Cold Hand in Mine Page 20

  Maureen had told me, before I left, that our ground, first, and second floors had all been made the subject of a single new letting. She had a way of picking up such things. She did not know whether the Freedom people had been actually driven out. It was impossible to believe that the enterprise could have much future in any case; and, indeed, I never heard of it again after that late sad night of removal and retreat, nor saw a copy of the paper on any bookstall or barrow.

  In the end, I went to London for the morning in order to prospect. The whole front of the house had had its woodwork repainted, partly in blue, partly in white; including my two small square attic windows that looked on to the street. The early nineteenth-century front door had been brightly blued, and, to the left of it, at shoulder-height on the whited jamb, was an unusually large brass plate: Stallabrass, Hoskins and Cramp. Chartered Accountants. The plate needed polishing, possibly because it had only just arrived from elsewhere.

  It was the time of day when Maureen was working with her bookmaker. I let myself in and mounted towards my abode. The internal paintwork had been renewed from top to bottom, though rather roughly, as was to be expected so soon after the war, and in crude colours. The staircase walls had been repapered in an assertive mid-green. There was even a mottled carpet, where before there had been dark lino and unravelling drugget. It occurred to me that the heterogeneous impression might be a consequence of drawing upon stock-ends sold off (in this moment of world historical renewal) at bargain prices. There was no one about, and all the doors were closed, and everything was silent. At least, and at last, the builders were out.

  My own front door contained a letter-box, though no postman had in my time ever ascended to it, all our letters being left on a shaky shelf in the ground floor passage. Now I found a billet-doux marked "By Hand": the agents were upset because I had not been there to admit the decorators. Would I please call in at their office as soon as possible? I never did anything more about that and nor did the agents. The building belonged to a vague charitable foundation which supported a school for needy boys. The school had been moved out of London before my time and the offices of the foundation with it. I had not found the agents to be over-officious. It had been one of the attractions.

  My rooms were filled with every kind of grit and dirt owing to the decorating activities outside. They looked almost uninhabitable. I had never thought of affording any kind of professional cleaner; nor, indeed, had I ever noticed such a person in the whole place, though I realized that someone must have brushed the stairs from time to time. Now I wondered whether I should not have to solicit Maureen, or at least Maureen's advice.

  It would have to be postponed. I had seen enough to know that in other, more important respects, I could return. Upon a writer unsuccessful and successful also in the degree that I then was, work always waits and presses. I went back to my mother's cottage for another night or two. "You must have found your flat very dusty," said my mother. "You had better let me give it a good spring-clean."

  She had not been there before and I was hesitant. But, fortunately, when the time came, she seemed quite to like the attic, despite the disconcerting approach, with all the new colours staring out, and all the doors still locked. I know that at least most of them were locked and not merely shut, because my mother tried many of the handles, and in no uncertain way, which I on my own had not cared to do.

  "How do you get on with the people in the basement?" asked my mother.

  I told her in some suitable words.

  "I'm glad the wife's taken to you. You need a woman around. I'm glad she's pretty too."

  It was not until several days after I finally returned that I again saw Maureen. My habits were pretty mousey, and I do not think she had realized that I was there. For my part, I held back from taking the initiative. In the first place, I had never done so hitherto. In the second place, I was more uncertain than ever, after the spell of absence, how things were going to develop, or even how I wanted them to develop. Then, one morning within the first week, as in a column of burning fiery chariots, entered into possession Messrs Stallabrass, Hoskins and Cramp, with all their force, all their mechanism, all their archive. Their arrival was as confident, rowdy, and cheerful as the withdrawal of Freedom had been obscure and muted. On the instant the staircase was alive with short-haired, short-skirted girls running up and down as in Jacob's dream, except that these girls were exchanging backchat with shouting removal men. (Short hair and short skirts were, of course, new at that date, though my mother had already gone in for both, even though she rarely travelled far from her cottage.) Moving through the throng were several men in white shirts, stiff collars, dark trousers, and braces. Could they be partners? Even Stallabrass, Hoskins and Cramp in person? Certainly they were going through motions which might well be a form of giving orders. The total number of persons involved quite eclipsed Freedom, even relatively. And that afternoon came Maureen tapping at my door.

