Room at the Top

7

The Library shared the same building as the Town Hall, I called there at ten the following morning and found out that Jack would be returning to the University in a couple of days.

I stood in the little alcove they called the Reference Department, feeling absurdly exultant and at the same time envious. Cambridge: I had a mental picture of port wine, boating, leisurely discussions over long tables gleaming with silver and cut glass. And over it all the atmosphere of power, power speaking impeccable Standard English, power which was power because it was born of the right family, always knew the right people: if you were going to run the country you couldn't do without a University education.

Jack's father, among other things, manufactured cars. Business was booming; though even if it hadn't been, it wouldn't greatly have mattered, since he'd built up a cosy little vertical trust. Whenever he spent more than a certain amount on any component, he bought the firm which made it; he owned a plastics factory, a tannery, a body-work builders and even a laundry and a printing firm. Beside Ford or Lyons or Unilever it was a small combine; but I'll be very surprised if the old man cuts up for less than a million.

Cedric had explained to me the reason for Jack's taking a science degree. "Whoever runs the combine can't specialise," he said. "He must be able to think generally. If he knows too much detail he won't be able to grasp the whole. So Jack's going to Cambridge to learn how to think." Cedric had given me a conspiratorial smile. "Not that it makes much difference. The accountants and the engineers run the show no matter who's in charge. All that's necessary is that Jack meets the right people and learns how to get on with them. Blinding with science - isn't that the phrase?"

All right, I muttered to myself childishly, I'll pinch your woman, Wales, and all your money won't stop me ...

I went out to the phone kiosk opposite the Town Hall and called Susan. Waiting for the operator to put me through I was half inclined to abandon the whole attempt. If she hadn't answered the phone it's doubtful whether I would have tried again.

"Susan Brown speaking," she said.

"Joe Lampton speaking. How official we sound." There was a pane missing in the kiosk and a cold wind blew in. My hands were shaking with excitement. "I've got two tickets for the ballet on Saturday night, I wondered if you'd care to see it."

"Saturday night?"

"I mean evening," I said, cursing myself.

"I'd love to see it. Just a minute, Joe, I'm all tangled up, I've just had a bath."

I imagined her nakedness, young and firm and fragrant. Then I put the idea out of my head. It was something I didn't want to think about. It wasn't that I didn't desire her physically; but to strip her mentally was adolescent and pimply, it didn't express my true feelings. This I can honestly say: my intentions towards Susan were always those described as honourable. Any other response to her beauty would have seemed shabby. Even apart from her money, she was worth marrying. She was the princess in the fairy stories, the girl in old songs, the heroine of musical comedies. She naturally belonged to it because she possessed the necessary face and figure and the right income group. And that's how it is in all the fairy stories: the princess is always beautiful, and lives in a golden palace, and wears fine clothes and rich jewels and eats chicken and strawberries and cakes made from honey and even if she has bad luck and has to go to work in the kitchen the prince always spots her because she's left an expensive ring in the cake she's baked for him; and the shock almost kills him when she's brought to him in her donkey skin with her face and hands dirty from menial labours because he thinks he's fallen in love with a common working girl, Grade Ten in fact. But she takes off the donkey skin and he sees her fine clothes and she washes her face and hands and he sees her white delicate skin. So it's all right: she's Grade One and they can marry and live happily ever after. The qualifications for a princess are made brutally clear.

Susan was a princess and I was the equivalent of a swineherd. I was, you might say, acting out a fairy story. The trouble was that there were more difficult obstacles than dragons and enchanters to overcome, and I could see no sign of a fairy godmother. And that morning I couldn't tell how the story would end. When she left the phone she seemed to be away for a long time; I thought for a moment that she'd hung up on me but somewhere in the background I could hear a vacuum cleaner and women's voices.

"I'm sorry for keeping you waiting," she said, "I couldn't find my engagement book. Saturday evening will be all right, Joe."

The first dragon was killed, even if it was only a small one. I tried not to sound too exultant. "Grand. I'll call for you at a quarter past six, shall I?"

