly down the road. He must follow them and check up on the
situation. Of course it was not true. He was just giving her a lift,
out to where her old aunt lived. Perhaps he had an old aunt
himself, in the same village.
All the time he knew that it <1was>1 true. He had seen the com-
placent pride of possession written across Tharkles's face. It was
that knowledge that was driving him mad; for, of course, it is
madness pure and simple to race wildly cn a bicycle down a
country road, chasing a motor-car.
Like a good many insane actions, it paid off. In another mile
the road broadened into a self-consciously picturesque village
street; like all such village streets it was dominated by several
73
hotels of various degrees of vulgarity. Some of them made a
point of being horsey, and had names like 'The Fox and Hounds'
and 'The Post Hom'. The largest, however, was determinedly
and phonily antique. It was called 'Ye Olde Oake Tree'.
Robert's car was outside the 'Ye Olde Oake Tree'. It was
empty.
Head down, looking straight in front of him, Charles cycled
past. He did not want to be recognized if either of them
happened to be looking out. He stopped a few yards farther up
the street and leaned his bicycle against the sham black-and-
white front of another hotel. A man in a green apron came out
and showed him a notice forbidding people to lean bicycles
against the wall. Charles moved away until the man went back,
then returned and leaned his bicycle against exactly the same
spot. Then he went down a narrow alley in the fading light, and
came out at the back door of the 'Ye Olde Oake Tree'.
He went in. It was the public bar entrance, although, as it was
not yet opening time, the actual door of the bar was locked. In
the passage where he stood there was no one about. By looking
through a serving hatch he could see across the space behind the
bar; at the other end of that space was another serving hatch,
opening on to the expensive part of the hotel. He stood still and
waited.
'Well, send a telegram,' came the voice of Robert Tharkles.
Charles's heart gave a great bound. Could it be that everything
was above board? That Betty had some genuine reason for being
out here, and was worrying about how to let Froullsh know? He
froze, and strained his ears for her answer. It made his heart sink.
'All right, but I still don't like it. I never told him I was going
to be away for the night. You go and spring it on me just because
your wife happens---'
'SHHHHHH!' came the agonized sound. Obviously the sen-
tence was going to end 'happens to be away for the week-end'.
or in some similar way. It was characteristic of Betty that she
could not make even the most perfunctory pretence of being
married to Tharkles when they were in public. In tlu-s, after all,
she showed as usual a certain sense of the realties, for no one
could possibly have taken her as such.
74
A slattemly grl in an overall came down the passage towards
Charles.
'That door's not s'posed to be open,' she said in a nagging
voice. She meant to convey that he had no right to come in by the
back way. Then she looked at him more closely and added, 'Did
you want summink?' Meaning to convey that she could not make
out, from his appearance, whether he was a potential customer,
wanting food or a room, or a workman who had come to do
some repair or other.
'I've brought the catgut,' said Charles coldly and distinctly.
'Brought the what?'
'The catgut. The landlord ordered it by telephone.' He stared
viciously into her eyes.
'I'll go an' ask Mr. Rogers,' she said uncertainly, and
disappeared. Charles left the hotel as he had entered it.
Pedalling back along the arterial road it suddenly came to him.
He must ask Em what to do. Em was the only person he could
possibly tum to. He must go to him and say, quite baldly, that he
had suddenly discovered a terrible fact about the way of life on
which he had prided himself; namely, that it was made possible
by the immoral eamings of a woman. Of that there was no doubt,
after the snatch of conversation he had overheard. Evidently they
had a regular weekly arrangement, and this week Tharkles,
released from supervision by Edith's absence on a week-end trip,
had suggested that they, too, should make a week-end of it.
Only Em could help. There was nothing to be done about the
rest of it. Nothing, that is, except leave the loft, quietly and at
once, wheeling his few belongings in the cart; Froulish, left at
home alone, would be too wrapped up in his endless task to
notice what was happening, and, since the cold weather had set
in, they had allowed their earlier custom of a weekly pub-crawl
to lapse. He could easily get away, and beyond that he found it
impossible to think straight about the situation at all; found,
indeed, that the effort of trying to think straight about it was
intolerably painful. What would Froulish feel if he knew?
75
Anything or nothing: he was as morally null as the wench herself,
and might perfectly well shrug hu-s shoulders and say that he had
always known that Art flowered from a soil that could not be
described as clean or fragrant. Perhaps---more numbing still---he
knew all the time, and the two of them had had just sufficient
delicacy to keep Charles with them by faking the story of the old
relative and the allowance. No : he rejected this idea, partly as too
horrible, and partly because he felt sure that the keeping of any
such secret, from one who saw him every day, would have been a
task quite beyond the powers of the twitching buffoon.
It was suddenly dark and terribly cold. His lamp threw a faint
ring of yellow on the wet road. Shivering, he thought of the
warmth and light of the hotel where Robert Tharkles had taken
Betty. The wages of sin. He thought of soft carpets, imitation log
fires looking warm, efficient central heating being warm. By a
sudden unexplained twist he found himself picturing the Oak
Lounge at the Grand, and the smooth man padding over to set
down the two tiny glasses. Can't get a short drink under two bob.
Money. The network everywhere : no, a web, sticky and cunningly
arranged. You were either a spider, sitting comfortably in the
middle or waiting with malicious joy in hiding, or you were a fly,
struggling amid the clinging threads. He and Froulish were flies,
but Froulish did not mind. His contempt for the spider remained
genuine and sustaining even while his wings were being pulled off,
even while he was being eaten. But the classification did not work.
Which was Betty, a spider or a fly? And which, oh which, was the
grl in the Oak Lounge? Could a spider have such delicate bones?
Could it make a fly feel that nothing else in the world had any
meaning?
He remembered reading about spiders. Sometimes the web
caught a wasp by mistake. Then the spider had to dismantle the
web. The wasp had to be let go,.because it was dangerous.
It seemed as if the wasps had the right idea.
Froulish was going through one of his bad spells. When Charles
arrived he was on his knees beside the oil stove, tearing sheet after
76
sheet of paper into long strips with a slow, deliberate bittemess.
When he had accumulated about fifty strips he set fire to them,
one at a time, and bumt them down until the flame almost touched
his stubby fingers. The loft was filled with dense acrid smoke.
'You're at that game again, are you?' Charles could not help
saying roughly as he passed him to go into his own compartment.
' How many times have I got to wam you against setting the place
on fire?'
'And how many times,' retorted the novelist sullenly, 'have I
got to explain that when I come to a standstill, I have to go back
and find the obstruction that blocks the flow of inspiration, and
that when 1 find that obstruction, the smoke from its funeral pyre
provides .the only possible stimulus to enable me to replace the
dead matter?'
The flame caressed his fingers, and with a curse he flung a
blazing scrap of paper into the middle of the flcor. Charles
stepped over and trod it out. He felt almost guilty at leaving the
idiot to his own devices. No one to cook him a meal or force him
to go to bed; no one even to preserve him from the ever-present
threat of his pyromania. As he rolled his tiny stock of spare
clothing in a sheet of newspaper, something like a lump rose in
Charles's throat at the thought that Froulish was, after all, about
his nearest approach to an old friend, and that their parting must
come at once, and come in a manner so brutal and silent. He
looked up almost affectionately at the moody figure crouching at
the centre of a blue cloud.
' Shan't be long,' he said, hating himself, as he clambered down
the ladder with the newspaper bundle beneath one arm. 'I've just
got to go round to Em's.'
Froulish nodded sulkily. It was, at any rate, a relief that he was
so insufferable at the moment. Had he been in one of his more
endearing moods Charles might have been led by an onrush of
sentiment into attempting impossible explanations. It was better
simply to fade out.
Lock stock, and barrel; he hitched the cart behind his bicycle
and pedalled away from the home that had become unbearably
sullied, that had been revealed as a mere cesspit on the Tharkles
estate. That episode was over.
77
Why did he seek out Em? Was there any hope that Em could,
in any important way, get him out of thus mess? Obviously, no;
but Charles's pride was beaten down to the point at which he
found it impossible to stand alone. Irrational as it was, he felt a
vague flutter of hope that Em would drive the weight of his
Manchester common sense into the heart of the problem, as he
had driven the weight of his chunky body into the oncoming bulk
of the man with the bald head.
The streets were dark and quiet. He cycled quickly, and once
the near-side wheel of the cart dragged protestingly along the
kerbstone as he rounded a comer too narrowly. As he approached
the quiet, dingy street where Em lodged, he felt like the one
living thing left on earth. The cold wind seemed to have driven
everyone and everything into shelter. It was begnning to freeze,
and the sparsely planted lamp-posts were islands of yellow silence
in the sea of darkness.
Except outside Em's house. There was quite a lot of activity
going on there. A highly-polished black car was drawn up outside
the door, with a man in a dark uniform waiting beside it on the
pavement. The light was on in the front room on to which the
front door opened. Charles stopped his bicycle in time to see,
framed in the lighted doorway, three figures. Two of them were
dressed in the same dark uniform as the man on the pavement,
so that Em, who was in lu-s ordinary working clothes, seemed
quite conspicuous.
He would have been conspicuous in any case, for he walked
with the clumsy, rather swaying gait of a man whose wrists are
handcuffed together.
The bicycle clattered to the ground as Charles went forward.
Idiotically, lu-s voice uttered three syllables.
'What's up, Em?'
The toothless face tumed in his direction. The policemen
halted for a minute while one of them opened the car door.
'Go into the 'ouse, Charley,' said Erm. 'The landlord's got
summat for you.'
' But can't I---I mean surely there must bp---'
One of the policemen tumed to him with a kind of sad menace.
'Come on, out of it,' he said in a voice which conveyed the
78
same blend of threat and melancholy. 'Else I shall have to teach
you better than to try to hold a conversation with a man under
arrest.'
'This is a frep---' Charles began weakly.
'I'd pull you in under suspicion,' groaned the policeman
you already and we've checked that you're not in this.'
'Not in WHAT?' Charles shouted in exasperation, but the
polished car droned away smoothly, with Em's cloth-capped head
just visible through the back window.
He stood, utterly paralysed, in front of the still open door. His
bicycle lay on its side a few yards away. Froulish and Betty gone.
Em gone. Policemen in cars. Where was his life? How could he
even begn to piece together its fragments, when he was not even
certain that he could remember what shape it used to be?
Then he remembered that at least Em had left him with one
concrete instruction. Go into the house, the landlord's got some-
thing for you. He tumed to go in at the door at the precise instant
that an enormously fat man in his shirt-sleeves began to close it.
'You'd be the partner?' said the fat man.
Charles nodded, and entered without speaking. The fat man
led the way down the greasy passage to what had been Em's room.
Inside, he waited for Charles to get well into the room, then closed
the door with heavy deliberation.
'Now mind,' he said breathily, for he was one of those fat men
who are always slightly out of breath, 'I know nothing, not one
thing, about that man's business. I've 'ad enough questions from
the police, and I don't want any more from you. All I want is to
be rid of the 'ole affair. Understood?'
' Understood,' said Charles, faintly.
'Now all I 'ave to do, to <1be>1 rid of it, is to 'and over what 'e left
for you, and then wish you a <1very>1 good night.'
He looked at Charles sternly.
'A <1very>1 good night,' he repeated. He put a cheap brown
envelope in Charles's hand. lnside it were two florins and a ten
shilling note. A scribbled note in Em's writing said: 'we did not
have time to share out this evening. you keep mine. i shant need
it where im going.'
79
' Where <1is>1 he going?' he asked the landlord, too dazed to reflect
that he had read the note silently, so that the man could not see
the connection.
'It's where <1you're>1 going that interests me,' came the answering
wheeze. "Outside. I wish you a <1very->1--'
'All right, all right,' said Charles. He went down the passage
and opened the door. Then he tumed and looked at the fat greasy
figure who stood staring at him inimically.
'Thanks at least for giving me what he left for me,' he said.
'I've told you, I want to be rid of the 'ole affair,' answered the
landlord. He did not even want to claim credit for his honesty.
It seemed that caution was the one virtue he recognized.
Charles picked up his bicycle and, too dispirited to mount,
wheeled it aimlessly away.
The Warden of the Y.M.C.A. hostel received Charles back
without comment or question, and the old routine picked up as
smoothly as if it had never stopped. It was all unbelievably
depressing, but Charles had decided that before leaving the district
he must wait to find out what had happened to Ern. It was only
partly a matter of personal loyalty; he had not known Ern long
enough to become attached to him, though, since the episode of
the bald-headed man, he had trusted him implicitly; his motive
was really the desperate need for more light on the situation. His
foundations had been knocked from under him, and he felt that
at least he must try to build up as clear a picture as possible
before making any fresh move.
The only possible course, therefore, was to watch the local
paper until it gave details of Ern's trial. As Stotwell was the county
town, the trial would be held at the local assizes. No one seemed
to know when this was due to come off, but Charles pinned his
faith in the <1Stotwell Advertiser>1 to tell him what happened.
It did better than that. Some ten days after his retum to the
hostel---ten days spent in fitful pursuit of his usual duties, so long
as they did not take him near the quarter of the town frequented
by Froulish and Betty---it announced the cases that were to come
80
up at the assizes the following day. Once again Charles's best
clothes came out of storage, and the next moming he waited
outside the building for an hour, to make sure of a seat in the
court's public gallery.
Em's case was, mercifully, one of the first to be tried. It was
over with incredible swiftness; no defence was offered, no legal
wrangling was necessary, nothing was to be done but state the
facts, hear Em's plea of Guilty, and sentence him. After the speed
of the proceedings, its next most striking feature was the casual
atmosphere. It was evidently seen as a business transaction. Em
had placed such-and-such an amount of illegal conduct on one
balance of the scales ; the law would place a corresponding weight
of punishment on the other, and equilibrium would be restored.
Charles had never seen lawyers in action before, but in their rapid,
detached handling of the business, their evident lack of personal
concem with what to others were matters of supreme importance,
they reminded him of clergymen scampering with professional
rapidity through a service. No one seemed to be shocked, or to
care much, about Em's crime. It seemed that he had been
employed by a firm called the Export Express Bureau, which
supplied drivers to motor manufacturers who wanted their newly-
finished vehicles driven from the factory to the docks. It was news
to Charles, as (evidently) it was to the Judge, that such firms
existed. Em's job had been simply to report at one or other of the
large Midland motor firms, pick up the car or lorry that awaited
him, and drive it to some major sea-port, usually Liverpool or
Southampton. In the course of the Judge's questions (it was,
patently, the only part of the proceedings that engaged his interest)
it emerged not only that such a job existed, but that it was
particularly subject to bribery. The demand for cars was such
that theft had become profitable and highly systematized. Gangs
would approach an Export Express driver, and make it sub-
stantially worth his while to leave his car unattended in a moment
of carelessness; it was quite enough to pull up at a wayside cafe,
and on emergng, go round to the lavatory behind the building
and stay there for two or three minutes. When the driver retumed,
the brand-new car had already been driven down the road and
into a waiting van, where, even as it drove along, it was resprayed
81
in a different colour and fake licence plates screwed on. A day or
two later the driver would receive his bribe. It seemed that he
always did receive it; the gangs wanted to stay on good terms with
the drivers, and found it worth while to do business genuinely.
Nevertheless, it appeared, rogues sometimes fell out. Em had
succumbed to the offer of a hundred pounds to leave a powerful
saloon car unattended for a few minutes at a pre-arranged spot;
but before he could receive the money, someone had managed to
reach him with a waming not to keep the appointment. The police
were in action. That evening he had melted away, and Stotwell
had gained a new citizen. All this had happened a mere four
months previously, so that Em's statement to Charles that he had
been in Stotwell 'a year or two' was simply a piece of caution;
Charles had not the heart to think of it as a lie, for, after all, what
was it to him how long Em had been there?
Impersonally, casually, the case was assessed. A first offence;
on the other hand the prisoner had made an unusually determined
effort to evade the law. Eighteen months' imprisonment.
That was that. Suddenly Charles felt that his feeling for Em
had evaporated, leaving yet another vacuum inside him. He
watched the stocky toothless figure led away, out of the court
and out of his life, without emotion. Their association had been,
after all, simply a convenience to both of them; a place to hide,
for each was a fugitive. It was this shared predicament that had
led to the quick formation of the intuitive bond between them,
and, now that for one of them the game was up, that bond parted
easily and at once. He rose, and, pushing his way to the end of the
row, left the courtroom.
Feet clattered down the stone stairs after him. Evidently some-
one else was leaving too. On emerging into the street, Charles
paused for a moment with a hint of the old irresolution, and the
other was beside him.
Not only that, but he had halted. Charles glanced sideways and
saw a tall, gangling young man dressed in expensive outdoor
clothes ; a heavy tweed jacket with slits up the back, twill trousers,
brogues. He had a flashing wrist-watch and a tie of good material
but poor design. He looked like someone who eamed more
money than he found it advisable to declare for Income Tax, and
82
consequently spent it. His eyes were on Charles's face, and, when
Charles looked at him, he spoke at once.
'Interesting, that last case,' he said. His voice was light and
rapid, with something of a county accent which shared the faintly
uneasy quality of his clothing.
Something made Charles reply, ' Very. Especially to me, I know
the man. Knew him, I suppose I ought to say.'
'What?' cried the tall young man. 'You know Ernie
Ollershaw ? '
It was characteristic that he made 'Ern' into 'Ernie', a name
that Ern would never have answered to. (All the same, it was nice
to reflect that Ern had not gven him a false name; probably he
had used one for his dealings with the thieves, and kept his real
one for genuine relationships.)
'Not in the game yourself by any chance?' the young man went
on in a light casual tone.
' Game?'
'Don't get me wrong. I don't mean what he was pinched for.
I mean the straight side of it. Export delivery driving.'
Charles shook his head. The other waited for him to say how,
in that case, he had met Ern, but he said nothing. It was not the
fellow's business.
The tall man took the hint.
'Well, must be getting on. I just came over to see the trial
because I used to know Emie on the job, and I knew the lads
would be interested to hear how he got on. We liked him.'
He nodded and began to stride away. Charles suddenly reazed
that a door was swinging to. In another second it would slam,
and one possible way out would be barred. Whoever this man
was, he was making money. If he chose he could, doubtless, move
in circles not far below those inhabited by the Rodericks. He
would probably never have condescended to start a conversation if
Charles had been wearing his working clothes and pushing his cart.
'I say!' he heard himself croak.
The gangling frame halted, and tumed.
'I'm---well, interested, in what you were saying,' Charles
brought out. ' About the job, I mean. I mean, I often wondered
what Em---you know---'
83
'It doesn't do to wonder too much, old boy,' came the answer
in a light pattering tone. Charles writhed, conscious of a deep
shame that his plight forced him to associate with people who
called other people 'old boy'. 'But if you're interested in the job,
I don't say we couldn't talk turkey over a pot.'
'All right,' said Charles. 'At least we can go and have'---he was
going to say 'a drink', but remembered in time to call it 'a pot'.
It would help to win the fellow-s confidence if he showed that he
could talk the same vile jargon.
'Lead me to it, old boy,' said the gangling man.
'This way, old boy,' said Charles.
THE big car edged uncomfortably close to the ditch as Charles
eased it round; he was well on the wrong side of the road, and the
camber was dragging the wheels sideways. Never mind! His first
run was nearly over, and he had kept up with the convoy. Not
that it had been easy; altogether ajob for the new Charles, though
the old one had leamt to drive sufficiently well to take his mother
shopping in the family ten-horsepower saloon. Just a question of
being able to climb into the driving seat of his first 'job', and drive
it away without too much clashing of the gears---and then the
grim struggle to keep the rest of the convoy in sight, to prove
that he could do what they could do. If Scrodd could see him
now!
They would soon be in Liverpool; the road was lined with
houses, and suddenly the five cars ahead stopped. A pedestrian
crossing with a crocodile of school children on it. He brought the
car to a halt and waited, keeping the clutch out; it was hard, the
pedal was new and stiff. As he sat quietly waiting, his mind strove
to grasp the swirl of recent events. What a time it had been ! How
little he had understood of what had gone on! He had felt like
Alice in Wonderland. From the moment when, over their drinks
(ironically, in the Oak Lounge), the gangling man had introduced
himself as Teddy Bunder and announced his intention of
'squeezing you into the racket, old boy---you're the type', he had
felt like a spark whirled up from a fire in a current of hot air. At
first he had suspected that Bunder was a crook, and that the gang
of cronies to whom Bunder had introduced him when they
arrived at the Export Express staff canteen and bar were crooks
too. They all seemed keen on recruiting the profession from among
85
those who were 'the type'; presumably Em had been the type,
and Em was now engaged in being the type behind bars for
eighteen months. And yet, once Bunder had levered him adroitly
into the firm, taking him straight in to the manager with the
claim that he had found the ideal man to fill a vacancy that had
recently occurred, and inventing on the spot a long record of
experience for him, Charles found himself left fairly well alone.
No one tried to interest him in dubious schemes; Bunder and his
set, though approachable enough, made no effort to sweep him
in as one of themselves; for his firstjob he had been assigned
not to a solo trip but to one of the less responsible convoy
mns.
The cars ahead moved. Charles dragged heavily on the tapering
gear-lever and somehow jerked the motor up through three
changes into top. He hoped, for the sake of the people to whom
these cars were to be delivered as brand-new, that practice would
soon make him a smoother driver.
At the docks came another ordeal he had, fortunately, not had
the foresight to worry about in advance: the cars had to be drawn
up close together in a dead straight line to facilitate loading on to
the ship. With eyes shut he jerked his vehicle violently forward for
the last ten yards, swingng on the steering wheel, and stamped
on the brake. ' All right, mate ! No need ter show yer bloody skill ! '
came a hoarse shout: opening his eyes he saw that he had drawn
up dead level with the car next to him, and left barely one inch of
clearance.
Perhaps it was an omen, indicating that, in this new sphere,
chance would decide to favour him. Certainly if his luck had
followed its old habitual course, he could have driven into the
dock and been drowned.
Before catching the train back there were pints of beer in a
dockside pub. At first Charles sat rather uncomfortably apart
from the others, who all knew each other well, but after a few
minutes a serious-looking middle-aged man in a grey cloth cap,
whom he knew as Simons, edged towards him along the bench
and gave a friendly nod as a signal that he was about to open a
conversation.
'Well: get on all right?'
86
'Yes, thanks; it didn't seem a very difficult job this time,'
Charles answered.
'No, not this time, it wasn't,' Simons admitted rather reluc-
tantly, as if implying that it was usually much worse; he was not
a pessimist, but he had the habit of mind of the responsible
mature artisan, always prepared for huge burdens to drop on his
shoulders. Then he looked at Charles rather curiously.
' Friend of Bunder's?'
It was obvious what he really wanted to know; are you with us,
or with them? Bunder's set were markedly different in appearance
and habits from the rest of the Export Express staff. Charles was
about to answer that he was scarcely on nodding terms with the
Bunder cllque, when it stmck him that he might leam more if he
kept the issue in suspense a little longer.
'Can't make him out, quite,' he said slowly, hoping to convey
the impression that he had been encouraged to throw in his lot
with Bunder, and was hesitating. Simons evidently took this as he
was meant to.
'Well,' he said with deliberation, 'you'll find as it pays to make
him out, even if it takes time, before you---' Leaving the sentence
unfinished, he drained his Guinness and set the glass down with
a rap on the table.
'He's not difficult to make out,' he said, 'not if you've met his
type before.'
Charles maintained silence. It was a policy that was proving its
value. As Simons seemed to be waiting for him to say something,
he took the simplest way out by pointing to the empty glass and
saying, ' Another?'
'Have one with me,' said Simons, thus revealing his hand a
little farther. It showed that he was willing to take a little trouble
to influence Charles.
Whcn he retumed with the drinks he said, 'The long and short
of it is this. Bunder and them pals of his aren't bad at the job.
They could do all right if they were content to stick to it and do
one job at a time, like. But they aren't. The job's not good enough
for them.'
He lit his pipe. The match flame flared, inches high, in between
guttering almost out.
87
'So what do they do?' he went on.
Charles did not know what they did. To answer might spoil
everything. He buried his face in his glass.
The other drivers were standing up. 'Come on, Jack,' one of
them called to Simons. 'Time to be getting on to the station.'
Simons took out his watch and looked at it. 'That's right,' he
said. He got up, and Charles followed him out into the street, and
fell into step as they tmdged along, hoping that Simons would go
on with the vitally important part of the story. But some of the
others were talking and Simons was listening to them. He seemed
to have forgotten that he had been intermpted.
In the train going back they played cards. Charles did not get
a chance to speak to Simons again.
Several weeks passed. Life was, on the whole, uneventful; his
energes were absorbed in mastering the new job, and he had as
little energy to spare for private worries as during his first weeks
as a window-cleaner. He had taken lodgngs near the Export
Express offices ; both Bunder and Simons had gven him addresses
that they recommended, but to accept either would have meant
the end of his policy of strict neutrality, and he was detennined
to preserve it until he saw how the land lay; so he found a place
for himself. It was drab, but he did hardly more than sleep there,
and the bed was comfortable. He had hoped that removal from
Stotwell, combined with the change in his way of life, would rid
him of the obsession that had seized him that evening in the Oak
Lounge; but his hope was streaked with despair, and even, at the
deepest layer of all, ousted by a desire to stay in the struggle. Had
he not found himself a job that carried good pay? Not riches, but
certainly more than he had eamed before, and enough to make it
something more than an occasional fling when he ate a meal at a
good hotel. And had not his motive, only half unconsciously,
been just that---to put himself in a better position for taking stock
of his chances <1vis-a-vis>1 the Rodericks?
He tried to shrug the notion away, but one tell-tale symptom
prevailed. When his route to the docks lay southward, it took him
88
through Stotwell, which lay about twenty miles away ; and, when-
ever possible, he called at the Grand Hotel and looked into the
Oak Lounge for a moment. It was useless to resolve, as he always
did resolve, that he would drive straight through the town ; doubly
useless to maintain to himself, as he always did maintain, a foolish
pose of I-can-have-a-drink-if-I-like indifference. A hundred-fold
useless to point out to himself the idiocy of imagning that because
he had once seen her in the Oak Lounge, he had only to hang
around there for long enough and he would see her again.
Probably she did not go into the Oak Lounge once in three years.
Time, the barman had said something about the Rodericks being
frequent customers there, but the barman was probably lying, in
a charitable attempt to pay for his drink with some good news.
Wearily admitting all this, he nevertheless parked his car, when-
ever possible, and padded up the broad staircase to meet the
accustomed disappointment. She was never there, and in any
case he would have had no idea what to do about it if she had
been.
Febmary passed ; Charles started innumerable engnes, stamped
on pedals, gripped wheels, stared through windscreens, wore out
pairs of gloves. One day, muffled up in furs and goggles, he took
the road perched above the gigantic chassis of a twelve-wheeler;
the next, elegantly flicking cigarette ash through the window, he
floated in an expensive llmousine. The arterial roads were usually
quick to be cleared of snow, and on the whole the weather
favoured his novitiate; his solitary mishap---when a van he was
driving skidded helplessly, revolved three times, and ran back-
wards up a bank of earth---served, if anything, to reassure him by
the speed at which his ruflled nerves recovered. At least, thank
Heaven, he was on top of the job; circumstances had forced him
to master one more skill, and he acknowledged, even in his aching
emptiness, the tonic effect of that mastery.
It was queer to look out of the carriage window and still be able
to see distances and colours at seven o'clock at night; it was well
into March, but the longer evenings still seemed a novelty. Charles
89
waited impatiently for the train to start: after a long and tedious
joumey from Southampton, they had almost reached Stotwell,
but evidently the signals were against them, and they had halted
outside the station. Well, he had only himself to blame; he could
have caught an express, but had discovered that if he travelled by
a slower train, he could change trains at Stotwell, and break his
joumey for long enough to visit the Oak Lounge. Pitiless, humilia-
ting obsession ! The train waited and waited. Fretting, he snatched
at the leather strap, dropped the window with a crash, and thrust
his head out. He was staring angrily up the line, and was on the
point of wrenching the door open and leaping out on to the metals,
though it would have meant a walk of two or three miles to the
town centre, when a rich, husky voice from inside the compart-
ment summoned him back.
'Have a heart, partner! I'm refrigerated to the marrow as it is!'
Charles brought his head and shoulders back inside and looked
round. So intensely preoccupied with his gnawing emotions, he
had not even looked at the compartment's only other occupant;
yet the man was not easy to overlook. Huge and squarely built,
with the superfluous flesh that middle-age brings to the powerful
physique. A broad face, broadly grinning. Loud, cheerful clothes,
worn loudly and cheerfully.
'Sorry,' said Charles, drawing up the window. 'It is a bit
chilly, isn't it?'
'Very nicely understated, partner,' came the reply. ' Let's light
a bonfire, shall we?' He produced a huge sillver case containing
what looked at first sight like small, cheap cigars. Charles
accepted one and, examining it in the fading light, discovered it
to be a cheroot. Obviously! No other kind of smoke would fit in
so well with the fat man's raffish good humour.
'Not as good as a night-watchman's brazier,' the fat man
apologized, holding out a match. 'But enough to melt an inch or
two off the icicles.'
What was that accent? It had a hint of America, a hint of the
Antipodes, and a fair slice each of Cockney and Birmingham.
Some words even sounded faintly Scottish. Obviously half a
century of roaming the world. Could it be show business of some
kind? The train had started; they would reach Stotwell in five
minutes, and, no doubt, separate and never see each other again.
Why not ask straight out? It was months since he had burst out
of the straitjacket of his upbringing---here was a chance to
benefit by that escape, if only in a small matter.
'I know it's a bit thick to rob you of a cheroot and then grill
you with personal questions into the bargain,' he began. The fat
man's face creased into a vast grin, and he interrupted with a
bellow of laughter.
'Easy to see you're not used to being free-and-easy with
strangers,' he husked powerfully. 'You can't make me out, and
you want to know what I make me living at, that's right, isn't it?'
Charles nodded, his incipient embarrassment puffed away in
the gale of bonhomie.
' All right, but I make one condition. I like a bargain, always did.
You tell me about yourself first.'
'I'm an export delivery driver. I take cars from the factories to
the docks.'
The fat man assumed an expression of bewilderment theatrically
overdone.
'Dear, dear, oh dear, the world's moving too fast for poor old
Arthur. Here was I trying to size you up, and failing because you
didn't fit into any type I knew, and now it tums out you've got a
job I'd never even heard of. And what kind of a job might that
be? One of these new kind ofjobs, I dare say, where you couldn't
rightly say whether a fella was a workman or an office stool
percher or a manager. It's all upside-down these days.'
'Well, at least you do know it's upside-down,' said Charles
reassuringly. 'Most people of your generation----er---if you don't
mind me making you sound very old, I didn't really mean to---
anyway, most of them haven't cottoned on to these changes.'
'Ah, but I'm in a job that's changng all the time,' said the fat
man, sitting back proudly with one powerful square hand on each
knee. 'In my job, when you stop being one jump ahead of the
changes, you get it straight where the bottle got the stopper.'
Holding his cheroot in his mouth, he devoted all ten fingers to
searching his waistcoat pockets and finally producing a car
which he handed across.
It said, 'ARTHUR BLEARNEY ENTERTAINMENTS'.
91
'I don't quite get the whole story from this,' Charles ventured.
'I suppose you promote shows and---act as an agent of some sort.'
Mr. Blearney chuckled richly. ' I promote shows, yes, I act as
an agent, yes. As for not quite getting the whole story, well,
partner, you weren't altogether meant to get it. That's another
lesson of my lifetime---the day anybody gets the <1whole>1 story, you
get it where the chicken got the chopper.'
The train drew in to Stotwell station and halted. They stood up.
'No,' said Mr. Bleamey, still chuckling, 'I didn't say anything
about the <1whole>1 story, partner, now did I?'
Charles looked at him, unable to decide whether to dislike him
or relax and join in his amusement, sharing that genuine good
humour and unconsciousness of offence. He had still not decided
when they had clambered down and emerged, still side by side,
through the ticket barrier.
' Busy? ' Mr. Bleamey asked. ' lf not, why don't you come along
to my hotel and let's have a drink?'
'What is your hotel?' Charles countered. He must not miss his
pilgrimage to the Oak Lounge after taking so much trouble to get
here.
'The Grand---only one fit to stay in in this dump,' Mr. Bleamey
husked, and, when Charles signified assent, he masterfully
signalled for a taxi. In a few minutes they were in the hotel foyer,
and Mr. Blearney was the centre of a vortex of scurrying em-
ployees. The receptionist ran forward with the book ; the manager
ran out of his office; the page ran towards the lift to take him up
to his room; even the porter stumped off with Mr. Bleamey's
case at twice his usual speed. There was something galvanic
about the man as he stood squarely dominating the scenc,
shouting jovially and keeping up a stream of atrociously unfunny
jokes. Charles melted away to the background, content to watch
and admire. Mr. Bleamey was the first man he had ever met who
combined a hearty manner with genuine self-confidence. He
contradicted the general rule that heartiness is a sign of self-
distrust, thus confirming it.
At last they found themselves comfortably installed in the Oak
Lounge. Mr. Bleamey insisted on ordering, and paying for, four
double whiskies. 'Two each, that's the style, partner,' he said
92
Positively. ' Drink the first one down in one swallow, then take the
second slowly.' He drained his first, and Charles followed suit.
'Aaaaah,' said Mr. Bleamey, sitting back. 'That's the first
time I've had the cold out of my marrow-bones for three hours.
I'm getting old for this gallivanting, in draughty trains at any
rate. I shall have to go everywhere by car, and that'll bankrupt me
in six months."
He lit a cheroot. Charles, refusing the offer of one for himself,
took out his cigarettes.
'And no real need to come, either,' Mr. Bleamey went on. 'Just
keeping my eye on a touring show that's here at the local flea pit.'
' One of your shows? ' Charles asked.
'In a manner of speaking, yes. I'm not the backer, but I'm
acting for the backer. We've been getting rumours that the zip's
gone out of it. Comics need some new gags, choms could do with
a rest---you know the sort of thing.'
Charles tried to look as if he knew the sort of thing. They drank
some more of their whisky.
'I shall have to---well, Gawd, look who's here,' said Mr.
Blearney suddenly. 'Come on over, Bemard,' he shouted, 'hey,
Veronica, come on over, both of you! It's Uncle Arthur.'
Charles looked up, a sudden intuition smashing into the pit of
his stomach. Walking over to them, with smiles of recognition
directed at Mr. Blearney, were the Rodericks.
Men have been known to commit suicide by standing in front
of a train. ln such cases there must have been an interval of time
---say, between one and three seconds---when the suicide stood
between the metals, firmly planted on his feet in the path of the
engine, with every nerve and muscle braced for the shocking
impact. Such a degree of tension is probably unique, and not to
be approached in everyday life. But Charles approached it now.
As he jerked to his feet, every muscle went rigid in the violent
attempt to stop himself from trembling or falling down.
'Well, well, you gadabouts! ' roared Mr. Blearney, delighted.
'I'd forgotten you'd be back from Monte by now! How's the old
Med. looking? Blue for a boy, eh? How's the old Casino, eh,
Bemard?'
'We didn't go into the Casino,' purred Mr. Roderick, humor-
93
ously. 'Roulette isn't one of my diversions, you should know
that, Arthur.'
'I should know that! Me?' Mr. Bleamey rasped in mock
horror, tuming to Charles with a ludicrous air of injured
innocence. 'What should I know of his diversions ! Me that's led
such a quiet life! By the way,' he continued, dropping into what,
for him, was a normal tone, 'I don't suppose you know each
other---this is Bemard and Veronica Roderick, old friends of
minp---this is, er, I don't believe you gave me your name, anyway,
I met this young man in the train just now, and I've taken a big
fancy to him already.'
'My name's Charles Lumley.'
Clumsy, oafish performance! When a touch of sparkle, a gay
rejoinder to old Bleamey's maunderings, a crisp epigram, perhaps
(already) a well-tumed compliment---when these things were
imperiously demanded by the situation, all he could do was to
stand stiffiy, his arms rigdly held at an unatural ange from his
sides, and mumble out his name.
Easily and naturally, yet with no more warmth than was
warranted by the casual introduction of an unimportant stranger,
Bemard Roderick held out a plump hand. Charles extended his
own. At the contact he had a vivid sensation of the difference
between the two hands. His own had become powerful and
square; the skin, roughened by incessant exposure to water and
air during his window-cleaning days, had since become a ~ttle
smoother, but remained hard and thick, with a callous at the base
of each finger. His nails were short; Roderick's were just long
enough to protmde a fraction of an inch beyond his fingerends, so
that Charles distinctly felt them in his palm. Irrationally, a sllght
tremor of physical revulsion went through him. It was not that
Roderick's nails were a little too long, it was not that his general
appearance contained in it a slight, indefinable excess of the sleek
and the groomed---it was all these together, and something else
over and above them, something that Charles could not have
indicated even in general terms.
