Play to the End

by Robert Goddard

  Jenny looked relieved to hear this explanation. She even smiled. “I see. So, Roger pretended not to recognize Oswin in order not to worry me. While I didn’t mention Oswin in order not to worry him.”

  “Probably,” I grudgingly agreed.

  “Why have you got the manuscript?”

  “It’s part of the deal I struck with Oswin. I’ll have Moira give it the once over. In return, he’ll lay off you.”

  “But surely it’s unpublishable.”

  “For certain, I should think. But he’ll be content as long as it’s given serious consideration. I reckon that was Roger’s mistake. Refusing even to look at it.”

  “More likely he knows Oswin of old as a waste of space.”

  We exchanged an eloquent glance. Jenny’s sympathy for the flotsam and jetsam of society used sometimes to annoy me. None of it was on show now, though. Was this new hardness, I wondered, one of the consequences of her relationship with Roger Colborn, the plastic man turned arbitrageur and landed gent?

  “Will Oswin honour your…deal…if Moira turns the book down?”

  “He says so.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “Yes. He knows there’s nothing more he can do.”

  Jenny looked less than wholly convinced. “Well, at the very least, I suppose it’ll be a breathing space. And I’m grateful for that. How did you manage to accomplish this so quickly?”

  “I missed this evening’s performance.”

  “You did what?”

  “It was the only time Oswin was willing to see me.”

  “Why on earth did you allow someone like that to—”

  The telephone was ringing. I stared at it and so did Jenny. I think we were both certain who was on the other end. Jenny leaned across the arm of her chair and plucked the receiver out of its cradle.

  “Hello?” She smiled. “Hello, darling…Yes…Yes, very quiet.” She was on the move now, slipping out through a communicating door into an adjoining room. The door closed behind her and her voice receded to a muffled murmur. Chester opened an eye, registered her absence and sank back into a torpor.

  I cast a jaundiced glance round the room, wondering if I’d recognize any of the items she kept when we separated. But there was nothing, not a single familiar object, only more of the same impeccably composed contents of an idyllic country-house life. “Is this really what you want?” I muttered, refraining from supplying the obvious answer.

  Then I spotted a framed photograph on top of the cherrywood hi-fi cabinet. I rose and went across for a gander. There was Jenny, carefree and happy, grinning at the camera as she wrapped an arm round the new man in her life. Her companion had to be Roger Colborn. They were leaning together by the tiller of a yacht, a triangle of sail visible above them, a sparkling chunk of sea behind. Colborn looked lean, muscular and nauseatingly handsome, with thick dark hair greying at the temples, blue eyes, a firm jaw and assorted indicators of rugged machismo. To make matters worse, he and Jenny appeared to be very much in love. I sighed and turned away, only to confront a reflection of myself in the mirror above the mantelpiece. Hair thinner and greyer than Colborn’s, waistline looser, musculature less evident, I could do no more than shrug.

  The door clicked open and Jenny stepped back into the room. “Sorry about that,” she said. “Roger always calls around now when he’s away.”

  “Thoughtful of him.”

  “Look, Toby—”

  “At a guess”—I tilted the photograph towards her—“I’d say he’s about my age.”

  “Yes.” Jenny compressed her lips. “He is.”

  “But wearing better.”

  “I don’t want to play this game, Toby. I’m grateful for what you’ve done about Derek Oswin. But—”

  “Mention him to Roger, did you?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “I should, if I were you. Secrets at this stage of a relationship…can prove tricky.”

  “I probably will discuss it with him when he gets back.” I sensed she wanted to tell me to mind my own business. But the favour I’d done her meant she couldn’t take such a stance. “You can leave that to me.”

  “Yes. Of course. Sorry.” I smiled, daring her to smile back. “It’s hard to get out of the habit of offering you advice.” The same, I could have added, went for several other habits. Touching her, for instance. That’s something I badly want to do—now I’m not allowed to.

  “I am grateful, Toby.”

  “Least I could do.”

  “I’m sorry it led to you missing the show. Won’t that get you into quite a lot of trouble?”