"No, no," she said quickly, "I'll meet you at the theatre."

"A quarter to seven then."

"Golly, here's Mummy. I must rush. Goodbye."

"Goodbye," I said, feeling a little puzzled. Some of the gilt had already been taken off the gingerbread. Why should she panic when her mother came into the room? It was as if she hadn't wanted it to be known that she was going out with me. Wasn't she supposed to go out with anyone except Jack? And was I, unlike him, not good enough to call at her house?

When I returned to the Treasurer's, Teddy Soames was drinking tea and flirting with June Oakes, the Health Department typist. June was just twenty with red hair and clear skin and, I was fairly sure, a silly but loving disposition; but I knew better than to become mixed up with her. Office affairs are easy to begin and difficult to finish, particularly in a small town.

However, I joined in the flirtation. It was reassuring to my ego to be with a woman who was within my reach, who wouldn't, I thought, looking at her full moist lips, egg me on unless she meant business, and who would be absolutely delighted to have me call at her home.

"Hello, queen of my heart," I said, taking a cup of tea. "It's always nice to see you. Every day you look more beautiful. I'm glad you don't work at the Treasurer's though."

"Wouldn't you like me to?"

"I'd be too busy looking at you," I said. "I'd never get any work done."

She giggled. "I hear that you're looking at someone else."

"Only because you won't marry me."

"You haven't asked me."

I went down on one knee and put my hand on my heart. "Dear - or may I say dearest? - Miss Oakes, I offer you my hand and my heart - "

"Don't listen, June," Teddy said. "He goes boozing with married women."

I straightened myself up. "I don't know what you mean."

June giggled again. "Her name might begin with A. She's much too old for you." She had a voice which was very light in timbre, almost a squeak; it combined oddly with her magnificent bust.

"Oh that ," I said lightly. "She was giving me a lift home. We were discussing the play. Teddy wouldn't understand. Our relationship is strictly platonic."

"Yes, I understand," Teddy said, putting his arm round June's waist. "I'm trying to take June on a platonic weekend. Of course, it'll be too bad if she has a platonic baby." He gave one of his loud artificial laughs and nuzzled June's cheek.

"Oh, you are awful," she said. "No, Teddy. No, you mustn't. What if Mr. Hoylake comes in?"

"He'll order me to leave you alone and let him have a cuddle," Teddy said.

"I won't speak to you again ever," she said. "You've got an awful mind." She smiled at me. "But Joe's a gentleman."

"Don't depend on it," I said.

She came closer to me; she had a strange smell, not perfume, not soap, not sweat, almost rank, but clean. I was strongly tempted to caress her, or at least make a date with her; but the one would have been unsatisfying and the other dangerous. So I smiled back at her. "You're lovely," I said.

"You've gorgeous eyes," she said. As she went out she laid her hand on mine for a second. "What's wrong with us young spinsters?" she asked. It was as if Teddy weren't there.

"Don't mind me," he said. "You're quite a boy for the women, aren't you?"

"They queue up just to speak to me."

"You can have June," he said. "She's only a kid. But Mrs. A. - now her I really envy you."

"There's nothing to envy me for."

"She's lovely," he said. His thin tough face was wistful.

"She's all right. Never thought of it."

"By God, I'd think of it. She's - " he searched for the word and then used it rather shamefacedly - "she's a lady. She's a woman too. Every time I see her I sweat and shake - you know."

"You lewd young man," I said. "You know what the Good Book says about committing adultery in your heart."

"Her husband's committing it elsewhere."

"That's no excuse. What's he like, by the way?"

"Wealthy woolman. Sleek and pale, talks well-off."

"Who's the other party?"

"A girl from his office. Young and plump and dumb. It's been going on for a year."

"They're worse than animals," I said indignantly. "Why can't he be content with Alice?"

"She's thirty-four and they've been married nearly ten years and they haven't had any children." He grinned. "I'd help him out. Willingly."

