I did not give Robert an account of Tom Malone’s visit – for once I thought he might be allowed to preserve his disbelief in the existence of anyone whom he had not found for himself. I was haunted by my picture of Murray-Hamilton sitting at his desk, the ledger open before him … on opposite pages he recorded Right and Wrong.
Robert had a new novel coming out. Also he had Annette to cope with. In case you have not had the opportunity to study the artistic temperament, perhaps I ought to say that it was the former which occupied him the more.
Robert had a fit of gloom. He was always in a hypersensitive state just before a book came out – a state from which he was readily thrown into apprehension if not gloom. And this essential state appeared not to be seriously altered when, as the centre-piece of his excellent press, he had the middle page to himself in The Times Literary Supplement. Very useful, indeed. People do not appear to read it, but they do appear to know it is there. For instance, the T.L.S. circulates officially, along with Nature, the Economist and others, through the offices of the upper echelons of the Civil Service. Within a fortnight of Robert’s getting the middle page, he had been invited out to lunch by first Murray-Hamilton and then Spinks.
‘What did Stinker Spinks say to you?’ I asked.
Robert was markedly offhand. ‘Actually he was rather interesting, when off his normal beat. It appears that he’s got quite an important collection of Roman coins. I didn’t know about it. He talked quite interestingly about them.’
‘Do you think he’ll invite me out to lunch when I get a middle in the T.L.S.?’
Robert said: ‘I think he might, you know. Murray-Hamilton definitely won’t, I can tell you that. But Stinker might. There are moments when his desire to be near to success, even somebody else’s, is even greater than his envy of it. I think he might ask you.’ He paused. ‘If you have this ambition, peculiar as it is, you ought to be warned that his club gives you a very poor lunch. An execrable lunch.’
When we went to our own club it was obvious that Robert in their opinion was doing well. No body of men responds more quickly to a change in the barometer of one’s prestige than one’s club, especially to an easily visible movement in the upward direction. Members who have not spoken to one before, speak to one: members who have spoken to one before, offer one a drink: members who have offered one drinks before, suggest one goes up to dinner with them: and members with whom one has dined for years say they are going to buy one’s book. It is difficult not to let it go to one’s head.
The first weeks after publication passed. And once again gloom, this time a different kind of gloom, supervened. The reviewers who had put Robert’s book at the head of their columns were now, with equal hebdomadal panache, putting somebody else’s book there. Robert came into my office and sat heavily on the corner of my table.
‘I feel,’ he said, ‘as if I might just as well have dropped it into the sea.’
I understood how he was feeling.
Why worry? you may ask. How right you are – please go on! Why be a writer? Why be Robert or me? Why not be two other chaps? Robert and I sometimes considered your last suggestion as the one, true way out of our dilemma.
‘I might just as well have dropped it into the sea,’ Robert said again.
The poignance of the concept kept me silent. Attention, attention … all artists are endlessly craving attention. A neurotic lot – not like everybody else.
Robert found little to console him in his domestic situation. Annette was still holding to her moral choice. Speculating on what he might do, I took it into my head that he might get Annette’s father to take his side.
Then one day I happened to meet Annette’s father. I called at Robert’s flat on my way home from the office, to collect some of my manuscript which Annette had been reading. To my surprise, the door was opened by Annette’s father.
‘Come in,’ he said cordially. ‘I’m here on my own.’ Tall and stork-like, he walked ahead of me down the corridor. ‘I’m staying here while my flat is being re-decorated. It’s rather more agreeable than getting a room at the Club.’
I was touched by his unusual cordiality. Tall and stork-like, he preceded me down the corridor – to the kitchen.
‘I was just going to have a whisky,’ he said, ‘to save myself trouble, though I should prefer to have some tea. Perhaps as you’re here we might make some tea?’
In the kitchen he turned to look at me with a sparkling, encouraging look in his eye. It was the most intimate sign of recognition he had ever given me. I felt that he was almost offering me his friendship. Actually, I realized, he was inviting me to make tea for him.
‘The first step,’ I said, ‘is to put on the kettle.’
‘I believe that is so,’ he said, with an amused glance round the kitchen which indicated little intention of doing it himself. I filled the kettle and lit the stove.
‘At least it is,’ I said, ‘for people of our class.’ I did not see why he should not get something of what he was asking for. ‘In schools for the lower classes,’ I said, having picked up the information from Elspeth, ‘the child’s first instruction is, “First empty the pot!” ’ In case he did not follow, I added: ‘The implication being that the pot has not been emptied after being used.’
