Towards the End of the Morning

by Michael Frayn

  ‘I’m a writer?’ said Bob.

  ‘I didn’t know you were a writer, Bob,’ said Jannie.

  ‘Bob is a marvellous writer!’ said Dyson, his voice almost breaking with emotion at his own generosity. ‘Perhaps a great writer.’

  ‘I didn’t know I was a writer,’ said Bob.

  ‘Bob, you’re a wonderful writer!’ cried Dyson.

  ‘But I haven’t written anything,’ said Bob uneasily. ‘Have I?’

  ‘Exactly! Exactly!’ Dyson leaned forward in great excitement. ‘And why haven’t you written anything? Because you’re slaving away in that little office all day doing stupid, piddling little jobs for me! That’s why!’

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t say that . . .’

  ‘I drive you hard, Bob. I realize that. I make you work like a dog. He writes like an angel, Jannie! And I make him work like a dog! I drive you hard because I drive myself hard, Bob . . .’

  ‘Really, John, you’re very reasonable . . .’

  ‘No, no, I’m a slavedriver and I know it. But don’t think I don’t understand what it costs, because I do. You haven’t written anything, Bob, because you haven’t got the right conditions of life because you’re not well-known.’

  ‘But look, John . . .’

  ‘I know you both think I’m an egotistical shit, going on about wanting to be famous. But it’s not just for myself . . .’

  ‘You want everyone to be famous?’ asked Jannie.

  ‘Everyone who has something to offer the world! I want to liberate myself from the tyranny of the BBC Overseas Service, certainly. But I also want Bob to become well-known, so that he can liberate himself from me.’

  ‘What about me?’ asked Jannie. ‘Do you want me to become famous and liberate myself from you?’

  Dyson put down his knife and fork, frowning, his exaltation all turned to dust.

  ‘All right, pick holes,’ he said sulkily. ‘All right, I haven’t got my ideas completely worked out and watertight. I know that.’

  He pushed his plate away.

  ‘Aren’t you going to have any more?’ asked Jannie.

  ‘It’s too rich for me – it always gives me indigestion. I don’t know why you keep serving it.’

  Jannie cleared the plates away, catching Bob’s eye for a moment and pushing her bottom lip up in mock guilt. Bob looked quickly away, trying not to smile. Dyson sat pouting and rubbing his hands together, glaring down at various parts of the table.

  ‘Shall we take our puddings into the next room and watch television?’ suggested Jannie.

  ‘Why don’t we?’ said Bob.

  ‘Load of shit,’ said Dyson.

  ‘There might be a discussion about the colour problem,’ said Jannie.

  ‘Oh, very sarcastic.’

  ‘It’s the old movie tonight,’ said Bob.

  ‘Oh, go and switch it on then, Bob!’ said Jannie.

  ‘Condescending lowbrows,’ said Dyson sourly. ‘Highbrow lowbrows. No – not even genuine highbrow lowbrows. Middlebrow highbrow lowbrows.’

  The old movie sent Dyson to sleep. Bob looked round to say something to him, and there he was, in the flickering bluish light from the screen, with his head back and his mouth open.

  ‘We shouldn’t have insisted,’ said Bob.

  ‘No, he must have been enjoying it,’ said Jannie. ‘He always goes to sleep when he’s enjoying something. Open another bottle of beer, Bob.’

  ‘Will you have some?’

  Jannie was absorbed in the film again.

  ‘I’ll have a sip,’ she said eventually. ‘What’s the name of the girl who’s playing the reporter? I don’t mean Myrna Loy, do I?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Bob, pouring the beer. ‘I know who it is. I’ll think of her name in a minute.’

  He settled back in his armchair with his beer, full of mutton and beans and well-being. He felt as though there were a space for him in the universe, and he exactly filled it.

  ‘I don’t mean Carole Lombard, do I?’ said Jannie.

  ‘No, no. The name’s on the tip of my tongue.’

  White telephones were brought to night-club tables. Stars were surrounded by reporters as they emerged from stage doors. Tycoons snarled. Eyes sparkled mistily. There were skyscrapers and luxury suites.

  Life was suspended . . .

  Once Damian cried out in his sleep, and fell silent again. Once Dyson snorted, and Jannie leaned over and stroked his hair.

