by Richard Hull
But as I keep on trying to say, only when one starts trying to write things down, which I don’t ever do normally, one does get led on and on; I really think Sandy was in it this morning.
You see, we were walking, all three of us, to the car and I was chatting away and we came to one of these one-way streets, not that I want to say a word against one-way traffic. I think it is an excellent idea, but so far as I can see, there is absolutely not the slightest need to have one just there (there not being much traffic) and that, I suppose, was what the fellow in the car thought. At least I should think that was what it was, because he just came down it as if it wasn’t a one-way street. Well, anyone might.
But that wasn’t any reason why Nicholas and Sandy should behave as they did, not by a long chalk.
Nicholas was the worst, and really I should never have thought his brains were so quick. Without saying anything and apparently quite accidentally, he got just the least little bit in front of me, so that if I had been looking to my right, it would have been difficult to see, Nicholas being far from transparent. But I was not looking to my right, I was looking to my left, where the traffic ought to have been coming from. But Nicholas was, and though he must have seen the car coming, he didn’t say a word, he just let it come on, and at the last moment that was safe for him, he jumped back, keeping as quiet as a mouse. I never heard him, and it wasn’t until I heard the brakes squeaking that I knew there was anything up.
I know Nicholas saw because I asked the driver why he hadn’t hooted and he said it was partly because he saw my friend had seen, and partly because of this rule about not blowing your horn at night. He said he had got so used to the idea that you ought not to hoot, that he had a kind of idea that it was criminal at all times.
Well, I can understand that. But you see the point about Nicholas.
As for Barraclough, I am not so sure. He had stopped, so he says, to do up a shoelace. I should think that was probably true. He couldn’t have combined with Nicholas beforehand, and anyhow, neither of them could know the car was likely to come, so that it could not have been a put-up job. But that was no reason why he shouldn’t have given me a yell. Instead of which he stood there and watched quite quietly without saying a word. There was a funny sort of look on his face afterwards too—kind of disappointed-like. The only excuse he could give was that fright took his breath away, which is frankly nonsense.
And then, of course, Nicholas gave the show away by abusing the driver and trying to call the police and making no end of a fuss. Why, if the fellow driving the car had not been reasonably slippy with his brakes, I must have been for it. He put them on so hard that he skidded all over the place. Of course he was in the wrong originally, but he had done his best to put it right. Nicholas’s silly abuse merely showed how disappointed he was that his plan had failed.
And as for sympathy for me, was there a word? There was not. I should like to hear what Nicholas would have to say about getting a black eye like mine. He’d go to bed for a week at least. For that matter I should like to listen to Sandy on the subject of a ripped pair of trousers. He would have had a new suit out of it pretty quick. Whereas a fool like me forgot to claim off the driver even half a crown to darn them with. As a matter of fact they weren’t worth darning, so that was that.
Well anyhow, there it is, and I have put it down on paper just to have a record of it in case. I shall let Nicholas and Sandy know that I have, so that if there is any funny stuff in future, there will be this evidence to go on. That ought to put a stop to any future games of that sort. But I shall be jolly careful. I didn’t really like taking that drive in the car and I told them so and why. They seemed to understand all right.
Having put down one incident, I might as well put down another. The idea seems to sort of grow on one.
It was like this. I found some people who were going to start a new canning factory. Whether it will ever come to anything, I don’t know, but I believe in keeping in with everyone, and all we stand to lose is some work. Well, better to work than to sit idle. Not that I would make anyone put anything aside for these canning people, but just when there isn’t anything else to do, it seemed to me a good plan to get some rough ideas together. Good practice anyhow.
So accordingly I asked the other two to help me. At least it was not really helping me. All I wanted them to do was their normal side of the show taken at their leisure, just in case it was wanted, for the benefit of the agency. So far as Barraclough was concerned, it was a bit more than his normal work, and I should not have been surprised if he had kicked a bit, but he didn’t. In fact he went for it all out rather more than I thought was strictly necessary. I really believe that chap likes work.
But when it came to Nicholas, it was quite another pair of shoes. He raised the most awful points of etiquette about not working for clients who didn’t exist and being paid for work if we did it, even if it was not used—stuff which was all true enough in theory but which has never worked in practice and never will. Moreover, Nicholas didn’t really believe a word of it himself. He only trotted it out when it suited his book, and chucked it overboard when it didn’t. But then that was his line about plenty of things.
However, I was not going to be stopped by a little thing like that, especially as Thomas was quite keen on it. Thomas likes drawing, or rather he likes drawing what he likes. I mean he enjoys making pretty pictures, especially if he can use colour, lots of colour, but he gets a bit bored with endless small sketches, and, above all, with lettering. Well, it is dull, I quite see, and Nicholas will make it so clear that anything Thomas produces is to be regarded as just the decoration to emphasize the beauty of Nicholas’s copy. Well, naturally Thomas gets a bit fed up. Who wouldn’t?