Their eyes met. Charles fought hard to like Mr. Roderick. His
muscles, which had relaxed for an instant, drew themselves taut
again with the effort of fighting off his revulsion. This man was
94
related to the one being who could bring significance into the
random pattem of his life. The effort failed.
'My niece, Veronica,' said Mr. Roderick. His eyes flickered
away from Charles's; he was looking at Mr. Bleamey.
She put her thin, cool hand in his.
' Whisky ! ' cried Mr. Bleamey.
'Let me get them,' Charles almost shouted in his anxiety. He
wanted it to be his tum to pad across the carpet with a tiny
gass, and set it down before her. Mr. Bleamey subsided in his
Not for us' we haven t had dlnner yet' proteste r- o eric -
Martini.'
<1Who cares what he wants ? A gentlenian would have asked the girl>1
<1what she wantedfirst. Turn towards her, look at>1 -<1her enquiringly.>1
<1Don't trust yourself to speak, soj ething's happened to your throat->1
'Thank you a pink gin please.' They were her first words to
him, for on being introduced she had smiled quickly and easily,
but in sllence. Her voice was clear, not shrill, but light.
As he hurried over to the bar, Charles was struck by a sudden
thought: no family resemblance. The sister, or brother, whose
daughter she was, must have been very different from Mr.
Roderick himself. Or was he a blood relation at all? Did adoption
come in at any stage?
The barman was leering at him sympathetically. He reazed
how he must appear in the man's eyes; just another crazy love-
sick fool.
'A pink gin, two double whiskies and a dry Martini, and don't
look now but your glass eye's fallen out,' he said harshly.
When he got back with the drinks, Mr. Bleamey had launched
into an anecdote that was not so much lengthy as proliferating:
it branched out in so many directions, sprouted subsidiary anec-
dotes by the dozen, and included an enormous amount of what
historians of primitive epic describe as ' episodic matter'. His talk
was not boring, but even if it had been of unexampled brilliance
Charles would not have listened. Under cover of the endless
husky roar, he sipped his whisky and kept his eyes on the grl, more
discreetly than when he had goggled so idiotically at her on their
95
first encounter. She was sitting opposite him, flanked by the two
men, so that Blearney's whisky-laden monologue swirled round
her like a heavy sea round a rock. She kept her eyes lowered, for
the most part, listening with a quiet but genuine amusement.
Once or twice she looked up and caught the eye of one or other
of the three, as people do in general conversation, now Bleamey's,
now her uncle's, now Charles's. It was impossible to decide which
of the three she glanced at most frequcntly. Charles decided that
probably, on a total count, Roderick would gave been declared
the winner. But when she looked at him, Charles, it was in quite a
normal and friendly way, without the chill of her first response to
his gaping. She was demure, her manner was not forward or even
particularly open, but it was not cold.
He suddenly realized that he was drunk again. Was it the three
whiskies on an empty stomach, or was it her presence? At any
rate, as so often before, he knew that intoxication made it possible
for him to act. Only when the higher centres, with their message
of restraint and caution, were put out of action---only then could
he dare. At lightning speed he revolved a number of possible
openings. ' Do you come here often? ' No, too silly. And she would
just say 'Yes' or 'No', and then what? No, it was better to start
from a more general angle. 'I gather you don't spend much time
in Stotwell?' Oh, so you gather, do you? Must have been prying
into her affairs, asking people questions about her. That must go
out. (He did not realize that this admission would have been
something like the charming artless compliment he had wished
for.) Well, what about leaving out the stuff about ' gathering', and
simply saying, 'Do you spend much time in Stotwell?'
He leaned forward. ' Do you spend much time in Stotwell?' he
asked.
The words crashed into a silence left by the sudden cessation of
Blearney's voice. The effect was like that of a man talking loudly
in a Tube train, who barks out the end of his sentence when the
train suddenly stops, and the whole carriage hears it. Thus
isolated, it seemed crass, thrusting, and impertinent. He felt limp
and nauseated. Blearney and Roderick turned and looked at him.
Nevertheless, she answered.
'It depends on how often my uncle has to make business
96
joumeys abroad,' she said. 'If he's going to be away for more
than a few days, I usually go with him.'
'Need someone to look after you, eh, Bemard?' shouted
Bleamey, humorously.
Roderick looked at him without expression. 'Yes,' he said.
There was a dead silence. Charles felt that he must certainly vomit
within the next ninety seconds. The figure, ninety, occurred to him
with odd precision.
Roderick got to his feet. 'Well, we'd better go and eat,' he said.
'Are you staying here, Arthur?' He did not ask whether Charles
and Mr. Blearney had had their dinner.
'Yes, but I probably shan't be seeing you for the rest of the
evening,' replied Mr. Blearney. 'I've got to go round to the flea
pit. I shall only see the second half as it is. Tell you what!' he
cried excitedly, 'come to my place in town next Sunday night.
Got a few of the right sort coming in---you know most of them,
Elsa, Stanley, Jimmy, you know the crowd. It's a long time since
we saw much of you in W.l.'
' Well---' Roderick began.
'Oh, Gawd, make him come, Veronica,' said Mr. Bleamey,
impatiently. ' You know you always enjoy my parties, both of you.
Look,' he tumed and faced the girl, 'you'd like to come, my love,
wouldn't you?'
'Yes,' she said simply.
'All right, we'll come,' said Mr. Roderick.
Charles got to his feet. He had to get away. Already the thought
of her at a party with Elsa, Stanley, and Jimmy was grinding into
him like a blunt drill. You always enjoy my parties! Both of you!
What in hell's name was the link between these two worlds?
Who spoke of the marriage of Heaven and Hell? At what altar
could this rite have taken place?
' Here, don't rush off without saying whether you're coming too,
whatsyaname, Charley,' shouted Mr. Blearney. ' You can get up
to London in those motor-cars of yours, can't you? 85A Sunflower
Court, about eight o'clock, now don't you start saying you can't
manage :t.'
Charles stood for a moment utterly numbed with bewilderment.
Then joy flooded into his being. Wonderful parties Mr. Bleamey
97
gave! The most delightful people, Elsa, Freddy, Jimmy, whatever
their names were, charming, witty, Jessie, Binkie, Sammy,
Socrates, Xenophon, Lao Tse, Stalin, to the hell with it all.
'I can manage it,' he said.
The next move was simple. It was late when he got back to the
town where Export Express Ltd. had its being, but he went
straight round to Teddy Bunder's flat. He rang the bell. His watch
showed half-past eleven. It was long time before Bunder came to
the door. He had no tie on, and instead of a shirt he was wearing
his pyjama jacket.
'For Christ's sake, old boy,' he said. He meant that Charles
ought not to have called so late without saying that he was
coming.
'Listen, I must talk to you,' said Charles rapidly. 'I came
round because I must talk to you.'
Bunder looked at him for a moment, then tumed and led the
way into the flat. The living-room was untidy, and there was a big
fire burning in the grate. A girl sat on the sofa.
'This is Doris,' said Bunder.
'Can I talk in front of her?' asked Charles openly and mdely.
'She wasn't bom yesterday,' said Bunder shortly.
'Well, now, listen,' said Charles in the same rapid voice. He
had a tremendous sense of the preciousness of time. 'I'll come
straight to the point. I can't be bothered just now to wrap anything
up.'
'Neither can I, old boy. Not my style at all. Cough it up, only
don't be all night about it. Doris isn't here to see my stamp album.'
'Well, then,' said Charles. 'It seems to be fairly common
knowledge that you and your particular pals have got some
racket that brings you in pretty big money. No one's said any-
thing, in so many words, and there's no indication that anyone
knows a single concrete fact about it, but it's fairly clear that
you've found some way of improving on the job from the money
point of view, and I'm here to ask you whether you can tmst me
enough to let me in on it.'
98
Bunder's eyes narrowed a little, and he took a pull at his
cigarette.
'I thought it wouldn't be long before you came round to ask
me that,' he said. 'Just tell me one thing. You need to make more
money, is that it?'
'That's it,' said Charles.
'I won't ask you what you need it for,' said Bunder. He glanced
at Doris, then back at Charles, and smiled. 'It's nearly always the
same story.'
'That's right, don't ask me,' said Charles. He stood stifly,
waiting for Bunder to make up his mind.
Bunder cmshed out his cigarette. Then he stood up.
' All right, old boy, we'll take you in. I think you're the type.'
'Yes, I'm the type, old boy,' said Charles.
Three days later he found himself posted on a run to the north-
westem docks in company with Bunder and five others. He had
been gven his instmctions, in private, and so, apparently, had
everyone else, for there was no public reference to the job in hand.
Nor was there any elaborate parade of casualness. They under-
stood one another.
When they had arrived at the docks, and duly driven the cars
to the appointed berth, there remained the two usual formalities.
One was to obtain for each car a certificate that it had been
delivered in proper fashion---the 'clearance chit'; the other was
to unscrew the trade plates which the cars carried in place of the
regulation number plates they would have when licensed. Each
driver was always responsible for removing these plates, front and
rear, from his vehicle and taking them back to Export Express.
Following Bunder's instructions, Charles went, as soon as he
was free, to the public lavatory which served that particular berth
of the docks. Inside, he found the others already assembled. They
had handed over their trade plates to Bunder, who received
Charles's from him and vanished, with the complete set, into one
of the water-closet compartments. The others stood about,
smoking, talking, and either using the urinals or pretending to do
99
so, until, after a few minutes, Bunder reappeared, flushing the
cistem noisily for the benefit of any outsiders who happened to
be present. None were, and quickly, but without the need for
concealment, Bunder handed everyone his trade plates back.
Drifting out of the lavatory in ones and twos, they passed out of
the dock gates and went off to the station.
Not until he was in the privacy of an empty compartment in
the train did Charles look closely at the two trade plates he was
carrying. Each of them had a plastic back, painted to look like
metal. A stiff clip held the back in place, but by inserting a half-
crown into a slot at one end, it could be levered off fairly easily.
He levered one of them off. Snugly fitting into the space between
the plate's false back and its real one, a space perhaps three-
sixteenths of an inch wide, were five tiny envelopes.
He snapped the back on again, and put the plates up on the
luggage rack. He did not need to look inside those envelopes.
A few weeks ago, if asked to make a short list of the lowest
human vermin, he would have put drug pedlars fairly near the
head of the list---assuming it to be in descending order of loath-
someness---somewhere in the same region as white-slave traders.
Now here he was, helping to smuggle heroin, or marijuana, or
whatever the vile stuff was, out of the docks and put it in circula-
tion. He had become a member, however insignificant, of the
organization that spread these drugs throughout the country ; the
organization that saw to it that the drugs were brought over in
the ships, taken into the pre-arranged lavatories on the docks,
concealed inside the cistem or in some other manner, and picked
up within a few hours by Bunder and his friends. The whole thing
was one vast network; each man was given his particular task and
told as little as possible about the rest of the business. For instance,
he, Charles, did not even know what steps were to be taken to get
these envelopes out of lu-s trade plates. That was someone else's
job; all he had to do was to leave them in the usual place when
arriving at the Export Express headquarters; they would be got
at somehow---perhaps by Bunder, perhaps by someone whom
Bunder did not even suspect of being in the organization---and the
envelopes removed. Then the filthy stuff would be hawked about
and sold, finding its way into the systems of miserable creatures
l00
who were half-crazy, lonely, ill, neurotic, or just very young. And
he had helped. He stared out of the train window with vacant,
heawy eyes, hating himself, hating his failure. And what was he
doing it for?
At the thought the vision of Veronica Roderick flashed with
blinding intensity upon the screen of his mind, and at once his
whole being, down to the smallest reflex and gesture, was drawn
into the violent whirlpool of his longing for her. He knew that he
would commit any crime, that he would steal, kill, maim, or ruin
the lives of people who had never done humham, for the sake,
not of possessing her, but of gving himself even a remote chance
of possessing her. He knew that neither his mind nor his body
could recognize anything as evil, nor as good, except in direct
relation to that desire. And he was helpless, and aghast.
SUMLOWER COURT proved to be a grandiose, ugly block of
'luxury' flats. As Charles walked up the steps he was aware of
an unfamiliar sensation, as of something pressing against his right
flank. It was his wallet. The reason why it was an unfamiliar
sensation was that, for the first time, the wallet was crammed full
of notes. For, besides the twenty-five pounds Bunder had handed
him for his part in the smugging trip, he had received his wages
that Friday.
The porter told him where Mr. Bleamey's flat was, and he took
the lift. The flat had a front door like that of a house, complete
with leaded window-panes and a letter-box. Even so, a consider-
able amount of noise filtered through. As Charles waited for Mr.
Bleamey to come to the door, he thought what a curious thing
enjoyment was. The sounds he could hear were made by people
who had assembled to have a good time, but they might easily
have been cries of anguish. Mr. Bleamey's voice, grating on as he
told one of his stories, might have been the endless mumbling
delirium of a man in great pain. The roars of laughter which
punctuated it, reaching him muffied through two closed doors,
sounded like the bellowing of a herd of cattle driven towards the
slaughter-house. And one woman shrieked at intervals as if she
were being disembowelled. He wondered if the Rodericks were
there already.
It was not Mr. Bleamey.but a man in a white coat who opened
the door. Charles guessed that this was Mr. Bleamey's valet,
dressed in a white coat to indicate for the occasion that he was
in charge of the drinks. He relieved Charles of his overcoat and
showed him into the room where the party was going on.
102
Mr. Bleamey, having just finished his story, had tumed to the
sideboard for some refreshment, and so had his back to the door,
so that he did not notice the arrival of Charles. The guests, who
had finished laughing at the <1denouement>1 of the story, had not yet
begun to talk about anything else, and were, for the most part,
standing looking at one another as people do at parties before
they break up into small groups. They tumed and looked at
Charles, who at once felt embarrassment surgng over him. The
valet did not announce him---it was not that kind of occasion and
he was not that kind of valet---and the situation was, temporarily,
a complete deadlock. Charles took a step or two forward, and
tried to take in the scene with a single glance.
He succeeded only to the extent of noticing that there were
about nine people in the room besides Mr. Bleamey. Most of them
were standing together in the middle, holding glasses in their
hands. Their appearance, in general, gave the impression of what
is usually known as Bohemianism, but without its redeeming
features; they looked studiedly theatrical instead of harmlessly
eccentric, and gave no impression, <1en masse,>1 of intelligence or
sensitivity. Charles's mind flew back to Froulish and Betty, but
there was the world of difference between these people and the
couple in the loft; they were harder, more bmtal, less absorbed
in pursuits outside themselves. The group seemed to be domi-
nated, in the temporary absence of Mr. Bleamey, by a thick-set,
middle-aged man in a loud check suit, who had the biggest face
Charles had ever seen. Its total area was big, and all its features
were big. Huge eyebrows arched over protruding eyes. His mouth
seemed immense even when, as now, he happened to have it
closed for the moment. His nose was both long and fantastically
bulbous, with nostrils like volcanic craters, from which black
hairs peered. Hairs of about the same length covered the backs
of his hands. Standing beside him was a young man in grey suede
shoes; Charles caught sight of those shoes and decided that he
now knew all he wished to know about one guest at least. He
avoided gancing in his direction again.
Bemard Roderick was standing in the kreplace leaning his
shoulders against the chimney-piece. Veronica Roderick was
sitting by herself on a Windsor chair, a little apart from the others.
103
'Ha, Partner!' cried Mr. Bleamey, tuming round and seeing
Charles. 'Just in time! Now we can really begn the fun---the
party's complete! Folks, this is Harry Lumpy, a young motor
engineer from the Midlands. This is Jimmy, Stanley, Elsa, Judy,'
the succession of names flooded over his mind like dirty water.
Charles nodded and smiled several times, vaguely. He was
wondering how soon he could get this part of it over and get
across to Veronica. For a few minutes he stood on the fringe of
the main group, while Mr. Bleamey launched into another of his
stories. The valet in the white coat came round with a tray of
drinks. Charles took one and drained it. Immediately the valet
was at his elbow, offering him another. Mr. Blearney had evidently
trained him to encourage his own principlp---the first one at a gulp,
the sTcond more slowly. He tried to keep his attention on the
story, or rather cluster of related stories, into which Mr. Bleamey
was now fairly launched, but it was useless. He glanced across at
Veronica Roderick. She was quite apart from the rest of the
gathering. The valet had just handed her another drink, but she
had not touched it. She was holding a cigarette in one hand. The
slim white tube seemed thicker and clumsier than the fingers
which held it. The spiral of smoke seemed less delicate and
mysterious than her small, tense form.
She looked up and saw him looking at her. Without embarrass-
ment she gave him a quick smile.
Charles began to edge away from his fellow-guests. If he could
get across to her before Mr. Bleamey finished his saga, they might
have quite a few minutes together without interruption. As he
began to steal away he felt a hand laid on his arm. It was the
young man in grey suede shoes.
'Oh, <1don't>1 go away,' he breathed in a beautifully modulated
undertone, his hand closing round Charles's wrist. <1'Do>1 come over
and talk to me. I felt straight away when you came in, what an
<1interesting>1 face, I must talk to that young man.'
' Later, later,' muttered Charles impatiently, trying to push past
him. But the man in grey suede shoes revealed an unexpected
physical strength in the grip he now exerted on Charles's arm.
'Oh, yes, we'll have a nice <1long>1 talk later,' he said. 'We'll go
back to my place and we'll be able to talk all night if we want to.
l04
And I feel quite <1sure>1 we <1shall>1 want to. But do tell me something
about yourself now. You're an engneer---how perfectly <1unex->1
<1pected.>1 I'd <1never>1 have guessed.'
Charles stopped dead. It was no use trying to slip gracefully
away from this kind of thing. It had to be faced and ended
abruptly. It was one more of the obstacles that stood between him
and Veronica Roderick.
With a considerable effort, he brought himself to look the suede
shoe man straight in the eyes. 'Yes,' he said soothingly, 'we'll
go to your place and have a nice long talk, and we'll be such good
friends, and exchange photographs, and tell each other what we
dream in the night, and when you go away for your holidays I'll
have a key and call in every day and feed your canary, but for the
next ten minutes I want to talk to somebody else, so just take
your God-damned dirty hand off my wrist if you want to keep
your front teeth.'
The man in grey suede shoes let go his wrist and said, 'At least
give me your telephone number.'
Without hesitation Charles gave him a number. It was the
number of the laundry to which he sent his clothes. The suede
shoe man wrote it down in a small book, giving it a page to itself.
That left nothing except the smoke-filled air between him and
the girl. All at once he had drawn a chair up next to hers and they
were talking. And there was no stuttering shyness, no inhibition,
now. It seemed, at last, so natural and right.
' Hello,' he said.
She replied, ' Hello.'
'Will this number find you during the day, or only in the
evenings?' asked the man in grey suede shoes, who had followed
him over.
Charles rose to his feet, and tumed to Veronica with a courteous
half-bow.
'Will you excuse me while I take this gentleman outside and
throw him down the lift shaft?'
'Yes,' she said gravely.
'I'll ring you one week-end,' said the man in grey suede shoes,
and left them. Charles sat down again.
Then they were talking once more, and again, in spite of the
105
interruption, it seemed all so easy, so natural. Time was terribly
limited---it could only be a matter of minutes before Mr. Bleamey
finished his story and came across to jolly them along---and there
seemed so little point in beating about the bush. He had done
with evasion.
'I have done with evasion,' he said out loud.
'And what does that mean exactly?'
'Just this.' He looked at her. 'Sooner or later I'd have to
confess this, so I'll confess it now. When we met the other night
in the Grand at Stotwell, that wasn't a coincidence. I'd been
hangng about, in that very room, ever since I saw you in there
for the first time. I wasn't sure what good it would do me if you
did come in, but I ---well, I just hung about.'
She had lowered her head, and remained silent for a moment,
then said, 'Why would you have had to confess that sooner or
later? '
'Because I love you,' he said.
'Are you all right, Veronica? You seem rather quiet; can I get
you anything to drink? ' asked Bemard Roderick, coming over to
them. Mr. Bleamey had finished his recital, and the central group
was begnning to break up.
'No thanks, Uncle. Mr. Lumley is looking after me very
nicely.' She smiled up at him, quite tense but quite composed.
Only the hand that held the cigarette allowed the spiral of smoke
to waver a little.
'Well, I'll just sit quietly and talk to you,' said Mr. Roderick
levelly, sinking into a chair on the other side of her. 'This party's
begnning to tire me. So many noisy people. I'm sure you two are
right to get away from it into,' he smiled tinily, 'a quiet comer.'
Charles wanted to stamp on his stomach.
There was a short silence. Veronica sat absolutely still with the
untouched gass at her side. She might have been carved, deli-
cately, lovingly, by some patient old artist from a single block of
ivory.
Mr. Bleamey approached them, leading the man with the big
face. 'Hullo, there,' he shouted, ' All happy, partners? All got
plenty to drink? Hey listen, Bemard, Jirnmy here wants you to
tell Elsa about the time you and Alfie Beaner were in Rio. She's
106


























never heard that story. Elsa, love, come on over here! Jimmy's
been telling me you've never heard Bemard tell the story about
the time he was in Rio with Alfie Beaner. You mustn't miss this!
Yes, Alfie Beaner. Hell, I didn't know anyone didn't know that
story!'
'Is it a good story?' said Elsa slowly, and without much
enthusiasm. She had reached a stage of intoxication which made
it difficult for her to follow a connected narrative, and she was
wondering whether this one would be worth the effort.
'No, it's not a good story, really,' said Bemard Roderick with
a firmness that sounded greater than the occasion warranted. He
seemed to be trying rather determinedly to get out of performing.
But nothing would have put Mr. Bleamey off the scent.
'Not a good story!' he shouted incredulously. 'What's come
over you, Bemard? You've made more people laugh at my
parties with that story---why, don't you remember the time Peter
Philp was here, and I bet him he'd have to laugh, and he held out
without laughing until you got to the bit where the old woman
comes in and says, well, hell, I mustn't gve it away, but you
remember you were imitating the old woman, standing there and
saying, <1will you gentlemen have your coffee in here or out in the>1
<1street in the rain,>1 don't you remember, and he laughed so much
he got some kind of seizure and couldn't straighten his legs'?'
'Yes, it's a good story all right,' said the big-faced man. 'I'd
like fine for Elsa to hear that story.'
'What did they want to sit out in the rain for?' asked Elsa,
beginning her grim strugge to understand.
'Hell, no, that's just <1part>1 of it,' roared Mr. Bleamey. 'They
didn't want to, and anyway that's just <1part>1 of it. . . . Bemard,
you've got to tell her the whole story, so come on!'
They clustered round Mr. Roderick eagerly, and some of the
other guests, those who felt like hearing the story again, came
over and added themselves to the audience. Mr. Roderick
disappeared in the centre of the expectant circle.
Charles stood up and vacated his chair to let Elsa sit down. She
could hardly be expected to cope with the double strain of balan-
cing on her legs and following the story. She sank into the chair
so rapidly that she nearly pinned him undemeath her, but he
1 07
managed to slip past. Looking round, he saw that Veronica, too,
had detached herself unobtmsively and was on the other side of
the room brooding over a plate of olives. He went across to her.
'Do you like this party?' she asked, suddenly half-tuming so
as to face him.
' I haven't thought about it,' he answered. ' I only came because
of you.'
She was silent, and Charles began to feel his earlier sense of
ease and resolution leaving him. He fought to keep his self-
possession, knowing that if he began to slide downwards he
would not stop until he reached the very lowest level of gaping
idiocy.
'May I call you Veronica?' he burst out, saying the first thing
that came into his head.
Her smile this time had a flavour of genuine amusement in it.
Probably this was as near as she ever came to laughing. He could
not imagine her shaken by laughter.
'How funny to say you love me and then ask if you can call me
Veronica---in that order.'
'It's not funny at all. It happened in that order. I loved you
before I knew <1either>1 of your names.'
'You mean any of them,' she said. 'I've got three.'
Again he felt himself slipping. Again he succumbed to the old
fatal tendency, to stammer out the first piece of lunacy that
entered his head.
'Do you like this party yourself?' he asked.
She shook her head with unexpected violence.
'I hate it. I always hate Mr. Bleamey's parties, and so does my
uncle. He only keeps up with him because of some business
connection.'
Charles tried to think what business connection Mr. Roderick,
a respectable industrialist, could have with Mr. Bleamey and his
Entertainments. He did not know the answer, but some instinct
told him that it stank. He jerked his mind back on to the rails
agam.
'Then why did you come to it?' he heard himself saying,
horrified at his own foolishness.
For answer she looked him straight in the eyes, for the third or
108
fourth time since they had met, but this time with an indescribable
hesitant appeal, a kind of shy warmth, that told him in an instant
more than he could ever have dared to hope for. 'I came to see
<1you,'>1 said the eyes. For a second everything hung in the balance.
He was within three feet of her, and enormous forces seemed to
have closed on him and to be about to fling him one way or the
other---forward to take her in his arms, or backwards on to the
carpet in a swoon. He gripped the edge of the table.
' Listen, please, please, listen,' his voice broke out harshly and
jerkily, 'I said I loved you just now, I didn't mean to come out
with it as, well, as baldly as that, but somehow, all this has been
so---so fumy and---'
He stopped and tried to get a grip on himself.
'You don't know, you see, how odd and unreal this has all
been---I was a window-cleaner when I first saw you, and then after
setting eyes on you I knew I had to go away and throw it up.'
Worse and worse. The horrible suggestion of vomiting in the
words 'go away and throw it up' fell terribly on his ears.
'Look, I'm not making this clear,' he said. 'I was a window-
cleaner, do you see?'
'What's this, a joke about a window-cleaner?' cried the man
with the big face, coming up behind him and catching the last few
words. ' So that's what you take the little lady away into a comer
for, is it? You want to tell her stories of that nature!' He laughed
delightedly.
' Please, please, for God's sake go away,' said Charles sharply,
turning to face him like a comered animal.
'Oh, no, you must let me in on this,' chuckled the big-faced
man, showing all thirty-two of his teeth. 'I like stories about
window-cleaners myself.'
Veronica Roderick walked away, showing no sign of anger or
impatience. She just walked away. Charles stood motionless, his
face dead white.
'Something upset the little lady?' asked the big-faced man in a
tone of pained surprise.
'Yes, you've upset her, you block-headed bastard, and you've
upset me too,' said Charles in a low voice.
For some reason the big-faced man did not take offence at
109
being called a bastard. Instead he did the worst thing he could
have done, from Charles's point of view: he began to defend
himself vociferously against the charge of tactlessness.
'Well, I must say I like that!' he spluttered. 'Here I am just
behaving in a sociable way, like anyone would at a party, and I
happen to hear you telling her a joke about a window-cleaner---'
' Shut up, please, PLEASE! ' cried Charles urgently.
'---and being fond of funny stories myself,' brayed the big-faced
man, 'naturally I came over and said, let me in on this, just like
anyone would at a party---'
The others began to gather round to see what was the matter.
'I didn't know I was interrupting a---interrupting---'
'Interrupting a what?' asked Bemard Roderick smoothly.
'Well, I don't mean <1interrupting>1 exactly,' said the big-faced
man. 'Ijust meant, well, I didn't know it was like that.'
'You didn't know it was like what?' said Bemard Roderick
again, smoothly.
' Look,' said Charles desperately. ' This gentleman's just making
a natural mistake. I happened to be telling Miss Roderick about
some of thejobs I've held, and I was just mentioning that I used
to be a window-cleaner when---'
'A window-cleaner, oh, whoopee! ' cried Elsa, who needed a
little excitement after so much work. 'I bet I know what you did
it for! Won't you tell us some of your experiences?'
'I bet that's what he <1was>1 telling her,' husked Mr. Bleamey in
delight. 'No wonder he didn't like being interrupted!' His words
were lost in gales of laughter.
Charles stared about him, almost beside himself. He actually
felt tears of rage and humiliation forcing themselves up into his
eyes. He had got her into this, he had involved her in this smutty
inebriated laughter. To say nothing of annoying her uncle, for
Bemard Roderick was obviously very angry. How could she ever,
ever tolerate the sight of him again?
'I think it's time for me to go,' he said coldly. He pushed past
them and went to the door. In the hall he looked for his overcoat,
wishing only to get it and go, and leave the whole terrible mess
for ever. His life was over.
He burrowed savagely among the coats in the hall, but none of
110
them was his own. Furiously he flung open the door of the little
room adjoining the one where the party was being held. He was
looking for the valet to ask for his coat. The valet was not there,
But his coat was hung over the back of a chair, and standing
beside the chair was Veronica. She must have come through the
communicating door from the main room.
'I'm sorry! I'm sorry!' he burst out, but before he could go on
she had picked up his coat and handed it to him, saying in a rapid
undertone, 'Call for me next Thursday and we'll go out for the
evening. My uncle won't be at home.'
He stood clutching the coat, but she had vanished. As he hesi-
tated, Mr. Bleamey and several of the guests, including Elsa and
the man with the big face, came in search of him.
' Here, partner, don't go,' roared Mr. Bleamey. ' Hell, the fun's
only just beginning!'
' Sorry,' replied Charles, trying to be as pleasant as possible, ' I
hate having to go, but I have to be back at work. I have ajob to
do to-night.'
' Sounds like a burglar,' commented Elsa seriously.
'No, no, baby, he's just going to clean a few more windows,'
said the big-faced man. ' He finds it more profitable to clean them
at night. They pay him to go away then.'
There was another surge of laughter. Charles bowed politely
and went out, slamming the flat door behind him.
Going down in the lift he tried to remember which part of his
overcoat she had touched with her hands, so that he could place
his own on the same spot. He could not be sure that he had it
right.
Bunder smiled as he handed Charles the twenty-five one pound
notes. Somehow it was that smile that touched off the profoundly
hostile reaction that swept through his frame. Bunder had a way
of making his moustache rise about an inch when he smiled,
revealing long white teeth that gave a really horrifying impression
of animality. They were like a dog's teeth.
But it was not the teeth but the eyes that suddenly disgusted
Ill
Charles so much that he felt paralysed and could not stretch out
his hand to take the money. They were slightly bloodshot; not
through dissipation, because Bunder, like most really dissipated
men, never showed any outward sign of it, but through driving an
open car on a long run without goggles. And they were rather
protruding, reminding Charles of the eyes of June Veeber. Worst
of all, they were fixed on his own eyes with a horrible air of com-
plicity. 'We know each other and we're both the same,' they
signalled, just as clearly as Veronica's eyes, two evenings before,
had spelt out a message of hope for him. The two messages
jammed each other out. Bunder---drugs---Veronica---happiness;
love, drugs in a water closet, huge dark eyes, dog's teeth, a pink
gn, please, drink up partner, steady with that gearbox, someone
to look after you, eh, Bernard?
'Feeling queer, old boy?'
He steadied himself. 'Just went a bit dizzy for a moment.' He
put out his hand and took the money, forcing himself to grin.
' Feel better now I've got this.'
'It's probably your eyes making you feel dizzy, old boy. Mine
sometimes go like that on me after a long run.'
'Yes, it's my eyes.'
'Better get some rest, old boy. Cheerio.'
' Cheerio.'
And I a twister love what I abhor.
They were dancing, then they were sitting at a little table, then
they were dancing again.
'I hadn't better stay later than eleven.'
'I can drive you back in forty minutes.'
'You're lucky to have a car of your own.'
'It's hired, but I'm getting one of my own soon. Just a few
more runs and I'll be able to buy one.'
'Your work must be well paid.
'Yes, it's well paid.'
'Is it dangerous or something-
112
' Yes, sometimes,' he said. ' It's dangerous sometimes.'
'It's always the dangerous jobs that are well paid, isn't it?'
'So it seems.'
She held him a little more tightly.
'I don't really like that, Charles.'
'Don't really like what?'
'You doing something dangerous.'
' Don't worry about me,' he said.
They went back to their table.
'I love you,' he said. 'That's dangerous, too, isn't it?'
'Why is it dangerous?'
'You'd know if you were in love.'
After one of her swift silences, she lifted her eyes to his face and
asked, 'How do you know I'm not in love?'
'You'd say so if you were, wouldn't you?'
'I don't know. I don't say much, you know.'
'No,' he said, 'You don't say much.'
At ten past eleven they were outside. They got into the car.
Before starting the engine he turned and faced her. There was a
lamp in the car park; it shone through the window, palely, on her
cheek, and glinted on her dark head.
'Why is it you don't say much?' he asked.
'I used to, once. But I gave it up, a long time ago.'
'Could I ask what happened to make you gve it up?'
' Don't ask me,' she said. She kissed him suddenly and violently.
Trembling, he started the engine. They drove back in forty
minutes .
It was not at all as he had imagined it. He had seen himself
rising, with the aid of his suddenly improved finances, to a social
position which would give him the <1cachet>1 required to penetrate
the Roderick circle; introducing himself; giving and receiving
hospitality; becoming a known and trusted figure in the daily
landscape, and finally---he was not quite sure what he had seen
himself doing finally. He supposed he had seen himself making a
113
respectable and solidly based offer of marriage, like any Tharkles
anxious to establish a home where he could invite the managing
director to dinner. But the fact was that he had never thought
about it at all; he had not dared lift his eyes so high.
Instead, he had met with a fantastic combination of good for-
tune and bewildering obstruction. The good, of course, out-
weighed the bad; he could never have believed that such a girl as
Veronica could feel---again his mind trailed off; could feel what-
ever it was she felt for him. That she could, at the very least, allow
herself to be taken about by him (she usually found him at least
one evening a week), and to give the appearance of enjoying these
occasions, and looking forward to them with pleasure. But there
was more than that, he knew there was more than that. Yet it was
here that he ran his head into the brick wall, the blankness that
barred his way. For one thing, it was obvious that, so far from
ingratiating himself with Bemard Roderick, fairly elaborate pre-
cautions had to be taken so that the uncle did not even know of
their evenings together: Veronica never actually put this into
words, but it was clear from the beginning. He was seldom
allowed to bring his car to the house and pick her up, except on
occasions when Roderick was obviously away from home. Even
then he had only to ring the front door bell and she emerged,
ready to set off at once; he was never asked inside. Mostly she
met him at some prearranged point, and here again he noticed
that she never chose the Oak Lounge, her uncle's haunt.
At times he did not care, realizing the foolishness of giving any
thought to the future so long as he had her in the present, and
aware also, with a certain mild surprise, that he was perfectly
happy to go on with no hint at all of what Froulish would have
described as 'funny stuff'. Mild surprise, because he had never
thought of himself as being particularly subject to the lover's
romantic delusions; he was aware, as aware as any other young
man, of the main idea underlying the division of mankind into
two sexes. Yet as the weeks went by, and spring followed winter
and gave a promise of summer beyond, it was enough to be with
her, to listen to her voice and look into her dark eyes.
And yet sometimes the uncertainty of his position came clearly
into focus, and then the whole burden of his terrible guilt crashed
114
down upon him. He had thrown his humanity into the gutter, he
had betrayed the tmst that men place in one another, and with
his thirty pieces of silver he had bought . . . what had he bought?
Sitting moodily over a drink one evening in a bar close to the
Export Express office, brooding on these problems, he was
startled by a voice barking crisply into his ear, 'I'm not wrong,
am I? It is Lumley?'
Even before his muscles had carried out their task of turning
his head to meet this new challenge to his tranquillity, Charles's
brain had recognized the voice. It had the familiarity that is only
acquired by voices we have heard all through our formative years.
' Hullo, Dogson,' he said. ' Ready to start filling those inkwells ? '
Harry Dogson laughed. Some ten years ago, when they were at
school together under Scrodd, someone had made a joke involving
- himself and some inkwells---no one remembered what it had been ;
the orignal joke had dissolved, but the tradition had lingered on;
to get a laugh at Dogson's expense, mention inkwells in his
presence. A good-humoured boy, he had revelled in this passport
to a genial popularity, always content to allow himself to act as
butt.
'I drink out of glasses now,' he grinned. 'What are you
having?'
Drinks bought, cigarettes alight, the conversation was free to
begn. It turned out that Dogson was a reporter on the local
evening paper. It was quite an important journal of its kind, but
he was ambitious and hankering for Fleet Street.
'There's only one thing that can put you at the top,' he said,
his plump face glistening with the sincerity of his devotion to an
idea, 'and that's a real out-and-out scoop. Something that really
catches the public's eye. Say an important series of articles on some
scandal. Set the whole nation talking.'
