The men never seemed to be fully dressed. Their clothes were always formal, the garments of the properly dressed professional man, but never (when I observed them) did the men seem to have them all on. It was always as if they were frightfully busy, or much too hot: even in winter, though, there, it is true that the offices were remarkably well heated. I would hardly have gazed in at the gas stoves or whatever they were, but from every open door, it might be in December or January, would come a positive and noticeable wave of hot air as one passed. The girls would wear summery dresses even in winter and then, necessarily, depart in heavy coats. But, of course, most people prefer to live and work in great heat; and I do not. I have to add that while the men always performed as if they were weighed down with work, I have no more recollection of seeing them doing any than I have in the case of the girls. But possibly I was and am influenced here by my own personal inability to work in an uproar. I did not know the names of the men (or, of course, of the girls); and though the girls chattered on through the open doors and all around me as if I were not present or were invisible, the shirt-sleeved men tended in the opposite direction, to fall silent and stand motionless until I had altogether passed and was out of earshot. Nor, now I come to think of it, did I notice any of the usual office horseplay between the men and the girls; though most of the girls might have been thought ready enough for it.
And then there was the mystery of the firm's clients. The mystery was that one never seemed to see one: only the internal staff seething up and down.
"Have you ever seen any?" I asked Maureen.
"Mr Millar says there are a lot of people who've been with them a long time."
"I wouldn't care to be among them."
"How can we tell?" responded Maureen vaguely.
I noticed that Maureen had ceased asking me whether I had met Mr Millar.
I suppose the number of letters arriving each morning might have given some idea of how much genuine business there was. But here I was at a disadvantage. Authors are not normally early risers. In the old days I had put on my dressing gown (quite faded and stained-even torn, I believe) and descended to the shelf in the hall without giving a thought to what the Freedom people might think about me, numerous though they were (as I then considered). Now it seemed quite impossible: partly because of the girls, of course, but not entirely. So my slender morning post, even the ill-made packages from Major Valentine, had to await my being shaved and fully dressed; and by then any post there might have been for the people below had been long "taken in", as the expression is. This was all the more unavoidable in that usually I made my simple breakfast before shaving and dressing, and could see no reason why I should change my ways because of Mr Millar and his merry men. But I think also that I had very little wish to know more of what went on below me. I have just spoken of "genuine" business. I found it hard to believe there was much of it, though I could not even surmise what went on all the rest of the time. It is true that I found odd letters for the firm at other times of the day: almost all of them impersonal emanations on his Majesty's service. They did, I realized, suggest there might be some accountancy in hand. I recollected an uncle of my mother's once observing that figures, my boy, are only a very small part of what a successful accountant does. And, indeed, I still do not know what did go on in that office. I have related my impressions as clearly as I can; but new developments began to seem of more importance.
I think it must have been at least a month before I even set eyes upon Mr Millar. For obscure reasons, Maureen and I had altogether ceased referring to him. Then, all at once, I not only saw him but had to talk to him, with very little warning or preparation; and à deux.
One Friday, in the late afternoon, at half past five perhaps, my own rather noisy doorbell suddenly rang. I say "suddenly" because I had heard no steps coming up my staircase, which remained uncarpeted. Swearing, I threw my raincoat over the current material from Valentine, and went to see who it was. A man stood there.
"I'm Millar." But he did not offer to shake hands, as one usually did in those days, and his eyes wandered about, never once looking into mine, but not, as I thought, examining my humble environment either. "Won't you come in for a drink?" he said. "Just on the floor below. And of course bring anyone with you."
I need hardly say I did not want to, but I could think of no way to refuse, and it would be no doubt unwise to make an enemy. So I got out something affirmative.
"Come when you're ready. Second floor."
It seemed a slightly odd way of putting it; but, for that matter, it was perfectly obvious that there was no one "with me", not even a girl pushed into a cupboard. Without another word, Mr Millar descended. I saw that he was wearing beige suède shoes, doubtless with crêpe rubber soles. And of course he was in his braces, like the rest of them.
