We All Fall Down

by Rosemary Friedman

  Praise for Rosemary Friedman

  ‘Delightful and easily read’ – Weekly Scotsman

  ‘Writes well about human beings’ – Books and Bookmen

  ‘Accomplished, zestful and invigorating’ – TLS

  ‘A funny and perceptive book’ – Cosmopolitan

  ‘A confident, sensitive and marvellously satisfying novel’ – The Times

  ‘A classic of its kind’ – The Standard

  ‘Readers will find it as affecting as it is intelligent’ – Financial Times

  ‘Adroitly and amusingly handled’ – Daily Telegraph

  ‘An entertaining read’ – Financial Times

  ‘Highly recommended for the sheer pleasure it gives’ – Literary Review

  ‘Observant and well composed’ – TLS

  ‘A pleasing comedy of manners’ – Sunday Telegraph

  ‘What a story, what a storyteller!’ – Daily Mail

  TO D.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  About the Author

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR ALSO ON EBOOK BY ARCADIA BOOKS

  Copyright

  One

  Had it not been for the fact that steel king William Boothroyd, familiar face on the City page of every daily newspaper and always good for half a column of gossip, dropped dead in the street one April afternoon, the treadmill might never have slowed down long enough for Arthur Dexter to step off. As it was, it stopped turning for a moment in time not only long enough to let Arthur off, dragging his wife and children behind him, but, as it gathered momentum, to send Honey and Basil and Howard and the Gurneys and Louise and her old mother sprawling at his feet. No one was more surprised than Arthur to find himself, standing on unfamiliar ground, watching the great wheel turn without him. When it happened he shrugged his shoulders and walked, not a very big man, away from its inevitable roll.

  The day, as usually happens with days that are to prove different, began as any other. From the April sun which found its way through the chink in his heavy satin bedroom curtains, to the April sun on the yellow bricks and the sooted cowls of the city, Arthur Dexter made the customary daily, unextraordinary transition. From his large desk with its basket of letters to be dealt with and ashtray full of paper clips, elastic bands and keys with which to wind mechanical toys, to his secretary with her permanently red nose, the inevitable packet of Kleenex on her lap, all was as usual. Against a background of yapping City dogs in the yard below and delivery lorries with clanking chains, Arthur Dexter went about his business. Briskly, methodically, interrupted constantly by the buzz of the telephones, he began on the day’s correspondence. Miss Walsh, the soft sliding of her pencil across her notebook accompanied by the regular sniffing which Arthur after fifteen years no longer noticed, took letters to the Customs and Excise Office re importation of pottery, book-ends from Japan, another to enquire whether glass marbles such as the one Arthur rolled towards her across the desk, and which she caught expertly, might be imported under open general licence, and one to the Chinese Toy Merchandising Company, Foochow, China, concerning an order for binoculars, tom-tom sets and compendiums of jokes. In between his dictation, allowing time for Miss Walsh to deal with her nose and to speculate about the various men she imagined, poor soul, to be in love with her, Arthur spoke to a clerk about a confirmation he had not yet received for a thousand guitars, another about some samples from South America, and to a supplier to complain about the faulty mechanism in a consignment of walking elephants. He dealt also with a cable from Warsaw put on his desk by a high-heeled typist with blue eye-shadow, an artist’s agent who arrived with a new design for a snakes and ladder box, an inefficient invoice clerk who received short shrift, letters from Sweden, China, Japan, Poland, Italy and Russia, and a sales note about a strolling duck family. Because it was Monday and he wished to clear his desk, he had a sandwich brought to his office and continued working, at undiminished pace but with rising temper, on into the afternoon.

