A man with a distinct personality, said VV.
A friendly type, Rev remarked, and with good connections.
A man with a keen administrative sense, added Pile, whose name is Blythe-Pountney.
VV rang a bell. A man came in. Andy, my boy, said VV, meet Mr Percival Blythe-Pountney. Mr Blythe-Pountney, Mr Anderson.
Anderson had seen Percival Blythe-Pountney before. He had been walking along, wagging a finger in the air and saying: Three four five six. Now the little man stuck out a hand, both guilty and sly. Anderson took it, and burst out laughing. The laughter, uncontrollable as last night’s laughter, rocked him so that he had to lean against the wall. Mr Blythe-Pountney looked modestly, but still slyly, at the floor, but three pairs of eyes stared at Anderson with frozen disapproval. There is, after all, no return from the dead.
6
There is no return. But was it not possible, Anderson thought again, that the whole thing was a dream? At times during the afternoon he thought so, said to himself: It is quite impossible that I should be showing this man Blythe-Pountney the progress of my accounts, introducing him to the Production Department, the Space Department, to Studio, Research, Vouchers, Accounts, Dispatch. Blythe-Pountney, at first accompanied by Rev, but later left entirely in Anderson’s hands, did no more number counting or finger wagging. He developed during the afternoon, however, a nervous tic which caused him to wink prodigiously at awkward moments, and his limb movements were poorly articulated. An arm, moving in a wild unnecessary semicircle, would now and again thud against Anderson’s body, or a flying elbow be dug suddenly into his side. Blythe-Pountney seemed able to control these unexpected thrusts in the presence of women, but he gave Wyvern a great dig in the stomach and flicked the manager of the Space Department lightly across the face with his hand. His two-step overcame him at the oddest times and places. He might run a step or two down the corridor, or break into brisk foot tapping while details of space bookings and insertions were being explained to him. It was difficult, certainly, to believe in Blythe-Pountney as a representative of reality.
The news, nevertheless, had to be broken. Anderson broke it, gently and carefully, like eggs into a basin “I’m taking a long holiday,” he said, and added with what he hoped was an obvious note of irony, “At the directors’ request.” When he told Lessing the copywriter shook his head, eyes grave behind his hornrims. “Bad luck,” he said. “Kiddy Modes?”
“No,” Anderson answered. “Life. The missing wail in the nursery.” Lessing looked puzzled. “This is Blythe-Pountney, who is taking over from me.” Blythe-Pountney twitched, winked and shuffled. Greatorex was brought from his corner desk and introduced. “Are you leaving us for good, Mr Anderson?” he asked.
“For good or ill. Never be surprised by sudden departures in the world of advertising, Greatorex.”
Blythe-Pountney said to Lessing: “You’ll be working for me on that – um, ah – new account, won’t you? Hey Presto. Big stuff. I like it. Scope for ideas. Let me see what you’ve done on Monday.”
“With you.”
“What’s that? What’s that?” Blythe-Pountney winked.
“Andy and I work with each other.”
Blythe-Pountney twitched. “That’s what I said.”
“The word is
with,
not
for.”
“Oh.” Twitch and two-step. “Oh yes. Jolly good. Yes, I see.” A gargantuan wink. “With, not for. Yes, I see your point.”
In the studio Wyvern carefully wiped off paint and took the hand offered by Blythe-Pountney with an accompanying two-step. Wyvern said nothing at all, but Blythe-Pountney seemed hardly to notice silence. He stuck his nose into the rough lay-outs Wyvern was making for Hey Presto, was enthusiastic about some designs for labels that had already been rejected by a client, pinched the arm of a girl working as apprentice in the studio, and criticized a photographic montage of buildings which was being pieced together for a construction company. “Modernistic stuff, eh, modernistic. Very interesting. Like it, do you? Can’t say I do myself. Simple, strong, vital, that’s what I find clients generally like. Just like the girls,” he said with a wink and a sudden dig of his elbow at Wyvern. “Most interesting place in an advertising agency is the studio, I always say. Like to spend all my time in it. Got some layout ideas myself, you know, full of ideas. Be bringing them down to you; you’ll be seeing a lot of me. ’Bye till Monday.” Blythe-Pountney two-stepped forward, grasped Wyvern’s hand, winked and two-stepped away. Anderson said: “I’ll be in tomorrow, Jack, to clear up and say goodbye.” Wyvern stood, hands on hips, looking after them.