I was glad to have a few minutes for rehabilitation. One does not wear one's best clothes for editing a pornographic manuscript alone in an attic; and also I had in those days a habit of unconsciously running my right hand (I am left-handed) through my hair as I wrote, wrecking whatever parting there might have been, and making myself look like the picture in the German book for children, my hair being then unusually thick and wiry. I changed my shirt, put on my old school tie (such as it was), and tried my luck with the comb.
Then, striving to think about nothing, I plunged through the door on the second floor landing. I had been in there several times during the Freedom period, but everything was now very different. The walls of the outer room had been newly papered in pink with a cornice of flowers, and were decorated with what appeared to be small English landscape paintings, probably by an amateur, and framed in nothing more permanent than passe-partout. There were a surprising number of them, not all exactly on a level from the floor. In the middle of the room was a desk, obviously new; but with nothing on it, not even a cloaked typewriter, or a rubber-out. Also I was alone. But the door into the further room was ajar. I went up to it. "Anyone at home?" I said.
Mr Millar drew the door fully open. "Come in," he said, still neither looking me in the eye nor offering his hand. Also he was still without his jacket.
"No one with you?" He seemed disappointed, though, as I have said, it was absurd.
"No," I said. "Only me."
"Working?" He said it not in the way of apology for interrupting me, or even in the way of making conversation, but rather as if he referred to some unusual hobby he had heard I went in for.
"Yes. But it doesn't matter. I'm glad of a break." That, of course, was not the exact truth.
"Sherry?"
The bottle indicated that it came from one of the colonies, and the three glasses on Mr Millar's desk were from the threepenny and sixpenny store. One is not supposed to say such things so plainly, but on this occasion I think they are of significance. Conclusive perhaps was that the bottle had to be opened, and some small shavings or chippings brushed out of two glasses with the back of a carbon paper, before they could be used. It seemed clear that the feast had been assembled especially for me.
"Thank you very much."
It was not a matter of an alternative to sherry. Obviously there was none.
Mr Millar fumbled away with a not very good corkscrew; one (as I knew even then) with too small a radius to the screw and too slender and cutting a handle. I almost felt that I should offer to help. I was quite sure that at least I should say something, as time was passing in silence while the cork split off and refused to come out; but I could think of nothing to the purpose.
I had not been offered a seat, though there were two new office chairs, as well as the one behind Mr Millar's equally new desk. Mr Millar's desk was in imitation mahogany, where the desk outside imitated some much lighter and yellower wood. The sanctum was papered in light purple, or perhaps deep mauve: I can see it now, even though I never saw it again after this one visit, and quite a brief visit too, as will be seen. There was also some purple stuff on the centre part of the floor, where the desk stood; th
ough the purple was not the same. There were four or five old portraits of the kind one can buy twice a week at certain auction-rooms. Normally such portraits are genuinely ancient, but of limited artistic value. They are like the "old books" which so many people believe to be of great value but which, though quite truly old, prove almost impossible to sell at all in the hour of need. These specimens were of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century gentry in lace and wigs, four men and one woman; and they were in battered, discoloured frames. The one woman was elderly and unexceptional. Somehow it could not occur to one that these could be likenesses of Mr Millar's own ancestors.
"Pity there was no one with you," said Mr Millar, pouring out. He fished out from one glass a scrap of tinfoil dropped off the bottle. That was quite a job too, as only a paperknife was available to do it.
"My home is not in London," I said. "I don't know many people here yet."
Mr Millar seemed uninterested, and one could hardly blame him.
"I wonder how long Lloyd George will last?"
This was, almost aggressively, "making conversation. Plainly I had failed badly in having no one with me. But at last the glass of sherry had reached me. As I was still not offered a seat, I sat down on one for myself. Immediately Mr Millar sat down also. I could think of nothing intelligent to say about Lloyd George, but I suppose I said something.
