Man Overboard

by Monica Dickens

  Ben came up to her grinning, but it was not his usual grin, and she said at once: “You didn’t get the job.”

  “Not this time. I’ll get the next. Excuse me.” A woman with a shopping cart bumped into him and glared, looking back at him as she trundled away, as if she suspected him of accosting a child.

  Ben was going into the café to pay Amy’s bill, but she said: “I paid it. No, don’t pay me back. You need it more than me.”

  What kind of a father am I? She shouldn’t have come. Seeing her sympathetic face, Ben despised himself for involving the child in his problems, and yet, knowing Amy, he knew that she would not want it any other way. Her consolation for not having a mother or a proper family life had always been the feeling that she was necessary to Ben, because she was all he had.

  “Come on. It’s cold.” He took her hand and put it with his into his overcoat pocket.

  “Do you feel like I did when they turned me down for the junior choir?” She looked up at him anxiously as they walked away.

  “I suppose so. No. No, I don’t really. You cried in front of the music mistress. I didn’t. I laughed. So did Mr Sweeting, because it was so absurdly hopeless. Can you see that? I don’t want you or Grandma or anyone else to feel sorry for me.”

  Amy thought for a moment, watching her walking feet. “Yes, I see. Grandma will, too, if you tell her the right way. But I don’t suppose Miss Kelly will.” She had stubbornly refused to call her Aunt Rose.

  “I’m not going to tell her. I’m supposed to meet her for lunch. Do you want to come?” Rose would not be pleased, but he could not put Amy on a bus for home when she had been through this with him.

  “No, thanks, Daddy.”

  “All right, let’s find a telephone. If she’s still at the flat, I’ll tell her I’ve got ‘flu, and take you to lunch instead. And a museum, if you like.”

  “I’ve gone off museums,” Amy said. “It’s French films now.”

  “Well, that’s better.” Ben stopped and released her hand to pull some silver out of his trouser pocket. “We might even manage the Curzon if you don’t have cider at lunch.”

  * Chapter 6 *

  “How could you do it? How could you do this to me?”

  Miss Arkwright lowered her head, for her eyes were reddening. “I know,” she said. “Don’t tell me. I’ve already had Mr Sweeting on the phone. He told me.”

  “Did he tell you it was a criminal offence to make false claims for your clients?”

  Miss Arkwright nodded, and fumbled in the sleeve of her apple-green angora jersey for a handkerchief. She could not speak, so Mrs French took over.

  “He laughed at Phoebe, that was the worst of it. If he had been angry, she could have given him back as good as he gave. You don’t know Phoebe when her dander’s up. But he laughed at her.” She raised her voice to where Jessie was typing listlessly in the little closet. “Tea’s wanted here!” she called, like a ward sister calling a nurse for emergency coramine.

  Ben tried to explain to them that Mr Sweeting had been sympathetically amused, but they would not be comforted. They had believed so firmly that Ben would come whistling back to them with the job in his pocket that their second-floor world was temporarily at a standstill. Jessie had broken out in a cold sore, and Mrs French had taken two sleeping-tablets last night and slept right through the alarm clock, and her husband had been late for work in the catering department at Barkers for the first time in twenty years.

  Rallying a little after the tea, Miss Arkwright racked her brains and her files for other possibilities. Slightly drunk with contrition, she offered all kinds of random ideas from male modelling through crowd work in films to night porter in a private hotel, all of which were rejected out of hand by Jessie and Mrs French, as being insulting to Miss Kelly. They knew about Rose, and had transferred some of their proprietary interest in Ben to her, especially since he had obtained for them a signed photograph, which was tacked to the wall, curling in the fumes from the gas fire.

  Not only Miss Arkwright, but Miss Arkwright’s sister and her sister’s friends were working for Ben. One of the friends, who had been teaching shorthand in a boy’s residential settlement for two weeks before she was bowed out for lack of discipline, came up with the news that the warden was being bowed out too, for a different reason.

