31st Of February

by Julian Symons

  “Wonderful,” Anderson said. “And when you’ve got it what have you got?”

  “You haven’t got much and that’s a fact. This is all two years out of date. Fortunately the date was at the bottom and we’ve cut it out. It looks good on the wall. Part of the red carpet for Mr Divenga.” She stared at Anderson. “You look terrible. What’s the matter? Here, never mind, take a nip.” She drew out a bottle from the drawer of her desk. Anderson looked round for a glass. “Ah come on, drink it like a man.” He took out the stopper, tilted back his head, and drank until tears came into his eyes. “My my,” said Miss O’Rourke, “that must have put several hairs on your chest. What’s the matter? Tell mamma.” Her black curls shook, her chalky nose was near to his face.

  “Look, Molly,” Anderson said. “Did you see anybody go in my office early this morning?”

  “Since I can’t see round several corners the answer, old cock, is No. Don’t tell me somebody’s been stealing your ideas.”

  “Somebody’s playing a funny kind of joke on me, and I’d like to find out his name.”

  “Sure it’s a him?”

  Anderson fingered the letter in his pocket. “Quite sure.”

  “Girls can play some pretty funny jokes sometimes.”

  “This one was played by a man.” The house telephone rang. Molly said: “Yes, you’ve run him to earth. Yes, I’ll tell him.” She put the telephone down. “Birdseed is on your tail. Something about some drawings—”

  “Christ!”

  “But more important, Mr Divenga is on his way round. Will everybody please be in their rooms. You’d better run along. Feeling better?”

  “Yes.”

  Molly was casual. “Care to repeat the dose this evening if you’ve got nothing better to do?”

  Anderson hesitated and then said: “All right.”

  She put her hand on her heart and grimaced. “My, you just sweep a girl off her feet. Come here, your tie’s crooked.” She straightened Anderson’s tie and gave him a little push out of the door. On the way back to his room Anderson met Reverton, walking down the corridor pipe foremost, with a look of intense concentration. He raised his hand and would have gone on, but Anderson stopped him. “I say, Rev, who’s Mr Divenga?”

  Reverton stared at him in surprise. “I thought you knew, old boy. He’s the managing director of Multi-African Products. Just flown over unexpectedly. Going to meet him now. Will you be available?”

  “I’ll be available.”

  “All a lot of bull, of course, showing him round, but you know how it is.”

  “I know how it is,” said Anderson.

  3

  Falsely hearty voices roared along the corridor in waves. The door opened and they all came in, laughing. But where was Mr Divenga? “And this is Mr Anderson,” VV said. “Our copy chief. He will be in control of the creative side of your account – under me, of course – and if I may blow somebody else’s trumpet without immodesty, you couldn’t have a finer man on the job. Anderson, this is Mr Maximilian Divenga of Multi-African Products.” Anderson stood up and from behind the smiling Reverton there darted a little figure something less than five feet high. He was dressed in a tight-waisted lilac suit with a fawn waistcoat, he wore spats above crocodile leather shoes. But it was not these things that made Anderson gape at Mr Maximilian Divenga, nor his beaky nose, but the fact that the lower part of the little man’s large head was almost completely covered by a great black spade beard.

  “You are happy, yes?” Mr Divenga asked, gripping Anderson’s hand with fingers like pincers. “Are happy in creation?”

  “Mr Divenga thinks it most important that the creative minds in charge of an account should feel thoroughly integrated with the work they are handling,” said Mr Pile plummily. He turned to the gaily dressed dwarf. “That is a consideration we always bear in mind, my dear Mr Divenga. We pondered very seriously the problem of which of our creative minds should handle your account. Mr Anderson already has the whole question of shaving at his – ah – fingertips. He handled another shaving cream account with great success when he was – ah – working with a rival agency some years ago. Isn’t that so, Anderson?”

  “Iss goot,” said Mr Divenga before Anderson could assent to this complete untruth. Then be turned menacingly on Mr Pile, and gave his chest several steely prods. “But iss not another shaving cream account. Preparation Number One iss not shaving cream. Shaving iss finished.”

  “Finished,” said VV triumphantly, and the others took up the cry. There was a short silence. Were they all thinking as he was, Anderson wondered, of Mr Divenga’s great black beard?