There was something almost fine, almost admirable, in the self-
less zeal with which Dogson worshipped the glory of the gutter
press. He really yeamed to identify himself with that cult in its
most debased form. Charles looked at him, at his shabby sports
115
coat edged with leather, his bitten finger nails, his stringy tie and
dented pork pie hat, and wondered what it could be like to live
for an ideal.
'As a matter of fact, I'm on to a series now, if I could just get
the dope for it,' Dogson confided. 'I've pestered our news editor
into promising that he'll find me space for it if I can make it good
enough, and publish it as a signed series---it might be the making
of me.'
'What is it?' asked Charles in idle curiosity.
'What is it?' echoed Dogson; always easily excitable, it was
evident that his temperature was rising as he thought of his
cherished project. 'What is it? It's the Foulest Racket in Britain
To-day ! The Shadow Falling Across Our Youth ! The Vile Saudal
of the Underworld! '
Charles looked at hirn to see whether he was joking; surely
such a cascade of headline phraseology must indicate an unsus-
pected gft for self-parody. But Dogson was in deadly eamest;
the corrupting air he breathed had already rotted what little
critical acumen Nature had allotted him. His professional
future seemed bright indeed.
'It's drugs,' said Dogson, coming down to earth. 'It's the drug
racket. Of course it's pretty well covered already, what with the
Vice Parade series in the <1Clamour>1 and those three articles in <1Sperm>1
with all those colour plates.'
Human misery and folly were merchandise to these people.
But what were they to him? However low Dogson had sunk, he
was infinitely lower.
' But the way I see it,' went on Dogson, warming to his subject,
'there's still room for a series with a rather speciazed angle.
You know---concentrating on one particular aspect.'
Charles felt his mouth and throat unnaturally dry. He took a
his throat was dry again. He lit a fresh cigarette
'What particular aspect?' he asked.
'Well,' said Dogson, 'I've been going into it, and I think too
much attention has been paid to the distribution of the stuff once
it's entered the country---you know, the way it's supposed to be
hawked round at these jazz clubs and so on. Well, I know that
116
makes a more obviously sensational story---a few photographs of
addicts undergoing treatment, a shot of the interior of a typical
club, and so on. But I think they've overlooked another aspect,
one that's more difficult to ferret out, of course, but it seems to
me that's just where the golden opportunity lies.'
'Opportunity to do just what?'
'Why, to dig in and find some facts and reveal them to the
country at large,' cried Dogson. 'Anyway, I haven't told you
what this aspect is that I have in mind. It's the actual smuggling
in of the muck. <1That's>1 the target.'
'But---but surely,' said Charles, speaking with a great effort,
'all that's taken care of by the Customs authorities and the dock
police? They must be up to all the dodges. And it's precious little
infomation you'll get out of them.'
'Oh, the customs! the police!' snorted Dogson in contempt.
' A fat lot they know. In any case I shan't go to them. I shall work
on my own. I'm bound to turn something up. I shall have to use
my own spare time, of course, and that skinflint Richards isn't
even allowing me a quid or two for expenses, but I'll make
it.'
He paused, then fixed Charles with an attentive eye. Evidently
an idea was about to emerge.
'Now look here, Lumley,' he said, 'I've got a notion you could
help me a lot here. You say you're an export delivery driver. You
must be in and out of every principal dock in the country.'
Charles was silent. He had, indeed, outlined his work to
Dogson in the first moments of their conversation, and now he
could have bitten off his tongue. But how was he to have known
what the maniac would do? He waited, miserably, for some crazy
scheme to be outlined. His heart pounded savagely.
'Now, look here,' said Dogson again. 'I haven't got any official
backing, you realize that. Left to myself, I couldn't even get access
to the docks when the ships were being unloaded. It would be no
use saying that as a member of the public I had a right to keep
my eye on the smuggling in of injurious drugs.'
'Besides,' Charles put in harshly, 'you're not a member of the
public. You're just a news-hound on the trail of a lurid story."
'That's right, insult me,' said Dogson amiably. 'You always
117
were a sharp-tongued swine, even at school. But look here, you
can see what I'm driving at, can't you? It would surely be quite
easy for you to get me in on your visits to the docks. You could
mn me down in one of these cars of yours---'
'Impossible,' Charles broke in with nervous loudness. ' We're
strictly forbidden to carry any passengers.'
'Hell, that means train fares out of my own pocket,' Dogson
sighed. 'Well, anyway, you just tip me off when you're going to
the docks, and what berth you're going to and so on, and then I
can meet you at the entrance and you can wave your magc wand
and get me a pass in.'
He looked like a terrier as he met Charles's eyes with a frank
friendly appeal. Charles cmshed out his cigarette and leaned
forward.
'Look,' he said slowly. 'I'm very sorry, Harry, but you must
get this idea out of your head and keep it out. I can't get you into
the docks, I can't gve you any inside information, I can't wangle
you a ringside seat while the country's drug traffic is being
arranged, in fact I can't help you with your articles at all. Get it? '
'No, I damned well don't get it,' cried Dogson. ' For one thing,
I don't see why you need be so bloody emphatic about it. Any-
body'd think I was asking you to risk your neck for me, instead
ofjust suggesting that you do me a little favour.'
Risk your neck. The words took Charles back to the dark
doorway next to Harry's, with the bald-headed man holding the
knuckle-duster under his nose. First time, you get this. Second
time, you get your bloody neck broke. Then he saw the heavy
boot stamping on the brass-rin- ged hand. Violence, agony, dark
bmises. He did not want any more of that: he had been on the
fringe of that world, and never wanted to go so close to it again.
If Bunder, or any of the myriad others in the organization,
thought he was responsible for putting this barking little terrier
on the scent, it would certainly mean violence on a scale he had
never known before, with himself at the wrong end of it. Oh,
damn this innocent fool!
'Now, see here, Harry,' he said, forcing himself to relax and
grin. 'Just let's drop the whole thing. It took me a long time to
get this job, and I don't want the sack, and I don't want the
118
reputation of bringing casual strangers along to keep an eye on
our conditions of work. I don't want anything to do with your
schemes for becoming a Fleet Street Tycoon. Just you do your
job and I'll do mine.'
'Do my job?' echoed Dogson with some bittemess. 'God!
Isn't that just what I'm trying to do? How else do you think a
newspaper man works except by personal contacts like this?
You're a disappointment to me, Lumley, you really are.'
'The road to Fleet Street,' said Charles with mock solemnity,
'is paved with disappointments. I've taught you a useful lesson.'
Dogson finished his drink and went out. Charles sat staring
into his glass. His heart was heavy with a vague sense of menace;
something inside him stirred with the gnawing consciousness that
the evil consequences of his surrender could not for ever remain
hidden from his sight, and that, when the time came for them to
break and blaze forth, one more iron door would slam behind him.
The hot sun, that year's first, had drawn birds, insects, and
plants into the open to receive its benediction: only human
beings, sitting in offices, standing at benches and lathes, and
going down coal mines with lamps in their helmets, withdrew
themselves from it. In the College, however, all pretence of work
had ceased at lunch-time. The undergraduates, who had been
chosen from among many applicants on the strength of their
intelligence, breeding, and ability to uphold the academic tradi-
tion of six centuries, were sitting on the grass in the garden with
their shirts off, making clumsy and inexperienced overtures to the
giggling maidens who accompanied them. Some had also removed
their shoes and socks. The sunlight glinted on their spectacles,
and the sound of their voices, delivering volleys of vulgar badinage
in a variety of uncouth provincial accents, offered serious compe-
tition to the riot of bird-song that went on above their heads. The
formal beauty of the groves and flower-beds, set off by the breath-
taking perfection of the grey stonework of the College itself,
strove to the limit of its power to soften and contain their boorish-
ness, but was defeated by their appalling mental and physical
119
ugliness as they sprawled on the ground or loafed coarsely to and
fro, smoking cigarettes and scattering stubs, empty packets, and
match-sticks on the velvety turf. Now and again some don,
blinded by habit both to the beauty and the sordidness of the
scene about him, scurried through the garden with the brisk,
proprietary stride of a shop-walker in a big store: none of the
wealth on show is his, but somehow it lends him some of its
prestige.
Charles and Veronica sat on a wicker seat under a beech tree.
Its lower branches were close above their heads, and the green
transparency of the fresh young leaves seemed an exact counter-
part to the vivid innocence of their emotion. It had been a good
idea to bring her here. When he had first driven up for her in a
car of his own, and they had decided on a day's excursion as soon
as it could be arranged, he had left the choice of direction to her;
and when she had said she wished to see his college, he had felt a
flush of discomfort at the thought of revisiting the scene of so
much folly and embarrassment; he had been on the point of
explaining to her his revulsion against the place, and people, by
whose means he had been so painstakingly unfitted for life. But
he had suppressed it, and now, all was perfection. The car had
run beautifully, the day was superb---one of those freak hot days
in late April---and here was the College putting forth all its beauty
as if to make amends to him for all it had denied. The garden
took her slight form and enthroned it in a splendour that left no
detail of perfection to be desired. The sun shone warmly on his
utter contentment.
As they sat, silently happy, a tall shambling figure swayed
slowly across the lawn in front of them. lt was Lockwood, his
brows furrowed in what passed for thought. Something stirred
in Charles, prompting him to issue a challenge.
' Lockwood,' he said sharply and bmtally.
The loose-knit figure swayed to a standstill, the watery eyes
looked over the upper rims of horn circles. Slowly the tutor
brought his mind to bear on this new disturbance. He opened and
shut his mouth several times; it was obvious that he was trying
to remember, first, who this was, and secondly, whether he was
one of the present generation of undergraduates or had gone
120
down. Then he notice Veronica, and a hungry look challenged
the presiding bewilderment on his features.
'Oh, er,' he said, and paused for a long time. Taking out a
brown metal case, he removed his spectacles and put them inside
it. Then he replaced the case in his pocket and took out another,
similar case. From it he drew out another pair of glasses, this
time with shiny metal rims. These he held in his hand. Two small
egg-shaped patches of light, reflected from their lenses, swayed
gently to and fro on the grass by Veronica's sandalled feet. Charles
had the odd sensation that if one of them should actually rest for
an instant on her bare skin it would bum her.
'It's you, Lumley,' said Lockwood. 'Haven't seen you since
you went down.'
'I haven't seen you either,' said Charles flatly. There was a
pause. Two of the young gentlemen chosen from a large number
of applicants came slouching past. As Lockwood was standing
about seven feet away from the seat on which Charles and
Veronica were sitting, they had room to pass between them,
interrupting the conversation. This they did with no sign of
hesitation or apology. One of them, who was in the middle of a
facetious anecdote, did not moderate his voice. 'And when they
put it to her,' he was saying, 'all she said was, "Well, you
couldn't expect me to keep it in the living room."
When they had passed, Charles said, ' Of course, I've been busy
eaming my living.' He did not offer to introduce Veronica: Lock-
wood must wait for that privilege.
' Ah, yes, earning your living,' said Lockwood cautiously. 'We
all have to come to it,' he added in a half-attempt at geniality.
' And in what, ah, sphere, in what . . . ?'
'Well, I say <1earning,'>1 said Charles with the air of one wishing
to be perfectly accurate, ' but of course it's only a nominal salary
I'm getting at present: I'm still in training under an apprentice-
ship scheme.'
'Yes?'
'And of course it'll be some time before I'm admitted to full
status.'
' Yes?' said Lockwood again, with a hint of impatience.
'It can't be learnt in a few months, of course.'
121
<1'What>1 can't?' cried the scholar sharply. The ovals of light
jerked, traversed Veronica's ankles, and came to rest on the hem
of her skirt. It was the signal to stand up.
'Allow me to introduce you,' Charles said, rising. 'Veronica,
this is Mr. Lockwood, whom you remember my having men-
tioned so often. This is Miss Roderick.'
'How do you do?' said Lockwood bemusedly. He stood
swaying in the sunlight, looking from one to the other like a
stupefied bull.
She answered him with the appropriate formula. Silence fell,
and before any of them could speak again a young man with a
prematurely bald head waddled on short legs round the edge of a
flower bed.
'About those papers, Lockwood,' he began abruptly, ignoring
Charles and Veronica. Evidently this was some colleague from
another part of the University. Charles and Veronica moved
silently away. The staccato voice of the young don, crassly
forcing its way through the sunlit air, followed them as they went.
He had not, at any stage of his preparations for to-day,
envisaged the possibility that they would ' go on the river'. It was
too much the expected, obvious thing, a <1cliche>1 embodied in
action ; young love, the murmuring water, the shared isolation of
the boat, holding them together within its hard, flat narrowness.
He was getting a little too old for such a formula to keep its
appeal. But actuality, once again, proved him wrong, showing up
the shallow stupidity of his post-adolescent rejection of the
'romantic' paraphernalia, with all its significance and strength
still to be drawn out of it. They found themselves walking by the
river as it flowed between the moist, level meadows: it invited
them: a man handed Charles a pole, wrote a number in a book,
and pushed them out into midstream: and the expected, trite
setting was immediately mustered, ready once again to produce
the expected, trite emotion.
122
equipment was all in order but the product stale, factitious, mis-
shapen, the mixture worked at last. The magc spell, mumbled
wearily and with less and less conviction, suddenly rang out
sharply and tumed the frogs and rats back into men, the fairy
came down from the Christmas tree, the straw was spun into
valuable gold. Was it just because he was with <1her?>1 Charles
wondered ; but no, there was, really and genuinely, an element of
luck or magic (two names, same thing) which had whisked up the
tired ingredients and made everything vital and beautiful. The
sunlight on the water knew exactly how to behave; after so many
centuries it could produce the precisely needed effect as it flickered
in reflection on the dark undemeath of the leaves which the trees
held out at just the correct height above it. The birds were
rehearsed, the flowers and grass knew precisely what to do; the
cool grey shapes of revered buildings formed, in the background,
a perfectly contrived contrast and balance for the calm, heavy
cattle lying down in the fields. So slick, so confident in its much-
photographed guide-book-and'calendar charm, the ensemble
ought to have been a flop. But in fact, it worked, and Charles had
to admit that its method was the only one; like all beautiful old
fakes, it had ended by believing in itself, and that conviction
could not, ultimately, be resisted.
Actually, he found afterwards that he could remember nothing,
in detail, about the two hours they had spent on the water.
Nothing except, oddly, Veronica's handbag, which lay on the
floor of the boat. It was of a rather distinctive shape, square and
chunky, with a clip that looked like a coiled golden serpent. Each
time he swayed forward, letting the wet pole slide down between
his hands for its hook to bite into the gravel, his eyes focused on
the handbag as it lay beside its owner's feet, llike a dog, quietly
and trustfully, wishing only to hold and carry things for her, and
to gve up its secrets at the touch of her hands.
The funny thing about what happened afterwards was the
naturalness, the ease, the absence of any fuss or strain. He had
always, when he allowed himself to think about it, assumed that
if ever they became lovers, it would be as a result of some
'significant' and purposely built up scene, a matter of formal
declaration and overt discussion, or, at the very least, the outcome
123
of some period of obvious and mutually communicated tension.
But this, the actuality, was upon them silently and with no sense
at all of anything to be <1done,>1 consciously or stemly, no stepping
over a threshold. It was merely as if they had been looking at one
another through plate glass, and, being momentarily dazzled, had
closed their eyes, and opened them to find that the hard, trans-
parent barrier had dissolved with air.
They knew it before either of them spoke. They knew it as they
walked between crumbling stone walls in the straight, golden rays
of the sunset; as they sat, with gasses in their hands, at a stained
wooden bench, not speaking, but thinking to each other.
At last he said, foolishly:
'Time to be getting back, I suppose.'
She put her glass down, quietly and peacefully, and said, 'You
<1know,>1 don't you?'
'Know what?' he said, still foolishly, but calm, not hating
himself.
'That we're not going back,' she said.
'No, we're not going back,' he repeated. 'Not to-night. We're
here, and we're together, and happy, and we're not going back.'
'Go and arrange it,' she said. 'I'll stay here and wait. Don't be
long, Charles.'
He got up to go and arrange it.
'Please don't be long,' she said again.
'Look out of the window,' he said. 'That's me coming back
already.'
He went and arranged it.
124
                   VII
THERE were nine cars to go down that moming, and they were
driving through light summer rain in a loose convoy, about a
hundred yards apart. Charles was last. He sat relaxed behind the
wheel; there was not much traflic, and only the surface of his
mind was occupied in guiding the car; the rest of his being
directed itself, in a glow of tranquil devotion, towards the thought
of Veronica. This glorious sense of having <1won,>1 come what may,
was entirely new to him. Searching his mind for something that
would pin down, by comparison, his state of mind, he thought of
an outclassed player at some strenuous game such as tennis, who
has managed to stay level with his opponent, and finally, by a
superhuman effort, to gain a few points' lead; and is thcn suddenly
told that, although the game is to continue for some time, no
more points will be awarded. Whatever happens now, however
many mistakes he commits, he is, irreversibly, the winner. His
game would probably rise to heights of unforeseen brilliance
through shecr carefree confidence; and such, Charles reflected,
would be his own life from now on.It had succeeded. He had
attained the one object that he had ever pursued without finding
it to be an illusion. There was indisputable evidence, in the light-
ness of his heart, in the tonic joyfulness of every breath he drew,
that he was happy.
Something reached inwards from the fringe of his conscious-
ness. For about fifteen minutes his driving mirror had picked up,
now and again, a shape that swayed into its orbit and then
swayed out again. Now that shape drew more determinedly into
focus, and, although he was travelling fairly fast, Charles drew
over, to allow a motor-cyclist to pass. The mirror picked up the
I25
front wheel and windscreen of the machine as it came up; it was
one of those large and omate American motor-cycles, painted
cream and draped all over with lamps, fenders and horns. The
rider was a mere wad of sacking humped over the tank.
Until a second glance disclosed that the wad of sacking had a
distinct head. And that the front of the head, as is usual, was
occupied by a face. And that the face was tumed to look straight
into Charles's own, with a ludicrous expression of smugness and
triumph.
boards. The car skidded, dragging itself to a stop in a series of
in silence, the engine ticking over. The motor-cyclist, taken by
surprise, was already fifty yards ahead. He slowed down more
cautiously, tumed his machine in a tight circle, and clattered back
in low gear. Charles wound his window down and they faced
each other.
'Rather handy, this,' said Dogson in a bright, embarrassed
way. 'Got it on the never-never, of course.'
'Going anywhere particular?' asked Charles, coming straight
to the point.
'Well, yes, actually,' said Dogson. He paused, unwilling to
specify. Relentlessly, Charles took him up.
'Can I guess where?'
'Have a shot,' chuckled the other with a constrained
<1bonhomie.>1
'Stop acting like a bloody fool, Harry. You're going down to
the docks to make a nuisance of yourself to our lot. Don't spin
me any fool yams. You've been following me for miles, probably
ever since we left the works, but I've only just noticed it since
we got clear of other traffic.'
'Well, what of it, blast you?' growled the joumalist, his over-
hearty demeanour tuming in an instant to sulkiness. 'You
needn't think it's fun, sitting on this damned thing mile after mile,
chasing you over wet roads, and all because you wouldn't stretch
a point and let me ride with you.' Water trickled from his lank
hair.
Charles looked at him in despair. It was obvious that the bland
126
and foolish face masked a determination that, however it might
issue only in the form of silly obstinacy, was not to be put off.
Dogson, inspired by the potent blend of ambition and devotion
to an ideal, would hang on until the end.
Until the end! And what would the end be? Sick at heart, he
thrust his head out of the window and spoke savagely.
'I'm telling you here and now to let this rubbishy idea drop.
You'll go to insane lengths to get on to the docks while the export
drivers are there, and make a blasted nuisance of yourself to
everyone concerned, and in the end you'll find nothing and simply
add to your reputation as a flaming silly fool.'
Dogson kicked at his machine. The engine started with a great
bellow. In open hostility, he faced Charles from the centre of a
storm of noise and smoke.
'How do you know I'll find nothing?' he shouted. The words
came through the infemo with an oddly eerie effect. He circled
and was gone, in pursuit of the cars.
Charles started up and began to follow. His happiness of a few
minutes before was strangely dulled. The game must be played
on, he suddenly felt, under some new and crushing handicap.
About noon, he arrived at the docks, aud
outside the entrance to the appropriate berth. While they waited
for the official routine to complete itself, the drivers clustered
together by the gate, smoking and talking; Bunder, who seemed
in high spirits, was telling a story which the others punctuated,
as Charles approached, with bursts of laughter. Jack Simons, his
grey cloth cap set straight on the top of his head, leaned against
the wall a few yards away from the others. Bunder's particular
cronies avoided, rather too carefully, the appearance of forming
a group among themselves; they took pains not to stand next to
one another or begin any private discussion. They were all,
undeniably, glad that there was no 'job' on to-day. Bunder had
received no word of a consignment to be picked up, and they
were free to come and go like honest men. For himself, Charles
reflected, he cared very little. His life had so long ceased to move
127
to the ordinary rhythms at all; his happiness was concentrated
absolutely in his dealings with Veronica, and the effect was to blot
out the concept of guilt from his mind altogether. With it, sur-
prisingly, went his fear. Although detection and arrest would lead
immediately to the only evil he was still able to imagne---
separation from Veronica---he had so completely accepted the
fact that only his crime made her accessible to him, that his terrors
had been laid to sleep as under an anaesthetic. He did not share
the terrible nerve-shaking that the others, even Bunder, so mani-
festly underwent. It was another example of the fantastic
narrowing of his mind. One idea possessed it utterly, and his
obsession gave him all the strengh and obstinacy he needed.
He leaned against the wall. Only one thing troubled him, and
that was the possibility---indeed, certainty---that the journalist
was about somewhere. He glanced about, irritably, but there was
no sign of the fanatic or of his motor-cycle.
Simons broke into his thoughts with some question about the
moming's run. Charles answered perfunctorily, and Simons
resumed his silence. He seldom spoke to Charles nowadays, being
shrewd enough to see, in spite of all the precautions Charles took,
that his waming not to associate with Bunder had been dis-
regarded. When their eyes chanced to meet, the older man's had
a drectly reproachful look in them; however little he wished to
show it---for it was obviously his policy to meddle no farther in
the matter---his own honesty, brought into contact with this
duplicity, sparked into something like accusation. Charles, who
in his pre-Oak Lounge days would have been desperately troubled
by the disapprobation of such a man, was now totally indifferent
to it, when he noticed it at all.
'All right, come on out of it,' said a voice, loudly but with a
kind of forbearance in its tone. Everyone tumed in surprise.
'I've got a perfect right, I can prove it---a MORAL right---the
people must KNOW---' came a squawk. Charles stiffened into
weariness and disgust. Round from behind the row of shining
black cars came a policeman leading Dogson by the arm. The
scene was so obviously farcical that most of the drivers, and others
who were standing about, grinned broadly or laughed outright.
The constable, mellowed by the sudden relaxation of tension, con-
128
descended to say, as he passed, ' Spotted him climbing into one o f
your cars. Trying to get access to the dock---hiding in the back
as it drove in.'
Suddenly Dogson caught sight of Charles. 'Here, Lumley,' he
called as the policeman marched him away, 'you put in a word
for me, will you? It might make all the difference.'
'You know this man?' said the policeman, halting. 'If so, I
shall have to ask you to come across to the Superwisor's oflice as
soon as you're free and identify him.'
'All right,' Charles muttered. The pair clumped away. At that
moment the signal was gven that the drivers could carry on
with moving their cars on to the docks. They broke up at once,
and the next half-hour was devoted to the job in hand.
As soon as it was over, Charles went across to the Supervisor's
office and identified a sulking Dogson, gving his testimony
that the fellow was harmless. He left by himself, leaving Dogson
still being interrogated, but conscious that he had probably made
all the difference for him between being flned and being released
with a caution.
As he walked from the office to the dock gates, another figure
fell into step beside him. It was Bunder. Charles wanted to speak,
but he felt suddenly choked and unable to think of an opening
remark. Bunder for his part remained absolutely silent. They
passed into the street. Bunder held open the door of the first
public house they came to, and in a moment they were sitting,
with drinks before them, in a secluded comer of the saloon bar.
Neither had yet spoken to the other.
Bunder looked across at Charles steadily. They sat motionless,
with the untouched drinks on the table between them.
There was no doubt that Bunder was absolutely the master.
Just at the moment when it seemed their silence was assuming the
form of a contest to see who could hold out longest, he suddenly
made a nonchalant gesture which indicated, with complete
success, that the game was over and that the prize was awarded
to himself; and spoke.
'So you had a visit from a friend.'
'Friend nothing,' said Charles with a weak effort at resistance.
'That fellow just knows who I am, that's all.'
129
Omce the words were out of his mouth he appreciated, horribly,
their silly emptiness.
'He knows who you are, that's all,' said Bunder calmly. 'And
he knows your name, that's all, and he gets you to go and help
him out when he's arrested, and he knew there was a consignment
of cars coming down this moming, that's all.'
Charles took a long swallow at his drink. It was like a sinister
repetition of his encounter, a lifetime ago, with Mrs. Smythe. I'm
a private detective. Co ahead, detect something. Detect something
to say to Bunder to save yourself from a cut throat or a knock on
the head one dark night.
' Look, let's be reasonable,' he began with a violent effort.
' I'm being reasonable, old boy,' said Bunder gravely. ' It strikes
me you're the one who's being unreasonable. Bloody unreason-
able.'
' Can I help it if I know a loony?' Charles jerked out.
'No,' the other agreed, 'but you can bloody well help it if you
act like a loony. You know what I'm getting at. Publicity isn't
much of a help in our line. Then a man tums up one day trying to
hide in one of the cars and get access to the dock. He's found out
somehow that there's a convoy going down on that day. When
he's pulled out of it he appeals to you to go and bail him out or
whatever you were doing. So you have to go and stand in the
SupeNisor's oflice and get your face properly looked at by a lot of
oflicials and policemen, every one of whom will remember you
whenever he sees you. And all because some silly bastard wants to
get on to the dock without a permit. And what was he doing it
for, anyway ? '
It suddenly flashed across Charles's mind that Bunder was,
mercifully, ignorant of the true facts. Of course! Dogson to him
would appear simply as a bum, a sneak-thief or outright imbecile
with a simple felonious motive for being where he should not be.
He searched his memory for a long second. Had Dogson blurted
out anything about being a newspaper man? No: he had said,
amid his imcoherent protests, 'The people must know', but that
fragment of the shapeless mass of rhetoric he carried inside him
would not necessarily mean anything to a casual iistener. He
must keep Bunder absolutely and permanently in the dark about
130
Dogson and his mission to reveal the secrets of the drug traffic.
Otherwise it would be the end for both of them.
'You've heard of---er---Jehovah's Witnesses?' he began
jerkily. Behind Bunder's long, evil face hovered a vision of the
resentful scowl of Mrs. Smythe. This time the act had to be good.
'What would that have to do with it? ' came the silky, menacing
tone.
'Well, it's quite simple really.' A little of the old fluency was
coming back. 'This man's a member, and he's got some bee in
his bonnet about sailors, that they need converting more than any
other part of the community. He's tried time and again to hold
meetings in the evenings at various seaport towns, and having
failed, he's got the idea that his only hope is to get aboard the
ships themselves, while they're in dock, and go down to the men's
living-quarters with his tracts and things. He's regularly in trouble
for trying to worm his wayinto berths that are closed to the public,'
Bunder drank from his gass. He looked meditative.
'I didn't notice that he was carrying a case or anything to hold
his tracts in.'
' He's too clever for that,' said Charles solemnly. ' He thinks it
would antagonize the men if he were obviously going to distribute
literature. He carries them on him. His pockets are bulgng with
them.'
'Is that so?'
' Bulgng,' Charles repeated with great emphasis. His heart was
hammering.
Bunder stubbed out his cigarette, and, looking up, held
Charles's eyes firmly with his malicious gaze.
'Do you know what I think about that story?'
'What should you think of it?' Charles managed to croak from
a dry throat.
'I think it's phony.'
There was a pause that dragged into an etemity.
'Either he's shooting a phony line or you are. I wouldn't know
which. That's the only thing I don't get.'
Charles was helplessly silent.
'That bird isn't a Jehovah's Witness or anything of the sort.
He's just some little rat who wanted to be on the wharf at the
131
same time as us. I don't know why and I d ' k
he's fooled you with this crazy yam, or whether you know what
he's really up to, and daren't talk because you're afraid it's your
own fault he's hooked on to us. Because you've opened your
mouth too wide.'
Another silence. Centuries went by, geological eras came and
went, mountains rose from the sea and subsided again. Whole
cycles of evolution developed at their leisure. The hands of the
clock, by a laughable illusion, recorded this stretch of aeons as
forty-five seconds.
'Well,' Charles got out at last, ' what are you going to do about
it?'
'I'm not going to do anything about it,' Bunder purred. 'For
one thing it's not myjob to do anything about it. If you're really
sticking your neck out, it'll have been noticed before now, by
those whose job it is to notice these things. They'll take care of
you. Because,' he finished on a suddenly harsh tone, 'the rest of
us have got to be protected.'
' Protected,' said Charles weakly.
'Protected against anybody who for any reason, <1for->1--<1any->1--
<1reason,>1 might land us in trouble. And the funny thing was that the
two float chambers weren't identical in shape.'
'Identical in shape?' Charles murmured in bewilderment.
'No, but they seemed to work all right. Gave a very good
mixture. But it surprised me when I first saw them.'
Charles reazed that a man in a bowler hat had sat down
within earshot of their conversation. One had to admire Bunder
for some things. At least he was a perfect specimen of adaptation
to a particular end. One could imagne him as a baby leaning out
of his perambulator to steal a fruit drop and putting the blame on
his little sister.
They walked out of the bar and set off ia different directions.
'Look, don't let's dance,' he said. 'Let's sit down.'
'You're looking terribly tired, my poor thing,' she said. 'Are
you ill or something?'
132
'No, not ill. Just a bit tired.'
'I'm sure you're ill. Either that or terribly worried about some-
thing. Please, please, dear, why don't you tell me?'
'Tell you what?' he said.
She frowned. 'I shall lose my temper. You'll make me lose my
temper. Why do you hide so much from me?'
He was at a loss. She had become, of late, so much a part of
him that it was increasingly difficult to hide the slightest comer
of his mind from her knowledge. Normally it did not matter,
since, when they were together, everything else was banished, and
there was nothing he could not fully and frankly reveal to her.
But the interview with Bunder had shaken him.
'Oh, my darling,' she said sadly. 'Why do you pretend so hard
that you love me, when it's obvious all along that you can't if you
don't trust me?'
'I do love you,' he muttered eamcstly. ' And I do tmst you. It's
just that there are some things I don't want to burden you with.'
She looked at him with astonishment.
'How can you say that? Don't you know that when a woman
loves a man she wants everything, <1everything>1 about him, including
what you call burdens---yes, especially those: can't you see that
the only burden to her is to feel that he's keeping something
from her?'
'Will you marry me?' he said aliruptly.
She drew in her breath sharply, as if to speak with vehemence,
but was silent.
'I said, will you marry me?' he said again, flatly and without
emphasis. The waiter heard him arid moved discreetly away.
'Would you mind not asking me that, not just at present?' she
said slowly.
'But Veronica, for God's sake, why not?'
'There are things,' she said, still slowly, and with eyes fixed on
the stem of her glass. 'Things you don't know about.'
'Don't you know,' he said bitterly, 'that when a man loves a
woman he wants everything, <1everything>1 about her, and that the
only burden to him is to feel that she's keeping---'
' Stop! ' she cried suddenly. They looked at each other, ba~ed
and inquiring.
I33
'Take me away from here, Charles. Anywhere, I don't care
We'll go to an hotel if you like.'
Moving towards the door, he felt, and knew that she felt, that
they were running away, hard, in panic, from something that they
had never seen or heard, and about which they knew only that it
was terrible.
The evening had that sudden chill dampness that the end of May
will sometimes produce; a cold, salty wind blew from the sea.
Charles had no overcoat with him, and he shivered continually in
his thin jacket as he paced between the bleak, ugly sheds. The cold
was, in fact, more present to his mind than the nerwous demands
of the situation---demands which, but for the immunity accorded
him by his demented state, would have been considerable, for that
evening there was a 'job' to be done. They were to assemble, with
trade-plates at the ready, for an unusually large consignment.
All this was, to him, a surprise in itself. For about three weeks,
neither Bunder nor anyone else had mentioned such matters in
his hearing. He had not even known, and had been scrupulous in
doing nothing to flnd out, whether there were any 'jobs' going
on. It was, for one thing, by no means certain that he would be
used any more after the debacle over Dogson; and in any case,
probably, an interval would have to elapse in which he could be
watched to see if any of his activities indicated danger or
treachery. With complete fatalism he had even faced, at odd
moments, the possibility of being murdered : Bunder's ' the rest of
us have got to be protected' certainly contained a clear hint of it;
but he had taken no steps to safeguard himself. As for leaving his
job, it was obviously out of the question. His one chance of safety
was to stay where he could be watched until suspicion died away;
in any case, what else could he do? Even as it was, he was
beginning to find himself short of money after three weeks on his
bare wages. And then, without fuss, and with no indication that
anything had happened since their last assignment, Bunder had
quietly gven him his instmctions, just before setting out that
moming.
134
A squall of rain sent him back to the shelter of the shed wall.
The vehicle he had driven down, a light van, had been taken
away for loading at once, and before they could leave the dock for
the warmth of some bar or cafe, there was the usual delay over the
official clearance forms. Besides the job: his glance flickered
nervously over to the door set in a concrete wall, with 'MEN'
painted in dark cmde letters beside it.
It was time. The forms were issued, and folding them into their
pockets, the drivers trailed away in ones and twos to the gate.
Charles stepped behind some crates to be out of sight during the
few minutes he must wait before entering the lavatory. Another
of the men concemed had already had the same idea, and he
silently produced a cigarette. Charles, laying down his trade-plates
on the ground,-made a lengthy business of bringng out a match
and lighting it for him; should anyone chance to pass and see
them, they were just sheltering from the wind to keep the match
alive. After a moment the other, his eyes deep-set and dark
beneath his cap, looked at his watch and jerked his head in the
direction they must go. He set off, and Charles followed. He felt
sick; his flannel trousers were dark with rain at the front, where
he had faced the drizzle-carrying wind.
They were the last to enter. The lavatory was shadowy and
damp, with an incessant dripping from pipes and cistems that
matched the weather outside. Come on, get it over. Bunder
seemed unnaturally thin and elongated as he collected the trade-
plates in a bundle under his arm and tumed to one of the cubicles.
Suddenly there was a concerted stirring and stiffening of attitudes.
Someone else had come in. Charles, who was standing with his
back to the scene, using the urinal, felt immediately and desper-
ately certain that something terribly wrong had happened. He
shivered violently. There was no sound from behind him. After a
long moment he buttoned and tumed round. Bunder was there,
motionless, with the plates under his arm; the other drivers
were gathered into a knot, staring fixedly towards the
newcomer. Dogson, rigd as the others, was staring back at
them.
He did not look towards Charles. It was impossible to tell
whether he was aware of his presence. All that he was aware of,
135
all that any of them were aware of, was that the swift and ultimate
crisis had been reached.
It came too suddenly to be anything but a scene from a night-
mare. Bunder jerked forward and threw open one of the doors.
A short, squat man in a black leather cap reached across and
grasped Dogson, pinioning his arms behind him. The mouth in
the foolish round face opened, but no sound came out. Bunder
used his free arm to seize Dogson's shoulder as the man in the
leather cap dragged him in through the door. It slammed,
The three of them must have had barely room to stand
inside.
'Break! Clear out!' came a voice. Charles could not tell who
spoke. But the group broke suddenly into motion. In panic, a
panic he knew was shared, he butted his way out of the door into
the rain. Outside, some stood indecisively for a second before
forcing themselves to walk, not run, in a parody of normal gait,
in different directions; others ran madly for a few yards before
getting a grip on themselves and slowing to a walk. The horrible
silence of the scene emphasized its dream-like flavour.
In an agony, he shambled towards the gate, mechanically
fumbling for his pass. Ou the level of conscious, intentional
action, he had no wish at all to go back and help Dogson, though
he knew that by acquiescing he was leaving a man to his death.
But something caught at his knees and weakened them as he
stumbled away. His body, or some mysterious part of the complex
of his being, cried out to be back in there, holding Bunder by the
throat, shielding Dogson from the silent, vicious onslaught from
which, now, it was already too late to save him. Over and above
it was a surge, recognizable and clear, of anger. Damn the fool!
Damn the blundering fool!
Two of the others who had started out in a different direction
and already reached the gatc, suddenly appeared running, their
faces creased with fear. They mshed heavily past him, and he
sprang, with a pure reflex action, behind the same pile of crates
that had sheltered him earlier. Peering through a narrow gap he
saw a group of purposeful figures in dark umforms walking past;
not mnning, but walking, like men whose task is not to pursue
but merely to move in and clear up an ugly mess.