  By the time Miss Walsh came softly into the office and handed him the evening paper the pall of smoke was grey outside his window, the sun had completely disappeared, and the sooty buildings were almost one with the sky. As on every other evening, Arthur took the newspaper from her and turned, as he always did, straight to the closing prices. Wall Street was firm, he noted, and many equities were up. There was also a column to the effect that exports were being hit by a fall in commodity prices. Although this last item affected the affairs of Arthur Dexter directly, he was not too worried. One could not, he thought, take too seriously the rumblings from the Far East. Satisfied that all was reasonably well as far as his investments were concerned, he closed the paper, laid it on his blotter, and picking up the receivers of both the telephones on his desk he held one to each ear. Into one he said: “Ask Mr Beesley if he’s found out yet about the chenille dolls from Italy. I asked him half an hour ago to make enquiries,” and into the other: “Johnson, I haven’t had a single stock card; will you bring them in immediately, please!” It was then that he noticed the headline in the newspaper, ‘Millionaire drops dead in street’, and underneath a bad picture of Willie Boothroyd in evening dress arriving at a film première. For a moment there was a vacuum in Arthur Dexter’s mind. Mentally and physically he froze. It was a full minute before he laid the telephone receivers on the desk and picked up the newspaper. He stared at it, then took off his glasses and stared again. It was, of course, ridiculous, completely fantastic. Last night the Dexters had sat next to the Boothroyds at a dinner given at the Dorchester in aid of an invalid Children’s Association, and Arthur and his close friend Willie Boothroyd had spent most of the evening in conversation. Willie had been in a particularly jolly mood, and bursting with vitality as always. He had, in fact, been dancing the cha-cha-cha at midnight, and Arthur remembered wondering where he got the energy from, knowing, as he did, that he was at his desk every morning at eight o’clock. They had been discussing, he recalled, Willie’s forthcoming cruise to South America, and he had asked Arthur why he and Vera didn’t come along, too, and Arthur had said he couldn’t afford to leave his business for so long. Then Willie had asked about Victor and if he still refused to go into his father’s business, and Arthur said that he was still set on going up to Cambridge and that he was going to read history. History! Willie’s reaction had been the same as his own. What would happen to the business? What would happen to the business…?

  There was a buzzing noise from the telephone receiver. “Mr Beesley here, sir, about the chenille dolls…”

  Arthur held the paper closer. It was a bad picture of Willie anyway. It made him look older than he was. How old was he? Fifty? Fifty-one? Not more. They had been at school together in the same class, and Arthur was fifty.

  “Mr Dexter, sir, about the chenille dolls…”

  Perhaps they had made a mistake. Arthur unfolded the paper and spread it flat on the desk. He put on his glasses again in order to read the small print. ‘Mr William Boothroyd,’ he read, ‘President of English Steel Holdings, collapsed and died outside his office building at lun
chtime today. Mr Boothroyd, well known financier and philanthropist, was, as far as was known, in good health. He is survived by his wife Mrs Margaret Boothroyd formerly Miss Margaret Lubbock… There were no children… An inquest will be held.’ On page four there were other paragraphs. Arthur wondered where they dug them up from so quickly. William Boothroyd’s charitable work, his house in Nassau, his enormous steel organisation, his friends (famous, of course), his race-horses, speculations as to how much he was worth. Last night William Boothroyd had left his soup and joked about his diet, pierced his cigar with Arthur’s gadget, stood on the pavement outside the Dorchester for a breather, danced jovially with Arthur’s daughter. Now William Boothroyd was no longer in existence. Arthur put down the newspaper. It was no good. It was too sudden. Too much of a shock. He could not be expected to believe it.

  There was a knock at his door which he didn’t answer. Miss Walsh came in pulling at her cardigan, already shapeless from her nervous habit, and sucking a throat pastille. She picked up the telephone receiver and handed it to him. “I thought perhaps you’d gone out. It’s Mr Beesley about the chenille dolls.”

  “What does he want?”

  “I’ll enquire.” Miss Walsh spoke into the telephone, then with her hand over the mouthpiece turned to Arthur. “He says the chenille dolls with wooden stands do need stronger packing.”

  Arthur stared at her.

  “What shall I tell him, Mr Dexter?”