  With the Phillimore Bureau’s blessings—blessings that were less confident than when he had charged out to do battle at Victoria—Ben journeyed to a northern suburb to try his luck.

  Was luck the right word? He did not really want the job. He had only come to please Miss Arkwright. Six hundred pounds a year and the struggling headache of responsibility for fifty boys who were mostly on probation or from broken homes—this was not the life he had planned. This was a refuge for the desperately unemployed. It bore no resemblance to the brilliant, adventurous career which had beckoned to him when he left the Navy.

  As the trolleybus glided to a stop by the church with the broken spire, Ben got off reluctantly, hoping he would not get the job. It might be all right to tide him over for a few months until something better turned up; but if he got stuck in some forgotten, gloomy institution with a bunch of social workers and delinquent boys, the something better would never come his way.

  He was pleasantly surprised by the appearance of the settlement. A collection of white stucco villas surrounded a large central building with a red roof and a lot of fresh green paint. There were gardens, a football field, even a hard tennis court, which was being used as a roller-skating rink by a few boys in turtle-neck sweaters when Ben walked up the well-kept drive. He spoke to them, and one of them came out of the wire cage to take him to the secretary. On the way, he showed Ben the warden’s house, a modern bungalow with flower-beds tidied for the winter, and red curtains and a red front door. Instantly, Ben saw himself and Amy there. She could go to some school nearby. They could have a dog. He and she would take it on the common, accompanied by a boy or two whose problems Ben would discuss in a man-to-man way while they walked. He would have to make strict rules for Amy about mixing with the boys. Those he saw looked all right, and the one who had taken off his roller skates to go with him to the secretary’s office was a spirited lad with a quick, gnomish smile; but Ben had handled enough national service ratings to know that this did not mean a thing.

  Mr Prentiss, the secretary, was an eager, myopic man with enormous glasses like the ends of bottles, who seemed as anxious to help Ben as he was to help the boys at the settlement.

  “I was R.N.V.R. myself in the war,” he said. “Oh, in an office job, of course.” He touched the spectacles. “I’d have given anything to go to sea, but—’They also serve——’ I told myself.” He had a rapid, running voice, which he used in small excited bursts, like a woman telling a story.

  “So you see, I can’t help being prejudiced in your favour.” His wide-stretched smile revealed a lot of intricate bridgework. “This is no way to start an interview, is it? But I was only a lieutenant. I can’t get over the feeling that I should be calling you Sir, although I believe I’m twenty years older than you.”

  “Oh, no, sir,” Ben said, although he believed it too.

  “I should start by finding out all the things against you, I suppose, but I’m so accustomed to looking for all the things in favour of the boys who come here that I haven’t the knack. That’s what sunk me with our last warden, between you and me.” There was a boy working in the outer office, and Mr Prentiss lowered his voice without slowing it down. “I only found out the things that were against him when it was too late. However … water under the bridge and all that.” He had a set of keys in his pocket, which he jingled merrily as he talked. “Let’s have some coffee. David!”

  The bony, red-haired boy from the outer office ambled in. “David is doing some secretarial work for me,” Mr Prentiss said. “The boys who don’t go out to work from here all have some sort of jobs around the place. It’s part of their training. Will you make us some coffee, please
, David?”

  The red-haired boy, who was perfectly polite although he did not say a word, favoured Ben with a careful stare before he went out. He returned shortly with two mugs of vile-tasting coffee, heated up many times, but not sufficiently this time.

  “Ah, that’s good,” Mr Prentiss sucked at it and smacked his thick lips. “Nothing like a good hot cup of coffee.” When the boy had gone out, he threw the rest of it into a basin in the corner and invited Ben to do the same. “David will learn,” he said indulgently. “He’ll come to it.”

  They talked pleasantly for a while and Ben began, with mixed feelings, to think that he was going to get the job. He offered all his disadvantages, but they could not staunch Mr Prentiss’s enthusiasm. He tossed aside Ben’s lack of experience like spilled salt. “I’d be here to show you the ropes,” he said. “I’ve been here ever since the war. I could run the place in my sleep. Tell me just one thing. Why do you want to work with us?”

