31st Of February

by Julian Symons

  “Do I understand you to say that Bagseed should have concealed this letter from me? That he should have…”

  The rest of the sentence was inaudible to Anderson.

  “I didn’t quite hear you, I’m afraid.”

  The ice tinkled more sharply. “That he should have betrayed his duty to me? You suggest that?” Bagseed shook his worn old head in anguished denial of such a possibility.

  “Why, of course not. But he’s got to make a distinction between a piece of spontaneous emotion like a man swearing when he kicks his foot against a stone—”

  “I regard bad language as bad manners at any time,” said Raper. Bagseed sucked in his false teeth sharply.

  “Ah, you’re too good for the rest of us erring mortals, Mr Raper.” Anderson managed a laugh.

  “Leaving aside your curious view of Mr Bagseed’s responsibilities, I must confess surprise that I have heard no expression of regret from you regarding the contents of the letter. But perhaps you think no regret is called for. If that is your view it would be honest to say so. I respect honesty, Mr Anderson, above all things.”

  It was the crawl then. “Of course, I regret extremely the expressions I used in a heated moment.”

  “But some of them, perhaps, you still feel inclined to justify.” Mr Raper’s lips moved, but no words were audible. Had his voice, perhaps, been deliberately lowered?

  At the other end of the mulberry carpet Anderson said: “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said, ‘Out of our many pestilential clients, Kiddy Modes are perhaps the most pestilential of all.’ Does that phrase have the ring of truth to you, Mr Anderson?”

  Not only a crawl, but a belly crawl. “Certainly not. I should like to apologize for the use of that phrase.”

  “‘Their criticisms on this occasion, as on others, are incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial.’ Does that seem to you a fair observation?”

  “It was thrown off in the heat of the moment.”

  “That is not an answer to what I asked. Do you wish to justify that remark?”

  “No no, certainly not. I should like to apologize for it – to you and to Mr Bagseed.”

  Mr Bagseed looked startled. Mr Raper made the very faintest inclination of his head.

  “‘Kiddy Modes demand just about six times as much attention as any other client of their size.’ Was that a proper remark?”

  “I apologize for that, and, for the whole of the letter unreservedly.” Is it possible for the head to get lower than the belly when you crawl? It is at least possible to try. “I don’t wish to make excuses, but a few weeks ago my wife died. I have not been myself since then.”

  “Please accept my sympathy in your bereavement,” Mr Raper said primly. “But I am sure you would not wish that factor to influence my judgement of this deplorable letter in any way.”

  “Naturally not. I only—”

  “I am very glad to know that you agree with me about the nature of this letter. Had you seriously thought us at fault I should have felt bound to make a thorough investigation of the circumstances. Nevertheless, I had to make up my mind whether a firm which expressed such views would be quite happy with our account.” The thin voice was now penetratingly clear. “I consulted with Mr Bagseed, and he agreed with me that once the perfect confidence that should obtain between client and agent has been broken it can never be mended.” Bagseed was picking at the knees of his trousers and staring at the floor. “Do I make myself clear, Mr Anderson?” Anderson was speechless, “Do I make myself clear?”

  “You’re taking away the account?”

  “Precisely. Here is a letter terminating the contract. Formally, it has still two months to run, but I imagine that in view of this,” Mr Raper tapped Anderson’s letter, “Mr Vincent will not wish to argue that point. Mr Bagseed will make all the necessary arrangements for our change-over to another agency.”

  So the belly crawl was useless, had been useless even before he contemplated it. He had been a perfect mouse for this neat sadistic cat, a mouse who gave the greater pleasure because he clung to the illusion of free will. And what could he say now? It would be a mild pleasure, perhaps, to call Raper names, but by doing so he would give the little man one more satisfaction. But even while his thoughts moved thus rationally, Anderson was inarticulate with rage. He stood up, walked stiffly over the mulberry carpet to the big desk, and picked up the letter terminating the contract. The temptation to put his fist into the small face upturned toward him was almost, but not quite, irresistible. Anderson folded the letter carefully, put it in his pocket, and left the room.

  3

  We all of us retain, for the greater part of our conscious lives, the impression that we are in control of events; not exactly in any world-shaking, Hitlerian or Napoleonic way, but in the sense that the performance of certain actions has predictable results. The exact nature of the links that make up the chain of cause and effect is concealed from us, and to most people, indeed, the links are of no interest; but it is essential for our mental well-being that the chain itself shall not be broken. When a switch is pressed the electric light must shine; the formal conversational gambit admits of only one formal reply; a letter, stamped and posted, must reach its addressee. No common logic is, in fact, applicable to the postal service, the return of conversation and the supply of electricity; few of us are concerned, however, to trace such things to their origins, but merely to receive a traditional result from a traditional action. It is upon this illusion of free will (an illusion in the cases mentioned because the effect of our actions is really based upon the inventive genius, the courtesy or the labour of others) that our civilization has its slender basis; damage to this illusion in the case of an individual may render him incapable of dealing with the simplest problems, so that he is afraid to push the bell of a street door or to pull a lavatory chain because he has come to believe that life is in its essence illogical and irrational.

