Towards the End of the Morning

by Michael Frayn

  Bob stayed away from home every evening, pursuing old Hitchcock films he had seen before to art cinemas in Kilburn, Tooting and Putney, and eating cheaply in Indian and Cypriot restaurants. But she usually heard him creep in, however late it was, and came scratching on the door just as he had got his trousers off, or just as he was scraping her uneaten steak-and-kidney pie into a polythene bag to throw away at the office next day. It embarrassed him to receive her in his dressing-gown. It embarrassed him still more when she arrived dressed for bed herself as well, a complex bundle of diaphanous nightwear from the midst of which her poised cigarette arm stuck out oddly, like an awkward projection emerging from some ill-wrapped Christmas parcel.

  ‘I hope you’re not shy, darling,’ she said, kicking off her high-heeled slippers and snuggling sensuously down into his armchair. ‘You’ve caught me in my frillies.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Bob.

  ‘Still, I’m sure you’ve seen girls in their frillies before. Haven’t you, Bob?’

  Bob made some small, non-committal noise. Mrs Mounce blew out cigarette smoke provocatively, narrowing her eyes against its sting.

  ‘And without, I bet, sweety pie. Oh, you don’t have to tell me. I know you’re not one of these lily-white Mother’s boys. I can tell a real man when I see one, believe me. I could tell you a thing or two, darling, I really could. I may look like a demure little wife who sits at home minding the house, but darling, I could tell you one or two things that would make your ears stand up on end.’

  She was going to get him finally, he could see that. She was going to edge him into a situation where it would be openly discourteous to refuse her, and nothing in his education or his upbringing had prepared him to be discourteous to anyone, least of all a woman. He felt a terrible queasy emptiness in his stomach at the thought; it was as bad as the prospect of Dyson’s going on television. Worse, Mr Mounce had begun to look at him oddly. Or so it seemed to him. When he met him in the office, or on the stairs, his habitually offensive glance seemed to have a new dimension of thoughtfulness. On the Saturday morning Bob came face to face with him as he emerged from the communal bathroom on the first half-landing. ‘I want to have a little chat with you some time, Bob,’ he said. Bob was numbed with fear. To be actually accused point blank by an outraged husband! He had never dreamed that it would happen to him.

  He went out immediately, and stayed out for the rest of the weekend. He had an idea that he would find himself another flat, and he actually called at a number of agencies in the Bays­water area and asked for their lists. The prices were unbelievable. Small bachelor flats were offered at £500, £650, £1,000 a year; plus £1,600 – £2,000 – £2,500 for furniture and fittings. Where did the people who could pay such prices come from? What jobs could they possibly have? How could there be so many of them? Some advertisements asked for only ‘a reasonable figure to cover F & F.’ But how much was that? He could offer them – what? – not more than fifty or sixty pounds altogether. Was that a reasonable figure? He didn’t have the nerve to ask.

  He gave up flat-hunting and went to the cinema. After the cinema he had tea, walked the streets for an hour, had a couple of Guinnesses in a pub to keep out the sharp evening air, and ate a biriani. Then he went to a party. There was a party almost every Saturday night given by someone in his circle of friends. It was that sort of set. A motheaten sort of set, as he frankly recognized – indeed, as they all frankly recognized – left over from Cambridge, and outgrown and abandoned by all its more enterprising members. The remaining half-dozen or so clasped the last tattered shreds of the undergraduate life around them to keep out the cold winds of the world. The party that night was like all their parties. Old Dave Meadows put old Brubeck records on the gramophone. Old Mike Ramsden got out his guitar and sang old Tom Lehrer songs. Old Ian Strachan locked himself in the bedroom with old Caroline Pickthorn, and old Peter Staithes pissed out of the window and threw empty bottles down into the basement area. On Monday morning they would all disappear into the Shell Centre and Unilever House and various grim out-departments of the BBC, yawning rebelliously.

  Bob sat up till three drinking red table wine from a bottle marked Red Table Wine, and talking to old Janet Moss about life and death and their relations with their respective parents. Then he dozed in an armchair for a few hours, until he was too cold and stiff to bear it any longer, when he got up and made tea for everyone, and discovered that there was nothing to eat for breakfast.