  “I don’t exactly know,” Ben said slowly, wondering whether he ought to produce some high-sounding philanthropic reason. “It isn’t anything like what I was looking for. Frankly, I didn’t want the job at all before I came here and saw the set-up. Now I think I do. Not only because you’re the first man who hasn’t slapped me politely and regretfully in the face since I left the Navy, but because I think Amy and I could be happy here. I could bring my daughter, I suppose?”

  “Naturally.” Mr Prentiss gave his orthodontic smile. “I would hardly expect you and your wife to move in without her.”

  “I’m a widower,” Ben said, expecting that this would be in his favour in this male community, but Miss Arkwright, of course, had overlooked the vital snag. Mr Prentiss let his artless face fall like a disappointed child.

  “That’s too bad, too bad.” He beat his unworkmanlike hands softly together. “The governors stipulate that the warden should be married. The wife is in charge of the housekeeping, and looks after any of the boys who aren’t sick enough for professional care. Our late warden’s wife was excellent in that respect. Nothing that happened was her fault. I felt very sorry for the poor little woman, but of course, the boys come first. Look here.” He transferred his sociology from the boys to Ben. “You ought to marry again, a young man like you, and for the little girl’s sake too. Have you a picture of the kiddy? Ah, yes———” He shook his head sentimentally over Amy’s photograph, and handed it back delicately, as if it were too sacred to be touched with the balls of his fingers.

  “Well, I’m terribly sorry. I wanted to help you. I thought I could kill two birds with one stone—get a good man for the settlement and put you in a worthwhile job. I’ve felt so badly about the Services slinging out officers right and left, even though I am a taxpayer. Excuse me. That was in bad taste.” He drummed despondently on the top of the desk. “If only you were married … not only because of the job here, but when I think of what my good wife has done for me—oh, hang it, you should be married, you know.”

  “I am sort of vaguely engaged,” Ben said, more to please Mr Prentiss than because he believed it.

  “Why didn’t you say so?” The bridgework was on view again. “When is the happy day? I can probably wangle you the job after all, if you send your fiancée along here to see me—purely as a formality, of course. I’m sure she’s a pearl.”

  Ben laughed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s so incongruous.”

  “She wouldn’t want the work? It’s not hard, and she’d get her four hundred or so. That’s good pin money.”

  “If she did come for an interview, you’d see what I mean.”

  “You mean she’s not the type? She wouldn’t like it here? Well, if you think that’s funny———” Mr Prentiss stood up, his natural eagerness withdrawn. “However, that’s your affair. I’ll say no more.” He tried not to, but his beneficent instincts would not be denied. As Ben stood up, Mr Prentiss looked searchingly at him. “It’s none of my business, I know, but are you quite sure she’s the right girl for you?”

  Ben said nothing. Rose, Rose. What if you should marry me, and by some miracle agree to give up your sham success and come and live in the bungalow with me and Amy?

  Oh, you fool, darling. You’re joking.

  His mind shook itself like a wet dog. He held out his hand. “Thanks for seeing me,” he said. “I hope you find the right man soon.”

  “We’ll have dozens of applications, I expect. Many of them from men like yourself. You got in first because of Miss Thomas knowing about the vacancy. How is that poor woman by the way? I hated to have to let her go.”

  “I’ve never met her.”

  “Well, if you do, try and help her, if you can. She’s had a tough struggle. Invalid parents, and so on. I tried to find her another job, but she’s not really equipped to earn her own living. She———” Mr Prentiss looked at Ben speculatively through the bottle ends, pondering a match between him and Miss Thomas, since the fiancée sounded so questionable. He went with Ben to the door and through the passages to the main door of the building, wishing him luck and talking encouragingly and a little wistfully, as if he were loth to let Ben get out of his hands to rush off and marry the wrong woman.

  The boy with gnome-like smile was back on his roller skates. He came over to the wire netting as Ben went by.

  “How did it go, sir?” he asked.

