Bill Waddy was telling a story.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I said to this bloke in the colonel’s pips, “Where the blazes are we . . . ?” John, Bob, what are you drinking?’
‘No, no,’ said Dyson. ‘Let me get these.’
‘No, no, I’m in the chair.’
‘No, no, I insist.’
‘No, no, certainly not. Mrs Dunfee!’
Mrs Dunfee, busy pouring more vodka for Mounce’s girl, gave no acknowledgment.
‘Anyway,’ said Bill Waddy, ‘so I said to this chap, who let me say was in the uniform of a full colonel, “Where the dickens are we . . . ?” ’
‘Yes?’ said Mrs Dunfee.
‘Oh . . . two more bitters, please, Mrs Dunfee. Pints?’
‘Half for me, please, Bill,’ said Dyson.
‘Half for me, too,’ said Bob.
‘Two halves, Mrs Dunfee. Anyway, so I said – this bloke was in the uniform of a full colonel, I should point out . . .’
‘Two-and-twopence,’ said Mrs Dunfee.
‘I said to him . . . I’ve only got a pound note, I’m afraid, Mrs Dunfee . . . I said to him . . .’
‘You’ve got the twopence.’
‘So I have. Anyway, so I said to him . . .’
‘Thanks, Bill,’ said Dyson, picking up his beer. ‘Cheers.’
‘Cheers,’ said Bill Waddy.
‘Cheers,’ said Bob.
‘Cheers,’ said Bill Waddy. ‘Anyway, so I said to this bloke . . .’
‘Where was all this, Bill?’ asked Dyson.
‘Well, that’s just what I asked this laddie in the colonel’s uniform.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Bill.’
‘I said, “Where the hell are we, Colonel?” And he said, “I haven’t the faintest idea!” ’
‘Fantastic,’ said Dyson. ‘Bob, can I get you a sandwich?’
Bob and Dyson drifted over to the sandwich counter.
‘Perhaps I could ask Mounce to get one of his people to take some pictures of me,’ said Dyson, gazing absently across the bar at Mounce.
‘He’s such a tit,’ said Bob.
‘Bob, why don’t you do some broadcasting? We could easily fix something up for you at Bush House.’
‘I don’t think I’d like it, thanks, John.’
‘You’d love it. I get a terrific kick out of feeling I’m known in parts of West Africa. I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anyone, Bob: I’d like to be one of those terrible people you see airing their views about life on television.’
‘So you keep saying, John. I think it’s a horrible idea.’
‘But think of it in practical terms, Bob! A hundred guineas an appearance and no script to write!’
‘Even so.’
Dyson looked at Bob admiringly.
‘There’s a saintly streak in you, Bob,’ he said, ‘which I’ve noticed before. And of course you write like an angel. Another half?’
By half past two most of the sober, responsible men had returned to Hand and Ball Court, walking a little more slowly now as the day began to tell upon them. By three o’clock a certain amount of writing was being done. Bob was writing a book review for the New Statesman; Dyson a radio-script on oil prospecting for the schools’ programmes. Locked away in his office on the fourth floor, the Editor was also writing. The room was chaotic. The raised surfaces were all covered with wrinkled page proofs and sheaves of yellowing galleys; the floor with stacks of books, and with old framed photographs which had fallen off the walls. They were of former editors, and ranked groups of schoolboys, dons, and officers. On a table in the corner stood a number of silver cups won by various athletics and boxing teams got up among the paper’s staff; the Editor’s raincoat and hat had been thrown down on top of them. The desk had disappeared beneath papers a long time ago. The Editor had abandoned it, and moved to a table against the wall, where he was typing very rapidly with two fingers on a small old-fashioned portable.
Mr Dancer, he wrote. PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.