  “Tell him it doesn’t matter.”

  A young man in his shirtsleeves came into the office.

  “You wanted the stock cards, Mr Dexter.”

  “Not now, Johnson.” Arthur stood up.

  “But you particularly said…”

  Arthur had his hat on. “I’m going now.”

  “What about the Japanese coffee sets?” Miss Walsh said.

  “I don’t know.” He opened the door.

  “Mr Dexter!”

  “What is it, Miss Walsh?”

  “You’ve forgotten your paper.”

  Arthur held out his hand for the newsprint which was all that remained of his friend Willie Boothroyd.

  In the street outside his office, Arthur stopped. His first thought had been to get out of the office, to go home. Now he knew that for the moment he was unable to face Vera, the normalcy of his house and the drinks on the tray as if nothing had happened to Willie. It had hit him too close and too hard. It was he who had dropped dead in the street outside his office. He was the same age, same build. If not still young men, he and Willie had considered themselves barely middle-aged. School even seemed such a short time ago. What had poor Willie done to have such a mean trick played upon him? Standing on the pavement, Arthur thought: I am William Boothroyd. One moment I am here, outside my office, the next I am lying dead, right here at my feet. No chance to say anything, do anything, not even to round anything off. Just ‘phht’, like a candle… ‘in the midst of our days’. Arthur looked down at the pavement half expecting to see himself lying there.

  “Why’nt yer look where yer going?” Arthur looked up at the two girls, arm in arm, who had bumped into him.

  “Sorry.” He walked along, the way the crowds were going. No, he certainly didn’t feel like facing Vera yet. She would understand, of course, that he was upset, but not quite the feeling he had that it was as though he, not Willie, had died, or at least might equally well have died. As he walked along, the newspaper under his arm, he felt almost as if he were cheating by breathing the stale city air, touching arms with his neighbours, hearing their voices when he should be lying lifeless on the pavement, waiting for the ambulance to take him to some ice-cold City mortuary. He found himself shivering at the thought, and wished he had stopped to have a whisky in the office. It was twenty minutes later, when he had wandered unseeingly as far as Fleet Street, that it occurred to him he might go into a pub. That it had not occurred to him before was due mainly to the fact that Arthur Dexters are not familiar with public houses. They drink, if and when they wish to drink, in their offices, their friends’ offices, their clubs, their homes, their friends’ homes, or, if they go out to dine, in the bar while waiting for a table. They are not in the habit, on leaving their offices, of dropping in for a ‘quick one’.

  The pub that Arthur Dexter chose, the first one in fact that he passed having made his decision, was large and friendly. Its clientele consisted mainly of those concerned with newspapers of the Law, who by day inhabited the surrounding district. Standing at the bar, awaiting the moment when he could catch the eye of the flitting bartender, he found himself next to a group of pink-faced, very young men in stiff white collars and vent-backed, dark suits. They each held a beer tankard, and appeared to be discussing crankshafts. Each had his spare hand in his trouser pocket and laughed, frequently, freely and heartily, at what seemed to Arthur nothing at all. From time to time they were joined by new equally pink-faced young men who, having hung their bowler hats and rolled umbrellas on the stand by the door, slapped one or two of their fellows on the back, guffawed merrily once or twice, laid their evening papers on the counter, jingled the change in their pockets, and accepted responsibility for the next round.

  Arthur looked miserably along the counter at the inverted green-glass bottles of gin, the fruit juices, bottled beers and Lea & Perrins Worcester sauce. The bartender stuck a pound note into the glass tankard by the till, already full of pound notes, and danced up to where Arthur stood.

  “Yessir?” One hand was wiping the counter, the other handing a packet of cigarettes to someone from the shelf behind him.

  “Double Scotch.” Poor Willie had drunk his last one last night.

