Towards the End of the Morning

by Michael Frayn

  Dyson suddenly turned on old Eddy Moulton, silencing him with the sourness of his expression.

  ‘You never went on a gas-main explosion in Newark, Eddy,’ he said irritably. ‘You’re getting mixed up with one of your “In Years Gone By” columns.’

  Old Eddy Moulton stared at Dyson, his mouth slightly open.

  ‘You did a fifty-years-ago about a gas-main explosion in Newark the week before last,’ said Dyson. ‘Don’t you remember?’

  ‘I went to Newark on the story, too,’ said old Eddy Moulton.

  ‘You’re getting mixed up, Eddy.’

  ‘That was my own story I put in the column,’ said old Eddy Moulton stubbornly.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Eddy!’ snapped Dyson. He jumped to his feet and walked quickly out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Old Eddy Moulton looked at Bob, who looked away.

  ‘I was only trying to cheer him up,’ said old Eddy Moulton.

  The rain had almost stopped, but various projections over the pavement in Fleet Street dripped on Dyson as he passed, wetting the lenses of his spectacles and making it difficult for him to see where he was going. He had decided to show himself to the crowd, and take the plunge into the humiliation that was awaiting him.

  He walked with self-conscious haste up the south side of the street towards Temple Bar, staring into the face of everyone coming the opposite way, challenging them to give any sign of their pity and contempt. It was difficult to know whether they recognized him or not. Every time he removed his glasses to wipe the rain off them he could see that everyone was taking advantage of his shortsightedness to stare at him and grin and point. But as soon as he got his glasses back on again, they had all smoothed the hazy, unfocused grins off their faces and seemed intent on their own affairs. Several times he swung round suddenly to see if people were turning to stare at him from behind. They seemed not to be, but it was difficult to be sure that they had not simply managed to turn away again in time. Outside the Lord’s Day Observance Society he caught the eye of a tall girl with a red face, who looked quickly away. He jerked his own head away almost as fast, galvanized by the shock of embarrassment. That had been recognition all right. That had been a pointed enough comment, by God! Or had she thought he was staring at her? He stopped, confused, by the bus stop opposite the Protestant Truth Society, and gazed unseeingly at the list of routes. Suddenly he realized that everyone in the queue was staring at him with frank interest and uninhibited hostility. This was it, then! They hated him! He had tried to rise above them, and had fallen back among them, there to be hated once for his attempt, and twice for his failure! He hurried away, his heart beating fast, shocked but obscurely satisfied by this revelation. He was across the road and halfway back down Fleet Street before it occurred to him that they had been staring at him like that because they thought he was trying to push in at the head of the queue.

  He went into an espresso bar and drank some coffee. No one turned round to look at him. He was a failure, certainly. Failure, it occurred to him, was the secular equivalent of sin. Modern secular man was born into a world whose moral framework was composed not of laws and duties, but of tests and comparisons. There were no absolute outside standards, so standards had to generate themselves from within, relativistically. One’s natural sense of inadequacy could be kept at bay only by pious acts of repeated successfulness. And failure was more terrifying than sin. Sin could be repented of by an act of volition; failure could not be disposed of so easily. Sin could be avoided by everyone, if he chose, but failure could not. For there to be any who succeeded, there had to be some who failed; there was no better without worse. The worse had their function. Without himself, thought Dyson, or at any rate the possibility of himself, Norman Ward Westerman would be unadmired, unloved, and unrewarded.

  ‘Seen you somewhere before, haven’t I, squire?’ said a weary young man in a coffee-stained white jacket who was clearing the tables, without any great interest.

  ‘Possibly,’ said Dyson, feeling himself flushing at once with apprehension and pleasure. The young man sank slowly into the seat opposite him, and got out a cigarette.

  ‘Yes, I seen you somewhere all right,’ he said. ‘Not in here.’

  ‘No, I haven’t been in here before.’

  ‘Where was it, then, Captain? Up the Oasis, was it?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Down the club, was it?’

  Dyson discovered that he wanted the young man to know where it was more than he wanted him not to know.

  ‘I do a certain amount of television,’ he said offhandedly, with a slight disclaiming smile. The young man went on staring at him; the idea that he had seen Dyson on television seemed to be too far-fetched even to penetrate his consciousness.