I have been giving further thought to the eternal problem of how we may best put the skids under our friend Mounce. As I have stressed before, I have no experience of summoning employees to my office and telling them that they are fired, and after long and careful consideration I must tell you that I see no prospect of finding the courage to start – particularly not with Mounce, whom I find very frightening indeed. Besides, it would be against the whole spirit of this office, where we have always laid great stress upon security of employment. But in the case of Mounce, who has turned out to be our greatest mistake since Pavey-Smith (do you remember Pavey-Smith? He got the canteen manageress with child, obtained a refrigerator by fraud, charged dinner for eight at the Savoy to the paper, and then – mercifully – absconded with three months’ salary in advance), I believe we should be justified in adopting guerrilla tactics. This is to say, I think we might try persecuting him, within the limits imposed by our consciences and by ordinary discretion, in the hope that he will spontaneously resign, and disappear from our lives, taking with him what, if we are careful, need be only a comparatively small amount of the firm’s money. As to how we should persecute him, I must confess that I have no idea. I am sure you will be able to think of something suitable; the world has come very low if a Chief Sub-Editor cannot think of discreet ways of making a man’s life a burden to him. I have great faith in your abilities in this direction, and I shall give you full backing in any scheme, provided that it does not involve (a) my coming face to face with Mounce, (b) physical violence, (c) putting ourselves in any morally false position, or (d) giving any appearance thereof. I await your thoughts on the matter with impatience.
The Editor folded the letter up, crammed it into a small brown envelope on which he wrote ‘B. D. Dancer Esqre’ and pushed it through a sort of serving hatch to his secretary in the outer office. During office hours the passing of notes through this hatch was his only form of communication with the world.
‘I always feel so sleepy in the middle of the afternoon,’ said Dyson in the middle of the afternoon, yawning, and leaning back in his chair with his hands linked behind his head. ‘I must cut out this beer for lunch. My system can’t take it, at my age.’
‘Neither can mine, at my age,’ said Bob, yawning also.
‘How old are you exactly, Bob, as a matter of interest?’
‘Twenty-nine.’
‘My God, you’re young! My God, you’re young! Do you know how old I am, Bob? Have a guess.’
‘Thirty-seven.’
‘I suppose I’ve told you, have I?’
‘Yes.’
Dyson rocked his chair back on its rear legs and gazed at the ceiling for a long while, yawning from time to time.
‘Do you keep a stock of photographs of yourself, Bob?’ he asked at last. ‘To send out to producers and editors and so on?’
‘No. I don’t do much freelance work, John.’
Dyson pursed his lips and shook his head slowly.
‘When you get to my age, Bob,’ he said, ‘with a wife and children, and a mortgage, you’ll be working all the hours God made. Saturdays and Sundays. Morning, noon, and night. I can scarcely lift my eyes from my desk from one day’s end to the next. I honestly sometimes wonder how long I can stand the pace. A journalist’s finished at forty, of course.’
He went on staring at the ceiling, occasionally blinking thoughtfully, and yawning, and sometimes opening his eyes very wide, as if to exercise the skin around them. Bob brooded over his book review. ‘Mr Berringer knows his New York,’ he wrote. A wave of honesty passed over him, and he altered it to ‘Mr Berringer appears to know his New York.’ The wave of honesty was succeeded by a wave of professionalism, and he altered it back to ‘Mr Berringer knows his New York.’ He put a toffee into his mouth.
‘You’ll rot your teeth sucking those things all the time,’ said Dyson, without taking his eyes off the ceiling, hearing the familiar rustle of Cellophane and the faint slopping of salivaed membran
es. Bob did not reply. Old Eddy Moulton smacked his lips too in his sleep.
‘God, I was going to have a blitz on the crosswords this afternoon,’ said Dyson.
He yawned twice in succession.
‘God, I can scarcely keep my eyes open,’ he said.
At five o’clock Dyson got restless. He jumped up and began walking up and down the room. The whole building was at last fully alive. The sub-editors’ room was full. The copytakers’ typewriters were clattering. The leader-writers were writing leaders. There were queues at the tea-trolleys.
