A shrill cry awakened him, and a thrashing and beating like that of a trapped bird. Talons tore at his arms. Molly O’Rourke sat upright and naked in the bed, clutching her neck. “Christ,” she said, “Christ, you nearly strangled me.”
He stared at her without understanding. “But you’re not Val.”
“And thank God I’m not if that’s what she was let in for every night.” The marks of his fingers were on her neck.
“I had a dream – a nightmare,” he said humbly.
“Well, don’t have another. Go to sleep.” She turned away from him, and in a few minutes the whistling sounds began again. Anderson lay on his back, staring up into the half-darkness which became slowly half-light. He thought about the letter, and then he remembered what had disturbed him when he came out of the pub.
The 27th of February
Upon Anderson’s desk there lay an envelope, white, with no name written upon it, placed centrally on his blotting pad. He stood above it, staring down, passing a hand over a chin treated with Hey Presto, which felt remarkably like polished glass. A jumble of thoughts moved in his mind, thoughts of fingerprints and of Val’s face as he had seen it in the night and of the red marks round Molly O’Rourke’s throat. The telephone rang and he picked it up, staring at the still untouched envelope which contained, perhaps, nothing at all, nothing related to Val. Listening with less than half his mind, he heard Bagseed’s voice, nasally imperative: “Action.”
“What’s that?”
“I say they won’t do, Mr Anderson. Mr Arthur has never seen anything like them in his life.”
For ten minutes Anderson argued about the merits of the drawings at which he had merely glanced. The neck of a frock had been too much rounded, a sleeve was too short and a lapel too wide. The effect was to depreciate the class of goods sold by Kiddy Modes. Mr Arthur had been much upset. Anderson made notes on a pad and said that he would send up for drawings and get alterations made.
Bagseed’s voice took on a note at once conspiratorial and gleeful. “One more point, Mr Anderson. Have you looked at drawing number eleven?”
“Number eleven?”
“I don’t think you can have looked at it closely. Mr Arthur said, and I was bound to agree, that it really is disgusting.”
“Really.”
“Disgusting. It’s the one with the gym tunic.”
“The gym tunic, yes.”
“A gym tunic must always be treated carefully, Mr Anderson. It’s a risky garment.”
“And you feel the artist hasn’t treated it carefully enough.”
“My dear Mr Anderson, your artist has shown her almost doing the splits.”
“Oh.”
“And she looks – can I be quite frank with you, Mr Anderson?”
“Quite frank, yes.”
“Not many vamps do the splits.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Nothing, nothing,” said Anderson. “We’ll scrap that pin-up schoolgirl. Send her back with the others.” He hung up and carefully, as though he might be touching a booby trap, picked up the envelope. There was something inside it, and he slit the top with a paper knife. A piece of paper fell out. It was blank.
He turned the paper over and over in his hand. What had he expected to find? Relief flooded over him; strength seemed to come to his body and resilience to his mind. He laughed aloud, crumpled paper and envelope and threw them into the wastepaper basket. And then, when the first exhilaration was over, he became thoughtful. What was the purpose of this curious pursuit of him? The letter of today was a sheet of blank paper, but the letter of yesterday had been, quite unmistakably, written by Val.
Something in his head moved round and round, round and round. Lessing, VV, Reverton, Wyvern. One of four. Or – he remembered what he had seen in the pub last night. He spoke to Jean Lightley and told her to have the drawings collected from Kiddy Modes. “And ask Mr Greatorex to come and see me.” Then he was there, in front of Anderson’s desk, blonde, neat ever so slightly deferential.
“Sit down, Greatorex.” He looked down at the desk pad. “Didn’t I see you last night? In Pimlico?” Would he deny it? But the neat blonde head moved in agreement.
“You were there with Miss O’Rourke.” Mildly and pleasantly, Greatorex smiled. “You were in the saloon and I was in the public.”
“A long way from home, weren’t you, Greatorex?”