  “I’ve been giving your preparation a test, Mr Divenga,” he said. “My chin’s pretty blue normally, but Number One leaves it smooth as silk.”

  The little man stepped up close to Anderson, passed a hand over his chin and breathed “Ahh.” He turned to the three directors. “You have felt?” Obligingly VV and Pile touched Anderson’s chin and exclaimed in wonder, although as Pile retreated Anderson seemed to remark a slight frown behind the pince-nez. Mr Divenga turned to Reverton. “You have felt?”

  “Don’t need to, Mr Divenga. Tried it myself yesterday morning. Absolutely miraculous.”

  “Miraclus, miraclus,” said Mr Divenga. “Always in South Africa are performing miraclus. Have marketed many miraclus – clasp knife changes to tooth drawer, paper flower breathe on and opens, card of pretty girl with clothes on – hold to the light and is pretty girl without clothes on.” The three directors and Anderson laughed heartily, but with a trace of puzzlement, VV became oratorical.

  “Engaging toys, Mr Divenga, but this is something different. I assure you, my dear sir, that I believe that we believe – your preparation to be the greatest boon ever brought to twentieth-century man. It is—”

  “Iss miraclus,” said Mr Divenga, whose attention seemed to have wandered. “Pleased to meet, Mr Anderson. Shall we go on now?” The directors about-turned.

  “Is Number One the final form of your preparation?” Anderson asked. “I ask partly because I think we should impart a slightly different odour from the one it has at present before putting it on the market, and partly because I felt a rather curious sensation when I used it this morning.” Then Anderson made the most awful error of his advertising career. “I don’t know whether you’ve tried it yourself, Mr Divenga–” Three directorial faces looked back at him from the doorway, frozen in expressions of horror. Anderson stopped, speechless. But Mr Divenga seemed merely puzzled. “Senashun, what is senashun?” he asked.

  “A kind of burning feeling just for a moment or two.”

  An expression almost of alarm appeared on the little man’s face; but it vanished in a moment. “Iss sample,” he said, pointing to the pot on Anderson’s desk. “Iss all the time more miraclus. Experiment lavatories,” he said with a smile at Anderson which showed a mouthful of splendid teeth, “Soon get rid of senashun.”

  He had gone, and the directors followed him. Mr Pile cast one backward glance over the top of his pince-nez at Anderson, and the glance was not friendly.

  4

  Jean Lightley stood awkwardly in front of his desk, with her weight resting on one foot.

  “So you brought in my mail at about twenty-five past nine.”

  “Yes, Mr Anderson.”

  “You’re absolutely certain that this letter wasn’t with it?”

  He held up Valerie’s letter upside down, and some distance away from Jean.

  “I’m sure, Mr Anderson.”

  “And it wasn’t lying on the desk when you brought in the mail?” She shook her head. “How do you know? It might have been put under another paper. That’s possible, isn’t it?”

  A tide of colour went up from Jean Lightley’s neck into her face. “Yes,” she whispered, “but I don’t think so.”

  “Now look, Jean, this is important. Are you sure you didn’t see anybody come into my room between half past nine and the time I came in this morning?”

&
nbsp; “I didn’t, Mr Anderson,” she said. “But of course I wasn’t watching the door. I passed up and down the corridor though.” She sounded doubtful.

  “All right, Jean.” He remembered the calendar. “Has that magic calendar of mine been behaving itself?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. She almost bumped into Charlie Lessing at the door in her eagerness to get out. The copywriter looked after her.

  “What’s on your mind?” Anderson asked. “And by the way, where were you at nine forty-five this morning?”

  Lessing looked” injured. “I was at the BM historically researching into the history of shaving. The old English was ‘sceafan,’ perhaps derived from the Latin ‘scabere,’ which means scratch, or the Greek ‘skapto’ which means dig. ‘We’re not going to sceafan any more’–yes?”

  “No.”

  “A shaving tool was first known in the twelfth Egyptian dynasty,” Lessing said imperturbably, “and became common in the eighteenth. ‘The Egyptians had a word for shaving – modern man uses Depilo.’”

  “Don’t keep calling it Depilo, that’s no good. Have you seen Mr Divenga?”

  Lessing grimaced and spread out his hands. “Depilo? De pillow? Ain’t that what you sleep on, no? So there’s nothing to history, eh? Out, damned history.”