Dyson went out and bought the evening papers.
‘I feel I must know what’s going on in the world,’ he said, perching himself on the corner of his desk to study them. ‘Don’t you feel that, Bob?’
‘No.’
‘I read all the papers every morning. I’d feel a definite sense of anxiety if I missed a single one of them. You don’t read any of them, do you, Bob?’
‘I read the cricket scores.’
‘You’re a shit, Bob. I don’t know how you can bear to work in newspapers. Of course, you write like an angel.’
He fell silent, reading.
‘Listen to this,’ he said suddenly. ‘ “Darkness at Noon for Londoners. Freak weather conditions brought darkness to Central London streets this morning. Lights went on in shops and offices all over the City and West End, as the sky grew black. By mid-morning it looked as if night had fallen.” ’
He looked up at Bob expectantly.
‘I know,’ said Bob. ‘I looked out of the window.’
Dyson started to read the paper again, grinning.
‘You’re a real shit, Bob, aren’t you?’ he said admiringly.
Just after eight o’clock the glass in all the windows started to vibrate. Here and there light shades and other thin metal fixtures burred faintly, or ticked, or rattled. In Dyson’s department, deserted, and lit only by the yellow sodium light coming in through the windows from the street-lamps in Hand and Ball Court, a ruler sticking out over the edge of old Eddy Moulton’s desk moved itself slowly sideways until it overbalanced and fell on the floor.
The great presses in the basement were running for the first edition.
Two
When Dyson had read the boys a story and kissed them good night, he settled himself in an armchair in the living-room to wait for dinner, and gazed up at a section of plaster which had broken away in the corner of the room and peeled back a large triangle of wallpaper. He had painted the wall only a month or two before, which made its decay particularly irritating.
‘God strikes again,’ he said bitterly.
‘What?’ said his wife, coming to the door in apron and rubber gloves, holding a mixing bowl.
‘Jannie, you didn’t pick at it or pull at it in any way, did you?’
‘Pick at it or pull at it? How could I possibly pick at it or pull at it? I can’t even reach it to stick it back.’
She disappeared back into the kitchen.
He wanted to say, you might have been trying to get cobwebs down with a broom, but he knew she wouldn’t be able to hear in the kitchen. God, it irritated him when Jannie asked a question, and then walked out of earshot before he could reply! It was one of her most infuriating habits . . .
She was back in the doorway again.
‘If you want to know,’ she said, ‘it’s the damp getting in through that bald patch under the children’s window where the stucco’s come off. The plaster’s sodden.’
Dyson sat back in his chair and drummed his fingers gloomily on the arm. God had his eye on the house, there was no doubt about it. Slowly but surely he was gathering it to his bosom. He was coming in through the walls as rain, up from the ground as rising damp, down through the chimney as birds, and moving in mysterious ways throughout the fabric as dry rot, green mould, mice and earwigs. Dyson won brief tactical advantages with Polyfilla and emulsion paint, only to find that God had accomplished some vast strategic infiltration behind his back. The sad truth, Dyson realized, was that it was an unfair fight. If God had been prepared to start square, and spend most of his time and energy, like Dyson, on keeping up the crossword stock and explaining the rudiments of British political life to Africans, Dyson could have given him a real run for his money.
The Dysons had bought an old house deliberately, when Jannie was carrying their second child, after long and shrewd reflection. They did not want to live in the suburbs, in an ugly suburban house with uncongenial suburban neighbours, miles from town. They decided to find a cheap Georgian or Regency house in some down-at-heel district near the centre. However depressed the district, if it was Georgian or Regency, and reasonably central, it would soon be colonized by the middle-classes. In this way they would secure an attractive and potentially fashionable house in the heart of London, at a price they could afford; be given credit by their friends for going to live among the working classes; acquire very shortly congenial middle-class neighbours of a similarly adventurous and intellectual outlook to themselves; and see their investment undergo a satisfactory and reassuring rise in value in the process.