“Yes. I live in Islington. I go to see friends in Pimlico sometimes.” Now Anderson lifted his head and stared. Greatorex shifted nervously in his chair. “The beer’s good in the old Demon.”
“You know it? Perhaps you’ve seen me in there before.”
“I don’t think so.”
“With my wife? A small woman, fair?” Anderson hesitated and went on: “She died three weeks ago.”
“Yes, I heard that. I’m sorry.”
Greatorex raised his own head and Anderson’s stare was met, it seemed, with candour and sympathy. “There’s no need to mention that you saw me with Miss O’Rourke. We were just having a drink together, you understand.”
“I understand.” And now the long gaze, held upon both sides, seemed to be one of deep complicity and comprehension.
2
“Hey Presto,” VV said. “Hey Presto, Hey Presto, Hey Presto.” Sheets of paper fluttered round him. One dropped into Anderson’s lap and he stared at it. A rough pencil layout showed the reflection of a face looking out of a shaving glass, fingers reflectively touching jaw. The drawing had been made with a B pencil. Above it VV had written in a crude, powerful script, “Say Hey Presto,” and below, “And forget about shaving.” When he looked at the other pieces of paper Anderson saw that they embodied the same idea with different slogans. Wyvern looked at the layouts with positive distaste; he regarded any work of this kind done outside the studio as a reflection upon his own capacities. Reverton’s expression was enigmatic as he collected the layouts when they had all looked at them, and replaced them on VV’s desk. The little man turned his dog-brown eyes upon each of them in turn. His hands fluttered like butterflies.
“Listen to me now. I am about to make a confession.” He bowed his head in penitence. “I asked you to forget that you were advertising men, and remember only that you were human beings in dealing with this thing. Mea Culpa, I was wrong. Don’t hold it against me.” Anderson watched with reluctant admiration as VV joined both bands together in prayer. There it is, he thought; that’s the way to do it. He knows he’s been contradicting himself right and left and he’s persuading us that black’s white, like a conjurer. “Let me tell you the result of much cogitation and burning of the midnight oil. I see a need here for drama. There must always be drama in advertising – advertising is the drama of the masses; but here we have a product which is in its essentials dramatic. But there is also, as Rev here has seen with his particularly practical mind, a need for education. How can we combine the two?” Behind the pipe Reverton’s face was serene, but he did not look at Anderson. So he’s been doing a little idea-stealing again, Anderson thought. Was it possible to imagine that square jaw, that placid face, belonging to Val’s lover? Was it Reverton’s hand that had placed the envelope, neat and square and empty of writing, upon his neat, square, empty blotter? He would never have the imagination, Anderson thought, and felt momentarily amused.
“Run the two schemes side by side” VV’s hands moved outward. “For big spaces the dramatic scheme. This face reflected in the glass, the face of a supremely contented man. The face of a man who has done with shaving for ever. And to drive it home simply the slogan. The basic slogan will be ‘Say Hey Presto – and forget about shaving.’ I have indicated some others very roughly, and the genius of our copy boys will find some more. For the smaller spaces an educational campaign. What is this wonderful new cream that has revolutionized men’s lives? What are its properties and its makeup? What precious oils enter its manufacture?”
“What do?” croaked Wyvern. He spoke so rarely in conferences that t
hey looked at him in surprise. VV regarded the question rhetorically.
“What do? That’s the question to which we give an answer, sober yet interesting, lively without being sensational. Jack, my boy, here’s your chance as a typographer. Something chaste, something discreet, something elegant. Andy, here’s an opportunity for good straightforward and educational copy. Don’t be afraid of packing it. Be factual. Be informative. Let yourself go. Set out what you’ve got to say under headings. One. Two. Three.” VV punched one hand into the palm of the other. Reverton scratched his nose with his pipe. “Doesn’t sound too lively.”
