Murchison awoke at his usual hour of seven o'clock, tubbed, dressed, and, as breakfast was a long way off, phoned for tea and toast. Luigi appeared in person, in a clean white jacket, and beamingly did the honours, evidently feeling that the responsibilities of hospitality rested upon his shoulders in the absence of his master. Murchison thought that the man who could win the adoration of a box of tricks like Luigi must be a good man to serve. Luigi had evidently been informed of his status in the house, and made a formal speech of welcome with many polite bows. Mistalre Brangwyn was a gentleman it was an honour and a pleasure to sairve. Mistaire - (a strange sound followed here, resembling the uncorking of ginger-beer) was fortunate, most honoured, most blessed, in being admitted to his service.
Murchison replied that he only hoped he would be able to achieve in his department the same lofty standard that Luigi had achieved in his.
Luigi bubbled with delight at this appreciation, and assured Mistaire - (more ginger-beer was uncorked) that he himself was also fortunate, honoured and blessed in having such a collaborator, and that his cooperation was always at his disposal.
Murchison replied that he thought that if they pulled together they ought to be able to make a good job of it. Luigi bowed himself out beaming, and Murchison saw how right Brangwyn had been when he said the tips would not buy the loyalty of a man like Luigi.
Murchison got rather bored hanging about waiting for the 10 o'clock breakfast. He did not like to wander about the house uninvited, nor to go out to get a paper, for he did not know how he would get in again in the absence of a latch-key. He felt that it would be more tactful to stop where he was till sent for, lest he drop unsuspected bricks, for he did not know the ways of the household, and had a suspicion that they were odd.
The air, though fresh, was over-warm for his taste, and he went over to where a diffused amber light came through some draperies and thrust them aside, concluding that here was the window, only to be checked by a sheet of plate-glass behind which was a filthy piece of Nottingham lace curtain and an even filthier sash-window. Peering through a rent in the Isabella coloured net, he saw the dreary facade across the way, and in a bow-window a foreign-looking female hunting small game in her infant daughter's hair. He looked down into the street, and saw a coster slowly shoving his barrow and apparently bawling, but no sound reached him through the thick plate-glass. Murchison dropped the amber silk curtain back into place again. It was certainly a mercy to have all the sights and sounds, and in summer presumably the smells, of that insalubrious neighbourhood shut out, but he wondered how he was going to like spending his days shut away from sunlight and fresh air in that somewhat high temperature, which he guessed to be in the neighbourhood of seventy.
He could not complain of stuffiness, however, and, looking up at the ceiling, he saw an ornamental metal grid, and judged from the slow movement of a curtain in its neighbourhood that air was being pumped into the room thereby, and presumably drawn out through another orifice which he could not identify. It was, he knew, the way most big buildings were ventilated, but, all the same, he found it hard to reconcile himself to it, and to convince himself he was not being stewed and stifled.
He shed his coat and prowled about in his shirt-sleeves, and felt better. The temperature would be all right if you had nothing much on, but in a thick suit and winter underwear it was decidedly oppressive. Then he shed a bit more, and yet more, until finally, hearing a step on the stair, he hastily seized the silken peacock robe that lay over a chair and flung it about him as a dressing-gown in case the visitor should be Miss Brangwyn.
But it was Brangwyn himself, in a robe of amber silk, and he smiled when he saw Murchison's peacock plumage.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I see you have realized the value of the robes. All the same, that is not the right shade for the first thing in the morning. One is of the earth, earthy, at that time of day. And brogues, my dear fellow, do not go well with it. Let me beg of you to wear the appropriate slippers. So much more pleasant for both the feet and the carpets.’
Murchison, blushing and feeling a fool, did as he was bid, kicking off his thick, clumping brogues and pulling on the soft, heelless, glove-like kid slippers that matched the robe. Silently as two cats in a jungle they made their way down the corkscrew stairs to the dining-room and took their places at a table laid and decorated with every imaginable shade of amber, yellow and orange, gay as a sunrise.
Luigi did not appear, to Murchison's relief, who found that a little of the temperamental Italian went a long way, with his perpetual chatter of recipes. He himself was accustomed to shovel down whatever was set before him without paying any particular attention to it, which was just as well in his sister-in-law's menage, and spared him a good deal.
Everything was to hand, and they waited on themselves. The porridge, in a fireproof casserole, was ready made, but the bacon was artistically laid out in a shallow copper pan, waiting for the current to be switched on in the electric grill, and they ate their porridge to the accompaniment of its frisky spittlngs as it cooked, and the silver tinklings of the coffee as it trickled through the percolator.