  ‘No, I seen you somewhere, Captain,’ he said.

  Dyson’s slight disclaiming smile vanished.

  ‘Yes,’ he said rather irritably; ‘On television.’

  The young man rose slowly to his feet, and took Dyson’s empty coffee-cup back to the counter. He gazed mournfully out of the window into Fleet Street for some minutes.

  ‘Up the Streatham ice-rink, was it?’ he suggested.

  Not to have achieved recognition as a failure, felt Dyson, was almost worse than the failing itself. It made him feel that he had failed even at failing.

  When Dyson got back to the office old Eddy Moulton had subsided into sleep again.

  ‘Thank God,’ muttered Dyson to Bob intensely. ‘I don’t think I could have stood any more of that this morning.’

  He sat down and plunged himself into his work. The item uppermost on his desk was a note in his own handwriting which said: ‘Straker hol – chck Daw 1st 2 pts Pelling’s chchiness.’ What the hell was that supposed to mean? He looked up, frowning, and saw that Bob was gazing at him apprehensively.

  ‘I’ve been walking up and down Fleet Street, if you want to know,’ he said, ‘to see whether I could still show my face in public. Did somebody get some copy out of Morley?’

  ‘It’s promised for tomorrow,’ said Bob.

  ‘I’m sick of Morley. He’s not a real professional.’

  ‘He’s a canon, John.’

  ‘He’s a stupid little prick. I’m not going to use him any more. That’s final.’

  He scrabbled angrily among the papers and galleys on his desk until he found the copy-pad, and wrote on it: ‘Morley stpd lttle prck. Rmmbr n to use.’

  Where had he been, when Bob had interrupted him? Oh, yes, looking at this note about Straker. ‘Pelling’s chchiness’? What in the name of God could that be? Well, he hadn’t time to mess around unriddling Pelling’s tomfooleries. He screwed the note up and threw it in the general direction of the waste-paper basket. Bob was still looking at him.

  ‘How about a bite of lunch, John?’ Bob asked anxiously.

  ‘I don’t want any bloody lunch,’ said Dyson, thinking of the usual crowd standing round in the Gates. It didn’t matter if you made a fool of yourself in front of strangers – he saw that now. It probably didn’t matter much if you did it in front of your friends. The shameful thing was doing it in front of strangers, and being seen by your friends in the process.

  He turned to the next item on his desk, a note on top of a copy-pad which said: ‘Morley stpd lttle prck. Rmmbr n to use.’ What drivel was this? He tore it off and threw it at the waste-paper basket. The next thing was a memorandum from Bill Waddy, the News Editor, which said: ‘Your department’s turn, I think.’ Clipped to the back was a letter headed ‘Magic Carpet Travel Limited. Specialist consultants in all forms of travel management.’

  ‘Dear Sir,’ said the letter. ‘Magic Carpet Travel announce with pride the opening of an entirely new sunshine holiday area – the Trucial Riviera. The exotic shores of Trucial Oman, washed by the warm sparkling waters of the Persian Gulf, and rich in all the Arabian Nights romance of the Middle East, offer something unique in holiday experience to the get-away-from-it-all holidaymaker . . .

/>   ‘To celebrate this remarkable new breakthrough in British holiday technology, we are inviting the Press to join us on a special round trip to Sharjah, the Pearl of the Trucial Riviera, next month . . .’

  Whose turn was it for a facilities trip? Bob had had the Bulgarian State Non-Ferrous Metals Trust jamboree the previous month, and he’d had the Cosmosair inaugural to Saarbrucken himself. It was old Eddy’s turn.

  ‘Eddy,’ he said, ‘would you like a little jaunt to Trucial Oman? Eddy?’

  No reply. Well, to hell with him. If he chose to be asleep when the lollipops were handed round, that was his lookout. Dyson couldn’t be expected to wetnurse his staff – he’d far too much on his hands already. In fact, he’d do the trip himself. He desperately needed a holiday. The Saarbrucken trip had been a disaster; it had rained continuously. In fact, it had just added to his burdens. He was ill with overwork. He really was. He was suffering from insomnia and hypertension. And now his tlvsn apprnce (his mind sheered off identifying it more fully even to himself) had finally set the seal on it all. His health was breaking down.