I shrugged my shoulders. "She doesn't attract me in that way." I was thinking about Susan; it gave me a queer little thrill in the pit of my stomach when I remembered. I badly wanted to tell someone, to boast about it discreetly. I rather hoped that Teddy would introduce her name into the conversation and then I could drop a casual statement about our date. He didn't mention her, however, but continued to drool over Alice.

That evening I went to the second rehearsal of Meadowes Farm . Ronnie was in great form, puffing violently at his pipe, running his hands through his hair to indicate nervous tension, and scribbling frantically in his interleaved script. "This evening, people," he said, "you're just bodies . And very fine bodies too, if I may say so. I want you to clarify these moves, and then we can get on with some acting ..."

Alice and I had three torrid love scenes. I expected to find them embarrassing, but she was so impersonal in her attitude, so free of embarrassment herself, that our embraces were like slow dances. We worked so well together that Ronnie didn't have to correct me more than twice each move, which is pretty good at that stage of production. I took my lead from her; which of course was quite correct because I was supposed to be seduced by her.

Ronnie was moved to praise afterwards. "Your love scenes are beginning to shape well already, Joe. I can forsee trouble elsewhere" - he twinkled at me over his spectacles - "you know, the dull necessary business of entrance and exit and sitting down and standing up. You sit down as if - well, I won't be vulgar. And you rise as if you'd sat on a tin tack. And you're most awkward with Anne and Johnny. But with Alice you really come to life."

"Alice would bring a dead man to life," I said. I smiled at her; to my surprise she coloured a little.

When Ronnie had finished speaking to the cast, I followed her off the stage into the auditorium. She took up her coat from where she'd left it in the stalls; I helped her put it on. The second before I took my hands off her shoulders she relaxed against me; it was as impersonal as our stage embraces.

I put on my own coat and sat down beside her. "I followed your suggestions."

"Which suggestions?"

"I phoned Susan. We're going to the ballet." Somewhere in the flies I heard the voices of Ronnie and Herbert: a blue light illumined the stage with its litter of cigarette ends, the trestle tables and Windsor chairs and the horsehair sofa on which I'd been making love to her. It was only a small theatre but suddenly it seemed big and echoing and desolate.

"Susan?" she said. "Yes, I remember." The light turned to a warm pink. "You can't go wrong if you're advised by me. Auntie Alice is always right."

"You're not an aunt," I said. "They're forty and smell of camphor."

She grimaced. I noticed that her chin sagged a little underneath.

"Well at least I don't smell of camphor. I'm behaving like a Woman's Chats auntie, though. Or Juliet's nurse." Her tone seemed bitter.

"But no," I said. "I saw Romeo and Juliet once. She was an evil old bitch. You're nice and exciting. And rather - " I stopped. I was going into dangerous territory.

"Rather what?"

"Don't be angry with me. Promise."

"All right," she said impatiently, "I won't be angry even if it's indecent. I promise."

I floundered. "It seems so silly. I can't - "

"This is just like At Mrs. Beam's ," she said. "You are irritating, Joe. Go on, for God's sake."

"You're rather - no - not pathetic. But lost, like a little girl. As if you were looking for something. Oh God, I sound like a cheap film. Forget I said it, will you?"

She was silent for a moment. Then her eyes moistened. "What a strange thing for you to say. No, I'm not angry, darling." She fished in her handbag. When I gave her a light I was surprised to find my hand trembling.

At that moment George Aisgill came in. He was wearing an enormously thick overcoat, which he wasn't tall or broad enough to carry. He had small well-shaped hands, the nails shining from a recent manicure and he wore not only a signet ring on his third finger but a diamond ring on his little finger. His features were neat and smooth and his moustache looked as if it had been painted on. Despite the manicure and the diamond ring, he didn't look effeminate; though he didn't look masculine either. It was as if he'd deliberately chosen masculinity because it was more comfortable and profitable. I disliked him at sight but in a different way from Jack Wales; there was no real harm in Jack, but George Aisgill had a watchful coldness about him which almost frightened me: he looked utterly incapable of making a fool of himself.

