by David Nobbs
Tomorrow he would go out there and start, after a good night’s sleep. He leapt excitedly to his feet, and went to his room, forgetting that he now slept with Mrs Pollard. She followed him, anxiously, terrified, but he told her that he was tired, that he thought he was sickening for something, that he’d better sleep alone.
“You need comfort when you’re sick. What am I here for? Didn’t I console Mr Phelp when he had the blisters? What are women for?”
“It’s not that. I’m not ill.”
“Ill, not ill, I don’t know. Make your mind up.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve work to do.”
“Work! You’re suddenly busy.”
“I’ve got to go out to work.”
“At this time of night?”
“No. Tomorrow.”
“Well then.”
“I have to be alone tonight, that’s all. It’s like that sometimes.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I’m sorry.”
She had gone, with dignity. For a few moments he contemplated her steps and wondered sadly what it would be like to be her at that moment. Then his blood swept him away and his nerves danced to his head. He grabbed hold of the sofa and converted it into a bed in a series of convulsive, screeching jerks.
Then he cleaned his teeth, undressed, placed his clothes untidily over the back of the wooden chair, tightened the cord of his pyjamas, and crept into bed.
Then he crept out of bed, switched off the light, and crept back in again.
Chapter 24
HE WAS UP EARLY AND WAS SITTING IN HIS EASY CHAIR by the time Mrs Pollard came in with an enquiry about breakfast.
“Still loafing, I see,” she said, having slept badly.
“I’m off to find a job after breakfast.”
“I should think so, too. Loafing around the house in your bedroom slippers all day, and you a grown man.”
“I don’t have any bedroom slippers.”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. I don’t know. Versifying till all hours. It’s not right. Will you have bacon and egg?”
“Thank you. I’ll go down into the town and get a paper and see what jobs there are. Another lot of things I’m not suited to, I expect.”
“Well, don’t expect me to sympathise. Loafing around the house with your famous arrears of rent. There comes a time. Cereals or porridge?”
“Cereals, please.”
“There comes a time. There’s not many would have stood it as long as I have. No rent, and dried skin from your warts all over the house. Marmalade or honey?”
“Marmalade, please.”
“Yes, well, there you are then.”
Mrs Pollard went to make his breakfast and returned with it after a few minutes. She watched him in that manner that irritated him so much, but he forebore to mention it, and in a few moments she started up again.
“You come here, you take advantage of me with your panacea this, panacea that, you egg me on, you make me think your poems will bring us untold riches, you eat me out of house and home, you get me so that I don’t know which of us is coming and which is going, you make me risk my reputation, without which no Darby and Joan club will look twice at me, and all for what? What’s come of it, that’s what I want to know. If Pollard was alive I’d get him to thrash you. Not that he would. He was a Pacifist. Until the war came, of course. After that, there was a war on, so of course he couldn’t be a Pacifist. Pacifist or no, though, he’d see to you. He’d give you panacea. A fine universal whatever it is you’ve turned out to be, and no mistake. Though that’s what you are, a mistake. That’s just what you are. You’re the biggest error of judgment that ever wiped its feet on my mat.”
Suddenly Mrs Pollard was sorry, and could not say so. Baker knew it, and could not say so either. He thanked her for his breakfast and began to tidy himself up, and Mrs Pollard left his room with his tray, saying, with apparent irrelevance: “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
He went out the back way, through the yard and down the alley, where a little boy was bouncing his sister against a wall. At the end of the alley he came to a little park, and behind the row of trees at the end of the park he could see the purple buses on routes 21 and 44 making their way to the city, and he could enjoy a delicious moment of anticipation. He wrung his hands together with a surge of excitement as he thought of all the activity of the world, of everything that he had missed in these last weeks.
He reached the streets and plunged into them, savouring, as he went, the diverse smells of city life, which contrasted sharply with the clean scent of the wind as it brought a promise of snow. He ventured far down hillside terraces that he had not visited before. He hacked his way through the warm stench of drying clothes and soapy mops. An occasional detour was necessary to avoid the fermenting brown air outside a pub, or the heat of cabbage pouring thickly from a toothless old window, but his progress was good. He placed his feet firmly, confidently, on virgin pavement which no Baker had ever trodden, and his passage through that strange place could have been charted from the cries that rose before him, as cats screeched away at the unfamiliar tread and noisy children ran to windows to peer and shriek. Eventually he heard a roaring ahead that grew louder and louder with each step that he took, and suddenly he found himself among the banks of a swiftly flowing city.
Ahead, on a hill, rose the principal buildings, and he climbed towards them. To his left were shops, offices and insurance companies, and over to the right the terraces of houses had once continued. But now a great scheme of slum clearance had begun. A huge crane was swinging slowly above the houses and on the end of its chain there was an iron punchbag, which swung against the walls of the modest houses soullessly and in slow motion. Clouds of red dust were rising into the air, and a few families, whose homes these had been, stood mesmerised into submission. All around offices and flats and schools of technology were rising, or stood as models on the desks of well-dressed men. Baker was badly dressed, despite his efforts.