136
He shrank back. In a moment they would begn a systematic
search, and he would inevitably be taken.
His brain misted over for a moment, then cleared suddenly.
It had an old trick of doing that. The new gain in clarity was
always startling, and never more so than now. When he had been
taken with Dogson to the Supervisor's oflice three weeks before,
he had noted, mechanically, that the sanctum was housed in a
block of offices which clustered and leaned on one another in a
Iarge ramshackle building, looking from the outside like a ware-
house. That building had several entrances. Some of them gave on
to the street outside. One of them gave on the wharf where he
was now standing.
It was a choice between a fantastic risk on the one hand, and
the complete certainty of capture on the other. Keeping out of
sight as far as possible, he moved along to within twenty yards of
the door he was making for. Dusk was beginning to fall, but he
knew that this was no great help to him: within a few minutes,
when the police had gathered fresh men and spread the net
systematically over the area, a suspect would be picked up even if
it were pitch dark. As yet, however, the general alarm had not
been given, and the small, blurred drama was acting itself out in
a framework of general indifference and orderliness. Workmen
were leaning against a shed wall, watching with happy curiosity
the knot of oflicers moving along the wharf; elsewhere the
routine was going on in ignorance of any disturbance of its peace.
Amazingly, no one stopped Charles, no one pointed him out
and began to run towards him, no one heeded him. There was the
lull of a few seconds before the oiled machinery of pursuit came
into action, and, by pure coincidence, he had achieved the miracle
of timing that enabled him to use those few seconds. He entered
the building by a clouded glass door that looked as if it were only
occasionally used and then not by anyone of importance. A flight
of stairs led upward. Long, dark corridors branched. The oflice
staff had long gone home, but it was not yet time for the caretaker
to inspect and lock up. Again he had chanced on the one brief
space of time that most favoured him.
He lost his way; and, pausing to look out of a window, found
that he was already on the side of the building that overlooked
137
the street The nearest door on the street side, if they had not
already placed a guard over it, would free him, temporarlly, at
least.
Footsteps clumped up the stairs, and a bowed figure with an
oval pail in one hand and a broom in the other came scowling
up to him. But the voice that accompanied it was casual, not
angry.
' Been workin' late, aincher? '
'I had to see about the catgut. Writing a report on the catgut,'
Charles's whirling memory prompted him to stammer.
'Oh,' said the man with complete indifference, not listening.
'Well, you'll find the door open just down the bottom of these
stairs. I'd rather you went out that way. If you go over to the main
doors, I'll 'ave to come with you because we're supposed to keep
the place clear after a certain time. Just you go down these stairs,
and then I know you're off the place. An' you're the last.'
His rambling semi-explanation was not clear, but Charles
seized on the directions as to the way out. Plungng down the
stairs with no attempt to conceal his haste (after all he was a
young clerk who had had to stay over time and write a report on
catgut, which had made him late for a date with his girl), he found
an open door leading to an alley. Emerging on to the street, he
tumed sharply away from the direction of the main entrance and
walked as fast as he dared. The rain had abated, but the wind
still blew in chill gusts, and he felt himself shivering, as if in the
midst of all this horror, his body was, as it were, joggng at his
elbow, asserting its claim to a little consideration, trying to get
him to put on an overcoat.
He crossed the street at a point mid-way between two lamp-
posts. As he passed a darkened shop doorway a hand reached out
and caught his arm.
'Let me go,' he said, then, 'how did you get out?'
'I swam,' said Bunder briefly. He was soaking wet. In some
way Charles could not imagine, he had managed to reach the
water, and leave it again undetected. 'Don't be a fool. You can't
get away from here on your feet. They'll have the whole town
alerted already. The only chance is a car---one they're not looking
for.'
138
'Leave me out of it,' Charles breathed fiercely. The wet hand
was still clutching his wrist. He tried to drag it away.
'Don't be a fool,' Bunder said again. He seemed desperately
avid for someone to share his plight, as if his hunted condition
would only be tolerable if shared.
' Where's Dogson? ' Charles could not help asking although he
knew, terribly, sickeningly knew.
'The man who came in- , ,
out They'll have to take him.' He breathed heavily and lus pro-
tmding eyes, which Charles had always hated, seemed to glow like
a wolf's in the deep dusk. ' They'll have to take him,' he repeated.
For a few seconds they stood motionless. Water dripped
heavily from Bunder's clothes. Then, without relaxing his grip
on Charles's wrist, he started forward from the shop doorway.
Charles jerked his wrist free, but continued to walk beside him.
What else was there to do, and what, anyway, did it matter now?
He was implicated in a murder, and sooner-or later they would
pick him up. Only one thing was clear. He would arrange, some-
how or other, to be hanged. He would never contemplate a
sentence of years during which he was shut away from Veronica.
'It's the first one we come to, or nothing,' said Bunder. 'If
we're not out of the city in twenty minutes we might as well stop
at the station and give ourselves up.'
They emerged from a side street into a rather more prosperous
street lined with quiet oflice buildings. Three cars stood parked
within a few yards. Charles had to admire Bunder's coolness.
Without haste he looked into the window of the largest one. Then
he calmly took out his key-ring.
'Go round to the other side, will you?' he said to Charles in a
casual matter-of-fact tone, exactly as the owner would speak to a
business acquaintance to whom he was offering a Lift.
Charles went round to the passenger's door. He watched
through the glass as Bunder went through the motion of selecting
a key from his ring. But he did not open the door with a key.
Instead he leaned suddenly and unobtrusively on the handle and
appeared to pivot in some way on his forearm. There was a slight
139
crunching noise, and a jagged hole appeared in the panelling.
Bunder opened the door and, stepping into the car, reached
across and opened Charles's door for him. As he did so it was
obvious that he had a short length of lead pipe up his sleeve: the
old car-thief's device for wrenching off a door handle. In a few
seconds he had wedged the door with its shattered lock, started
the engne, and they were purring down the street.
'We've got one chance in a thousand. Hit that main road and
get out into the country. Ditch the car and travel from a country
station, or hide in the fields,' said Bunder half to himself. Charles
sat hunched in his seat, feeling a heawy numbness stealing over
him. Something had happened to the part of him that ought to
be feeling fear, pity, remorse, excitement : he felt no trace of any of
them. Only a deadness that was indescribably more painful.
Then he saw something as they swung round a comer and began
the climb up the hill away from the dock area. A bizarre, lop-
sided piece of machinery, painted cream and leaning drunkenly
against a wall. Two small boys were standing gravely by it with
handfuls of mud, which they were plastering over it with serious
concentration.
It was Dogson's motor-cycle. It was waiting for him to come
and ride it away, but he would never come again.
'Christ! They're on to us!' Bunder suddenly cried. In the
driving mirror appeared a black saloon with a small lighted sign
on the front---' Police'.
It was odd how little Charles cared. Something about the sight
of that pathetic clumsy object, waiting patiently, like a mule, to
be led away, brought into delayed action the full complex of
emotions roused by Dogson's death. It was like a series of ex-
plosions, each setting off another. Whole areas of his mind that
had for months been frozen or jammed, freed themselves now
with a succession of violent jerks. He felt like a man waking from
a drugged sleep. With fantastic vividness, now that it was all over
and too late for questions, one question flared before his eyes:
what was he doing here? How could he ever have led himself, by
what crazy route and with what blind footsteps, to the position
he was in at this moment? Sitting beside a tall, thin crook in a
soaking wet lounge suit, being driven in a stolen car, pursued by
l40
	the police, wanted for dope-smuggling and murder was this he
Charles Lumley ?
' Veronica,' he said aloud. ' You didn't know, you didn't know.'
'You bloody well bet I didn't know,' replied Bunder, who had
not caught the first word. ' I suppose they were just patrolling and
saw us immediately after getting the wireless message. Blast their
guts. We'll cook them yet: we've got five miles an hour more than
they have, flat out, and in any case they're not taking me alive.'
<1They're not taking me alive either,>1 his heart signalled as the
image of Veronica danced before it. <1They didn't take Harry alive>1
<1either,>1 the motor-cycle called faintly from somewhere in his brain.
<1He came in, but he won't go out.>1
By now it was almost completely dark. The horrible white light
from concrete lamp-standards illuminated the fish-and-chip
shops, the advertisement hoardings, the trolley-buses crawling
along in convoy. They were in that long, hideous street, lined by
altemate stretches of cheap shops and depressed houses, which
inevitably leads out of all English cities, connecting the centre
with the outer suburbs. Bunder drove fiercely in the crown of the
road, aiming from one trolley-bus to the next, since each one
blocked any possibility of seeing the road ahead. As the street
became gradually clearer of traflic, he drove faster and more
wildly, staking everything on the fact that the police in the
following car would have to retain, amid their haste, some con-
sideration for the public safety. Courting death, their own and
anyone else's, was the one possible chance of escape.
The ghastly patches of white light, gleaming on the wet road
beneath the concrete standards, flicked beneath them rhythmic-
ally. A steamy smell began to come from Bunder's wet clothes.
The car swayed and surged in its furious pace. Charles sat
hunched, staring through the windscreen, his mind echoing to the
shouts of his retuming sensibilities. Now and again he shook his
head, as if to clear it, like a boxer recovering from a knockout.
After a time a terrible, strained rigour seized him; his muscles
tensed, he sat braced in his seat with jaws clenched and eyeballs
fixed. It was as if he were in labour, fighting to be delivered of
something that must either be bom or kill him in the process.
Once before, as he had lain in the ditch and felt his previous ~fe
141
'I didn't think so myself,' said the woman's voice. 'I was just
carrying out Dr. Bulcastle's instructions.'
He could not hear what the man's voice said in reply. 'Dr.
Bulcastle, something something experience of this type of case.'
They seemed to have pinned his legs down under a heavy weight.
" He struggled to move, but the only result was a sharp pain in his
left shoulder as the upper part of his body stirred slightly.
'Well, we'll just have to carry on and see what we can do,'
said the man's voice.
Charles's head was packed tightly, inside, with cotton wool.
When he tried to shut his eyes he found cotton wool instead of
eyeballs under the lids. Revolving layers of thick blankets descen-
ded on him every few seconds and suffocated him. His bed was
slowly rotating. But all these inconveniences, even the shooting
pain in his shoulder, troubled him less than the inconsiderateness
of these people, whoever they were, in leaving a heavy oak chest,
or some similar weight, on his legs. It must have been there for a
long time, because his legs were quite numb.
He struggled to speak. At the third attempt his vocal chords
vibrated slightly, and a hoarse whisper came out:
'Take that thing off my legs.'
The woman heard him and approached.
'He's awake, Doctor. How do you feel now? Are you getting
much pain?'
'Thing---off my . . . legs,' he said.
'He's saying something about his legs,' she said.
'I'm not surprised to hear it,' said the man's voice drily. 'Well,
we can't hang about all night. Bring Perkins in and let's have a
try with this portable.'
During the few minutes that followed Charles died, was bom
again, lived whole life-times of pain and fever, contemplated the
worm-eaten sides of his coflin for centuries. Complete umcon-
sciousness supervened before they had quite finished.
Coming half-round, he heard: 'The only thing is to get him
down to the X-ray room. I didn't want to have to move him, but
it's inewitable. Get Perkins in again.'
Then they went away, all of them, and he was alone. The mists
cleared a little and he looked about him. Screens by his bed:
143
those green things were screens. Didn't they only put screens by
your bed when you were dying? You'd got to be dying before
they put screens round your bed. Screens round the bed, dead.
Dead round the screens. Screams in the bed. Dreams of the dead.
'Take that weight off my legs, damn you!' He thought he was
yelling. Actually a few whimperin-g sounds emerged.
'You be quiet, then you'll be all right,' said a woman's voice,
not the same one. He had a glimpse of starched cuffs moving
near his pillow. 'They'll be coming to move you in a minute.'
' What are the screens for? ' he asked, suddenly quite coherent.
'The screens?' she said. 'Just to make it comfortable for you.
To make it nice and comfortable for you.'
' Careful, now, Perkins,' said a man's voice. 'This is a serious case.'
Voices murmured for a few moments, then suddenly they began
to drag him in two. The top half of his body was twisted and
dragged off. The revolving blankets fell on his face. Death,
decomposition, rebirth, lingering death, the cycle began again.
Vaguely beneath it all he felt the sensation of being wheeled along.
Then he was flung, suddenly and violently, down a pit shaft. He
crashed into the coal dust at the bottom. The sea flooded into the
workings, and his head, which had bounded from his shoulders at
the impact, showed signs of drowning.
'You're awake this moming, are you?' said the sister with
brisk semi-indifference. 'This is Dr. Bulcastle. He's going to see
what can be done to put you right again.'
Grey eyes looked at him over half-moon glasses. Then they
dropped and looked through the glasses at his legs.
'I want you to tell me if you can feel this,' came the doctor's
creamy, rather tired voice. But he did not do anything.
'Feel what?' said Charles. He wished the man would get on
with it. He wanted to sleep, because he had a delicious certainty
that death awaited him if he could only get properly to sleep.
The idea of death had possessed his mind with its beauty and
necessity.
'Can't feel it, eh?' said the creamy voice.
l44
An ant seemed to be crawling over the sole of his left foot.
'My foot,' he said.
'Feel something in the foot, do you?' The creamy voice had
taken on a note almost of urgency. 'Which one?'
'That one,' he muttered.
' Good. There's a chance.'
'What's the matter with me?' he asked faimtly.
'The matter,' said the voice, tired again. 'Well, apart from
abrasions and a broken collar-bone, and considerable concussion
---that's wearing off now, of course---the main trouble is that the
lamina of your lumbar vertebrae are pressing on the spinal cord.
It's induced paralysis of the legs. But the fact that you can feel
something when I scratch the soles of your feet, as I've been doing
with this pair of scissors, shows that we've a fair chance of
operating successfully. Can you tell us what happened to you?'
'Happened,' he said wearily. He closed his eyes. Tell us what
happened to you, Vcronica, Bunder wouldn't stop. Tell us what
happened to Dogson. Finish with the whole thing. Tell us
what happened, partner. Bemard. Need somebody to look after
you. Yes.
'Not much good trying to talk to him for some time yet,' he
heard the voice. ' I know you'll see to everything that's necessary,
sister. I'll be ready for him about twelve.'
After that, nothing was clear for a long time, perhaps days. He
felt them inject things into him and move him now and then. The
blankets folded themselves tightly about his face, and the cotton
wool sprouted from his ears and filled his mouth. The screens
were always round his bed. Sometimes, when he woke up, there
were electric lights buming. That was night. It was day when they
were off, because you could see without them. Grotesque frag-
ments of talk mingled with his dreams; reality hung its head
defeated.
Then the time came when he woke up properly. He could tell he
was awake. Things seemed clear and normal; the lights were not
burning; it was day, probably moming. There was a moming
feeling in the place. The nurse noticed that he seemed better.
'You seem better,' she told him. He moved his right hand down
the bed to his waist and below. Plaster, heavy and stiff. Inside
145
were his legs, lying quietly, waiting to see if they would ever
serve him again. Poor legs, he felt sorry for them. Never did any
harm. A few tears came into his eyes.
Then the sister and a man he had never seen before were
standing by his bed. The question again: can you tell us what
happened to you? I'm too clever, he thought. I won't remember.
I've forgotten all about it.
'You see,' the sister said, 'you were found lying by the road-
side, but your injuries aren't really the type that we associate
with people who are knocked down by cars. They seemed to
suggest that you had, say, fallen from the pillion of a motor-cycle.'
' I can't remember,' he said.
' Don't you remember anything?' said the man quickly. ' What
you were doing there or anything?'
Mustn't overdo it. ' Oh yes,' he said. 'I remember who I am. I
remember my name.' He told them his name.
'Yes, we know that,' said the sister. 'We got your name and
address from things in your pocket. But don't you remember the
accident ? '
'Had you been drinking?' the man put in.
'No,' he said obstinately. 'I hadn't been drin king. I don't
remember what I was doing. I don't remember the accident. I was
sober but I don't remember.'
' Do you remember definitely that you <1hadn't>1 been drinking?'
the man asked him.
He shut his eyes. 'I feel tired,' he said.
'I think we'd better not disturb him any more,' said the sister
definitely. They went away. He felt an intoxicating sense of
Machiavellian triumph. It was all so easy: you just said you were
tired and they had to stop. He was going to feel tired every time
they asked him anything. Every time they asked him if Bemard
Roderick and Veronica had fallen off the pillion of Harry Dog-
son's motor-cycle, if Mr. Bleamey had nose-dived out of the sky
on a motor-cycle, if Harry Dogson had mn over Froulish on his
motor-cycle, leaving him with injuries not usually associated with
people who could remember if they had been drinking.
146
One day when the nurse came to wash him she told him he was
lucky. 'You're lucky,' she said. He asked her what she meant.
' You're being moved to the Private Block, with a room of your
own,' she said.
'Using what for money?' he asked.
'A friend of yours is paying,' she said, plying the flannel.
'Haven't you heard anything about it?'
' You must be making a mistake,' he said round the edges of the
flannel. 'No friend of mine could possibly pay for me to go into a
private ward, and anyway they don't know I'm here.'
'Oh, but they do. There was something in the paper,' she re-
torted. 'Mr. Perkins cut it out. I'll show it you when I come
round this aftemoon.'
That aftemoon she brought him a tiny cutting from one of the
more gossipy evening newspapers. He looked at it and read, 'The
Shah declared at a press conference that it was the will of Allah
that he should take a tenth wife. Miss Wadder, speaking on the
telephone from Los Angeles, said that the wedding was scheduled
for the fourteenth.'
' You're looking at the wrong side,' she said.
He tumed it over and read: 'HIT AND RUN. Charles Lumley
(23) was admitted to hospital last night suffering from severe
intemal injuries, after being found lying unconscious by the
roadside,' the paper was tom and he could not make out a line or
two, 'believed to be another case of a motorist failing to stop
after knocking down a pedestrian.'
'What's this about intemal injuries?' he asked the nurse.
'Oh,' she said, 'that's what they always put when they don't
know. The reporter didn't know anything about you except that
you were injured, but he thought it would sound as if he knew
if he just called it "intemal". We often get them doing that.'
'Was there anything about . . . ' He stopped just short of the
fatal word. He had been about to ask if there had been, in the
same issue of the paper, anything about a murder at the docks.
But what had all that to do with him? It was a former life, over
and done with, something he had forgotten about. Since then he
had died and been rebom a score of times.
' About what?' she prompted him.
147
He looked at her blankly. 'What about what?' he muttered.
She decided that he must be tired. 'You must be tired,' she told
him.
' But what about this private ward business?'
'Oh, that's tomorrow,' she said. 'You're being moved
tomorrow.'
'Yes, but who's behind it?'
'Some friend of yours,' she said impatiently, as if it were his
business to know the names of his friends. 'I don't know the
name. They'll tell you tomorrow when they move you.'
They moved him the next moming, out of the ceaseless
racket of the public ward with its communal wireless and echoing
vastness, over to a tall, narrow room with big windows and only
one bed. He looked round bewildered at the trappings of comfort,
the neat washbasin, the vase of flowers, the wireless set on the
bedside table. Mr. Perkins, who brought him over, coulld tell him
nothing. But just as they had finished getting him into bed, the
sister came in.
'I expect you'd like to dictate a letter to your friend, thanking
him,' she said.
'I would if I only knew who it was,' he answered-
' Haven't they told you that? Dear me, how silly. I thought you
knew. It's a Mr. Roderick. Mr. Bemard Roderick, of Stotwell.'
He lay back in silence.
'You can dictate your letter to me if you like,' she said.
'You're sure they got the name right?' he asked.
' Of course the name's right. We had quite a lot of dealings with
him, over the telephone and by letter. He's even arranged all the
details, like having the wireless hired by the week and the bills
sent to him. Didn't they gve you that note he sent?'
'A note to me?' He was still stupefied.
'Who else?' she said in the tone that comes to those who
control their impatience, either masking it or releasing it in
calculated amounts, for years together. ' Here it is on the dressing-
table.' She handed it to him. It was a small, neat envelope with a
card in it, such as expensive florists enclose with flowers sent by
wire. He took out the card. It said, 'Hoping you will be as
comfortable as can be expected. Bemard Roderick.'
148
'You're lucky to have such a generous friend,' said the sister.
Her inquisitiveness, like her impatience, had never been off the
lead, but she was human.
'Lucky,' he said.
'I suppose it's someone you've known for a long time,' she
prompted.
' A long time,' he repeated.
' Would you like to dictate your letter now?' she asked.
'I feel tired,' he said.
It worked: she left him alone.
The comfort of his new quarters aided his resolution not to
think. Attempts to puzzle out this mystery of Bemard Roderick's
generosity simply brought on an acute pain behind the eyes ; it was
safer to push it into the limbo where he had pushed the Bunder
episode and all that led up to it. If ever he came out of this and
resumed normal life, so much would have to be forgotten that
one or two items on the list did not matter much.
The greatest surprise of all was that he did not find it difficult
to avoid thinking of Veronica. In fact it was easier, as well as more
comfortable, not to think of her. Once or twice, when he allowed
his mind to recall their moments of profoundest happiness, ofjoy
so deep that he had no means of telling whether he was remem-
bering or imagining, the pain became, simply, intolerable:
frightened, he lay back and allowed blankness to flood over him.
If in his day-dreaming he saw her at all clearly, the agony of lying
helpless, not being able to go to her, was not to be bome; if she
were merely there as a vague presence, the effect was comforting.
Obviously his fierce mental shying away from the thought of her
was, in origin, physical; his body, in the struggle to piece itself
together, required the co-operation of his mind, and when
insanity was threatened, took swift action by means of drowsiness
or nausea. And so the impossible happened: he passed long
stretches, amounting to hours, without thinking of Veronica.
The wireless with its ceaseless half-heard droning was a great
help. On the aftemoon of the second day in his new room, he was
149
lying half-asleep, listening to Children's Hour. A bright, sexless
female voice had just said, 'And now we're going over to the
Birmingham studio for a new story for the under-nines, told by
Jeremy,' when the door opened and the nurse ushered in a visitor.
It was Bemard Roderick.
Prone in bed, plaster from waist to knees, Charles felt more
than ever at a disadvantage in dealing with this man who had
always subtly overpowered him with suave self-assurance and
blandness. The whole tangle of his emotions towards Roderick,
the ambivalence of his hatred for Veronica's seemingly jealous
guardian and his will to feel kindly towards him as her relative
and benefactor, had been mirrored in his utter inability to measure
up to Roderick, to play, as it were, in his key. But his former
difficulty was nothing compared with this; for his physical weak-
ness and imprisonment now had its analogy in the moral hand-
cuffs which Roderick had clicked on and locked by his display of
expensive generosity. He wished to feel gratitude, but the whole
machinery of his reactions was too complex, and too much out of
order, for any such simple and good emotion to be possible. He
looked stonily, yet with obvious helplessness, at his captor.
Roderick, for his part, was smoothness itself. He was gving a
first-rate performance in the role of himself being smooth. He
padded towards the bed, mirnicking with great skill his own soft-
footed manner of progression. His head was inclined slightly
forward ; he was imitating himself being calmly, gently concemed
for another's welfare.
'And how do you find yourself after all these ordeals?'
'Quite easily,' Charles replied with a grotesque attempt at a
light laugh. 'I just look inside the plaster and there I am.'
The jarring note had been struck already. Roderick had had his
usual effect- of throwing him off balance, rendering him absolutely
incapable of judgng the right tone, reducing him to an imbecile.
'I really must thank you for your great kindness,' he went on
primly, veering wildly to the other extreme. It was like a decayed
gentlewoman thanking some charitable institution for helping her
with the quarter's rent.
Roderick gave a brilliant, rather impressionistic imitation of
himself being slightly pained and at the same time touched and
150
pleased. 'Look into my eyes,' his manner said, 'and notice the
blend of rather shy pleasure at finding my kindness appreciated
and genuine regret that I could not manage to help you anony-
mously.' When Charles had had a reasonable chance to notice
this, the expression was switched off, and replaced by one that
indicated the responsible man, aware of his obligations to
humanity.
'I simply heard about your unfortunate accident---read about
it in the paper as a matter of fact,' he said, 'and as soon as I
could get the details about where you were and so on, I naturally
did what I could to make you more comfortable.'
' I', not ' we', read about it. All right, you bastard, if you won't
mention her first, I won't. We'll go through the whole wisit
without mentioning her if you like, since you're evidently doing it
on purpose.
' A nice change from the public ward. It was noisy down there,'
he said.
Roderick nodded agreement. His eye wandered round the room,
noting that everything was in order. He kept his responsible man's
expression in place a little longer, then allowed it to fade into a
sympathetic one. Charles watched fascinated as the performance
became richer and richer: compassion tempered with a certain
robust cheerfulness, as of one who understood all the suffering,
shared it even, but had come as the messenger of hope.
' The sister was telling me downstairs that they've every hope of
your complete recovery,' he said impressively. Pf they told <1me>1
that, it must be true. I'm not a man who gets lied to.)
' Yes, they might get me walking when this plaster comes off,'
said Charles. This mechanical repeating of everything Roderick
said, in an attempt to avoid breaking any fresh ground, was
terribly boring and fatiguing. He felt listless. How soon would it
be permissible for him to say he was tired?
'I don't want to stay too long: I know you mustn't be tired,'
said Roderick. He leaned forward slightly in his chair as if on the
point of standing up to go, then relapsed. 'Just a few more
minutes to think of anything I can send you---I tried to think of
everything, but one can't be sure. Or,' he added, 'any messages.'
Charles stiffened. That last word was the first piece of open
151
bullying Roderick had indulged in: obviously he had not been
able to resist it. Instinctively he rejected the (in theory) possible
explanation that the man really wished to gve him a chance to
communicate with her, and was thus delicately introducing the
subject. No, it was an insult. Messages! When the only message
Charles could possibly care about was one that could under no
circumstances be entrusted to him.
'No, no messages,' Charles said faintly. At any moment he
could say he was tired, and the powerful magc would sweep this
ghoul away.
'That's funny,' said Roderick, standing up. 'Because I've got
one for you.' He produced an envelope from his pocket. ' I don't
know whether you recognize the writing.'
' Charles Lumley, Esq.,' in Veronica's handwriting. His heart,
after so long and so illusory a quietness, smashed at his ribs under
the pyjama jacket.
As Roderick handed the envelope over he did not gve an
imitation of himself being anything. His face had become empty,
quiescent, utterly without character.
Roughly Charles tore the letter open. A single sheet of paper,
with only a few words written carefully.
'It is tme what Bemard tells you. There is nothing for it. I
am sorry. V.'
. .
He looked up at Roderick. Everything in him was nerwed for
some terrible blow.
'Well, go on,' he said. 'Tell me what it is she says is true.'
Roderick looked down at him. His face was like a pumpkin on
which a child has idly made a slit for a mouth, two dark holes for
eyes.
'If you think for a minute, Lumley, can't you guess?'
A great weariness possessed him, tuming his bones to jelly and
his muscles to water, dirty water.
'Yes,' he said, his voice coming from a long way off. 'I suppose
I can guess.'
' And do you really mean to say that you didn't guess all along?
That you really thought she was my niece?'
I52
Charles was silent. The knowledge that Veronica was Roderick's
mistress had been there all along, in his bones, in his arms and
legs, in the blood in his veins. Now it had risen at last to his
brain, bursting through the pathetic little barrier of self-hypno-
tism that had kept it down all these months.
'In every important sense,' he said, 'I've known that since I
first met you both. That stuff about her being your niece
wouldn't have deceived anyone unless they wanted to be deceived.'
'And you did want to, didn't you?'
' Yes,' he said simply, 'I did want to.'
Roderick moved towards the door. Before reaching it he
stopped and tumed his pumpkin-face steadily towards Charles.
'We shan't meet again. Veronica has told me that she will
never communicate with you any more. I may say, in case you're
puzzed, that this little gft of mine,' he waved his hand to
indicate the room and its fumishings, 'was made at her request.
She agreed with me that you must be told about the real nature
of the position, and told, what's more, before you grew strong
enough to begin building hopes on what had happened between
the two of you, hopes about the time when you came out of here.
But she wanted me to see that you were comfortable before
breaking the news. She felt you would need that little extra help
if you were to stand the shock.'
Charles was silent.
' Well, have you anything to say before I go? ' Roderick asked,
clearing his face of its pumpkinhood and resuming his irnitation
of himself being bland---only this time there was a touch of
parody in the performance, so that it was a slightly malicious
portrait. He stood, waiting. Charles just managed to speak.
'Yes. Get out.'
He went out quietly, shutting the door.
The nurse noticed at six o'clock that his temperature was up.
' Your temperature's up,' she told him.
'It is true. There's nothing for it,' he replied. She looked at him
with mild surprise, but made no comment. When she had gone
153
he lay perfectly still, searching within the huge hollow space in
his mind, hoping that in some neglected comer he would find the
strength to keep him sane, the will to begn from the begnning.
So much had to be altered; he had known it; and now this, too,
the foundation on which everything else had rested. Lying there,
still and frightened, he knew that the next few hours would bring
him, finally, to sanity or madness. Either the loss of Veronica---
not merely the loss but the need to reject every thought of her---
would kill him, or it would set him free, and gve meaning to his
decision to sweep the violent and senseless elements from his life.
Outside, the summer evening was bright; before darkness finally
fell and the birds slept, he would have wrestled with his angel.
The full meaning of Roderick's message filtered piece-meal into
his mind, cmshing, exploding, searing, as its delayed action
brought wave after wave of pain. And yet there was, at the core,
a hint of release and a new strength. The night-sister, coming on
duty, was told that Lumley was behaving strangely and seemed to
be talking to himself; she went in to cheer him up, but met only
perfunctory, listless answers, and his mutterings began again
before she was out of the room : 'the new life', she heard him say.
She was not unduly worried, being experienced enough to know
that serious cases have minor relapses as a matter of course.
He himself knew only that the new life, if he could reach it
without going mad or dying, contained his salvation. The long
hours of slowly fading light witnessed the immensity of his
stmggle: it is true what he tells you, forward, to the new life,
there is nothing for it. Now and then he slept, and in his tangled
dreams caught glimpses of an unimaginable state of peace. There
was nothing for it, time must carry him on, without a pause,
forward, to the new life, it is tme, it is true, I am sorry.
l54
                           VIII
was recovering. He could move his legs when they took
the plaster off, and soon they gave him a stick with a rubber end
to it and he was walking round the room.
He was not transferred to a convalescent home ; either there was
no such institution available, or it was too full, he did not enquire;
but this was the reason why he spent an unusually long time, in a
semi-invalid condition, at the same hospital. As soon as he was no
longer definitely ill, he persuaded the sister to write to Roderick
saying that he had left the hospital and that the payments for the
private ward need no longer be kept up; transferred to one of the
smaller public wards, he lived a life half-way between that of
the patients and the hospital staff, making himself useful in odd
ways to fill in the time.
It seemed simple and natural, therefore, that when his cure was
finally completed---by this time it was the middle of July---he
should solve the problem of employment by taking on a job as
orderly in the hospital. He had grown familiar with the place,
inured to its curious blend of atmospheres---part factory, part
hotel, part battle-ground, part mortuary---and had, in any case,
no wish to leave its shelter and begin again the task at which he
had already failed twice, the task of adjustment to the world. His
physical cure had been successfully completed; his mental
cure was taking longer, and the hospital offered facilities here
too.
And so he moved no farther than a quiet, dingy lodging-house
where he slept at night, spending most of the twenty-four hours
inside the vast hospital. His work was not quite so congenial as
window-cleaning had been; for one thing, it was irksome, in fine
155
weather, not to be out of doors; still, it was simple, and fulfilled
his major needs in being laborious but not quite back-breaking,
and in being obviously useful---a badly-needed refreshment for
his rudimentary social conscience.
Sweeping, polishing, fetching and carrying, occasionally helping
to move a patient, conscious or unconscious, under the sergeant-
majorly supervision of Mr. Perkins, his time passed smoothly.
With satisfaction he noticed himself becoming accepted and
integrated into the community of the hospital, finding his place
in a feudal pyramid-shaped society that brooked no vagueness as
to questions of status. He found this refreshingly different from
the world outside; here, there could be no false pretensions, for
rank, prestige and privileges were settled automatically. At the
top were the doctors : these had their own hierarchy, but it was too
distant to be obserwed from below, and concemed no one but
themselves and the few uppermost nurses---Matrons and Sisters
---who shared the same status. Next came the nurses in general,
again with an elaborate hierarchy from Staff Nurse to Probationer.
At the bottom, the broad base of the triangle, came the cooks,
technicians, clerical and domestic workers. There was, of course,
a rigd line of demarcation between each trade here. Charles
found his place somewhere near the bottom. As an orderly he cut
rather little ice, being inexperienced and without knowledge of
any technical trade: it was soon discovered that he was little use
at emergency patching up of electrical equipment, plumbing, or
any other deep mystery. So he was tolerated and kept busy on
humble tasks ; which suited him perfectly. Anonymity, obscurity, a
relief from strain, the situation was exactly what he had pre-
scribed for himself. Finally, he found with gratitude that hospital
life, being so grotesquely unlike anything in the world outside,
did not admit of any of the usual socialclassifications. It was not
considered strange that he should be working at a manual
occupation and still sounding his aitches.
Morning coffee was a great ritual on his block; convention had
long since sanctioned a generous mugful for each patient, and for
156
any of the nurses or members of the staff who could arrange to
be on hand when it was being distributed. It was Charles's one
social half-hour of the day, when, having taken round trays of
coffee, collected them, and washed them up, he sat down in a
small room between sinks and stoves, and chatted to women with
dusters round their heads as they helped themselves from a
freshly made pot.
The women themselves were an interesting sociologcal study,
in so far as he could look beyond the rigid world of the hospital
to their probable place in the shifting structure outside. Though
their work was cleaning and dishing up food, few of them were
the ordinary charwoman type; mostly they were obviously
welcoming the chance to eam a little extra money by plying the
only trade they knew, yet would have starved rather than become
even a 'lady help' to another woman, with the personal relation-
ship that it would involve. Hospital meant charing as far as work
went, but in its social atmosphere it meant something more
interesting, more romantic, and, in the long mn, more respect-
able.
At least one of Charles's coffee-time circle, however, was free
of any such preoccupations. Rosa had taken work at the hospitaI
because it was 'more like life---you could meet more people and
get to see and hear more,' she confided to Charles as they washed
mugs. She was a sturdily built grl of twenty, not pretty, but alive,
with a touch of exuberance that proclaimed itself in the big scarlet
mouth that she daubed across her already full lips, and the
animation of her voice in talk. She found everything interesting,
tbough she was quite without curiosity and never tried to puzzle
things out. What was, was, and that was the end of it; but she
lived in a perpetual state of deep wonderment, bordering on
excitement, that people and things were so various. Charles found
her refreshing and slightly comical. She in tum took, he some-
times felt, a degree of interest in him that was a shade deeper,
even, than her general interest in human personality. He was
unlike any other young man she had ever met, and, without
trying to account for his differences, she found him absorbing.
He knew that when a lively girl of that age finds a man absorbing,
it is sometimes not long before she finds him other things as well.
157
this, he did not know what to do about it or even
whether he wanted to do anything about it.
One day, as he was wheeling a trolley down a corridor, .he nearly
ran into a young man in a white coat who said, 'It's Lumley, isn't
it?'
It was a man who had been at college with him, a medical
student, but by some odd chance Charles had never leamt his
name. They had only known one another very distantly. Obviously
he had either to ask him his name at once, or to pretend for ever
thathe knewit.d It t ht bl t khi . h
would simply have to call him You.
'What are you doing here?'
'Wheeling these dmms down to the theatre.'
The other flushed slightly at Charles's discourtesy.
'I meant, of course, what are you doing doing this job?'
Annoyance had a poor effect on his syntax.
'I've got to live, haven't I?' said Charles in the patient tone of
one who is prepared to discuss the matter fully.
This continued coldness ought to have been enough to brush
the fellow off, but evidently he had motives for persevering.
Perhaps he was lonely and welcomed the sight of a once-familiar
face. Or he thought Charles had come down in the world and was
anxious to befriend him. The latter was the less likely of the two.
'Well, let's be seeing something of you,' he said. 'Where do
you live?'
Charles wondered whether it would be a legitimate continus'tion
of his surly-independence act if he merely replied 'At home', like
a character out of W. W. Jacobs, but decided it would be over
the borderline into unjustifiable rudeness, so gave his address.