  ‘I couldn’t eat any lunch if you paid me,’ he said.

  ‘We could go to the Mucky Duck for a change,’ said Bob.

  Dyson sat hypertensely clenching and unclenching his fingers, trying to think of a headline with no more than ten characters for a piece about the dangers of the exaggeratedly indifferentist liturgical tendencies inherent in ecumenicalism. He could remember a time when he had fallen asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, and when he had always had a healthy appetite. By half past twelve each day he had had a hunger pain. He had a pain in his stomach now, ironically enough, which felt almost exactly like a hunger pain. He knew what it was. It was the irritation of overstrained nerves. The stomach acid, with no food to work on, was quietly starting to digest and ulcerate the stomach lining.

  ‘Perhaps I ought to try and eat something,’ he said, ‘to give the stomach acid something to work on.’

  He jumped up hypertensely.

  ‘The Mucky Duck?’ said Bob, getting to his feet too.

  Dyson shook his head impatiently.

  ‘The Gates, the Gates, the Gates,’ he said. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

  ‘Aren’t you on television tonight, John?’ asked Gareth Holmroyd, as they all stood round gazing into their beer, trying to think of something to say.

  ‘It was last night,’ said Dyson.

  Ralph Absalom looked interested.

  ‘Did you say you were on television tonight, John?’ he asked.

  ‘Last night, last night,’ said Dyson.

  ‘Last night? Well, I wish you’d told me beforehand.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I’d have stayed in and watched if you’d told me. Did you see John on the box last night, Andy?’

  ‘No,’ said Andy Royle. ‘I didn’t know you were going on television, John?’

  ‘I knew,’ said Gareth Holmroyd. ‘But I thought it was tonight.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were on, John,’ said Pat Selig. ‘I didn’t know he was on. Did you, Lucy?’

  ‘I knew he was on,’ said Gareth Holmroyd. ‘But I thought he said it was tonight.’

  Everyone looked into his beer.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Gareth Holmroyd finally, ‘how did it go, John?’

  ‘Terrible,’ said Dyson.

  ‘He was very good,’ said Bill Waddy, arriving with more drinks for people. ‘He was very good indeed.’

  ‘You saw him, did you, Bill?’ said Andy Royle.

  ‘No, I missed him, unfortunately,’ said Bill Waddy. ‘Old Harry Stearns told me.’

  ‘John was very good,’ said Bob, who had told old Harry Stearns­ that he was very good in the first place.

  ‘You saw him, did you, Bob?’ said Ted Hurwitz.

  ‘Yes. He was very good.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bill Waddy, ‘old Harry Stearns said he was very good.’

  ‘Yes, he was,’ said Bob. ‘Very good.’

  ‘I was terrible,’ said Dyson.

  ‘You were very good, John,’ said Bill Waddy. ‘Old Harry Stearns told me.’

  ‘Good for you, John,’ said Pat Selig.

  ‘What was the programme about?’ asked Gareth Holmroyd.

  ‘The colour problem,’ said Dyson.

  ‘Well, anyway,’ said Gareth Holmroyd, ‘I’m glad you made a good job of it.’

  It rained on and off most of the afternoon. Dyson sat back in his chair watching it, yawning, his hands behind his head. He was in a rather more agreeable mood. Jannie, Bob, old Harry Stearns, Bill Waddy, Gareth Holmroyd – they could scarcely all be wrong. In fact, if one tried to think about it objectively, they were likely to have been able to make a more accurate assessment of his performance than he could himself. One couldn’t help being over-critical of one’s own performance. One knew just how much labour and effort had gone into it. One knew exactly where there had been difficulties and compromises behind the scenes. But Jannie and Bob and old Harry Stearns and Bill Waddy and Gareth Holmroyd saw only what was put before them, which was in fact all that counted. And of course he had been extremely relaxed and natural, he could see that. He had been very fluent and articulate.

  ‘Do you believe in success and failure, Bob?’ he asked, yawning.