On the cleared site, where as yet there had been no building, things sprawled, and a few people wandered among them. Here there was hard mud and clay and stone, bits of blue china, broken bricks embedded in frozen soil, and all manner of things that gave him quiet pleasure. On the centre of the site a bonfire was breathing on the air and turning it to shimmering frosted glass. Burnt scraps of paper climbed like rising snow, and a small group of people stood around the fire in silence, watching. For these few moments Baker’s destination was quite forgotten. This glowing magnet claimed him. Flames flickered, shapes were created and destroyed, and people stared. There was something in the fire that thrilled all his senses and made him throw up his head into the cold air with pride.
He glanced at the men around him. They were looking into the fire not for what they might see but to blind themselves with its brightness. They were the few who were not busy at that moment in all the big buildings all around, and they were trying to blind themselves with its brightness.
He turned back to the fire. It was fine to succumb to the heat, to throw one’s legs on the fire and then one’s arms, and then one’s brains. It was fine to stand by the fire and watch one’s brain burn and one’s thoughts turn to smoke around one’s head. It was lovely to melt, and to feel the molten blood lapping round one’s legs, rising, rising.
A puff of wind pushed the tangy smoke back into his face, and he coughed and turned away. His pride returned, and the fire burnt fiercely. At this moment, in Hertfordshire, they were dressing for polo. He’d show them. A new age was coming. There was so much to do, and at last he had the power. Onward. To battle. Sir Baker, rise.
Sir Baker strode mightily across the derelict site, and, forgetting that traffic had been invented since he set off to rescue his world in distress, stepped off the pavement straight into the path of a number 12 bus, which screamed to a halt a few inches from him. It gave him a terrible shock.
Baker continue
d to the top of the street, his heart thumping, and bought a copy of the Telegraph and Chronicle. Once again the “situations vacant” column consisted almost entirely of vacancies for those who already held jobs identical to those that were being advertised. The only feasible ones this time were for postal workers and, again, for bus conductors. It was obviously impossible for him to return to the buses, so he would have to try to become a postman.
He went straight to Postal Buildings and entered a door marked “Enquiries”. He explained why he had come and a pretty girl gave him a booklet entitled “It’s just the job!” and told him to sit down and wait while she rang Mr Lomax. He sat down, and while he waited he read all about the postman and his function in society. He was thrilled and inspired by all the services that he would have an opportunity of rendering, for it was through giving service, he realised now, that the purpose of existence was to be found.
“Mr Lomax will see you tomorrow,” said the pretty girl, breaking in upon his prospects of bliss. “Eleven-thirty sharp. Through the swing doors in Haggle Lane, lift to the sixth storey, and it’s room 13,002.”
“Thank you.”
It hurt him rather to think that they were no more eager to see him than that, when he had worked himself up into such a state on their behalf. And yet he was glad of the delay. While he was reading the booklet an idea had come to him. It was little more than a germ as yet, but he would work on it that night and it would swell into something far greater, something which in the weeks to come might revolutionise the General Post Office—and transform a nation’s mail!
Chapter 25
MR LOMAX WAS A GLOOMY, AGGRESSIVE LITTLE MAN who looked as though sealing wax wouldn’t melt in his mouth. He motioned Baker into a chair.
“So you want to join the Post Office?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I see. Ever done any postal work before?”
“No, sir.”
“I see. Have you come straight from school?”
“No, sir.”
“I see. What positions have you held, then?”
“I was a bus conductor, sir.”
“What made you give that up? Eh?”
“I was sacked.”
“Why?”
“It wasn’t my vocation.”
“And that’s the only job you’ve ever had, is it?”
“No, sir. I’ve been a cook.”
“A cook?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I see. Anything else?”
“Yes, sir. A journalist. A schoolmaster. A seismographer. Several things.”
“And what made you give all these jobs up? Eh?”
“I was sacked, sir.”
“Why?”
“They weren’t my vocation.”
“Do you think this would be your vocation?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I see. Why?”
“Because the Post Office offers a unique chance to help oneself and others at the same time, sir. There are posts for those who have just left school and want to lead an outdoor life, and for those who have graduated from the University and want to lead an indoor life. The Post Office offers stimulating horizons to those who are really keen. If there were no postal services, sir, this country would be subject to untold misery. No-one would know what anyone else was doing! To many people the postman is a symbol of hope. He it is who brings the good news that alters their whole life. He delivers letters alike to the big block of luxury flats in the heart of the thriving city and to the humble stone cottages in the midst of the lonely moor. His work cuts right through the invidious class distinctions that bedevil so much of our life today, sir. He brings the Christmas gifts while the snow is on the ground, and during the summer months he carries his heavy mail bag through the afternoon heat without wilting. He has a cheerful…”
“What makes you so sure we’d make you a postman if we employed you?”
“Well, sir, I—that was the vacancy in the paper, sir.”
“Eh?”
