PART I

That was the Friday afternoon when a well-known silk merchant died of the heat in St. Paul’s Churchyard while laughing at a funny story. Suddenly he folded up joint by joint and died before they had time to loosen his collar; and the weather was so op­pres­sively hot that his friends had not sufficient energy to express surprise or simulate grief. Collars were wet, grey ban­dages. Peo­ple were irritable and careless. Water, poured in at the mouth, poured out at the forehead. In the stuffier City offices people were uncomfortably aware of the fact that their neigh­bours had feet. The minutes dragged, clogged with heat and moisture and gritty with dust. Everybody was thinking: To-morrow is Saturday, which is a half-day. The day after is Sunday. Then, thank God, comes August Bank Holiday, so there will be noth­ing to do until Tuesday. This thought, alone, was enough to un­settle many precise minds, and draw attention away from letters to be perused and books to be balanced. Old, tried clerks, accustomed to detecting at a glance one pennyworth of error in ten thousand poundsworth of figures, were horrified to find their con­cen­tration out of focus: they paused toward the feet of red or black columns, bit their lips, banished from their minds insidious fantasies of quiet afternoons in the garden; rushed irritably back to where they had started and, line by line, climbed down again. The stenographers sighed, and there was a great deal of irritable tongue-clicking and some irritating grating of cogs and ratchets as they twirled back the platens of their machines to rub out foolish errors – or ripped away whole sheets before starting again with wet faces and set teeth. Everyone was thinking of cold water or cold beer, green grass or cool shade.

In St. Martin’s-le-Grand a solicitor named Pismire, having read a short letter addressed to Forty Richards and Co. Ltd., scrib­bled an impatient signature and told his managing clerk to have the letter posted. “And now let’s get out of this,” said Mr. Pismire.

This managing clerk was famous, in the City, for his cunning and his caution. He re-read everything five or six times, even his tram tickets. It was said of him that he had dismissed an office boy for wasting too much pencil in the mechanical sharpener. But the day was so hot that, having looked at the letter, he threw it languidly to a typist and told her to send it off at once.

At any other hour of the day he would have noticed that there was something out of the ordinary in the feel of this letter. The firm of Pismire went in for a characteristically elegant note­paper, very thin but beautifully white and opaque, expensively die-stamped with the letter-heading. The managing clerk knew that such sheets tend to stick together, but did not notice, this afternoon, that the typist had used two top sheets of headed notepaper instead of one. She, thinking of something that could never be, pushed the folded letter into an envelope, which she threw into the letter-box.

Mr. Pismire’s letter was not important. It informed Forty Rich­ards that an instruction of such and such an ultimo had been re­ceived, and that Pismire was proceeding in the case of a man named Greatheart who had accused Forty Richards of stealing his formula for a patent medicine which was becoming vastly popular under the name of Formula 40-R. The litigant was obviously mad. Formula 40-R was nothing but precipitated chalk, which Forty Richards packed in a pocket-size tin with a tricky cap. When you twisted the cap a square hole appeared, out of which you could shake a balanced dose. He sold it with the assistance of ingenious slogans: The Wind In Your Stomach Will Fill A Balloon, and Every Square Inch Of You Supports A Pressure of Fifteen Pounds. One Hiccup Lifts Tons, and Don’t Let Your Stomach Break Your Back.

Pismire’s letter was delivered at Forty Richards’s office by the first post on Saturday morning. Forty Richards’s secretary looked at it and, dabbing her upper lip with a handkerchief, said: “It’s only Pismire – proceeding according to instructions.”

“Good. File it.”

“Yes, Mr. Forty Richards,” said the secretary. She was a fat woman, almost overwhelmed by the heat of the day. As she closed her employer’s door she saw one of the clerks, walking sedately with a manilla folder under his arm.

“Oh, Mr. Trew!” she said. “I wonder if you’d mind putting this letter in the general file, under Pismire/Gen/Inst.?”

“Only too delighted,” said Mr. Trew, and he walked jauntily to the file. Having found the right section he opened the filing cabinet and put the lawyer’s letter in its proper place. Having done this, and slammed shut the deep green steel drawer, he ob­served that a sheet of paper had detached itself from the letter he had filed, and was lying on the floor. His first impulse was to kick it out of sight under the filing cabinet, but then the secre­tary passed on her way back to her little office, and Mr. Trew stooped and picked up the paper with exaggerated care, blowing it free of imaginary dust. The secretary disappeared, puffing and wheezing, and Mr. Trew, looking at what he had picked up, was at first disgusted to see that he had wasted good energy on a perfectly blank sheet of notepaper.

But the obvious costliness of the notepaper made him pause in the act of throwing it away: it felt so like a Bank of England note that he stopped to wish that it were, and to listen wistfully to its crisp, dry crackle as he shook it gently between a thumb and forefinger. Thinking of banknotes and looking at the name of Pismire he said to himself: Lord, say I woke up to-morrow morning, and found a letter on paper like this, telling me somebody’d died and left me fifty million pounds! Well, of course, it couldn’t be to-morrow morning, because there’s no post on Sunday. Well, all right. Say I get home this afternoon with my lousy four pounds ten in my pocket to last me over the Bank Holiday and all next week. I open the door of the old digs. I’m a month behind with my rent; I’ve promised faithfully to let the landlady have a couple of weeks’ on account this Saturday. She knows Friday’s pay-day, but I’ve buttered her up with a yarn about a Bank Holiday bonus. I’m racking my brains for some new fairy-tale. I can generally get round her by telling the old girl a funny story, and doing a funny act and getting her on the giggle. Get ’em on the giggle, and you’ve got ’em, but I’m not in the mood. I couldn’t make anybody laugh if I tickled them under the arms, not to-day – it’s too hot. . . . Laugh, clown, laugh! . . . said Mr. Trew to himself, with a brave smile, so pathetically that he drew from himself a tear of pity. . . . Pagliacci! To act with my heart maddened with sorrow, ha-ha! . . . All right! Go in. Letter in the rack – afraid to open it – most likely a bill. Feel it. Crackle-crackle. It doesn’t feel like a bill. Pluck up courage and open it. And lo and behold, somebody’s gone and left me fifty million pounds! God! . . .

