Room at the Top

28

It was almost two months before Alice came out of the hospital. The day before, I had a phone call from Brown at the Town Hall. He rang me direct, with none of the usual secretary nonsense. "Mr. Lampton? Lunch at t'Con Club. Leddersford. One."

"Are you sure it's I you want?" I asked.

"Of course I'm sure. It's important, too. See you're there on the dot."

His tone annoyed me. It was a grey drizzling September morning, muggy and cold by turns; my in-basket was full, and after I'd cleared it I had to see our junior, Raymond, about the shortages in the petty cash. Now that Raymond is a solid citizen occupying my old job, it seems hard to believe what he was like then: a skinny little boy with a white pimply face, and a shiny blue serge suit with frayed turn-ups and shirts that were never quite clean and never quite dirty. He was cleaning the inkwells when Brown rang and singing "Onward, Christian Soldiers" in a quavering voice, trying to keep his spirits up, I suppose.

"Are you having a prayer meeting?" Brown asked. "I can hardly hear myself speak." I noticed that he'd dropped his Yorkshire accent.

I covered the mouthpiece. "Shut up, Ray, I'm busy. What was it you wanted to see me about, Mr. Brown?"

"I can't tell you over the phone, and even if I could, I haven't the time." He hung up.

I lit a cigarette; it didn't taste very good. I hadn't really enjoyed tobacco since my return from Dorset. I've been lucky to avoid this till now, I thought; Hoylake, having failed to scare me off Susan, has handed the job over to Brown who, in some unpleasantly direct way, is going to kick me in the guts. A man with only a few hundred in the bank - and lucky to have that - is powerless against a man with a hundred thousand. I would be forced to leave Warley. Already I had a premonition of my future status at the Town Hall whenever I saw Teddy swelling visibly with his promotion (he'd been given APT Four, too). I'd been with Susan last night; she'd been silent and tearful and distrait, and wouldn't tell me what was wrong with her. I knew now. Daddy had put his foot down, she was sprinting towards the already rising drawbridge and the slowly closing portcullis. And Jack Wales would be home for Christmas - what chance had the swineherd against the Prince? Now it had come, it was actually a relief: there was nowhere I could retreat to, no need to be pleasant to anyone, I could afford the luxury of speaking my mind.

I looked at Ray, his hands red and blue with ink, his lower lip trembling. He'd noticed me spending much more time than usual over the petty cash books, and he knew what was coming. I had it in my power to alter his whole life: he came from a poor family, and I knew just what happened to people who were sacked from local government. The Efficient Zombie had a junior sacked once for exactly the same offence as Ray's and he'd ended up as a labourer. The reference system, unless you're very lucky or very rich or very talented, can be your implacable enemy for the rest of your life if you do one thing out of line. Ray was in the dock, all five foot four of him: I was the judge and the jury. One word from me to Hoylake, and out he went.

"Bring me the cashbox and the stamp book and the petty cash book," I said. He took them out of the safe and came over to my desk with them, dragging his feet in their down-at-heels shoes.

"I went over these this morning, Ray," I said. "There seem to be some discrepancies."

He looked at me dumbly.

"Errors," I said. "Errors that should have been revealed by a surplus but weren't. Fifteen shillings over the last fortnight. Have you got that fifteen shillings?"

He shook his head. The tears were coming to his eyes. "All right, then. Maybe I've made a mistake. We'll go over the books together."

He stood over me while my finger traced down the rows of figures, his red-and-blue hand with the bitten fingernails following mine. It was that, and those down-at-heel shoes, that sickened me: I saw myself through his eyes, old and sleek and all-powerful. I shut the books with a bang.

"You damned idiot, what did you do it for? You knew you'd be found out."

"I don't know," he said tearfully. I did, though. His elementary school pals would be earning five or six pounds a week while he had only two. He'd been trying to keep up with the Joneses, the poor little devil.

"Stop snivelling," I said. "You're in a mess, and crying isn't going to help you one little bit. Have you got that fifteen shillings?"

He shook his head. "No. I'm very sorry, Mr. Lampton, I won't ever do it again, I swear. Please don't tell on me, please."

I took a ten-shilling note and two half crowns from my pocket and put them in the cashbox.

His face brightened a little. "You're not going to tell on me, Mr. Lampton?"

