Precisely at a quarter to seven, Edgar Jessop, the Assistant Foreign Editor, put on his jacket and prepared to keep his appointment. He was a neat, spare man of less than average height. From his general appearance his age might have been anything from forty-five to fifty-five, but in fact he was an embittered forty-two. People who had known him in his youth would scarcely have recognised him now. Then he had been pleasant-looking in an unobtrusive, dapper sort of way, with thick dark hair, mild hazel eyes, and a smile that gained him all the friends he needed. Now his hair, meticulously parted in the middle, was uniformly grey, and so scanty as hardly to warrant the repeated gesture with which his right hand smoothed it back. His face had a drained look, a bleached papyrus-quality under its light tan, like that of an English child brought up in a hot country. His eyes, unless their interest was directly challenged, were for long periods expressionless, as though all his thoughts turned inwards. Only the sardonic droop of his mouth below the long clean-shaven upper lip gave any clue to the nature of those thoughts. In his rather timid manner there was certainly no hint of the nervous vitality that made him as potentially dangerous as a high-tension cable. Outwardly he was just an insignificant little man who looked as though worry and premature middle-age had got him down a bit.
He gave a short instruction to the boy in charge of the tape and walked quickly along the corridor. He felt anxious, and was uncomfortably aware of a pounding pulse. This interview mattered a great deal to him. The Foreign Editor of the Morning Call, a man named Lambert, had just left to join another paper, and Jessop hoped to move into his vacant post. He was, he had told himself a score of times, fully entitled to it; if he didn’t get it, it would be grossly unfair. But he had been passed over so often already that he couldn’t help feeling apprehensive. Luck had always been dead against him, and the high-ups had been slow to recognise his abilities.
He turned the knob of the secretary’s door and saw with relief that Miss Timmins was alone. Sometimes at this hour she had to control an unruly mob, like the janitor at a stage-door; and he wanted to get his ordeal over quickly. He directed an inquiring glance at the inner room. “Is he free?” His voice was thin, his enunciation precise.
“He’s got Mr. Iredale with him,” said Miss Timmins, “but I shouldn’t think they’ll be long—they’ve been talking quite a while already.” She gave him an encouraging smile. “I should wait if I were you.” She was a bright little woman in her early forties with a darting, observant glance, a kind heart and an unshakably cheerful disposition. She was slightly over-rouged and her black hair was definitely over-dyed, but her dark dress was the last word in neatness and her collar was startlingly white. Miss Timmins looked her own idea of the perfect secretary.
Jessop sat down on a hard-backed chair and stared glumly at the floor. Miss Timmins put another sheet of paper in her typewriter. “I’ll have to get a move on with these letters. Mr. Ede will want to sign them directly he’s seen you.”
“You work too hard,” said Jessop. “You’ll get no thanks for it in this place.”
Miss Timmins chuckled, and her agile fingers began to clatter over the keys. “No good looking on the gloomy side, Mr. Jessop. Do things cheerfully and they don’t come so hard, that’s what I say.”
The office was in fact Miss Timmins’s life. She had sat in that ante-room for more than twenty years; she had served several editors, though none, in her view, more pleasant than Mr. Ede; she knew everything that went on in the office and enjoyed the confidences of half the staff. By normal standards she was grossly overworked, but apart from a regular Friday practice with the Brondesbury Female Choir and an occasional visit to her married sister at Wembley she had nothing particular to do with her evenings and she flourished on overtime and the sense of being needed. The Editor had only to say that he really couldn’t let her take on anything more and she would shoulder the new load happily.
Above the clicking of her machine the sound of raised voices came suddenly from the inner room. Miss Timmins stopped typing and looked slightly incredulous. It was rare for the Editor to get heated with any members of his staff, but foreign correspondents were notoriously temperamental. They got spoilt living abroad and became too independent. “Mr. Iredale seems to be giving trouble,” she said. “It’s very naughty of him.”
Jessop listened, conscious of a vicarious excitement as the exchanges grew sharper. He couldn’t make out what was being said, but he could hear Iredale’s tone of angry protest and something very like the sound of a heavy fist being brought down on a desk-top. It was good to hear someone answering back and insisting on his rights.
“Bill said he was going to have a show-down,” he remarked. “I don’t blame him, either, considering the way he’s been treated.” It was as though he were expressing his own feeling of resentment. “After all, what was the point of sending an experienced man like him to the Outward Islands in the first place if we weren’t going to trust his judgment? And then getting a chit of a girl to write up the story from office clippings—just because he sent something out of line with policy! It makes me sick.”
“Oh, you’re prejudiced against Katharine,” said Miss Timmins. “I don’t know much about the subject but I read her article and I must say it seemed to make everything nice and clear.”