Pretending to be busy at the filing cabinet, Mr. Trew played with the idea of writing himself such a letter on Pismire’s note­paper and brandishing it in the face of his landlady, for the sake of a few more days’ grace. But he reasoned that even the most skilful application of charm and the most carefully devised ex­cuses could not procure him more than a week or ten days more credit in her house; for she was only half stupid, and really did owe rent to her landlord. Furthermore she knew where he worked. Mr. Trew’s instinct warned him that, easygoing as she was, his landlady might raise the devil if she felt that he had taken advantage of her credulity. She would come to the office, make a scene, and get him the sack.

No, it would not be honourable to play such a trick. . . . She’d come down on me like a sackful of wild cats. Oh, she was ready enough to let me cheer her up when she was depressed. She didn’t mind letting me talk myself hoarse, telling her fumy stories when she was crying her eyes out that Sunday when the bath overflowed.

Mr. Trew was thinking of a wretched affair; a little tragedy which his comic genius had transmuted into a good joke. Early in the spring his landlady had ordered a female tenant who claimed to be a milliner to leave the house at short notice. The mil­li­ner left, but before leaving she wedged the rubber stopper tightly into the plug-hole of the bath and turned both taps on full. The land­lady, who was out shopping at the time, came back to find the plaster of the kitchen ceiling lying in four inches of water on the floor. The water had penetrated to her little sitting-room, and the carpet was ruined. Then all the miseries and humiliations of the past forty-five years came back in a rush. The poor old widow threw herself into a sodden stuffed chair, and wept helplessly. Mr. Trew, coming home just then, felt that it was necessary to do something. The landlady had a pin-cushion – a pathetic souvenir of some steamboat trip to Ramsgate – shaped like an old-fashioned life preserver. She had never stuck a pin into the red plush part of it, because it had a sentimental value: it stood on the mantelpiece close to a photograph of her husband as a young man. Mr. Trew hurled the pin-cushion at her, shouting: “Ahoy! Lusitania ahoy! Captain Trew to the rescue! Women and children first!” Then, sitting on the soaked carpet he pushed himself in her direction with his heels, pretending to pull imaginary oars. The pin-cushion fell into the water. The landlady looked at it and had hysterics. She laughed and cried at the same time. Her laughter was so piercing and so prolonged that Mr. Trew congratulated himself for having made the most successful joke of his career.

But when he repeated it, with embellishments, to friends in the City, drawing a ludicrous picture of the silly old fat lady shrieking in her chair with a life preserver no bigger than a saucer in her fat white hand, while he, the comedian, got up out of a puddle, nobody laughed until Ted Middleton said:

“You both had a good laugh, Trew, old man, but you were the only one that . . . made your trousers wet. Perhaps the old lady saw only half the joke.”

This was the only funny thing Middleton had ever said. Uttered as it was in his timorous, hesitant voice, it struck like a thun­derbolt. There was a half-second of astounded silence, fol­lowed by a bellow of laughter that blew Trew’s narrative out of time and attention, and killed it for ever. He had lain awake half the night weighing every word and measuring every ludicrous angle of that story, for he was the acknowledged joker of the tea-and-bun shops around Cheapside, the Sidney Smith of the milk bars; an important man in his circle. His acquaintances enjoyed his company in the lunch-hour. He was free entertainment. There was no funny story that he did not know by heart. Consequently he found other men’s jokes curiously stale and dry. If, taking advantage of some few seconds of silence, while Trew’s mouth was full of pie or hot tea, one of his friends managed to tell a little story of his own, Trew generally looked blank, and said: “And what happened then?” Or: “I’m sorry, old man, I don’t think I quite get the point of that one . . . and that reminds me. Did you ever hear the one about the Irishman, the Scotchman, the Welshman, and the Jew? . . .”

He loved to tell stories in dialect, for he was proud of a cer­tain knack of mimicry, and had a mobile, expressive face. As a caricaturist of deformity, he was unequalled; a young man whose mother had died the day before had forgotten his grief in a big laugh at Trew’s imitation of a man with a dislocated hip and a hare-lip. He was so popular that the proprietor of a cer­tain Italian restaurant allowed him credit – Trew was always followed by so many younger men.

He had, as you will observe, a formidable reputation to maintain. To be funny all the time is the hardest work in the world, for a man who is not born with wit: the strain of it drives men mad. Days of knuckle-biting and feverish nights of intense think­ing go to make the mildewed joke that raises the half-hearted laugh in the half-empty theatre in the provinces. Once in a blue moon a petty comedian happens upon something all his own, which strikes him as excruciatingly funny. Then, more often than not, this masterpiece, this calculated laugh-maker, is destroyed by something unpredictable. In a carefully-timed split second of silence, a miserable fly comes out of the tobacco smoke and tickles someone’s nose: there is a sneeze, and people laugh – at the wrong thing. Or perhaps some impatient person, determined to have his laugh in any case, lets out a mad guffaw, in which everyone else automatically joins, drowning the masterpiece in uproar. On such occasions, the bitterness of the jester is terrible, and his hate so murderous that, like Caligula, he wishes that the whole had had one throat, that he might cut it.

In such circumstances it is possible for a professional comedian to be philosophic. . . . The great joke fell flat in Manchester; well, it may hit a jackpot in Leeds, and if it falls in Leeds, there is always Birmingham, or Nottingham, or Bedford. But what is the comedian to do who has the same faithful audience of five or six, every day, day after day? He must bury his joke as dead; and he wishes that he might bury with it the mutilated corpse of the murderer that killed it.

Middleton had murdered Trew’s only original joke. Since every­one else was laughing, Trew laughed too, and cried: “Shake hands on that, old man – that was a good one!” When Middle­ton clasped his outstretched hand, Trew squeezed it, and Middleton uttered an astonished cry and started back, knocking over a glass of water; for Trew had concealed in his palm one of those little contraptions of clockwork that give the effect of an electric shock if they take you by surprise. Then the laugh was on Middle­ton. He, smiling foolishly, stood up and mopped spilt water from his trousers with his handkerchief.

“Are they wet enough for you now, Middy?” said Trew.

There was another roar of laughter, and for a moment Trew was almost grateful to Middleton for having unconsciously helped him to a new, unexpected climax. Then Middleton, in his artless, silly way, pointed to a little wet patch on his left knee and, letting the company see that his right leg was perfectly dry, said, with a giggle: “Look . . . He-he! . . . That was only half a joke, see?”