'I'll be having a few people round for a beer-one ot- these
evenings,' said the man, writing it down. ' You must come. There
are one or two men you know here. We're doing our hospitaI
rnining.'
'I'm doing my hospital training, too,' said Charles, but the
158
other had hurried on. With a muttered exclamation of annoyance
he wheeled the trolley forward again.
That day, in one of the private wards he attended, a new
patient appeared : a thin, pallid, bird-like man in advanced middle-
age, who spoke in a faint voice and lay back as if he were afraid
and wanted to efface himself and make his bed look empty.
Charles did his best to make a littlc cheering conversation as he
swept out the room, and the bird-like man seemed grateful and
responded at once.
'You'd better put a special bit of elbow-grease on in number
three,' Rosa said to him at coffee-time. 'There's a man there it'd
pay you to get in his good books.'
'Why, who is he?'
'You know Braceweight's Chocolates? Well, that's Mr. Brace-
weight. They say he's very rich. A proper millionaire they say he
is! ' She glowed with suppressed excitement at the thought that a
man who makes chocolate on a big scale can become rich, and
can then fall ill, and that he should have come to 'their' hospital,
and that Charles should be cleaning out the room where he lay
in fear and suffering. It all thrilled her genuinely.
Even Charles took, from then on, a fresh interest in the frail,
scared figure in that bed. From time to time people have genuinely
believed that money 'doesn't matter', 'isn't everything', and so
forth, but no one has ever failed, on being told 'Mr. X is a
millionaire' to look at him with keen interest, keener than if they
had been told 'Mr. X is a veterinary surgeon', or 'Mr. X has an
interesting hobby: he carves chessmen'. And yet the result o- f his
observation was, for some time, mere bewilderment; it revealed
no extraordinary or compelling qualities in Mr. Braceweight. He
seemed to have no personality at all, even allowing for the fact
that the obvious outward trappings by which a man advertises
his personality---clothes, possessions, pursuits---were not available
to him as he lay helpless in bed. He was obviously afraid of his
operation: he was having his tonsils out, which is a severe
operation for an ageing man; but even his fear did not make
159
itself felt in any marked way. It was restrained, not by courage,
but the lack of any equipment for making itself significant or
noticeable. Afterwards his relief was the same, obviously and
genuinely there, but flavourless and only faintly apparent.
In the end Charles realized the truth, that it was this negative-
ness, this lack of any real Braceweighthood, that had brought the
man to his power and wealth. Having no definite character of his
own, he had gladly accepted a lifetime of application to the
routine of buying and selling, his protective colouring enabling
him to move through that jungle in safety. He was not, Charles
gathered, a self-made man; that struggle, which tums those who
win it into stunted gants---half maimed, half Herculean figures---
had been unnecessary in his case. He had simply inherited a good
business, and turned it into a huge one with the aid of his colour-
less persistance. Charles liked him; he had the faint, but genuine,
appeal of the harmless and ordinary character. He, on his part,
seemed to find in Charles his one ray of hope. The doctors over-
awed him, the nurses domineered him, the charwomen were too
large and healthy for his peace of mind, and Charles fell into an
intermediate category. He asked Charles his name, and addressed
him punctiliously as 'Mr.' Lumley, confiding in him at every
stage of his circuitous road to recovery. 'Do you think I could
ask them not to give me cascara to-night, Mr. Lumley? Or is it
a regulation, do you think?' Or: ' Mr. Lumley, is it usual, when
the nurse takes a patient's temperature, for her not to tell him
what it is? They never tell me what mine is.' Charles was reassu-
ring, calling into play that softness and slight hesitancy of speech
that the University had made, once upon a time, his normal
utterance. He had long since laid it aside in favour of the curter,
more aggressive manner of the normal world, but something about
Mr. Braceweight's helplessness, he found, called it out again
despite himself, and made him reaze afresh that it was a speech-
habit common to the disabled.
The man in the white coat, acting from his obscure motives,
duly sent his invitation, and Charles found himself walking down
l60
a suburban road one evening after duty. He was not looking
forward to the gathering, but found himself, nowadays, bored and
irritated by making excuses and evasions; it was simpler to go and
be done with it. As he walked up the gravel path to the large,
semi-detached house ('Stockbroker's Tudor') where the man
lived or lodged, he saw the lighted window on the first floor, and
heard gruff laughter. Hearties. He had kept clear, during his
college days, of the sporadic warfare between athlete and aesthete,
but felt, looking back, that if he had disliked each party equally,
it had, nevertheless, been for different reasons. He had distrusted
the cooing, pink-shirted aesthetes because he perceived inside
himself the germs of the same disease, and had been afraid of
allowing the tendency any free play. The hearties he had simply
disliked as one dislikes a foggy day or a bad smell. And here he
was walking into a nest of them.
It was all exactly as he had known it would be. The featureless
lounge, with imitation oak furniture and square-cut 'comfy' arm-
chairs and sofa, was full of tall, erect young men and tweedy
young women who all somehow echoed the same <1ersatz>1 note as
their surroundings. The landlady, a forty-ish blonde aspiring wildly
to a chic slightly above her own level, the degree of chic repre-
sented by the present company, was acting as hostess: the man
whose name he did not know was evidently 'more like a friend
than a lodger'. The lady probably kept Caim terriers, or a Labra-
dor, but fortunately the creatures were out of sight at the moment.
No attempt was, of course, made at an introduction: Charles
was launched into the company with a vague intimation that
some of them knew him, carrying with it the implication that the
others were the lucky ones. Beer was available, and he took a
gass in his hand and prepared to wait out in patience the time
he must endure before going home. But his calm resignation was
suddenly disturbed. His ears picked up a familiar braying noise,
and a broad back that had been tumed towards him was abmptly
reversed, becoming a broad chest. The same immature, arrogant
face, the same cold eyes behind glasses. It was Burge, one of the
medical set who had been at College with him, and possibly the
only one of his contemporaries for whom he had ever felt a
really vivid dislike.
161
For Burge contained within himself all the unpleasant charac-
teristics of Robert Tharkles and Hutchins combined, while
blending and applying them in a way that was all his own. Charles
disliked him too much to be able to pity him, and yet he, too, was
one of the disabled. At first profoundly uneasy at exchanging the
seniority and power of his last year at school for the insignificance
of his first year at the University, he had quickly remedied this
sense of insecurity, partly by making no new friends---he confined
himself entirely to the set who had come up from his school and
their immediate cronies---and partly by taking advantage of the
fact that a University career is very short, only three years for
most men, and therefore a medical student, whose course takes
much longer, easily becomes a senior figure in the Junior Common
Room as he stays on year after year. By the time Charles had
come up as a freshman, Burge was already in his fourth year, and
had devoted himself with complete success to reproducing the
<1milieu>1 in which he had been so happy and successful as a Head
Prefect. Charles, inclined to be lazy and tolerant, had welcomed
the University largely---almost solely---because it meant the
maximum release from the atmosphere of school with its incessant
discipline and public spirit, and he had been roused from his
lethargy to several open clashes with Burge: who now nodded
to him coldly before resuming his conversation. It was, charac-
teristically, on the very topic---the war of the athletes and the
aesthetes---about which Charles had been musing as he walked
up the path.
'Remember Reilly?' he was saying. 'My God, he was a fool.
He was a bloody fool. Remember that bloody monocle he used
to wear?'
The others laughed. They were quite good humoured: but
Burge was angry. When he thought of this man Reilly, who had
wom a monocle, he wanted to seek him out and do him some
physical injury. Something inside Charles prompted him to
ignore all the dictates of common sense and speak out.
'Perhaps he wore a monocle because he had something wrong
with one eye,' he said.
Burge tumed to face him. 'Won't wash,' he said curtly. 'If he
had something wrong with one eye, why didn't he simply wear a
162
pair of spectacles? He could have had ordinary plain glass in the
good eye.' He spoke rapidly and impatiently, as if it were only
just worth his trouble to answer such a foolish remark.
Charles, insanely, persisted.
'Why should he look through plain glass with his good eye
when he could see all right without looking through anything at
all?'
Burge now gave him his full attention. He spoke so that those
guests who had been talking to one another stopped and listened.
'I'll tell you why he should look through plain glass,' he said,
'if you really can't think it out for yourself. He should do it so
as not to make himself look a bloody fool. By wearing a monocle
he just made himself bloody conspicuous. Everybody looking at
him wherever he went. And that's what he did it for. You know
that as well as we do. Hejust wanted to draw attention to himself.'
Something had got into Charles. He felt a mad compulsion to
bait Burge. He insisted on draggng out the argument. The fourth
form boy was defying the Head Prefect, the hospital orderly
standing up to the almost-qualified doctor. The other guests
began to look uncomfortable.
' Look, Burge,' he said hotly and roughly. 'You talk about this
bird Reilly drawing attention to himself. Now you -were captain
of the College mgger team, weren't you?'
Burge just managed a nod. His face was totally without
expression, save for the faint sneer that never left it, even when he
was asleep at night. -
' When you scored a try,' Charles persisted, ' and the spectators
applauded, can you honestly deny that you were gad that there
were spectators present, and that you had done something that
pleased them so that they applauded? Weren't you glad of their
admiration ? '
Not even a nod this time. Burge simply stared at him with
fixed loathing.
' Didn't you, in other words, believe, or act as if you believed,
that there are some forms of drawing attention to oneself, as you
call it, that are harmless or even good?'
' Blimey,' said a youth in a yellow pullover, affecting a Cockney
accent, ' ain't we 'alf getting Socratic?'
163
One or two people tittered, in an attempt to break the tension.
But Burge had set down his gass on the table and was staring at
Charles. His face had gone a dull red.
'You always were liable to say bloody silly things. I must say
I thought after I went down I should have heard the last of people
saying bloody silly things.'
' Answer my point,' snapped Charles. He was losing his temper:
this was getting serious.
'I'll answer your bloody point,' Burge said in the 'dangerously
cool' voice he had used to over-awe children of twelve when he
was a prefect. ('If he speaks to you quietly it's a beating: if he
shouts you're all right', the white-faced urchins had told one
another.) He advanced towards Charles, and halted about six feet
away, holding himself unnaturally erect.
'If a man does something in a decent game like rugger,' he said
coldly and distinctly, 'it's a sign that he's a good bloke. If the
people watching start clapping, that's their way of saying to him,
"We appreciate that. You're a good bloke." It takes a good bloke
to play well at a decent game like rugger. If that's what you call
drawing attention to oneself, that's not what I call it. I call it just
being a good bloke.'
'At a decent game like rugger,' said Charles in a parody of
Burge's manner.
Burge took a step forward. Charles thought he was going to
hit him, and almost threw up his fists. But Burge checked himself.
There were females present, females of his own species.
'I suppose people like you wouldn't call rugger a decent game,'
he said, challengng Charles to say something really outrageous,
to brand himself.
'And there's another thing,' he said, raising his voice, when
his challenge was received in silence. ' Just what the bloody hell do
you think you're playing at, Lumley, eh? They tell me you've
taken a job at the hospital as an orderly. Carrying buckets about
and emptying bedpans. What the bloody hell's the big idea?'
Charles was roused to a degree he would have believed
impossible. His heart was pounding with rage, and he felt the
blood surgng behind his eyes.
' Do I understand, Burge,' he said, with a hint of a choke in his
l64
voice, 'that you are interfering with my right, the absolute right
of a citizen, to do just whatever work I may choose?'
Two people moved forward and began to speak in an attempt
to stop this before it went any farther: the landlady who was
more of a friend, and a tall girl with a bad complexion who was
evidently connected with Burge in some way, probably his fiancee.
But it was too late. Everyone was listening intently, and Burge
was not to be halted.
'Yes, you bloody well do understand it,' he cried. 'That sort
of work ought to be done by people who are bom to it. You had
some sort of education, some sort of upbringing, though I must
say you don't bloody well behave like it. You ought to have taken
on some decent job, the sort of thing you were brought up and
educated to do, and leave this bloody slop-emptying to people
who were brought up and educated for slop-emptying.'
There was a murmur among the company that indicated agree-
ment. Burge had expressed one of the prime articles of all their
faith.
'You deny, then, that hospital orderly work is a valuable and
neoessary job ? '
'No, I don't. You're bloody well not catching me out with your
smart questions. It's necessary, and so is emptying bloody dust-
bins,' cried the educated man, 'but there are some classes of
society that are bom and bred to it, and ours isn't. If you take a
job like that, you're just---' he fumbled among his small stock of
metaphors, and brought out the inevitable, ' letting the side down.
And I don't like people who let the side down. None of us here
like it. We were discussing you before you tumed up, and agreeing
it was a bloody disgrace, if you want to know.'
The man whose name he did not know looked a little uncom-
fortable, and so did most of the guests. Not being as ruthless
as Burge, they did not like to have it known that they had been
discussing him prior to giving him hospitality; but Burge's girl, he
noticed, did not share in the discomfort, and looked at him with
cold contempt. It was too late to stop the scene, so she silently
threw in her support on the side of Burge.
'No, I don't want to know,' Charles retorted. 'And I don't
want your silly Edwardian notions of an upper-class Herrenvolk
165
thrown up at me, either. By "letting the side down" all you mean
is that the nigger-driving sahib oughtn't to do anything that reveals
that he shares a common humanity with the niggers he drives. That
idea's dead everywhere in practice, and it only survives in theory
in the minds of people like you.'
' God!' said Burge, in tones of sincere and utter loathing.
'You're talking just like a bloody Socialist. Workers of the
world, unite! ' he shouted, raising his clenched fist.
'All I'm saying is that work, necessary and good work---'
'Workers of the world, unite!' shrieked Burge again, waving
his fist wildly. He seemed possessed. It was no good going on.
' If I were you,' the girl with the bad complexion said to Charles
in tones of cold hatred, ' I'd clear out of here before you start any
more trouble with your Red notions.'
He had been prepared to go, that minute, but something
snapped at the thought of so much unthinking, emotional
intolerance.
' Red be damned ! ' he shouted. ' I've nothing against you men, in
the main---you're going to do useful work and you'll leam what
life's all about when you come to do it, but I might as well tell
you that, as you are here and now, I despise you.'
They clustered round him in open hostility.
'I despise you on two counts,' he continued rapidly and
fiercely. 'First, because my education, which you throw in my
face, was an education along humane lines that didn't leave
me with any illusions about the division of human beings into
cricket teams called Classes, and secondly because while you've
been living this inane life of---of good mixing, beer-drinking,
and slapping the nurses' bottoms on night duty, I've been out,
out in the world leaming the truth about things---and what's
more---'
He never said what was more, for he had trampled too heavily
and they considered themselves hard-driven men. Even as they
laid hands on him his reason told him to bear no grudge, nor
would he have bome any if the loathsome knuckly hands of
Burge had not been prominent among them, grasping lus collar.
He struck out, aiming to hurt, and the man next to Burge
stumbled backwards with an exclamation. He had missed. They
166
frogmarched him to the door and launched him into the air at the
top of the stairs. He bumped dizzily down them, but the carpet
saved him from hurt: he was on his feet, passionately calling
Burge to come out in the garden and put his fists up, but they
had closed the door. The outsider was outside, and they were
inside.
He walked home, marvelling at the depth, range, and richness
of the humiliation he felt; it was so terribly, urgently, out of pro-
portion to the simple, almost good-humoured, insult they had put
upon him. In his disturbed sleep the girl with the bad complexion
looked coldly, with Burge's eyes, through spectacles. ' One lens is
just plain glass, just bloody plain glass,' she kept saying.
Next morning, over their coffee, Rosa told him the plot of a
film she had seen the night before. 'Don't you ever do nothing
with your spare time?' she asked him when she had finished. He
roused himself from his torpid, resentful reverie and looked at
her. She met his gaze composedly, but he saw that her usual hint
of suppressed excitement was perhaps a little more pronounced
than normally. At all events, he understood that this was a
definite invitation. She was prepared to 'walk out' with him. He
did not know whether girls like Rosa still used the expression
'walking out': he himself had only met it in novels dealing with
Victorian or Edwardian village life. But the institution itself
survived, of that he was certain. Half a dozen visits to the cinema,
then a Sunday aftemoon tea at her parental home, and they would
be ' going steady' ; and afterwards . . . well, why not? Would he be
less contented than Burge, coupled with his frozen-faced long-
toothed product of Roedean or Cheltenham?
'I don't do much with my spare time,' he said, 'but I might if
I had anybody to do it with. Are you very booked up yourself?'
She looked dissatisfied: 'are you booked up' was too indirect
a way of putting the vital preliminary question. Hastily, he altered
it to 'What about coming out with me one of these evenings?'
and her brow cleared.
A buzzer sounded and a light flashed.
167
' Mr. Braceweight's ringng,' she said, sufficiently feminine not
to answer his question immediately.
' I said, what about coming out one evening? ' Charles repeated
patiently.
'What to do?' she asked.
' Anything you want to do.'
The staff nurse came in. 'Anybody going to answer that bell?'
she demanded.
' Yes,' said Rosa, going out. The staff nurse thought this answer
intended for her, but Charles knew it meant, yes, she would come
out with him. Cheerful and tranquil, he washed up the coffee mugs
and went about his work.
'Have you always worked in hospitals, Mr. Lumley?' asked
the rich patient, lying back paper-thin and parchment-grey amid
his pillows.
'No,' he answered, busy with the broom. 'I was an export
delivery driver before this. Drove motor cars for a living.'
Mr. Braceweight appeared to think this over. 'I suppose you
left it and came into this work because you had a special interest
---er---in this direction?'
'Not particularly. I was a patient here and I took the job
because I hadn't any other.'
The manufacturer ought to have been displeased at this display
of indifference and lack of initiative by a young man; but the
gance he shot at Charles from beneath his straggling white eye-
brows was, of all things, a slightly envious one. What could it be
like, he seemed to be thinking, to be free? Just to take any job that
came along? Was it really, as he had always accepted and
believed, the ultimate damnation?
' You were out of work, then?' He enunciated the dread words.
'Well, yes. Not that it really bothered me much. Something
reasonable always tums up once you've abandoned the idea that
one particular job is the only one you're cut out for.'
He gathered up his dusters and prepared to leave. 'Is there
anything you want, Mr. Braceweight?'
168
'Yes,' said the frail, prostrate figure with sudden energy. 'I
want to know what experience you went through that gave you
this indifferent attitude to questions like the choice of work.
Something must have happened to make you so different from
other young fellows. Usually if they talk like that they're just
' wasters, living by spongng on others, and you're not a waster.
But I'm not going to ask you. I haven't any right to ask personal
questions. Tell me some time if you feel like it.'
Charles leaned on his broom.
' Tell <1me>1 something first. Why do you feel this personal interest
in me? If I'm anyjudge at all, you're not a man with a big streak
of inquisitiveness, or even much ordinary interest, about what
other people are like in themselves. But something's given you a
wish to know more about the orderly who cleans out your
hospital room. Is it something in me or something in you?'
Mr. Braceweight closed his eyes. He looked incredibly feeble;
Charles could imagne the blood thinly pulsing along the tiny
veins in his eyelids. He was thinking hard, along lines new to him,
and it was exhausting.
'Two reasons,' he said at last. 'I've never had a long spell in
bed before, with nothing to think about. At first I just thought
about <1things->1--money, organization, that kind of subject. But that
was just habit. I'm thinking about people now : and yet when I try
to think about people I've known in the past, I find I can't really
remember them. I've never really noticed anybody. Not noticed
what kind of person he was: just whether he was a good business
man, a sound employee, or a serious rival---you know. Women
too,' he said more slowly, and paused for a moment.
'And the second reason?'
'The second reason is that you don't want to get anything out
of me.'
' Jabber, jabber, jabber, gossip, gossip! ' said the staff nurse to
Charles, coming in with a tray of surgcal instruments and dress-
ings. 'I wish I was like you. Nothing to do but talk all day and
lean on that brush.'
Charles went out, but not before his eyes had rested on Mr.
Braceweight's face for an instant with an expression of respect.
The man may havc come late in life to the begnnings of wisdom,
169
but not too late. The heavy cloth that had bound his eyes was
begnning to come unwound: he was begnning to see.
He went up the broad stone steps ~ith Rosa. Knots of youths
were standing about, on the steps, inside the vestibule, on the
pavement outside. Most of them wore blue or brown suits and
shoes with pointed toes; but here and there was one with a loud
tweed jacket and flannels, with broader shoes, sometimes in
suede. The ones in blue or brown suits had their hair swept into
shiny quiffs, stiff with grease, above the forehead; the others
had theirs brushed smoothly back, with no parting, or cut off
entirely except for a thin covering of scrub, some three-eighths of
an inch long. They stood with cigarettes cupped in their pahns, as
if to hide them. When they raised the cigarettes to their lips it
looked as if they were biting their finger-nails. Those who had
violent-coloured shirts on, to make them look like their own
conception of Americans, stood with their jackets unbuttoned and
hanging a long way open. There were no corresponding knots of
grls.
When Rosa came back from the ladies' cloak-room, Charles
took her to the ballroom door. He paid one-and-six each for them
to enter, and the evening had begun. The band had just played
and was momentarily silent, so that the huge floor was crowded
with people walking to and fro, and every one of the chairs ranged
round the walls was occupied. Cigarette smoke drifted in clouds
towards the great lights in the ceiling. Charles and Rosa stood
just inside the door; he said nothing, for he was taking the scene
in. Dances like these, in provincial town halls, were the main
recreation of millions of his fellow Britons below the age of
thirty, and he had never been to one before. Rosa was signalling
to acquaintances; she had probably been to a dance in this hall
once a week since she was fifteen. How much and how quickly
he would have to notice and absorb, if he wanted to speak her
language !
The band began to scream and clatter, and immediately the
throng broke into movement. Still Charles hung back, making a
170
note of the obviously complex traditions of the place before
venturing into the ritual. He noticed, for instance, that the chairs
lining the walls did not empty when dancing was resumed; on the
contrary, about a third of those present walked off the floor and
stood in a thick layer, three or four deep, making a human ring
round the shiny floor with its solemnly entranced procession.
The procession itself moved in an intricate pattem. There was an
inner circle of the slow and comparatively sedate; a main circle
of average animation; and, in each comer, under the 'No Jitter-
bugging' notices, were clustered pairs who did not circulate at all,
but faced one another and moved their bodies in such a way as to
suggest the extremes of sexual desire. Sometimes these couples
entered each other's arms, in the normal fashion of dancers, but
usually they allowed themselves no contact beyond, at pre-
arranged intervals, grasping each other by the right hand.
He and Rosa began to dance. Immediately he realized that she
was in love with him. He could not quite define how she conveyed
it, but it was unmistakably there. They took their place in the
outer ring of dancers, between the two extremes, and joined the
mass-hypnotic swaying and gliding. Charles was slightly horrified
---horror is an extreme emotion but it is, nevertheless, possible to
experience it in a slight form---to find that instead of worrying
about the fact of Rosa's being in love with him, he was simply
accepting it as a rather pleasant sensation, rounding off his evening
and completing the satisfactory state of affairs. He was not asking
himself what he ought to do, but simply drifting, happily, in the
direction the current took him; and the current, at the moment,
was Rosa; just as the current, a month ago, had been the hospital,
offering him its economic and emotional protection in retum for
his services with brush and pail. This must be his drifting period;
he had finished with his period of intense effort, and his initial
phase of revolt was a thing of the distant past. Drift! The band
pumped its rhythms into his ears, and vibrated them up through
the soles of his feet on the shiny floor, Rosa in his arms ceased
to be a person and became something without individuality, but
still powerful, drawing and guiding him in the same way as the
beat of the music, the heat of the air in the hall, and the deep, deep
fatigue and resignation at the core of his being. Drift, he would
171
drift, and if it happened to him to slide over the edge of a water-
fall, at least the water at the bottom of a waterfall was no worse
than at the top of it, and he could not, any longer, be hurt by the
fall.
When the dance finished he took her home, down airless streets
of low, brown houses. All the houses were alike, and yet each
was unique and lovable to the people who lived in it. The night
was warm, so that the faint chill he felt through his sweat-damped
shirt was welcome. Rosa held his arm, and was silent. He saw that
he, so little involved or stirred, was gving her one of the memor-
able moments of her life; this evening would remain as a pin-point
of light which she would still see when, as an old woman by some
fireside, she looked back along the dark corridor of the years. He
knew that when they reached the door of her home he must kiss
her.
The street lamps were a long way apart in this quarter, and the
door at which she halted was in a patch of deep dusk. Without
speaking, she took off her hat; a gesture that exactly summed her
up, for it was both slightly quaint, and also natural and right, as
indicating that she was going in and had finished with her outdoor
clothes. She glanced at the plain wooden door, innocent of
knocker or bell, but made no move to knock or open it.
As he kissed her she trernbled slightly, but without losing her
wonted blend of strength and repose. Holding her in his arms for
a moment, he felt the sturdiness of her body, and how her strong
legs stood firmly on the earth. Still calm, still not stirred to any
damaging or ennobling depth, he felt a tranquil and comforting
sense of being welcome and in his right place. He had come, not
home perhaps, but to <1a>1 home, a place where he could be received
and left to root himself in peace, until the day when, at last, he
belonged.
That was Thursday' and on the Sunday they took the bus lnto
the country. But before it got further than the outskirts of the city,
Rosa looked through the window and saw a small fair encamped
in a dingy field.
I72
'Oo, do let's go to that fair,' she said excitedly. 'I haven't
been on a roundabout since I was, well, not since I was quite a
kid.'
'You're quite a kid now,' he told her. She was happy enough to
take every remark that was capable of several interpretations as a
compliment, and smiled and sparkled at him as they got off the
bus at the next stop. The conductor looked sourly at them
because they had bought sixpenny tickets and only taken a three-
penny ride, thereby upsetting his notions of order.
At the fair Rosa was perfect. If anything had been needed to
confirm Charles in his sense of the rightness of this business, he
had it now. Her animal vitality, and her capacity for small but
whole-hearted enjoyments, showed themselves vividly. Years
dropped from him, reducing all three or four lifetimes he had
endured to the simple chronologcal total of his twenty-three years.
They bucketed round and round on staring wooden horses, flung
a hail of cracked wooden balls at cast-iron coconuts, laughed at
each other in paper hats. Rosa's said 'Kiss Me, Sailor' on the
front. 'I'm not a sailor,' he said, and kissed her. Some children
cheered and laughed, and Rosa pretended to chase them. They
watched a man pour sugar into a whirling machine; it came out as
cotton wool, and they each had a huge bunch of it on the end of
a splintery wooden stick. ' Don't swallow the splinters,' said Rosa
seriously. Time passed as time ought to pass, unreflective, leaving
no sediment.
They were to go to tea afterwards with her family; this had
seemed, when first mooted, an ordeal, but the aftemoon had put
him into such a rosy frame of mind that he positively welcomed
it. Everything, the new happiness with Rosa, the lingering traces
of resentment after the Burge evening, even the recent odd little
conversation with Mr. Braceweight, conspired to bring him to the
test with an eager willingness to pass it and a serene confidence
that he would be able to.
It was about five o'clock when Rosa knocked for them to be
let in. The door was immediately opened by Rosa twenty-five
years older. Sturdy, rather lined about the eyes and mouth, with
heavy shoulders and arms---not a pretty sight---but with the same
air of eagemess and vivacity. If Rosa were like this in twenty-five
173
years, well, it would suit him. He would be no oil painting himself
by that time.
Rosa's mother said she was pleased to see him. He said he was
pleased to see her too. She obviously had a Sunday dress on, and
the way she was wearing it indicated that this was notjust because
it was Sunday.
There was no passage, the front door opened straight into the
parlour, but of course it was empty and stiff, with photographs in
silvered frames cluttering the fumiture. Having two downstairs
rooms for the whole family, they lived in one and kept the other
as a museum: this was England. So Charles did not get his first
sight of Rosa's father until they had gone through into the room
at the back.
No concessions here. This was Rosa's father's Sunday after-
noon, and he had been spending it as he always did, in his
armchair by the fire with the <1News of the World>1 on his knee, fast
asleep. No doubt his wife had nagged him to put a collar and tie
on for once, but if so she had not succeeded. He sat blinking in
his armchair, still not quite focusing; the knock on the door, and
the entrance of his daughter and Charles, had woken him up, and
he was not quite with them yet. But he did his best. His braces
tightened as he leaned forward in his chair, his heavy moustache
expanded as the mouth behind it widened into a smile, and with a
genuine blend of dignity and affability he told Charles to sit down
and make himself at home.
'The kettle's just boiling. Where's Stan, dad? We'll start tea
when Stan comes in,' Rosa's mother said.
'If you don't know where Stan is,' retumed the head of the
household, poking the fire, ' don't ask me. I haven't been noticing.
I must a nodded off. I sometimes do, on a Sunday, over me paper,'
he added to Charles.
Charles made some suitable answer, and at that moment a
small grl ran in from the yard.
'Oh, Glad!' cried Rosa, 'you've been playing down the
embankment again ! '
The child did not answer, but fixed her eyes on Charles's face
and stood motionless.
' Did you say the embankment?' called Rosa's mother, coming
174
in with the teapot from the scullery. 'Turn round, Cladys, this
minute. Yes, my grl, and how many times do you have to be told,'
etc. etc.
the visitor.
'Upstairs this minute!' It seemed that everything Gladys did
must be done that minute. 'Take her up, Rosa, dear. See that she
gets her other things on, bus, buzz,' something Charles was not
meant to hear.
'Tea ready, Mom?' said a youth with a shiny pimply forehead,
coming in through the museum. ' Ajadoo,' he said to Charles.
This was Stan. A few minutes of disjointed conversation, while
Rosa was seeing to buzz, buzz, upstairs, revealed that Stan had
been round to Len's, and that Wilf had been lucky with his per-
mutations that week, and that Jeff and Am were in danger of
getting laid off while the dispute went to arbitration. None of
Stan's friends seemed to have monosyllabic names of the older
type, like Jack and Bob; they had all been given inconveniently
long names by inconsiderate parents at the font, and now mutllated
them with savage glee.
Charles liked Rosa's father, but he did not like Stan. This was
not so much a disappointment as a confirmation of the whole
tendency of his preferences just now, for Stan was making a
fairly determined effort to 'better himself' by rising out of the
world of strictly manual work---his father was a foreman at some
kind of brickyard or quarry, it was not quite clear which---into
the circle immediately above it. This circle seemed, by all accounts,
a good deal slimier. At sixty, Stan would have neither the massive
good humour nor the genuine dignity of his father, and already
he was immersed in leaming the technique of cheap smartness. He
talked a different language, for one thing; it was demotic English
of the mid-twentieth century, rapid, slurred, essentially a city
dialect and, in orign, essentially American. By contrast it was a
pleasure to hear his father, whose speech had been formed, along
with all his other habits, before 1914; the last injection of new
elements into his vocabulary had been in the trenches, and a slight
seasoning of the Army slang of those days gave his talk a touch
of colour.
175
Not that either of them said much. Rosa brought Glad down-
stairs, the finishing touches were put to the tea, and they sat down.
Stan had lit a cheap American-style cigarette just before the meal
began, and instead of extinguishing it, he kept it burning while he
demolished his ham and pickles. The smoke drifted into Charles's
face and made his eyes water. No one seemed to think Stan's
behaviour unusual; in fact, Charles soon realized that the essential
procedure governing this meal was to do as many things as
possible. Tea was poured out, passed round, stirred, and drunk
incessantly from the beginning of the meal; and if tea, why not
tobacco?
The talk kept itself alive on gossip from Stan. Not that Stan
wanted to gossip; but he was a hairdresser, and so heard every-
thing. It appeared that he worked as assistant to a man who did a
thriving trade a few streets away, and all the men in the locality
left their latest news and opinions with the top inch of their hair,
lying about in the shop to be swept up by Stan. Charles could see
him in a few years, running his own place, flashy but dingy, with
little cards about rubber goods among the hair-cream ads. in the
window.
'What's Sam Boulton doin' with them pigeons now, Stan?'
his father asked.
'I dunno. But we had Les in yestdy saying they was a ruddy
noosance. They come in the bedroom windows.'
'I told him he wants to get some new stock. It'll be all Na Poo
with 'em if he keeps breeding from the same ones. I told him that.'
Stan did not answer. They usually talked at cross purposes,
since the father's questions only concemed men of his own
generation, by whom Stan was bored.
'What about his mother's bad back?' asked Rosa. 'We'll be
getting her in the hospital one of these days, with that back.'
' Dunno,' he said, smoking and eating a piece of cake.
'She's still under the doctor,' said Rosa's mother. 'More tea
for anybody? Rosa, we want some water, love, out of the kitchen.'
Charles sat silent, with Glad's eyes boring into his face. He was
- quite peaceful, content not to talk. They accepted him without
much curiosity and with complete friendliness. He was Rosa's
business, and it was up to her to make something of him.
176
Finally, stuffed with ham, cake, bread and butter, and pints
of dark tea, they moved from the table. Stan went out abruptly
and silently, the women disappeared into the scullery to wash up,
and Rosa's father lit his pipe and addressed himself to making a
little conversation to Charles until Rosa should come and take
him away.
Charles kept his end up fairly well. The invaluable <1News of the>1
<1World>1 provided them with topics ; first what Rosa's father thought
about the buming issue raised by their football correspondent,
then the slightly less burning, but still urgent, controversy on the
boxing page. Finally the murders, and how disgracefully easy it
was to escape from Broadmoor and these places. Twice during
the fifteen minutes, Rosa's father spat into the fire, and the second
time he did so, Charles decided to co-operate and spat too. He
could not decide whether this had been the right move. The old
man appeared not to notice it, but Glad, who was standing in a
comer staring at him, giggled softly.
During a lull in the talk, he tried to show an intelligent interest
in the family. What school did Glad go to? Did Stan think of
starting on his own? and so forth. This, however, was not a
success, and he soon dropped it. Rosa's father had evidently
fuWled his duty towards his children by begetting them and
providing them with food and clothing during their non-produc-
tive years, and he seemed vague about other matters. Out of
politeness, he tumed and asked Glad how she liked being at
school, but she kept her eye on Charles's face and only giggled.
Rosa came in, dressed for going out to the pictures. The
initiation was over. They went out, and sat gazing, doped, at the
immense screen peopled with futile shadows, in a state of calm
and content. Charles felt that his search was over. No demands
were to be made on him other than merely being there, merely
existing. He thought of Rosa's father, and how well he compared
as a human being, with Sheila's father. And there was no Tharkles
here. Stan was the family Tharkles, and he was quite harmless.
It would do; his demands on life had grown smaller and smaller,
until that stuffy, cosy room contained everything that he needed
to fulfil them. That, and a bed upstairs with Rosa in it. Burge,
Hutchins, Lockwood, Tharkles, Roderick, might be looking for
177
him to torment him again, but in that room, that bed, they would
never find him. He would be free and unnoticed.
once did Rosa ask him the expected question: the question about
'the others'.
' Did you ever have a girl before?' she asked on their way home
from the cinema one night. 'I mean, steady?'
He had to translate this. In his former circles, 'to have a girl'
would bear its own precise meaning. What she was asking him
was whether he had been in love before.
'Once,' he said. Might as well confess it.
-Was she nice? Did you---like her as much as me?'
Again that shying away from the word <1love.>1 And the poor
little broken word 'nice', doing so much duty. But her real,
urgent meaning shone through.
Perversely, he clung to the word 'like', though he knew it was
not what she meant.
'I didn't <1like>1 her at all, really,' he said slowly, trying to be
honest. 'I could divide my feelings about her pretty well into
three parts. About one third of was hatred: another third, the
feeling that I wanted to make her keep perfectly still and just look
at her, without saying anything, for ever: and the last third, a
desire---'
He was about to say, 'a desire to bite her shoulders, arms and
legs', but checked himself just in time. That would never do. If
he wanted to avoid wounding Rosa, he must break the habit,
lingering from his undergraduate days, of casual frankness and
honesty in speaking of these things. He ended limply, 'a desire to
touch her'.
Rosa was silent. He wondered whether even this was enough to
affront her respectability. But she said, ' And is that what you feel
about me? Any of those things?'
'No,' he answered, still slowly, still honestly. ' None of them,
in quite the same way, I---I like you too much---I don't know -
whether you see this---I didn't at all <1like>1 her---'
178
' You only loved her,' she put in unexpectedly. He was surprised
into silence.
'If that's how you love people,' she went on, speaking caUy,
'it doesn't sound as if you do love me; if it's all so different.'
He stopped and faced her.
i 'Why shouldn't there be more than one way of loving some-
one?' he demanded. 'And why shouldn't one way be better than
another? For that matter, why shouldn't one way be hateful and
damagng?---and another healing, helpful, wonderful?'
