"I"ve told him a little bit about you, and he"s excited. He said, "From the Congress?" He"s that kind of man. Knows everything, knows everybody. And, who knows, he might have some proposition for you. It"s one of the reasons for his success. He"s always on the lookout for new people. In that way you can say he"s no sn.o.b. In another way, of course, he"s sn.o.bbish beyond imagining."
Two days before they left for the weekend Roger said, "I think I should tell you. They unpack for you."
Willie said, "It sounds like jail. They"re always unpacking for you there."
"They take your suitcase, and when you go up to your room you find that one of those men in striped trousers has taken out all your clothes and other goods and spread them about in various suitable places. You are supposed to know where. So you have no secrets from the staff. It can be a great surprise. It"s terribly shaming, the first time it happens. I"ve often thought I should insult them back by taking absolute rags in a filthy duffel bag, to show them how little I care for them. But I never do. At the last minute I get cowed. I can"t help thinking of that scrutiny at the other end by servants, people technically below one, and I pack carefully, even in a slightly exhibitionist way. But you can do it. You can try to insult them. You"re an outsider, and for them it doesn"t matter what you do. Not many people know that that kind of big-house servant exists nowadays. They know that"s what you are thinking, and they put on a special style. I am not easy with them. I find them a little sinister. I suppose they"ve always been sinister, those grand house servants. Nowadays they are embarra.s.sing for everybody, I think, with the butler and the master acting it out, pretending that they are not out of the ordinary. My banker likes to pretend sometimes that everybody has a butler."
When on the Friday they (and their suitcases) were in the taxi going to the railway station Roger said, "It"s actually because of Perdita that I became involved in this caper with the banker. I wished to impress her. I wished to show her that I knew a man with a house ten times bigger than her lover"s big house, would you believe. I didn"t want her to give up the lover. Far from it. I only wanted her to have an idea of his place in the scheme of things. I wanted her to feel a little squalid. What a calamity that"s been for me."
When they were in the railway station Roger said, "I usually buy first-cla.s.s tickets on these occasions. But I think this time I am going to buy second-cla.s.s." He lifted his chin as if to express his resolve.
Willie stood in the queue with him. When his turn came Roger asked for first-cla.s.s tickets.
He said to Willie, "I couldn"t do it. Sometimes they meet you on the platform. I can say now that it"s a foolish, old-fashioned thing about which I don"t really care. But when the actual moment comes I don"t think I would have the courage to be seen coming out of a second-cla.s.s carriage by one of those awful servants. I hate myself for it."
They were the only people in the first-cla.s.s carriage. That was, strangely, a kind of let-down (since there was no one else to witness). Roger went silent. Willie searched for something that he might say to break the heavy mood, but everything he thought of seemed to refer in some way to their extravagant travel. Many minutes later Roger said, "I am a coward. But I know myself. Nothing I do can really be a surprise to me."
And when they got to their station there was no one on the platform to meet them. The man (in a suit, but not with a cap) was in an ordinary-sized car in the station car park, waiting to be found. But by this time Roger"s mood had lightened, and he was able to deal, in a slightly exaggerated stylish way, with the driver.
Their host was waiting for them at the foot of the steps of the big house. He was in sporty style, and in one hand was playing with what looked to Willie (who knew nothing of golf and golf tees) like a very large and white extracted molar. He was a hard, dry, well-exercised man, and at the moment of meeting all his energy, and Roger"s, and Willie"s, and the energy of the plump-legged striped-trousered servant coming down the steps, went into pretending that this kind of reception in front of this kind of house was perfectly ordinary for everyone.
For Willie a kind of unreality, or a reality hard to grasp, veiled the moment. It was like what he had felt in the forest and in the jail, the detachment from what was about him. In a manner he couldn"t reconstruct he became separated from Roger, and docilely, as in the jail, not looking too hard at anything, he followed a servant up to a room. The window had a view of many acres. Willie wondered whether he should go down and walk in the grounds or whether he should stay in the room and hide. The thought of going down and asking his way about the grounds was oppressive. He decided to hide. On the protective gla.s.s on the dressing table was an old, solidly bound book. It was an old edition of The Origin of Species The Origin of Species. The cramped Victorian typography (the letters seemingly rusty with age) was daunting, as was the smell of the crinkled old paper and the old printing ink (calling up gloomy ideas of the printing shops and the printing workers of the time) that might have caused the paper to crinkle.
The man in the striped trousers (perhaps someone from eastern Europe) began doing the famous unpacking. But since the man was from eastern Europe Willie was not as disturbed as Roger had thought he might be.