Heaven knows what there was to laugh at there, yet everyone laughed again. Trew squeezed the thin whey of sour, curdled laughter through tightly clenched teeth.

“Ten minutes to two,” said Middleton. “Back to the office, I suppose.”

Trew had heard a humorous character in an American film say: “Don’t take any flannel dimes.” This struck him as excruci­atingly funny, and he had been storing it for use on some appro­priate occasion. But now, demoralised as he was, he felt the need to improve on it, to give it local significance, and to bring it home to the hearts of unsophisticated young men who did not know what a dime was. At all costs Trew had to get the last laugh. “Well, old man,” he said, heartily, “don’t take any paper pound notes.”

Nobody laughed. The joke fell flat. The audience reasoned: since pound notes are made of paper, why should one not take them? Trew cursed himself. If he had said flannel pound notes, he might have raised that essential, memorable, conclusive laugh. Even Middleton said “Eh?” and looked blank, for he worked in the mail order department of Coulton Utilities: hundreds of pounds-worth of paper money passed through his hands every day.

If only I had said “flannel postal orders”! thought Trew. He tried it:

“ – Or flannel postal orders.”

But it was too late. Only a junior clerk in an insurance com­pany sniggered tentatively, as he always did when Trew said some­thing. Trew went back to his desk. This had been one of the most miserable mornings of his life. That afternoon he made three foolish mistakes, through sheer inattention. His mind was not on his work; he was thinking of revenge.

Now a great comedian must be a great man – a man of fine instincts, because he must never hurt the weak, mock the noble, deface the beautiful, distort truth, or undermine virtue. Great comedians are honourable, merciful, intelligent, and selective in marksmanship. No missile in the world takes more careful aim­ing than a custard pie thrown at the right time to the right place. A great comedian, therefore, helps to destroy evil by making you laugh at a tyrant, a coward, a poseur, or a fool; if he wishes to attack the abject, he personifies himself as all that is despicable, and tears himself down. He does what he has to do the hard way, because great men naturally take the hard road. But may God save us all from the little would-be comedian; the one who says “Anything for a laugh”! He will dress in rags to make hunger despicable, or humiliate himself in a silk hat to make prosperity hate­ful. He will get a laugh out of you at all costs. Unsuccessful come­dians are the unhappiest of men. Their unhappiness breeds malice – but their malice becomes madness. Would-be come­dians are often mad. Their madness takes the easy way. Where a great comedian almost automatically tries to make you laugh yourself out of the misery of the world, a little comedian tries to make you feel strong by laughing at some degradation deeper than your own. A good comedian loves all laughter. A bad one despises any laughter that he has not personally provoked, and hates the man who dares to raise such laughter.

Trew never forgave Middleton for the humiliations of that ter­ri­ble morning. They had always been close friends, and con­tinued to meet every lunch-hour. Trew cracked five hundred more successful jokes, and Middleton never cracked another. Still, Trew could not forget that Middleton had murdered his joke – cut the throat of his child.

But he was so discreet in his hate that Middleton continued to think of Trew as his best friend.

* * * * *

An aspiring clown’s best friend is the man that laughs longest and most constantly at his jokes. The time had been when Trew could not sneeze – he had a highly humorous sneeze – without choking his friend with laughter. Middleton was a sponge out of which he could squeeze tears of joy on any occasion. Since they had lodgings in the same shabby square, Wheeler Square off the Gray’s Inn Road, they made a point of meeting every morning at half-past eight and, on fine days, walked together to the City, where they parted reluctantly and went to their offices, to meet again in the lunch-hour, when they generally arranged to stroll home together at five o’clock. Middleton was an excellent com­pan­ion for Trew: it was impossible to hurt his feelings. If you pulled away his chair just before he sat down, he would begin to laugh before he hit the floor.

But then Middleton fell in love with a pretty brown-haired waitress who worked in a restaurant where they used to eat an eighteen-penny lunch every Friday, when they had their pay enve­lopes in their pocket and felt prosperous.

Now Trew became grave and anxious, and gave his friend a great deal of good advice. “Look here, old man, I’m a little older than you . . .”

“Four years, Trewie, old boy. You’re only thirty.”

“I know a bit about life, you know, old man. Don’t be a mug, Middy. Laugh it off, laugh it off, old man. I know women – there’s nothing to ’em. They drag a man down. You and your Love’s Young Dream! Get out! Where does it get you?”

He was unpleasantly surprised when Middleton replied, with a certain asperity: “I don’t know and I don’t care, old boy. You and your gay bachelor life, where does that get you?”

“Good Lord, you’re not going to tell me you want to marry the girl!”

“What did you think I wanted to do with the girl, may I ask, old boy?”

“No, but I mean to say, old man,” said Trew, shocked. “A waitress!”

“Would you mind telling me what’s the matter with being a waitress? It’s an honest living, isn’t it?”

“Well, old man, so is sweeping the streets . . . and that reminds me. Did you hear the one about the two sparrows——?”

“ – No, I didn’t, Trewie, and with all due respect I don’t want to!” cried Middleton, astonishing his friend with an unpreceden­ted flash of anger. “What were you saying about street sweepers? Do you mind repeating?”

“I only said it was an honest living. Keep your hair on, old man.”

“Never mind about my hair, old boy. Look after your own hair” – this was a hit, because Trew’s light, colourless hair was already thinning on top – “Louisa and I are going to get married, Trewie, and I won’t hear a word said against her!”

“But, old man, I was only speaking for your own good. How can you go and get married on four pounds a week? Answer me that.”

“Louisa says . . . Well, anyway, we’ll manage.”

“Got any money saved up?”

“I’ve got about sixteen pounds left in the bank out of what Mother left. We could start off with just two rooms . . . get the furniture on the never-never system. I won’t always be earning four pounds a week.”

Trew asked: “What about your rich uncle?”

Middleton had sometimes talked rather wistfully of his Uncle Joseph, his father’s brother, who had gone to Australia at an early age and made a fortune out of wool. His mother had made a point of sending an expensive greeting card with a carefully chosen message in verse every Christmas – a practice which he had continued, by habit rather than hope. Trew, of course, had made a joke out of it.