  "Why didn't you let me know you were back?"

  "I hesitated."

  She was willing to let it go at that.

  "What do you think?" I went on, inclining my head downwards and sideways.

  Maureen twitched up a corner of her mouth.

  "Do you suppose they'll quieten down?" I asked.

  "I don't see why they should. They're a pretty awful lot from what little I've seen."

  "I've seen quite enough of them already." Authors always tend to be hasty in their judgments. It is the strain of searching for peace and concentration.

  "Have you seen Mr Millar?"

  "Not that I know of. Who's Mr Millar?"

  "He's the man whose outfit it really is. The names outside don't exist, or are all dead, or something. My guess is that Mr Millar's bumped them all off."

  I remember Maureen using that exact expression, which was then as new as short hair and short skirts.

  "Not necessarily," I said. "You often find these firms with lots of names and none of the people really existing."

  "You haven't seen Mr Millar," replied Maureen.

  "Not that I know of. There seemed to be about a hundred of them. Is there anything special about Mr Millar's appearance?"

  "Yes," said Maureen. "He looks like Cordoba the Sex Vampire." This, I should observe, was a silent film that made a mark at the time, though I was a little surprised to find Maureen citing it.

  "Then you'd better rub yourself all over with garlic before you go to bed," I replied; and this helped to make things go more easily between Maureen and me after our separation.

  I cannot say that Maureen's description of our new neighbour even stimulated my curiosity. As will have been gathered by now, I was an anxious and cautious youth, walking his own tight-rope, and rather afraid than otherwise of new company, of becoming involved. Possibly the frightful stuff that Major Valentine sent up to me contributed to my social timidity. I am sure I thought that the longer I could keep entirely out of contact with Maureen's Mr Millar, the better. I had very little idea of "gathering experience", and never doubted that I could spin books from inside me. For me the matter did not even need thinking about.

  It was bad enough that the new tenants were all over the stairs and landings, with endless giggling, shouting, and banging of doors. Even during the first two or three days I noticed that they had a way of banging ordinary room doors several times in succession, as people do nowadays to doors of motor cars. None of it was at all the way I had supposed chartered accountants to behave.

  "I wonder how they get any work done at all," Maureen was soon exclaiming. It was indeed on the next occasion I saw her.

  I agreed with her: being one who needed complete silence and total absence of distraction before I could work at all. Or so I then thought. Indeed, I elaborated a little to Maureen.

  "It's different for you," Maureen observed amiably. One of Maureen's many good points had always been her apparently sincere respect for an artist. It is probably grudging of me to term it "apparently sincere", but i
t is a thing one never really knows.

  "You're welcome to use our living room at any time," Maureen continued.

  "Thank you very much."

  "If Mr Millar makes himself at home there, I don't see why you shouldn't. I like you much better," Maureen added coquettishly.

  "Mr Millar! How did he get in?"

  "He rang our bell the afternoon he arrived. The day I told you about him. You'll find he does the same to you soon. I rather fancy it's the way he goes about things."

  "But what does he do in your flat?" I enquired feebly. I was astounded by what Maureen had said. The new people had been with us for only a few days.

  "He lies down. In a darkened room, as he puts it. Though, as a matter of fact, our flat's not at all easy to darken properly. I once tried. Mr Millar says that he has to have what he calls intermissions. You can see what he means when you think about the din they all make."

  "They're his staff, after all. Why can't he make them shut up?"

  "I can't tell you, Roy."

  "But what are you doing when he's there?"

  "So far I've not been there. After all, it's only happened about three times. I suppose I can always keep the kids in the kitchen or put them in their bedroom."