“It can be lively,” VV insisted. His eyes were gleaming with love and inspiration. “Make it question and answer. What is Hey Presto? It is a cream that etcetera. What are its constituents? The rare oils of the tgojumba tree are blended with etcetera. How is it prepared? Analytical chemists working in conditions of aseptic etcetera. Christ, do I have to write them all for you?”
While VV talked Anderson had been staring at his mobile face, alight with enthusiasm. He was moved suddenly by a desire to turn that constant enthusiasm and good humour to anger. He coughed. “Did you say this was factual advertising or a patent medicine campaign?”
There was a moment’s silence. Then VV spread out his hands again, imperturbably good-humoured. “Ah now, Andy, you expect too much. Advertising is persuasion, not medical science. But do you see what I’m after? We’ve got to persuade, yes, but we can do it decently not vulgarly; we can set out persuasion in Times Roman instead of…” He let the sentence die away and sank back in his chair. His doglike eyes, half closed, moved from face to face.
Reverton scratched his nose again. “Silence reigned,” he said humorously. “And we all know what happened after that. Shall I tell you what I think, VV, speaking as one who’s seen a bit of life on both sides of the fence – Board Room, Copy Room and Studio?” Body flung back, too tired completely to open his eyes, VV slightly nodded. “I think I’m speaking for the boys when I say that they’d like to feel they’re not bound by this scheme of yours, that they—”
Anderson ceased to listen. How many solemn conferences of this kind had he attended over the years? Conferences on the best way of selling boots and toothpaste and machine tools, vacuum cleaners and antiseptics and motorcars? They peeled off in layers from his mind, the ridiculous failures and even more ridiculous successes, the occasion when by a mixture of wheedling and bluster he had jockeyed a superior or a client into accepting his own presentation of an idea. To win it was necessary above all to know when to fight, when to laugh, when to argue earnestly. To an equal the rueful smile: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t see it that way, old man.” To a superior propounding ideas the youthfully enthusiastic tone: “I say, sir, this really is grand stuff; this’ll knock ’em sideways.” He had been accomplished in playing those parts and many others, but now something had gone from him, and he could think only that one of these three men might have been his wife’s lover.
“Isn’t that so, Andy?” Reverton looked at him with a slightly quizzical gaze. “The guinea pig’s come to no harm, has he? Hey Presto really works?”
With a conscious effort Anderson brought himself back. “Girls, just feel my chin.”
“No five o’clock shadow?”
“No five o’clock shadow.” He ran a hand over the slightly chilly smoothness of his face. “If I were a boxer I’d say I had a glass jaw.”
They laughed. That’s it, Anderson thought; you can still do it when you try, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks but he doesn’t lose the ones he’s learned. Providing, he noted mentally, he can summon up the energy and interest to go through them. Consciously summoning up the necessary energy, Anderson spoke for ten minutes in a manner both passionate and serious. He said that it was absolutely essential that they should obtain more information from Mr Divenga. He said that informative copy, even if dedicated to the art of persuasion, must have a firm basis of fact. He was judiciously doubtful about the proposal to split the campaign into halves. He suggested that they work on this idea of VV’s, but keep their minds open to other possibilities. He suggested also that a memorandum should be prepared covering the whole subject. Reverton listened with every appearance of interest. VV still lay back in his chair, but his eyes stared at Anderson keenly. Wyvern looked out of the window.
Ten minutes later the meeting broke up. Anderson was the last to leave the room. He was at the door when VV said softly: “Andy.” Anderson pivoted on his heel. VV hesitated and then said: “What are you doing for lunch?”
3
“Nutmeat steak, jacket potatoes and salad with grated new carrot,” VV said. “Is that all right?”
The waitress, a brick-red girl with a fanatical eye, bent over him. “Perhaps you’d sooner have the mock-chicken with seakale? or spaghetti and tapioca savoury?”
“Nutmeat steak,” Anderson said hurriedly, and when she had gone away, “I didn’t know you were a vegetarian.”