‘That porridge,’ said Brangwyn, ‘is ground between stones instead of steel rollers, and it comes fresh every week. Incidentally, I may mention, it takes all night to cook it. It is my belief that one should take thought in these small matters. Most people don't. They only take thought in big ones, and then it is usually too late. How much simpler to pay attention to your porridge instead of having your appendix out. Yet most people prefer the latter. I make a fine art of the simplest processes of living, thereby inducing a high degree of efficiency, and I hope to have your cooperation in the matter, Murchison, for I regard it as important.’
Murchison thought that the five pounds a week was going to be earned all right with all this finickiness, but acquiesced politely.
Brangwyn, who was watching him closely, continued, ‘You know, my dear fellow, if you were designing a car you would study every detail of every part, right down to the air vacuum in its wake. How much more should one study the details of the machinery of living that make for smooth running and economy of power?’
‘I had always thought you were a kind of monk,’ said Murchison. ‘I had expected to see you eating one of those nut rissoles that set solid inside you, instead of doing yourself jolly well, as you seem to.’
‘Yes.’ said Brangwyn thoughtfully, ‘I always do myself as well as I can, except when I'm fasting. Why not? It has always appeared to me that only fools and slovens do otherwise. Yet what's this breakfast? Porridge, bacon, coffee, toast and butter, honey. But everything is the best of its kind, and I scoured the country till I found where the best was to be had. Most of it comes by post direct from the folk who produce it. It costs very little more than the worst of its kind. I don't suppose there is a shilling's difference between the actual cost of what is on this table and the cost of what you would get in a cheap boarding-house. The only difference is that everything has been thought out. Someone once asked Opie what it was he mixed his colours with to get such brilliant effects, and he said he mixed ‘em with his brains. Luigi and I mix our recipes with our brains, and that makes all the difference. Now tell me, don't you feel, sitting there in your flowing robe, beside my yellow breakfast table, as if you were much more alive than you felt when you ate your breakfast yesterday?’
‘My God, yes!’ said Murchison, thinking of the leathery kidneys and tea that could have tanned them which he had partaken of twenty-four hours ago amid sounds of contention and smells of back-fired gas. There was a curious feeling of satisfaction to be derived from the simple perfection of this breakfast. The wheels of life moved smoothly and easily; his self-esteem seemed established on a firm basis. More things were soothed than the stomach by this minor artistry.
They were tranquilly digesting their breakfast with the aid of cigarettes which, in accordance with Brangwyn's theory that sophisticated smokes should be kept for later in the day, were homely papers, when host once again shot a sudden, revealing question at guest:
‘What did you dream of last night?’
Murchison sat up as if a pin had been stuck into him. He hated these sudden questions that could not be parried because they could not be foreseen, and that laid bare the secret recesses of his soul; that forced him to speak of the things that should never be spoken of and exposed his secret self to ridicule. His first impulse was to deny that he had dreamed, or to make up an imaginary dream for his employer's delectation; but he knew that if his employer were a Freud fan, an imaginary dream would be just as revealing as the genuine article. He therefore determined to offer nothing but the truth, even if not the whole truth.
‘I dreamt of a church service. Scraps, you know, nothing definite. Music, mainly. And of the searchlights we had during the War, only coloured, like our robes. Then I woke up for a bit, and then went to sleep again and didn't dream any more till I woke up for good at seven.’
Exceedingly innocuous, thought Murchison. Even the fiercest libido hound will find it hard to make anything of that.
‘Anything else?’ came the inexorable question. Murchison writhed and felt like rebellion, but five pounds a week is five pounds a week, and he answered sullenly;
‘Oh, just the usual lovely houri.’
‘Could you describe her?’
‘Yes,’ said Murchison furiously, looking ready for murder. ‘She was damn like you. And now I suppose you'll say I've got a schoolgirl crush on you?’
‘Not at all,’ said Brangwyn placidly, quite unperturbed by the other's simmering resentment. ‘There are a lot more things in the subconscious than are dreamed of by our mutual friend, Dr Freud. Forgive my eccentricities, but I am interested in some of the remoter branches of psychology, and one can learn a great deal about a person from their dreams, as you appear to know; and as we are going to work together, and I shall have to place a good deal of reliance on you, I am anxious to know what manner of man you are. I thank you for being frank with me, and I may tell you that I am quite satisfied.’
It was close on eleven before they concluded their leisurely breakfast, and Murchison thought of other meals he had gulped down and fled from. Life lived like this was as far apart from that which was led in his brother's home as the Eskimo from the Zulu. What it was to have money, he thought with a sigh. And then it occurred to him that it was not simply a matter of cash; it was the personality of the man opposite him that was the inspiring force; he would probably have lived in much the same manner, sitting on one packing-case and eating off another in an attic, and discriminating in the brand of his margarine.