  Sunday went by in a haze, long and grey and unreal. He sat over breakfast in a cafeteria for a long time, reading the Sunday papers. He walked round Kensington and Earl’s Court and Chelsea until his feet were sore, met old Mike Ramsden and old Caroline Pickthorn for drinks, had lunch on his own in a spaghetti house, walked again. Afterwards, he remembered that Lots Road power station had smoked whitely into a grey sky, and that along the Embankment a cold wind had been whipping off the river, driving spread-eagled pages from an old newspaper before it, and wrapping one of them round the legs of a tall, frail man in a tweed overcoat.

  After tea he dozed through an old Peter Sellers film at the King’s Road Classic, dined off a biriani, dozed through an old Tati film at the Baker Street Classic, and crept upstairs to his flat just in time to meet Mounce coming downstairs from his den.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mounce. ‘The prodigal returns. I want to have a word with you, lad.’

  ‘All right,’ said Bob. He gave up. He had no fight left.

  Mounce unlocked the flat which had been converted into a bar. He switched on the strip lights behind the bottles, and the electric fire, and poured out two large glasses of whisky. Bob perched on a bar stool, still wearing his overcoat. It was cold in the room, and the air smelt musty and unbreathed.

  ‘The point is this, Bob,’ said Mounce, leaning across the bar towards him and swilling the whisky round in his glass, ‘I’m away a lot, as you know. I’ve got to be. I’m a married man – I’ve got responsibilities. You know what I mean, Bob?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bob, remembering from his childhood just how much it hurt to be punched on the nose.

  ‘The point being that while Dad’s out earning the housekeeping, certain things could conceivably be occurring behind his back. I’m not saying they do. But you know what I’m driving at?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bob. Or perhaps Mounce would punch him in the eye. A flash of light – then darkness – the sight perhaps permanently damaged.

  ‘I mean,’ said Mounce, ‘I’m not going to give you a lot of crap about being pure as the driven snow myself. I’m not saying that. All the same, there are limits. There are some stinking limits. I don’t know whether you’d agree with me on that?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Bob. ‘Yes. Yes, indeed.’

  Mounce swilled his whisky round moodily for some time, as if trying to think what to do next. If he just suddenly hits me without warning, thought Bob, I shall almost certainly go straight over backwards with my feet still caught up in the bar-stool, and split my skull open on the floor.

  ‘Do you see much of Glenda while I’m away?’ asked Mounce.

  ‘No,’ said Bob eagerly. ‘Oh no. Scarcely at all.’

  ‘You never drop in on her?’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘You never ask her in for a drink?’

  ‘No!’

  Mounce frowned. Oh God, thought Bob. It’s all just about to happen.

  ‘You are a rotten sod, Bob,’ said Mounce.

  ‘Honestly, Reg . . .’ began Bob, trying to get one foot down on the floor behind him.

  ‘No, you’re a rotten sod, Bob.’

  ‘I assure you, Reg . . .’

  ‘You’re a rotten, stinking sod. You might just ask her in once in a while. You know, hold her hand and cheer her up a bit. Keep her out of trouble. Do you see what I mean?’

  Bob took a long draught of whisky, spilling some of it down his chin.

  ‘I never thought of it that way,’ he said.

  Dyson had expected to find t
he television studios a blaze of activity in the middle of the evening viewing hours, and humbly anticipated that he would himself be treated as a completely unimportant part of the machine – jostled indifferently in the corridors by actors, musicians, and cameramen, sighed at offensively in the studio by the technicians and professionals. But when he stepped out of the Hunter Snipe which had been sent to pick him up he found that the building was in darkness and apparently deserted. The only light he could see was in the lobby, and the only person in the lobby was an anxious girl with a clipboard who was waiting to greet him personally, and who seemed personally grateful for his skill in getting himself found and driven there by the company’s chauffeur. She led him along deserted, echoing corridors; nothing was happening in the whole enormous building, he realized, but the tiny preparations for this one tiny programme. All the rest of the evening’s television was pre-filmed, pre-taped, or provided by other companies.