"What the bloody hell do you think I'm doing this for?"

He grabbed my hand and started shaking it. "Thank you, sir, thank you. I'll pay back every penny, I swear I will - "

"No," I said. Fifteen shilling was to him as impossible a sum to find as fifteen hundred. "No, you fool. Just don't do it again, that's all. I'll fix it this time; but if ever I catch you again, even if it's only a ha'penny, then you go to Mr. Hoylake straightaway. Now get out and wash your face."

After he'd gone I wondered if I hadn't gone soft in the head. I had in a sense compounded a felony, and if he were to steal anything again it would go hard with me. But I couldn't have done otherwise; I could remember the time when I was desperately in need of fifteen shillings myself, watching the Dufton yobs peacocking it in new suits and their wallets stuffed with notes, when I scarcely had the price of a Woodbine. And perhaps, I thought superstitiously, if I were merciful with Raymond, Brown would be merciful with me.

The Leddersford Conservative Club was a large Italianate building in the centre of the city. The stone had been a light biscuit colour originally - sometimes I wonder if all nineteenth-century architects weren't a bit wrong in the head - and a hundred years of smoke had given it an unhealthy mottled appearance. The carpet inside the foyer was plum-coloured and ankle-deep, the furniture was heavy and dark and Victorian, and everything that could be polished, right down to the stair rods, gave off a bright glow. It smelled of cigars and whisky and sirloin, and over it hung a brutally heavy quiet. There were a great many pictures of Conservative notabilities: they shared a sort of mean sagacity of expression, with watchful eyes and mouths like spring traps, clamped hard on the thick juicy steak of success.

I felt a cold excitement. This was the place where the money grew. A lot of rich people patronised expensive hotels and roadhouses and restaurants too; but you could never be really sure of their grade, because you needed only the price of a drink or a meal and a collar and tie to be admitted. The Leddersford Conservative Club, with its ten-guinea annual subscription plus incidentals (Put me down for a hundred, Tom, if the Party doesn't get it, the Inland Revenue will), was for rich men only. Here was the place where decisions were taken, deals made between soup and sweet; here was the place where the right word or smile or gesture could transport one into a higher grade overnight. Here was the centre of the country I'd so long tried to conquer; here magic worked, here the smelly swineherd became the prince who wore a clean shirt every day.

I gave my name to the commissionaire. "Mr. Lampton? Yes, sir, Mr. Brown has a luncheon appointment with you. He's been unavoidably delayed, but he asked you to wait in the bar." He looked at me a trifle doubtfully; not having had time to change, I was wearing my light grey suit and brown shoes, my former Sunday best. The shoes were still good but much too heavy for the suit, and the suit was too tight and too short in the jacket. Third-rate tailors always make clothes too small. I saw or fancied that I saw, a look of contempt in the comniissionaire's eye, so I put back the shilling I was going to give him into my pocket. (It was fortunate that I did; afterwards I found out that you never tip club servants.)

The bar was crowded with businessmen slaving to help the export drive. An attempt had been made to modernise it; the carpet was a glaring zigzag of blue and green and yellow, and the bar was topped with some kind of plastic and faced with what appeared to be black glass. There wasn't any sign that it was the stamping ground reserved for the higher grades, unless you counted the picture of Churchill above the bar - a picture which you could find in most pubs anyway. And by no means all of them spoke Standard English. Ledderford's main manufacture is textiles, and most of its ruling class receive their higher education at the Technical College, where to some extent they're forced to rub shoulders with the common people and consequently pick up some traces of a Northern accent. What marked the users of the bar as being rich was their size. In Dufton or even Warley, I was thought of as being a big man; but here there were at least two dozen men as big as I, and two dozen more who were both taller and broader. And one of them, standing near me, was at least six foot four and as broad-shouldered as a gorilla - it would be genuine bone and muscle too, there'd be no padding in that suit. He could have broken my back across his knee without putting himself out of breath and doubtless would have done if he'd been given half a chance, to judge from the way he was scowling at me. Then the scowl changed into a social smile, and I saw that it was Jack Wales.

"How are you, old man?"

"Very fit," I said. "Had a good holiday in Dorset. You seem to be bursting with health, I must say."

"Been to Majorca. Cambridge seems a bit damp and chill after it. I'm just returning there - I made a flying visit to Warley. Papa's rather off-colour. Works too hard."