  “How did what go?”

  “Well, weren’t you, like, after the warden’s job? David come out and give us the thumbs-up. He said you was all right.”

  “Thanks, but I can’t come here. I’m not married.”

  “Too bad. Well, I don’t blame you.” The boy rubbed his hands, spat on the ground and skated expertly away.

  That night Ben went out and got drunk with the Major. Geneva had sciatica, and was out of whisky. She had also quarrelled with Ben, because she had declared herself relieved that he could not have the warden’s post.

  Back in the fastnesses of the Bayswater Road, with the settlement so far away in distance and spirit that it seemed almost a mirage of the north London hills, Ben might have agreed with her, if she had not said it first.

  “It’s the deadest end I ever heard of,” Geneva told him from her bed. “I can’t see why you even went there. I thought you were going to have such a brilliant career.”

  “Find me one,” Ben said. “You can’t start a career if no one will employ you.”

  “And you can’t start to climb the ladder of success if you begin by going down to the cellar.”

  “Spare us the clichés,” Ben said. “And the snobbery too.” The day’s pain showed in her face, so he added: “Anything I can get you?”

  “Thank you.” Geneva attempted to look lofty in spite of a hairnet and the beribboned bed-jacket that she had received, with caustic ingratitude, from her sister Florence last Christmas. “Since I am not a juvenile delinquent, I cannot hope to engage either your time or your sympathy.”

  So Ben and the Major went round the bars together, cheerily enough at first, but later growing mournful. In an undefined club off Tottenham Court Road, where they paid a pound each to become members in order to get a drink, they talked of love and marriage and the sorrows of being a widower.

  “I’ve sometimes thought of marrying again,” the Major confided, keeling forward and buffering himself with his arms on the table. One of his elbows slipped off the edge and he almost fell on the floor.

  Ben heaved him upright with one hand. “Who’d marry you?” he asked.

  “You’d be surprised.” The Major’s small discoloured mouth curved into a silly smile under the brave little moustache which was dyed to match his hair. “Women have chased me all my life— when I wasn’t chasing them. They’ve slowed down now, so have I, but the hunt’s still on. A man needs a woman, my boy.” He turned to look at Ben with mournful, bloodshot eyes. “That’s the hell of it.”

  “That’s what I found out this morning. Have I told you what happened to me this morning?”

  “Twice.�
� The Major moved his lips carefully round the word.

  “I’ll tell you again.” Ben told the story once more, making it very sad. It was sad. It was a bloody tragedy. They both felt that. They would have cried, if they had been that sort. They called for a drink towards the shadows where they thought the bar was, and while they waited for it, they laid their forearms side by side on the table, sunk their necks between their shoulders and moped.

  “It was the only chance I’ve had,” Ben said. “My only chance of happiness. All gone.”

  “What a shame,” said the woman who brought the drinks. “That will be twelve shillings, dear.”

  The Major plunged his hand into his pocket and spilled an assortment of coins on to the table. “Leave him alone,” he said belligerently. “Officer and gentleman. Allow me the honour at least of buying his whisky.”

  The woman took what she wanted from the money and the Major scooped the rest back into his pocket, and scrabbled on the floor with his legs spread wide and shaky to find the fallen coins. When he pulled himself upright, making the table rock and the drinks slop over, his face was deep purple. His eyes were starting from his head, and Ben wondered dispassionately whether he was going to have a stroke.

  But he was only having an idea. “Take my advice.” He got a grip on Ben’s lapel and pulled himself very close. “Carry the girl by storm. Force her to marry you. Fair heart never won faint lady, and all that sort of rot.”

  Ben removed the Major’s breast-pocket handkerchief and began to dab at the spilled whisky, tracing swirling patterns with it on the plastic table-top. “Geneva doesn’t want me to have the job, anyway,” he grumbled. “She never wants me to have any fun.”

  “Geneva can boil her head. It’s your life, isn’t it?”

  “But Rose wouldn’t want to come there with me. No one wants me to have any fun.”