In the early years of their marriage, while they had still been content to live in a rented flat, they had often noticed the sort of place they now had in mind. Driving about London they had passed innumerable Georgian and Regency terraces which needed only a lick of pastel-shaded paint to make them habitable. But now that they were actually looking for them a curious thing became apparent. The houses had vanished. It was like trying to return to a place one remembered from one’s childhood; the innumerable terraces could not be found – the appearance of the world had subtly altered. There were Georgian and Regency houses, certainly, but they were occupied by the rich already. There was no shortage of slums; but they were not Georgian or Regency slums, and in any case the prices already seemed to have gone up beyond what they could afford in anticipation of the middle-class invasion, improbable as that Armageddon seemed in those flowerless grey streets where abandoned motor cars squatted on flat tyres, bleeding their rusty insides and torn upholstery into the gutter around them. The houses they had seen belonged not to the real world at all, but to the world one glimpses out of the corner of one’s eye, which vanishes when one turns to look.
Little by little they made concessions to themselves, swinging from each last concession to reach the next. They decided that they were prepared to settle for an Early Victorian house, provided it were central. Then they agreed that they were prepared to go a little way out, provided they could find an Early Victorian house. Like Tarzan swinging himself from branch to branch through the jungle, Dyson and his wife swung themselves farther and farther out from the centre of London, and farther and farther on through the nineteenth century, until they arrived at the year 1887, and number 43 Spadina Road, S.W.23. There the descending curve of demand at last met the unyielding base-line of supply. Looked at in one way, what they had acquired was an ugly suburban house with uncongenial neighbours, miles from town, which had cost all the money they could raise by mortgage, plus all the savings and borrowings they had intended to use for modernization and repair. But they didn’t look at it in that way. And in any case, the uncongenial neighbours would soon be driven out by the great influx of congenial architects, journalists, civil servants, and university lecturers who would come flooding in to follow the Dysons’ example, and who would float the whole district off the bottom and up to the £2,500 a year mark.
But the middle classes did not come to Spadina Road, S.W.23. Number 41, the house next door to the Dysons’, continued to be occupied by Mr Cox, who was a lorry-driver, and by Mr Cox’s wife and three children, his sister and brother-in-law and their three children, another sister who was a bit soft in the head, and Mrs Cox senior. Number 45, on the other side, went not up but down. It was owned by two elderly sisters. One of them died, the other was put in the asylum, and the house was bought by a West Indian landlord who broke it up into flats. Dyson was entirely in favour of both the working c
lasses and West Indians. All the same, the particular West Indians and members of the working class living next door to him seemed to be very hard to get to know. And he couldn’t help feeling that the refusal of the middle classes to follow his example and move to Spadina Road was a reflection on his judgment. He invited friends and colleagues out at the weekends to see for themselves the delights of the district. They agreed that S.W.23 had a village-like atmosphere and a distinct character of its own. They agreed that if you cut through the back-streets to the Tube, and the District Line was running normally, you could be in Fleet Street in under the hour. They agreed that Ecosse St George was a wonderful West Indian name, and that Ecosse St George and his wife Princess were wonderful characters to have for neighbours. But they did not move to Spadina Road.
A man described as a surveyor moved into number 84, it was true. The Dysons invited him to dinner as soon as they heard, and told him all he needed to know about the district – where the only good butcher was, what to do about the little boys who came in at night and shat in one’s basement area. But it became apparent that whatever it was the man surveyed, he surveyed most of it through the bottom of a glass. He was on his way down in the world, like Spadina Road itself. He did not paint his house a pastel colour, and after a couple of evenings of watching his eyes become more and more like unfocused brown poached eggs, Dyson began to feel that the tone of the street had been higher without him. There was no doubt about it; God was leaning on Spadina Road, S.W.23.
Towards the End of the Morning Page 3