"I'm sorry to hear that," I said, wondering maliciously whether it was gout, prostate trouble, or high blood pressure that was making Wales Senior ill.

"He's all right now," he said. He smiled at me. "My father puts in a sixteen-hour day, you know. Drink, old man?"

"Whisky."

"Have a double. Then you don't have to catch the waiter's eye twice."

"You shouldn't have any trouble that way."

"Whatsay? Oh, see what you mean. My height's a curse, actually. Can't get away with anything ... What brings you here anyway? Thought you were a red-hot Labour man. Seen the light, eh?" He gave one of his hearty false laughs.

"I'm meeting Mr. Brown."

"Susan's father?"

"Uh-uh."

"Nice chap. Don't let him overpower you, though. Stick out for the highest figure the traffic will bear - I suppose it's a job you're discussing?"

"Could be," I said. There wasn't anything else that I could say.

"You're cagey," he said. "Wise man." He looked at the gold watch that seemed effeminately small on his huge hairy wrist. "Well, I must push off." He finished his whisky.

"Another?"

"No thanks, old man. In any case, you can't buy one; club rule." He clicked his finger at the waiter. "Double whisky for Mr. Lampton, Henry." He gave the waiter a note, and shovelled the change into his pocket without bothering to count it. "Goodbye for now, Joe."

"Goodbye, Jack." Three double whiskies would add up to fifteen shillings, the lack of which had nearly condemned poor snivelling little Raymond to the equivalent of a life in the galleys. Not that I enjoyed the whisky any the less.

I saw Brown enter the room. He came straight over to me.

"Seem to have made yourself at home, young man. Think I'll have one of those whiskies while there's still some left." He crooked his finger and the waiter glided over to him.

"I'm very annoyed with you, young man," he said. He had very heavy black eyebrows and in conjunction with his grey hair and red face they were a little alarming; compressed over his deep-set eyes the effect was that of a hanging judge, a jolly old bon viveur sentencing some poor devil of a labourer or a clerk to death by dislocation of the neck as an aperitif to a good dinnah with a bottle of the best - the very best, waitah - port.

He took out a gold cigarette-case and offered me one.

"No, thanks."

"You're sensible. Bad habit before meals. It's the only thing you are sensible about; in all other respects you've been a bloody fool."

I felt myself going red in the face. "If that's all you wanted to see me about, there's no point in me staying."

"Don't be any dafter than you can help. I've a proposition for you. Anyway - " he gave me one of his unexpectedly charming smiles, the hanging judge becoming a Santa Claus who would send absolutely every item on the list - "you might as well have lunch first. Not that you'll have a very good one; this place has gone down the hill since rationing started."

"No one here seems to be starving."

"Never said they were. Just that you couldn't get a decent meal here any more. This is the first time you've been to this club?"

"This or any Conservative club,' 'I said. "My father'd turn in his grave if he could see me."

"So would mine," he said, and winked. "So would mine, lad. But we're not bound by our fathers."

I looked at him coldly. The bluff friendliness approach no doubt came automatically; the fustian glove on the steel fist which, any moment now, I was going to be given a mouthful of. Why didn't he get it over with?

A waiter approached us and, with much bowing and scraping, led us to a table in the dining room. This was in the same style as the foyer; the linen was blindingly white and sailcloth-stiff and the cutlery heavy enough to be silver. It wasn't a room that any moderately good hotel couldn't duplicate; but there wasn't one chip, one scratch, one speck of dust anywhere, and you had the feeling that the waiters would, without flicking an eyelash, bring you anything that you wanted the way you wanted it, even, if you really insisted, their own ears and eyes, braised in sherry.

I was taking the first spoonful of game soup when Brown said casually: "I'm thinking of setting you up in business."

I nearly choked. "Are you serious?"

He scowled. "I didn't bring you here to play jokes. You heard what I said. You can name your figure." He leaned forward, his hands gripping the table. His nails were white at the top with pressure. "You're a clever young man. You don't want to stay at the Town Hall all your life, do you? Now's the time when accountants can do well for themselves. Supposing I lend you what's necessary to buy a partnership somewhere? I won't sell you a pup; and I'll even send business your way."

"There's a catch somewhere," I said.

