Room at the Top

by John Braine

  3

  I awoke at three, wondering for a moment where I was. Outside the sun was shining, pale but warm, the colour of Demerara rum. There was a blackbird perched on the cherry tree, sleek and glistening as if it had been bathed in oil, its beak the same clear primary yellow as the cup I'd drunk my coffee from that morning. It started singing as I looked out of the window, ending each phrase abruptly as if out of breath, a curiously amateur effect.

  Mrs. Thompson was rolling out some pastry when I went downstairs. The kitchen was large and clean and bright with an electric oven which had a control panel like a bomber's. All the canisters, one felt certain, contained exactly what their labels stated, all the knives would be sharp, all the implements, from egg whisk to orange squeezer, in perfect working order. And yet the room was as gay as Mrs. Thompson's flowered apron; it would, just as it was, have served as a film set for any middle-class comedy. It didn't make one feel an intruder, there were no squalid little secrets like stopped-up sinks and dirty dishcloths.

  "I'm off to do some shopping, Joan," I said. "Is there anything I can bring back for you?"

  "Nothing, thanks," she said. "You'll find most of the best shops round the market place. The Modley bus will take you there -- the stop's at the bottom of the road. Going back, it's on the half hour from the bus station. The Food Office is at the Town Hall, by the way. Aren't I a mine of information?" She unwrapped a piece of cheese and began to grate it.

  "What's that going to be?" I asked.

  "You'll find out at six o'clock," she said. "I hope it's going to be perfectly delicious, but I won't promise anything, mind." She looked at me with a cool tenderness. "It's nice to have two men to look after again."

  I went out into Eagle Road. The Thompsons' house, wasn't, I perceived on further inspection, quite at the top either of Eagle Road or Warley; the topmost building of the road was a block of flats in ferroconcrete and glass with the glass predominating, and St. Clair Road, from which Eagle Road branched off, continued upward for at least a quarter of a mile.

  The houses were a mixed bag, in every style from mullion and hall-timber to what, from its white walls and dark green roof and profusion of ironwork, I took to be Spanish. No doubt it would all have been a nightmare to anyone with any understanding of architecture; but I didn't look at it aesthetically. I saw it against the background of Dufton, the back-to-back houses, the outside privies, the smoke which caught the throat and dirtied clean linen in a couple of hours, the sense of being always involved in a charade upon Hard Times. What pleased me about Eagle Road was the clean paintwork and stonework, the garage for each house, the taste of prosperity as smooth and nourishing as eggnog. Anyone who lives on a private income in Bath will consider me a crass brute; but anyone who lives in a place like Dufton will understand the sensation of release and lightness, of having more than one's fair share of oxygen, which I experienced that September afternoon.

  The Town Hall was a queer mixture of Gothic and Palladian, with battlements and turrets and pillars and two stone lions. It was rather like Dufton's -- like a hundred others, for that matter. As soon as I passed the front door I recognised the municipal smell of radiators, disinfectant, and floor polish; having been away from it for two days I'd forgotten how depressing it could be -- the smell of security and servitude, Charles used to call it.

  The Food Office was like Dufton's too -- the long counter, the trestle tables, the rows of filing boxes, the bright posters appealing for blood, for safety on the roads, for volunteers for the Army. And though it was part of the Town Hall it had its own smell, the unmistakable Government smell halfway between a teashop and a stationer's.

  It was empty except for two girls behind the counter. The elder, a plump girl with black eyes, attended to me. "You're coming to work at the Treasurer's, aren't you?" she asked. "I saw your picture in the Courier . It doesn't do you justice, though. Does it, Beryl?"

  "He's smashing," said Beryl. She stared at me impudently. She had unformed babyish features and no perceptible breasts but there was about her a disturbingly raw provocativeness as if, along with her school certificate, she'd passed some examination on the subject of the opposite sex.

  "I'm even more smashing when you get to know me better," I said. "I've hidden charms . . ." They giggled.

  "You're very naughty -- " Beryl was beginning when a middle-aged man carrying a sheaf of cards like the Holy Grail walked into the room, and the atmosphere of flirtatiousness and self-aware femininity as young and silly and pretty as kittens was instantly dispelled. There was enough left over, though, to linger with me pleasantly for the rest of the day; I carried the traces out with me like face powder on the lapel.

  After I'd finished my shopping I went into Snow Park. It wasn't as one expects a municipal park to be, an open space set aside from the pattern of ordinary living, existing in a kind of quarantine; it seemed to mingle with the town. The River Merton loops the southern half of Warley; the park stood between the river and Warley Forest, narrowing at Market Square as if to let the forest come nearer, so that the narrow cobbled streets round the market all seemed to end in running water and trees.

  I sat on a bench by the river and took out the Warley Courier . Looking at the Merton -- so clear that I could distinguish the colours of the stones on its bed -- I thought of the dirty harlequin of a river which ran, if that's the word to apply to a body of water as sluggish as pus, through the black streets of Dufton. The Merton was full from the day's rain and running strongly but in a backwater about a hundred yards from where I was sitting I noticed something even more important than clarity; that pale green film of algae which means that water's clean enough for fish to live in. I felt a bitter envy towards the two small boys walking along the path with their mother at that moment: they would grow up beside a river where they could swim and boat and fish. The Langdon at Dufton could and frequently did drown people; and that was the only characteristic of a river which it possessed.

