As Far as You Can Go

by Julian Mitchell

  “You’re in the City, aren’t you?” said the Captain, leaning across the table at Harold. “Isn’t there some way these terrible people can be stopped from buying everyone up?”

  “Not really,” said Harold. “It’s called free-enterprise capitalism.”

  “Now, Harold, let’s not have any of that left-wing nonsense of yours.”

  “It’s not left-wing nonsense. It’s plain fact, that’s all. If you like free enterprise, then you have to put up with takeover bids.”

  “Are you Labour?” said Mrs Crawshaw in amazement.

  “He’s practically Communist,” said Mr Barlow. “Thinks we all live too well.”

  “Not at all. I work in the City, don’t I?”

  The Captain gave Harold the sort of look that he had no doubt practised for years on junior officers who got uppish in the wardroom. Then he said, “I don’t think Macmillan will have much trouble winning the election, do you?”

  “Shouldn’t have,” said Mr Barlow.

  “Are you going to vote Labour?” said Mrs Crawshaw to Harold. “You can’t, surely, I mean, can you?”

  “I shan’t vote at all,” said Harold. “Politics bore me. There’s no one I want to vote for, you see.”

  “That pretty well describes what I’ve got against people of your generation,” said the Captain, giving him the quelling look again. Harold immediately added Belsen to the list of possible names for him. “You all sit around moaning and complaining, and you’ll none of you put your backs into a job of work. No sense of service.”

  “No spirit,” said Mr Barlow.

  “Nothing personal, of course,” said Belsen. “You may be an exception. I don’t know you well enough to say.”

  “Oh, you’re absolutely right,” said Mr Barlow. “Harold has about enough spirit to warm a pan of milk.”

  “Really, dear,” said Mrs Barlow, “you know Harold works very hard.”

  “Thank you,” said Harold.

  “Works hard to avoid work, if you ask me.”

  Belsen laughed. Harold gave him the contemptuous glance of one who knows that, if it came to it, he could run further and faster than his opponent, implied in which was a superior sexual ability and an accusation that Belsen and his like were responsible for two world wars. It was too complex a glance to be very effective, but it was satisfying to use.

  Mrs Crawshaw said, “Aren’t you rather hard, you men?”

  “Not hard enough, that’s the trouble,” said Mr Barlow. “Harold’s brother, you know, insisted on going straight up to the university in the hope he’d avoid national service. And it looks as though he will.”

  It was the one thing Harold would always have over his brother in his father’s eyes, and at times he was genuinely grateful. Timothy, though, might conceivably get a Blue for golf, which would be unpardonable.

  “You neither of you have children, do you?” asked Mrs Barlow, brightly sympathetic.

  “Alas, not,” said Mrs Crawshaw.

  Captain Belsen looked thoughtfully at Mrs Barlow, opened his mouth as though to say something, then shut it again, and pushed at a few pieces of cheese-rind with his knife.

  “Shall we withdraw?” said Mr Barlow, breaking what was beginning to be an awkward silence.

  “You must allow me to help with the washing-up,” said Mrs Crawshaw to Mrs Barlow.

  “Oh, no, my dear, there’s nothing to do. There’s a woman in the morning to see to it.”

  Obviously nettled, Mrs Crawshaw said, “You must be marvellous with servants, Mrs Barlow.”

  “I have them,” said Harold’s mother with a sweet smile. “You go ahead, would you, while I get the coffee?”

  Harold helped his mother clear the table, not minding clearing anything like as much as washing-up.

  “Who are those terrible people?” he said.

  “Hush, dear, they might hear you. They say they’re brother and sister, but if you ask me they’re nothing of the sort. In fact, if I was old-fashioned, I’d say they were living in sin. I expect one of them can’t get a divorce. I certainly don’t believe that they’ve both lost husbands and—you know what I mean.”

  “They could still be brother and sister,” said Harold.