When Blythe-Pountney had gone Anderson sat in his office, staring at the diminishing finger of sunlight on the carpet. His mind had gone back, for no obvious reason, to the day in his boyhood when, coming downstairs to breakfast, he had seen by his mother’s plate the salmon-pink writing paper and recognized Elsie’s hand. His mother had wept, shouted, screamed at him; but when she knew that Elsie was going to have a baby shouts and screams were replaced by gentle wheedling. “You don’t really want to marry her, do you, dear? A girl of that class. You’ve made a mistake, but we must see if you can’t patch it up, so that you can wait until Miss Right comes along.” Patching-up meant the last letter in the salmon-pink envelope to say that Elsie had gone to Bradford, but what else did it mean? His father and mother had spoken of the affair thereafter only as a narrow escape from danger, a trap which through their cleverness had never, quite, been sprung. But what had happened to Elsie? He could recall nothing of her but a nervous giggle, employed upon the most inappropriate occasions. On the common under the bushes Elsie had giggled and giggled, quite unable to control herself. She remained as a giggle and a salmon-pink envelope, but what had happened to the seed within her? Had it been allowed to live? Was a child of his loins, a young man or woman, now talking with a Bradford accent, training as engineer or student of ballet? How astonishing that in all these years he had never thought of Elsie Smith and of their child. One brings down the curtain, Anderson thought, and never looks behind it And why was he looking behind it now? Suppose the seed exterminated, might one say that murder had been done when Elsie was sent to Bradford?
The thin beam of sunlight had vanished when, looking up, he saw Reverton standing, pipe in mouth, smiling a little ruefully. Vincent, Reverton, Wyvern, Lessing, which of them gave my wife his – blessing? “I’ve come to say good-bye,” Reverton said, with such finality in his voice that Anderson was startled.
“Good-bye?”
“I shan’t be in tomorrow. Going down to see Crunchy-Munch. I was sorry to have to butt in with my own ideas there, but you know how it is sometimes. Anyway, it’s over now. Andy, it’s all for the best, believe me. It may be only temporary.” A far-away look came into Reverton’s eyes. “We’ve had some good times together. I’ll miss you, Andy. We’ve been a great team, but I’ve got the firm to think of. We must all think of the firm. Frankly, I’ve had a feeling lately that you haven’t really been – believing in your work.” Tribute had been paid in sentiment. Reverton took the pipe from his mouth, looked at it, tapped it on his heel. “You won’t forget the Hey Presto when you come in tomorrow, will you? Divenga rang up about it today. As a matter of fact, there’s some snag.”
“Snag?”
Reverton was looking hard at his pipe. “This particular sample may not be absolutely suitable for every type of skin. He doesn’t want us to go on using it. Seems it contains some substance which may irritate the delicate white skin, though it’s quite all right for dark skins. They’re sending over other samples which have gone through some new refining process. They’re experimenting all the time, you know that.” Reverton paused, apparently expectant of a reply. When he did not get one he said again: “You won’t forget to bring it back tomorrow. I shouldn’t go on using it.”
“I won’t forget.”
“No hard feelings, Andy.”
There should be hard feelings, Anderson thought, but in fact there are no feelings at all, nothing but numbness and a memory of Elsie Smith. “No hard feelings.”
“Sure you’re all right?”
“Perfectly.”
“Well.” Reverton tucked away the pipe, shot out his muscular reliable hand. “Good-bye, Andy, and good luck.”
“Good-bye.”
The afternoon grew darker. Anderson sat at the desk while spots of light appeared in the offices visible through the window. At last he got up, put on his hat and raincoat and reached the door. There he switched on the light and stood looking at the desk still littered with papers, the green carpet, the hatstand; items in a dead life. He said aloud, not knowing what he meant. “It won’t do.” As he walked away from the office the telephone was ringing. It seemed somehow to be a comment on his career.
7
The sense of impending event, awful in its significance, disastrous in its effect, that hung over Anderson was accompanied by a strange numbness and emptiness. He was frightened at the thought of return to his fiat; the disordered presence, the empty drawer, the dirty sink, the Inspector’s presence hanging about the place like his cigar smoke, were things that moved through his numbness to cause irrational apprehension. It was with a sense that he had absolutely nothing to do but wait, combined with a contradictory feeling that some kind of action was demanded of him, that Anderson turned into the Stag after leaving the office. There, sitting in one of the partitioned alcoves, hat on back of head, sat Wyvern. He pointed a finger at Anderson.