  “Keep it up your sleeve. But I don’t think we’ll ever get past VV. Let’s look at that list of names Greatorex has made.”

  “Some of them aren’t bad.”

  They bent over the list. “All these portmanteau names are no good,” Anderson said. “Can’t be patented. And things like Secshave are no good either. But we might put forward –” The house telephone rang and he picked it up. VV’s voice said:

  “Hey presto.”

  “What’s that?”

  Gleefully the voice repeated: “Say hey presto.”

  “Hey presto.”

  “No no. Say ‘Hey presto’ – can you see that at the top of an eight-inch triple? ‘Say Hey Presto – and forget about shaving.’ ‘Say Hey Presto for a silk-smooth jawline.’ ‘Say Hey Presto and no more cottonwool.’”

  “Cottonwool?”

  “After you’ve cut yourself shaving.” VV’s voice was faintly dubious. “Perhaps that one’s a bit obscure. But you see the possibilities. I think we’ve really got something with Hey Presto, don’t you?”

  “I thought we were out for humanity, not humour.”

  VV chuckled happily. “This is human and magical at the same time. Think it over, boy. Then come in and see me.”

  Anderson put down the telephone, and began methodically to tear up the sheet of paper containing Greatorex’s names. Reverton’s square head was poked round the door, for once pipeless. He said with mild interest: “Copy Department having fun tearing up copy?”

  “VV’s had a brainwave. He’s found a name for our anti-shave preparation. Hey Presto.” Decisively Anderson tore the sheet of paper across again, and dropped it in the wastepaper basket. “There go about a hundred ideas for names.”

  Reverton’s square face and Lessing’s round one both looked serious. “It’s got something,” Lessing said.

  “‘Say Hey Presto – and forget about shaving.’” Anderson was ironic.

  “Yes, I can see that,” Reverton said. They were his highest words of praise. “You don’t like, Andy?”

  “It’s not whether I like it – though I think it stinks. But it’s just exactly the line he told us not to work on.” Reverton raised his eyebrows. “Humanity, not humour, he said, and I think he was right. Is ‘Hey Presto’ human? It sounds pretty comic to me.”

  “Now look, Andy,” Reverton said earnestly, “You’re losing your sense of proportion. It’s good this name, don’t you agree, Charlie?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “All right then. You know me, Andy. I’m one of the boys myself; I think like you, I know what’s on your mind. You like ideas to come from the copy boys and the Studio and then go up to the directors, not come down the other way. So do I. We all know directors are pretty dumb – I ought to know, I’m one myself.” He laughed heartily. “But it can happen that a director gets hold of a bright idea. This is it.”

  Perversely, against the sense which told him he had better keep silent, Anderson said “I still think it stinks.”

  The telephone rang. Anderson picked it up and made a face.

  It was Bagseed. Reverton and Lessing went out. With an effort, Anderson adjusted a tone of false joviality over his voice and said, with the forestalling technique familiar to advertising executives and others engaged in selling material which they have had no hand in producing, “I know what you’re after, Mr Bagseed, you’re after those drawings.” The forestalling technique was justified upon this occasion by the fact that, at the moment these words were spoken, Jean Lightley came in with drawings in her hand. Mr Bagseed whined, cajoled and threatened until Anderson said brightly: “Those drawings are on the way up to you now, Mr Bagseed.” He looked at the drawings, which showed odiously fat little girls and unnaturally demure little boys wearing a variety of clothing, and told Jean Lightley to send them up immediately to Kiddy Modes. When she had left the room he tilted his revolving chair back against the wall, and sat staring at the green carpet. Looking up, he was surprised to see the neat brown suit of Greatorex in front of the desk.

  “I knocked, but you didn’t answer.” Greatorex coughed. “I wondered if you’d had a chance to look at those names for the new preparation.”

  Anderson pointed to the wastepaper basket. “There they are.” He held up a warning finger. “Don’t get the idea they were no good. I thought two or three of them were pretty bright. But that doesn’t matter.” He let the revolving chair drop to the ground with a bump. “What matters is that VV has had an idea himself.”

  “That’s Mr Vincent?”

  “That’s Mr Vincent. He’s decided to call the stuff Hey Presto. That’s the decision and there’s no argument about it, unless VV changes his mind. So –” He indicated the torn up pieces of paper.