  The preparations for The Human Angle, Dyson discovered, were going forward in a room on the first floor furnished with a sea-blue fitted carpet, a number of discreetly abstract paintings, and a walnut sideboard. A dozen or so well-bred men in dark suits – some of them, noted Dyson with interest, wearing Brigade ties – were standing about drinking gin and smiling agreeably at each other’s jokes. A selection of them pressed forward upon Dyson deferentially, introducing themselves, fetching him drinks and salted peanuts. Like the girl with the clipboard, they seemed consumed with gratitude and admiration for his skill in getting there. ‘You got here all right, then?’ they asked anxiously. ‘The driver found you all right? You found your way upstairs without any difficulty?’

  The only person in the room Dyson recognized was de Sousa, the producer, and he seemed to be the least important of them all. There was a woman – presumably Miss Drax, the social worker, and a man with rather dark skin – clearly Williamson, the Trinidadian barrister. Dyson never caught the names of any of the others, or found out what they did, apart from drinking the company’s gin with a reassuring deftness. Dyson assumed they were the company’s directors, bankers, and financial advisers; they all had an air of unassuming integrity and human dignity which in Dyson’s experience was acquired only by daily contact with very large sums of other people’s money. He liked them, he discovered. He liked their deference and he liked their gin, and within ten minutes he was explaining to them exactly how the daily supply of crosswords in a newspaper was maintained. They were fascinated. ‘Really?’ they said. ‘How extraordinarily interesting!’ Dyson began to feel that everything was going to be all right. His pockets were full of remarks to make, and a bottle of bismuth in case he got nervous indigestion. He began to feel that he would not need either.

  Lord Boddy arrived. He was a large, slow-moving man with bushy grey eyebrows and dandruff on his shoulders.

  ‘I must tell you, Lord Boddy,’ said Dyson deferentially, ‘how very much I enjoyed that collection you did of your father’s papers. Of course, I’m a great admirer of all your books.’

  ‘Really?’ said Lord Boddy, pushing up his eyebrows with no less deference in return. ‘It’s very good of you to say so. Most kind, most kind.’

  Deference bred deference. Lord Boddy, grasping his gin-and-tonic in his right hand and talking about the greatness of Asquith, put his left hand in his trouser pocket. A moment later Dyson realized that all the men listening to Lord Boddy had their left hands in their trouser pockets, too. His own left hand, he discovered, was in his trouser pocket. He took it out hastily, lest Lord Boddy noticed it and jumped to the conclusion that Dyson was mimicking him, and transferred it to his jacket pocket. At once Lord Boddy did the same, and one by one, as they listened and nodded, everyone else followed suit. Embarrassed, now that he had noticed what was happening, Dyson removed his hand from his jacket pocket and slipped it inconspicuously behind his back. Boddy, describing very slowly and emphatically how Asquith had died just before he could meet him, put his own hand through the same manoeuvre, and one by one all the other spare left hands disappeared behind their owners’ backs, too. Mutual deference could scarcely be carried further.

  And yet, when Norman Ward Westerman arrived, it was. Dyson could imagine Lord Boddy and the executives gathered around him putting deference aside from time to time in order to get on with the gardening, or to discipline some delinquent guardsman. But Norman Ward Westerman was deference made flesh. When he bent that famous craggy face and strong jaw down from its natural elevation to the level of ordinary human beings it was not to advance any opinions or tell any anecdotes of his own. It was purely to bring his ear reverentially into line with the mouth of whomever was speaking. ‘Exactly,’ he murmured. ‘Exactly.’ And Dyson knew from the depth of humility and reverence in his inflection that he was getting a larger fee than even Lord Boddy. Dyson felt awed by him. He felt awed by Lord Boddy, for that matter, and by the company in general. He felt awed by himself. They were all gods, gathered in godly discourse.

  They moved into the next room, and sat down to dinner. White-jacketed waiters tiptoed reverently around them, pouring hock with the frozen scampi, a claret with a fruity, full-bodied label to go with the reheated roast lamb. ‘Thank you,’ murmured Dyson with heartfelt respect to a waiter at his elbow. ‘Thank you, sir,’ said the waiter. ‘Thank you,’ said Dyson.