  The bench was on a little rise sloping down to the river; from that vantage point the park broadened out again past Market Square, so that it was in two halves, roughly the shape of a letter B turned away from the town. It was a satisfying shape, wild and natural and yet cultivated. There weren't many people in the park that afternoon. I could hear the faint hum of traffic from Market Street; apart from that, I might have been deep in the countryside. It was even more secluded on the other side of the river; there were places in the forest scarcely five minutes' walk away where you couldn't see as much as a house chimney. But I didn't know this till much later.

  I didn't bother to read my paper; and I stopped myself at the point of lighting a cigarette. There wasn't any need to fill the moment with trivialities -- it was already filled to capacity. It was sufficient to sit there, to breathe, to look at the river and the trees, simply to exist.

  I'd been sitting there for at least an hour when the wind turned cold and I began to shiver. I left the park and crossed into the Market Square for a cup of tea. I'd been sitting too long in the same position; as I put my hand to the door of Sylvia's Café I had a mild attack of pins-and-needles and one leg gave way under me. I swayed forward and put my other hand against the wall to steady myself. It was the most minor of mishaps and I recovered within a second; but the incident seemed, for the duration of that second, to jar my perceptions into a different focus. It was as if some barrier had been removed: everything seemed intensely real, as if I were watching myself take part in a documentary film -- a really well-produced one, accurate, sharp, with none of the more obvious camera tricks. The black cobbles splashed green and yellow and red with squashed fruit and vegetables, the purple satin quilt held up in a bullfighter's sweep by a fat man in his shirt sleeves, a giggle of schoolgirls round a pile of brightly coloured rayon underwear, the bells of the parish church striking the hour sad as Sunday, a small girl wearing an apron dress with one strap fastened by a murderously big safety pin -- everything was immensely significant, yet neither more nor less tha
n itself. There were no tricks with the lens or the microphone, the buildings steadily obeyed the laws of perspective, the colours registered without smudging, the sounds were neither a symphony nor a discordance. Not one inch, one shade, one decibel was false; I felt as if I were using all my senses for the first time and then, turning into the café, I returned to normality as smoothly as a ski jumper landing.

  I took a seat by the window and ordered a pot of tea. It was a long curved window extending along the front of the café like a ship's bridge. My table was placed at the centre of the window, and I was able to see all the streets which led into the square. Market Street was the broadest, forming one side of the square; three other streets, narrow and cobbled, ran off it, one at each of the top corners, another, scarcely wide enough to take two walking abreast, halfway up the lefthand side. The two houses facing each other at the end of this street were half-timbered; I recognised them as genuinely Elizabethan, the beams an integral part of the structure instead of laths nailed on plaster. There was a bridge of wrought iron and glass connecting the next two houses; it seemed to be the only thing which prevented them from sagging into each other. The name of the street was Hangman's Lane; probably, I thought, a hangman had actually lived there, an interesting bloody-handed Elizabethan hangman, not a seedy little bore in a bowler hat.

  Then at the moment the waitress brought the tea something happened which changed my whole life. Perhaps that isn't entirely true; I suppose that my instincts would have led me to where I am now even if I hadn't been sitting at the window of Sylvia's Café that afternoon. Perhaps I wasn't directed in the Ministry of Labour sense, but I was certainly shown the way to a destination quite different from the one I had in mind for myself at that time.

  Parked by a solicitor's office opposite the café was a green Aston-Martin tourer, low-slung, with cycle-type mudguards. It had the tough, functional smartness of the good British sports car; it's a quality which is difficult to convey without using the terms of the advertising copywriter -- made by craftsmen, thoroughbred, and so on -- I can only say that it was a beautiful piece of engineering and leave it at that. Prewar it would have cost as much as three baby saloons; it wasn't the sort of vehicle for business or for family outings but quite simply a rich man's toy.

  As I was admiring it, a young man and a girl came out of the solicitor's office. The young man was turning the ignition key when the girl said something to him and after a moment's argument he put up the windscreen. The girl smoothed his hair for him; I found the gesture disturbing in an odd way -- it was again as if a barrier had been removed, but this time by an act of reason.

  The ownership of the Aston-Martin automatically placed the young man in a social class far above mine; but that ownership was simply a question of money. The girl, with her even suntan and her fair hair cut short in a style too simple to be anything else but expensive, was as far beyond my reach as the car. But her ownership, too, was simply a question of money, of the price of the diamond ring on her left hand. This seems all too obvious; but it was the kind of truth which until that moment I'd only grasped theoretically.

  The Aston-Martin started with a deep, healthy roar. As it passed the café in the direction of St. Clair Road I noticed the young man's olive linen shirt and bright silk neckerchief. The collar of the shirt was tucked inside the jacket; he wore the rather theatrical ensemble with a matter-of-fact nonchalance. Everything about him was easy and loose, but not tired or sloppy. He had an undistinguished face with a narrow forehead and mousy hair cut short with no oil on it. It was a rich man's face, smooth with assurance and good living.