“My boy, I haven’t touched meat for six weeks,” VV said with the enthusiasm of the reformed drinker. “My stomach was a terrible state. Insomnia, indigestion, sharp pain after food. I knew there was only one thing for it – clean break. I’ve made a clean break with meat.”
“Do you feel better for it?”
“Of course I feel better. If it weren’t so difficult I’d eat nothing cooked, nothing but raw food. Do you know the protein of grated raw cabbage? Do you know what percentage of protein value is destroyed by cooking?” He stared at Anderson indignantly, and then suddenly burst out laughing. “Andy boy, I’m getting to be a bore in my old age.”
Anderson joined in the laughter politely. “Last year it was steam baths.”
“And before that it was brown paper next to the skin.” VV’s hearty laugh rolled round the restaurant, startling pale long-nosed men crouched over their date and nut salads and their large-footed bare-legged wives munching raw vegetables. “Do you know the trouble with me, Andy? I’m an advertising man. It’s an incurable disease. There’s nobody more easily sold on a simple nostrum for all human ills than a good advertising man. And do you know why that is?” He flung himself back and stared at Anderson.
“Why?”
“Because we make such a mess of our own lives. We know how to sell other people on happiness, but we’ve never been able to sell it to ourselves.” VV’s brown eyes melted with self-pity. The waitress brought the nutmeat steaks. She carefully wiped the edge of each plate and stared at its contents lovingly before she moved away. “I’m a failure,” VV said as he stuffed nutmeat steak into his mouth. “I’ve made a mess of my life.”
VV had several moods well-known to his immediate subordinates. They fell into the chief divisions of self-congratulation, self-condemnation and self-pity. These were all capable of refinement into subdivisions by characteristic modifications. There was, for instance, self-congratulation with mock self-mockery: “You struggle to get to the top of the tree, and when you’ve clambered up it what do you see? A desert.” Thus also VV’s moods of self-condemnation were based upon recognition of his own wasted genius, and his self-pity was compensated by recognition of his courage in surviving the hard knocks of fate. Anderson ate some food which tasted like sawdust covered with breadcrumbs, and waited for self-condemnation to be replaced by self-esteem.
“And why have I failed?” VV pointed a finger and turned it into a fist. “Because I possessed too many talents. You think that’s a good thing? Andy, my boy, it’s as fatal as having no talent at all. Composer, singer, painter – did I ever tell you that I had a picture in the R. A. when I was sixteen?” Anderson, who had been told this story many times, made a surprised noise. “I composed an opera when I was twelve. But one’s restless, one turns from this to that and at last one becomes – what? An advertising man.” VV attacked his jacket potato furiously. “It’s a sad end for an artist. I always say thank God for the wife and kiddy, Andy, thank the Lord for the personal life. Though even that –” He sighe
d heavily and left the sentence unfinished.
“How is Mrs Vincent?” Anderson scraped pieces of underdone potato out of a burnt jacket. It was Vincent, he thought; he is an attractive man – Vincent was Val’s lover. This kind of histrionic nonsense is the kind of thing all women enjoy. Vincent and Val rolled together on the pink bed in the pink room. Anderson had once gone swimming with VV and noted the remarkable furry hairiness of his body. It was this furry animal that he now saw holding Val in a firm grasp, her gaze adoring while out of the animal’s mouth poured a sickening stream of self-pity and self-praise. Suddenly Anderson thought of Molly O’Rourke, and of the mask that had turned to him in the night. Nausea overcame him as he stared down at his plate. “I can’t –” he said, half rose from his chair and sat down again. One or two long-nosed men looked round.
VV said in alarm: “Andy boy, are you all right?”
“Quite, thank you.”
“This stuff takes a bit of getting used to. You have to stick at it.” VV pushed his own plate away and played with a toothpick. His stare at Anderson, for all its self-absorption, was remarkably shrewd. “I’d like you to know, Andy, that I feel for you about Val.”
31st Of February Page 10