  Something like this loss of belief had been suffered by Anderson. His mind had served him well in his work as a business executive; his judgement of people and situations had been almost invariably correct. The realization that he had been hopelessly astray in dealing with Raper affected him profoundly. It had never occurred to him that Raper’s action might be the decisive one of severing relations altogether; the whole of his own conduct had been based upon a set of wrong assumptions. It was true that even a correct analysis of the situation could not have saved the account, but that point was irrelevant to Anderson’s shocked consideration of his own condition. Such a gross error was out of the natural order of events; so far out of it that Anderson, when he left the room with the mulberry carpet, was a changed man. The change affected his thought and by extension, naturally, his conduct. There are two great classes in European civilization, those who do things, and those to whom things are done. Anderson entered the room with the mulberry carpet as (in his own view, at least) a member of the first class; he came out of it a member of the second. His energies had hitherto been divided between the attempt to preserve his position as an advertising executive and the desire to discover the identity of his wife’s lover. The first of these objectives be had now abandoned. Not quite consciously, he felt that his power to apprehend the external world was failing; he had always believed that whatever happened constituted a norm or rationality, so that inability to understand the happenings around him naturally appeared as a defect in rational apprehension. He gathered together, therefore, as it might be said, his remaining forces, and launched an attack on the mystery of his private life, the vital part of the enemy position. His business flank was necessarily left exposed.

  It was symptomatic of this changed attitude in Anderson that on return to the office his first move was to telephone Elaine Fletchley, and not to see VV. She was out at a fashion show. He telephoned Fletchley at Joseph Street and got no reply. He asked for VV, who was still in the Board Meeting. Jean Lightley, who had told him this, also gave him the result of the investigations
he had asked her to make about the change-over of the letters. It seemed that a boy from the Dispatch Department, in an access of zeal, had taken the letters from Jean Lightley’s desk. In the Dispatch Department, where the drawings were being packed up, he had dropped the letters and when he picked them up he had put them into the wrong envelopes. It was as simple as that; and to Anderson, now, it seemed so unimportant that he did not even ask the boy’s name. When Jean said that she hoped Kiddy Modes had not been too angry he smiled, but made no reply.

  To some natures there is something consoling in the perfect knowledge of the worst that can happen; it is, for a little while at least, satisfactory to be saved from the belief in the possibility of beneficial action. Such false tranquillity blessed Anderson now. He felt as the prisoner condemned to death may feel after his appeal has failed and the Home Secretary has refused to intervene. To know one’s fate inevitable – is that not also to know peace? Anderson, a plastic and suffering figure, waited now for what might happen with the resignation he had shown in air raids during the war; feeling now, as then, certainty of disaster. But, in fact, he had come through the war unchipped, and no doubt there remained in some part of his mind the thought of escape, which added an edge of contradictory pleasure to his perfect despair.

  Anderson remained in this mood for about half an hour, staring into space unseeingly: and then his eye, coming, it seemed, into focus and roving round the neat room, was caught by something out of place. It was the blue overcoat he had brought away from the Pollexfens’ party. What was it Lessing had said? That it looked like a coat belonging to young Greatorex? Anderson got up slowly (his movements, since his return from Kiddy Modes, were slightly hesitant like those of an old man), picked up the overcoat and went to Lessing’s room. The copywriter was not there, but Greatorex sat at a desk in a corner of the room with a guard book open in front of him, and the telephone in his hand. He replaced the receiver as Anderson came in.

  Anderson held out the coat. “I picked this coat up by mistake last night. Lessing said he thought it might be yours.”

  Was he mistaken in thinking that the blonde young man hesitated before answering? But he must know if he had lost an overcoat. “Yes, it does look rather like mine.”

  “And you lost yours? At the Pollexfens’ party?”

  “That’s right.” Greatorex nodded, and smiled ingenuously and charmingly. “To tell you the truth I had rather a lot to drink and didn’t know whether I was coming or going. I wasn’t sure where I’d left it. But that’s mine. I recognize that mark on the sleeve.”

  Anderson held out the coat. “You know the Pollexfens?”

  “Not really. My uncle, Sir Malcolm, gave me introductions to a few people, and they were among them.”

  “I didn’t see you there.”

  Greatorex smiled discreetly. “You’d gone, breathing fire and brimstone, before I could make my way across the room to say hallo. You created quite a stir.”

  Of course – Fletchley! Anderson had forgotten about him.

  “Was Fletchley all right?”

  “Was that his name? I don’t think he sustained any vital injuries. He seemed to spend most of the evening crying about his wife. I believe he stayed the night. At least, he was still there when I left. Yes, that’s my coat all right.” Greatorex looked at the label, put his hands in the pockets. “I suppose you didn’t leave anything –” His hand came out with an envelope in it. He looked at it and said: “This is yours.” Upon the envelope, in typewriting that somehow seemed familiar, was printed Mr Anderson.