Sitting at the dressing table, turning the pages of The Origin of Species The Origin of Species while the man unpacked, unfolding the ill.u.s.trations, Willie saw a little wicker vase or container with sharpened cedar-coloured pencils. It was like the one in his room in Roger"s house. Then he saw a small crystal sphere, solid and heavy, ringed from top to bottom with scored parallel lines, and with a little well at the top with long pink-tipped matches. That, too, was like something in his room in Roger"s house. It was from here-where Roger, behaving in an unexpected way, had brought her to awe her with a grandeur that wasn"t his, the way a poor local person might take a visitor to see the grand houses of his town-it was from here (and perhaps from other places as well, perhaps even from places she had seen or known as a girl) that Perdita had taken some of her ideas of room decoration, focusing on what was small and incidental and attainable. Willie felt an immense surge of sympathy for her, and (surrendering to things within him) he felt oppressed at the same time by the intimation that came to him just then of the darkness in which everybody walked. while the man unpacked, unfolding the ill.u.s.trations, Willie saw a little wicker vase or container with sharpened cedar-coloured pencils. It was like the one in his room in Roger"s house. Then he saw a small crystal sphere, solid and heavy, ringed from top to bottom with scored parallel lines, and with a little well at the top with long pink-tipped matches. That, too, was like something in his room in Roger"s house. It was from here-where Roger, behaving in an unexpected way, had brought her to awe her with a grandeur that wasn"t his, the way a poor local person might take a visitor to see the grand houses of his town-it was from here (and perhaps from other places as well, perhaps even from places she had seen or known as a girl) that Perdita had taken some of her ideas of room decoration, focusing on what was small and incidental and attainable. Willie felt an immense surge of sympathy for her, and (surrendering to things within him) he felt oppressed at the same time by the intimation that came to him just then of the darkness in which everybody walked.
After some time he went to the bathroom. It had been constructed within the older room and the part.i.tions were thin. The wallpaper was of a bold design, widely s.p.a.ced green vines suggesting a great openness. But on one wall there was no wallpaper, no feeling of openness, only pages from an old ill.u.s.trated magazine called The Graphic The Graphic, closely printed grey columns in the Victorian way, broken up by line drawings of events and places all over the world. The pages were from the 1860s and 1870s. The artist or reporter (possibly one and the same person) would have sent his copy or sketches by ship; in the office of the magazine a professional artist would have straightened out the drawings, probably adding things according to his fancy; and week by week these drawings, the products of advanced journalistic enterprise, ill.u.s.trating events in the empire and elsewhere for an interested public, were reproduced according to the best methods of the day.
For Willie it was a revelation. The past in these pasted pages seemed to be just there, something he could reach out and touch. He read about India after the Mutiny, about the opening up of Africa, about warlord China, about the United States after the civil war, about the troubles of Jamaica and Ireland; he read about the discovery of the source of the Nile; he read about Queen Victoria as though she were still alive. He read until the light faded. It was hard to read the small print by dull electric light.
There was a knock at the door. It was Roger. He had been discussing business with the banker and he looked drawn.
He saw the book on the dressing table and said, "What book do you have?" He took it up and said, "It"s a first edition, you know. He likes leaving them about casually for his guests. They are gathered up very carefully afterwards. This time I have a Jane Austen."
Willie said, "I"ve been reading The Graphic The Graphic. It"s in the bathroom."
Roger said, "It"s in my bathroom, too. I will tell you about that. I have an interest, as they say. There was a time when I used to go to the Charing Cross Road to look at the bookshops. It"s not something you can do today, not in the same way. One day I saw a set of The Graphic The Graphic on the pavement outside one of the shops. They were quite cheap, a couple of pounds a volume. I couldn"t believe my luck. on the pavement outside one of the shops. They were quite cheap, a couple of pounds a volume. I couldn"t believe my luck. The Graphic The Graphic was a famous thing, one of the precursors of the was a famous thing, one of the precursors of the Ill.u.s.trated London News Ill.u.s.trated London News. They were in beautifully bound volumes. It was the way things were done at that time. I don"t know whether the magazine did the binding, or the libraries, or the people who subscribed. I could only take home two of the Graphic Graphic volumes, and I had to take a taxi. They were very bulky things, as I told you, and very heavy. It was about this time that I was getting involved with our banker. I was beginning to understand the immense power of the true egomaniac on people around him. In fact, I was yielding to that power without knowing it. To the intelligent person, like myself, the egomaniac is in some ways pathetic, a man who doesn"t see like the rest of us that the paths of glory lead but to the grave. And that is how the intelligent man is caught. He begins by patronising and ends by being a minion. Anyway. Just after I had seen the volumes, and I had to take a taxi. They were very bulky things, as I told you, and very heavy. It was about this time that I was getting involved with our banker. I was beginning to understand the immense power of the true egomaniac on people around him. In fact, I was yielding to that power without knowing it. To the intelligent person, like myself, the egomaniac is in some ways pathetic, a man who doesn"t see like the rest of us that the paths of glory lead but to the grave. And that is how the intelligent man is caught. He begins by patronising and ends by being a minion. Anyway. Just after I had seen the Graphic Graphic set I came here. The great man was still courting me, and in fact I had already been caught. I"m not punning. He showed me some of his pictures. He told me how he had picked them up. And, not to be outdone, I told him how I had recently picked up the two bound volumes of set I came here. The great man was still courting me, and in fact I had already been caught. I"m not punning. He showed me some of his pictures. He told me how he had picked them up. And, not to be outdone, I told him how I had recently picked up the two bound volumes of The Graphic The Graphic. I was boasting. He of course didn"t know about The Graphic The Graphic, and I was telling him how much I knew. Having boasted to him about The Graphic The Graphic, I thought, when I went back to London, that I should go and get a few more of the volumes. I found nothing. Our friend had sent his big car and carried away the lot. This was his wife"s idea, pasting the pages on the lavatories. When the place is done up again, or sold, and becomes a hotel or whatever, all those pages will go to the builder"s rubbish dump."