The result of it was that he was all for this canning stunt. He could let himself go, and when I told him he could do what he liked so long as he didn’t tell Nicholas, he was doubly pleased. No tiresome supervision, you see. He said at once that he could find time when Mr. Latimer was out of the office, which we both knew was not difficult, Nicholas being more absent than present.
I must say I liked the stuff he produced—good bold designs and plenty of colour. It made you quite greedy to look at it. Luscious great strawberries and plums and fruit of all sorts, and the vegetables looked good and appetising. I told him I thought a good deal of what he had done.
But Nicholas, of course, put them low down in the mud class. He would. Just because he didn’t design them himself. What he said to Thomas, I do not know, but he must have trodden on his artistic sensibilities pretty hard, the fellow’s face was white with passion. I think it was a lucky thing for Nicholas that there wasn’t a suitable weapon handy or I believe Thomas would have given him something to go on with. At least that is what Miss Wyndham told me, but fortunately the heavy ruler Thomas uses had fallen on to the floor, and you can’t hit anyone with a paint brush.
Anyhow when Nicholas had finished making Thomas thoroughly huffy, he came in to me. Now, as I have said, I know I lose my temper at times, but I generally recover it pretty quickly, but this time I am going to have it out with Nicholas. Directly he comes back into the office, I am going to tell him just exactly what I think of him and I don’t think he will like it, and if he tries to talk back I'll shut his mouth for him and hold him down until he has heard what I want to say. He shan’t run away as he did today.
But I am leaving out what Nicholas did when he came in to me.
First of all I must say that he looked, when he came in, the nastiest thing I have ever seen. He resembled the devil himself with his black hair and sneering face and wicked, angry expression. I am not very good at describing that sort of thing, but I shall call him Old Nick in future.
Then he held up one of Thomas’s designs and gave a sarcastic giggle, which is an irritating thing to do. It would have been more annoying if it had been a genuine laugh, but it was so obvious and feeble and forced a performance that I just sat quite still, said nothing and (I hope) looked as co
ntemptuous as I felt.
Upon that, he repeated the performance, the ‘hollow, mocking laughter’ becoming more theatrical with each attempt. I think he saw that it was falling a little flat, so he decided that he must do something more drastic. Anyhow he did.
I was just about to tell him that I thought them pretty good as rough work, when he dramatically tried to tear some of them in two. Even as a gesture it was rather a failure because he tried to do two at once and found he was not strong enough. Consequently he only damaged one and crumpled two or three others slightly before I got to him. I have no doubt that if Nicholas was describing this incident, he would say that he had torn them in pieces and thrown them at me. Well, he certainly tried to throw one of them, but he missed me.
I should have taken hold of him then and there and shaken some sense into him, and literally made him listen to reason, if he hadn’t run away, the little coward. I might, of course, have followed him, but it didn’t really seem dignified, and he has got to come back to-morrow morning and then we will have it out. By George, we will—fully and properly.
I think Nicholas must be really frightened; because he hasn’t shown up this morning. He has just rung up to say that he will not be in before lunch at any rate, which is just like his cheek when there is any quantity of work to be done about Galatz-si. However, that will be one more thing to tell him when he does condescend to appear. Tea time probably. The mean little brute won’t miss a more or less free cup of tea.
So far as I am concerned, too, I must own that I can’t do any work until I have had it out with him. This morning will really be practically wasted. Generally if I have not got anyone who I ought to go and see, I spend my time in looking at obscure papers. In practically all of them one sees some perfectly frightful advertisement which obviously has been drawn up by the manufacturer. You can always distinguish the amateur as against the professional touch—except that I have known Nicholas’s stuff mistaken for the home-made article.
Well, then, having spotted my beginner in advertising, I used to look round to see if there was anything which could be made of the stuff, and, if possible, find out something about it and its owners. Then I would be able, if I thought it was a good thing to do, to sail right in and tell them the story—“Why not have your stuff done properly? It will cost no more. In fact, perhaps, less. We are very skillful at buying space.”
Of course there were snags. One had to be rather careful not to say ‘done properly’ to the man who had written it, for one thing. For another, Barraclough did not like me to talk too much about getting space cheap. He had an idea that if we got it for less than had been paid before, that that was our skill and we were entitled to stick to the difference. We had had one or two rows about that. I told him straight out that it was downright dishonest, but he couldn’t see it, or rather he wouldn’t because of his infernal avariciousness.
However, there is no doing anything of that sort this morning; which is why I am writing this. Until I have had it out with Nicholas, I can think of nothing except what will happen this afternoon.
Suppose he comes in just before tea time.
Well, I shall hear Miss Wyndham take Barraclough in his tea, and then Nicholas’s. Then Nicholas will probably ask her to fetch him something he doesn’t want. He does that to annoy me. Directly I have got my cup on the table, I shall sail in to Master Nicholas. It will take me about ten minutes to say what I want, which is just about the time I like for my tea to get cool, and by going in then, I shall not only be sure to find him in, but to find him doing nothing, because he always takes advantage of the excuse of tea to do nothing for a quarter of an hour.
Then I shall start talking to him and he shall listen, and since that means force if necessary, I had better be quite sure in my own mind what I am going to say.