Mr. Joseph Hugh Middleton lived in a place called Wagga-Wagga. For months after he saw the address, Trew greeted Mid­dle­ton with a joyous bark, shaking his hind quarters, and saying “Wagga-Wagga, old man, Wagga-Wagga!”

“No harm in trying,” said Middleton and he wrote a long, af­fectionate letter to his uncle, who did not reply. So, romantically penniless, he married Louisa at Caxton Hall. Trew was best man, very spruce in a light grey suit with a pink carnation which squirted water into Middleton’s face when, after a pressing invit­a­tion, he stooped to smell it.

The bride and groom went to live in two rooms (with use of kitchen and bath) on the fourth floor of the same house in which Middleton had lived alone and unattached when he was a bachelor. Middleton carried her over the threshold, and they were happy.

But there came a pay-day two or three months later, when the friends met at lunch-time in a tea-shop and Trew ordered steak and kidney pie, fried potatoes, cabbage, bread-and-butter, boiled golden roll, and a large cup of coffee; while Middleton ordered a crust of bread-and-butter and a cup of tea.

“Lost your appetite? Falling in love again?” asked Trew, as if he did not know.

“I’m not very hungry, thanks, old boy,” said Middleton, pick­ing up stray crumbs.

They were alone that afternoon. Trew said: “Look, old man, I’m broke myself, but I could lend you four or five bob till the middle of next week if you like.”

“Oh no, thanks all the same, Trewie old boy; I’m very much obliged to you for the offer, but I wouldn’t dream of borrowing where I couldn’t be sure of repaying.”

“Why, poor old man! Bad as all that?”

Middleton said: “Well . . . there was the down payment on the furniture, and a new suit, and a few flowers for Louie. The ring was an item, too . . . and, you know, a little present . . . a little wrist-watch, you know, and so we started housekeeping on a capital of five pounds ten.” He smiled wryly. “. . . Well, the rent’s a bit high, of course, and then there’s gas. A pound a month to pay off for the furniture. All kinds of little items – you know, things like soap, furniture polish – Louie’s proud of that furniture – needles, washing, thread, boot polish. And then again you’ve got to get your shoes mended, and get your hair cut. And shoe-laces, and metal polish. You can’t help it if a cup gets broken, or a plate – it mounts up, Trewie old boy, it mounts up like the devil. You have to get your suit cleaned once in a while, however careful you may be: and there goes three-and-sixpence! I’ve cut out smoking, it’s true . . . but there’s hairpins, darning wool. If it rains, as you know, old boy, a man’s got to take a bus. Newspapers, of course, a man can do without. But sometimes a girl must go and get herself all sorts of little things. . . . I mean a bit of face powder; that kind of stuff, etcetera etcetera. Things don’t last for ever, Trewie old boy. Take stockings; take underclothes. All in all, you need to economise, go easy, because apart from everything else you’ve got to eat, haven’t you? . . . Oh I don’t mean stuffing yourself up with meat and stuff in the middle of the day, which only makes you sleepy. I mean you’ve got to keep body and soul together. You know what I mean? But Louie’s a wonderful manager – marvellous! You ought to see her shopping! She can make one shilling do the work of five – honestly, I give you my word, old boy.”

“Couldn’t she get a job, just to help out for the time being?” asked Trew.

Middleton blushed, and said: “Well, I mean, job! . . . Run her legs off being a waitress, or in Woolworth’s for a few shillings a week? I don’t like the idea of it. Besides, Trewie old boy, Louie and I half believe that we’re going to – as man to man, Trewie – have a baby.”

“No!” said Trew, staring. “No!”

“Why ‘no’ in that tone of voice, Trewie?” asked Middleton, irritably.

“I was just thinking of you, that’s all, old man. Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you, old man,” said Trew.

Middleton’s temper was uncertain this morning. He snapped: “Warn me? What d’you mean? D’you suppose I have any regrets, or what?”

“Don’t put words into my mouth, Middy old man!”

“ – Well, I haven’t!” said Middleton.

“Laugh it off, laugh it off.”

“I won’t laugh anything off, Trewie, and I have not got one iota of regret,” said Middleton, snapping his fingers.

They parted with a handshake before two o’clock. Trew went his way with a malevolent inward chuckle. Middleton strode into his office, taut with screwed-up resolution. He was admitted to the general manager’s room.

“Well?” said the general manager.

Middleton’s fingers were numb, his nails were breaking; his courage, like a wet sail, was flapping away in a black wind, and an unfathomable gulf foamed below; but he found strength to say: “Mr. Mawson – sir. I hope you are satisfied with my work here——”

“You do your work, and are paid for it, I believe, Middleton?” said Mr. Mawson, who knew what was coming.

“Yes, sir,” said Middleton. “But I’m a married man, sir, and I thought——”

“Married? What do you mean?” said Mr. Mawson.

“I’m a married man, sir,” said Middleton, pale but still resolute. “And I hoped that you might see your way clear——”

“ – Excuse me, Middleton. How long have you been married?”

“Three months, sir; and——”

Mr. Mawson said: “But if I remember rightly, your salary is in the region of two hundred pounds a year, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. That is why——”

“Excuse me, Middleton. How could you think of getting married on two hundred a year? Your wife has a little money of her own, no doubt?”

“No, sir, and so I hoped——”

Middleton did not know how to put things into words. All but one frayed handful of courage had gone fluttering down into the gulf. “ – I hoped that you might see your way clear to raising my salary a little, sir,” he said.

Mr. Mawson looked at him steadily, shaking his head slowly, and said with terrible deliberation: “Middleton. You have been with us for quite a while, I believe.”

“Yes, sir. Nearly ten years, sir – since I was sixteen, sir.”

“And your salary has been increased according to our system of annual increments, I think. You are now . . . how old?”

“Nearly twenty-six and a half, sir.”

“Now look here, Mr. Middleton; I’m surprised at you. I’m disappointed in you. At your age, with the whole world before you, you get married on two hundred a year! And what if there should be little ones?”

“I’m afraid – I mean I hope – I think there are . . . there is going to be,” said Middleton.