  His mother straightened up sharply from the trolley on which the dishes were being put. “You can’t mean that, Harold.”

  “Well, it’s possible.”

  “You shouldn’t say such things.”

  “I only said it’s possible.”

  “Do you think they could be?”

  “It’s happened before.”

  “Oh, no, it’s too outrageous,” said Mrs Barlow. She bent to the trolley again. “Well, we needn’t bother to have them again, anyway.”

  “No. But they’ll have to ask you back.”

  “If you ask me, they’re not the sort of people we want in Peterham, anyway. And if they go on not liking it as much as they do now, with any luck they’ll have gone in a few months.”

  “Why is Daddy so crotchety this evening? Have I done anything I shouldn’t have?”

  “I don’t think so, dear. He’s been grumpy for days.”

  Harold wandered round the room, making no further effort to help, then suddenly said, “I’m getting awfully fed up with Fenway’s.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just bored, that’s all. They expect you to go on being bored for years before you do anything interesting, and to be honest it’s not very interesting even when you get it.”

  “But it’s a very good job, Harold.”

  “I know that. And that I’ll make a lot of money later on. But it’s very tedious waiting.”

  His mother looked at him for a moment, then she said, “You don’t want to get married or anything, do you?”

  “God, no.”

  “Well, what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, really. I just feel fed up.”

  “Well, dear, everyone has to go through it. I know it seems a long time before you get really established, but it’s the same with everything, you know.”

  “I don’t want to be established, Mummy. I can’t think of anything more awful than being established.”

  “Now you’re being silly,” she said. “Go on and join the others. I’ll bring the coffee in in a moment.”

  “But, don’t you see, everyone’s established, and it’s a bore. You just go on and on till you become very established indeed, and then you retire. It’s all so dull.”

  “Well, what do you want to do, then?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  She gave him a thoroughly old-fashioned look and wheeled the trolley out, saying, “You can’t help those who won’t help themselves.”

  Harold wondered what she meant, then decided she was simply repeating a piece of folk wisdom that didn’t mean anything but which sounded incontrovertible and comforting. Of course you could help people who wouldn’t help themselves. It was called aid to underdeveloped areas.

  He stared out at the garden, wondering what on earth he did want to do, until he saw his father and Belsen and Mrs Crawshaw come out on to the lawn with croquet mallets. He hoped very much that Belsen and Mrs Crawshaw were brother and sister living in sin. It was certainly more interesting being incestuous than working at Fenway’s and motor-scooting off to copulate with Helen. It would be doing something, anyway.

  His father took a cheroot out of his mouth and shouted, “Harold! Where are you? Come and play croquet.”

  He went to play croquet.

  As the light faded, Harold took considerable pleasure in despatching his father’s ball into the darker corners of the shrubbery. Mrs Crawshaw, tactically, he sent into the rose-garden. Belsen didn’t seem to enjoy the game much, and was content to do whatever Harold told him, or at least to try and do it. His eye didn’t seem too good, Harold thought, and blaming it on the lawn did Belsen no good with Mr Barlow.

  “Hit her well on the port side,” said Harold as they neared the end
of the game. Belsen grimaced, and missed the shot. “I think we might consider an appeal against the light soon, don’t you?” he said.

  “But we’re losing,” said Harold.

  “All the more sporting.”

  Mr Barlow hit Harold neatly into a clump of irises. “Want to give in?” he said, putting himself through the hoop and aiming towards Belsen.

  “Certainly not,” said Harold.

  Belsen’s ball disappeared towards the rose-garden.

  “If you’d done what I told you,” said Harold, amiably, “we should now be well ahead. As it is, it’s going to be rather tough. You’d better try and find your ball before it gets too dark to see.”

  Belsen stalked off, and tripped over a hoop.

  “All right?” said Mr Barlow.

  “Yes, thank you.” Belsen vanished into the gathering night.

  “Where’s Mrs Crawshaw?” said Harold.