"I've come to take my wife away from you rogues and vagabonds," he said. "My wife having messed up the Fiat."

"This is Joe Lampton," Alice said to him. "My lover."

"Dear me," he said, "I'm sorry. Have I spoiled it all?"

"We've met before," I said.

He gave me a quick exhaustive glance. "I remember," he said. He nodded towards the stage. "How's it going?"

Something in his manner suggested that we were all indulging in a scruffy kind of charade.

"I can't tell you," I said. "You'll have to ask Alice."

"Oh, it's not more than usually bloody," she said in a flat voice. "We continue to amuse ourselves."

Her whole manner had changed with his coming. She wasn't subdued or frightened or overbright; it was very difficult to put one's finger on the difference, but I noticed it at once. She became the sort of person that up to the evening before I'd thought she was - cool, blasé, superior, only half alive.

"You're a Town Hall wallah, aren't you?" he asked me.

The outdated temporary gentleman phrase set my teeth on edge. "Treasurer's."

"Must be a bit dull."

"You'd be surprised," I said lightly. "There's always some businessman trying to fiddle. My God, how those boys hate paying taxes!"

"Not guilty, old man," he said. "My mill's not in Warley,"

"We don't like that either. You're depriving your home town of money."

"When the Council encourages business I'll build a mill at Warley."

"When we find a businessman who thinks our smoke abatement policy isn't merely words, we'll welcome him."

He smiled showing sharp white little teeth. "Where there's muck - "

I was just going to retort that he took damned good care to live outside the muck when Alice broke in.

"No shop," she said. "Don't you ever get tired of it?"

He threw up his hands in a gesture of mock resignation, the diamond on his little finger glittering coldly. "You'll never understand that we men live for our work. As soon as we talk about anything interesting, you complain we're talking shop."

Against my will I felt pleased that he should have considered my remarks interesting, though I knew that it was Dale Carnegie stuff, a small, apparently casual compliment. The others imperceptibly gathered round him, in much the same way, I thought, as they'd gathered round Jack Wales. He represented the power of money as Jack did: he was another king. As I watched them all paying court to him, I wondered how on earth he came to marry Alice, how the thin lips under the neat moustache brought themselves to frame - as they surely must have done - the words I love you . I just couldn't imagine them in bed together, either. They weren't the same kind of person; they hadn't, as all the happily married do, acquired any likeness to one another.

I rose and said to Alice that I was going.

"You're coming our way, aren't you?" she asked.

"There won't be room," I said.

"Nonsense," George said. "You haven't an engagement, have you?"

"There's plenty of room," Alice said. "Do come, Joe."

I looked at her sharply. It was as if she were asking me for protection.

George's car was a Daimler 2˝ litre. I settled down in the back with Johnny Rogers and Anne Barlby. I'd never ridden in a privately owned Daimler before. George switched on the roof light for a moment: the soft light enclosed us in a private world, warm and cosy, tough and adventurous too, arrogant with speed and distance.

Johnny passed round cigarettes and I leaned back against the deep cushions, letting myself be absorbed in the private world, letting the atmosphere of luxury rub against me like a cat. Johnny talked cars with George; he was, of course, going to buy one soon. We used RAF slang, which personally always makes me want to vomit: unless exceptionally well done it stinks of newspapers and films. "I wish you could see this Bug," Johnny was saying. "It's wizard, sir. Bang-on ..." But he was harmless, only just twenty, with a snub nose and curly hair and an air of morning baths and early to bed and plenty of exercise.

Anne Barlby was his cousin. She was talking to Alice, or rather, trying to make her feel thoroughly uncomfortable by references to her good fortune in possessing a Daimler and to the good looks of her lover - "The spit-and-image of Jean Marais, darling." I was Alice's lover of course; the joke was wearing thin.

