Sweet Dreams

~ ~ ~

Howard meets Phil Schaffer in various pubs, down there in the sea of lights — Phil knows the city intimately already — and they walk round for hours, talking and yawning and doing joky things. They go to amusement arcades, and start a poetry magazine, and buy pornographic books, and release long streamers of lavatory paper from the top of the Pan-Am building to see whose will be carried farther by the wind as it falls. Phil makes every dark doorway seem an entrance to a sinister underworld, every advertisement and book title a revelation of the absurd. Their regular promenading grounds are the streets that abound with dirty bookshops and prostitutes and Chinese restaurants. They are both nineteen at the time, and if there’s anything in the world that’s sweeter than being nineteen when you’re thirty-seven, it’s being nineteen in a street full of whores and dirty bookshops and Chinese restaurants.

As they go about the city they search for God. They know he won’t be in any of the obvious places — that wouldn’t be his style at all. He won’t have his name on the door. He’ll be ex-directory, lurking behind some apparently innocent front, like the head of an intelligence agency.

One day they find him. They are looking through the directory board in the foyer of the RCA building, reading aloud to each other all the names of firms they find ridiculous (“How about this? Cock o’ the North Erection Company.” “What?” “Sorry — Construction Company. Hey, what goes on in this one, though? Toplady and Partners!” “Disgusting!”) when they discover a firm on the sixteenth floor called Geo. Dewey (Optical) Ltd. Phil whistles, and looks at Howard with raised eyebrows.

“What?” says Howard.

“G.D.O.” says Phil.

“I don’t get it.”

“Anagram.”

“Fantastic!”

They go up to the sixteenth floor at once, not at all sure what they are going to do. But as they hesitate outside the door marked Geo. Dewey (Optical) Ltd., a man comes out. He is wearing a tweed cap and an ancient blue trench-coat. He has a slight limp.

Phil raises his eyebrows in Howard’s direction at once.

They spring into the next lift, catch sight of him again in the lobby, and trail him for miles, on underground trains and buses, out into sparse unfinished housing estates among the vague terrains on the outskirts of the city, elaborating increasingly fantastic and boring explanations of his destination and business, until, mercifully, they lose him, and can return to the dirty bookshops and Chinese restaurants.

“Have you ever thought why it gets dark each evening?” asks Phil one day, as they leave one coffee bar where nothing is happening, and walk to another, to find out if anything is happening there.

“What do you mean?” replies Howard. “The world’s turning round!”

“But why is the world turning round? Who’s turning it?”

“Not … Geo. Dewey (Optical) Ltd.?”

“Of course. Think what would happen to the electric-light industry if it didn’t get dark every night. And the entertainments industry. And gambling, and girls. Would you be surprised if I told you that the seven major shareholders in GEC, Westinghouse, Con Edison, NBC, and CBS, are Mr. El, Mr. Elohim, and Mr. Adonai, YHWH Inc., Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, Shaddai Holdings, and Zebaot International?”

Howard puts a significant look on his face while he thinks. Then some faint memory stirs.

“But aren’t they the Seven Names of God?” he asks.

“Right! Seven aliases, and he’s got the moon and stars sewn up as well!”

Whores, dirty bookshops, Chinese restaurants — and the whole scene manipulated by the invisible wires of this all-powerful secret monopoly!

Fantastic!

“But you must know!” says Howard to Felicity, walking up and down the living room and clutching an amazed hand to his forehead.

“Well, I don’t,” says Felicity evenly, peering closely at her sewing.

“They must have told you at school!”

“No.”

“Oh, come on! You’re just trying to shock me. You’re just trying to amuse me — to set it up for me so that I can walk up and down the room gasping and shouting ‘I don’t believe it!’ ”

Felicity says nothing.

“And all right,” says Howard, “I’m enjoying it. I’m having a good time walking up and down here and being astonished that anyone could be so ignorant. It’s really made my day, to discover that there’s someone in the world who still doesn’t know who the seven major shareholders in GEC, Westinghouse, Con Edison, NBC, and CBS are!”

“All right,” says Felicity. “You’ve finished enjoying my not knowing. Now you can enjoy telling me.”

One day his father phones. It’s eleven years since he died, but Howard recognizes his voice at once, and is able to save him the embarrassment of deciding whether to say, “This is your father,” or, “This is Laurence,” or, “This is your dad.”

“It’s you!” he interrupts deftly.

“That’s right,” says his father gratefully. “It’s me.”

“Well, this is a surprise,” says Howard.

“Not too early in the morning to ring, I hope?”

“No, no — we’re all up.”