  “Hey Presto,” Greatorex said. “Well, that’s a pretty good name.”

  I think it’s a terrible name. I’m the creative man on the account. But that doesn’t matter either.” Anderson tapped the desk with his finger. “Lesson number one in advertising. Be original, but don’t be too original, because people won’t like it. And remember that until you get near the top nine-tenths of what you do won’t even be considered. You’ll sweat your guts out for no purpose whatever. It’s disheartening, but that’s the way it is. Now, here’s advertising lesson number two.” He laid another finger on the desk. “Have you got another copy of that list? All right then, don’t throw it away. VV may change his mind – or the client may not like VV’s idea – then that list may be very useful. Understand?” Greatorex nodded, but looked at him oddly as he left the room. Anderson reflected again that he was a fool to be saying such things. A month ago he would not have said them. Why was he saying them now?

  He pulled out of his pocket the letter from Val, spread it before him on the desk, and read every word of the letter carefully as though in the hope that the wording of those hurried phrases or the shape of the handwriting or the texture of the blue paper would tell him something of the circumstances in which this letter had been written, and to the utterly unknown and unsuspected lover who now lay like a shadow across his past life. Who had been her lover? Somebody in his own office, somebody to whom Val had talked of him, laughing about him as a cuckold almost too easily deceived. Who could it have been? Reverton, Lessing, Wyvern, Vincent? She had known them all slightly, and thought little of them. It was impossible that she could have written to any of those men the words on the sheet of paper, that she should have said to any of them, “I love you dearly.” And yet she had done so; in death she triumphed over him through hasty words of love. What assignations did this letter represent, what clandestine meeting, what furtively delightful brushing of hands even in his presence, what pleasant deceits! Reverton, Lessi
ng, Wyvern, Vincent: which of them had been her lover? The letter gave him no answer.

  5

  The small window of Anderson’s office looked on to the backs of three similar blocks of office buildings, separated from Vincent Advertising by a deep, narrow well. On three sides, looking out of Anderson’s window both upward and downward, one could see through other windows girls typing, men surrounded by sheets of paper, girls looking in filing cabinets and sharpening pencils, men making notes in books or speaking to strange machines, tea being made and drunk. Wyvern was fond of standing at the window and saying that the contemporary world could be seen in microcosm; with, he added too aptly as he stared down the dark well, the bottomless pit which was the destination of all worshippers of Mammon, all those who sold their souls for a mess of pottage, all who had installed a piece of clockwork in their heads in place of a mind.

  Anderson’s room was never fully illuminated by sunlight, but on sunny afternoons a bright searchlight shaft would cut across his desk, liven the colour of a small, sharply defined area of carpet, and play upon the hatstand. This February afternoon was sunny; and giving himself an occasional quarter turn in the revolving chair, Anderson sat watching the parallelogram of sunlight become narrower and narrower until it was a finger strip touching one edge of his penstand and gleaming on a worn segment of carpet. The telephone rang, people came in and out asking questions and bringing tea; he made no attempt to do any work, but sat staring in front of him. He thought – although the word is not truly applicable, for the images that passed through his mind seemed almost wholly casual and involuntary – of Val in relation to those four men, of her gestures and actions in their company. One day at the annual outing Lessing had helped her out of a charabanc. Anderson saw now with strange clarity the grip of Lessing’s hand upon her arm just below the elbow, fingers pressing deeply the soft flesh of the upper arm. Lessing, Lessing, a randy married man? Once at a party, Val had been missing for half and hour and then had returned, dragging somebody by the hand, saying: “Look what the cat’s brought in.” There, smiling behind his pipe, letting himself be pulled into the room, with a great show of good-humoured reluctance, was Reverton. But Reverton, like Lessing, was a man happily married, with two children. Surely not Reverton. Wyvern? A disappointed artist, tediously cynical, always droning on about his obligation to his mother. But then Val had always liked them to go out drinking with Wyvern because she said he was such good company. There was a particular ridiculous phrase they used instead of saying “Cheerio.” Anderson saw Wyvern raising his glass and saying “Shorter days,” and a clink as Val’s glass struck it and she responded: “Longer nights.” And VV? But he could recall nothing about VV in connection with Val, except a vague impression of the elaborate courtesy with which he always treated women.