Room at the Top

by John Braine

  "Just the average amount. You soon forget."

  "You look so young. Except for your mouth. Are you sure you've forgotten?"

  "Sometimes something happens to bring them out. They poke out their heads and growl and then you shove them back in the cage. Why are you asking? Afraid I'm neurotic?"

  She kissed me on the cheek. "You're the least neurotic person I know. It's just something I've been curious about for a long time but I haven't really known anyone whom I could ask. George wasn't in any of the Services. He has a perforated eardrum and they wouldn't look at him." She looked at me a little angrily. "It wasn't his fault."

  "I haven't said a word."

  "It's all so safe and civilised and cosy," she went on, half dreamily. "All these men, so well mannered and mild and agreeable -- but what's behind it all? Violence and death. They've seen things which you think would drive anyone mad. And yet there's no trace. There's blood on everyone's hands, that's what it amounts to . . . everything so damned insecure -- " I felt her shiver.

  "Don't think about it, love," I said. "The world's full of violence. But it always has been. There's probably someone being killed not ten miles away from here at this very moment -- "

  "Don't remind me," she said.

  "It's different in wartime, too. You didn't have time to be sickened. There was too much to do. Anyway, you can't help anyone by being sensitive."

  "I know, I know," she said impatiently. "Oh God, everything's going so fast. There's no way to stop the merry-go-round. You never feel safe. When I was young I used to feel safe. Even if Father and Mother quarreled, they were kind to me. The house was solid too. That bloody concrete barracks I live in now -- it's so clean and streamlined that I wouldn't be at all surprised if it took to flight."

  "You talk too much," I said, and drew her upon my knees. "Quiet now, not another word." I stroked the smooth skin of her forearm; she closed her eyes and went limp in my arms.

  "You can do that all night," she said. "I won't stop you."She sighed. "You make a lovely seat. I could purr like a cat."

  The smoothness of her arm, the warm weight of her upon my lap; I too could have done it all night. And I could have taken her again; but the act of love was becoming not distasteful, not unnecessary, but only one of a series of pleasures; of pleasures which were solely dependent upon her.

  The doorbell rang; three shorts, one long, three shorts. "Elspeth," I said. I was going to rise, but Alice pulled me back.

  "Don't be so bourgeois," she said. I put my arms more tightly round her.

  Elspeth's head came round the door with a roguish smile on it which would have suited her better in the days when she was touring in A Little Bit of Fluff . She danced rather than walked into the room, her skirt flaring up round her. A heavy smell of Phul-Nana came in with her. "Hello, dears," she said in her husky fruity voice. "Do hope I haven't disturbed you. I try to be discreet, but I had to come in. It's cold outside."

  "I'll make you some tea," Alice said, and went into the kitchen.

  Elspeth threw herself down into an armchair. "Me oh my, what an evening I've had. You not only produce, you teach 'em how to act. Honestly, ducks, they can't understand the simplest thing. I don't know why I went in for the stage, I don't really." She pirouetted to the piano and started to sing "Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington," her husky voice still clear and full.

  She whirled the piano stool round when she'd finished and sat facing me, her hands held outward. "Not that it's anything else but cabaret stuff," she said. "No body in It somehow . . ."

  "If you're not going to give us a concert, you'd better have some food," Alice said from the kitchen.

  "Lovely, dear," Elspeth said. She lowered her voice. "You're a very lucky young man, Joe. Alice is an angel, a real angel. A heart of gold." Her black button eyes were looking at me intently. In the old painted face they were shockingly youthful. She was sitting with her legs slightly apart and her skirt had ridden up above her knee; I turned my eyes away, feeling a little disgusted. Her legs too were the legs of a much younger woman: cut off from the waist, sheer pornography. However full her skirt, Elspeth always gave the impression that it was inadequate.

  She pulled it down over her knees. "I always forget," she said. She smiled at me, her head a little on one side. "If you'd seen that much of me once, you wouldn't have stayed in that chair for very long."

  "I'm sure I wouldn't."