“Only I’m never too sure whether you’re going to be up or not.”

“Don’t worry. We’re all up.”

“I just thought I’d phone and find out how you are. It must be getting on for eleven years now since …”

“I suppose it must,” interrupts Howard neatly again, to save his father from hesitating over “since I died,” or, “since I passed away.” He knows instinctively that it’s not a subject his father would want to talk about.

“And Felicity?” inquires his father. “And the children? You’ve got some children, I should imagine, haven’t you?”

“Yes, four. They’re fine. We’re all fine. And you?”

“Oh, quite well, thank you. Yes. Not too bad.”

“And Mother, and Auntie Lou, and Mildred?”

“Oh, we can’t complain, all things considered.”

“Good. Good.”

Howard is very moved. Because this is what he always felt after his father died — that if he could just speak to him now, he could really open his heart and say everything, without feeling that strange mute on his vocal chords. And here he is, actually doing it!

“It’s nice to hear from you,” he says frankly.

“Well, I just thought I’d ring,” says his father. “I said to your mother, ‘I’d better just ring him and find out how he’s getting on.’ ”

Howard wants to make some huge impulsive gesture to express the naked love he feels.

“Why don’t you both come over and have a cup of tea some time?” he suggests. “Or lunch, perhaps, if that would make getting back easier?”

“Well, one of these days, perhaps. When the weather’s a bit warmer.”

“Yes, well, any time. Just give us a little notice, so that we can get the kettle on.”

There is a silence, during which Howard licks his finger and wipes at a mark on the telephone. When he realizes what he is doing he is amazed. Really, it’s fantastic! To be able to sit in silence with his father, without any need to make conversation — so relaxed together that he can sit there licking his finger and wiping marks off the telephone!

“You’re not just wasting your time here, I take it?” asks his father. “You’re not just lolling around?”

“No, no,” says Howard, smiling to himself, but touched by his father’s concern. “No, I’m rather busy, in fact.”

“You’ve got a job, have you?”

“Oh, I’ve got a job all right.”

“Because it would be a very sad thing to waste your opportunities in a place like this.”

“No, no, I’ve got a job.”

“Only too easy to lounge about all day enjoying yourself, I realize that. But you’d regret it in the long run, I think, wouldn’t you? You’d feel you hadn’t made the best use of your time here. Let your chances slip through your fingers. You’ve got to think about the future, you see.”

“No, well, this job’s got quite good prospects. Quite a generous pensions scheme.”

The sheer pleasure of being able to give his father pleasure like this!

“All right, then,” says his father. “I just thought I’d make sure you were getting on all right. Give my love to Felicity and the children. You did say you’d got children, didn’t you?”

“That’s right. Give my love to Mother, and Auntie Lou, and Mildred.”

As easy as that! After eleven years!

He has in fact got a job, now his father mentions it, and an astonishingly good one, too, for someone in his first year down from university. He is working with Harry Fischer’s design group, which is almost certainly the liveliest team in the profession at this particular moment. They all think so, at any rate, though they turn it into a joke. You can tell how lively they are by the fact that they work not in great white north-lit drawing-offices, like the more fashionable and established groups, but in a few cramped rooms on the fourth floor of an Edwardian commercial block, above a tobacconist and an employment agency, mostly looking out on an airshaft.

They are designing the Alps.

Each morning the members of the team come straggling into the dark and dusty offices, yawning and inert; and each morning, as coffee is brought round and work gradually gets under way, the little enclosed world comes alive. Harry Fischer comes out of his room in his shirt sleeves, hoisting his braces up with one hand, and holding in the other some letter or Ministry circular which has arrived in the morning post, and which he reads mockingly aloud to evoke their common derision at the obtuseness and bureaucracy of the world outside the office. They all cackle with pleasure at the absurdity of it; then, as soon as Harry has gone back into his room, they all mock him, walking back and forth about the room holding imaginary braces and letter, and talking with a German accent. As the day wears on they begin to mock each other, particularly Neil Strachan, the melancholy Presbyterian geologist who keeps ruling out half their best ideas as bloody tectonic impossibilities, and who can’t do a convincing German accent for the life of him. They talk in joke Scottish voices to each other and joke Scottish German voices, and act out the scenes of depressive Presbyterian fornication in which they affect to believe Neil’s evenings are spent. Jimmy Jessop, the glaciation expert, who is a skilled pickpocket, undoes the back buttons of Neil’s braces as they lean over a diagram together, until Neil loses his temper, and chases Jimmy round the office, shouting that he is going to bloody kill him. Then they all settle down for a bit and design some mountains.