"Santé!" said Mr Millar, still not looking at me—or at anything else, as it seemed to me. He was like a man with two glass eyes. I took a strong pull at the sherry glass, fortunately quite large.
"Thundery weather," said Mr Millar. "How long before it breaks?"
"Not just yet I should say."
"You're a countryman?"
"More an outer suburban, I'm afraid. At least it's become that."
"Rather good sherry, don't you think?"
"Frightfully good."
"Do you take the Post or the Telegraph?"
"I take The Times."
"Bit young for that, aren't you?"
"I grew up with it."
"Really?"
"Never another paper in our house."
"Good Lord! You'd better write and tell them so." Mr Millar laughed metallically.
It seemed that there was positively nothing to me without that missing person "with me". Really we could hardly continue.
"Let me fill you up." He said it as perfunctorily as he had said everything else; but I accepted with some relief. I much needed daredevilry. I could hardly escape for a few more minutes.
I could think of nothing to say which would continue the conversation. I doubted very much whether anything I could possibly say, would continue it. The central fact about Mr Millar was that his thoughts were elsewhere: were, I felt all the time I was with him, elsewhere permanently. His glass eyes and wandering hands spoke truth of a kind, where his lips spoke only cotton wool.
"Fancy anything for the Cambridgeshire?"
I could but shake my head. From one point of view, I could see that Mr Millar might hope for more lively company.
"What about the tennis this summer? Good to have it back, don't you think?"
"Good to have a lot of things back."
"But there's a lot that won't come back so soon."
"Yes," I said. "That's true."
"I shouldn't wonder if there's never proper polo to watch again. Not polo worth watching."
He was sitting sideways at his desk, showing me his left profile. I have said little—indeed, as I see, virtually nothing—about Mr Millar's appearance. Perhaps it is because there is so little to say. As far as I recall, he was a slender, dark man of medium height. He was cleanshaven, always a trifle black in the jowl—but only a trifle. I suppose he was 40; maybe a well-preserved 50. He had a wad of blackish hair, carefully trimmed round the edges, so that it seemed to fit his head like a cap, and always honeyed with brilliantine. He was at all times well dressed; at all times noticeably so, but not in a pejorative sense, except, conceivably, for such details as the suède shoes I have mentioned (he was wearing a townsman's country suit with them, it being the eve of the weekend). His counterparts are to be seen everywhere, at all times . . .
I think I might even say that Mr Millar belonged to a type whose members tend to make one feel that their thoughts are elsewhere. But few of them carry this impression as far as Mr Millar carried it. Even at that first (but almost only) meeting, I sensed that Mr Millar's thoughts were as far away as those of Boris Godunov, who had, some said, made away with the rightful heir; or even of our own misled Macbeth.
"While you're here," said Mr Millar, "there's something I'd like to explain. It seems a good opportunity."
"Oh yes," I said, slanting my sherry glass, now once more less than half full.
"We're very busy just now. I often have to stay on. So don't be surprised if you hear sounds."
"I'm glad you've mentioned it."
"I didn't want you to think we'd got the burglars in." Mr Millar laughed his metallic laugh. "I supposed at first I could come to an arrangement with the girl in the basement. Rather a sweet person, don't you think?"
"From what I've seen of her," I said.
"But of course she has her family to think about and all that sort of thing. So I've decided to shake down up here. After all, why not?" Mr Millar's colourless eyes roamed uneasily round the room, almost, it seemed, as if he thought his question might be answered. His gaze then proceeded to traverse the ceiling. To me his news was so unwelcome that again I could find nothing whatever to say.
"You're one of these famous authors, I'm told?"
"I aim to be," I replied.
"I once thought I'd write a book myself."
"Had you a subject in mind?" I enquired without a trace of sarcasm.