  ‘Or take Baldwin,’ Norman Ward Westerman was saying to Lord Boddy. ‘I find him . . . an enigmatic figure. Would you think that was a fair assessment, Frank?’

  ‘Oh, indeed. Indeed, indeed, indeed. I think that’s a very fair assessment of him. It’s rather interesting you should mention Baldwin, as a matter of fact, because I never met him.’

  ‘Didn’t you? That’s extraordinarily interesting.’

  ‘No, I never met Baldwin.’

  ‘You interest me, Frank, because I didn’t know that at all.’

  One of the financial figures was leaning deferentially across the table towards Williamson.

  ‘You don’t happen to know a man called Firmead, do you?’ he said.

  ‘Firmead?’ said Williamson deferentially. ‘Curiously enough I don’t believe I do.’

  ‘David Firmead, to be precise.’

  ‘Curiously enough I don’t believe I’ve ever met him.’

  ‘He was in Trinidad for some time last year. Something to do with oil, I think.’

  ‘Really? How very interesting.’

  ‘I just thought you might have run across him. Awfully nice man. We were at school together.’

  ‘Really? That is most interesting.’

  The financial figure turned his head slightly to include Miss Drax in the conversation.

  ‘You don’t know him, do you, by any chance?’ he asked. ‘A man called Firmead, David Firmead?’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Miss Drax, ‘I don’t think I can honestly say I do.’

  ‘Awfully nice man,’ said the financial figure.

  Dyson felt he had grasped enough of the general principles of the conversation between Boddy and Williamson to risk joining in himself.

  ‘I find Halifax a curiously intriguing figure,’ he said when there was a pause. ‘I don’t know whether you’d agree?’

  Westerman swung round in his chair to give Dyson his full attention.

  ‘I think that is an awfully good point,’ he said. ‘Halifax is a figure who intrigues me, too. Do you find Halifax at all intriguing, Frank? Or do you feel that there’s nothing really interesting about him?’

  ‘No, I think as Mr Dyson says, Halifax is an extraordinarily intriguing figure. Most extraordinarily intriguing. But do you know, Norman, in all the years that Halifax held office I never met him once.’

  ‘Really?’ said Westerman. ‘That is absolutely fascinating.’

  ‘Not once.’

  ‘That is most incredibly interesting,’ said Dyson.

  The meal went by like a dream. Dyson felt as though that small room, surrounded by the dark emptiness of the studios, was the one speck of warmth and life
in an unpeopled universe. Of course, there were other subsidiary settlements if one stopped to think. Somewhere in the building was a room where a hired chef was unfreezing the scampi, reheating the meat, and opening the giant economy can of fruit salad. Somewhere there was a studio with five black leather armchairs waiting. But the real richness of life was concentrated here – brilliant conversation, warm mutual esteem, a man who had not known Baldwin or Halifax, and good claret warmed by discreet waiters on some radiator well out of sight. This, realized Dyson with a sense of homecoming, was where he belonged; this was the way of life for which his character and education had fitted him.

  ‘Norman,’ said de Sousa as the coffee and brandy were being poured, ‘I wonder if we ought perhaps to have just a tiny natter about the programme.’

  ‘I think that would be an awfully good idea, Jack,’ said Westerman. He took some cyclostyled papers out of his pocket and looked at them. ‘Well, as I understand it, Jack – tell me if I’m wrong – we open with the credits on telecine. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ said de Sousa, lighting a small cigar.

  ‘Then we come up on me in the studio. I say, “Good evening. The film you’re about to see is the record of a remarkable experiment in blah blah blah . . .” ’

  ‘All on Autocue.’

  ‘All on Autocue. Then we have the film. Then we come back to me in the studio and I say, “The film you have just seen was an attempt to blah blah blah. Now we have here in the studio tonight four people who are vitally and personally concerned with the problems of living in a multiracial community. On my right is Lord Boddy, who was a member of the Royal Commission on blah blah blah . . .” ’

  ‘And you go right round the table.’

  ‘And I go right round the table. Then I’ll turn to you, Frank, and say, “Lord Boddy, what do you think of the experiment we have just seen? Do you think it holds out a ray of hope among the problems which perplex us all so sorely today?” ’