  “I’ll survive.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  “Are we still on for lunch tomorrow?”

  “Actually, no.” She gave an embarrassed little smile. “Roger’s coming back earlier than he expected. He suggested…picking me up for lunch.”

  I found myself wondering, for no rational reason, whether Roger had somehow got wind of my contact with Jenny and decided he’d better hurry home and spike my guns. It was an absurd idea, of course, but in that instant strangely credible. “We could make up a threesome,” I suggested, using sarcasm to shield my disappointment.

  Jenny looked at me for several silent seconds, then said, “I’d better drive you back into Brighton.”

  Jenny’s bought one of the new fish-eyed Minis. She’s always liked Minis. I remember the one she had when we first met. Travelling in the modern souped-up version tonight revived more than a few memories for both of us. But we didn’t share them. My mind wrestled with a slippery tangle of things I wanted to say and needed to say—but didn’t. Time was suddenly short. And all I could do was watch it pass.

  Eventually, oppressed by the thought that we may well not meet again before I leave Brighton and spotting the Duke of York’s Cinema ahead as we approached Preston Circus, I said, “Derek Oswin lives in Viaduct Road. Number seventy-seven.”

  “Do I need to know that?” Jenny countered.

  “You may do.”

  “I hope not. If Oswin leaves me alone, I’ll be happy to leave him alone.”

  “When you mention him to Roger, will you also mention me?”

  “What do you think, Toby?”

  “I think not.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Really.”

  “Well, there you are, then.”

  “But am I right?”

  Her answer took so long coming that I began to think it never would. She had to say something, though. “I only asked you to approach Oswin because I genuinely believed you were the key to his interest in me. I’m grateful to you for proving that isn’t the case. But now you have…”

  “You want me to back off.”

  Another wordless interval followed. We were past St. Peter’s Church by this time, heading south down Grand Parade. I watched Jenny clench and unclench her jaw muscles. Then she said, “That’s what separation means, Toby.” She glanced round at me. “Let it go.”

  Back here at the Sea Air, Eunice had gone to bed, leaving a note for me on the hall table.

  BRIAN SALLIS CALLED. PHONE AND IN PERSON. SEEMS YOU’VE BEEN A NAUGHTY BOY, TOBY. I HOPE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING. WELL, THERE HAS TO BE A FIRST TIME FOR EVERY THING, DOESN’T THERE?

  E.

  Even in my less than joyous condition, I raised a chuckle at Eunice’s characteristically perky perspective on events. I’ll have to do some fence-mending tomorrow, no question about it.

  I came up here to my room, broached my emergency whisky supply and pondered Jenny’s parting plea to me. “Let it go.” Rich, that, I reckon. She came to me for help and I obliged. Now she wants me as well as Derek Oswin off her back. Life isn’t quite as simple as that, Jen, however sweet and easy lover boy’s made it feel lately. I’m not letting this go. Not just yet. Tomorrow, I’ll post The Plastic Men to Moira. Then…we’ll see.

  And what about The Plastic Men? I need something unreadable to lull me off to sleep. Let’s take a l
ate-night look at the little man’s chef d’oeuvre. Let’s get past the title page and the epigraph and see what we find.

  An Introduction, no less.

  The Oxford English Dictionary defines plastic as “any of a large and varied class of wholly or partly synthetic substances which are organic in composition and polymeric in structure and may be given a permanent shape by moulding, extrusion or other means during manufacture or use.”

  Most of us know what the word means without needing to understand the chemistry of polymerization. Acrylic. Alkathene. Araldite. Bakelite. Bandalasta. Beetle-ware. Celluloid. Cellophane. Ebonite. Ivoride. Jaxonite. Lycra. Melamine. Mouldensite. Nylon. Parkesine. Perspex. Plasticine. Polythene. Polystyrene. PVC. Rayon. Styron. Terylene. Tufnol. Tupperware. UPVC. Vinyl. Viscose. Vulcanite. Xylonite. We are all familiar with at least some of these.