“Just as I said! Middleton, I like my little team of assistants to come and tell me their little troubles. But I think you have been rash, very rash. You must realise, of course, that you have pre­judiced your entire career. I have had confidence in you, Mid­dle­ton. How am I to have confidence in you in the future? Do you realise that some of the greatest banks in the world do not allow their clerks to marry until they have attained certain positions of responsibility? And rightly so! A young man in a position of trust is unsettled by family responsibilities. He is more easily tempted than a young man without responsibilities. You, Middleton, in the mail order department, are in much the same situation as the cashier of a bank. Middleton, I’m glad you told me of this marriage of yours. Pity, pity, pity . . .”

Middleton said: “Mr. Mawson, sir! If you feel that I am not to be trusted, just because I happen to be married——”

Then his throat closed, and he had to swallow to get it open, while he blew his nose hard to ease a certain pressure at the back of his eyes.

“God forbid, Middleton! I am glad that you have been candid enough to make a clean breast of it,” said Mr. Mawson.

“Sir, excuse me – I wasn’t making a clean breast of anything,” said Middleton. “I thought that since I’d been with you so long, you might find it convenient, all things considered, to raise my salary——”

The general manager shook his head, and said: “Quite out of the question. Not within my power to do it, even if I wanted to, Middleton. You should have controlled yourself, Middleton, you should have played the man. I was forty before I thought of marriage.”

“Yes, sir,” said Middleton, and then a high-pitched buzzer sounded. Mr. Mawson turned to a little oblong box bristling with levers grouped about a hole covered with gauze. He knocked down one of the levers and a voice, strained thin through the gauze, said: “Oh Mr. Mawson, Mrs. Mawson is here to see you.”

The general manager changed colour and said: “Ask Mrs. Maw­son if she wouldn’t mind waiting just a moment,” and snapped the lever back. “. . . So, Middleton, you’d better get back to your work. I’m sorry if you’re in trouble, but you have no one but yourself to blame. That will be all.”

“Yes sir.”

“ – Oh, one other thing, Middleton. I know that young men who have been foolish enough to place themselves in your posi­tion are frequently foolish enough to get even deeper into the mire – buy things they can’t pay for, fall into the hands of money­lenders. I don’t say you’re as foolish as all that, but I give you fair warning; if I hear of your doing any such thing, you leave this office at a second’s notice. You know Lord Herring’s senti­ments. Go along now. On your way out ask Mrs. Mawson if she’ll kindly step in, will you?”

“Yes, sir.”

But Mrs. Mawson did not wait to be asked; she shouldered Middleton aside and went right in. He caught a glimpse of a massive, elderly woman with the jowls and bulging eyes of an old white bulldog; her head was thrown back so that she might have been straining to balance a preposterous little hat on her powdery forehead. Then the door slammed, and Middleton went back to his desk, his throat tight, his eyes hot; perilously near tears.

The firm of Coulton Utilities manufactured, or caused to be manufactured, almost everything a housewife needs – kitchen cabinets, enamel-top tables, ironing boards, blankets, sheets, can­teens of cutlery, brass-plated fire-irons, carving sets, washing machines – all the dreary, necessary paraphernalia of the pinched, half-hungry household. Coulton Utilities also conduc­ted a pros­perous mail-order hire-purchase clothing business: you sent six­pence in stamps for a Measure Yourself Chart, a Fashion Book (“State whether Ladies or Gents”), a book of patterns, a free tape-measure, and a hire-purchase form. Coulton Utilities managed to make a profit even on the bait, since the whole envelopeful, postage and overheads included, cost them exactly fourpence farthing. Thus they sold hundreds of thousands of suits of ladies’ and gents’ outfits, on the easiest of easy terms. A million hard-working, hard-up readers of the advertisements in the Sunday papers were still half-heartedly paying the two shillings a week that had seemed so little in the first flush of enthusiasm, months after their suits, costumes, and overcoats were worn out.

At the same time the president of Coulton Utilities, Lord Herring, a staunch Baptist, sternly warned his employees that they had better not get into debt. Debt led to worry, and worry to loss of concentration; loss of concentration led to day-dreaming; day-dreaming led to the loss of your job, and so, by easy stages to hunger, theft, murder, the gallows, and hell. Every month he sent to every one of his twenty-five hundred employees a little printed sermon full of good advice and biblical references, and pregnant with thinly-veiled menace. A man who let himself be persuaded to buy an article for which he was not absolutely sure he could pay was a weakling and a cheat, said Lord Herring. Also, he was a coward, because in trying to buy what he could not afford to buy, he was cringing away from his duty as a private soldier in the battle of life. He was guilty of cowardice in the face of the enemy; and soldiers in battle are put to death for that. To sum up: weaklings fall by the wayside, and perish; thieves go to prison, and sink lower and lower until they murder and are hanged; cowards are shot. “The Wages of Debt is Death,” said Lord Herring, in one of the best-worded of his monthly sermons.

“Liars and hypocrites!” thought Middleton as he cut the string that bound one of the bundles of letters on his desk. The bundle – two hundred tightly-bound sealed envelopes – jerked upwards and over, opening like a concertina. The music, the agonised wail­ing of that paper concertina, was yet to come. Middleton knew that more than half of the letters contained postal orders. Last Sunday Coulton Utilities had advertised another bargain, not to be missed. Don’t delay, write to-day – for a twenty-three-piece gen­u­ine MacLennan tea service, genuine willow pattern, only ten shillings post free! He knew that the lid of the teapot was in­cluded as a “piece”.

All over the country housewives would be rushing out to look for the parcel-post. Here were God knows how many pinched pennies of pin-money, saved for little surprises, or bits of finery.

Middleton knew how it went: on Sunday afternoon the tired woman sits down to read the paper for the first time in seven days, easing her poor old feet; she sees the Coulton Utilities advertisement, with the cut depicting a family sitting down to tea at a table covered with fine china. The husband, comfortable and happy, sits at one end of the table. She, young and gay, pours tea from a pretty teapot at the other end. A sturdy son and a pretty daughter and a couple of hale and hearty grandparents sit in their places, smiling in anticipation. Somewhere in the back­ground a cosy fire burns bright. . . . Free Offer – Real Stamped Willow Pattern Tray. . . . And that settles it! Out come two-shilling-pieces squeezed down out of twenty-four pennies, worn shillings, smooth sixpences, and silver threepenny bits that appear no bigger than drops of sweat and evaporate faster. One morning the poor woman goes to the post office, changes her silver for a paper postal order, fills in the coupon, scrapes up the price of a stamp to mail it; and waits, dreaming of something pretty for the house.