  ‘It’s not Jean Arthur, is it?’ she said.

  ‘No. I think the brother’s the bloke who was in The Philadelphia Story.’

  ‘Was that the one with Katherine Hepburn?’

  ‘No – the one with Katherine Hepburn was the one with Cary Grant.’

  From somewhere outside at one point there came a distant rumble and chinking, like old milk bottles clashing together.

  ‘Is that the rubbish coming over the wall?’ asked Bob.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we wake John up and tell him?’

  ‘He’ll find out soon enough.’

  Bob opened another bottle of beer.

  ‘Poor John,’ said Jannie.

  Dyson drove Bob home in the old Standard Vanguard, through the dank, dead streets of the inner suburbs, yellow under the sodium lights. Bob felt comforted by their calm and familiar variety. Yellow high streets, with yellow electrical shops, and in the windows of the multiple tailors blank-faced dummies leaning discreetly forward in eggily dark worsted. Yellow Victorian mansions, with their front gardens asphalted over to make yellow parking areas for the flatholders’ yellow cars. Now it was mercury vapour country. Bluish second-hand car lots; sagging bluish fences; bluish Unitarian churches; small bluish factories, some Odeon-fronted, some glassed and rectilinear, but set at odd bluish angles to their surroundings. Now they were back among the sodium, passing yellow pre-war flats – Keeps, Courts, and Mansionses, with yellow gables and yellow weather­boarding.

  There were few people about, but many cars. As soon as they got within range of Dyson everyone seemed to drive badly. They overtook him when he wasn’t expecting it; they pulled up at the side of the road and trapped him behind them; they got in front of him at traffic-lights and then decided to turn right. ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ snarled Dyson, snatching at the wheel, thumping the accelerator up and down uncertainly. He sat forward tensely in his seat, as if he found it difficult to see the road, and frequently wiped at the windscreen with his handkerchief. At one point something heavy fell off or out of the dashboard on to Bob’s foot, and rolled away beneath the seat with a metallic ring. Dyson peered down into the darkness after it, driving the car steadily out across the white line in the middle of the road.

  ‘Don’t worry about that, Bob,’ he said. ‘That’s always coming off. Incidentally, Bob, those brown patches on the wings aren’t rust, you know.’

  ‘Which brown patches, John?’

  ‘I thought I saw you looking at them before we started. They look like rust – it fooled me at first. But it’s rather interesting – it’s brown undercoat. It’s quite remarkable when you come to think about it. The car’s fifteen years old, it stands out in all weathers, and the undercoat’s still intact.’

  ‘Remarkable.’

  ‘Of course, it’s not just the paintwork. Everything was built to a slightly higher specification then. They hadn’t learned to cut quite so many corners. It’s worth remembering, Bob, if you ever buy a car.’

  Dyson swung left into a main road, looking over his shoulder to watch out for traffic from his right, and drove over the edge of the kerb. The thump of the back wheel coming back into the gutter brought Bob’s window down.

  ‘Jam it with that wedge of paper,’ said Dyson. ‘I suppose some damned fool left a brick lying in the gutter.’

  In the middle of a yellow common the engine died, and the car rolled jerkily to a halt.

  ‘That’s funny,’ said Dyson. He pressed the starter. He pressed it again. He went on pressing it until the
starter-engine ground to a halt. Then they sat in silence for some moments.

  ‘George God strikes again,’ said Bob.

  In a sudden access of enraged energy, Dyson jumped out of the car, slammed the door violently behind him, and wrenched the bonnet open. Bob followed him apprehensively. Dyson was glaring into the hot, oily darkness of the engine as if he was about to smash it to pieces with his bare hands.

  ‘Perhaps it was that bump we went over,’ said Bob hesitantly.

  Dyson straightened up and transferred his glare to Bob.

  ‘Do you know anything at all about cars?’ he asked curtly.

  ‘No, John.’

  ‘Then be a good fellow, will you, and try not to make imbecile remarks.’

  Dyson bent over the engine again.

  ‘If you want to know,’ he said, ‘it’s probably the points. Or something to do with the plugs.’

  He put his hand into the engine, touched something hot, and sprang back a pace.

  ‘Christ!’ he hissed, sucking his knuckles.