  Anderson put the envelope in his pocket and walked out of the room without saying anything. Back in his own room he extracted a cream laid card of medium thickness. On it was typed:

  Yet Ile not shed her blood,

  Nor scarre that whiter skin of hers, than Snow,

  And smooth as Monumental Alabaster:

  Yet she must dye, else shee’l betray more men:

  Corny, Anderson thought, corny. Somebody’s done five minutes’ work with Stevenson or Bartlett. He remembered now why the typing seemed familiar. It was, he felt sure, the same as that on the anonymous letters shown him by the Inspector. And yet the quotation, corny as it was, stirred something in him, probed gently and painfully into a very tender and deep recess. But how had the card got into the pocket of that overcoat? It could not have been put in while he was at the party, for nobody could have known in advance that he would leave wearing Greatorex’s coat. In pure theory it could have been slipped into the coat after he had put it on, and was about to leave, but somehow that seemed very unlikely. Somebody, it was much more likely, had put the card into the coat pocket this morning, while it lay in his office. Somebody, anybody, X. But Val’s letter and the blank sheet had been put on his desk. Why should X have chosen to put this card into a coat pocket, rather than on the desk? To that question Anderson could find no answer, until with a flash (there seemed, quite literally, to be a flash and a kind of crack inside his head, so that he put both hands to his temples, covering his eyes) an answer came to him. Postulate Greatorex as X, say that the card had been in Greatorex’s overcoat last night ready for delivery at some convenient time. By bad luck Anderson had taken away the coat with the card in it; and when Greatorex discovered the fact he must have been on tenterhooks in case Anderson put his hand in the pocket immediately on leaving and discovered the card. In fact, Anderson had not done so; and when Greatorex found that out this morning he had, with the utmost coolness, delivered the envelope as he had meant to do last night. Neat.

  By this process of reasoning which, Anderson conceded to himself judicially, seemed remarkably plausible, Greatorex was X; but Greatorex, as far as Anderson knew, had been altogether unknown to Val. Greatorex was in the office only because he happened to be the nephew of Sir Malcolm Buntz. Greatorex as X was, in fact, at once plausible and ridiculous.

  When Anderson progressed this far in his reasoning he became aware that something in front of him was shining. The shining came from his desk and was something more than the reflection of electric light upon it’s polished surface. Something actually upon his desk was shining, and, peeping through the fingers that covered his eyes, be could not be sure what it was. He must, then, remove his fingers to see the object; but that proved to be, for some reason, remarkably difficult. It seemed to Anderson minutes, although doubtless not more than one or two seconds, before he drew away fingers from eyes; and when he did so he was conscious of a positive screech of separation, as though they had been attached by sticky tape. His eyes, naked and defenceless, were confronted by the shining object. Anderson was looking at a brand new chromium desk calendar. The date showing on it was the thirty-first of February.

  The sight of the calendar filled Anderson with an unreasoning terror which nullified altogether the logical process of reasoning by which he had been seeking to identify Greatorex as his wife’s lover. He put out a finger and touched the calendar, very timidly, as though afraid that it might contain some poisonous spike that sprang out at a touch. He ran a fingertip over this shining surface, placing it upon the figures 3 and 1 as if to convince himself of their existence. He was still staring at the calendar when the door opened and Lessing said, “How did it go?” and then, “Why, what’s the matter?”

  Anderson swallowed and spoke. “The calendar.”

  “What about it? New, isn’t it?”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “How should I know? Probably a gift from your faithful secretary.”

  Anderson swallowed again and said: “Look at the date.” Lessing looked and sighed. “What little things do amuse little girls. The thirty-first of February. Doesn’t it show that the oldest chestnuts are still the ones that rock ’em in their seats?”

  “You think it’s a joke.”

  “If you call it a joke for a young girl to be coy.”

  “Coy?”

  “What’s the thirty-first of February but a sort of super leap year, quadruple leap year or someth
ing? But how did it go with ropy Raper and birdseye Bagseed?”

  Still looking at the calendar, Anderson said: “We lost the account.”

  Lessing’s soft mouth rounded into an O of surprise. “Do the big boys know?”

  “Not yet.”

  “They won’t be pleased.”

  With an effort Anderson stopped looking at the calendar and looked instead at Lessing. “Rev’s always said it was a pain in the neck.”

  “Saying’s saying and losing’s losing. A twenty-five thousand pound pain in the neck is worth having. But it’s your baby, not mine. Only I’ve got some bad news too. Rev’s done you in the eye over Crunchy-Munch. He produced a scheme of his own at the meeting and pushed it through against our two ideas. Ghastly stuff. ‘The kind of sweet that mother used to make.’ Two curly-headed children and a good brawny housewife wiping her hands on her apron. VV fell for it like a ton of bricks. Did you know Rev was working out a scheme of his own?” Anderson shook his head. “It’s a filthy trick,” Lessing said indignantly. “How’s Hey Presto?”

  “It’s made my face stiff,” Anderson said and then broke off. “There’s Jean.” He was out of his chair and at the door. Jean Lightley came in, panting slightly. Anderson pointed to the chromium desk calendar. “Did you put that on my desk, Jean?”