Middleton knew. And he knew that the other letters in the bundle contained first payments on the Klever Kitchen Kabinet. In this little handful of letters, eighty or ninety harassed women were signing away their peace of mind, agreeing to pay only five shillings a month for two years. “After all, it’s only eighteenpence a week,” they said to themselves, “and only five shillings with order.”

Then Middleton understood exactly what is meant by “Bitter­ness”. He had taken his first taste of it. It was as if his mouth was full of copper coins, green with verdigris. One by one these green copper coins slipped down his throat, until the weight of them dragged his heart and stomach down and down, and there was nothing in the world but an awful heaviness that no sigh could lift; a turbulent emptiness in his head, and in his mouth a bitter taste which he associated with bad pennies.

He washed his face, took a long drink of water, and went back to work – to work like a madman, chasing lost time.

Wherever he turned, Middleton felt a slimy little fish writhing from the back of his collar to his waist-line and escaping with a cold shudder down one or other of his legs. This slippery fish was the general manager’s eye. Middleton had made himself con­spicuous, now. That coldness was always between his shoulder-blades. If he had been an unmarried man he might have walked out of the office and taken his chance in the world. But Middle­ton said to himself: “If I was single, with nobody but myself to consider, the situation wouldn’t have arisen. As it is, here I am – a married man, a father, most likely, in five or six months. Only four months ago I was my own master. Now I’m a slave under three masters: Louie, the baby, and Mr. Mawson. A slave, that’s what I am, a slave. . . . Oh, all right, let it be like that,” said Middle­ton, and went on working.

Middleton had a lucky piece, an old spade-guinea with a hole in it. When he left the office at five o’clock that afternoon, he went to a jeweller’s shop, sold it for twenty-three and sixpence, and carried home a flowering shrub in a pot, and a new pound note, both of which he gave to Louisa, saying: “Little bonus for you. A present for a good girl. I want you to buy something nice for yourself. . . . Yes, Louie dear, I want you to; it would please me if you did. Go and spend it on something silly.”

He was stubborn in his insistence that the pound be squan­dered in frivolity, so she went to a cut-price hairdresser near Tottenham Court Road, who advertised a permanent wave for only one pound, and had her glossy, straight brown hair curled. The effect was ravishing: Middleton was delighted. She could honestly reassure herself that at least half of the pound had been spent on him. Breathing admiration, and stroking his wife’s new curls, he said that he had never seen anything so pretty, while he thought: Now this is the right way to spend a pound. This is value. What a fool I was to keep that skinny little golden guinea with a hole in it all this time!

But the poor little potted shrub died in two days. Louisa’s hair became straight again in ten days; and things were as they had been before Middleton sold his spade-guinea. All that remained was the dead twig in the little flowerpot. Louisa kept it on the window-ledge where the sunlight could reach it and watered it every morning: refusing to accept death as inevitable, half-hoping for a miraculous resurrection, a new blossoming. Once, she thought she saw green buds. They were nothing but flecks of mildew. Then although she knew that it was foolish to cry over a plant, she shed a tear or two, and threw the flower-pot into the dust-bin.

Louisa disliked Trew and he knew it. Therefore he hated her. He needed admiration: there was a spoiled child wrapped in the thick hide of that irrepressible jester.

Now fingering the fine notepaper of the lawyer Pismire, Trew thought of Middleton, whom he had come to regard as a traitor, and Louisa, whom he saw as a climber, a designing woman, a schem­ing waitress who had married above herself and taken away his best friend.

Wrinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. Smiling, he went to his desk, took a pencil, and carefully drafted a letter on a bit of scrap paper. He was not unacquainted with commercial jargon and legal terminology, but he wanted this to be clean-cut, perfect, and unsmudged by erasures. Soon he had it right. His smile became triangular; an office boy, who had observed Trew and understood him, said to another office boy: “I wonder wot old Podgy’s got up ’is sleeve.”

Out of earshot the office boys called Trew Podgy, because he was prematurely corpulent: they knew that if he overheard them, they would sooner or later feel between their shoulder-blades the quick, quiet stiletto of his malevolence. If you forgot to laugh when Trew called a club-footed man “Hoppy”, or addressed a one-eyed and one-armed beggar as “Lord Nelson”, he might be offended; but if you called him “Podgy”, or “Baby Face”, he would lie awake at night thinking of revenge.

Trew walked sedately to a typewriter, and carefully wrote a letter to Edward Hugh Middleton, Esquire, of 3, Wheeler Square, W.C.1. He regretted to inform Mr. Middleton of the death of his uncle, Joseph Hugh Middleton, Esquire, of Wagga-Wagga, New South Wales, Australia. He had been advised of Mr. Mid­dleton’s present address, and begged to inform him that he, Edward Hugh Middleton, was sole beneficiary in his uncle’s will. Joseph Hugh Middleton had left £103,751 6s. 8d.: net personalty £76,100. If Mr. Edward Hugh Middleton would call at his earliest convenience, Mr. Charles Pismire would be happy to clarify the situation. In the meantime, with condolences, he ventured to con­gratulate Mr. Middleton on his good fortune.

Between the respectful salutation, and the punctiliously typed

CHARLES PISMIRE

Pismire & Pismire

Trew scrawled a black signature.

Then, enclosing the letter in one of Forty Richards’s very best white envelopes, he sent it to Middleton, Express. To do so, Trew had to go to the post office. If this had been any other day, his absence, if only for five minutes, might have been noticed; but this was that hot Saturday before August Bank Holiday. The letter was mailed, and Trew was back at his desk before anyone knew that he had left it. He was poring over a great red-and-green ledger when Big Ben struck ten. Counting the chimes, Trew calculated that Middleton ought to receive the letter before three o’clock, and then there would be fun. Pretending to work, he waited. At one o’clock the office closed. In the good old days, Trew thought, sadly, Middy and I used to walk back home on Saturday – we used to walk westward, and have a bite to eat in one of the Italian places around New Oxford Street, or somewhere. Now, of course, he’s got his Louie!