"You think it will become a hotel?"
"Something like that. Ordinary people can"t live in places like this. You would need a lot of servants. These places were built in the days of many servants. Fifteen gardeners, umpteen chambermaids. Those people don"t exist nowadays. People in service, as they used to say. At one time they were a big part of the population."
Willie asked, "What happened to them?"
"It"s a wonderful question. I suppose one answer would be that they died out. But that"s not the question you asked. I know what you are asking. If we asked it more often we might begin to understand the kind of country we"re living in. I realise now I haven"t heard anyone ask the question."
Willie said, "In many parts of India it"s the big issue nowadays. What they call the churning of the castes. I think it"s more important than the religious question. Certain middle groups rising, certain top groups being sucked under. The guerrilla war I went to fight in was a reflection of this movement. A reflection, no more. India will soon be presenting an untouchable face to the world. It won"t be nice. People won"t like it."
They went down later to drinks and dinner. It was not a formal affair. The banker"s wife was not there. The only other guest was a picture-gallery owner. The banker was a painter, in addition to everything else, and wished to have an exhibition in London. He had told Willie and Roger, when telling them about their fellow dinner guest, "Thought it would be better to ask him down to talk things over. These people like a little style." Using that last sentence both to flatter Willie and Roger and to rope them into his conspiracy against the gallery man.
He, the gallery man, was dressed as stiffly as Roger. He had big red hands, as though he had been carrying about big framed pictures in his gallery all day.
Spotlights in the ceiling of the very big room played on three of the paintings the banker had done. Willie began to understand what Roger had said about the power of the true egomaniac. It was open to Willie and Roger and the gallery man to say that the paintings the banker had chosen to light up were second-rate work, Sunday painting, no more. It was open to them to be quite brutal. But the man had exposed himself in too innocent a way, and no one wished to wound him.
The gallery owner was suffering. Whatever excitement he might have felt about being a guest in the grand house (and having his elegant clothes unpacked and noted) was going.
The banker said, "Money is of no moment to me. You understand that. I am sure you do."
And the gallery owner struggled, and failed, to say that he was in the gallery business to make money and the last person he was interested in professionally was a painter who didn"t need money. He spoke two or three disconnected ideas and then gave up.
The subject was then left alone. But enough ego and power had been displayed (the ceiling spotlights continuing to play on the banker"s paintings) for Willie to understand that, after the artistic grand charge, whatever arrangements were going to be made with the gallery man were going to be made privately, without witnesses.
The banker said to Willie, "Do you know the maharaja of Makkhinagar?" He gave Willie no chance to reply. "He came to stay. It was just after Mrs. Gandhi had de-recognised the princes and abolished their privy purses. This would have been in 1971. He was very young, uncertain in London, very much pulled down by the loss of his privy purse. I thought I should do something for him. My father knew his grandfather. Naturally enough, with all the changes in India, the young man was very much standing on his dignity when he came here. No one minded that, but I don"t think he appreciated the people I had brought together for him. Many doors would have been open to him if he wanted, but he didn"t appear interested. They do that, and then they go away and talk about a lack of regard over here. In London I invited him to the Corner Club for lunch. Do you know the Corner? It"s smaller than the Turf Club, and even more exclusive, if such a thing can be imagined. The dining room is very small. The Corner isn"t called the Corner for nothing. Eyebrows were raised when they saw young Makkhinagar, I don"t mind telling you. But I never heard a word from him after that. About fifteen years later I went to Delhi. One of the many occasions when the rumour was that the economy was going to be liberalised. I looked up Makkhinagar in the telephone book. He was a member of the Indian upper house now, and he had a house in Delhi. He invited me over one evening. Such a panoply of security at the house, watchmen and soldiers and sandbags at the gate, and men with guns inside. Makkhinagar was much more relaxed, in spite of it all. He said, "Peter, that was an amusing little lunch place we went to the last time." That"s what I mean about the Indians. "Amusing little lunch place." The Corner! You put yourself out, and that"s what you get."