The strength and sincerity of his own emotion surprised him,
and she was reassured and made happy by it. Looking back on
the conversation, he reflected that something new could be dated
from that moment. It was a milestone on the way to somewhere
he wanted, deeply and increasingly, to go. Or, rather, a sign-post ;
for a milestone would have told him how far he had still to travel.
'There's some news in this letter, rather inconvenient news,'
said Mr. Braceweight, feebly waving an envelope. He was much
better now, sitting up in bed. ' My chauffeur's gven notice. He's
going to get married.'
'Oh, yes?' said Charles perfunctorily, adding, to make con-
versation, 'does your chauffeur have to be a bachelor?'
'Well, it's not the job for a married man,' said Mr. Brace-
weight. 'He has a small room over the garage where he lives.
There wouldn't be room for two people.'
Charles dusted the wireless set and moved it to a more
convenient position.
'I---you said you were a driver, a deliv-ery driver, wasn't it?'
' Yes,' said Charles, not seeing his drift.
'I suppose the job wouldn't---wouldn't suit you at all, would
it?'
He was grateful, rather touched, even, but shook his head.
'I'm sorry, Mr. Braceweight, but as a matter of fact I'm
thinking of getting married myself one of these days.'
' Oh,' said Mr. Braceweight faintly. ' Oh, well. That's that, of
course.'
179
'You'll soon get another chauffeur,' said Charles reassuringly,
gathering up his broom.
He saw a lot of Rosa in the next week. They went out on
Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday evenings. Each time he called for
her at the house, and chatted for a time with anyone who happened
to be at home. Even Glad began to get used to him, and leamt to
take her eyes off lu-s face now and again. It was pleasant, but he
was not altogether sorry to get an evening to himself on the
Friday, when Rosa was busy doing something or other. Such
repeated doses of affection and domesticity, with nothing to
balance it, couId become a llttle oppressive. He needed it, like
bread, but one can be surfeited with bread.
He tried this metaphor over in his mind as he sat in his digs
after tea, trying to analyse his feelings. Yes, surfeit; and yet
perhaps it was something more acute than just a mild bout of
emotional over-eating. Somewhere, he could not quite locaze
it, there was a hunger as well. A sensation not properly defined,
not possible properly to define, was faintly present under the
surface of his contentment. Like the itching of a wound as it finally
healed. But where was he wounded? His smashed life, like his
smashed body, had become whole again. Itch, itch. Something
was the matter.
'A couple of drinks, that's what you need, my man,' he said to
himself in the hall mirror as he went out. It was heavy and
thundery outside ; early August and begnning to get that washed-
out feeling of high summer, when the freshness has gone from the
leaves. Not that there were any leaves in the streets where he was
walking, but outside, in the country, the leaves were drying
slowly, and they had whispered their message to be heard in the
backyards within the smoke-ring of the city.
He tried a pub near the hospital, but it was dirty and lonely. A
few old men sat staring with red-rimmed eyes into their pints,
making the beer look llke tears they had dripped into their glasses
and wcre saving for some purpose. He went out, leaving half his
drink unfinished, and walked for a long way, keeping to the quiet
180
back streets. Every road, every junction and square, was the same
as every other. The low brown houses watched him as he walked
past. ' One of us is your home,' they muttered to him. 'You'll find
Rosa in the kitchen and the bed upstairs in the front room, the
photographs talking to each other in the cold parlour, the
lavatory down the back yard, for ever and ever, Amen.' Well,
what of it? He would be safe and hidden. Nothing ever happened
in houses like this, nothing except things people could understand.
No problems, no art, no discussions and perplexities, just birth,
death, eating, resting, sitting in front of the fire on Sunday after-
noons with the <1News of the World.>1 The factory sirens, instead of
birds, would wake him in the moming, he would leave off his
collar and tie and grow fat round the middle. As the years padded
past, a troop of horse on felt, he would grow closer to his Rosa,
making her happy and reflecting her happiness like a tarnished
mirror, wrong in only a few spots that didn't matter.
This looked like a more cheerful pub. He went in and got a
drink and carried it to a seat. He had been wrong. It was a gn-
palace when you got inside. He must have wandered somewhere
near the middle of the town, and the place seemed to cater for a
smarter clientele, very much the kind of people he wanted to
avoid from now on. Besides, by not keeping his eyes open he had
come in at the wrong door; the public bar might be all right, but
this was the Saloon. He looked round him in disgust. It was the
sort of place where you met people like Tharkles.
A tart came and sat next to him. 'Feeling lonely, dear?' she
asked. 'I'm waiting for someone,' he replied to drive her away.
She had a hideous green coat and skirt on, shrieking at her
peroxide hair. Odd how they sometimes seemed to choose the
ugliest colours; perhaps it was a trade convention to make them
conspicuous, or perhaps that life sapped their aesthetic sense.
He had half a mind to ask her what made her choose that colour
scheme, but if he did he would never get rid of her; in any case
she had gone across the room and transferred her attention to
an old gentleman with a white moustache who ought to have
been at home, watering his roses.
It had been a mistake to drink beer. He was feeling drowsy and
miserable. But if he switched to something short, now, he wouId
181
get drunk. What a wasted evening! Was this what you had to do
to gve yourself a change from going out with Rosa? He thought
of the little room over Mr. Braceweight's garage; imagination
showed it as a quiet retreat, rather like a cottage on a calendar,
with roses climbing round a lattice window. What rubbish, it was
probably more like a prefab in a slum, with the petrol fumes
seeping up through the floor. He must get a grip on himself, a real
grip.
He went up to the bar and ordered a whisky. Just one ought not
to make any difference to him, and in any case it was difference
he wanted, in any direction. He had just paid for it and was about
to take it back to his seat, when his eye fell on an object lying on
the bar at his elbow. It was a bar with tall red stools, repulsively
suggesting a milk-bar, and a girl was sitting on the stool next to
where he stood. She was with a man he did not bother to look at.
The object lying on the counter was the grl's handbag. It was
of a rather distinctive shape, square and chunky, with a clip that
looked like a coiled golden serpent.
The whisky could not very well spill out of his glass, for it was
only about half an inch at the bottom. But it climbed steeply up
the sides and circled there gddily. His hand could not keep still;
he put the glass down. The girl, without looking at him, tumed
to get her handkerchief out of the handbag. Her fingers unfastened
the coiled golden serpent. They were the wrong fingers, rather
chubby, too many rings, bottle-green on the nails.
It was a mistake, this couldn't happen to him, he was free, free,
he had been free for a long time. He didn't care about the handbag
and whose handbag it was and who had had one just like that,
God, they couldn't be doing this to him. The pain was beyond
anything he believed possible. He clung to the bar. Waves of
agony radiated from the centre, somewhere about the solar plexus,
and splashed down as far as his toes and finger-ends. No one
could do this to him, not really, not if they knew what they were
doing. All these people in this bar, everyone in the world, if they
only knew they would help him, they would find Veronica and
bring her to him. They would find her if they could only realize
that a man was dying, a man who had not deserved to die and go
down to Hell. If they could see inside him, for one second feel
182
what he was feeling, they would seek her out. Messages would
flash along wires, brr, brr, is that you, a very urgent call, hold
everything, a man here's in Hell. The message would be type-
written, swiftly, on a sheet of paper, someone would knock on the
door of the room where she was sitting, or mn out to the meadow
where she walked by herself. If you were drowning they threw a
rope. This was worse than drowning, he was being broken to
pieces, humanity would not let this happen to him.
No, no, no one will help you. Take your drink, move away from
the bar. But the handbag! There could not be two like that. Had
she stolen it? Perhaps this was Veronica's way of coming to him:
she might be inside the handbag, shrunk by magc to the size of a
white mouse, waiting only till he opened it and took her out. Then
put her in water and she would become her real size. Dehydrated.
He was going mad, in eamest this time. He drank the whisky.
All at once he felt tired, tired and old. It was the grI's own
handbag, they sold them in shops, there must be plenty just like
that. Serpent clip and all. Anyone could go into a shop and buy
one. He could go and buy one himself, and gve it to Rosa.
Rosa! As he sat, empty glass in hand, staring across at the bag
on the counter, he knew suddenly and finally that it was over.
He would never gve anything to Rosa now, not even himself,
because he was not his own to give. Another whisky. Thoughts of
Veronica ebbed away. That was over too, there must never be
any thoughts of her again. He did not, ultimately, want any. If
she came in now, into this very bar, he would go out by another
door without speaking to her, without letting her see him even.
He was broken. The wheels had passed over him. This latestdream,
of peace in a smoky brown house, he now recognized for what it
was. A stage in his recovery. Recovery meant nothing but coming
to terms with your illness, gaugng accurately the extent to which
you had been maimed. He did not want Rosa, he did not want
Veronica, he wanted nothing.
' Snap out of it. Bloody self-pity,' he said, going out into the street.
'That's over, anyhow,' he said, walking into another pub a few
yards away.
'Just a freak,' he said into his gass of stout. 'Tricks you play
on yourself'
183
' Say something, mate?' said a man in a muaer, leaning across.
' No. Just catgut. I've got the catgut,' he said, standing up to go,
'That's all I came in for, to leave the catgut.'
He went out.
'No good fooling yourself,' he said to the lamp-post.
<1And t a twister love what I abhor. And buy a hoar love twisting>1
<1what and eye.>1 Oh, shut up, shut up.
'Still by yourself, dear?' asked the tart, coming up to him.
'Yes,' he said. 'And I'm staying like that.'
'No offence, dear,' she said.
'No offence,' he said.
' About that job, Mr. Braceweight,' he said. ' If you haven't filled
it yet, I could take it, as things have tumed out.'
'You won't be getting married just yet, then?'
' Apparently not.'
'You reaze you've accepted the job without asking me any-
thing about pay or hours?' Mr. Braceweight asked, pained; it
was obviously very hard for him to get used to anyone like Charles.
'Was that so very improvident of me? Remember I've seen a
lot of you during the time you've been here, enough to feel sure
that you're not a man who underpays his employees. Sir,' he
added, feeling that relations between them would obviously have
to become more formal soon, and the sooner the better. He liked
Mr. Braceweight, and for a moment, once, they had approached
something like confessional intimacy. But instimct wamed him to
shy away from the complicated relationship that would result
from any attempt to mix the employer and the friend. He must
fend off any sign of the patemal.
'You're only just in time,' said Mr. Braceweight, switching off
the personal note as if he, too, felt the danger. 'I'm being dis-
charged from here to-morrow. I shall go down to my place in
Sussex and stay there for the rest of the summer. As soon as
you're free to come down, you'll flnd everything ready for you.
But I suppose you'll have to gve a week or two's notice here?'
'No,' said Charles with unnecessary emphasis. 'I can leave
184
straight away. I never signed anything to say I'd stay here: I just
lose a week's pay if I go without notice, and---' then he remem-
bered that he was talking to his prospective employer and so
ought not to sound too carefree about leaving without notice, and
added, 'the fact is that things have cropped up that make my
position here rather diflicult, for myself and others. I can leave
when you leave tomorrow.'
'That's lucky, because I was wondering who would drive me
down to Sussex.'
'It's defimite then, Sir?.I'm employed? '
Mr. Braceweight nodded.
' From tomorrow.'
'Look,' he said to Rosa. 'Something's happened. I'm going
away.'
'When will you be back?' she asked, not understanding him.
' I shan't,' he said, hating himself. ' Not back, ever.'
She tumed to face him. Her vivacity drained away, leaving only
pallor and emptiness.
'Tell me why.'
' I can't.'
'Tell me. You must tell me.'
'Rosa, my dear, my dear, I wish, it's all so crazy, I wish I
could---'
'Is it something I've done?'
'No.'
'Is it something I haven't done, then? Something you wanted
me to?'
'There's nothing either of us has done. It isn't anything either
of us could possibly have avoided.'
'You mustn't treat me like this,' she said, deadly calm. 'You
can't do this to a girl. Not to a decent girl. I'm not trying to hold
you, I only want to know where I went wrong with you.'
'Oh, God, Rosa, I tell you you never went wrong. You were
always sweet and right. You were yourself.'
' What was it, then?'
185
He faced her. His brain was dry and empty. He wanted to
explain to her that it was not his fault. He had not meant to
injure her, he had only thought, mistakenly, that he was the kind
of man who could bring her happiness and help her to profit by her
own particular kind of life-gving simplicity. Now she faced him
across the dirty dishes on the table, with nothing left in her face
and bearing except numbness and pain.
Innocent and tranquil as his dealings with her had been, he had,
after all, known a greater degree of happiness, and therefore of
intimacy, with her than with any other woman, and so they were
able to converse, instantaneously, without the use of words.
Helplessly, silently, he tried to explain that it had all been a
mistake. Silently, in answer, she condemned him.
'You sinned against me,' her expression and stance told him.
'You injured me in the one way that can never be forgiven.
Because, ultimately, you were committing the one great offence
against a fellow-creature: you tried to use me. Not to give, not
to combine, but to use me.' 'It wasn't so simple,' he tried, with
his eyes, to plead, but she cut across his defence. 'I was ready to
love you, and all you were doing was taking me as a drug.'
Accusation and apology, inadmissable, lame apology, flashed
across the table. He felt stricken and soiled.
' What was it? ' she repeated, aloud.
Crushed and ashamed, he muttered, ' I can't explain---only---it
was just---'
' Tell me what <1happened.>1 Something must have happened, some-
thing you could tell me about,' she said in a new voice, flat and
without overtone.
'I saw a handbag. It was a handbag,' he burst out, painfully,
madly.
'Heavens! Haven't you got these dishes done <1yet?'>1 exclaimed
the staff nurse, bustling in. 'It beats me what you people do with
your time.' Then she saw that Rosa was crying. She was crying
heavily, helplessly, without any attempt at concealment. The staff
nurse rounded on Charles, violently partisan, a woman standing
up for another woman against the common enemy.
'What have you been doing to her?' she demanded bitterly.
' Oh, please, please,' said Charles, utterly defeated and miser-
186
able. 'It isn't anything you could understand. Please don't let's
go into it.'
Rosa had tumed away. Her shoulders were moving rhythmic-
ally as she sobbed without making a sound. The staff nurse was
passionately angry and insulted that Charles should have said
this was something she could not understand.
'Can't understand, my foot,' she said. 'That's the line all
you dirty cads take. I can understand all right. You've been
messing about with her, you've been making her unhappy. I
know you, damn the lot of you. Don't take on, kiddie,' she said
to Rosa. 'You'll be better off without a rotten bastard like him.
You're a rotten bastard,' she added to Charles.
' Yes,' he said, and nodded.
'Well, get out of here,' she stormed. 'Get out of here and do
some work for your living.'
Dumbly, head bowed, he collected his broom and duster.
'And there's another thing, Mister Don Juan,' she said, her
arm round Rosa's shoulders. ' Just let me catch you putting your
foot wrong and I'll see you sacked quicker than that.' She snapped
the fingers of her free hand.
'I'm going anyway,' he said dully. 'This'll be my last night on
duty.'
'Well, go on, get out,' she said, impatient for him to leave her
alone with Rosa. 'Get out and do some work, even if it is your
last night. And next time you meet a decent girl, leave her alone,
will you?'
'Yes,' he said obediently, as if she had gven him some order
relating to his duties as an orderly. 'I'll do that.'
187
IX
It was characterurstic of Mr. Braceweight not to have a Rolls-
Royce. He was rich, but he had refrained from going the whole
hog and becoming a millionaire, and he showed the same spirit of
restraint in his style of living. Another two thousand a year and
Charles might have been dressed in an elaborate uniform, with
leather gaiters and buttons to polish, driving a Rolls and sleeping
among the cockroaches. As it was, he had only a simple uniform,
a brown suit with a peaked cap, found his tiny bed-sitting room
perfectly comfortable, and cruised round the country lanes in a
Daimler; fluid flywheel, three and a half tons, making him feel
like a bus driver, except that he did not have to stop to let people
get on.
He had fallen on his feet. For the first week he was wary,
expecting some crippling snag to reveal itself, but once over the
initial feeling that this was too good to be true, he had lived in a
trance of self-congratulation. Peace : an obscurity as great as any-
thing he could have found by marrying Rosa and disguising
himself as Stan's brother-in-law. And coupled with it a sense of
idyllic, almost pastoral calm, flowing in upon him from the
tranquil beauty of the countryside. The house was a modest
brick building, probably a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century farm-
house, with a few unobtusive but thorough-going innovations in
the cause of comfort for the inhabitants, but no messing about
with the outside. Mr. Braceweight's moderation again, his refusal
to be rushed by his own wealth. Through the window of his room
Charles could see how the expensively tended garden (cottage
style) broadened into the expensively tended countryside that
slumbered around it. For this was not what Charles secretly
188
considered the ' real' countryside; it was rural, yes, it produced
its crops and milk, yes, and the pubs were full of moody broad-
shouldered men speaking slowly and loudly in Mummerset, yes,
but he had grown up accustomed to the countryside of the middle
of England, which earns its own living. Sussex, with its fabulous
beauty, its groomed cottages in Hollywood black and white, its
Mossy cows and immense trees, was to him a stage set, a fake,
something supported by the prosperous in search of peace and
quiet and food in their week-ends out of town. As he drove
slowly through the deep lanes with their nodding green edges,
sounding his hom in tiny spotless villages, the blatant self-
consciousness of it made him feel as American visitors must feel---
gad that a good show has been put on, but somehow wistful at
finding the organization so perfect.
Of course, it had taken some luck to produce these ideal
conditions for his introduction to the job; he admitted that. For
one thing, Mr. Braceweight was taking a holiday after his
operation. There was no need to drive him up to London, or to
spend long periods at his house there, ready at any time of the day
to face the nightmare crawling traffic of the city. It was half-
pressure as yet. Then again, the man had had the sense, at some
remote period of his life, to choose a wife who was exactly like
himself. So entirely without flavour or distinction, for good or ill,
was Mrs. Braceweight, that for the first fortnight Charles found
himself unable to remember, between one meeting with her and
the next, what she looked or sounded like. He carted her like a
parcel on her shopping excursions, touched his cap to her in the
garden, sat in the car and read his newspaper while she paid calls
in the district, and that was all.
Life, in fact, had slowed down to a welcome jog-trot. He had
forgotten the taste of peace since those first golden weeks as a
window-cleaner, before it had begun to tum sour. Now some-
thing of that spirit was retuming; his room above the garage,
when he climbed to it after his day's work, had about it a
pleasantly nostalgc reminder of the Froulish loft. Not even his
fellow-servants presented a problem, for there were none. There
was only a harassed housekeeper who tried to train a succession
of more or less mentally deficient grls from the village. All the
189
intelligent ones had gone into the towns, mostly to serve in milk-
bars within striking distance of American airfields. Ten years
previously and there would have been a full-scale servants' hall,
presided over by a butler looking like an eighteenth-century
statesman at Madam Tussaud's, and a rigd hierarchy, smaller and
more viglant than the one at the hospital, into which he would
have had to squeeze himself somehow. Now there was nothing;
he did not even know the name of the old man who dug the
garden, or the youth who helped him on Saturdays. He was a
Cmsoe with no need to look for footprints in the sand.
He was polishing the headlamps, one slack aftemoon, when a
high-pitched buzzing, like that of an angry bee, began to cut
through the drowsy August air. Approaching, it tumed into a
series of deep, choking snorts, then renewed itself into a mad
bellowing. Charles straightened up and stared down the drive.
It was a curving one,.which skirted the kitchen garden so as to
leave the flower-garden with its cottage atmosphere unsullied, and
he saw through the gaps in the bushes that something was taking
it, gravel surface and hairpin bend included, at little short of
forty miles an hour. Hastily he backed behind the solid bulk of
the Daimler.
The motor-cycle swept into the small courtyard in front of the
garage with its front forks whipping up and down as the brakes
went on. Gravel spurted like the spray from a fast launch. With
wheels locked, the abominable machine clawed its way round in a
tight circle. One handlebar scored a deep line in the paintwork of
the garage door. It stopped, and there was silence.
Before Charles could collect himself to protest, a young man
had heaved the bicycle on to its stand and tumed to face him.
'Not bad,' he said. ' Sixty-two minutes from town. From High-
gate to be precise.'
He was powerfully built, with black brows and a heavy jowl.
His face showed no trace of intelligence or sensibility, but it was
not unattractive. His general manner was of untroubled, genial
capability; obviously there were quite a number of things he
190
could do well, and as for the things he could not do at all, he had
simply never heard of them.
' How are you finding the old carriage?' he jerked his thumb at
the Daimler. ' Deadly bore, eh? Nought to twenty in five minutes.'
He laughed loudly, then suddenly became serious. 'Look!' he
said, swiftly moving over and dragging open the bonnet, 'I've
been thinking of one or two things we could do to increase per-
formance. It ought to be the simplest thing on earth to get the
compression ratio up by about two-thirds. And see the position
of that jet? Possibilities there, you know.'
'Before we go into it in more detail,' said Charles, able to speak
at last, 'could you just clear up one point for me? Just who the
hell are you?'
The young man laughed.
' Of course, I was forgetting. You wouldn't know. I'm---'
'Walter,' said Mr. Braceweight's voice from behind them in a
tone Charles had never heard him use before, ' is this thing yours ? '
He had come round from the garden to investigate the noise
made by the motor-cycle.
The young man tumed and began talking with a false eagemess,
like a salesman making an all-out effort on someone who never
buys.
'That's right, Daddy. I didn't think your ban would apply to
this, as it was such a soundly constructed---'
'I told you no motor-cycle and I meant no motor-cycle,' said
Mr. Braceweight stonily.
'Yes, but you see---'
'I thought I had made myself perfectly plain.'
'Well, yes, of course, but when I had a chance of a good thing
like this, solid as a rock---you see there's no danger with a thing
like---'
'I don't want the details. This is not what your allowance is
gven you for.'
'---telescopics, you see here, and---'
'I don't see anything to discuss, Walter.'
'---graphite lubrication---all perfectly---'
Mr. Braceweight had tumed and gone into the house.
Walter tumed to Charles. The confidence had gone from his
191
bearing, being replaced by half-comical mefulness. The large
circular white patches round his eyes, where his gogges had kept
off the dust and oil, enhanced the effect by gving him the look of
a Walt Disney animal.
' Drat it. I might have known it was fatal to bring it down here.
Ought to have kept it at school, or in the vlllage, rather. No
motor-bikes, that was the decree on my sixteenth birthday. Some
crazy idea that they're dangerous. Hell, I can't go another six
months without any form of motoring at all.'
Charles was still trying to get a grip on the situation.
'Forgve my obtuseness,' he said, 'but I've been used to a
quiet life lately. I've let myself get out of touch with the march of
events and it's made me so that I can only take in one fact at a
time. To get this straight---your name is Walter and I heard you
call my employer Daddy, which means you're his son.'
'Yes.'
'And you're sixteen and a half although you look thirty.'
Walter brightened. 'Yes, I do look a bit old for sixteen-six,
don't I? Not much chance of being stopped to show my licence.
No one would take me for under age, would they?'
'And I'll add another thing I know about you,' Charles went
on, still concentrating on keeping his head clear. ' You're a motor
enthusiast. History started for you when the sparking-plug was
i nvented.'
A happy smile came over Walter's square-cut, dusty face.
'Well, don't let's say the sparking-plug,' he said in the tone of
a connoisseur who dwells lovingy on some abstmse point in his
pet subject, 'let's say---let's say the differential.'
Mrs. Braceweight had spent the moming shopping at the
neighbouring market town. ' By the way, I nearly forgot, Lumlley,'
she said as he held the door open for her to get out of the car,
'my husband wants you to meet the 2.45 at the station. I didn't
catch the name quite, but it's a young man who's coming to be
Mr. Walter's tutor during the summer. There won't be more than
one person who looks like a tutor getting off the train.'
192
He murmured some kind of discreet agreement---he never
talked to his employers---and carried her parcels into the house.
After lunch he took the Daimler over. The tiny station was in
the midst of its one daily half-hour of alertness, for the next train
in was the one which waited patiently for any passengers alighting
from the express, and clattered round the neighbourhood dropping
them at smaller and smaller stations. It was the only train on
which anything, or anyone, from the larger world ever reached them.
Charles sat smoking on the bench outside the waiting-room.
His peaked cap lay on the seat beside him. The Daimler stood
patiently in the sun outside, its leather gving off a hot smell. The
train was signalled, and fussed into the station. Charles kept a
look out for someone who looked like tutor to a rich man's son.
Two people got off. One was a middle-aged woman carrying a
side of bacon. The other was George Hutchins.
In spite of his tranquillity, and the fading of his various gmdges
against life, Charles had to admit that his character was not
really growing more benign as he lived longer. On the contrary,
he was less willing to sit down under an insult than he had ever
been. And the very existence of Hutchins, within five miles of
himself, was an insult. He decided to be offensive.
Hutchins looked round keenly and nervously. He had his pipe
at the ready in case it should be necessary to put on his don's act
at short notice. Even at first glance Charles could see that the act
had grown richer and more professional during his year of close
contact with the real thing. There was something in the way he
glanced about him---vital, intelligent, and yet with an endearing
touch of absent-mindedness---that revealed a fresh mastery of the
academic bag of tricks. He sat on the bench appreciatively
watching the performance.
'I was to have been met,' he heard Hutchins say to the porter.
' Mr. Braceweight, something, something,' he could not quite catch
what came next, ' definitely arranged to have me driven over.'
'Can't say nothin' 'bout that. Doano nothin' 'bout that,' said
the porter over his shoulder, going into a shed marked ' Staff only.'
He knew, of course, that Mr. Braceweight's car was outside, and
Mr. Braceweight's chauffeur was sitting on the bench a few yards
away, but he had his own job to do.
193
Hutchins tumed round, irresolute. Charles folded his peaked
cap and hid it carefully in his pocket. In his brown suit he had
notlu-ng about him to suggest the chauffeur. Just in time : Hutchins
had spotted him.
'Well, this is a surprise, Lumley,' he said, coming up the
platform.
' I'm astonished,' said Charles.
'What are you doing down here? Did you come down on that
train ? '
'No,' said Charles, avoiding the larger question, 'I was here
when the train came in.'
'I'm doing some tutoring for a family down here,' said Hutchins
carelessly. It was wonderful how modest and unassuming he was.
He talked about his tutoring as if anybody could have done it.
Just as he had said 'we' at the Stotwell Literary Society. Success
had not spoilt him. ' Awkward, actually,' he went on, ' because I
wanted to get across to America to look at some of the stuff in
Princeton. I shall have to do that next year instead.'
'Yes,' said Charles pleasantly, 'and meanwhile, tutoring is
useful work.'
'That's what I thought.'
'A man like you can do a lot of good by sharing his knowledge.'
'Just so.'
'And you can't have too many friends and patrons among the
rich. It all helps.'
Hutchins flushed dully. 'If you're implying that my motive in
tutoring is an unworthy one, of course, I---'
'Not at all. Social climbing isn't unworthy. When a man's got
half-way up the ladder by hard work, as you have, it's only human
for him to decide that he might as welljump the rest of the rungs
by a quicker method.'
The old Hutchins might have been drawn by such elementary
gambits. But the new one was too snug. The veneer had been
applied very skilfully.
'Just the same as ever, Lumley, I see, living in a muddle of
unexamined ideas. What you would call social climbing, I, from
perhaps a more impartial standpoint, would describe as,' and so
he went on for three or four minutes, until he had talked himself
194
back into poise and self-confidence. 'And now, what about this
car they're supposed to be sending for me?'
'Well, there is a Daimler outside,' said Charles. 'Perhaps you
ought to go and get into that.'
They went out. Hutchins looked doubtfully at the car.
'It seems the only one, certainly, but I hesitate to get in without
anyone here to ask. And yet, damn it,' he went on, irritated, ' how
do they expect me to get there without a car?'
'Tell you what,' said Charles. 'You get in and I'll drive the
thing myself. That'll get you there, anyway.'
'You'll drive? What on earth do you mean?'
For answer Charles held the door open for him. When Hutchins
still did not understand, he took his peaked cap from his pocket
and, putting it on, stood grotesquely at the salute.
' You've started a taxi firm, then? ' asked Hutchins.
' Keep guessing and you'll get the answer in less than three. Yes,
as one parasite to another, I'll confide. I'm the chauffeur.'
Hutchins was startled out of his new urbanity. The old Black
Country expression and manner came back with a rush.
'Well, Lumley, I'm sorry you're down on your luck. I should
have thought you could have got a better job than this, though, I
must say. Of course, I could see years ago that you hadn't got a
real grip on things. But I didn't think you would have come down
to this.'
'What do you mean, come down?'
'I could gve you a recommendation that would probably get
you a job in a prep. school. That would be a start, at least.'
'Listen, George,' Charles said wearily. 'Never mind the
missionary zeal. I don't want honest work. I'm like you, I prefer
to be a parasite. A louse on the scalp of society.'
'I don't see the comparison, I must say,' said Hutchins stiffly.
'What could be plainer? I drive the great man's car. You try
to tinker with the brain-box of his son. The only effective differ-
ence between us is that my work is obviously of some practical
use, whereas you'll have nothing to show for it. I've met the boy.
He's perfectly decent, but ten of you working in relays wouldn't
gve him any academic intelligence. He's a mechanic.'
'That's as may be. And in any case, Lumley, if you <1have>1 taken
195
a job as chauffeur, and seem to like it so much, I shall have to
remind you, when you get too obstreperous, to <1behave>1 like a
chauffeur.'
'Of course, you're a believer in acting the part, aren't you?
Well, get that pipe out and rehearse some of your better opening
moves while I get your suitcase. The old boy's quite sharp-eyed
although he seems a nonentity. And don't worry about me. I
won't let on that you've ever associated with a man who's working
as a chauffeur. And I'll call you "sir" in front of the family, as
long as you'll tip me five bob when you leave.'
'I see you're determined to make my position uncomfortable.'
'It'll be uncomfortable without my doing anything about it.
Wait till you meet your pupil. You'll be lucky if he doesn't take
one look at you and ask you to run away and tell your mother
she wants you.'
'Whose mother what?' asked Hutchins, becoming seriously
confused.
'Never mind. Get in and I'll fetch your bag. Sir.'
'The main trouble is this,' said Walter. 'I could see when I
bought the engne that the valve seats were going to gve trouble.
It was just what I expected. The valve stem was too long, and
what do I have to do but pack up the rocker-shaft standards, to
bring up the height of the rocker fulcrums; and now, of course,
I've got push-rod trouble.'
' Of course,' said Charles.
Walter sighed, and bent over the grotesque mass of machinery
on the bench. It reminded Charles of one of Cecil Beaton's photo-
graphs of wrecked tanks in the North African desert. Walter's
square, powerful hands, with black-edged nails broader than they
were long, moved lovingly about among the entrails of the beast,
tapping, levering, adjusting. He was wearing dungarees black and
stiff with oil, and wherever his person emerged from their pro-
tection it, too, was flecked and streaked with dark grease. A long
stripe of it ran up the side of his face.
' Of course,' he said bitterly, ' I'm handicapped all along the line.
196
No money, and having to do the whole job on the quiet. I can't
cven afford the proper tools. I spend hours checking my piston
rings to get the gaps right, and then I have to mess them up just
because I haven't got a proper ring expander. Just have to slide
the bastards on over the pistons any old how.'
'Why are you having to do it on the sly, anyhow?'
'Well, ask yourself,' said Walter, turning to face him. 'If the
Peter knew I was building a special, he knows me well enough to
know that when it's finished I shan't just put it in a glass case. I
shall use it. I shall enter it in sprints and hill-cllimbs if I can't race
it. And we've had one or two almighty scenes already. It's the
only thing we <1have>1 had scenes over, as a matter of fact. Nothing
of that sort till I'm twenty-one, if you please.'
He scowled at the spanner in his hand, the grease mark on his
face twisting itself into an irritable line.
'And here's me having to put every brass farthing of my
allowance into getting a few wom-out old parts off the junk heaps.
I was actually offered a double-knocker Norton unit for twenty
quid the other day. Think of it! Unique offer! I could have built
the best five-hundred that ever raced. But twenty quid, twenty
measly quid---not me. So I have to get along without even proper
equipment, and work in a damned shack like this.'
The damned shack was Walter's workshop at the bottom of the
kitchen garden. It had doubtless been handed over to him when,
in more tender years, he first showed an interest in working with
his hands. Certainly it was not a suitable place for the building of
motor cars. What a paradox the whole thing was!
'Forgve my asking this,' said Charles, 'but don't you some-
times feel it was a stroke of bad luck for you to be bom with a
well-to-do father who's got ideas about educating you, and so
forth, inflicting a tutor on you in the holidays?---when if you were
the son of, let's say, a chimney-sweep, you could have been
happily employed by now as a garage hand.'
But Walter, surprisingly, shook his head.
'Not much fun in being a garage-hand. They very seldom see
anything interesting. Working on stock jobs most of the time.' He
paused, then suddenly bellowed with laughter. 'I'd soon get the
sack for trying my ideas on the customers' chariots. Imagne a
197
fellow's face if he brought his car in to have the brakes tested, or
something, and found when he got away that I'd machined his
guides for him and got double valve springs in!'
Charles joined, a trifle uncertainly, in the laughter.
' Or better still,' Walter spluttered, ' fitted him a bigger sump and
brought his pressure up---particularly if I'd forgotten to get a
pump shroud in for him to stop his oil surge!'
Then his laughter was suddenly cut short by a sobering recol-
lection. He looked at his watch.
'Oh, flaming hell,' he said, 'got another spell with my tutor in
ten minutes' time. Latin, Latin, always Latin.'
'How do you get on with him?'
'With who? Oh him? I believe he's all right.'
It was clear that Walter had never really noticed Hutchins. No
doubt he stolidly sat through their sessions, living for the time
when he could get to his inlet valve springs. Nor was it likely that
Hutchins himself would have his mind squarely on the job.
Sweetness and light. A liberal education. Wragg is in custody.
The summer had been going on for a long time; it had reached
its highest point of ripeness and profusion, just before the season
when a few menacing hints of frost would come to remind plant,
insect, and man that winter must follow. Charles sat looking out
of his window at the hot rich night. The garden had worked itself
up to an almost intolerable fragrance. An impossibly fat, full
moon hung in the sky, provoking manufacturers of similes to
fresh jumps into the ludicrous : it contrived to suggest everything
from a Dutch cheese to the polished bell of a trombone, without
being like anything except itself. Now and again a cow lowed in
the distance. Peace, warmth, and glimmering light rested on the
self-confident landscape.
Moths swerved in at Charles's window. The smoke from his
cigarette streamed out and upwards on the faintest of breezes. He
was thinking of Bunder. Why had no one ever questioned him?
Could it be that Bunder had escaped? Or had he been arrested
and still kept his mouth shut about his accomplices? Obviously
198
he, Charles, could never know the answer to these and a hundred
other questions. The men who had scattered and run before the
police at the dock, for instance, surely some or all of them had
been arrested. How long would it take for enquiries to lead to
him wherever he hid himself? On the face of it, he ought to have
been afraid; but he could not frighten himself. His deepest
instincts told him that the whole business was over, for him at
least. For one thing, if Bunder had only been a comparatively
minor figure in a large organization, headed by men who never
revealed their identity, some way had probably been found of
intimidating the captured men into revealing nothing, not even
the little that they knew. It was all quite beyond him, and yet he
felt secure. When the police patrol car had swept past his uncon-
scious form as he lay by the roadside, the law had brushed its net
across him, and it had not picked him up. All he had to do was to
stay a long way away from publicity, and especially police-court
publicity. Deepest of all, generating a calm that spread through
his mind, was the intuitive conviction that Bunder had not, in
fact, been captured. 'In any case they're not taking me alive,' he
had said, and Charles had absolute confidence that he meant it.
The pace, and the manner, of his driving had probably led him
into a fatal accident; or he had taken some other way of following
his victim out of this life. Somehow, and certainly, he had slipped
through the net by the smallest hole of all.
A rustling and whispering from down below. Two figures, one
of each gender, were making their way through the bushes. Who-
ever they were, they had some reason for not wanting to be seen.
Walter and the latest kitchen-maid, perhaps. He froze and
watched intently.
'I hope you're right when you say this is simple,' came a
female voice. It was subdued almost to a whisper, but its clear,
bell-like quality was unmistakable. 'I still say you ought to have
come to the hotel.'
'I tell you this is much the simpler way,' hissed Hutchins. 'It -
would be absolutely impossible to avoid being seen down there.
I've got to keep myjob.'
So the June Veeber game was still going on, after a year! And
the harpy had followed him down here.
199
'Nobody uses this side entrance. We can go straight up the
back stairs to my room,' said Hutchins tensely fiddling with a
key-ring in the moonlight. 'Ah, here it is. Quick, let's get inside.'