  She blew me a kiss. "Ah, I don't blame Alice. You're the sort of man I like, big and beefy. There's too many pansies about these days. I knew a lot of big men once; they're all dead now and a little skinny thing like me lives on . . ." Her picture-postcard face with the dyed red bubble-curls and the Lillle Langtry nose and chin was sad as a sick monkey's. "It's as if the bigger and stronger they are, the more the illnesses have to feed upon. I remember the night Laird died. I can't breathe, he said, and he started tearing at his collar. Then he just fell, straight forward. My God, the dressing room shook. We picked him up and he was dead. Thirty-five, with his whole life before him. It makes you wonder, don't it?" She lit one of her Turkish cigarettes; the sweet, pungently archaic odour -- The Bing Boys and Romano's and Drury Lane -- filled the room like incense. "He was mad for me to go away with him," she said. "Sometimes I wish I had. My husband wasn't much good even then. I was too independent and he wanted to own me. He was a devil when he was drunk. A big strong man too -- I never could resist big strong men . . . Do you love Alice?"

  "Yes," I said without thinking; the question was so abruptly put that it caught me off balance.

  "I thought you did," she said calmly. "I saw the way she was sitting with you. She doesn't know it yet -- " she put her hand on mine -- "Don't hurt her. Don't hurt her."

  I had a sensation of black water closing over my head; the room seemed airless, too heavily scented, somehow decadent; the raddled, intent face before me was an old witch's, I'd suddenly awaken and find myself turned into an old man and see her laughing at me, a girl again, rosy and plump with my stolen youth.

  She started talking about the old days at Daly's Theatre; I hardly listened because suddenly I wanted to be out of the room, to walk over the moors, to have the wind and the rain in my face.

  When Alice came in with the supper tray, I saw her for a moment as the same kind of person as Elspeth, an inhabitant of a shut-in musty world, tatty as running greasepaint, and the tenderness I had felt evaporated; it seemed impossible that I'd embraced her naked body, that the whole evening hadn't been a rehearsal for some naughty bedroom farce, a bored routine the colour of a provincial theatre's faded gilt and plush.

  12

  The Bar Parlour of the Western Hotel, just opposite the Town Hall, is a remarkable one in its way. It's the best furnished in the place, with cushioned benches and thick grey carpet and glass-topped tables and basket chairs and photos of local cricket and football teams and wallpaper in a soft, subdued orange and grey which is, if you care for that sort of thing, a pleasure to look at. It's for men only; the other rooms, even the Lounge, are rather scruffy, with iron-legged tables and hard benches and Windsor chairs. Consequently the pub is much used by solid businessmen and Town Hall officials, who like to drink without women but who have no taste for the sawdust and spittoons of the taproom. The Western has always been the venue for the Warley NALGO Men's Evening, the Town Hall's annual stag party. The routine is to meet in the Bar Parlour for a couple of pints, have dinner upstairs and a couple more pints, then return to the Bar Parlour for some serious drinking. One unwritten rule of the Men's Evening is to mix with other departments; that evening, I remember, I talked mostly with Reggie from the Library.

  I'd taken Charles's advice and hadn't tried to see Susan since Christmas. I hadn't much hope of his plan working; in fact, I'd almost decided to write her off. But that evening -- probably as a result of the four pints inside me and the odd feelings I'd had about Alice in Elspeth's flat the day before -- I started to daydream. I did the job thoroughly too. There wa
s a letter from Susan inviting me to a party and asking plaintively if she'd done anything to offend me. Or, better still, the doorbell would ring one wild wet evening and she'd be standing there, her face rosy with the wind; perhaps she'd come ostensibly to see the Thompsons on Thespians business or perhaps she might simply say "I had to come, Joe. You'll think I'm shameless but -- " And I'd kiss her and there'd be no need to speak; we'd stand there listening to the rain walling us up into happiness together and then we'd go out to Sparrow Hill -- "I love walking in the rain with you," she'd say -- and we'd walk on and on, the good clean air fresh in our lungs, walking on forever, the fairy story come true . . .