Willie said nothing. The gallery man gave a little laugh, already like a man pleased to be admitted to this kind of converse about the great; but Roger was silent and looked suffering.
More people were going to come the next day. Willie wasn"t looking forward to it. He wondered why. He thought, "It"s vanity. I can only be easy with people who have some idea of what I am. Or probably it"s just the house. It makes too many demands on people. I am sure it alters them. It has certainly altered the banker. It altered me. It prevented me from seeing things clearly when I arrived."
In the morning after breakfast (which he went down for) he met the banker"s wife. She greeted him before he greeted her, striding towards him and stretching out her hand as if in the completest welcome, a still-young woman with long bouncing hair and a big bouncing bottom. She gave her name and said, in a fine tinkling voice, "I"m Peter"s wife." She was narrow-shouldered, narrow-chested, attractive: a very physical person, Willie thought. Nothing about her afterwards was as fine as that first moment. She was only her smile and her voice.
Willie thought, "I must work out why, like the maharaja in the Corner Club, I am not at ease with these people. The maharaja felt the lack of welcome and settled the score fifteen years later. I don"t feel like that. I don"t feel the lack of a welcome. On the contrary, I feel anyone who comes here would be more than ready to meet the banker"s guest. What I feel is that for me there is no point in going through with the occasion. I don"t wish to cultivate anybody or to be cultivated by them. It isn"t that I think they are materialist. No one in the world is more crudely materialist than the Indian well-to-do. But in the forest and in the jail I changed. You can"t go through that kind of life without changing. I have shed my materialist self. I had to, to survive. I feel that these people don"t know the other side of things." The words came to him just like that. He thought, "The words would have meant something. I must work out what the words mean. The people here don"t understand nullity. The physical nullity of what I saw in the forest. The spiritual nullity that went with that, and was very much like what my poor father lived with all his life. I have felt this nullity in my bones and can go back to it at any time. Unless we understand people"s other side, Indian, j.a.panese, African, we cannot truly understand them."
The banker had been talking business with Roger, playing with his golf tee as with a rosary. When they came out from where they had been the banker took Roger and Willie and the gallery man and someone who had just arrived on a little tour of some of his things. He had come back from a world trip visiting business a.s.sociates and (like a visiting head of state) getting presents from people. Some of these he now displayed. Many of them he mocked. He especially mocked a tall blue semi-transparent porcelain vase, crudely painted with local flowers. The banker said, "It was probably done by the local manager"s wife. Nothing to do in the long nights at those lat.i.tudes." The vase was very narrow at the base, too wide at the top, unsteady, rocking at the touch of a finger. It had already taken a few tumbles and had a long diagonal crack; a piece of the porcelain had broken off.
Roger, speaking with an unusual irritation, possibly as a result of something that had happened during his business conversation, said provocatively, "I think it"s rather nice."
The banker said, "It"s yours. I"ll give it to you."
Roger said, "It will be too much trouble."
"No trouble at all. I"ll get them to wrap it up and see it into the train with you. I am sure Perdita will find some use for it."
That was what happened the next afternoon. So the first-cla.s.s tickets that Roger had bought at last had the witness for whom they had been intended, and Roger was spared the most horrible kind of shame. But again, at tipping time, he lost his nerve and tipped the servant ten pounds.
He said to Willie, "All the way in the car I was trying to work out the tip. For everything extra connected with that odious vase. I settled on five pounds, but at the last minute I changed my mind. It"s all the effect of that man"s ego. I allow him to insult me, as he did with that cracked vase, and then I try to find excuses for him. I think, "He"s like a child. He doesn"t know about the real world." One day someone with nothing to lose will insult him in the profoundest way, and then the magic will be broken. But until then for people like me there"s an electric charge around the man."
Willie said, "Do you think you will be the one to insult him in that profound way when the moment comes?"
"Not now. I have too much to lose. I am too dependent on him. But at the end, yes. When my father was dying in hospital his character completely changed. This very gentlemanly man began to insult everybody who came to see him. My mother, my brother. He insulted all his business a.s.sociates. Really vile language. He said everything he thought about everybody. He kept nothing back. The nearness of death gave him that licence. I suppose you would say that for my father death was his truest and happiest moment. But I didn"t want to die like that. I wanted to die the other way. Like Van Gogh, according to what I"ve read. Peacefully smoking a pipe, reconciled to everybody and everything, hating no one. But Van Gogh could afford to be romantic. He had his art and vocation. My father didn"t, and I don"t, and very few of us have, and now that I am within sight of the end I find myself thinking that my father had something. It makes death something to look forward to."
When they got back to the house in St. John"s Wood Roger said to Perdita, "Peter has sent you a gift."