The headings really are already present in what I have been writing, but I think I will stress laziness and unpunctuality rather more than incompetence. It will give him the loophole for the future of proving to me that he can do good work. Yes, the line should be—“your work is at present bad, because”; and then I shall point out a few examples of how he slacks.
I suppose, though, that I must produce definite examples of where he could have done better. I should like to instance Flukil, but it is such a red rag to him and I don’t want to get drawn too much into a discussion on details. Not that there is going to be any discussion; it is going to be a monologue; still, perhaps it will be as well to confine myself to Henriques and ‘the new beads’.
Then I must go on to the more serious subject of his quarrelsomeness, if that is the right word. I mean the way in which he is prepared to cut off his nose to spite his face, or rather the agency’s nose in order to spite my face. In other words, he must be made to realize that his idea that if he cannot persuade himself that a suggestion originated from him, he opposes it in every way he can, is a rotten idea, because no good suggestions ever do originate from him, hence the theory has rather a cramping effect on all of us.
After that I must end on the Greyfields business, and point out to him that he must not make a childish scene every time something is done without consulting him. That will be an excellent practical example of how business is stopped by him. Even he must see that, and, however much he may dislike me, he must see that our interests are the same and that NeO-aD has got to make money if we are to live.
In fact it is all so elementary that, after he has fretted and fumed for a few days, even Nicholas Latimer must see it, and though there will be the devil of a row for a time, it is the only chance that things will ultimately settle down.
But if he is to understand, he must hear it all—every word of it. I will allow no interruption, and, as I have said before, if force is necessary, force must be used. On the whole I rather hope that it will be, because then I shall take the opportunity to return him that black eye. In fact I think he is going to get that anyhow. And then I shall tell him that it was his own carelessness that gave it to him, just as he brightly said to me. I should like to cover him with mud, but it is so hard to keep it handy. I might try though to think of a substitute.
But anyhow in the end he will be so situated that he has got to listen, even if he isn’t in the mood for it. And then I shall say....
* Later I got so intrigued thinking of caviare, that I looked it up. I find that Rumania is one of the places it comes from, so I take it all back about the mustard and apologise to Nicholas’s boy friend Tonescu. I never knew that about caviare, and I don’t mind betting most people don.t
Part III
Achievement
Chapter One
As has been stated twice before, there is a limit to the extent to which the folly of any man may be allowed to ruin a business.
Up to a point I agree with both my late colleagues. The only difference I would suggest is that instead of making the sentence refer to each other, they should have included themselves as well.
Since it may perhaps seem unlikely that both of them should have written accounts of events up to the same point of time and should both have started with the same sentiment, expressed in very similar words, I had better explain how those improbabilities came to occur.
The account which is written by Paul Spencer is genuine enough, and I have not altered it. It has been a sore temptation to put it into English, to delete all those “well’s” and “I mean’s”, with which he has been so prone to start his sentences—to change phrases such as “anyone who I ought to go and see” to “anyone whom I ought to go and see”, but to take such action would have been to make the chronicle mine, not Paul Spencer’s.
I have therefore, though sadly, left it as an example of the literary style taught in an English public school. In Scotland we manage things better. It was perhaps rather sad that the more Spencer boasted of his education—and he was inordinately proud of it—the more he proved that it was in many ways defective. That the only memorial left to it should be a proof of that, is a piece of r
ather delicate irony.
But as to the account alleged to have been written by Latimer, that, I must confess, is to some slight extent a forgery. I confess it without shame, since I consider that I have succeeded in throwing myself into the attitude which he adopted, and have produced a document which would have deceived his closest friends—or perhaps I should say those who knew him best. The word ‘friend’ is inappropriate where Nicholas Latimer is concerned. He had but one, namely, himself.
There is, I flatter myself, but one thing which would have aroused suspicion in the minds of his acquaintances. I refer to its length. Latimer would never have found sufficient energy to have written so long a document, and had he done so, no one could have succeeded in deciphering it. But let that pass; I only mention it as a matter of mental honesty.
Hence then it comes about that Latimer’s chronicle begins with nearly the same words as those used by Spencer. They are not exactly the same words. I could not imagine Latimer, with all the literary faults that his copy showed, putting in an unnecessary ‘you know’, or referring to NeO-aD as a ‘perfectly good business’. Nor did I find it possible to write such a sentence myself.
Hence also it has happened by design, and not by chance, that the two accounts chronicle the events that happened up to approximately the same time.
Yet it is by no means entirely a forgery. Very far from it. Latimer did keep a diary and in it he put down all his grievances, lest the least of them should by chance escape his memory. All that I have done is to amplify and complete the chronicle of that period which was covered also by Spencer.
But before I begin to describe what actually happened that afternoon and all that has happened since, there are two further points on which I feel that an explanation is necessary. The first is how Spencer’s manuscript comes into my possession. The second is why I should have taken the trouble at a particularly busy period of a reasonably energetic life, to have spent so much time in rounding off the account that I received from Nicholas Latimer.