"There is. I'll make you a rich man - a damned sight bet- ter off than you'll ever be in local government - on one condition." He paused; suddenly he looked old and sick. "Just one condition: you never see Susan again or communicate with her in any way."

"I'm to leave Warley too, I take it?"

"Yes, you're to leave Warley too." He wiped his forehead with a white silk handkerchief. "There's no need for you to think twice about it, is there? There's nothing for you if you don't take the offer. In fact, I'll go out of my way to make things unpleasant for you."

There was a roaring in my ears; I wanted to knock over the table and hit him until my arm had no more strength in it, then give him the boot give him the boot give him the boot - I drew a deep breath. "No. Definitely no. If you were a younger man, I'd knock you down, by God I would!" To my horror, I found my accent growing broader. "Ah reckon nowt to your bloody rotten offer. Ah'll dig ditches afore Ah'll be bought - " My voice stopped shaking as I regained my self-control. "Listen. You wouldn't understand, but I love Susan."

"I wouldn't understand," he said, dragging out the words. "I wouldn't understand about love."

"I'm not in love with her," I said. "I love her. She's absolutely the best girl I've ever met. I wanted to marry her the first moment I saw her; I didn't know who she was then, and I didn't care. Damn it, I'll bring it before the magistrates. She can stay at my home if you throw her out. The magistrates won't refuse us permission to marry, and even if they do, I'll kick up the hell of a row - "

"You'll do no such thing, Joe," he said quietly.

"Why won't I?"

"Because you're marrying her. With my consent. Right quick."

I looked at him with my mouth open.

He'd regained his normal floridity now, and was actually smiling. I could only gape at him.

"Finish your soup," he said. "There's many folk 'ud be glad of that and you're letting it grow cold."

I spooned it up obediently as a child. He looked at me with a bristling kindliness.

"Why did you make me that offer?" I asked.

"I wanted to be sure you were right for her. Mind you, it would have been a good investment anyway. You're a bright lad."

I remembered something that Reggie had said on the evening of the Carstairs party. "You've done this before, haven't you?"

"She was only sixteen," he said, almost apologetically. "He was a clerk at the works. Fancied himself as a writer. And a fortune hunter. I got him a job with an advertising firm. It wasn't anything - just calf love. He caved in straightaway. If you just spoke rough to that chap, he was licking your boots the next moment. But that's of no importance. The first thing is to fix the wedding date."

"You've been against us marrying right from the start," I said, "and you want us to get married quickly ... I still can't see why."

"The reason's very simple. Yes, I'm glad you've the grace to blush."

"But why didn't she tell me?"

Brown looked at the chicken the waiter had just brought him. "Chicken again," he grumbled. "I'll be turning into one soon. Well, Joe, she didn't tell you because she didn't want you to wed her just out of a sense of duty. And I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to wed her as a financial proposition. And why the hell should I present you with a gun to hold at my head?"

My respect for him increased. And then I was seized with the fact of sharing life, all life, of being in the main current - everyone talks about the joys of motherhood, but they say very little about the joys of fatherhood, when you feel an immense animal tenderness towards a woman; the Bible puts it exactly right when it talks of your bowels yearning towards someone.

"You mean that you'd let her have the baby and say nothing to me?"

"I'd sooner have that happen than have her miserable for the rest of her life."

"Susan with my son," I said, and smiled. I was dizzy with happiness. It was a happiness as wholesome as honey on the comb, I was a man at last. Instead of having the book snatched from me halfway I was reading in to the next chapter.

"You've nothing to grin about," Brown said roughly. "This isn't the way I'd planned to have my daughter wed." His eyes turned opaque as mercury and his voice had a knuckleduster menace. "Some fathers have sent their daughters away to - nursing homes. It's not too late for that."

"She wouldn't consent," I said in agony. "You couldn't do it either, you couldn't murder your grandchild. I can't believe that anyone would be so rotten. I'll take her away with me tonight, I swear I will."

"You don't know what I can do," he said. "I can get my story in first, and I can handle her better than you can."

"You try it. You try it. I'll take the matter to the police before I let you do it."

"I believe you would." He seemed pleased about it. "I really believe you would. You're an awkward customer, aren't you?"

"Being decent isn't the same thing as being awkward."

"True enough. I've no intentions of sending Susan away, in any case."