She was excited, and immediately began undoing the servant"s unskilled and perfunctory wrapping (a lot of sticky tape) of the awkwardly shaped, tall vase.
She said, "It"s a lovely craft piece. I must write to Peter. I have a place for it. The crack needn"t show."
For a few days the vase was where she put it, but then it disappeared and wasn"t spoken of again.
A WEEK OR WEEK OR so later Roger said to Willie, "You made a great hit with Peter. Did you know?" so later Roger said to Willie, "You made a great hit with Peter. Did you know?"
Willie said, "I wonder why. I hardly said anything to him. I just listened."
"That"s probably why. Peter has a story about Indira Gandhi. He never thought much of her. He didn"t think she was educated or knew much about people in the wider world. He thought she was a bluffer. In 1971, at the time of the Bangladesh business, he went to Delhi and tried to see her. He had some project on hand. She ignored him. He twiddled his thumbs in his hotel for a whole week. He was furious. At last he met someone from the inner Indira Gandhi circle. He asked this person, "How does the lady judge people?" The person said, "Her method is simple. All the time she is waiting to see what her visitor wants." Peter no doubt took the tip. He was waiting all the time to find out what you wanted from him, and you said nothing."
Willie said, "I didn"t want anything from him."
"It brought out the best in him. He talked to me about you afterwards, and I told him some of your story. The result is he"s made you an offer. He"s involved with some big construction companies. They do a quality magazine about modern buildings. It"s high-cla.s.s public relations. They don"t overtly sell any company or product. He thinks you might want to work for them. Part-time or full-time. It depends on you. The offer is perfectly genuine, I should tell you. It"s Peter at his best. He"s very proud of his magazine."
Willie said, "I know nothing about architecture."
And Roger knew that Willie was interested.
He said, "They do courses for people like you. It"s like the courses the auction houses do in art history."
SO W WILLIE AT last found a job in London. Or found something to go to in the mornings. Or, to make it still smaller, something to leave the St. John"s Wood house for. last found a job in London. Or found something to go to in the mornings. Or, to make it still smaller, something to leave the St. John"s Wood house for.
The magazine"s offices were in a narrow, flat-fronted old building in Bloomsbury.
Roger said, "It"s like something out of central casting."
Willie didn"t know the meaning of the words.
Roger said, "In the old days in Hollywood the studios had departments that did exaggerated sets of foreign places. Exaggerated and full of cliche so that people would know where they were. If somebody-doing A Christmas Carol A Christmas Carol, say-had gone to them and asked for a d.i.c.kensian office in a d.i.c.kensian building they would have built something like your building and enveloped it in fog."
It was not far from the British Museum-pediment and columns, big front court and tall, pointed, black iron rails. And it wasn"t far from the Trades Union Congress building, tight against the street, modern, three or four storeys high, gla.s.s and concrete in rectangular segments, with a strange cantilevered flying figure in bronze above the entrance, representing labour threatening or labour triumphant, or perhaps only labour or the idea of work, or perhaps again representing mainly the sculptor"s struggle with his socialist subject.
Willie walked past that sculpture every day. For the first few weeks, until he ceased to see it, he felt rebuked: his work on the magazine was really very soft, and for a large part of every day was hardly work at all.
It was a part of London that Willie knew from twenty-seven or twenty-eight years before. Once the a.s.sociations would have been shameful; now it didn"t matter. The publisher who had done his book was in one of the big black squares. Willie had thought the building undistinguished. But then he was surprised, as he went up the front steps, to find that the building appeared to be growing bigger; and then the interior, behind the old black brick, was lighter and finer than anything he might have expected. Upstairs, in what would have been the main room in the old days, as the publisher told him, he was made to stand in front of the high window of what had been the drawing room and to look down into the square, and the publisher made him imagine the carriages and servants and footmen of Vanity Fair Vanity Fair. Why did he do that? Was it just, in the grand first-floor room, to create the picture of the wealth of merchants and traders in the high days of slavery? He did that, of course; but he wished to make another point as well. It was that, in such a room in Vanity Fair Vanity Fair, the rich merchant wished to compel his son to marry a black or mulatto heiress from St. Kitts. Was the publisher saying that for those rich men money overrode everything else, overrode even a man"s duty to his race? Was he saying, then, to take the other slant, that their att.i.tude to money gave them, in racial matters, a kind of purity? No, he was saying no such thing. He was speaking critically. He was speaking like a man letting Willie into a national secret. What did he mean? Was he saying that a mulatto heiress should be shunned by all right-minded men? Willie (whenever, in Africa, he thought of his poor little book) had also gone on to ponder the publisher"s gloss on Vanity Fair Vanity Fair. And he had decided that the publisher meant nothing at all, that he was only trying in Willie"s presence to give himself a point of view, was trying to work up a little anger about the rich and the treatment of blacks and mulattos at one and the same time, something he would forget when his next visitor came into the room.