“It’s easy to make things clear when you put in only half the facts,” said Jessop sourly. He knew that he was coming to Iredale’s defence when the battle was over, and that he was protesting in the wrong quarter; it gave an added bitterness to his complaint.
Miss Timmins made a non-committal sound and went on with her typing: She had long ago learned the wisdom of keeping neutral in these recurrent office disputes, though she was quite willing to bandage the wounds. “Anyway,” she said after a few moments, “I expect Mr. Ede knows what he’s doing.”
“Don’t you believe it,” said Jessop. “He’s still an amateur at this business. So’s Katharine Camden. So are a lot of other people on this paper. Too many damned intellectuals altogether, if you ask me.” Jessop had started his career on the Morning Call as a messenger boy at the age of fourteen, and had learned his job the hard way. He didn’t approve of people who took short-cuts—particularly graduates from Oxford.
“Look how they stick together, too,” he went on “Why do you suppose the Editor took Munro’s view of the riots rather than Bill’s? Do you think it’s because Munro is Governor of the Outward Islands and so ought to know all about them? Not on your life. It’s because Munro was once a leader-writer on this paper and has a couple of degrees and wears the same tie as Ede and they both know a bit of Greek. Whereas Bill, after all, is just a glorified reporter—and a reporter, in Ede’s view, is no better than a literary barrow boy.” Jessop’s eyes had lost their inward look and his mouth twisted contemptuously.
“That’s right, get it off your chest,” said Miss Timmins cheerfully. “Don’t mind me—I can take it.” She typed a few more lines. “Did you know Mr. Munro was coming to lunch here to-morrow?”
Jessop’s sardonic expression was momentarily replaced by one of curiosity.
“Is he?”
Miss Timmins nodded. “One of the usual office lunches—he’s the guest of honour. It’ll be queer seeing him back here after all this time, won’t it? It seems ages ago that he used to sit in that easy-chair over there, waiting to show his leaders to the Editor.”
“He didn’t stick it for long, did he?” said Jessop morosely. “He knew which side his bread was buttered. I never could stand the fellow—interfering busy-body!”
Miss Timmins looked rather disapproving. Mr. Jessop was really being very difficult this evening. She remembered now, though—there had been some trouble between him and Munro long ago. “I suppose that’s why your name’s not down on the list for the luncheon this time, Mr. Jessop,” she remarked.
Jessop shrugged. “I don’t know about that—someone’s got to bring out the paper. We can’t all sit over liqueurs and cigars until three in the afternoon.” His tone was offhand, but he knew that he hadn’t deceived Miss Timmins. “Who’ll be there, anyway?”
“Oh, it’s only a small affair. Mr. Ede, Mr. Munro, Mr. Cardew and Mr. Hind.”
Jessop’s gloom deepened. To ask Cardew and not him was a deliberate snub. Cardew was only the Diplomatic Correspondent. Surely, in the absence of a Foreign Editor … He sensed a conspiracy.
The inner door suddenly opened and Nicholas Ede appeared, beckoning Jessop with a crooked forefinger. He looked very cool in a semi-tropical cream suit and seemed unruffled by his stormy interview with Iredale.
“Oh, Miss Timmins,” he said, “you might ring my wife, will you, and tell her I’ll be about half an hour late. Break it to her nicely!”
“Of course,” said Miss Timmins, resisting an impulse to shake her head at the way he always got behindhand with his engagements.
“Now then, Jessop,” said Ede, switching on an attractive smile and immediately switching it off again, as though it were current not to be wasted. “Come in, will you?” His voice was rich and fruity. He held the door with an expensively-shod foot and then let it close on its spring.
Jessop preceded him into the empty room—Iredale had evidently left by the other door. Ede walked quickly past him to his private shower room—one of the directors’ post-war installations—and turned off a dripping tap. It was his only sign of irritation. Then he sat down behind his outsize desk, adjusted the framed photograph of his wife as a reminder that he must keep this interview short, and lit a cigarette. “Have a chair, my dear fellow,” he urged, surprised to see that Jessop was still standing. He waved the Assistant Foreign Editor to a soft capacious seat and scrutinised him for a moment in silence.
Nicholas Ede was younger than Jessop; actually he was not quite forty, but his short pear-shaped figure and heavy shoulders suggested a much older man. Massive horn-rimmed spectacles half concealed the alertness of his eyes, and only when one was close enough to observe the smoothness of the skin above an unusually dark jowl did his comparative youth become obvious. He had been precocious in childhood and brilliant in his academic generation, and so far in his life had had no reason to suppose that he could not succeed in whatever he attempted. His whole manner and bearing gave an impression of self-confidence and strength. Yet he was genuinely kind-hearted, and the charm of manner that the envious derided in him was not entirely the cultivated attribute they suggested. He was sincerely interested in almost everyone he met—for a short time. Like Lord Melbourne, he preferred the company of any new person, for half an hour, to that of the dearest old friend. He was often strongly attracted to people, but he rarely allowed himself thoroughly to dislike anyone. The nearest he got to it was being bored. This was the feeling he tried to throw off as he looked at the man before him.