Murchison doffed his robe, put on his clumping brogues, and set off to collect his belongings from his brother's house. It seemed like coming out not only into another world, but also into another century, when he stepped out of the front door that was black mahogany on one side and grained deal on the other. He felt rather as if he were a swimmer coming to the surface for a breath of air after the exoticisms of Brangwyn's flat. He made his way over the wholesome, mundane pavements in God's good air, and took the tube for Acton. He was still a little sore at having his houri dragged to the surface, and inclined to be resentful of his employer's easy superiority, though he had to admit that it was the superiority of man over man, and not of employer over employee.
It was nearly noon when he reached his brother's house, but he was met on the steps by a slattern with a bucket and swab, who shrieked to her mistress: ‘E's come back, mum!’
The mistress of the house appeared, clad in a soiled afternoon dress that did duty instead of an overall, and, not being washable, was decidedly less sanitary. She had her hair in a bun behind, and a hair-net over her fringe, for being a clergyman's wife she felt it incumbent upon her not to follow the fashions. History teaches us that the good of all ages have always been against the fashions. When men's hair was worn long, the Puritans cut theirs short; and nowadays, when men's hair is worn short, reformers and intellectuals wear theirs long. And likewise with the females of the species. In Victoria's days they cut their hair short; but nowadays, valiantly declining to shingle, bob or bingle, they keep their buns as symbols of souls that rise above the things of this world.
It is curious also how seldom a religion of love sweetens the temper, and Mrs James Murchison was exceedingly acidulated in her greeting of her brother-in-law, rubbing his dignity in the char's filthy swab, as it were, while the slattern listened appreciatively.
‘So you've come back at last? And did you get that post?’
Murchison thought how he would have smarted under that inquiry, with the char listening, if it were as his sister-in-law suspected it was. He had a shrewd suspicion that they had never expected him to get that post, knowing he had none of the qualifications that it had turned out to require.
‘No,’ he replied evenly, ‘I did not get that one. In fact, the fellow was rather annoyed at my wasting his time over the interview, as he said he had made it quite clear that shorthand was essential. But I have got another, and much better job, with a fellow I knew during the War, and whom I met quite by chance, and I have come to fetch my things.’
‘Fetch your things?’ exclaimed his sister-in-law. ‘Do you mean to say you are leaving us?’
‘Yes,’ said Murchison, ‘I am glad to say I shall be able to take myself off your hands at last.’
It had been regularly rubbed into him that what he paid did not cover what he ate, and that they badly needed his room for their ever expanding family; but his sister-in-law appeared to have forgotten all that, and rapped out like a defrauded boarding-house keeper:
‘You can't leave without notice like that. How do you expect us to manage without your money coming in?’
‘Good God,’ exclaimed Murchison, ‘I always understood I was accepting charity!’
This nonplussed Mrs James for the moment, and made her feel she was not doing herself justice in front of the char, on whose appreciation she was counting, and Murchison did not improve matters by turning on his heel and marching upstairs to his room and slamming the door behind him. He did not trouble to pack formally, but flung all his small gear pell-mell into his old suitcase, chucked the bulkier stuff loose into a taxi, and was gone within ten minutes of entering the house.
He had fairly burnt his boats behind him, he thought to himself with a chuckle, as he sat among his piled-up belongings in the taxi. If he were out of a job again he would have to sleep on the Embankment, Acton would have none of him. But somehow he did not think it would come to that. He ought to be able to save a bit out of five pounds a week, and he did not think that Brangwyn would see him stranded if he served him faithfully. He had a strong inner feeling, that rose again as often as he tried to curb its exuberance, that his luck had turned. He felt as if he had been caught up in the current after swirling aimlessly in a stagnant backwater.
Arrived in Cosham Street, he knocked up Luigi in his restaurant, and begged for assistance in transporting his belongings up the long stairs to Brangwyn's flat. Luigi not only turned out in person, but summoned his entire staff of affable Latins, and Murchison headed a perfect army corps, moving in single file, their arms full of oddments. He inserted in the door at the top of the stairs the latch-key his employer had given him, and the beaming procession began to enter, when from one of the deep chairs by the fireplace someone arose, who had evidently been waiting there for his arrival, and he found himself confronted by a tall, slender, dark girl, very like Brangwyn. The very girl, in fact, whose head, no bigger than an orange, had appeared at the foot of his bed in his dream. He was so startled that he stood clutching his battered old suitcase, quite unable to take the hand she held out to him or respond to her greeting. If the bull of Babylon had walked off its pedestal he could not have been more taken aback.
She smiled at his confusion.
‘I am Ursula Brangwyn,’ she said, ‘Alick's sister. Or, rather, his half sister. And you, I believe, are Mr. Murchison?’
Murchison recovered himself sufficiently to take and shake the hand she was still holding out to him and to admit his identity.