And often, perhaps every day for a second or two, Willie thought, walking to the magazine from the Underground station, "When I first came to this area I saw nothing. Now the place is full of detail. It"s as though I"ve pulled a switch. And yet I can easily think myself back to that other way of not seeing."
The building Willie went to work in, which was like something out of central casting, was old only on the outside. Inside, it had been so often renovated and restored and then, without a pang, ravaged again, part.i.tions going up and then being taken down, that it had the appearance, on the ground floor, of being like a shop with no particular character, fitted out only for the moment, frail and brittle, fresh paint lying thin over the sharp lines of new soft wood. It seemed that the shopfitters could at any moment be called in to cart away what they had put up and do a fresh design. Only the walls and (perhaps because of some restraining heritage by-law) the narrow staircases with their slender mahogany banisters lived on from change to change. The small waiting room downstairs had a front part.i.tion of gla.s.s, just behind the receptionist"s cubicle. On one wall was an old black-and-white photograph of Peter and two other directors of a building company welcoming the queen. On a small kidney-shaped table were copies of the modern building magazine. It was impressive, expensive-looking, with beautiful photographs.
The editor"s office was upstairs, in the front room, in a much-reduced version of the grandeur of Willie"s publisher twenty-eight years before. The editor was a woman of about forty or fifty with a ravaged face and big pop eyes behind black-rimmed gla.s.ses. She seemed to Willie to be eaten up with every kind of family grief and s.e.xual pain, and it was as though she had four or five or six times a day to climb out of that hole before she could deal with other matters. She was gracious to Willie, treating him as a friend of Peter"s, and this made the pain in her face harder to witness.
She said, "We"ll see how you settle down. And then we"ll be sending you to Barnet."
Barnet was where the company"s architecture courses were given.
When Willie gave Roger an account of his meeting with the editor, Roger said, "Whenever I"ve met her I"ve always had a distinct whiff of gin. She is one of Peter"s lame ducks. But she does her job well."
The magazine came out once a quarter. The articles were written by professionals, and the payment was good. The editor"s job was to commission the articles; it was the job of the photo editor to hunt out photographs; and it was the job of the staff to edit and check and proof-read the articles. Layout was done professionally. There was an architectural library on an upper floor. The books were big and forbidding, but Willie soon began to find his way about them. He spent much time in the library and in his third week he learned to say to the editor, when he was idle and she asked what he was doing, "I"m checking." The words always calmed her down.
One lunch hour, when he was walking in one of the quieter squares, a big car stopped beside him. A woman got out. She had a stamped letter which she wanted to drop in the letter box nearby. When she had done that she greeted Willie. He had thought nothing until then about the woman. But her tinkling, happy, rhythmic voice was at once recognisable, that voice that went with her bouncing hair and bouncing bottom. It was Peter"s wife. She said in a quick ripple of speech, "I hear you"re working for Peter." He was flattered to be remembered, but she gave him no time to say anything. She tinkled away, "Peter"s having his exhibition. It"s in all the papers. We hope you will want to come." In that same ripple of speech she introduced Willie to the half-hidden driver of the car, and, not waiting for either man to speak, got into the car and was driven off.
When Willie told Roger about the meeting Roger said, "That"s her lover. She could have gone on to another post box, but she wanted to show herself to you with her lover. She wants everyone who has seen her with Peter to see her with this other man. It torments Peter. It undoes everything for him. His head must be full of painful s.e.xual pictures. And the man she showed to you is quite ordinary. A small-scale property dealer, not too educated. That"s how Peter met him. Peter"s ventures into property haven"t been too successful, to put it mildly. And now nothing he does can win his wife back. I met her at the house many years ago, shortly after she married Peter. She began to tell me about her earlier marriage and why it had failed. She said it had oppressed her. I didn"t know what she meant. She said, "Tim would say, just before he went to work, "I"ve run out of toothpaste. Buy me a tube." I am just giving an example. And all day I would be thinking of that tube of toothpaste I had to buy. Tim would be in his office, doing all his exciting deals, and having his exciting lunches, and I would be in the house thinking of the toothpaste I had to buy for him. Do you see what I mean? It oppressed me. You do understand, don"t you?" She spoke this in her lovely voice and she fixed her lovely eyes on me and I tried very hard to understand her oppression. I felt she wanted me to do battle with her oppressor. I felt, to tell the truth, that she was making a pa.s.s at me. I could feel her wrapping me in her special brand of gossamer. And then, of course, I realised that I couldn"t understand what she was saying because there was nothing to understand. She was only listening to herself speak. I became worried for Peter. He would give up many things if he could be sure of her. This is where big men can be overthrown. I haven"t been the same man since I married Perdita. Now the whole world knows about her lover with the big London house. No one would believe that for years she pestered me to marry her. Now she becomes the one hard done by, the woman I let down."