"Then what did you give me such a fright for?"

"Wanted to see what you were made of," he said with his mouth full.

"I suppose that's why you warned me off Susan, too?"

"I never warned you off Susan," he said, helping himself to roast potatoes. "My wife had a word with Hoylake at a church social and he took it upon himself to tell you to keep away from her. That is, as much as he ever tells anyone anything. Proper Town Hall type, that chap."

"Why didn't you say something to me?"

"Why should I? If you had owt about you, I knew you'd damn my eyes and go ahead. If you were gutless, you'd let yourself be frightened off by a few vague threats, and everyone'd be saved a lot of bother. The point is, lad, that a man in my position can't get to know a man in your position very well. So I let you sweat it out."

"Jack Wales didn't have to sweat it out," I said sulkily.

Brown chuckled. "You should have seen to it that your parents had more brass. I didn't make the world."

There was now the luxury of confirming the details of my good fortune, of admiring the pretty colours of the check. "There's one thing I don't understand," I said. "I thought that you had it all fixed between him and Susan. There was talk of a merger ..."

"There was nothing fixed and the merger had nowt to do with it. I'm not a sort of king, I don't give my daughter away to seal a bargain."

"Will this mess up the merger?"

"You've some peculiar notions about business, young man. I never for one moment thought seriously about joining forces with Wales. For one thing, I've been boss of my own works too long to relish being just another co-director; and for another, I don't like the way they're going. They're makbig money hand over fist, but anyone capable of counting up to ten can do that nowadays... However, I didn't bring you here to talk about the Wales family. I want you to leave the Town Hall as soon as you can."

"I've not qualified as a cost accountant yet, you know. I've only got the C.S. - "

He silenced me with a wave of his hand. "I judge people by what they do, not by little bits of paper. I've no time to go into much detail now, but what I need, and need damned quick, is someone to reorganise the office. There's the hell of a lot too much paper; it started during the war, when we took everyone we could get hold of, thinking we could always find use for them. I'm an engineer, I'm not interested in the administrative side. But I know what we can and what we can't afford."

"So I'm to be an efficiency expert?"

"Not quite. Don't like those chaps anyway; there's bad blood wherever they are. Alterations have to be made which are best made by a new man. That's all."

"I've a wife and family to support," I said. "How much salary?"

"Thousand to begin with. Nowt at all if you don't make a success of it. You can have one of the firm's cars; there's depots at Leeds and Wakefield you'll be visiting a good deal."

"It's too good to be true," I said, trying to look keen and modest and boyish. "I can't thank you enough."

"There's just one matter to be cleared up," he said. "And if you don't, then it's all off. You've been too bloody long about it already." He scowled. "God, you have a nerve. Whenever I think about it, I could break your neck."

He fell silent again; after a minute I couldn't take it any longer. "If you tell me what's wrong, I can do something about it," I said. "I can't read your mind."

"Leave off Alice Aisgill. Now. I'm not having my daughter hurt any more. And I'm not having my son-in-law in the divorce courts either. Not on account of an old whore like her."

"I've finished with her. There's no need for you to use that word."

He watched me through narrowed eyes. "I use words that fit, Joe. You weren't the first young man she's slept with. She's notorious for it - " I suddenly remembered, down to the last intonation, Eva's crack about Young Woodley - "there's not many likely lads haven't had a bit there. She has a pal, some old tottie that lends her a flat ... Jack Wales ..."

On a trip over Cologne the bomb aimer got a faceful of flak. I say a faceful because that takes the curse off it somehow; it was actually a bit of metal about two inches square that scooped out his eyes and most of his nose. He grunted when it happened, then he said: "Oh no. Oh no."

That is what I said when Brown spoke Jack Wales's name and, pressing his advantage home, went on to give chapter and verse.

There was a handshake, there was talk of a contract, there was tolerance - I've been young and daft myself - there was praise - You're the sort of young man we want. There's always room at the top - there was sternness - See her tomorrow and get it done with, I'll not have it put off any more - there was brandy and a cigar, there was a lift back to Warley in the Bentley; and I said yes to everything quite convincingly, to judge from Brown's satisfied expression; but inside, like that sergeant until the morphine silenced him, all that I could say, again and again and again, was the equivalent of those two syllables of shocked incredulity.