  At the back of the large room, with its black and white tiled floor, were some green covered chairs and tables. Arthur needed to sit down. One table with six seats was empty. He was glad, not wanting to be too close to humanity. A stout, dark, kindly-looking lady with comfortable looking bosom and shoes came up with a cloth. She said, “Good-evening, dear,” to Arthur, and having mopped up the small puddles of spilled beer and emptied the ashtray, said, “Nothing worse than a dirty table,” and moved on. He became lost in thoughts of Willie, and was surprised to find when he next looked up that he was no longer alone at the table, and that he had not touched his drink. A young man in a green jersey, a slightly older man in black jacket and striped trousers, and a girl, very pretty, with long black hair, were sharing the table with him. They all had drinks before them. The man in the black jacket was looking at Willie’s picture on the front page of his newspaper.

  “He was my friend,” Arthur said, surprised at himself for addressing a strange man in a pub.

  The young man in the jersey glanced at the headline.

  “The lolly doesn’t help,” he said. Arthur wasn’t quite sure what he meant.

  The man in the black jacket, obviously a barrister, Arthur thought, had a beautiful, Cambridge voice. “And the dust returneth to the earth as it was,” he said piously, “but the Spirit returneth unto God who gave it.”

  “Is that what you believe?” Arthur asked.

  “One must believe. How else could one go on living?”

  Arthur was silent. He had never considered the problem of an after-life.

  Green jersey ran his fingers through the long hair that flopped over his forehead.

  “I don’t believe all that bunk,” he said. “When you’re dead, you’re dead, and that’s that. It’s all a huge bloody joke and sometimes it isn’t very funny.”

  “Then what’s the point in living, working, carrying on?” the Cambridge accents said.

  “I’ll tell you,” green jersey said, leaning forward confidentially. “It’s because we’re all on a bloody treadmill and we can’t get off. We have so much to do, and so little time in which to do it. With every year that the world gets older, the treadmill turns a little faster, and there’s so much that is exciting and new, almost, almost within our reach and we don’t know where to grab first. New plays, a little more shocking — m
y God, we’re not even in the social swim unless we’ve seen them — new speeds across the world, ten minutes off the journey to Karachi; ten minutes, I ask you! Larger and larger cinema screens with stupider and less artistic films than we have ever had, colour television, stereophonic gramophones – but how many people damn well care about the quality of the recording? New clothes washers, dish washers, brain washers, suffocating heat from the walls and the floors, atomic lighting, the Japanese influence in interiors — contemporary simply won’t any longer do — new names, stars born overnight; stars! Babes with mascara hurled to the lions by their publicity agents; new this, new that, new worlds even to conquer, and if we lived to be a hundred it’s doubtful whether we should be using the right toothpaste or the right soap. And we’re scared, too. We’re scared of war; not nice, comprehensible wars like those we’ve known in the past, where the worst that could happen was that you’d be killed by a bayonet or a bomb or tortured until you became a gibbering idiot, or herded into a gas oven – we knew where we were then. Now we don’t even know what we’re afraid of – cold wars, nerve wars, trade wars even; war with Russia, war with China, the slow drowning democracy in the muddy bogs of communism – where can we look and not be afraid? But we don’t stop to look because we have to run, faster and faster and faster. We run so fast we leave our souls behind in the company of our honesty, our integrity and our peace of mind. We go on and on and on, step after step after step, to make the treadmill turn faster and faster until ‘Wham!’” he slapped Willie’s picture in the newspaper so hard he made them all jump, “You’ve had it! You’re off all right but what good is it to you?”

  Black jacket pointed to the headline. “He had the money to get off the treadmill if he’d wanted,” he said.

  “Ah! But did he? Of course not! And you know why? Because money wasn’t enough. He wanted more money. What for? Don’t ask me. He probably could have retired years ago if he’d wanted to. But he liked being a tycoon; the power and the glory! He was mad with it, drunk with it, enslaved by it, and he trod the steps of his own particular treadmill harder, faster, more urgently than most of us who have more need to. He was afraid to get off. And now he has simply been removed, like a fly picked off the jam.”