Trew went out to eat alone. A bank clerk to whom he tried to tell a funny story about microbes said that he had to catch a train to Brighton, and ran away. In a few seconds, as it seemed, life departed from the City; dark-coated, shiny-coated swarms disappeared like flies under a Flit spray. Trew, solitary on earth, ate in a restaurant in Charing Cross Road, and killed time with a magazine. He read a newspaper and went for a walk. At three o’clock he went home to take off his dark suit and change into light grey. On the way he was accosted by a flower-seller with a barrow-load of moribund carnations at four for sixpence. Trew bought a shillingsworth. He meant to call on the Middletons, casually, and ask them to come for a walk in the park.

His landlady was waiting for him. Before she could speak, he said: “Here’s a nice thing! Had to go and deal with a couple of things in Leadenhall Street – a firm by the name of Koestler and Dunlap, dare say you know them – and when I got back the cashier was gone, all locked up. Never mind, everything will be all right Tuesday.”

“Well, Mr. Trew, I sincerely hope so because——”

“ – Don’t worry. Don’t you worry. On Tuesday, mark my words, everything’ll be all right. I’m going to have a cold bath. I’m hot.”

“I’d hoped you’d be able to let me have something on account, Mr. Trew,” said the landlady, vitiated by the heat and thoroughly discouraged. “My rent’s overdue, too. I promised——”

“ – They can’t do anything to you before Tuesday, can they?” said Trew.

“No, but——”

“ – Well, Tuesday morning I settle up.”

“You’ve said that so often, you see. I don’t like to ask, but . . .” She made a helpless gesture with one hand, and wiped her damp face with the other: she had never dreamed that she would be forced to come down to this. “. . . but what else can I do? I hate asking for money, but . . . When my poor husband was alive, it would have been . . . you promised faithfully, you know. Oh dear me!”

“Would I have walked in this heat if I’d even got the price of a bus-ride?” asked Trew, almost indignantly. “Look at me – wet through. If I say Tuesday, I mean Tuesday! Is it my fault if they kept me waiting in Leadenhall Street? D’you think it’s pleasant for me, having to put you off like this? Eh?”

“No, but——”

“ – Tuesday without fail,” said Trew, and went upstairs. On the way he stumbled, and the landlady heard a jingling of loose change in his pocket. Then she wanted to run after him, take him by the throat, and kill him, crying: Liar, liar, liar! You have got money and you did not walk from Leadenhall Street! But she was overwhelmed by an appalling realisation of her impotence. If she went to Trew’s room and said: “Get out!” – what would happen if he replied: “I won’t!” What could she do? Throw him out bodily? Scream for policemen? If only poor Dick were alive, this could never have been. She went to her bedroom and sat by the open window, wishing that she had never been born.

In his room, Trew relaxed, keeping an eye on his alarm-clock. Five o’clock, he thought, would be a good time to call on the Middletons.

Trew set the alarm-clock for four-forty-five, in case he fell asleep. The joke was going to be too rich to miss.

* * * * *

As for Middleton, he walked home slowly, with a heavy heart. On the stroke of one the whole City (in a manner of speaking) threw its bonnet over the windmill, and kicked up its heels with a joyous whoop, at the prospect of the Bank Holiday. All the week the clerks had been talking of what they meant to do, and how they hoped to enjoy themselves. Smith, Jones and White, who pretended to be very desperate fellows, were going to Southend-on-Sea for a couple of days; hearing them talk, a naïve stranger might have been tempted to warn Southend that it had better shutter its windows and lock up its daughters. Robinson and Brown were going to Margate on a steamboat – one of those gay boats in which carefree bachelors used to sing sentimental songs until they were hoarse, cool their throats with bottled ale, and, wearing silly little paper hats, brazenly flirt with the girls, who had put on their lightest, brightest dresses and were ready for a little fun, harmless or otherwise. Middleton, in his time, had staggered with a staggering group of jolly good fellows – Trew in the lead, of course – to catch the last train from Southend to Fenchurch Street on Bank Holiday Monday. He, too, had looked forward to August Bank Holiday, putting a little money aside for a little orgy: two Bank Holidays ago he had squandered three pounds in two and a half days. But now he walked homewards heavily, tired and discouraged, thinking with dread of the long week-end. Should he take Louisa to Hyde Park, where they would simply sit on their behinds on the burnt-up grass, cheek by jowl with half a million similar unfortunates, most of them with feverish, sun-scorched children that needed to be smacked or screamed at every five minutes? Or go to the Zoo and make part of a fretful mob, a million strong – half of them children howling their heads off because they couldn’t see the lions being fed? Then, suddenly the sky grows black, the rain pours down. There is a stampede for the buses, which are all full. So you stand in the middle of another endless line of fathers and mothers who are beating wet, shivering, terrified children and saying: “Stop grizzling, you little wretch! You’re here to enjoy yourself, and enjoy yourself you will, if I have to wring your neck” – or words to that effect. Then comes a peal of thunder; the caged lions, wolves, and apes roar and howl and gibber, and the children kick and scratch at their parents while the parents hiss and strike at their children. If, later, you want to relax in the glamorous darkness of a cinema, you must wait somewhere near the end of a line of a million mothers and fathers, all worrying about their children left at home.

And in a few months, now, I shall be a father, thought Middleton. I’d rather it was a boy. Perhaps it won’t cry very much, though I never came across one that didn’t.

He was near Wheeler Square, walking through a street which, on Saturday, was an open-air market. In the gutters, between two short rows of shops, the street vendors, the barrow-pushers, the costermongers had set up their stalls. They were cutting their prices, now, and shouting like madmen – especially the costers who were selling perishable soft fruits and flowers. By Tuesday, their goods would be rotten. One unfortunate fellow with half a barrow full of peaches still unsold had reduced the price of his fruit from threepence to a penny, and had so exhausted himself with shouting that he could only say, in a husky whisper: “Eech! . . . Eech!” Middleton bought sixpennyworth. Then another coster, roaring like a bull, thrust a fourteen-inch cucumber under his nose and said: “Lookatit, lookatit, lookatit, ain’t it lovely? Ten­pence!” Middleton bought it. Whilst he was counting out the money he remembered what someone had told him – that this was the costermongers’ holiday, and that on the Monday they some­times spent as much as twenty pounds apiece at the fair and in the pubs around Hampstead Heath. The thought must have soured his face, for the coster clapped him on the shoul­der, said: “Cheer up, you’ll soon be dead – ’ere’s a bit ’o creese for the missus” – and slapped a bundle of watercress into Middleton’s hand.