  The first semi-synthetic plastic, based on cellulose nitrate, was invented by Alexander Parkes during the 1850s. He named the substance Parkesine and displayed it at the International Exhibition of 1862. In 1866 he launched the Parkesine Company to market products made using the material. Parkes was a brilliant inventor but a poor businessman. In 1869 he was forced to sell his patent rights to the Xylonite Company. He did not give up, however. When those patents expired, he set up in business again, launching the London Celluloid Company in partnership with his brother Henry in 1881. This venture also failed.

  The Parkes’ works manager, Daniel Colborn, decided to carry on alone. He returned to his native Brighton and built a workshop in Dog Kennel Road (the original name for Hollingdean Road), where he began trading in 1883 as Colbonite Ltd.

  The Colbonite workforce was at first very small. It soon began to increase, however, as the company prospered. Labour was in plentiful local supply. A large area of artisans’ dwellings (later categorized as slums) existed to the south. By the outbreak of the First World War, Colbonite’s workforce stood close to a hundred. One of those hundred was my grandfather, George Oswin, who took a job working 55½ hours per week in the Colbonite acid shop in 1910, at the age of fourteen, on a wage of 1½ d. per hour. His descriptions to me of his working life are one of the principal sources of information I have drawn on in the compilation of this history, especially where the early period is concerned.

  Before I enter into an account of working conditions at Colbonite during this period and the industrial processes applied there to plastics manufacture, I should try to set the scene.

  Colbonite’s premises filled a roughly triangular plot bounded by the Brighton to Lewes railway line, the municipal slaughterhouse and the Jewish cemetery in Florence Place. The slaughterhouse opened in 1894, replacing the Union Hunt kennels which had given Hollingdean Road its original name.

  To the south lay the small and largely middle-class parish of St. Saviour’s. The next parish to the south was St. Bartholomew’s, where most of the Colbonite workforce lived in densely packed terraces.

  Most of these houses were demolished in the slum clearance programmes of 1955–66. Only photographs and memories can tell us what the area looked like before then. St. Bartholomew’s Church, which has the highest nave of any parish church in England, was built in 1872–74 at the instigation of Father Arthur Wagner as an inspiration for its poverty-stricken parishioners. It soared to what must have been awesome effect above the narrow streets, just as it still soars above the car parks and vacant lots that have succeeded them.

  My grandparents began their married life literally in the shadow of the church, at a house in St. Peter’s Street. My grandfather walked past St. Bart’s every workday morning at about 6.30 en route to Colbonite, where he was due to clock on at 7.00. In London Road he could catch a tram that took him most of the way, but he only did this in severe weather. Usually, he crossed London Road, cut through via Oxford Street to Ditchling Road and walked north uphill to Hollingdean Lane, which led round to the Colbonite site.

  I imagine him—as I want you to imagine him—in the final stage of that walk, dawn breaking over Brighton on a chill March morning circa 1930, as he approaches his destination. He is familiar with his surroundings. There is the railway line behind him, emerging from a cutting. A train may be chugging east along the track, belching steam as it accelerates away from London Road Station. To his left is the ivy-clad brick wall enclosing the Jewish cemetery. Ahead, on lower ground, is the slaughterhouse, where at that moment doomed creatures are very possibly being unloaded from a line of trucks shunted onto the siding that also serves Colbonite. Behind the slaughterhouse, smoke is rising from the chimney of the corporation’s so-called dust destructor, where the collected refuse of Brighton is daily reduced to ashes. It is not a pleasing vista, though no doubt any vista is pleasing to a man such as my grandfather, who survived four years on the Western Front during the First World War—the Great War, as he always called it. (He remained grateful to old Mr. Colborn for keeping his job open for him during the hostilities.)

  He looks to his right as he rounds the bend in the lane and sees Colbonite’s brick-built workshops, roofed in corrugated iron. He turns in past the company sign—COLBONITE LTD, PLASTICS MANUFACTURER, EST. 1883. He nods to the gateman and proceeds across the yard towards the shed where his clogs and leggings are stored. He has arrived.