  ‘John,’ said Bob, ‘may I ask a very naïve question? Are you sure it hasn’t just run out of petrol?’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Bob,’ said Dyson, peering into the engine and trying to see what it was he had touched.

  ‘But would it perhaps just be worth looking at the petrol gauge?’

  Dyson straightened up slowly.

  ‘Look, Bob,’ he said. ‘I’m extremely tired. I’m extremely angry. I’m extremely likely to hit you. Every single thing without exception has gone wrong today. It’s been the most awful day of my life. And now you pester me with idiot suggestions about something you know nothing whatsoever about.’

  He plunged back into his contemplation of the engine. Bob did not like to remind him that up till then it had been an awfully good day for him, on which every single thing without exception had gone right.

  He crept inconspicuously back to the dashboard, switched on the ignition, and looked at the gauge.

  ‘The gauge doesn’t work,’ snapped Dyson. ‘I know precisely how much petrol I’ve got because I know precisely how much I’ve put in and precisely how many miles I’ve been. I put in two gallons on Saturday, and I can tell you for a fact there’s at least quarter of a gallon left. I hope that satisfies you.’

  When Dyson was hidden beneath the bonnet again Bob tiptoed round to the boot and eased it open. Beneath a heap of old rags and newspapers and raincoats he found an empty petrol can. He put it under his overcoat, gently closed the boot, and tiptoed away along the yellow pavement in search of a yellow garage.

  ‘I’m not waiting for you,’ shouted Dyson when he was about fifty yards away. ‘As soon as I’ve got the car going I’m off.’

  Dyson undressed quietly in the dark, so as not to wake Jannie, sighing loudly in the hope that it would. As he got into bed she rolled over towards him and put her arms round him.

  ‘What time is it?’ she asked sleepily.

  ‘Half past one,’ said Dyson. ‘I ran out of petrol.’

  She ran her hand down over his chest and stomach, and seized him softly and irresistibly by the roots.

  ‘No, Jannie,’ he said. ‘No, really . . . No, honestly, I’m terribly tired . . . No, honestly, Jannie, I shall be absolutely deadbeat tomorrow as it is . . . Now, Jannie . . . ! Jannie . . . ! Well, look, Jannie . . . Well, I suppose . . . Just . . . Oh, well . . .’

  Five

  Dyson made thorough preparations for his television appearance. All weekend he drove about the outer suburbs with Jannie and the boys, calling on relatives and letting fall the news in the course of conversation.

  ‘The poor old souls like to know what one’s doing,’ he explained to Jannie, as they jerked along in the traffic stream between aunt and aunt.

  At the office during the week he found circumstances made it necessary for him to ring most of his influential friends and acquaintances – Sims, the paper’s tame QC; Sir William Paice; Brent-Williamson, the Literary Editor; Huysmanns at the French Embassy. ‘I hope you’ll be watching the box on Thursday night,’ he said to each of them in a humorous voice. ‘What? Well, I’m going to be on . . . Yes! Isn’t it preposterous? 10.45 on the commercial – some ghastly programme called The Human Angle.’

  Bob’s gaze disconcerted him. He would turn his back on him while he was talking, or look down smiling into the mouthpiece.

  ‘It’s naughty of me, I know,’ he would say as he put the phone down. Or: ‘I’m sorry, Bob. I’m behaving outrageously.’

  And he would dial another number.

  He also gave some serious thought to how he should look. Should he lean forward passionately and denounce things? Or should he sit back in his chair and smile calmly at the idiocies of mankind? He rehearsed a calm smile in front of the mirror at home; it looked like an apologetic grin. He tried an expression of passionate commitment; it came out indistinguishable from defensive surliness. Either way, his fingertips became moist with sweat at the thought of producing the expression in front of the television cameras.

  There was also the question of what he was going to say. He began to note down suitable thoughts and epigrams on pieces of office copy-paper, not really with the intention of learning them off by heart, but with the idea that he might put them in his jacket pocket and touch them from time to time during the programme to give himself reassurance, knowing that if the worst really came to the worst he could take them out and refresh his memory.

  ‘T prob of t multiracial soc,’ he wrote, ‘is in ess merely t mod versn of t time-hon prob of unitg tribes in nationhd.’

  The real problem was to avoid the obvious. He was not being paid twenty-five guineas to tell people what they could manage to think out themselves for nothing.