Anne wasn't like Johnny in temperament, but looked very like him, with the same fresh look and curly hair. Unfortunately, she had a nose which would have better suited a man, big and shapeless, nearly bulbous. It didn't look bad from some angles and was passable on the stage; but she was unduly sensitive about it. She needn't have worried: she had a trim figure, was bright and intelligent and, though not exactly an heiress, had money behind her. In the meantime she was inclined to be bitchy. She especially disliked me and never lost an opportunity to be unpleasant. Looking back, I know the reason for her dislike: I didn't take sufficient pains to disguise the fact that I found her physically unattractive. A little gentle flirtation, even a discreet sort of pass, would have changed her attitude entirely. She behaved as if she wouldn't welcome sex from me in any shape or form; and I took her at face value. Which is the last thing that any woman wants.

The Daimler took St. Clair Road with no effort. It was like being in a mobile drawing room; except that it was a great deal more comfortable than many drawing rooms. George drove with a chauffeur's neat efficiency; I couldn't help comparing his technique with Alice's slapdash recklessness.

"We'll leave you here," Anne said halfway up St. Clair Road. "It's a lovely car, Mr. Aisgill. Much nicer than the Fiat. You can only squeeze two into the Fiat, can't you, Joe?"

"My God," Alice said, when George had started the car again, "what a poisonous little cat she is. Dripping nasty insinuations in that chorus-girl accent! She'll wait a damned long time before I ride in the same car with her again. Shall I confess all, George? Shall I throw myself upon your mercy? I gave Joe a lift home last night and we called at the St. Clair. There now, our guilty secret's out. Of all the scandalmongering, gossiping, evil-minded places - "

"All small towns are like that," George said indifferently. "Anyway, why bother with the St. Clair? Take Joe home if you don't like people gossiping. There's plenty to drink in the house, isn't there?"

He overshot Eagle Road and I didn't notice myself until we were half a mile past, nearly at the top of St. Clair Road.

"I'll walk down," I said to him.

"You might as well come and have some supper," he said. "You can phone the Thompsons."

"Do come," Alice said.

"The rations - "

She laughed. "Don't worry about that, honey. It won't be a banquet anyway, just bits and pieces."

We'd reached the top of St. Clair Road. From Eagle Road it was open country - pasture land bordered by trees, with a few big houses set well back from the road. On the left, half hidden by pines, there was the biggest house I'd seen in Warley. It was a mansion, in fact, a genuine Victorian mansion with turrets and battlements and a drive at least a quarter of a mile long and a lodge at the gate as big as the average semi-detached.

"Who lives there?" I asked.

"Jack Wales," George said. "Or rather the Wales family. They bought it from a bankrupt woolman. Colossal, isn't it? Mind you, they don't use half of it."

My spirits sank. For the first time I realised Jack's colossal advantages. I thought that I was big and strong; but there was a lot more of the house than there was of me. It was a physical extension of Jack, at least fifty thousand pound's worth of brick and mortar stating his superiority over me as a suitor.

The Aisgills' house stood at the end of a narrow dirt road just off St. Clair Park. It was 1930 functional in white concrete, with a flat roof. There were no other houses near it, and it stood on the top of a shelf of ground with the moors behind it and the park in front of it. It looked expensive, built to order, but out of place, like a Piccadilly tart walking the moors in high heels and nylons.

Inside it was decorated in white and off-white with steel and rubber chairs which were more comfortable than they appeared. There were three brightly coloured paintings on the walls: two of them were what seemed to me no more than a mix-up of lines and blobs and circles but the other was a recognisable portrait of Alice. She was wearing a low-cut evening dress in a glittering silver cloth. Her breasts were smaller and firmer and there were no lines on her face. The artist hadn't prettified her; I could see the faint heaviness of her chin and the beginnings of lines.

"Don't look at it too closely, Joe," she said, coming up behind me. "I was ten years younger then."

"I wish I were ten years older," I said.

"Why, Joe, that's very sweet of you." She squeezed my hand but didn't release it straightaway. "You like the room?"