  The first chapter of this history will attempt to recreate in detail the kind of experience an average working day for an average employee of Colbonite such as my grandfather would have been at this time. Later chapters will consider the company’s efforts to keep pace with changes in the plastics industry worldwide and how these affected the workforce. The closing chapters will analyse the circumstances leading to the closure of the company in 1989 and the fate of those who found themselves out of work as a result.

  Mmm. An “average working day” for an “average employee” of a defunct plastics company more than seventy years ago. I’m not sure I want to know about that. I’m not sure anyone does. I’m even less sure that Moira will be willing to try and sell it. Sorry, Derek. I don’t think we’re onto a winner here.

  I’m suddenly weary. Wearier than I would have been if I’d done my stuff at the theatre this evening. It’s been a long day. And a strange one. It’s time to call it a night.

  TUESDAY

  Tired as I may have been last night, I woke early this morning, roused as much as anything by queasy anticipation of the recriminations that were bound to flow from my no-show. A strategy of sorts evolved as I showered and shaved. It amounted to pre-emptive grovelling.

  First, I wanted The Plastic Men off my conscience, though. I scrawled an explanatory note to Moira (that was naturally less than comprehensive in its coverage of recent events) and reached the St. James’s Street post office just after it had opened. I bought a large jiffy bag, stuffed the note and the manuscript inside and despatched the lot to my esteemed agent by recorded delivery. She’ll receive it by noon tomorrow.

  The morning was dry but drearily overcast. Brighton needs sunshine to look even close to its best. In its continued absence, I plodded down to the sea front and struck west towards the Belgrave Hotel, where I knew Brian Sallis to be staying. (Along, theoretically, with Mandy Pringle, although in practice she was almost certainly tucked up with Donohue at the Metropole.) My plan was to catch Brian early, perhaps over breakfast, before he’d properly remembered how angry he was with me.

  But his day turned out to be further advanced than I’d expected. As I neared the Belgrave, I spotted him ahead of me on the promenade, dressed in jogging kit and using the railings above the beach for a hamstring-stretching routine prior to reeling off a brisk few miles along the front. I hailed him.

  His first reaction was surprise. Then came puzzlement. Followed shortly by exasperation. “Good morning, Toby,” he said through a mock smile. “And fuck you.”

  “I’m sorry about last night, Brian,” I responded.

  He stared at me, then cupped a hand round one ear. “Is that the end of the speech?”

  “What else can I
say?”

  “You could try telling me your absence was something I just dreamt; that your unexplained, unannounced, utterly inexcusable failure to do what we pay you to do—and pay very generously at that—was merely a figment of my imagination.”

  “’Fraid not.”

  “Alternatively, you could offer what I personally suspect you’re not going to be able to concoct: a decent excuse for letting us all down. Or, failing that, maybe you could just try the truth, Toby. Yes. On balance, I’d favour that.”

  “It was a personal matter, Brian. A critical situation. I had no choice but to be somewhere else.”

  “Are you going to tell me what this critical situation was?”

  “No. But it’s over now. Permanently resolved. You have my word on that.”

  “A word from you is what I’d have welcomed yesterday afternoon, Toby. A word of warning that you were going to run out on us.”

  “I warned Denis.”

  “You don’t work for Denis. You work for Leo. And as Leo’s representative, I was entitled to an explanation.”

  “Yes. Like I say, I’m sorry. I don’t expect to be paid for last night’s—”

  “You won’t be, believe me. In fact”—he tossed his head and gave the railing a thump with the heel of his hand—“Leo was all for laying you off for the rest of the week. I talked him round in the end, not because I was anxious to go easy on you, quite the reverse, but—”

  “Because you’d sell fewer tickets.”

  “Yes,” Brian reluctantly agreed.

  “Which Leo would have been quick enough to realize himself once he’d stopped spitting nails. I do understand. We’re locked in a commercial embrace.” As grovelling went, this sounded defiant even to my own ears. I tried at once to soften the message. “I’ll give it a hundred per cent for the rest of the week.”