  ‘T troub is,’ he tried, ‘tt we aren’t prej enough! Shd educ ourselves to be dply & bttrly prej – agnst prej!’

  He tried it over uneasily in front of the mirror. If one of his deans or canons had written it in a Meditation he would have read it out to Bob in a mock-clerical voice, and deleted it, snarling. However, this was a television programme, not a newspaper article. Different criteria applied.

  The trouble was that they would all agree with each other. They would all sit round deploring racial prejudice and suggesting how to avoid it. Perhaps he should try to play the devil’s advocate? He noted down one or two cautiously controversial points. ‘Mst try to undrstnd att of man whse hse val falls. – Ind ckng delightfl but hly fragrnt. – Mst admt I pers h diff in undrstndg next-dr neighbr’s Eng.’

  He would keep the liberal thoughts in his lefthand pocket, he decided, and the provocative ones in his right-hand pocket. Then he would be able to put his hand immediately on whatever he required. And jokes, of course – he’d need jokes. He could keep a list of jokes in his inside breast pocket. The idea of race opened up a few humorous possibilities. Something about the three-legged race, perhaps, or the egg-and-spoon race? Bn estab by scientists tt all races are of eql intell, except prhps egg-&-spn race. Something along those lines. Professionalism, that was what counted – thorough, serious preparation for even the most informal and evanescent of undertakings.

  Whenever Dyson’s phone rang that week it was the television company. Could he give them a few facts about himself for the company’s press release? They hoped that he would be able to join the other participants for dinner at the studios beforehand. A car would be sent for him at seven-thirty. The final members of the team had now been settled – Miss Ruth Drax, a social worker, and Mr Lewis Williamson, a barrister from Trinidad. The car would be coming at eight. A list of likely topics of discussion was on its way to him by post. The car would now be calling for him at seven.

  Every time the phone rang Dyson’s fingers became moist with sweat. So did Bob’s. Every time Dyson looked at himself in the kitchen mirror, trying to imagine it was a television screen, his stomach and Jannie’s stomach turned over in unison. Jannie was beginning to doubt whether she actually would be able to bring herself to watch the
programme.

  ‘Would you like to go round and hold Jannie’s hand on Thursday night, Bob?’ said Dyson at the office one morning. ‘I’d be awfully obliged if you would. She’s in a terrible state about the whole thing, poor poppet.’

  ‘I’m in rather a state about it myself, John,’ said Bob.

  ‘You can hold each other’s hand, then. I’m in a frightful state about it, too, and there’s no one to hold my hand. It’s funny – I never get in a state about doing radio programmes. Do you, Bob?’

  ‘I don’t do radio programmes, John.’

  ‘Of course you don’t. I get a few qualms just before the green light comes on. Nothing to worry about, though. But I must admit, when I think about Thursday night I feel absolutely sick with nerves. Do you do any television, Bob? I can’t remember.’

  ‘You know I don’t, John.’

  ‘You’re very sensible, Bob. Take my advice – stick to good old steam radio.’

  Bob had troubles enough of his own.

  ‘Bob my darling,’ wrote Tessa. ‘What a strange letter you wrote me! I know it’s very stupid of me, but I couldn’t understand what it was supposed to be about at all. Did John Dyson really have a fight with a man called Cox, or did you make all that up? It was all like something you read in a book. My private idea, which I hardly dare mention in case I’ve got it all wrong, is that you were copying the style of some book or other to see if I would recognize it. Darling Bob, don’t be cross if I haven’t got it right, but is it one of your beloved American writers? Is it supposed to be someone like John dos Passos or James Joyce?’

  And Mrs Mounce was crowding him closer and closer. She had got a key to his room out of Dotty, as she had threatened. She came and went while he was out, tidying up, laying the table for his evening meal, and no doubt reading his letters and looking in his drawers to see if he had a rupture belt, or kept a stock of contraceptives. She left dishes she had cooked for him, with notes underneath them. ‘Have a good nosh darling,’ said the notes, or: ‘Sorry Bob I broke the milk jug, I will get you another.’ ‘Have borrowed one of your Frank Chacksfield records, promise faithfully not to scratch it.’ And, under not a dish but his pillow, folded into his pyjamas: ‘How’s the bite Bob, sorry but you did ask for it sweetie.’