Howard laughs more in his first few weeks on Harry’s group than he has ever laughed in his life before. He tries to convey the humour to Phil, but Phil looks at him sardonically and talks of other things. Howard also finds with pleasure that he is beginning to speak a language which is incomprehensible to anyone outside the office, even to Phil — schuppen structure, Pennine “windows,” and Dinaride outliers.

Another thing Howard likes about the job is the money.

Not that the salary is all that large. What tickles Howard is the principle of the thing. Paying him! Real money! Him! There’s something about it that’s delectably … grown-up.

There are other benefits, too, with a responsible adult ring about them. “My life’s insured by the department,” he explains to Felicity, “so that if anything happens to me you’d get both a lump sum and a regular income. And the pension arrangements are remarkably good, too. Under the regulations here they’re only allowed to pay up to eighty per cent of your salary from a contributory scheme. But they make it up, from a special noncontributory fund, to one hundred per cent of the highest salary level you reach.”

“How much will that be?” asks Felicity.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” says Howard. “It’s just the principle of the thing that struck me.”

He saves his monthly salary slips, and his bank statements and cheque stubs, and reads through them all each time he adds another item, entranced by the complex passage of money through his hands.

His intention is to form a complete collection, covering the whole of his working life, so that he will have a real store of memories to look back upon in his old age.

He likes the work itself, too.

He likes the sense of working against limitations, of seeing what kind of mountain shape can be developed given certain unalterable geological and meteorological data. And then the sudden lurching shift of perspective, the falling through the bottom of things, when you discover that these constants have been or could be altered after all.

He likes the way they suddenly drop the whole interlocking tangle of folding and faulting and erosion, and stroll round for lunch in the pub they’ve adopted.

He likes the smell of dust in the office, and the smell of clean white shirts as the sweat begins to come through the armpits.

He likes days when nothing seems to happen, and rain runs down the windows, and through somebody else’s windows on the other side of the airshaft you can see girls with piles of lacquered hair laughing and making sudden small self-conscious movements, as they flirt with young men in Italian-cut suits, silent behind the layers of glass.

He likes the endless consultations and conferences. The reaching for cigarettes from packs open on the table. The sinking of heads upon hands. The sudden impossible inspirations — “Look, just a minute, why don’t we simply scrap the Triassic strata altogether, and to hell with it?” — “Because that’s what’s holding up Mont Blanc.” — “Oh, yes.”

He likes the crises. The afternoon when they discover that they have to have a complete outline plan of the Dolomites ready for the Minister by nine o’clock the following morning, and all stay working into the small hours, until their backs are aching and their eyes closing, and they all love each other and are united in extremity against the entire world. And the other afternoon — crises are always in the afternoon — when Harry, back from an official lunch, comes out of his office and announces, “Gentlemen, I thought you might be interested to know that the location of the Alps has been shifted to Central Africa.” Lightheaded, laughing despair. Mutinous abandonment of work. Discussion of mass resignation and letters to the papers. Wanderings out to buy shirts and more cigarettes. A holiday atmosphere.

One morning Harry summons Howard into his office.

“Shut the door,” he says. “Sit down.”

He hoists his braces up, tips his chair back, and begins to sharpen a matchstick into a toothpick. He is in his fatherly mood.

“How long have you been in the office?” he asks.

“Five months,” says Howard.

“How are the moraines coming along?”

“Fine. I’ve finished the production drawings for three of them now.”

Harry curls up his lip, and picks at his gold-filled teeth with the matchstick. He has given half the designers in the business their start; survived two famous resignations on principle; been in prison and concentration camp; outlived one wife and divorced another.

“Take a rest from moraines for a bit,” he says. “I’ll tell you what I want you to do. I want you to design a trade-mark for the Alps.”

“A trade-mark?” says Howard, not understanding. “How do you mean?”

Harry takes the matchstick out of his mouth and points it at Howard.

“If I knew how I meant I shouldn’t be asking you to design it, because that’s what design is, knowing how you mean. What I want is something, I don’t know what, but when you see it it means the Alps. That’s how you stay in front in this business, Howard. You do a good piece of work. Then you put a good big handle on it, so that everyone can get hold of it and pick it up. Go and design me a good big handle, Howard.”

