Room at the Top

23

And that was why, only three days later, I found myself staring at a letter from Susan.

I don't want to see you ever again. I didn't listen when people told me about you and her but now I know that all the time we've been going together you've been making love to her. I'll be going abroad soon so it's no use your writing or telephoning. You've been very bad to me and what hurts most is that you were telling lies all the time. I expect you thought that I was too young and silly to make you happy. Perhaps I was; but now I feel grown up. I hope you will be happy and get all the things you want so much. I don't feel angry with you, only sad and hurt, as if someone I loved had died.

It was a nicely expressed letter, all things considered; the first I'd had from her or any other woman. In a way, it was a relief; I wasn't obliged any more to spend even that figurative shilling; all my physical and emotional capital could go to Alice. The affair was neatly rounded off - it was rather flattering, too, that I should be the reason of her sadness. As if someone I loved had died - I made a mental note of the phrase. It conveyed the fact that she had loved me, that everything was over, and that she was most distressed about it, without descending to abuse or threats of suicide. It was a Grade Two letter; a woman of my own grade could never - even if she'd got round to writing a letter - have achieved that innocent, dignified, elegiac note.

Smiling, I opened Charles's letter.

I'm settling down happily in London, though so far I've been unable to find one of the rich old sugar- mammies with whom, I'd been given to understand, the place abounded. However, I'm now entangled with the Children's Librarian, a delicious little Grade 5 - if not 4 (intelligent at least she agrees with everything I say), untampered-with I'll take my oath, and, to my great surprise and joy, with a daddy who is a MANAGING DIRECTOR. Mind you, it's a small firm, and daddy has three sons - big boozy clots who are all continually wasting the Old Man's substance: one's at Oxford, another's a writer and gets far too generous an allowance, and the eldest is in the business and draws far too big a salary. No one gives a thought to poor little Julia - but she has in me a devoted defender, you may be sure.

But that isn't what I wanted to ask you about. Before the dark night of matrimony descends upon us - or at any rate, upon me - how about this holiday in Dorset? I've got the offer of a cottage at Cumley, which is at the head of a little cove near Lulworth. Roy Maidstone will share expenses with us and we can have a fortnight's fishing, swimming, drinking, and, I hope, sinful goings-on with the local wenches who, everyone says, are stupid, loving, and passionate, and smell of hay and honeysuckle.

The only snag is that the place is only available from the 20th of June to the 11th July, and Roy and I can't get down until the 24th. It's only four days we shan't be getting our money's worth for but it niggles me rather. You said you could get away on the 20th - so if you'd like to go on ahead of us and draw up a list of likely virgins and places of historical interest and so on, the picturesque little residence is all yours. Or you can stay at my digs - it's up to you ...

I smiled again. Alice and I had been making vague plans to go away together even if only for one night. She was going to visit an old friend in London in July. George was going to the Continent on business -

"You've let your tea go cold, Joe," Mrs. Thompson said.

"I'm thinking about my holidays."

She gave me a fresh cup of tea. "Everything fixed?"

"Yes," I said. "It's odd, but whenever you want something you get it."

A change came over the happy composure of her face. I'd seen something like it before: Aunt Emily had looked like that at my parents' inquest. It was an old face looking at me, knowing too much about love, proper human love as prosaic as wet Mondays and as necessary as wages, knowing too much about the pain which announces itself in accents as matter-of-fact as the policeman giving evidence; Mrs. Thompson at that moment knew all about me, saw through the flesh of my words and into the skull beneath.

"You always get what you want when you're young," she said. "The whole world's in a conspiracy to give you things ..."

Then she was herself again, and I was out of that courtroom in 1943 with its smell of damp wool and dried ink, and stone floors and the coroner, listening to Aunt Emily with a bored look on his fat face, and back in the front room with the sun sparkling on the polished oak table and Eagle Road outside as bright and bouncing as a newly bathed baby.

When I reached the office, it was full of people shaking Tom Harrod's hand. Tom was the Chief Audit Clerk, spectacled and bald and in his early thirties, with the typical sedentary worker's stoop and pasty face; I suppose that he had all the normal human attributes, but to me it always seemed that he'd been included with a new consignment of office equipment or given at Christmas instead of a desk diary or inkstand.

I joined the crowd. "Congratulations. You'll make a good Deputy Treasurer. When are you leaving for the South?"

"Steady on," he said. "I haven't resigned yet." He put his hand on Teddy's shoulder. "I expect you'll be able to carry on without me."

Teddy looked smug. It didn't suit him. When Tom had gone and we were left alone together, he said: "Are you applying, Joe?"

"You don't get Grade Four until you're too old to enjoy it," I said. "Besides, it's not worth the extra responsibility."

"I think I'll have a bash just the same," he said.

"You stand a better chance than I anyway. You've been here longer." He had been there longer than I; but he wasn't as good as I and he knew it. "They'll put you on Grade Three at first," I said. "There's something about Four which terrifies them."

"Every little helps," Teddy said. "You know I'm going steady with June?"

"You couldn't do better." I had a sudden sense of loss, and then a feeling of barriers being raised between me and the rest of the world. "I wish you luck, Teddy. With both her and the job."

"You're sure that you don't mind about me applying?"

"Why the hell should I?"

"I'd be your senior."

"Tom never bothered me much."

"I had the buzz that Hoylake's reorganising."

"I knew that a long time ago," I said. I looked at the rows of files, the red and black inkwells that the office boy should have cleaned out yesterday, the tin lid used as an ash tray in which my cigarette was smouldering, the calculating machine and the typewriter, the calendar with the picture of the girl like Susan, the basket full of accounts at my desk, and each became part of a dreadfully cosy desert - though at least, I thought as I turned away from the calendar, I was no longer deceived by the mirage.

"I knew a long time ago," I repeated. I dropped my hand heavily on Teddy's shoulder and squeezed it in mock friendliness until he winced with pain. "You go right ahead, Teddy."