When Middleton was on his way the salad-seller turned to his wife and said: “All boot-blacking and no bloody boots. No bread to ’is feet, no boots to eat, eh, gel?”

“Go on, give the stock away! You’d give me away if I let yer.”

“ ’Oo’d ’ave yer?” said the coster, and then, drawing a deep breath, roared at the world again: “Come on, come on, come on! Cucumbers! Cues! Cues ’n creese! Lovely, lovely, lovely! . . .”

Middleton stopped at a barrow loaded with imperishable goods – second-hand books and back-numbers of popular maga­zines. The proprietor of this stall did not shout: he stood still, stroking his long white moustache. Middleton bought three back-numbers of Real Love Tales, for Louisa to read, so that she might keep the dull truth at arm’s length over the week-end. For him­self, he bought a copy of Adventure, so tattered that the old man let it go for twopence. Then he went home. Louisa had prepared a lunch of cold corned beef with a little faded lettuce. The cucumber was just what they needed to make it perfect. With peaches for dessert, what more could a man or woman desire? If all this was not enough, there was something good to read. Middleton sighed deeply, and this sigh loosened something heavy that had been weighing on his back. If Louie was happy, why, then, so was he. They ate heartily of the corned beef, the salad, and the peaches; and drank tea. He complimented her on her housewifery, she thanked him for being such a good provider, they kissed each other, sat down to read their magazines.

Middleton was reading a story about a battle between lumber­jacks when his landlady knocked at the sitting-room door, and his head was full of the rumbling of logs and the trampling of cleated boots; the clashing of canthooks and the By Gars and Sacré Dames of infuriated French-Canadian loggers.

“Yes, Mrs. Gibson?” said Middleton.

“This came for you, Express,” she said, giving him a letter. “There was nothing to pay.”

“Oh, thanks very much, Mrs. Gibson. . . . Oh I say, Louie, look at this. An Express letter!”

“Oh dear,” said Louisa. Urgent communications filled her with nameless terrors: she associated them with death. She watched her husband’s face while he opened the envelope, and clutched at her throat when she saw his jaw drop and his cheeks turn grey. “What is it?” she asked, “for God’s sake, what is it?”

“Don’t upset yourself,” said Middleton.

“What is it?”

“It’s a letter. I mean, it’s a letter from Pismire – biggest solicitor in the City. He’s Lord Herring’s solicitor. Well – you remember my Uncle Joe in Australia?”

“He never answered your letter when you wrote and told him about you and me,” said Louisa.

“Well, he’s dead, Louie.”

“Oh, well——”

“ – And he’s left me seventy-six thousand pounds, that’s all,” said Middleton. “Seventy-six thousand pounds, that’s all. A mere seventy-six thousand——” he choked.

“Oh no!”

“Well, here’s the letter, Louie – read it for yourself.”

“Sole beneficiary,” said Louisa, reading aloud. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, nothing – only that he’s left me everything, that’s all,” said Middleton, half-crying. “A mere seventy-six thousand pounds. . . . Oh Louie, Louie!”

“It seems too good to be true,” said Louisa.

“There’s the letter,” said Middleton. “. . . Let me have another look at it . . .” He fumbled in his pockets, and found twopence. “I’ll telephone and confirm,” he said. “There might be some mistake.”

“Will they be in the office this afternoon?”

“Of course not,” said Middleton, “but there can’t be many Charles Pismires in the telephone book. I’ll ring his private number. Come with me, Louie.”

There was no telephone in the house, so they crossed the square and squeezed themselves into the telephone booth on the northern corner. Middleton had some trouble with the thin pages of the directory; some of his fingers were numb; others were wayward, and fluttered in wrong directions. But he found a Charles Pismire who lived in Highgate, and dialled the number. God, let this be true! he prayed, while the ringing sound rhythmically buzzed. Then the buzzing stopped, and a loud, expressionless voice said: “Yes?”

Middleton’s voice shook as he said: “My name is Middleton. Is that Mr. Pismire?”

“No, sir. Mr. Pismire is not in.”

“Oh. It is the right number I’m ringing, isn’t it? Mr. Charles Pismire, the solicitor?”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Pismire will not be back before Tuesday. Can I take a message?”

“Well, it’s like this,” said Middleton. “I received a letter from Mr. Charles Pismire, asking me to get in touch with him. But the office, of course, is closed, you see . . .”

“Was it a matter of business, sir?”

“Yes. I received a letter from Mr. Charles Pismire, informing me of a . . . a legacy – Mr. Joseph Hugh Middleton of Wagga-Wagga, New South Wales, Australia.”

“Yes, sir?”

“A matter of seventy-six thousand pounds,” said Middleton. “I wanted to have a word with Mr. Pismire and confirm.”

The expressionless voice was the voice of Charles Pismire’s servant, a man named Sutton. His master had come home, hot and exasperated, before one o’clock, and said: “Sutton, I am going to Paphurst, and I am not coming back before Tuesday morning, whatever happens. I am going to rest. I am spending the week-end with Lord Paphurst, and I absolutely forbid you to disturb me in any circumstances – even if the house burns down. If anyone calls, you will take the message and say I’ll be back on Tuesday. Is that clear?” Sutton bowed: he had served Pismire’s father, and loved the son.

“ – I only wanted to be sure,” said Middleton. “I just wanted to make certain that there was no mistake.”

“I beg pardon, sir,” said Sutton. “I believe I heard you say that Mr. Charles Pismire had already written a letter to you?”

“Yes, but——”

“In that case,” said Sutton, “you may rest assured that every­thing is in order. Mr. Pismire will be back in Town on Tuesday. Is there any message?”

“Only that Mr. Middleton – Edward Middleton – rang, if you don’t mind.”

“Yes, sir. Good-bye, sir.”

Middleton turned to Louisa. “You heard?” he said. She nodded. “You heard him say ‘rest assured everything is in order’? Eh?”

“Um!”

“Well, we’re rich, Louie!”

“Yes,” she said; and fainted.