  He hadn't ever had to work for anything he wanted; it had all been given him. The salary which I'd been so pleased about, an increase from Grade Ten to Grade Nine, would seem a pittance to him. The suit in which I fancied myself so much -- my best suit -- would seem cheap and nasty to him. He wouldn't have a best suit; all his clothes would be the best.

  For a moment I hated him. I saw myself, compared with him, as the Town Hall clerk, the subordinate penpusher, halfway to being a zombie, and I tasted the sourness of envy. Then I rejected it. Not on moral grounds; but because I felt then, and still do, that envy's a small and squalid vice -- the convict sulking because a fellow prisoner's been given a bigger helping of skilly. This didn't abate the fierceness of my longing. I wanted an Aston-Martin, I wanted a three-guinea linen shirt, I wanted a girl with a Riviera suntan -- these were my rights, I felt, a signed and sealed legacy.

  As I watched the tail end of the Aston-Martin with its shiny new G.B. plate go out of sight I remembered the secondhand Austin Seven which the Efficient Zombie, Dufton's Chief Treasurer, had just treated himself to. That was the most the local government had to offer me; it wasn't enough. I made my choice then and there: I was going to enjoy all the luxuries which that young man enjoyed. I was going to collect that legacy. It was as clear and compelling as the sense of vocation which doctors and missionaries are supposed to experience, though in my instance, of course, the call ordered me to do good to myself, not others.

  If Charles had been with me, things would have been different. We had evolved a special mode of conversation to dispel envy and its opposite, forelock-tugging admiration. "The capitalist beast," Charles would have said. "Give the girl her clothes back, Lufford," I would have said, "she's turning blue." "Those big pop eyes of yours are glinting with lust," Charles would have said. "Is it the girl or the car?"

  We would have continued in this vein for some time, becoming more and more outrageous, until we'd dissolve into laughter. It was an incantation, a ritual; the frank admission of envy somehow cleansed us of it. And very healthy-minded it all was; but I think that it fulfilled its purpose too thoroughly and obscured the fact that the material objects of our envy were attainable.

  How to attain them I didn't know. I was like an officer fresh from training school, unable for the moment to translate the untidiness of fear and cordite and corpses into the obvious and irresistible method of attack. I was going to take the position, though, I was sure of that. I was moving into the attack, and no one had better try to stop me. General Joe Lampton, you might say, had opened hostilities.

  4

  Bob and Eva Storr came to tea the next day. I was to be very friendly with them later; that afternoon I found them rather intimidating. At first I thought that they were brother and sister, they were so much alike -- small, dark, with snub noses and big mouths. They talked a lot, mostly about the theatre, with special reference to the Warley Thespians.

  They'd seen all the latest plays and ballets and knew all about the private lives of the famous. "And at the dress rehearsal fleets of taxis came," Bob would say, "disgorging hordes of pansies. The theatre smelt like a brothel. And that, my dears, is the British housewife's dream lover; they swoon over him in droves, the silly sluts."

  Then Eva would jump in with her piece of scandal. "He isn't so bad, darling, I mean, he doesn't corrupt anyone, his boy friends are corrupt already. What about poor Roger? He was so delighted when he was given that part. And the things he was expected to do . . ." She named an actor-manager whom I knew, from his publicity at any rate, as the apotheosis of wholesome masculinity. "Roger was invited to dinner every Sunday. He used to try to make him drunk, and when that wouldn't work he offered him more salary . . . of course Roger left the company. 'If I have to do that to get anywhere in the theatre, he said -- you remember, Bobby darling? -- then I've finished with the theatre.' Poor lamb, he was almost in tears."

  I did for a moment examine the possibility of Roger not having been very good at his job and inventing the story as an excuse for having been sacked but I kept my mouth shut. By the time they'd finished it appeared that there wasn't a normal person in the whole theatrical profession; at the very best they were eunuchs or nymphomaniacs.

  They both talked as if they were in constant contact with the professional theatre. In actuality they knew only a handful of professionals, mostly young people like Roger not long out
of the theatre school. And the Thespians occasionally had actors and playwrights visit them as lecturers, mostly down-at-heel nonentities but each with his or her stock of scandal in return for free drinks and, with luck, a substantial supper and bed for the night.

  I wasn't aware of these facts till much later, of course; I thought Bob and Eva immensely sophisticated. They gave me the sensation of being in the know, of being close to a wicked, exciting, above all, wealthy world. Beside Cedric and Mrs. Thompson, they seemed very young, not much older than myself, though he was thirty-seven and she was thirty-three and they had two sons.

  Bob, it transpired, was in textiles but precisely what he did in textiles I couldn't discover. He'd lived in London and hadn't enjoyed it. "Got damned tired of it," he said. "Don't like being a little fish in a big pond. Glad to come home again, weren't we, Evie?"

  I noticed that, when he remembered to, he clipped his words; he's learned that from Ronald Colman, I thought, and felt a little less impressed -- it put him on the same level as the millhand with the Alan Ladd deadpan and the millgirl with the Veronica Lake hair style.