“Well, now,” he began, “let’s get to business. I asked you to come and see me because I thought it was time we had a discussion about your future on the paper.”
“Oh, yes?” murmured Jessop. Now that he was actually in the presence of authority his resentment had ceased to be articulate. He felt insignificant, buried in that vast chair before the genial, self-assured Ede. He massaged the palms of his hands with the tips of his fingers, nervously restless. His mouth felt dry. Ede knew him as a conscientious worker and a first-rate technician, but at that moment he looked definitely unimpressive.
“Yes,” Ede went on smoothly, “I’ve been giving a good deal of thought to the matter. Of course, now Lambert’s gone one obvious possibility is to appoint you Foreign Editor.” He saw Jessop wince at the implication of the sentence and hurried on. “Perhaps you ought to know that Lambert strongly urged your claim before he left. He was certain you’d do the job very well, and I think you would. All the same …” He paused, searching for the right words.
Rage welled up inside Jessop, till he felt he would choke. He was going to be passed over again. He wanted to protest, to urge his title, to recall his lifetime of devoted efforts for the paper, to bang the desk as Iredale had done—but no sound came.
“Let me put it like this,” said Ede. “You’ve certain obvious recommendations for the post. You’ve shown yourself an excellent administrator and desk man. You’ve managed to keep on good terms with all your foreign correspondents …” he switched on a rueful smile, “… which is more than I seem able to do!” The smile took Jessop into his confidence, the confession sought to put him at his ease. “You know your stuff: I don’t suppose there’s anyone in Fleet Street with a better theoretical grasp of the international situation than you have.” He paused. “All the same, I think a Foreign Editor should have something more than an academic knowledge of affairs. He ought to know something at first hand of the countries he’s dealing with. Don’t you agree?”
“I suppose so,” said Jessop dully.
“Good. That’s my view, too. So for the time being—nothing is ever permanent, of course, particularly in Fleet Street—for the time being, as I say, I’m going to put Cardew in charge of the Foreign Room. He’s knocked about quite a bit at conferences, and it won’t hurt him to sit on his backside and sort copy for a while. In fact, it’ll steady him up a bit. And we’ll take you off the leash. How would you like a foreign assignment, just for a year or so? A roving commission, if you like.”
Jessop moistened his dry lips. So that was the plan: to brush him aside, to send him off somewhere where he’d be forgotten. “The idea had never occurred to me,” he said slowly. “I—I think perhaps I’m a bit too old to start foreign reporting.”
“Old?” Ede shook his head vigorously. “Not a bit of it! On the contrary, your experience should be a great advantage—it will give balance to your dispatches, and you won’t be so likely to go off the deep end as some of your colleagues.” The memory of his talk with Iredale evidently still rankled. “What I suggest is that you make a start by flying to Malaya for a couple of months. As you know, we’ve been without proper coverage there since poor old Eversley was ambushed, and the situation’s boiling up into something pretty big. After that, you could spend a few months in Indo-China and Burma on your way home.” He smiled. “A tour of the trouble-centres—the dream of every newspaperman. It should be most interesting for you. What do you say?”
Jessop’s face had become more like parchment than ever, and he seemed to be having difficulty in swallowing. “Is this an instruction, sir?”
“Good heavens, no, my dear fellow.” Ede was all charm. “It’s an offer—an opportunity. Most men in the office would give their ears for it. It’ll widen your horizon, give you self-confidence, and probably equip you to do a first-class job in the office later on. Frankly, Jessop, I think it’ll be the making of you. Of course, if you feel the whole thing’s too much for you to undertake …” his full lips pouted in reflection, “… well, I suppose there’s no alternative but for you to carry on with your present job, under Cardew. It’s up to you entirely.”
“Eversley …” began Jessop, and stopped, uncomfortably aware of Ede’s piercing look. “Eversley …”
“Eversley had bad luck. That’s not likely to happen again. Still, there’s no point in going out if you feel nervous about the job.” Ede glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Anyway, think it over. And let me know by the end of the week what you decide, will you?”
He got up—the interview was over. He walked with Jessop to the outer door, his plump hand resting lightly on the older man’s shoulder. “I can tell you this—I wouldn’t mind the chance of going myself!” He gave Jessop a smile of dismissal. “Good-night.”
“Good-night,” muttered Jessop, closing the door behind him with unintentional violence and almost putting his head in again to apologise. Ede returned to his desk, frowning a little, and rang the bell for Miss Timmins.