"Very much," I said. But I wasn't quite sure that I did. It was a strange room, very clean, very bright, in good taste, but somehow without comfort. The low white-painted shelves across the wall opposite the fireplace were full of books, mostly brand new, with the jackets still on; they should have humanised the room but they didn't; it seemed impossible that they should be read; they were so much a part of the room's decorative scheme that you wouldn't have dared to have taken one.

"Drink?" George asked, going to the cocktail cabinet. "Gin, whisky, brandy, rum, sherry, and various loathsome liqueurs which I can't really recommend."

"Whisky, please."

He gave me a malicious look. "It's not Scotch, alas. An American customer gave me a crate. Tastes like hair oil. I warn you."

"I drank a lot of it in Berlin," I said. "No soda, thanks."

It left a warm glow inside my stomach after it had for a split second dried my mouth and sent a little rush of air up my throat.

"Alice says you're from Dufton." He filled up his glass with soda-water and sipped it like a medicine.

"I was born there."

"Been there on business once or twice. My God, it's depressing!"

"You get used to it."

"You'll know the Torvers, I suppose."

I did know them in the same way that I knew the Lord Lieutenant of the county. They were Dufton's oldest mill-owning family; in fact, the only mill-owning family left after the Depression, the other mills having gone either into the hands of the Receiver or London syndicates.

"My father worked at their mill," I said. "He was an overlooker. So we never met socially, as you might say."

George laughed. "My dear Joe, no one ever meets the Torvers socially. No one would want to. The Old Man hasn't had one decent emotion since he was weaned, and Dicky Torver spends what little time he has left over from the mill-girls in drinking himself to death."

"We used to call Dicky the Sexy Zombie," I said.

"Damned good. I say, damned good!" He refilled my glass as if he were giving me a little reward for amusing him. "That's just how he is with that awful pasty face and that slouch and that fishy gleam that comes into his eyes whenever he sees a bedworthy woman. Mind you, he's a good businessman. You'd have to get up very early to catch Dicky Torver."

"He's a horror," said Alice, entering with a tray of sandwiches. She poured herself a whisky. "I met him at the Con ball at Leddersford. He made a pass within the first five minutes and invited me to a dirty weekend within another five. Why doesn't someone beat him up?"

"Some women might find him attractive," George said. He nibbled a cheese biscuit.

"You mean that their husbands might want to do business with him?" I said.

He laughed again. It was a low, pleasant laugh; he could evidently call it up at will. "Not that way, Joe. It's like bribing an executioner; if you're reprieved, he says it's due to his efforts and if you're hanged you can't talk. If someone's wife is - well, kind to Dicky, and the husband lands the contract or whatever it is, then Dicky's kept his side of the bargain. If the husband doesn't land the contract he can hardly make a public complaint. No, business isn't as simple as all that."

"It happens," said Alice.

"Occasionally." His manner indicated the subject was closed and I'd been put in my place.

"Joe," Alice said, "do have a sandwich. They're there to be eaten."

The sandwiches were the thinnest possible slices of bread over thick slices of cold roast beef. The plate was piled high with them. "You've cut up all your ration," I said.

"Oh no," she said. "Don't worry about that. We've lots more. Truly."

"The farmers have meat," George said, "I have cloth. See?"

It was perfectly clear; and I enjoyed the meat all the more. It was like driving Alice's car; for a moment I was living on the level I wanted to occupy permanently. I was the hero of one of those comedies with a title like King for a Day . Except that I couldn't have deceived myself as long as a day, and I could, in that room, tasting the undeniable reality of home-killed beef and feeling the whisky warm in my belly, put myself into George's shoes.

Alice was sitting a little away from the table, facing me. She was wearing a black pleated skirt and a bright red blouse of very fine poplin. She had very elegant legs, only an ounce away from scragginess; her likeness to a Vogue drawing struck me again. I looked at her steadily. We were the same sort of person, I thought fuzzily, fair and Nordic.

George poured me another bourbon. I swallowed it and bit into a second sandwich. Alice gave me a light little smile. It was no more than a quick grimace, but I found my cheeks burning as I realised that I'd like to be in George's shoes in more ways than one.