  "You'd better charge him something," I said sourly.

  "Are you jealous, Roy?" asked Maureen.

  "Yes," I said; though it was not entirely the truth.

  "Oh, good," said Maureen. "We progress."

  I had to admit to myself that I had probably invited remarks of that kind.

  I had also to admit that, in the matter of meeting Mr Millar, to general distaste had now been added specific embarrassment.

  I began to be upset by another irritating habit: the people downstairs had a way of letting their telephones (undoubtedly several of them — commoner now than then) ring and ring and ring before lifting the receiver. As they almost always left all their doors open, the trick contributed greatly to the distant uproar that ascended to my attic.

  Sometimes I could not but overhear one end of these delayed telephone conversations; when I was passing through the house, I mean: I do not imply that actual definable words penetrated my floor or walls.

  Whatever I did hear was always of unbelievable commonplaceness or banality. It never seemed to be business in any sense; only a flow of vapourings, mixed with giggles. It is obvious that I judged with prejudice, but, as time passed, and I heard more and more of these vapid utterances, and never anything else, prejudice began to be mixed with a certain wonder, and then with a certain concern. Yes, I am almost sure that it was these overheard inanities, in no way my business and not even overheard all that frequently, because I passed through the house during business hours as rarely as I could, that first made me feel disturbed . . . feel that about the new tenants was something that as well as continually irritating me also frightened me. I had, of course, come upon jokes about typists talking on the telephone to their boy friends, but here was something that seemed to go much further. I think I might put it that a conversation as reasonable as a chat with a boy friend would have been positively welcome to my long ears, and explicable. Everything I heard or overheard was merely empty. For that reason nothing of it can be remembered. I doubt if I could have written down immediately what I had just heard as I climbed up to my third floor. Apart from anything else, I should have been ashamed to harbour such futilities in my thoughts or memory.

  When I met them in the hall or on the stairs, the little girls leered at me forthcomingly, or smirked at me contemptuously, or sometimes manifested real hostility. Some of these words seem absurd; but they describe how the girls made me feel. All of them were very young. Many people would say that the fault must have been largely mine. No doubt in a sense it was. I admit that I could find no way of dealing with the girls. Conventional greetings seemed absurd. Moreover, the girls were always new: I suppose there might have been five or six working there (if that was the word) at a time, but faces that I had come to know soon disappeared, and were apparently replaced by complete strangers. It was not possible to think in terms of getting to know individuals; even if that had been what I wanted to do.

  As for the men in the firm, who did not change (and were, needless to say, older), the custom was to stare me up and down, while, perhaps, I descended the stair or came in through the front door; to stare me up and down as if I were a stranger and an intruder off the street; and then sometimes, but not always, though always at the last moment, to utter an over-bland Good Morning or Good Evening.

  The men never seemed to be fully dressed. Their clothes were always formal, the garments of the properly dressed professional man, but never (when I observed them) did the men seem to have them all on. It was always as if they were frightfully busy, or much too hot: even in winter, though, there, it is true that the offices were remarkably well heated. I would hardly have gazed in at the gas stoves or whatever they were, but from every open door, it might be in December or January, would come a positive and noticeable wave of hot air as one passed. The girls would wear summery dresses even in winter and then, necessarily, depart in heavy coats. But, of course, most people prefer to live and work in great heat; and I do not. I have to add that while the men always performed as if they were weighed down with work, I have no more recollection of seeing them doing any than I have in the case of the girls. But possibly I was and am influenced here by my own personal inability to work in an uproar. I did not know the names of the men (or, of course, of the girls); and though the girls chattered on through the open doors and all around me as if I were not present or were invisible, the shirt-sleeved men tended in the opposite direction, to fall silent and stand motionless until I had altogether passed and was out of earshot. Nor, now I come to think of it, did I notice any of the usual office horseplay between the men and the girls; though most of the girls might have been thought ready enough for it.