Now that on weekdays Willie had the building magazine and Bloomsbury to go to, he no longer had his mornings with Perdita. She would come up to his little room only occasionally, usually in the evening, perhaps once a week, when Roger (as she liked to say) was with his tart, and when she didn"t have her big house to go to and was otherwise free. These meetings now had to fit into everybody"s movements, and for the first time in the house Willie consciously became a deceiver. He wished it didn"t have to be so, but he preferred the new arrangement. It was less burdensome; it made him like Perdita more.
They talked more than before. He never tried to find out more about the man with the big house or about Roger"s other woman. Partly this was because of the reserve he had learned in the guerrilla movement (where in the strict early days it was forbidden, for reasons of doctrine and security, to ask other people in the movement too many questions about their family and background). This reserve had become part of Willie"s nature. And he genuinely didn"t want to know more about Roger"s other life or Perdita"s. He wanted to stay with what he knew; he didn"t want greater knowledge to spoil the little life he had lighted upon in the St. John"s Wood house, in his little room, in the middle of the unknown.
Perdita let drop some details of her early life in the north. Willie encouraged her. He thought his own family life had been bizarre, his childhood blighted. To imagine Perdita"s happy early life, to recreate it with the details she let drop, was to walk vicariously in a field of glory. It made her much more than he had thought her at the very start. She felt his new regard and she blossomed when she was with him. She developed, became less pa.s.sive.
One Sat.u.r.day morning she said, "Roger may not want to talk about his caper with Peter"-"caper": it was Roger"s word-"but I am sure he will soon now. His career is on the line." And then she went on, in a more reflective way, "I feel sorry for Roger. With Peter he has always been pathetic. Bringing home that awful broken vase as a gift for me. There are many ways of saying no, and he should have found at least one. All Roger"s energy, or much of it, has gone into sounding and appearing. It"s the great trap of men of Roger"s cla.s.s. They have a ready-made style they can adopt, and once they"ve adopted it they don"t feel they have to do too much more."
Willie said, "But you pestered him to marry you. In 1957 and 1958. I remember it very well."
She said, "I was attracted by his great show. I was young. I knew little of the world. He was a phantom. The best side of him is in his business, his law."
Willie wondered for some time afterwards where Perdita would have picked up those words, and a day or two later it came to him: Perdita was using the words of her lover, the man with the big house, Roger"s colleague. Roger was enmeshed in betrayal on every side.
AFTER SIX WEEKS in the Bloomsbury office Willie went to the company"s training centre at Barnet. The editor would say, "They"ll be wanting you at Barnet pretty soon." The layout man would say, "Haven"t you gone to Barnet yet?" Barnet, Barnet: It ceased to be only a place name. It appeared to stand for luxury and rest, a place where people lived for two or three or four weeks without supervision, getting their salary all the while, a blessing that came to the fortunate. There were stories about its beauty, about the food at the training centre, about the local pubs. in the Bloomsbury office Willie went to the company"s training centre at Barnet. The editor would say, "They"ll be wanting you at Barnet pretty soon." The layout man would say, "Haven"t you gone to Barnet yet?" Barnet, Barnet: It ceased to be only a place name. It appeared to stand for luxury and rest, a place where people lived for two or three or four weeks without supervision, getting their salary all the while, a blessing that came to the fortunate. There were stories about its beauty, about the food at the training centre, about the local pubs.
There was a leaflet about the place, with a map and directions. Roger decided to drive Willie down. They started early one Sunday afternoon. The London orbital motorway was very crowded. Roger turned off to the older roads, and the names of some of the places they had to drive through were touched with romance for Willie.
Cricklewood: Twenty-eight years ago it was a mysterious place for Willie, somewhere far to the north of Marble Arch, where in his imagination people lived regulated and full and secure lives. It was where June, the girl from the Debenhams perfume counter, lived with her family (and also had a boyfriend since childhood), and it was the place to which she had to catch a bus after Willie"s miserable s.e.xual moment with her in a Notting Hill tenement. Cricklewood, Willie learned later, was where a big bus garage was; it was also (Willie looking out at this time for news about Cricklewood) where the lovely young actress Jean Simmons was born and grew up: the fact threw an unbearable extra glamour on June at her perfume counter.
Seen now from the clogged Sunday-afternoon roads Cricklewood (or what Willie a.s.sumed to be Cricklewood) was an unending level red line of two-storey houses, brick and rendered concrete, with little local shopping areas in between, shops as small and as low as the houses they served: London here, as created by the builders and developers of sixty or seventy years before, a kind of toy land, cosy and confined: this is the house where Jack and his wife will live and love and have their litter, this is the shop where Jack"s wife will shop, this is the public house at the corner where Jack and his friends and his wife"s friends will sometimes get drunk. Nothing like a town, no park or gardens, no building apart from houses and shops. It all seemed to have been built at the same time, and Cricklewood (if it was Cricklewood) ran without change into Hendon, and Hendon into what came after, and it went on and on, with sometimes only a rise in the road over the mainline railway tracks below.