Howard sits tensely at his drawing-board, his mouth tight shut, his eyes gazing unseeing at the paper, rigid with anxiety to produce a good big handle. Impossible ideas crowd through his brain. He tries to follow the line of Harry’s thought, but all he can think of is Harry’s accent. Harry’s accent makes him think of Vienna, and Vienna of E. H. Gombrich. Gombrich makes him think of the readiness with which the eye recognizes the features of the human face. He sketches out a domed mountain with a pair of high corries and ledges that seem to form eyes and eyebrows, and a vertical crest of rock running down between them, passing a snowfield on either side…. He scribbles the absurdity out. He tries again with a vast seated figure like a Henry Moore, in which a hanging valley forms a kind of lap…. His mind wanders. He thinks about girls he might meet, and the evolution of the brassiere. And then suddenly, for no reason at all, he finds he is thinking of the Pyramids. With a jolt of excitement, as if his heart has stopped for a moment, his mind leaps to the image of a pyramid-shaped mountain. A mountain that weirdly echoes the shape not of the human face, but a human artifact! A mountain that looks as if it was designed by the ancient Egyptians, instead of by God and his advisers! Just made dramatically steeper, like this, and then subtly twisted out of alignment, like that….

An hour and a half later he has finished a rough plan and elevation. It’s exactly as he conceived it, except that instead of twisting it he has knocked the top slightly cock-eyed, like the cow with the crumpled horn.

He goes into Harry’s office, and without a word puts the drawings on the desk in front of him. For some moments Harry gazes at them in silence, slowly plucking the left-hand strap of his braces away from the shoulder, and letting it snap back against the shirt. Howard can feel the muscles of his face trembling slightly, as they tense for a self-deprecating smile at Harry’s appreciation. His head makes little involuntary movements, the first beginnings of the small pleasurable movements which his whole body will make as a kind of modest disclaimer in the face of Harry’s approval.

Harry’s appreciation is even more wholehearted than he expects. He begins to laugh. He laughs violently, excitedly, hammering his hand up and down on the desk. People come drifting into the room to see what’s up. They look over Harry’s shoulder, and slowly begin to smile. They glance up at Howard, looking at him in a new way. “This your idea?” they ask curiously.

Howard twitches. He runs a hand across his mouth, as if to keep wiping off his smile. He leans against the wall, and pushes himself off, and leans against it once more. His whole body is full of a genial electric warmth.

In just six and a half hours he has produced the Matterhorn.

It’s a real young man’s mountain, of course. He never does anything quite so bold again, or quite so fast.

But people in the office regard him differently now. They still mock the slow way he speaks. “Urm,” they all boom ponderously, on varying notes, when he fails to answer a question at once. They still mock his eagerness, and mimic the keen forward inclination with which he walks, as if he can’t wait to get where he is going. But he can see from their eyes that they look upon him now as someone who will transcend the collective and desert it. So he is able to become even more modest than before. He speaks more slowly, leans more eagerly, so as to offer more opportunity to the mimics; smiles more disarmingly at the result. He knows he is behaving well, that his behaviour slots precisely, with a well-oiled click, into the space in the universe that’s waiting for it.

Meanwhile the Matterhorn begins to grow famous. Projections of it are reproduced in the papers. It catches people’s imagination, and becomes, as Harry wanted, a kind of pictogram to represent the whole range. A newspaper refers to Harry in a headline as “Mr. Matterhorn.”

“I should get your lawyers onto that,” says Jimmy Jessop.

“Not at all,” says Howard. “He’s the head of the department. It was his idea, really.”

They all instantly mimic him, pressing their hands together and casting their eyes soulfully upwards.

“Manifest unto us thy holy arse, O Saint Harry, that this thy humble servant Howard may lick it,” chants Jimmy.

But they are very fond of him, underneath it all.

One day Harry comes into the office silently holding up an advance copy of one of the professional journals. It contains the first detailed plans for the Himalayas, which all the big names in the business have been working on for years. Everyone in the office comes crowding round, anxious to see the strength of the opposition. Silently they gaze. Silently Harry turns the pages over.

“Well?” demands Harry.

“Well,” says Brian McDermott cautiously, “they’re very big….”

They all let their breath out in an explosion of laughter. It’s true. They’re very big, and they’re very expensive, and that’s about all you can say for them. A prestige job, with not a suggestion of the wit and sinew and quirky humanity that informs the stuff they are turning out in Harry’s office. Which means that, unless the Andes group produces any surprises, Harry Fischer’s little bunch of boozers are the best bloody mountain-builders in the world!

Howard would like to put his arms about the whole team, as they crowd round the journal, smelling of shirts, and squeeze them all, and fuse them into one perfect corporate human being.

“You know what the trouble is with these bloody monstrosities?” asks Neil Strachan, turning back the pages of the journal with his disapproving Presbyterian fingers. “In three bloody words?”

They wait.

“No bloody Matterhorn,” says Neil.