  “I’m here,” said a voice from the rose-garden. “Is it my turn yet?”

  “Not yet,” called Mr Barlow.

  “Well, we got those two together, anyway,” said Harold to his father. He hit his ball as hard as he could at the silhouette of Belsen at the other end of the lawn.

  “Ouch!” said Mrs Crawshaw.

  “Sorry! Just coming over to join my partner.”

  “I say, are you all right, Dolly?”

  “I think so, Jack. Is it my turn?”

  “Yes, your turn.”

  The game dwindled into total darkness, and Mr Barlow reluctantly suggested they should all go in. When they came into the light, it was noticeable that Mrs Crawshaw was limping.

  “I’m most awfully sorry,” said Harold. “I do hope you aren’t badly hurt. I was trying to hit the Captain.”

  A few minutes later the brother and sister went home in their Hillman Minx.

  “What’s that man’s name?” said Harold, after they’d gone.

  “Belling. I say, you shouldn’t have made all those remarks about port and starboard, he was Fleet Air Arm, not Navy proper.”

  “But he kept talking about the Navy.”

  “I know. Not your fault. I don’t think much of him, do you? Not surprised they didn’t make him an admiral.”

  “Do you think that’s really his sister?”

  “My dear boy, what can you mean?”

  “I think he’s right,” said Mrs Barlow. “I think they’re a very fishy pair. I don’t think we need ask them again, do you, Roger?”

  “I say, in Peterham, too.”

  “They obviously don’t like the place,” said Mrs Barlow. “I can’t think why people come to the country if they don’t like it. I suppose being at sea you get a romantic idea of what it’s like.”

  “He wasn’t in the proper Navy. I was telling Harold. He was in the Fleet Air Arm.”

  “Oh dear, I did get it wrong, then.”

  “I suppose the Fleet Air Arm is one better than the R.A.F., but only just. I wonder if that really is his sister.”

  “I think she is,” said Harold, “and that they’re living in sin, as Mummy calls it.”

  “Really, Harold.”

  “Harold, you shouldn’t go round saying things like that, you could get yourself into trouble. Why do you think it, anyway?”

  “It would be more interesting that way, wouldn’t it?”

  “If I thought you were right, I’d never have them in the house again.”

  “Suits me,” said Harold.

  His father gave him a wary look. “Well, we’ll have to think about all that. I must say, the thought had never entered my head.”

  “Nor mine,” said Mrs Barlow. “Nor will it again, unless they ask us back. I don’t care for them at all, do you? I think there’s something rather common about her, in particular. And he’s rather rude, I thought. I can’t see why people come to the country if they don’t like country life.”

  “Oh, well, if he was in the Fleet Air Arm,” said Mr Barlow.

  “Snob,” said Harold. “I’m going to bed. Good night.”

  “Good night, my boy.”

  “Good night, dear. There’s an extra blanket in the airing cupboard if you think you’ll be cold.”

  “I shan’t need it, I don’t expect. But thanks all the same. Good night.”

  “Good night.” Harold could hear her returning to her theme as she went upstairs. “Why do people like that want to come and live in a quiet little place like Peterham?”

  “Well,” said his father, “if you and Harold are right about them, I dare say they want a little privacy.”

  Harold had a bath and went to bed. He read a few pages of a book Dennis Moreland had lent him. It was about literature and politics, and didn’t seem to be in favour of either. He threw it at a chair and missed, turned out the light and went to sleep.

  In the morning he avoided his father till after he had set off for church. Harold never went to church, but his father tried to make him accompany him every Sunday. It wasn’t, Harold decided, that he hoped to convert him, simply that he wanted someone to sit beside him. Mr Barlow went purely out of a sense of duty, since the vicar had been a friend of his father’s.

  Harold got through the two serious papers in a quarter of an hour, then settled down to the News of the World. There was a father of two who had strangled a little girl after committing a serious offence against her. The judge said it was the most revolting case he had ever heard of. He couldn’t have been reading the papers, then, Harold thought. Mr Barlow came back from church while Harold was in the middle of an article about provincial girls being lured to London under false pretences.