“That was the vacancy, sir.”
“Postal services, that was the vacancy. Ever seen an iceberg, Baker?”
“No, sir.”
“No. I’m going to tell you something about icebergs, Baker. Icebergs have a little bit above the water. All the rest is underneath. You didn’t know that, did you?”
“I knew that, sir.”
“Nonsense. And what makes you think you’d be that little bit?”
“Well, I——”
“Where were you educated?”
“Cambridge and Winchester, sir.”
Mr Lomax looked gloomier and more aggressive than ever. He leant forward and gazed fixedly at Baker. “There have to be back-room boys, you know. We can’t all do the glamour jobs,” he said.
“I want to be a postman, if I can. I want to deliver the mail.”
“Why?”
“I’ve worked out a system, sir.”
Mr Lomax stared at him even more fixedly than before, if such a thing were possible, before he said, very quietly: “Tell me about it, Baker.”
“A—well, sir, it’s a—a better method of delivering mail.” The remark sounded meaningless when addressed to Mr Lomax, and Baker felt like a man in the first hot bath he has had for weeks, who has dislodged the plug with his foot and can’t fix it in again in time.
“Better, Baker?”
“Well, sir, fairer. It seems to me that all the popular people, with lots of friends, get practically all the mail. The others, who need it most, get very little. Eighty per cent of the mail is going to twenty per cent of the population.”
“And what do you intend to do about it?”
“Well, sir, I’ve worked out a points system.” He took an untidily folded piece of paper out of his inside jacket pocket and handed it to Mr Lomax, who stared at it for a few moments.
“Explain.”
“A Christmas card or a circular counts one point, postcards count two, letters three, registered letters and parcels four. Bills would be minus one. I would deliver ten points per head to every house in turn, and then if there wasn’t enough mail to go round I’d remember where I’d stopped and I’d start there the next day.”
Chapter 26
DR MILDWEED’S MOBILE MENTAL HOME HAD BEEN pitched in a sheltered part of Roundwood Park, far from prying eyes. As one approached it, one could see, above the exotic trees of the botanical gardens, the huge tent where the cures were effected. One could catch an occasional glimpse, through the rare tropical shrubs, of the gaily painted caravans where the various specialists lived. They were a colourful people, those men and women of the road, men and women whose talents had been handed down from medical journal to medical journal, and sharpened by constant training. And one might also see, behind that gay scene, if one looked hard enough, the cages and wagons where the patients were housed.
There were not many dangerous patients at Dr Mildweed’s. That was the great advantage it had over the Goldplank or City Mental. The Home remained for only two months in each city and dealt only with such patients as stood a good chance of being cured in that time, so there were none of the incorrigible lunatics who made life at the Goldplank so dismal and practically ensured that each new inmate was driven mad within a few days of his arrival, even if he had not been mad before.
This advantage would have seemed minimal to Baker, even if he had been aware of it. There could be no advantage to him in spending almost two months in a Home. He wasn’t an old lag who liked an occasional spell of institution food at the small cost of having to pretend to believe that the Jehovah’s Witnesses were out to get him. He wasn’t even a family man, happy to abandon the monotony of his bungaloid life for a few weeks and enter a gayer and more inventive world. He was a man with a mission, a man with a vital function to perform, and now, when at last he had developed a framework within which to begin his task they had whisked him off to this horrid place. It was incomprehensible.
On their arrival at the Home a tall thin man wi
th a black beard came to meet them. Fitted mentally and physically for only one thing, military dictatorship, Dr Mildweed had suffered the crippling blow of being born an utter coward in Worksop—a town little renowned for its coups d’état. So he had made the best of a bad job, had qualified in America as a doctor of some obscure corner of medical science, and had returned to England to set up Mental Home. Now he welcomed Mr Lomax warmly and ignored Baker completely. Mr Lomax was led off for a cocktail, while Baker was taken to Wagon Five, where, as a new inmate, he would be given a room to himself until diagnosis had been made.
In his little room he soon began to feel martyred. Here he was, in this dismal little cell, seven foot by five, and bare except for a bed, a chair and a bedside table with an empty fruit bowl on it. Here he was, at his time of life, in this situation which had come upon him too suddenly to seem real as yet, just when he could have cured the world. It was galling. But still, he was not the first man to be martyred, not the first man in the troubled course of our island’s history—but at this point his thoughts were interrupted. A nurse wished to know—or pretended to want to know—the state of his bowels.
During the next half hour seven more nurses, due to an administrative mistake, questioned him on this same point. Long before the end his feelings of martyrdom had collapsed and his confinement had become a real situation. He began to be frightened, to wonder what they would do to him and where it would all end. He wished to question every nurse, to say: “It won’t be too bad, will it?”, to ask for little crumbs of comfort. But he dared not. He said: “No, I haven’t been,” and that was that. He wished he had never gone to the Post Office, and he longed to be back in Mrs Pollard’s kitchen. He would have given a great deal, just then, to be back in Mrs Pollard’s kitchen.