Willie said, "I never knew London was like this. It"s not out of central casting."
Roger, who had been abstracted for much of the slow, demanding drive, said, "It"s like this east, west, north and south. You understand why they had to create the green belt. Otherwise half of the country would have been gobbled up."
Willie said, "I wouldn"t want to live here. Imagine coming back here day after day. What would be the point of anything?"
Roger said, as if going against what he had said earlier, "People do the best they can."
Willie thought it a feeble thing to say, but then his mouth was stopped. Increasingly on the winding main road there were Indians; and Pakistanis; and Bangladeshis dressed as they might have been at home, the men with layers of gowns or shirts and with the white cap of submission to the Arab faith, their lowstatured women even more bundled up and covered and with fearful black masks. Willie knew about the great immigration from the subcontinent, but (since ideas often exist in compartments) he hadn"t imagined that London (still in his mind something from central casting) could have been so repeopled in thirty years.
So this Sunday-afternoon drive through north London was a double revelation. It did away with the fantasy Willie had had for more than thirty years of June going by bus from Marble Arch to the security and glories of her home. And perhaps it was right for the fantasy to be erased, since June herself, as Roger had said, would by now have been much battered (in every sense) by the years, was almost certainly fat and boastful (counting her lovers), changed in other ways too, adapting whatever ancient genteel perfume-counter yearnings she might have had to some new plebeian television pattern. It was more than right for the fantasy to go. And it was for Willie a relief, enabling him to shed the humiliation connected with the fantasy, to put it in its place.
The level red line of repeopled houses and shops went on and on. At last they turned off the main road. And then, quite suddenly, while Willie was still thinking of what he had seen, the red line of buildings and the costumes of the subcontinent, they were at the training centre. A brick wall, iron gates, a paved drive and a few low white buildings in a large garden. When the car stopped and he got out he thought he could hear the traffic from the main road. It couldn"t have been very far away. At one time the park would have been in real country. Then London had grown up and met it; bits of the park would have been sold; and roads had been opened up all around to serve the population. Now the park, much reduced, was in immigrant territory.
Roger said, with a kind of irony, "It"s one of Peter"s property deals."
The traffic sound was always there. But the green of the little park was wonderful after the roads and the level line of red houses and the clutter and signboards of little shops. It was far enough away from London to set people dreaming of adventure. And Willie could understand why it was much loved in the office.
Roger saw Willie settled into his little room in the hostel or residence building. He seemed to be in no hurry to leave. They went to the main lounge. It was in another building. At a table or sideboard they helped themselves to mineral water and tea. Roger knew his way about the training centre. There were other people in the lounge, in suits, a little stiff all of them at the start of their courses. There was an African or West Indian, and an Indian or Pakistani in white leather shoes.
Roger said, "It"s so strange. I"ve had to help you. And now I myself am in deep trouble. I have no idea what my situation will be when you finish your course here. You must have had some idea, since you"ve been with me, that there were problems."
Willie said, "You told me something the first day, when you were driving me in from the airport. Perdita dropped a word, but I know nothing else."
"It"s one of those things that begin quite legitimately. And then it develops into something else. I am sure when Peter started the caper it was nothing more than a wish to keep it all in the family, so to speak. Think of Peter"s bank, then, with a property portfolio. Think of a very reputable firm of surveyors. Think of a very reputable firm of lawyers. That"s where I come in. Think of a couple of perfectly sound property companies. When Peter wishes to divest himself of certain properties, the surveying firm does the valuation, the law firm does the papers, and the properties pa.s.s to the property companies, who might then after a couple of years sell at a huge profit. We are talking about city properties. They are not easy to value. It is always possible to be a couple of million out. We are also in a time of rising property values. Something bought for ten million today might in three years sell for fifteen, and no one will raise an eyebrow. That is why this property caper could pa.s.s for a long time unnoticed. It pa.s.sed unnoticed for twelve years. But then somebody noticed and began to make trouble. Peter was able to smooth things out, pay millions in compensation. But some people have been awkward. And if they have their way my firm will be in trouble, and I am likely to be in court. It will be the end for me. And yet I feel that when it started Peter wanted no more than to keep all the business in the family, so to say. To extend patronage, to win regard. He can"t have enough regard. You know Peter. He"s a raging egomaniac, but he has his generous side. And he has ideas. This training centre, for example. For years I have been going over this business in my head, trying to present it to myself and my imaginary court in the best possible light. It"s driving me crazy. And just at this time my private life is about to blow up. It"s always like that, two or three things at a time. All my life I have believed they come three at a time. It"s my only superst.i.tion. When you see a magpie look for the second. I am waiting for the third blow."
"Perdita?"