  But it wasn't quite like that. I was sitting in the Bar Parlour with Reggie after dinner, feeling agreeably full of food and beer but not so full that there wasn't room for a few more pints. I'd just finished telling Reggie a dirty story, the sort that one can only tell at stag parties.

  "That's the muckiest I've ever heard," he said admiringly. "Where the devil do you get 'em from, Joe? That reminds me. Ran across Susan the other day."

  "Susan Brown?" I kept my voice flat deliberately.

  "We had quite a cosy little chat. I bought her a coffee at Riley's. After all, if you won't look after the girl, someone's got to. We talked about you most of the time."

  "You couldn't choose a better subject."

  "I don't think so, old man. I kept trying to point out my own merits in a discreet sort of way but it was all Joe Lampton. Isn't Joe handsome, isn't Joe clever, wasn't Joe wonderful in The Farm -- I got sick of it."

  "You're joking."

  "Wish I were. You haven't seen her for a bit, have you?"

  I drained off my pint. "Another?" I tried to keep the triumphant smile off my face.

  "I haven't your monumental capacity," he said. "Just a half, please."

  I beckoned the waiter over. Hoylake came in at that moment, twinkling and dapper. He saw the empty seat beside us and came over. "I'm not intruding, boys?"

  "Not at all," I said. "Won't you have a drink, Mr. Hoylake?"

  "You have one with me, Joe. And you too, Reggie. I only dropped in for five minutes. Must encourage NALGO activities. Though I like mixed events best. All-male social functions have rarely appealed to me. I hope you weren't talking shop. I hate talking shop."

  A little hush had come over the room; but it didn't last long. He wasn't the sort of chief who paralysed conversation; not that I was entirely taken in by his chumminess. It was all very nice of him to call us Joe and Reggie but, I reflected, he wouldn't have been pleased if we'd called him Fred.

  "We were talking about a young lady," Reggie said.

  "Good, good," Hoylake said. He looked over the top of his glasses with mock severity. "You weren't taking her name lightly, I hope?"

  "We were taking her very seriously," Reggie said. "We're deadly rivals for her affections. We contemplate a duel in Snow Park."

  "What crowded lives my colleagues lead," said Hoylake. He lifted his whisky. "All the best, boys."

  "I shall lose both ways," Reggie said. "If I win, she won't have me; I shall have hurt her precious Joe. If I were her I wouldn't look at him. What do you think of a young man who takes a sweet young girl out for months, then drops her flat, Mr. Hoylake?"

  I found myself blushing. "Don't believe a word he says. She couldn't care less."

  "Couldn't care less indeed!" Reggie laughed. There was a look of faint malice on his face. "She lights up when she hears his name. And he just doesn't bother. The best-looking girl in Warley too."

  "They all fall for Joe," Hoylake said. "When he collects the taxes at Gilden all the women come in droves. They pay twice over to have five minutes longer with him." He sighed. "Mind you, when I was younger I'd have given him a run for his money."

  I was thinking about what Reggie had said with increasing jubilation. I shut my mind against entire acceptance of his words; it was possible that her only feeling was one of hurt -- at least slightly damaged -- pride. If I asked her to go out with me again, that would retrieve her pride; if she used some transparently contrived excuse to put me off, she'd be completely revenged. But I knew, almost as soon as these thoughts passed through my head, that they were all nonsense; Susan simply wasn't the vendetta type.

  "The prettiest girl in Warley," Hoylake said ruminatively. "Now, who could that be? Unmarried, I trust. Joe would meet her at the Thespians, I should imagine. Let me see -- her name would begin with an S? Surname with a B? Dark hair and not entirely unconnected with the Chairman of the Finance Committee?"

  "You're a first-rate detective," Reggie said.