  And then there was the mystery of the firm's clients. The mystery was that one never seemed to see one: only the internal staff seething up and down.

  "Have you ever seen any?" I asked Maureen.

  "Mr Millar says there are a lot of people who've been with them a long time."

  "I wouldn't care to be among them."

  "How can we tell?" responded Maureen vaguely.

  I noticed that Maureen had ceased asking me whether I had met Mr Millar.

  I suppose the number of letters arriving each morning might have given some idea of how much genuine business there was. But here I was at a disadvantage. Authors are not normally early risers. In the old days I had put on my dressing gown (quite faded and stained-even torn, I believe) and descended to the shelf in the hall without giving a thought to what the Freedom people might think about me, numerous though they were (as I then considered). Now it seemed quite impossible: partly because of the girls, of course, but not entirely. So my slender morning post, even the ill-made packages from Major Valentine, had to await my being shaved and fully dressed; and by then any post there might have been for the people below had been long "taken in", as the expression is. This was all the more unavoidable in that usually I made my simple breakfast before shaving and dressing, and could see no reason why I should change my ways because of Mr Millar and his merry men. But I think also that I had very little wish to know more of what went on below me. I have just spoken of "genuine" business. I found it hard to believe there was much of it, though I could not even surmise what went on all the rest of the time. It is true that I found odd letters for the firm at other times of the day: almost all of them impersonal emanations on his Majesty's service. They did, I realized, suggest there might be some accountancy in hand. I recollected an uncle of my mother's once observing that figures, my boy, are only a very small part of what a successful accountant does. And, indeed, I still do not know what did go on in that office. I have related my impressions as clearly as I can; but new developments began to seem of more importance.

  I think it must have been at least a m
onth before I even set eyes upon Mr Millar. For obscure reasons, Maureen and I had altogether ceased referring to him. Then, all at once, I not only saw him but had to talk to him, with very little warning or preparation; and à deux.

  One Friday, in the late afternoon, at half past five perhaps, my own rather noisy doorbell suddenly rang. I say "suddenly" because I had heard no steps coming up my staircase, which remained uncarpeted. Swearing, I threw my raincoat over the current material from Valentine, and went to see who it was. A man stood there.

  "I'm Millar." But he did not offer to shake hands, as one usually did in those days, and his eyes wandered about, never once looking into mine, but not, as I thought, examining my humble environment either. "Won't you come in for a drink?" he said. "Just on the floor below. And of course bring anyone with you."

  I need hardly say I did not want to, but I could think of no way to refuse, and it would be no doubt unwise to make an enemy. So I got out something affirmative.

  "Come when you're ready. Second floor."

  It seemed a slightly odd way of putting it; but, for that matter, it was perfectly obvious that there was no one "with me", not even a girl pushed into a cupboard. Without another word, Mr Millar descended. I saw that he was wearing beige suède shoes, doubtless with crêpe rubber soles. And of course he was in his braces, like the rest of them.

  I was glad to have a few minutes for rehabilitation. One does not wear one's best clothes for editing a pornographic manuscript alone in an attic; and also I had in those days a habit of unconsciously running my right hand (I am left-handed) through my hair as I wrote, wrecking whatever parting there might have been, and making myself look like the picture in the German book for children, my hair being then unusually thick and wiry. I changed my shirt, put on my old school tie (such as it was), and tried my luck with the comb.

  Then, striving to think about nothing, I plunged through the door on the second floor landing. I had been in there several times during the Freedom period, but everything was now very different. The walls of the outer room had been newly papered in pink with a cornice of flowers, and were decorated with what appeared to be small English landscape paintings, probably by an amateur, and framed in nothing more permanent than passe-partout. There were a surprising number of them, not all exactly on a level from the floor. In the middle of the room was a desk, obviously new; but with nothing on it, not even a cloaked typewriter, or a rubber-out. Also I was alone. But the door into the further room was ajar. I went up to it. "Anyone at home?" I said.