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Bob, not looking up from his work. He was subbing an article by a reader, rewriting it in the style laid down by the paper for reader’s articles. ‘There is a lack of good first-hand information about the opportunities for cruising in the Barents and Kara Seas,’ began the original version. The paper didn’t like that sort of opening in a reader’s article; it gave a rather professional and businesslike air to what was after all really just another little essay on the pleasures of messing about in boats. ‘Little did we realize,’ wrote Bob, ‘when we blithely set sail from Petsamo in Lady Jane, our trusty converted Car­marthen mussel boat, with plenty of paints and modelling clay to keep the children busy, and a supply of special seasick pills for Jason, the children’s calm terrier, exactly what fate had in store for us.’

  ‘Do you think competitiveness is just an aspect of the society we live in, Bob?’ said Dyson. ‘Or do you think it’s absolutely endemic in man?’

  ‘I don’t know, John.’

  Dyson yawned.

  ‘I think I’m really competitive by nature,’ he said. ‘I have a tremendous fundamental urge to get out and make my way in the world. Do you feel that, Bob?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, of course, you’re a writer. It’s different for you. I’m merely an administrator, an organizer. It’s natural for me to be more aggressive and pushing. I make no apology for it.’

  He yawned again, uncontrollably.

  ‘God, I’m really going to make a resolution about no beer for lunch,’ he said. One fought and struggled, he thought. Sometimes one had terrible doubts about how one was doing. But one tried to put a good face on it and keep them to oneself. One could not afford to admit to weaknesses, the competition was so ruthless. Once one had slipped, no helping hands would be extended. Well, he liked it like that. He welcomed it.

  And what happened if you failed to make the grade? You ended up like poor old Eddy Moulton, put out to pasture in some quiet department where nobody bothered to talk to you, doing small unworthy chores and dozing the day away. Dyson looked at old Eddy, head down behind the dusty newspaper files, nothing visible of him but his tousled white hair. Who knew now, or cared, what old Eddy had done in his prime? What stories he had beaten the great Stanford Roberts on, or even whether Stanford Roberts had been great after all? Well, thought Dyson suddenly, he cared. Old Eddy meant something to him. He would take him to the Gates that evening and get him talking. He would ask him about Stanford Roberts. About Walter Cunningham and Sidney Naylor. Just get him talking, and then listen, really listen, while old Eddy disinterred one man’s life from the dust of time, and put it together again before his eyes.

  There was something abo
ut old Eddy’s appearance which had been worrying Dyson subconsciously for some minutes, and he suddenly realized what it was.

  ‘Eddy,’ he said sharply, leaning forward and bringing the front legs of his chair down on to the floor with a crash, so that Bob looked up startled.

  ‘Eddy!’ said Dyson, scrambling to his feet and going across to Eddy’s desk. ‘Eddy!’

  He hesitated, frightened of making an embarrassing mistake, then felt the wrinkled white hand lying on Eddy’s desk top.

  ‘Fetch someone, Bob!’ said Dyson. ‘I think Eddy’s ill!’

  From the scared tone of Dyson’s voice, Bob knew that what he meant was that he thought Eddy was dead.

  People kept phoning up, after the body had been removed, and Dyson and Bob were rushing to catch up and finish preparing the copy that had to be set overnight.

  ‘I hear you were on the box last night,’ said small, cheerful voices in Dyson’s ear. ‘I’m told you were rather good.’

  ‘Very kind of you to say so,’ Dyson would reply, not knowing what else to do, but turning his back for shame on Bob and poor old Eddy’s empty desk. ‘I’m glad your wife enjoyed it . . . Yes, I enjoyed doing it . . . Well, I thought it went off quite well, but one never knows with these things . . .’

  Events were devoured by events, thought Dyson, states of affairs were overtaken by states of affairs . . . He cut five lines from ‘The Country Day by Day’ proof, then restored them, realizing that he had misread the layout sheet. He felt very shaky. How long had Eddy been dead before they noticed him? Already the phone was ringing again.

  ‘Hello, David . . . Yes, I wanted to talk to you about your Country copy. You’ve written, “I saw a pair of golden plover . . .” What? Oh, it’s very kind of you to say so . . . Well, I thought it didn’t go off too badly . . .’