  "I'm an old busybody," Hoylake said. "We all are in Warley. Mind you, there's a lot to be said for it even when, though don't quote me -- " he snickered as if deprecating his slight touch of self-importance -- "it takes the form of scandalmongering. It indicates interest in one's fellow humans, which surely is an admirable thing. I'm glad that Joe here is beginning to take some part in the community life of Warley and isn't living outside the town. I thoroughly dislike commuting -- people should live and work in the same place. But here I am, on the verge of talking shop . . . I see your chief, Reggie. I must have a word with him. See you later." He went over to the Librarian; I noticed that he took his drink with him, barely touched. He was paid twice as much as the Librarian, and didn't wish to force him into buying expensive drinks.

  "He's a clever little devil," Reggie said. "Not much he misses. Every move taped out."

  "As long as I get on with him he can be as clever as he likes," I said. "Look, Reggie, are you really serious about Susan? I mean, did she really say all those things?"

  "Why on earth should I joke about it?" He seemed a little indignant. "It's absolutely true. I mentioned The Farm -- and then I talked about your performance. Among others, of course. I wasn't terribly impressed with you -- she absolutely leapt to your defence. From then on, the conversation never left you. She lit up from inside when she talked about you. It's quite unmistakable, that look -- a sort of dopey joyfulness. You're wearing it at present, incidentally."

  "You want another drink," I said hastily.

  "It's my turn. Don't try to sidetrack me."

  "I drink two to your one, so it's fair enough."

  "That's ridiculous," he said weakly, but I could tell that he was relieved. He looked round the room. "Small-town officials. My God, what a crew! You know something, Joe? I'd give a year's salary to get out of this town."

  "I don't agree with you. I'm all for small towns. If they're the right kind."

  "It's all very well for you, chum. You're a bright, efficient type. You stand out in a crowd. You're bound to get ahead in a place like Warley. And, of course, it's a novelty to you. If you'd lived here all your life you'd feel differently."

  "I hate my own hometown," I said. "But that's different. Look, Dufton's awful. It stinks. Literally. It's dead as mutton. Warley's alive. I felt that from the first moment I set foot in the place. And there's so much of it, too; in five minutes you can be right away from everything. It's even got a history; you can find out something fresh about it every day . . ." My voice trailed off; I was giving too much of myself away.

  Reggie smiled. "Anyone'd think you were talking about a woman and not a perfectly ordinary market town with a few mills. You're a funny chap, Joe."

  Teddy Soames came over to our table at that moment. "We're all funny here," he said. He belched loudly. "Excuse me, I'm a trifle intoxicated. Not that I should be. When I was in the RAF, the amount that I've forced down me tonight wouldn't have made me turn one of my Brylcreemed hairs." He sat down heavily. "Roll on the next war."

  "Speak for yourself," Reggie said. "I never was so miserable in my whole life."

  "It was monotonous at times, I grant you that," Teddy said. "But you had no worries and plenty of money. Plenty of beer and plenty of cigarettes and plenty of women. Shall we give them an old RAF song, Joe?" He started to sing softly. "Cats on the rooftops, cats on the tiles -- "

&nb
sp; "Whoa," I said. "It's too early for filthy ballads."

  "I'd forgotten I was respectable," Teddy said. "I've sung that at all the best hotels in Lincolnshire. With Wingcos and Group Captains joining in. Happy happy days!"

  "It may have been like that for you," Reggie said. "As far as I was concerned, war was hell. All I did at first was drill under a blazing sun in itchy woollen underwear. Then I peeled potatoes. Later on I became the British Army's most inefficient clerk. For a while I was quite happy. At least I didn't have to handle loaded weapons and such-like dangerous objects. Then some inhuman planner at the War Office started cutting down administrative staff. So I became the British Army's most frightened infantryman. The day I put on my demob suit was the happiest day of my life. Granted, I came home to discover that the bloody Library Association had made their exams ten times as difficult, thus giving a flying start to the women and the conchies -- "

  "No shop," Teddy said. "The Library Association's shop. Definitely." He looked at me then put out his hand to feel the texture of my suit. "High-grade worsted," he said. "And look at that shirt and tie! My goodness, Mr. Lampton, however do you manage on your coupons?"