They disappeared. In a moment, light flashed from the window
of Hutchins's room. It was dimmed at once, evidently by the
drawing of the curtains. About twenty minutes later it was
extinguished. Charles sat quietly and sardonically smoking.
There was something about the whole sordid little episode that
made him feel slightly sorry for Hutchins, sorry in a superior way
that flattered his self-esteem. A social climber can ill afford an
Achilles' heel, and this particular weakness on Hutchins's part
would probably be disastrous to him sooner or later, especially in
view of the profession he had chosen. Charles sat on, in the
moonlight, smoking, and sinking deeper and deeper into the fatal
condition of hubris.
He even felt rather sorry for Hutchins. If the man had his
difliculties, it was rather a shame to add to them. And he had
been adding to them. While waiting for Mrs. Braceweight in the
main street of the local shopping centre, he had been unable to
resist slipping into the Post Office and sending him a telegram:
ARRIVING FRIDAY LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU
MERDE. The thought of Hutchins slitting open the yellow
envelope and reading so perplexing a message had amused him
richly. The following day, finding that Walter was going for a
day's excursion to visit a friend at Winchester, he had enlisted the
boy's help, and got him to send another telegram to Hutchins,
gving only the telephone number of Mr. Braceweight's house so
that the message would be dictated. They had timed it to arrive
when the family was at lunch, and no doubt the housekeeper had
copied it on to a piece of paper and taken it to Hutchins at the
table. THANKS FOR SYMPATHY WILL DISCUSS MAT-
TERS ON FRIDAY MERDE. It was Friday evening now, and he
rocked with laughter at the thought that June Veeber had probably
arrived that day. He could imagine Hutchins asking her crossly
why she had sent him two telegrams and signed herself Merde.
200
Warm, stagnant and dreamlike, the days went by. Nothing -
intermpted the calm: even the one major drawback of his job,
the lack of personal freedom, was an advantage in his eyes. He
could never be far away, but must be ready at need during most
of the twenty-four hours. This feature of the job had caused so
many of Mr. Braceweight's chauffeurs to become discontented
and leave him, that he had been compelled to counter-balance it
by the bribe of an unusually high wage. Charles enjoyed the high
wage without any hankering for more freedom; he never wanted
to go farther than the village pub on his evening out, and he
could always leave word with the housekeeper that his em-
ployers could find him there.
One evening after closing time, he was sauntering along the
lane from the inn, relishing the deep tranquillity of the dusky
hedgerow, when voices reached him from a few yards away. He
halted ; there was a gate a few yards farther on, and just inside the
field stood a haystack, its top visible over the tall hedge. Hutchins
and June Veeber were in the field. He could picture them sitting
with their backs to the warm, rustling wall of hay. He began to
cross to the other side of the lane, hoping to walk past quietly
without being seen, but June's next words, the first he had heard
clearly, arrested his movement. He paused in the deep shadow,
and, after a brief inward struggle, listened.
'I don't care what you say, George. I won't have it and that's
the end of that.'
'I don't want you to have it, damn it,' came the voice of
Hutchins, petulant and flustered. 'All I'm saying is that you can't
just come up to me and say, "I'm pregnant. Now it's your move,"
as coolly as that. These things cost money, and I just haven't
enough.'
'You'll get hold of it soon enough if you have to. And you <1have>1
got to, that's all there is to it. There are any number of people
who would lend it to you.'
'That's what you think. Who, for instance?'
'I'm not concerned with that. It's up to you to find out who'll
lend it to you. But there must be dozens. Even in your own
college: what about Lockwood, for a start? '
'Lockwood!' came his voice sardonically; then a short, sour
201
laugh. ' Well, he'll serve as an example if you want one. Where do
you think I got the money for our trip to Spain? Did you think
that came out of my salary?'
'You mean Lockwood lent it to you? '
' He and two other people. He lent me twenty-five of it. The fact
is, darling, I don't want to say this, but---it hasn't been chicken-
feed all these months. You've cost me plenty---'
Her clear voice was raised, and had a cutting edge to its
anger.
'Go on, put it that way if you like! I suppose every time we've
been to bed you've gone back to your rooms and worked out how
much per time it's been costing you.'
There was a silence.
' Dearest,' came the voice of Hutchins in a cmshed, wheedling
tone, 'you must be very angry with me to talk like that. After all
we've---'
'Never mind all we've this and all we've that,' she snapped, the
fishwife under the skin becoming more audible (and doubtless,
more visible too) with every second. 'All I know is you've had
your fun, and now I'm going to have a baby, and you aren't man
enough to scrape up a miserable seventy-five pounds without all
this whining. Well, you'll have to scrape it up. I'm not going to
dip into my funds to save you from a scandal.'
'Why to save me? You'd be saving yourself too.'
'It's no good trying that line either---frightening me into paying
for it myself because I'm just as anxious to avoid it as you are.
You stand to lose everything if there's a real stink---and I wam
you I'd stir one up. You'd never hold your job and you'd never
get another.'
' They couldn't prove I was the father,' Hutchins blustered, with
terrible lack of confidence. She laughed.
'Well, I must say, you're more of a fool than I took you for,
George. Do you mean you don't see how I could prove it up to the
hilt? Oh, you've been very clever about not writing me any letters,
you poor sap, but you needn't think that'll cut any ice. There are
all the hotels too. I took good care the maids and the reception
clerks got a proper look at us.'
'Taking care of yourself, weren't you? ' he sneered weakly.
202
'Yes, and it looks as if I was right to take care, if you're the
kind of louse who'd leave me to it after you've---'
' Oh, please, June, don't! ' he burst out. Charles was surprised
to hear a note of real emotion, not at all to be accounted for by
panic, in his shrill note. 'This really has meant something to me,
really, and you know yourself those---things---you say aren't---'
he sounded choking. There was a long silence; perhaps she had
taken him in her arms.
' Mutter, mutter, mumble,' he heard, evidently some kind of
endearment, then 'and you will make it all right, darling, won't you? '
'I'll get it somehow,' Hutchins said in a shaking voice. It was
obvious that all this was a terrible ordeal for him. 'You say we've
got another three or four weeks. I'll see to it. Just get in touch
with the man and tell him it'll be all right about the money.'
'You mean about the rest of the money,' she reminded him
sweetly reasonable. ' Half is payable in advance.'
'You certainly seem to know the details,' said Hutchins with a
retum to something like his earlier would-be hardness of manner.
'Have you been to him before by any chance?'
Her answer began on an icy tone of calm, and worked up to a
ragng torrent. Charles only stayed for the first sentence, ' I don't
know what it is in you that makes you say something beastly and
hateful every time you open your mouth,' then crept away,
taking a wide detour through a field. He could not bear to listen
to them quarrelling. As it was, the healing peace of the evening
was sadly disturbed for him.
Walter came hurrying up as Charles switched off the engine and
got out of the car.
'Have they gone?' he asked.
'I saw them off at Northolt,' Charles replied a trifle stiflly. He
was not sure that he ought, as a loyal employee, to countenance
the boy's obvious glee over the departure of his parents.
'That gves us a week,' said Walter meditatively. 'Not long
enough, of course, and it's hell having nothing but this gravel
drive, but at least we can see how she picks up in the lower gears.'
203
Charles, ignoring the 'we', went into the garage. Mr. Brace-
weight had declared himself well enough to spend a week seeing
to some neoessary details at his branch in Brussels, and he had
taken his wife with him. Walter was under instmctions to continue
his work under Mr. Hutchins. No doubt he would, but the absence
of his father meant that the frightening machine he had been so
patiently assembling could be wheeled out of its hiding-place, and
allowed to make unlimited noise and smell with no fear of
detection.
He wheeled it out now. Charles looked at it critically.
'I thought they only used piano wire for pianos these days,' he
said. 'And doesn't that silver paper make it too heavy?'
'No souI,' said Walter, rocking the apparition from side to side
on its springs. 'For a chauffeur you're the most soulless bastard
I've ever met. Gave me quite a shock when I first realized that
you honestly hadn't a clue about engneering.'
'Modem chauffeurs haven't,' Charles admitted cheerfully.
'They leave it all to chaps like you.'
He genuinely admired Walter. Brainless lout as he was, the
boy had achieved, with absolutely no effort, what it had taken
him, Charles, a shattering mental revolution to accomplish: he
had cleared at one stride the artificial barriers of environment and
upbringing. Partly, of course, because his environment and up-
bringng had never worked on him. From the time he grew old
enough to lie on his back and look up at the back axle of a
motor-car, in the way a lover of Nature looks up at the sky
through the branches of a tree, nothing else had counted for him.
Mankind was divided into those who did, or did not, share his
passion. Charles was ranked fairly low down, but his willingness to
listen saved him at least from being pushed right outside the pale.
'Just gve me a shove for a few yards,' Walter said. 'We'll get
her firing.'
'Once and for all,' Charles protested, 'leave me out of this.
You seem to assume that I'm going to aid and abet you in fooling
about with this contraption and going against your father's wishes.
Well, I'm not losing my job for you or anyone else.'
'Look, you've got it all wrong,' said Walter in a wheedling
tone. 'You seem to think you've got to come down definitely on
204
one side or the other. The Pater's or mine. Well, you needn't;
you can be neutral. When he's here, you play his game. When
he's away, you play mine.'
'What about my own game? When do I play that?'
' Be a pal. Come on, now, don't leave me in the lurch. All I want
is a little help now and again. Life's difficult enough as it is.'
'All right, all right. Get behind the wheel and I'll pu-sh.
Anything for a quiet life.'
He pushed until the engne began to gve off intennittent bangs
and puffs of black smoke. Walter made one or two efforts to
accelerate up to a smooth rate of firing, then silenced the machine
and wheeled it moodily away to his workshop. Charles smoked a
cigarette, relaxing in the still warmth of the aftemoon, and then
began to make up arrears of work. He was putting oil in the
Daimler when Hutchins came out of the side door and walked
across to him, flushing darkly with annoyance.
' Have you been sending me a lot of damn fool telegrams signed
Merde?' he demanded.
Charles straightened up and looked at him in stupefaction.
'Have I been doing <1what?'>1
'You heard. Some damned swine has been sending me tele-
grams, with idiotic messages, calling themselves Merde.'
'Can I help it if you've got friends with peculiar names?'
Hutchins had his fists clenched and thrust inside his hip
pockets. He was really angry.
' Look here, Lumley, blast you, come clean. I don't know any-
one else who would send telegrams from this area, all from
different places. And if it comes to that, I don't know anyone
else who would want to annoy and embarrass me.'
'You must be lucky,' said Charles in a tone that implled that
Hutchins was also lucky to have his own front teeth.
'I'll get you sacked, you blasted well see if I don't.'
'You want to think carefully, George. You may be making a
terrible mistake. Perhaps you really have a friend called Merde
and it's slipped your mind. People can't help their names.'
At that moment the housekeeper came out and handed
Hutchins a telegram. He tumed white and stood holding it,
looking straight in front of him.
205
'The boy wants to know if there's any answer, sir,' said the
housekeeper.
'Tell him there isn't,' Hutchins grated.
Charles was bubbling with happiness behind his impassive
front. He knew that he had not sent one of his telegrams that day.
Hutchins would either refuse to open it, and thereby miss an
important message, or open it too late and find he should have
sent an answer.
The housekeeper stumped away. Hutchins, trembling, held out
the envelope to Charles.
'Now open it, damn you.'
'I've got greasy hands. Open it yourself. It's for you.'
'You heard what I said. Open it.'
Charles shmgged and broke open the envelope. He took the
telegram out. It had been handed in at Birmingham and read:
GET READY COMING OVER IN ROLLS MERDE.
Walter had excelled himself. He must have gven instmctions
to some friend in Birmingham. No doubt a rapid volley of tele-
grams would shower upon them from all parts of the country,
and possibly even from abroad, for Walter did nothing by halves.
Silently he handed the telegram to Hutchins, who glanced at it
before flingng it violently to the ground in a ball.
'That settles it. I'll get you sacked if it's the last thing I do.'
'You'll have to prove that I was in Birmingham, or that I know
anyone in Birmingham, first,' said Charles smoothly.
'Prove nothing. I'll just get you sacked some other way.'
'It's no good, George. There's only one thing you can do about
it, and that's grow up. Stop being the kind of person that people
play practical jokes on.'
'It's just my misfortune that I know blasted swine like you,'
said Hutchins, more calmly than he had yet spoken.
'Yes,' said Charles. ' Like me and Merde.'
He picked up the dipstick and went back to the Daimler's
entrails. Hutchins walked away.
.
The next morning Walter proved at once that he meant to
make hay whiIe the sun shone. Charles went across to the kitchen
206
for his breakfast at half-past seven, and already he could see the
stocky, overall-clad figure at work on some elaborate piece of
makeshift at the other end of the drive. Still hankering for neut-
rality, he slipped across the yard unperceived; but when he
retumed, half an hour later, Walter was waiting to collar him.
He had laid down a mbber strip at the end of the drive, just where
it broadened into the small concrete yard in front of the garage
doors.
'Ah, there you are,' he said as soon as Charles emerged.
' You'll be at a loose end for a bit this moming, I expect?'
'Not a second to myself,' Charles asserted solemnly. 'Busy
from morn to dewy eve. Never been so busy in my life.'
'Oh, hell, don't make me go through all that again. I thought
you said you'd help. I was counting on it. All you've got to do is
to stand half-way along the drive and watch the dial.'
The amazing youth had actually constructed an electrical
timing device. He explained it to Charles. When the wheels of his
juggemaut touched the first strip, just inside the gates of the
drive, an electrical impulse started the stop-watch moving; when
he ran across the second, another impulse stopped it. He must have
been working since the first streak of day. What chance had
Hutchins against this?
'Just stand over here and keep the watch lying flat on the
board. The thing's fool-proof,' said Walter kindly. 'I shall keep
inside the gates, so no one can say I've driven on the public roads
without a licence. Everything above board, that's my motto.'
He walked over to his machine.
'Just a minute,' said Charles in alarm. 'Do you mean you're
going to rush along the drive in that thing with me timing you?'
Walter nodded.
'But it's absolutely impossible. You'll kill yourself when you
run into the yard at full tilt.'
' Not on your life. The braking'll stand it.'
Charles shook his head.
'Walter, I ought to tell you I was in hospital myself once with
the kind of injuries you're going to get. It wasn't nice.'
'Oh, God,' said the youth wearily. 'Look, if it'll make any
difference to your state of mind, we'll adopt safety measures. You
207
open the garage doors---that'll give me an escape route---and I'll
put my hat on.'
'Your hat?'
He answered by taking out of his tool-box a huge red steel
helmet, with the word 'iorton' stencilled across the front.
'Oh, I gve up, I gve up,' Charles groaned. He opened the
garage doors, and tumed round to see Walter fastening the strap
under his chin. The immense steel cup reduced the face below it
to a dwarfed mask. Circular metal shells contained the ears.
'Come on, let's get weaving,' said Hutchins's pupil, settling
himself in the cockpit. The steering wheel pushed into his
abdomen. Charles had visions of horrible injuries.
' You wouldn't care to leave a signed statement that I warned
you not to do it?' he asked, with desperation in his voice.
'Oh, rats to all that. Push me off and let's get some practice in.
It's nearly half-past eight already, and I've got a spell with my
tutor at ten.'
Charles bent and pushed. Silently, except for an occasional
sibilant squelching noise from the engne, they crawled down the
drive.
' Hell, what's happened now ? '
'Just a couple of blood-vessels,' Charles panted, throwing
himself down in the long grass.
Walter cllmbed out and began to burrow in the engine. 'That
ought to do it,' he said after a moment. ' Let's try again.'
They tried three times more, and finally, at the cost of as many
years of Charles's life, the engne began to bray loudly.
'Up to the middle! The dial! ' shouted the helmeted figure from
amid a haze of oily vapour.
Charles stumbled away, wiping the sweat from his forehead with
the back of one hand. Did everyone get into these farcical situa-
tions? Or was there something about him that attracted them?
Here he was, pushed into helping his employer's son to kill
himself, and all because he lacked the strength of mind to refuse.
And yet inwardly he knew that he coulld not have refused Walter;
a really single-minded person is always gven what he wants.
What a man lives for, he gets; witness Hutchins, Froulish, Mr.
Bleamey, Roderick, Stan, Burge, and now Walter.
208
The crackling and bellowing at the far end of the drive
suddenly took on a more violent tone. The needle before him
j umped, and began to circulate. It was too late to stop the maniac:
Charles stood appalled, as he had looked appalled at the rapt
face of Harry Dogson, humbled by the mystical power of
humanity in pursuit of an ideal. He heard a vicious spluttering
as the engine moved into second gear, and then the grotesque
junk-heap flew past him round the sharp bend, flinging pebbles
into the air. It was a fantastic sight; the engine was placed behind
the driver, gving a nightmare impression that the machine was
going backwards. The four naked jets that served as exhaust
pipes were pouring black smoke, which was whipped behind in a
straight llne to mingle with the shower of fine dirt. Bouncing
wildly, Walter aimed himself like a torpedo towards the second
timing strip and, beyond it, the garage doors.
Hutchins must have been nervous about getting June out of the
house unobserved; it was, evidently, the absence of Mr. and Mrs.
Braceweight that had emboldened him to keep her there
dangerously late. So flustered that the ear-splitting racket outside
made no impression on him, he jerked open the side door and
hurried out, draggng June by the arm, into the path of Walter's
flying hell-bat.
Charles lacked the power to cover his eyes. He stood motionless,
his hands spread out on the wooden board. The stop-watch, its
hurrying finger arrested, gleamed up at him innocently.
There was a loud, non-human scream from Walter's tyres.
Hutchins and Jume Veeber were stone figures, absolutely
immobile. He was about five feet away from the protection of the
wall; she, lagging behind, had still one foot on the doorstep. It
seemed to Charles's tricked eyesight that the machine changed
its shape, grotesquely, in a twinkling. It appeared enormously
elongated, then squat and contracted. Only the helmed figure in
the cockpit remained recognizable as he wrenched the wheel
violently from side to side. Smearing its locked wheels horribly
across the concrete, the car flitted past the two petrified figures like
a gant bat. The garage door was not quite wide enough to admit
it on its present trajectory, and the rear end smashed into a
comer of the wall. Leaping into the air and spinning round, it
' 209
vanished into the building. An appalling metallic crash announced
the presence of the unsuspecting Daimler. Outside, flung pebbles
pattered to the ground in the silence.
Hutchins stood swaying and twisting his chalk-white face from
side to side in the sunlight. June Veeber leaned back against the
lintel of the door with her eyes closed. Charles pushed himself
away from the timing apparatus and began to walk towards the
garage.
Before he could reach it, Walter came out. At first it seemed
that he had been injured. His face was terribly mis-shapen, as if
it had been violently knocked sideways. Then Charles realized that
it was twisted with rage. His creation had been smashed, the
sacred object of his highest endeavours was taken away from him
in the moment when it had begun to work its magic. Any normal
sensation of relief that he had not been smashed with it was
absolutely excluded by his violent passion. As well might one
imagne Napoleon feeling warmed and comforted by the thought
that he, at least, had not been killed in the Russian campaign.
He advanced on Hutchins to murder him. Charles stood help-
lessly, paralyzed by his recent shock as well as by his instinctive
reluctance to do anything to protect Hutchins. Walter tramped
across the yard, his contorted face capped by the dented steel
toadstool that had saved his life, his powerful arms swingng
loosely by his sides. June Veeber had not yet opened her eyes.
Then Walter sprang his great surprise. The decision he took, at
whatever level of consciousness it was reached, stood out for ever
in Charles's mind as having provided the most purely astonishing
moment he would ever live through. Halting before Hutchins, who
was still too rattled to grasp fully that he was about to be set
upon, he gazed at him squarely for a moment, and then spoke in
a calm and unwavering voice.
'I see you've got her with you.'
' Got who with me?' Hutchins quavered.
'Murd,' said Walter, and went into the house.
For a moment the boy's pronunciation had them baffled. Then,
simultaneously, Charles and Hutchins began to laugh hysterically,
not amused, hating each other, wanting to stop. June opened her
eyes and burst into tears. Standing in the yard, with the four black
210
smears across the concrete between them and the smell of high
octane fuel still in their nostrils, they shrieked and bellowed and
sobbed. The housekeeper came out and stared at them, then
tumed and went back.
That had finished it, of course. There was not even any point in
waiting for Mr. Braceweight to come back and gve him the sack.
The Daimler had stood massively on its wheels and allowed
Walter's projectile to be smashed into a heap of smoking, twisted
metal against its side, but the fact remained that one wing was
crumpled beyond any hope of repair, a rear mudgard half tom off,
and a window smashed. In addition, hot oil had splashed liberally
over the whole car and ruined its glossy finish. No chauffeur
could let that happen to a Daimler and keep his job.
He would, of course, take any blame that was going. He had
skidded into a stone wall while driving back from Northolt: any
story would do that did not involve another vehicle, whose owner
might have to be identified. Walter should be---what was that
word they always used in school stories?---' shielded'. Yes, it was
only fair that he should be shielded. After so devastating a
disappointment it was unthinkable that he should be handed over
to the attentions of a disciplinarian father on top of everything
else.
Sitting moodily in his room above the garage he wrote on a
sheet of cheap letter-paper:
.
Dear Mr. Braceweight,
When you retum I am afraid you will already be annoyed at
not having been met at the airport. You will notice, on getting
here, that your car has gone, and so have I. It is being repaired:
I will arrange for them to pick it up before I go. My negligence
was responsible for its being damaged, and, in deciding that I
am not a good enough chauffeur for you, I am merely antici-
pating the judgment you will inevitably form for yourself. I
will mention to an agency that you need a new one, and they
211
will no doubt be sending you some applicants. As regards the
cost of the repairs, you have, in the first place, a fortnight's
wages of mine that I shall not be claiming; if this does not meet
the bill, and you feel I should pay the rest, please communicate
with me c/o Charing Cross Road Post Office, London.
It may be, of course, that you will take steps to have me
arrested in order to make sure of reimbursement. In that case
it is only fair to wam you that I shall make a very determined
effort to evade the police. But I do not think you will.
In any case, in saying Goodbye and hoping we shall never
meet again, I should like to thank you for your kindness. I
regard it as one of the ironies of my life that the only man who
has treated me with unalloyed decency should be one who is
exposed to the greatest of all temptations to bully and oppress
his fellows : namely, non-inherited wealth.
I remain, Sir,
yours with respect and gratitude,
Charles Lumley.
The effort of composition put hirn into a serious frame of mind,
and he went out for a walk. It was evening, and the still, golden
sunlight enfolded the luxury countryside. No, it was not for him,
not for him. Even the cows who stood grazing in the fields where
he walked, even the trees, even the artfully disposed brooks
chattering over cleaned pebbles, unanimously assured him of it. <1We>1
<1knew you wouldn't be staying. You're not the type.>1 They were
right; he was not. This dream of semi-retirement, of dignified
parasitism in the service of a good rich man in a Technicolor
landscape, was foreign to his nature. Whatever the outcome, he
belonged to the world where real actions were undertaken. He
belonged with Froulish thumping his typewriter in a derelict loft,
with Dogson getting himself murdered in the quest for a story,
even with Em serving a prison sentence or Mr. Bleamey getting
up dreary leg-shows in the provinces. The people he belonged
with were ill, disgusting, unsuccessful, comic, but still alive, still
generating some kind of human force. This expensive bucolic
setting had offered nothing more than an escape down a blind
alley, and it had taken a crack-brained mechanic, a nympho-
212
maniac and a deranged careerist to show him that. As ever, the
serious point had emerged through the machinery of the ludicrous.
His life was a dialogue, full of deep and tragc truths, expressed
in hoarse shouts by red-nosed music-hall comics. Nothing
happened straight: in future it had better be enough that things
happened at all.
When he got back to his room it was about nine o'clock. It was
not yet dark enough for lights to be switched on, except by a
person who wanted to sew or read fine print, so there was nothing
to warn him that there was someone waiting there. It was June
Veeber. She was sitting in the armchair. As the room contained
no other chair, except a hard wooden one that he put his clothes
over at night, there was nowhere for him to sit except on the
divan. He sat down, at the end farthest away from the armchair.
' Did you want something? ' he asked.
'I came to do you a good tum,' she said in her clear, distinct,
impudent voice.
'Such as what?' he asked.
Instead of answering, she looked slowly round the tiny room,
till her eyes came to rest on him.
' You're quite comfortable up here, aren't you? I think it's much
nicer than George's room in the house.'
'There's one big advantage, of course,' he said. ' George isn't
in this one.'
He wanted her to become angry, or at least to laugh, for the
tension she was trying to generate had to be broken quickly. But
she merely nodded seriously, as if he had said something true and
important.
'It <1is>1 nicer without him, isn't it? And do you live here all
the time? I mean, do you use that couch thing for sleeping
on?'
' Look,' he said. 'Would you mind leaving me with some of my
childish secrets and getting on with this good turn you're going
to do me?' 'Unless it's what I think it is', he almost added, but
the vestigal power of his upbringng checked him.
213
' Oh, the good tum, yes,' she said, speaking deliberately. ' It's a
warning. I wanted to wam you.'
'What against? ' he asked, impatiently, when she did not go on.
He wanted her out of his room. It was small, it was over a garage,
it did not belong to him, but he liked it and did not want it
contaminated.
'Against George,' she said, still in the half-hypnotized voice
that dragged across his nerves. 'He doesn't like you. In fact he
hates you. It seems that you've been playing some kind of joke
on him, he won't say what, and he takes these things terribly
badly.'
'I know he does,' said Charles to fill up another silence.
'Terribly badly,' she repeated. 'He hasn't told me anything,
but I know he wants to injure you. He'd like to get you sacked.
And he'll try to do it, one way or another.'
'He needn't worry. After what happened this moming, I'm
going anyway. D'you think I could stay here after letting the car
get smashed about like that?'
' But that wasn't your fault,' she said slowly and seriously.
'Well, whose fault was it? The kid's fault for building himself
that lunatic machine and racing it along the drive? Yours and
Hutchins's for coming out of the house at the wrong moment?
Mine for not putting my foot down? It's no good arguing it out.
When a thing like that happens, the chauffeur goes. Particularly
when the altemative is to expose a couple of things that everybody
would rather have hushed up.'
'Oh, so you're being noble,' she said coolly, with a note of
something resembling scom.
'Noble and obliging. Clearing out five seconds ahead of the
boot.'
There was a pause. The discussion seemed to have reached its
logical ending. But she did not move.
'Was there anything else?' he asked gently, in a parody of
chauffeurly deference.
'Don't be in such a hurry to get rid of me.' She looked at him
steadily. 'I'm doing nothing in particular between now and
tomorrow morning.'
He stood up.
214
'Well, I am. I'm packing and then sleeping and then clearing
out. There must be other places where you can do nothing in
particular.'
'Not the kind of nothing in particular I'm thinking about,' she
said slowly and precisely.
He felt defiled, as if warm treacle were pouring on to the crown
of his head from a tap in the ceiling, and then spreading down his
face and running down his back, over his chest, into his armpits.
He must get her out. If he had felt anything so clear and unam-
biguous as ordinary disgust or resentment, it would have been
easy to prolong the sparring until she tired of it; but he was aware
of other feelings that he did not care to examine.
'I've had enough of this,' he said roughly. 'If I didn't happen
to know you were pregnant I'd manhandle you out of here
without any more discussion. But as things are, I'll give you one
more verbal warning to get out of here before I tum the fire-
extinguisher on you.'
'Oh, you know that, do you?' she said. She looked at him
fixedly; he supposed her condition amounted to a kind of hypno-
tism. She came over and sat on the divan, drawing up her legs.
' I'm comfortable here,' she said.
'I told you to get out.' He looked at her with hatred.
' Listen,' she said more urgently. 'lf that bit of information is
what's worrying you, don't let it. In the early stages it doesn't
make any difference.'
' Why are you trying to make me throw you down those stairs?'
he asked.
'I tell you it doesn't make any difference at all.'
He took a step towards her, to grasp her arm and jerk her
upright. Then their eycs met, and suddenly the tension faded,
leaving merely two people not liking each other, recognizing and
confirming each other's hostility.
'You're deranged, I suppose,' she said carefully, speaking to
hurt. 'Probably suffering from some psychosomatic form of
impotence, and afraid of revealing it.'
'I'd certainly be afraid of revealing it when you were about,'
he said.
'You're ill. It's too long since you had a woman. I can see it.'
215
'Thanks for the solicitude,' he said, 'but I'll wait till it comes
under the National Health Scheme.'
She went out. He lay on his bed and brushed the sweat from
his temples and upper lip. Outside, the week-end landscape
slumbered in illusory calm, illusory contentment.
X
IT was cold on the bench. For the first hour or two he was grateful
that, at least, it wasn't raining, but after about one o'clock the
cold became so intense that it could certainly not have been
worse even if he had been soaking wet. There must be some knack
of sleeping on these things; one more lesson that he had still
to leam. You mustn't lie down, he knew that, or a policeman
could pull you in. You must keep sitting up and looking more or
less as if you were awake. He tried drawing his knees up and
hunching his body into a tight ball, then clasping his hands
round his knees, leaning his head forward, and relaxing as far as
possible with his fingers interlaced. But somehow it seemed to
cramp the muscles of his back, and after about ten minutes he
abandoned it. That was about every position he could think of:
all no good. The clear chimes of some City clock came through
the cold air. One-fifteen. A night or two without sleep didn't
necessarily harm you, if you were fit. Walk about a bit. He
dragged himself along by the side of the quietly lapping, malevo-
lent river. A litter box made of wire netting attracted his attention
by gleaming whitely: it was full of sheets of newspaper. A piece
of luck. One of the easiest ways of keeping warm. He stuffed
loosely-rolled pads of it into the bottoms of his trousers, up to
the knees, and inside his jacket. One or two of the sheets were
rather greasy, as if they had been used for wrapping fish and
chips. He should worry. The cold had affected the membranes of
his nostrils so that he couldn't smell anything. If he stank to high
heaven of fish, he wouldn't offend himself, only other people, and
when you were a tramp you didn't mind offending other people.
It was what was expected of you. Always do what they expect of
217
you, and you'll be a success. How to make friends and influence
people. How to influence friends and make people. How to
people your friends' influences. Stop that. Make your influences
your friends, stop that, get a grip on yourself. I'll get you sacked,
Merde, see if I won't. How to influence Merde.
What was it the tramp had told him? A sure way to make a few
bob. Piccadilly Circus at six o'clock in the moming, always full
of people dying for a smoke. Many's the time if I'd had a packet
of cigarettes on me I could have made enough to eat for two or
three days. Give you sixpence, a shilling, for a cigarette some of
them. More if you had the heart to ask for it. That was why he
had saved his cigarettes, an intact packet of ten. He got them out
and looked at them hungrily in the seedy moonlight. A smoke
now would do him the world of good. Help pass the time. Just
one: sell the rest. Sixpence each for nine, that was four and six.
No. Keep the lot. Then get enough for a day's food and another
packet of ten. Keep alive till a decent job came up. Came up
where? Daren't go to the Labour Exchange. Steer clear of any-
thing that involved oflicialdom, regstration, all that stuff. Some-
where, it was someone's business to find him, to pull him in for
the drug business. He would have to wait and let something good
happen to him. I'm sorry you've come down to this, Lumley. Don't
worry about me. I can make friends and influence people. And
I'm big. I let them influence me in retum. Just watch this dial,
time the speed in the lower gears. Just clean these windows. A
perfectly honest profession. Harry Dogson. Do you know this
man? He's harmless. Not like me. Let me be your father. I'm
cold, Rosa, Veronica, come closer. Sticky newspaper. You're a
good bloke, we like you. We were just talking about you when
you came in. A good bloke, partner, Mr. Froulish will read to us
from his novel, Mr. Froulish will make friends with us and
influence us, have you been sending me a lot of damn fool
telegrams? No, I'm too cold for that, I'm a good bloke, it's time
you told me what you did for a living, it's time, it's time.
Somehow it was five, then half-past, then six. Daylight. He
walked through the windy streets to Piccadilly Circus. Men in
overcoats loafing about. Not many girls : the grls were all off the
streets by now. The men had nowhere to go. The drink inside
218
them had wom off, leaving only a sour feeling in the stomach.
He knew how they felt. The lowest ebb. Mouth like an Arab's
armpit. What's wrong with Arabs anyway? They were doing
better than he was, they were sitting under date palms in the
warm sun. But then it was probably night where they lived, and
cold, too. He felt sorry for the Arabs. They must have some-
thing pretty badly wrong with them if their armpits felt like his
mouth.
Make a start somewhere. There was one man standing by
himself under the arches. Looking very forlom, but well dressed ;
he ought to have a few shillings left even if he had had a night on
the tiles. Charles sauntered up to him, trying to stop shivering,
and halted a couple of yards off. Now get into conversation.
'Not much doing at this time in the morning,' he said.
The face that tumed towards him was solid, carved with deep
lines of responsibility, pouchy eyes staring through rimless glasses.
Some provincial business man, doing well, with a comfortablc
wife and children im a suburban house. Just the type who lined
the pockets of the vice racketeers on his business trips to the
metropolis.
'Eh, yer never spoke a truer word. But what can a chap do
when 'e finds himself spent up at four in the morning and too
late to go to bed anyway?'
' What indeed? ' Charles murmured.
'All I can do,' the other continued positively, 'is to 'ang about
till nine o'clock. There's a fast train then, and I'll thank them to
get me back 'ome as quick as they like. This is no place to be in.'
He dropped his voice confidentially. 'There's a sight too many
folks after a man's munny in this town.'
' And what's more, they get it,' said Charles sympathetically.
'Get it!' echoed the pillar of society angrily. 'I tell you it
really 'urts to think of the amount they got out of me since ten
o'clock last night. I'll gve yer a piece of advice, yung man. Don't
you take any notice of these fellers as stand on the pavement an'
invite yer into these clubs. Affable as yer please. In town for the
night, sir? What about steppin' into the club? 'Ave a drink.
Enjoy yerself. Some nice girls, 'e says. Nice!' his voice rang out
angrily under the windy arches.
219
'It's all experience, I suppose,' said Charles, feeling this parti-
cular line had better be dropped. If the man worked himself into a
rage over having been fleeced, he would be less likely to pay
handsomely for a smoke when the time came to try it on.
' Experience! ' said the heavy, bitter voice. ' I'll give yer another
piece of advice while I'm at it. There's---some experience,' he went
on emphatically, ' as just---isn't---worth---'aving. Not if yer got it
for nowt.'
Charles looked at him in pitying contempt. This type,
armoured heavily in the smugness of business success, simply
could not leave off showering advice on others. The present
specimen, dead beat, robbed of his loose cash in the pursuit of
disgusting pleasures, loitering with an empty stomach in a
ghastly dawn, twitched into sententiousness by a reflex action.
It was Tharkles all over again.
Anyway, he could try it on. Carelessly producing his cigarettes,
he took one out and lit it with elaborate slowness. Inhaling deeply,
he leaned back against the wall. His companion looked at him
anxiously, waiting for him to proffer the packet. For a few seconds
he fought a one-sided battle with his pride, then spoke.
'You don't 'appen to have one of those to spare?'
Charles looked at him, as if the question were surprising.
'I got through the last o'mine about midnight,' the man went
on, talking fast and eagerly. Obviously he wanted a smoke very
badly. 'You 'and 'em round in those places, when yer get with a
crowd. The bloody cheatin' swine,' he added violently.
'Well,' said Charles carefully, 'I suppose you know cigarettes
are at a bit of a premium in the West End at this time of day.
Supply and demand. As a business man you'll appreciate that.'
Their eyes met. Hatred and suspicion glowed behind the rimless
lenses.
'The price of an article is what you can get for it in the com-
petitive market,' said Charles, trembling with cold and anxiety.
'Free enterprise. Made this country what it is.'
The approach must have been wrong. After all, the man prob-
ably spent half his life prating about the necessity of a free
economy: but that would be quite consistent with his bitter
resentment when the weapon was used against him in tum, And
220
from his own account it had been used quite successfully the
night before.
Instead of answering he leaned across and snatched at the
packet Charles held in his hand. Charles saw red. His livelihood
was in danger, and after so much fatigue his nerves were raw.
He clenched his other hand and hit Mr. Free Enterprise in the
face.
The man bounced off the wall and came back with his hands
grabbing for Charles's throat. This was the last straw ; thcse lousy
London types were going to see that they couldn't go on
indefinitely putting it across an honest man from the North.
Charles hit him again, hard, over the heart. A policeman across
on the other side of the Circus began to walk smartly over,
drawing out his whistle in case it should be needed. No hurry.
Just a couple of morning-afters. They never had much fight in
them at this time in the day.