"I'm sure I had," said Mr Millar. "God knows what it was!" He laughed again. "Let me fill you up."
"I really ought to be on my way."
"Just one more before you go," said Mr Millar, making a discernibly minimal effort to retain me. He was waving the bottle about nervously, but managed to concentrate enough to refill my glass.
"Yes, a sweet little person that!"
I smiled as man to man; or rather that was how it would have been if both of us had been men, instead of one of us an adolescent and the other a simulacrum.
"Man was not meant to live alone. Don't you agree?"
"There are arguments on both sides," I replied.
"You wait till you're older," said Mr Millar, and laughed his laugh. "You can't talk till then."
"I live a long way away, you know," he continued. "I couldn't possibly go home every night when we're so infernally busy. Couldn't stand the fag of it."
"I suppose it's a good thing accountancy's so prosperous." But I was quite surprised that Mr Millar claimed to have a "home", however distant.
"Yes, I suppose it is if you care to see it like that."
I rose. "Anyway, I must leave you to it."
"Glad you were able to come."
He saw me only to the door of his sanctum; then turned back, his mind concentrated upon someone or something else, one shrank from thinking what.
From then on, as I might have known, Mr Millar seemed to remain in his office almost every night. The rest of them disappeared at more or less the usual hour, but Mr Millar would continue pottering up and down stairs, locking and unlocking doors, carting small objects from place to place, making and answering late telephone calls, sometimes talking to himself as he roamed. When his shuffling about stopped me working (which, I have to acknowledge, was only occasionally), I would quietly open my door and shamelessly eavesdrop down my dark stair. But Mr Millar's activities seemed so trivial and futile as to be hardly worth spying on for long, and the chatter he addressed to himself (quite loudly and clearly) was not so much obsessive as escapist. The burden of his thoughts had long ago driven him out of his own personality, even when he was by himself. He had become a walking shell from which the babble of the world re-echoed.
Did he ever reall
y sleep? And, if so, on what? His sanctum had offered nothing but the floor when I had been in it; but, as I have said, I never entered it again. I suppose a sofa could have been introduced without my meeting it coming upstairs or hearing it bruise the new paintwork. I did not know whether Mr Millar locked his door, the outer one or the inner one, when finally he ceased to travail on the staircase and from room to room. Assuredly, I never heard him snore through the ceiling; although his bleak sanctum was immediately below my bedroom. But snoring is always absurd, and absurd was never quite the word for Mr Millar.
That was how it was in the early days of Mr Millar's virtual residence beneath me. (I often wondered about the terms of his lease. It was as well that the agents we had to deal with were so easy-going.) But before long Mr Millar began to receive visitors.
I had observed that rather late in the evening he seemed often to be out of the building. I would wander downstairs for some reason, or come back from the gallery of a theatre or the front rows of a cinema (my mother warned me about the effect on my eyesight). At any time between, perhaps, nine o'clock and two o'clock, I would find the lights on, and some of the doors still open, but no sight or sound of Mr Millar. I supposed that even he had had to seek a bite of food. I never looked into any of the open rooms, because I feared that Mr Millar would spring from behind the door, cry Peep-bo, and do me a hideous mischief; but I think I was right in supposing him out of the office at these times, and this was confirmed when he got into the way of not returning alone.
Normally I only heard voices; voices and trudging steps, coming up the stairs, often very slowly, and then interminable talk on the floor below me, though sometimes there were other noises less easily definable, or explicable. More often than not, the voices were female; and, more often than not, very common voices, even strident, though I could seldom hear precise words. Up to a point the explanation was obvious enough: in those days, and before Mr R. A. Butler's famous Act, there were streets in the immediate area where it was far easier to pick up a woman and do what you liked to her than to pick up a taxi. On other evenings, Mr Millar's late callers were men, and several of them at a time, and as rough-spoken as the women. But the women also usually came several at a time: several at a time and apparently all friends together.
The Collected Short Fiction Page 35