“Bang bang bang, so they got you. The gipsy’s warning was right. Let me set them up. Cheers. Let me guess what my old pal Rev said to you. He said: Good-bye Andy, it’s been lovely knowing you; if I were a crocodile I’d weep; I’m sorry, but you’ve stopped believing in your work. Right?”
“Not far wrong.”
“I know I’m not far wrong. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. But why did they fall for this St Vitus? Because of his old school tie? He’s no advertising man; he just stocks a nice line of bull. Anybody with half an eye can see that. Well, he’d better not come playing around in my department or he’ll be out on his ear.”
“Another beer.”
“Thanks, mine’s a Bass. It’s a damned shame the way they’ve treated you. It is the boot, isn’t it? Rev said you were taking a long rest, and might not come back.”
“I shan’t come back.”
Wyvern held his long nose with two fingers. “When you smell stinking fish, there you smell advertising. That’s my view of the profession.”
“There’s nothing like that to it,” Anderson said wearily.
“They’ve got as much right to get rid of me as I’ve got to leave them. I don’t complain.”
“Then you bloody well should complain. When I think of those complacent bastards sitting there and then think of my old mother –” Wyvern tilted his glass and took a long drink. “Though from what they tell me you’ve been a bit off the beam lately. I mean old boy, magic calendars and letters flying about to the wrong people – they just won’t do.”
“Who told you?”
“My ear is to the ground,” Wyvern cupped one ear. “What are you going to do for that little girl?”
“Jean Lightley, do you mean?”
“Jean Lightley,” Wyvern made a noise. “I mean Molly.”
“I’d forgotten about Molly.”
“Ah, there you are. But she hasn’t forgotten you. She wants you, Andy.”
Anderson thought of the long chalky nose, the ride in the taxicab and the tears staining the little squares of colour. He Said flatly: “But I don’t want her.”
“Why did you make her think you did, then? Why did you sleep with her?” Anderson stared in astonishment at the face stuck forward indignantly into his own. “Hell, man, everybody knows it. You’ve only got to look at her and see the difference.”
“You can’t see a difference,” Anderson said mechanically. He was looking at a hat which lay on a table by one of the alcoves opposite. The hat was a bowler, rather old but quite respectable. A coat, beside it, was dark blue. The occupants of the alcove were invisible, but it seemed to Anderson that he knew both hat and coat.
“Shall I tell you the trouble with you? I feel all the sympathy in the world with you, the dirty way you’ve been treated, but shall I tell you the trouble with you? Self-centred, you’re too damned self-centred, Andy. Suppose we were all like that? Take me and my mother now, what do you think happened the other night? I was just going out—”
A hand, holding a glass of beer, was visible outside the partition. The beer was placed upon the table by the hat. Before the hand was withdrawn Anderson saw the thick, hairy wrist. At the same time he heard a laugh, light and boyish. The laugh, like the overcoat, belonged to Greatorex. Anderson stood up suddenly and knocked over the table. Beer flowed over the floor and on to Wyvern’s lap. “Sorry,” Anderson said. “Sorry.” He got out of the alcove and ran from the pub without looking into the alcove opposite.
8
Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, Piccadilly, Shaftesbury Avenue, Charing Cross Road. Neon signs flashed at him in coloured lights messages which had a desperate depth of meaning. BOVRIL – BOVRIL – BOVRIL, said the lights in Trafalgar Square, where the fountains played excitingly their song of sexual aspiration. In Leicester Square the houses of pleasure invited him, Gable and Grable, Garbo and Harpo, Tracy and Lamarr. In Piccadilly Circus a sign said excitingly DRAIN IT TO THE LAST DROP. Ah, to belong again to the world of Bovril and Moussec, to know and love the realities of Gable and Grable, to be unconfused by the agonies of choice.
Reality,
said Dr Johnson, leaning forward and pinching one elegant thigh with his rude fingers,
Here is reality, sir. Thus I confute you.
Oh, Anderson cried, wandering among the civilization of the Corner House and the Milk Bar, jostling gum-chewing girls, passing the contraceptive doorways of chemists – oh to believe that such a visible world exists in its ideal simplicity. a world away from the disordered flat, the anonymous letter, the unseen figures in the alcove. He stopped outside a cinema which said MORE BRUTAL BENNY – MORE LUSCIOUS LUCY – FIERCER AND FRANKER THAN EVER. Lucy Lalange presented an expanse of thigh ten feet high. Brutal Benny Baily stood snarling by her side. Anderson passed over his pieces of silver and went inside.