Charles saw him begn to move, broke away, and ran. The
pillar of society, brought up short by the punch to the heart,
blinked round, saw the policeman, and shambled rapidly away in
another direction. He had a good reason for not wanting police-
court publicity, but Charles had a better. Like a hunted hare he
fled down one shabby tuming after another, afraid to look back
to see whether he was being followed. He had dropped his
cigarettes; he had struck an older man after trying to swindle
him; this was rock-bottom again. His breath began to come
painfully, he must stop running, get off the streets somehow. A
doorway. He swung himself into it at full speed, with the stitch
tearing at his side and his lungs close to bursting point. Smack
into Mr. Bleamey.
Who said reprovingly, ' You want to take it easy, partner. Why
don't you put shorts on and go into the country if you want to
run before breakfast? '
He had been putting his overcoat on, and his right arm was
pinioned behind his back as Charles rammed him against the
wall. He got free, straightened himself, and shook the coat on.
'Good thing I wasn't smoking,' he went on. 'You might have
put your eye out on my cheroot if I had been.'
'Take---me upstairs,' Charles gasped. 'Got to stay off the
221
streets---a bit---some unpleasantness--just sit down---get my
breath back.'
'Well, the club's just closing,' caid Mr. Blearney doubtfully.
'And it's downstairs, anyway, not up, Well,just for a few minutes
then.'
They pattered down the grimy steps. A door said, 'Golden
Peach Club'. 'The golden peaches have all gone home,' said Mr.
Blearney.
The room stank, stale tobacco and drink. Sweat and advanced
halitosis fought it out with the dominant odours. Charles breathed
deeply, but there was not much that his lungs could use for the
benefit of his bloodstream.
'This is Ada. Manageress,' said Mr. Bleamey briefly.
A fat woman with a shock of henna-stained hair looked at him
across a tray of dirty glasses.
'One of your friends, Arthur? Bit late to come to the club.
Better get him out of here so I can lock up. My hours are
supposed to be eleven till six.'
'Take it easy, Ada,' he implored. 'I'll take him round to my
place for some breakfast.'
'Eleven till six,' she said, 'and don't you forget it.'
' Drink this, partner, and we'll go home.'
lt was bad whisky. Charles drank it and they went home.
Mr. Bleamey's 'man' was not wearing his white coat this time.
His off-white shirt sleeves flickered dully to and fro as he fetched
toast, eggs, and coffee. Charles found himself reviving at remark-
able speed; in the closing stages of the meal he launched into a
rather selective account of his immediate past and present
situation. Mr. Blearney, who was obviously shrewd enough to
see that a good deal was being missed out,was also old and cautious
enough to stifle any feelings of curiosity about the omissions. He
had heard enough secrets to last him his lifetime. Looking across
at the pouchy, bulbous comedian's face, Charles wondered why
this man bothered to be kind to him. Perhaps there was really no
explanation other than the obvious one, that geniality had been
222
the driving force of his life for so long that it had consumed
everything else: unless there was someone at hand to be genial to,
he would die. Besides, there was the undeclared war between
people of Mr. Bleamey's type and people of the ordinary, con-
ventional type; the smaller group, the active minority, sought
each other out for mutual support against the heavy, unleavened
mass on which they looked with alternate suspicion, patronizing
affection, and contempt. When the mass did the right thing, they
were 'the public' ('the public, bless them, took me to their hearts
right from the first'); when they did not react satisfactorily, they
were simply 'them' (-just can't get them moving to-night', 'if this
doesn't knock them in the aisles, well, blast 'em'); and in times
of lowered circumstances, you simply preyed on the less reputable
impulses to which the mass was subject, when its members
became plain suckers ('one born every minute, you needn't
starve'). This secret society, unconsciously sworn to the task of
providing the vibrations that caused wear and tear in the structure
of normal living, consciously pledged to working themselves to
a standstill at anything that did not look like normal work, this
invisible Trade Union, had been waiting for Charles ever since he
first failed to take root in the cliff-side of a shattered bourgeoisie.
He had tried manual work, he had tried crime, he had tried being
a servant, and now he was sitting opposite Mr. Bleamey, director
of (among other things) the Golden Peach Club, accepting his
hospitality, waiting for him to suggest some way out of his
difficulties. With uncanny vividness, derived partly from fatigue,
his consciousness freed itself from his body, sitting there at the
table, and watched the scene, cleverly picking out the allegorical
elements. The young man (Hopeless) breaks out of the prison of
Social and Economic Maladjustment; he carries on his back a
hundredweight of granite known as Education. After a skirmish
with the dragon Sex, in which he is aided by a false friend, Giant
Crime, he comes to the illusory citadel called Renunciation of
Ambition. And so on. What an allegory it would make! Of course
he would have to think up some more catchy names for these
abstractions, but that would be easy enough.
'Well, what d'you say?' Mr. Blearney was asking.
'What do 1 say to what?' stammered Charles, then, realizing
223
that his host had been talking continuously for about five minutes,
during which he had not heard a word, he roused himself and
apologzed profusely, blaming his fatigue and the confusing effect
of his adventures.
'All right, I'll cut it short this time,' said Mr. Bleamey with
surprising patience. ' Just a couple of sentences, so you can follow
before it gets too tiring. I was saying that itjust happens we need
a chucker-out at the Golden Peach. Not that it's a rough place.
We've never had a bouncer there before, but Ada's been com-
plaining lately that there's nobody to back her up if anybody
gets nasty; there's a couple of waiters, but they're paid to do
waiting, and you can't blame them if they look the other way when
anyone starts acting rowdy. A man doesh't want a thick ear as
well as having to carry things about on a tray.'
Charles did not speak. A chucker-out in a dive like that. Well,
who was he to be fussy?
'And as Ada says,' Mr. Bleamey went on, ' she's only a woman.
I have to take her word for that, mind you. There's what you'd
call reasonable doubt.'
' Any pay?' asked Charles. It was with an effort that he stopped
himself from speaking out of the side of his mouth. The whole
thing was getting too like a film. He lit a cigarette in the manner
of Alan Ladd.
' Pay, of course, partner! And what's better, pay in kind, a lot
of it. Nothing for the tax inspector to take off you. A square meal
every night, a bed in one of the private rooms when they're not
all being used,' he spoke rather quickly, as if to hurry over that
part of his statement, 'and five bob an hour while you're on duty.
Thirty-five bob a night. Why, that's nearly as much as Ada
gets ! '
'Any compensation for injury?'
'Well,' said Mr. Bleamey meditatively, pushing his coffee cup
into the exact centre of the table, 'we can keep quiet about you
being a professional. Then if anybody hurts you badly, we'll
provide witnesses to prove they picked a quarrel with you as
another guest at the club, and you can sue them. I believe you get
quite a lot,' he said cheerfully, ' for anything that shows, like, well,
the loss of an eye.'
224
'I wouldn't be exorbitant, of course,' said Charles.
'Well, that's settled, partner, eh? Eleven o'clock at the club.
And meanwhile you can stay here. I'd advise you to take your
shoes off and stretch out on the sofa there. You might as well get
used to doing most of your sleeping in the daytime now.'
' Good idea,' said Charles. ' And by the way, thanks for every-
thing.'
' Don't thank me, partner. It's a pleasure.'
And when the young man that was called Hopeless came to the
castle of gant Racket, he lifted up his hand and bravely beat upon
the gate. And the gant heard him from within for indeed he had
caused him to be shown the way to that place by Malice and Con-
fusion his senants, and up and welcomed him, calling to him
Don't thank me, partner. And the young man that was called
Hopeless entered and lay down to sleep in that place.
Twenty-four hours later he was going off duty after his first
night's work. He was elated and sllghtly puzzled: Ada did not
look like a person subject to nervous fears, but he could not
imagne on what other grounds she had asked for a chucker-out
to be engaged. He had had visions of hulking brutes, members
of race-gangs with razors at the ready, or, at best, sailors on
shore, full of high spirits and liquor. Nothing of the kind! The
patrons of the Golden Peach Club were as meek and docile a
tribe as the inhabitants of any third-class compartment on a
suburban electric train. The two types, indeed, seemed to overlap
a good deal, with a solid core of unwary provincial visitors such
as Mr. Free Enterprise of the day before, and a sprinkling of
genuine night-prowlers, dmg-addicts, dipsomaniacs and mental
cripples of various kinds, all of whom were far too undermined
physically to cause him any anxiety even if their behaviour had
threatened trouble.
As to the attractions which drew the club's customers, Charles
found it easy to keep his eyes averted from the more sordid of
them. There was no need to msh things; he would, inevitably,
develop a hard shell to cover what remained of his moral and
225
aesthetic sensibilities, or even shed these sensibilities altogether,
but, until that time came, he was paid to watch out for any rough
behaviour, and not to poke his nose under the surface. As a
matter of fact, he could hardly help noticing, after the first two
or three hours, that it was very much the polcy of the club to
create the illusion of concealing more under the surface than was
actually there. Apart from a tiny bar, the preserve of a few
regullars and <1cognoscenti>1 who had the privilege of ordering their
drinks straight from the barmaid instead of having them brought
over by a waiter for three times the price, there was only one
room, a large one; it was styled 'the ball-room', and actually did
contain a three-piece band who huddled in a comer zingng and
tooting in front of a pocket-handkerchief of cleared parquet
flooring, but no one danced; the revellers sat morosely at the
tiny tables that occupied most of the room, or on the plush-
covered bench that lined three of the walls. Two waiters, both of
whom would have been entitled to the Old Age pension if they
had cared to reveal their identities by applying for it, shambled
to and fro with poisonous drinks at lethal prices, Ada sat behind
the bar and chatted with the <1cognoscenti,>1 who seemed to be
mostly relatives of hers, and Charles perched quietly and watch-
fully in a comer, still feeling like Alan Ladd.
In this setting it was easy enough to create the impression that
the machinery of high-powered vice was roaring away off-stage,
but it was soon obvious that the roaring was of the same order of
artificiality as a man shaking a thin sheet of metal to simulate a
thunderstorm. The ' hostesses ', of whom there were half a dozen,
were very much in evidence, and now and again one of them
would withdraw, hand in hand with some chosen mate, to one of
the 'private rooms'---causing Charles early to make up his mind
that he would decline the offer of one of these rooms for his day-
time repose---but it was clear that, for every one of the chosen
mates who succeeded in reaz- ing lu-s ambition, there were ten
who were simply overcharged for a suocession of nauseous drinks
and finally turned out bankrupt and feeling ill. A depressing
spectacle, the sight of people failing to enjoy themselves even at
this level! Frustration, weariness, and self-betrayal staring from
so many human faces at once!
226
The only people in the room who seemed to be doing anything
positive were the three 'musicians'. After about the fifth hour,
Charles was driven by boredom and depression to go and sit in
their comer, even at the price of placing himself close to the
racket they were making. In between numbers, introductions
made themselves ; Jimmy on the piano, Albert on clarinet, Frankie
on guitar. Once they left their instruments behind, there would,
he felt, be no telling them apart, for they were all got up to look
like identical marionettes; thin, waxy faces, hair cropped to the
length of a matchstick, drape jackets, and Windsor ties. They
were nice boys, masking an appealing provincial <1natvete>1 under a
mass-produced sophistication gained from incessant study of the
<1Melody Maker>1 and <1Down Beat,>1 and expressed in accents leamt
in the cinema.
'No, you don't wanner stay here, boy,' Frankie assured him,
taking a new plectrum out of his breast pocket and gazing at it
intently. ' Reggler hick joint in the daytime, innit fellers? '
'Yeah, proper lousy,' assented Jimmy, bending backwards on
the piano stool. ' You wanner stick around with us, boy. We gotter
real nice place we room in. Getchew in there, easy. Take you
along, personal recommendation, in straight away. Real classy,
innit? '
Albert, appealed to, nodded vigorously. 'Right outer this
world,' he said.
'Thanks,' said Charles. He did not feel like making longer
speeches until he had mastered their <1argot.>1
And so the morning found them all four walking home. The
three artists exchanged cryptic communications, speaking of
Charles as if he were not present, but with perfect friendliness.
They were like three schoolboys in their second term who had
decided to be nice to a new boy.
On his way to the club one night he went into the Charing
Cross Road Post Office to see if there was a letter for him. The
clerk handed him an envelope, and he sat down at the table
and broke it open. It was a typed letter, obviously dictated to a
secretary. He read it slowly and carefully.
227
Mr. C. Lumley.
I found your letter waiting for me, but I do not know why it
contained no mention of the fact that, before leaving, you stole
a valuable jade figurine from my wife's writing table. It was
clever of you to pick this out, as I am not a man of ostentation,
and it is the only valuable omament in my house; but I suppose
you have had experience of thieving before. The evidence
points unmistakably to you, so please do not make any attempt
to deny the charge. I do not intend to put the matter into the
hands of the law, for the monetary loss is of little consequence
when compared with the betrayal of my confidence in you, for
which I could not be compensated. I have never made a serious
error in the judgment of character until now; I have to admit
that my previous experience did not embrace any specimens of
the ordinary criminal type. I neither expect nor wish to hear
from you or of you in the future.
Samuel P. Braceweight.
He read the message three times; twice slowly, but the third
time very rapidly; and then stared vacantly ahead of him with
eyeballs of hot dry cast-iron. The evidence points unmistakably
to you, Hutchins, I'll get you sacked, don't worry, we'll get the
money somehow, you've been costing me plenty, the evidence
points unmistakably, an ordinary criminal type, he hates your
guts, see you on Friday, Merde. Next to him sat a woman with a
red face and untidy grey hair, writing a telegram. She looked up
at him with fierce resentment, and he reazed that his vacant
stare must have been resting on the form she was filling in. She
spoke to him in the tone of one who is unbearably provoked.
'I really don't see what my telegram has to do with you.'
' Sorry,' he said. 'It's all this catgut. Too much catgut.'
She smiled widely and falsely, looking out of the comers of her
eyes for possible assistance.
'Too much catgut,' she said, slowly, and with an encouragng
nod.
' Much too much,' he said. He got up to go before she released
the scream that was waiting in the depths of her weather-beaten
throat. As he went out, he crumbled the letter into a tiny hard
228
ball. It was good quality paper and creased into tiny sharp
points that hurt the palm of his hand. He dropped it carefully
into a litter box and went out of the door. The street was very
cold.
He hurried on to the club. It was the usual depressed and
depressing scene; the band strummed and whimpered in the
comer, the patrons stared gloomily into their glasses. Feeling
unutterably soiled, Alan Ladd miscast in the part of a heel, he
settled down to another night's desolation and spiritual drought.
Might as well get used to it. It looked as if this were to be his
permanent niche. Just another ruin, a hulk washed up on a dirty
shore within sight of the seagulls drowning with oil-clogged
wings.
For three hours he stared blankly in front of him, brusqucly
refusing his usual free allowance of the nauseating liquor served
by the unkempt waiters. About one o'clock, he left the room for
a few minutes. On retuming, he found an unusual atmosphere of
tension; the two waiters were in a huddle with Ada behind the
bar, and one of them was pointing, with a plaintive expression,
into the main room.
'What's the matter?' he asked wearily. He hoped there was
going to be some work for him to do. He would like to have a
fight, to smash his knuckles viciously, yet easily and without
strain, into someone's mouth.
'There's a chap creating,' said the senior and dirtier of the
waiters. ' Says he doesn't like the tipple.'
Ada said nothing. She looked at Charles andjerked her head
in the direction he was to go. He walked across, following the
waiter. The waiter halted beside a man sitting at a table by
himself with his back to Charles.
He stood behind the man's right shoulder, not bothering to go
round in front of him.
'They tell me the drink doesn't suit you,' he said.
The patron looked up over his shoulder. Above the expensive
shirt and new silk tie, his face was a twitching mask of dough.
229
'Oh, God, it's you, Lumley,' he said. ' Doesn't the joint provide
anything better than this kidney water at five bob a glass?'
'We've got some pretty good kidneys round here,' said Charles,
'but before you do any more grumbling, tell me just what you're
doing here. I left you in a loft in dear old Stotwell.' He sat down
at the table and listened expectantly.
'Well, I don't come to places like this because I enjoy it,' said
the novelist, squirming irritably in his chair. 'It just happens that
I'm on duty this week as Dirty Joke man. I have to sit about in
places like this to gather in the latest crop.'
'Be less abstruse, my riddling days are past,' said Charles. It
was a quotation he remembered from his riddling days.
'Oh, well, God,' said the man of letters, screwing up his tiny
eyes until they became as small as the blackheads which tessel-
lated his forehead. His suit, though it looked as if he had slept in
it, was a very good one.
'Please bring us two glasses of water, Erasmus,' he said to the
waiter. ' I feel thirsty.'
The waiter stared at him without any expression on his face.
'You heard what the gentleman said,' Charles told him. 'Two
glasses of water out of the cold tap.'
'Well, now,' said Froulish, when the man had moved away, 'I
suppose you've heard of Terence Frush.'
'No,' said Charles.
'God, you're out of touch,' said Froulish in a petulant tone
which suggested that Charles had done him a personal injury by
not having heard of Terence Frush. 'Don't you ever listen to the
wireless ? '
'I haven't got one,' said Charles.
' Well, look,' said Froulish. ' It just happens that Terence Frush
is the biggest name in the gag-writing business. He writes the
scripts for some of the top rank radio shows. Millions of people
listen to them.'
'What would that have to do with you?' Charles asked.
' I'm one of his team,' said the novelist, seriously. ' Naturally, a
job like that has to be run like a business. At the moment we
furnish the scripts regularly for the Flimmer and Punque show,
<1Deadline on Wednesday.>1 You've got a half-hour programme
230
which includes two musical interludes of three minutes each.
Allowing a minute at each end for signature tune and announce-
ments, that makes twenty-two minutes. Two gags a minute works
out at forty-four a week.'
The waiter came back with two glasses of water. The glasses
were very dirty. Froulish drank his at a gulp and put the glass in
his pocket.
'And how many of the forty-four do you think up?'
' Well, it's all a collaboration, you see,' said Froulish. For some
reason he seemed genuinely interested in explaining the details
of his employment. 'We get together once a week and hammer it
out. There's a rota of jobs that different members of the team
have to do each week.'
'And it's your turn to be Dirty Joke man,' said Charles.
Froulish reached across for Charles's glass, threw the water on
the fioor and put the glass in his other pocket. At this rate he
would soon ruin the shape of his suit.
'Yes, I'll explain about that. If you'd listened to these things
at all, you'd know that it was a recognized part of the technique
to introduce, two or three times in each script, submerged
references to dirty jokes that are current among the audience.
All comics do it. You get a big laugh because the ones who know
the joke feel fiattered at being told how worldly wise they are, and
the rest of them laugh because the others do The point is that the
technique works best with jokes that are up to the minute---
makes it more fiattering. I suppose you don't know any really
recent ones?' he added, taking out a notebook.
Charles told him the most obscene joke he had ever heard. He
had remembered it ever since first hearing it at the age of eleven.
Throughout his adolescence he had often wondered what it meant.
'We used that last week,' said Froulish. 'I can see you're not
going to be much help.'
'Well, why the hell should I be?' said Charles aggressively.
After all, he had been sent over to chuck Froulish out, and he
was still ready to do it.
'Well, that's just it,' said Froulish, looking at him attentively.
'I've got another assignment this week. I've got to find a Seventh
Man.'
231
'What do you mean, a Seventh Man?'
'Mr. Frush has only got five in his team at present. That
makes six, counting him. And, like most creative people, he's got
fads and superstitions.'
'You mean, about seven being the golden number?'
'Yes, all that bunk,' said the novelist. 'Seven Sleepers of
Ephesus, Seven Types of Ambiguity, all that stuff. We don't
really need another man, but he says so, and as far as I can see,
anybody would do. <1You'd>1 do,' he added kindly.
'Do I understand that you're suggesting I should change my
employment?' Charles asked him with dignity.
'Why, do you mean they pay you here? If you're the washer-up,
I don't see any evidence that you've been on duty lately.'
'I'm the chucker-out,' said Charles, 'so watch your step. Take
those giasses out of your pockets. And if one of the girls comes
up to you, don't forget your manners.'
Froulish took an elastic band out of his breast pocket.
Stretching it tightly, he slipped it over his head so that it encircled
his forehead just above the eyebrows, and began to pick at it,
snapping it against his head with his thumb and forefinger. Charles
wondered why he did not find this too painful.
'Well, take it or leave it, for God's sake,' he growled.
Charles caught Ada's eye as she stared out of her sanctum.
My previous experience did not embrace any specimens of the
ordinary criminal type.
'I'll take it,' he said.
Froulish stood up. The glasses made unsightly bulges in his
pockets. One of the 'hostesses' came over to him and asked him
why he was leaving so early.
' Look, dear,' he said eamestly, 'I wouldn't do you any good.
I'm riddled with it.'
They walked across the floor. Charles halted in front of where
Ada sat.
'Don't bother about any pay to-night,' he said. ' Keep it in lieu
of notice.'
She looked up at him sourly but without surprise. The naked
bulb above her head revealed how carelessly she had applied the
henna to her hair. It was a dirty grey at the roots.
232
'So you're walking out on the job, are you?' she said flatly.
'You're just a louse like the rest of them.'
'Louse?' he said with a light laugh. 'I'm just the ordinary
criminal type. Somebody's just told me so in a letter.'
He walked up the steps. Froulish was waiting on the pavement.
The next script conference was fixed for the following morning.
Ready for anything, and especially anything unwelcome, Charles
entered Mr. Frush's conference room at the heels of Froulish. With
characteristic unpunctuality, the novelist had got them there ten
minutes late, and the others had all assembled and were already
sitting round a long mahogany table. Mr. Frush himself, a big
man who looked like the head of a steel combine, sat at the top of
the table. His four hacks, whose dress and deportment suggested
that they were trying, with various degrees of success, to parody
the appearance of typical provincial bank clerks, sat in sub-
missive silence. Terence Frush nodded, curtly and with a trace of
irritation, at Froulish.
'I've got him, Mr. Frush. The Seventh Man.'
'Good,' said his employer. 'And you've got the current jokes
as well, I hope. We mustn't waste any time to-day.' He gave
Charles a nod, the replica of the one he had given Froulish.
'I take it my secretary has gone through the usual business
details with you,' he said. (Charles had not yet seen any secretary.)
'You start at the bottom of the salary scale: forty quid a week for
the first three months. Ten minutes' notice on my side. Two years'
on yours. You'll find you can make good if you've got it in
you.'
Charles sat down in the seat next to Froulish. He glanced
round the room. It was bare and surgcal. The mahogany table
seemed to be the only object that was made of a natural substance ;
the rest of the fumiture was tubular steel, fake leather, and glass.
The walls were white and had a glazed look, suggesting the tiled
walls of an operating theatre or public lavatory. They were bare
of pictures, but two large notices, each neatly framed in black,
confronted each other across the widest part of the room. One
233
read 'The Customer is Always Trite'; the other, 'What he'll
Say Next is Nobody's Business---and Remember, You're No-
body '.
'Prellminaries first,' said Mr. Fmsh briskly. 'Who's been on
radio duty this week?'
' I have,' said a fat, unhealthy-looking young man with a ragged
moustache.
'Well, let's hear if you got hold of anything.'
' What's radio duty?' Charles whispered to Froulish.
'It's when you have to spend the week listening to all the other
shows of the same kind, particularly the American ones,' the
novelist muttered. 'You have a stenographer with you to take
down the scripts entire, but it's your job to edit it for anything
that can be pin---used.'
' Quiet, please,' said Mr. Fmsh. When the young man with the
moustache had flnished his report, it was Froulish's tum, and
Mr. Fmsh asked him, ' What about the seamy side of things this
week ? '
'Well, they seem to have come round to the one about the lace
curtains. That's in Central London, of course. We really need
another man for the Provinces.'
'No need to worry about that,' said Mr. Fmsh easily. 'After
all, remember that we're the only team who do any research at all
in that line. The rest simply rely on what they happen to pick up.'
'Would you believe it,' said the radio duty man eamestly, 'but
Hudson's gang are still using the brass monkey. You'd hardly
credit it.'
'Some of these people,' said Mr. Fmsh, shaking his head
gravely, 'would take money out of a blind man's tin.'
'And then cut the string of his dog,' said Froulish with a high-
pitched laugh: he was very nervous.
'All right, hold it, Edwin,' said Mr. Fmsh, looking at him
stemly. 'We haven't started on the gags yet. And when we do,
there's no need to take them out of Noah's ark.'
'It wasn't a gag; I was serious,' said the man of letters
eamestly.
'Well, now, to business,' said Mr. Fmsh. 'The theme of the
next show is going to be baby-sitting. I estimate that we shall need
234
gags in the following proportion: six of the old-fashioned vulgar
type, about nappies and that sort of thing; then, I should say,
about twelve tuming on the precocity of the elder child who's
also left at home while the parents go out; five husband-and-wife
ones before they set out; of the remaining twenty-one, fifteen
about his ignorance of how to handle the baby---and remember,
they're not to overlap with the six nappy ones: I'm thinking of
things about feeding it, not being able to understand what it says,
that sort of line---and as for the remaining six, they can be off
the main theme. We needn't be too perfectionist.'
'Can we bring in anything about breast-feeding?' one of the
team asked.
' Definitely not,' said Mr. Frush weightily. ' Remember, we've
got a reputation to keep up.'
' You'll want the usual three highbrow ones, I suppose,' put in
a man wearing a velvet jacket and with hair growing down the
an'eThat's our culture man ' Froulish whispered to Charles. 'Eton
'Now switch that machine on and let's get weaving,' said Mr.
Frush. One of the men walked across and switched on the tape
recorder. Before resuming his seat he took a bottle of whisky and
seven glasses from a cupboard on the wall, and poured everyone
present a stiff drink.
' Ready? OFF!' Terence Fmsh roared with sudden violence.
Immediately a wild bedlam was let loose. Their voices, super-
imposed upon one another, rose and fell in a series of mounting
waves. Whisky was dmnk and spilt, cigarette ends crushed out
on the mahogany table, wild half-completed sentences shrieked
across the room. It was all such a sudden surprise to Charles that
for the first ten minutes he remained completely outside the atmo-
sphere, staring dumbly from one contorted face to another. It was
a scene worthy of the pencil of Blake. Froulish had rolled the
elastic band on to his forehead, and had inserted into it strips of
equal length torn from the pink blotting paper in front of him. He
resembled some fantastic maenad crowned with a hellish garland.
'I've got it,' he was shouting. 'He can tune in to some non-
British station on the wireless just when he's flustered after the
235
first spell of trouble with the baby, and get a sponsored pro-
gramme. Elder cluld's comments and quick-fire sales talk mixed,
see? Do you foam at the mouth when you clean your teeth? Are
you worried about those crow's feet? Keep your shoes on, it's
hurting you more than it is me, says the kid, that kind of thing.'
In the deafening uproar no one heard him. Livid with rage and
fmstration, he began barking like a sea-lion. 'Diaper was an
eighteenth century poet,' the culture man was shouting. 'Work
that in.' Charles suddenly felt the blood msh to his head. Gripping
the sides of his chair, he began firing off inane jokes, in a queer
snarling voice that did not sound as if it belonged to him. Foolish
quips of the matchbox type rose up unprompted from the
disordered filing system of his memory. Sweat broke out profusely
all over his body. The noise intensified. Even the magsterial Mr.
Frush had taken off his collar and tie and allowed his hair to fall
forward over his face. Charles felt that his skull would soon
explode. Amid a final prolonged burst of bawling, loud coughing
and shrieks of laughter, he flung off his jacket and began beating
the culture man about the head and shoulders with a rolled-up
newspaper.
' All right! There's enough there! ' Mr. Fmsh suddenly shouted
above the din in a parade-ground voice. Silence fell. 'Now let's
get on with the editing.'
They took their seats quietly, rolling their sleeves down, getting
into their jackets, hooking on their spectacles. Froulish dragged
off the elastic band; the pink strips of blotting paper cascaded on
to the table, where he began cmmbling them to invisibility with a
nervous motion of his stubby fingers. At a meaning glance from
Mr. Frush he controlled himself and sat still.
The recording machine was switched off by the same man who
had switched on. Amid silence and calm, they addressed them-
selves to their work.
Autumn had passed into winter. The yellowest and most
obstinate of the leaves had been tom from their moorings by the
October gales, and fluttered down on to the damp pavement,
236
like tears shaken from the wrath-bearing tree. Charles sat in
front of the electric fire in the living-room of his flat and looked
across the carpet at Mr. Bleamey.
' And a very nice place too, partner,' Mr. Bleamey was rasping
appreciatively. ' Just the very thing. Well, well, your luck changed
just in time, didn't it?'
'I fell on my feet all right,' Charles admitted.
' Fell on your feet! ' Mr. Bleamey echoed, comically shocked.
'Can't you find anything better to say about it all than that?'
Charles had been smoking one of his guest's cheroots, and now
crushed out the stub in an ashtray and began meditatively
unrolling it.
'Well, I suppose I ought to be overjoyed,' he said, 'and yet I
can't quite feel that it's anything but a freak of chance, and one
doesn't like owing one's way of life to a freak of chance.'
Mr. Bleamey exploded with laughter.
'That's rich. I say that's rich. Here you are, only just in the
game, and you start talking like all the rest of them.'
' All the rest of whom?'
' It's typical, you see,' Mr. Bleamey explained seriously. ' That's
what you are, typical. The entertainment world is full of people
who think they only got themselves mixed up in it by accident---
what you'd call a freak of chance. Every department of the
business, it's the same. Fight promoters who think they're country
vicars at heart, conjurors who meant to be dentists. Look at me,'
he said, violently wrenching his mbbery features into an expression
of self-pity, 'a poor old leg-show organizer whose Dad wanted
him to be a market gardener!'
'Why? Was he one himself?'
'You bet your life he was. And in a very good way of business.
"No need to get your finger-nails dirty, Arthur," he used to say,
"not like I had to. Just the oflice part of it for you, my lad. A
gentleman, that's you." But I couldn't see eye to eye with the old
man. I kicked over the traces, and I've lived my life in the enter-
tainment business one way and another.'
Charles unrolled the last fragment of leaf. 'Well, I can't help
it if I sound typical,' he said. 'I suppose I did tum down a steady,
humdrum life, like you, but it wasn't a question of breaking out
237
or kicking over any traces. I never rebelled against ordinary life:
it just never admitted me, that's all. I never even got into it.'
'Same thing,' said Mr. Bleamey authoritatively. 'You never
wanted to get into it because it hadn't got what you wanted.'
'And what's your idea of what I want?' Charles demanded
brusquely. He expected Mr. Bleamey to come out with some
sentimental irrelevance on the lines of 'You're a vagabond at
heart like all of us, you need the colour and variety, grand
troupers, kind hearts beneath the motley.' He stared challengngly
across the hearth-rug.
'What do you think I want?' he repeated.
' Neutrality,' said Mr. Bleamey calmly and without pausing to
take thought.
Charles looked at him in silence.
'Go on, partner, tell me it isn't true, if you can,' said Mr.
Bleamey. 'It's the type who wants neutrality who comes into our
racket. Doesn't want to take sides in all the silly pettiness that
goes on. Doesn't want to spend his time scratching and being
scratched. Wants to live his own life.'
Charles was humbled. The man understood him perfectly. His
very choice of a word was absolutely right. So far, he had set
himself target after target that had proved out of reach: econo-
mically, the quest for self-sufficient poverty; socially, for
unmolested obscurity; emotionally, first for a grand passion and
then for a limited and defined contentment. And now he valued
his niche simply because it gave him the means, through his new
wealth, to put himself beyond the struggle, and the leisure to
meditate sufficiently to keep him on his guard against his own
folly.
'By the way, there was a letter for you downstairs, partner,'
said Mr. Bleamey, moving easily away from the subject now that
he had finished with it, 'so I brought it up.'
Charles opened the envelope. A thick, blue-tinted document
and a typewritten letter.
' My dear Lumley,
In sending you this three-year contract, which I hope you
will sign, I am happy to say how much I have come to appre-
238
ciate your work during the months you have been with me.
You are a valuable counterweight to the more (shall I say?)
volatile elements in my team, and I have come to feel that I
definitely need your presence. Perhaps you would be good
enough to treat this contract as confidential, as I have so far
not felt able to offer similar terms to any of your colleagues.
With my congratulations on your work, and wishes for many
years of fruitful collaboration,
Yours sincerely,
Terence Fmsh'
' The glasses and whisky are in that cupboard, Arthur,' Charles
said. 'Would you get them out? I feel a bit queer.'
' Nothing the matter, I hope, partner?' Mr. Bleamey asked as
he poured out four glasses of whisky.
'The reverse, the reverse,' said Charles faintly. ' I'm permanent.
He's sent me a contract to sign.'
' And about time too,' shouted his guest joyfully. 'Well! Well!
And a very good excuse for drinking this stuff at five o'clock in
the aftemoon !'
They drained their first and began slowly on their second, in
accordance with Mr. Bleamey's principles.
'Well, I must be getting,' he said when they had finished. 'Got
to see an early rehearsal. So long, partner! Don't take any jokes
off matchboxes---they might go on strike!'
Laughing uproariously, he went out. Charles stood looking
through the window at the wet sky. Neutrality ; he had found it at
last. The running fight between himself and society had ended in
a draw; he was no nearer, fundamentally, to any <1rapprochement>1
or understanding with it than when he had been a window-
cleaner, a crook, or a servant; it had merely decided that he
should be paid, and paid handsomely, to capitaze his anomalous
position. To his companions in Mr. Frush's team, this was a job
like any other. They did it instead of working in industry or
' commerce. But to him it was an armistice, obviously leading to a
permanent armed truce. There could be no forgiveness, but neither
party would, in the foreseeable future, launch an offensive. Tharkles,
Scrodd, Hutchins, Lockwood, Burge, Roderick, none of them
239
could either despise or respect him now. All they could do would
be to look at him in bewilderment, shake their heads, and enwy
him his salary. He did not not want their envy, but it was less of
an embarrassment than either their contempt or their approval.
The telephone bused, and the janitor's voice croaked that a
lady wished to see him.
'What's her name?' he asked.
After a short pause the frog in the man's throat said, 'Miss
Flanders, sir.'
He did not know anyone, male or female, whose name even
vaguely sounded like ' Flanders'.
' Sho~ her up, please,' he said. As he replaced the instrument,
a slight, quick tremor ran through him, as if the indifferent
bakelite had tried to wam him that he had said the wrong thing.
Veronica came in as unconcemedly as if this were the Oak
Lounge.
'I wasn't quite sure about giving my right name to the man,'
she said, 'so I just gave him the first name that entered my head.
Moll Flanders. I've just been reading about her.'
'I never got to the end of that book,' he said. 'Has it got a
happy ending? '
'Not really. It doesn't end, it just stops. She tums respectable
and repents, but you knew that from the begnning.'
He looked away from her, trying not to feel how beautiful and
dangerous she had been to him, and could be again.
'I don't like it when I know from the start how things will tum
out, do you?' he asked.
She lifted her dark head and looked at him silently. Inside his
skull sledge hammers crashed down on metal plates.
' Do you? ' he repeated urgently.
' I don't think I ever have known,' she said slowly. ' You always
get surprises.'
' Such as what?' he asked.
'Charles, please don't be so strange and awkward. You know
what I came to say. At one time it just looked as if our,' she
hesitated, ' our thing hadn't got a chance. It looked as if there was
simply no way of going on. But things have altered, altered so
strangely.'
240
Mentally he translated this into: <1You're rich now, you're doing>1
<1as well as Roderick. And you're fifteen years younger.>1
 'I don't really see how things have altered,' he said obstinately.
 ' Between you and me, I mean.'
She looked at him quietly and possessively, rebuking him,
making him feel ashamed of his foolish temporizing.
He stood up and walked to the centre of the room. If an
" animal who was tame, or bom in captivity, went back to what
should have been its natural surroundings, it never survived. If it
was a bird, the other birds killed it, but usually it just died. Here
was his cage, a fine new one, air conditioned, clean, commanding
a good view, mod. cons., main services. And she had snapped
the lock and was calling him out into the wavingjunge. When he
got there, he would die.
That was Con. What was Pro?
Pro was that she was beautiful, and he loved her, and to accept
her with death and catastrophe in the same packet would be no
trouble at all, thank you, anyone would have done the same, don't
mention it. Pro was that he could not bear it that she should sit
casually in the armchair, talking to him across half the width of
the room, when he knew every contour and texture of her body
under its demure clothing. Pro was that I a twister love what I
abhor.
It was dusk now. He crossed the room and tumed a switch, The
light sprang suddenly into every comer, dramatizing each outline,
mphasizing the shape of the furniture and the shape of their
predicament.
They looked at each other, bafled and inquiring.