  “Good sermon?”

  “What? Oh, all right. Mackenzie’s getting on a bit, you know. He keeps it short, thank heaven.” Mr Barlow blew his nose. Then he said, “Your mother says you’re not enjoying your job. What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, really. It bores me, that’s all.”

  “Well, you can’t expect to start at the top, you know.”

  “No.”

  “Everyone has to go through it. I know it seems a long time before you get really established, but it’s the same with everything.”

  “That’s exactly what Mummy says.”

  “You’re not thinking of giving it up, are you?”

  “Only idly.”

  “Have you anything else in mind?”

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  “Well, soldier on. You’ll be a partner in a few years. It can be frustrating when you’re young, I know, but it’s worth it in the long run.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Good heavens, yes. What can you be thinking?”

  “Just that it might not be worth it in the long run. That I might suddenly decide, when I was your age, that the whole thing had been a colossal bore, and I would much rather have done something else.”

  “But you say you haven’t got anything else in mind.”

  “I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t be a colossal bore, that’s all.”

  “My dear boy, you’re talking nonsense.”

  “I knew you’d say that.”

  “Well, it’s the truth. What’s the matter? Things not going too well with the girls?”

  “Perfectly, thank you.”

  “Liver all right?”

  “Fine.”

  “Then stop talking nonsense and have a glass of sherry.”

  “I’d rather have a gin and French.”

  “Well, go and get it, then. And bring me a glass of sherry. And ask your mother what she’ll have.”

  Harold went out to the kitchen, where the drink was kept. His mother was cooking the lunch.

  “Would you like a drink, Mummy?”

  “A glass of sherry would be lovely, darling.”

  “Why did you tell Daddy I was fed up with my job?”

  “Well, you told me, and I don’t hide things from him. You know that. What has he said?”

  “Exactly what you said.”

  “Well, that ma
kes two of us, then.”

  “Yes, but there’s still me.”

  “Harold, is there something wrong?”

  He thought about all the things that were wrong, but said, “Not really, no. I’d like to do something more interesting, that’s all. It’s exceedingly dreary at Fenway’s, you know.”

  “I expect you need a holiday. You start next week, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Perhaps I do. But August’s such a hopeless month. There’s nowhere one can go at all without being trampled to death.”

  “You have to take your holidays when you’re given them, dear. You can’t expect to pick and choose at your age.”

  “That’s precisely the trouble. By the time I’m old enough to pick and choose I shall have lost all interest in being alive at all.”

  “Nonsense. Where’s my glass of sherry?”

  “Every time I say anything I’m accused of talking nonsense. If I said Macmillan was Prime Minister, you’d say I was talking nonsense. I’m bored and fed up and sick of being told what I have to wait for.”

  “I’m bored with waiting for my sherry.”

  “Here you are. Don’t you see that it’s about as tedious as can be to be told all the time that in a few years everything will be different and I’ll be able to do what I like, when I want to do it now, while I’m still young and reasonably interested in things?”

  “Yes, Harold, everyone knows it’s very frustrating to be young.”

  “But I’m not young, I’m twenty-eight.”

  “That is young, darling.”

  “I shall be thirty soon.”

  “It’s worth it in the long run.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Harold, and left the kitchen.

  Five

  THE FOLLOWING FRIDAY he was again at the Macaroon a few minutes before the official time to leave Fenway, Crocker and Broke. Dennis Moreland was sitting at a table with a man Harold didn’t know. He wasn’t sure whether Dennis would want him to join them or not, so he smiled quickly at him as he went to the bar, hoping for some definite indication. But Dennis, who was looking faintly harassed, simply nodded. Harold decided to risk it. Besides, there was no other vacant table, and he refused to sit at the bar and be overwhelmed by the overripe woman behind it.