To my surprise he bestirred himself to the extent of looking for Annette’s tea-pot. It was on the window-ledge. He picked it up, weighing it, and then with a negligent gesture handed it to me.
It was full.
I burst into laughter. I could not help admiring him. I had demonstrated that I did not give a damn. No more did he. He smiled with sub-fusc satisfaction.
‘I wonder where Annette empties it,’ I said.
He stroked his moustache and gave me a swift glance from under his eyebrows – he had long eyebrows that curled outwards. ‘She used to empty it in the lavatory – after we’d once suffered a slight contretemps after emptying it down the sink.’ He took the tea-pot from me and went out of the room.
When he came back the kettle was boiling and I had got cups and saucers for us.
‘Shall we have tea in here?’ he said. ‘It will save us trouble, won’t it?’
‘I think Annette and Robert have their tea in here,’ I said.
‘Very sensible of them.’ He got a bottle of milk and some butter out of the refrigerator. ‘There doesn’t seem to be very much to eat,’ he observed as he shut the door. ‘We must be going out for dinner.’
I opened a bread bin and took out half a sliced loaf wrapped in waxed paper. We sat down at a small table and began our tea.
‘I wonder where we’re going for dinner,’ he said. ‘I know Annette’s first choice of place to go out to for dinner is a coffee-stall in the Fulham Road.’
‘I didn’t know there was a coffee-stall in the Fulham Road.’
‘They’re getting harder to find,’ he said, with a touch of gloom. ‘We’re always having to go a long way …’
I tried to find a happier topic.
‘This is superior tea they have,’ I said.
‘Very good.’
He got up and looked in some of the cupboards.
When Annette and Robert moved into the flat they had had the kitchen completely done up by one of the classy kitchen firms that had made their appearance since the end of the war. The tops of the stove and sink and the benches of drawers were all on the same level, while the hanging cupboards also were perfectly aligned. Some of the cupboard doors and drawers were painted bright yellow, the rest white, while the benches and our table were covered with the latest thing in plastic surface materials. The kitchen was much envied by Elspeth.
Annette’s father opened a hanging cupboard which, as far as I could see, was empty except for a small jar on the lower shelf. He brought the jar out.
‘Marmite,’ he said. ‘Annette used to eat a lot of it when she was up at Oxford. She believes it to be highly nutritious.’ He spread some on a slice of bread and butter, and then passed the jar to me. ‘I don’t know if you know it? I rather like it.’
I said: ‘You’ll need something pretty nutritious if you’re going out to a coffee-stall for your evening meal.’ I thought of the pork chops which Elspeth had ordered for us. What a satisfactory marriage mine was!
‘That’s what I thought,’ he said.
I waited a moment and then said directly:
‘What line are you taking over Annette’s becoming a schoolteacher in Bethnal Green?’
‘I would have thought she might find a teaching-post nearer home.’
We stared at each other.
After a pause he said: ‘Of course, she’s changing, you know. I mean, since her marriage.’ He could see that I was expecting some revelatory comment. ‘She dresses better, don’t you think?’
‘I suppose I do.’ It occurred to me that at dinner-parties which succeeded the first one, when she had appeared in her wedding-dress, Annette had worn a black frock which Robert had chosen – Elspeth thought it was cut too low at the front, but I thought it was all right.
‘I always thought when she was at Oxford,’ her father said, ‘she looked as if she had just landed by parachute.’ He could not resist glancing at me slyly.
I laughed.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, pretending not to have heard me, ‘I can see Robert’s influence.’ He gave me the same glance again; and this time I saw a gleam, light and clear, of malice.
I stopped laughing. The full measure of his detachment had for the first time really struck home to me. He was clever, cultivated, cordial and humane; he was unusually free from envy and stuffiness. He was also free, I thought, from serious concern with anyone but himself, dazzlingly free …
And I had taken it into my head that Robert might be hoping for his intervention! I had made a frightful ass of myself. I knew Robert could not possibly have hoped for such a thing.
Annette’s father spread some Marmite on a second slice of bread and butter. ‘I do recommend this,’ he said.
Out of sheer moral disadvantage I took some. A look of amusement was glimmering in his eyes.
‘What do you think of Robert’s new novel?’ he said. ‘You and he write very different kinds of novel, don’t you?’ He paused. ‘I think it’s very interesting that you should have such a high opinion of each other’s books. It does you both credit.’ He leaned forward a little. ‘And it interests me.’
We engaged in literary conversation.
Meanwhile I was reflecting on a matter that had not occurred to me before. I knew that every shrewd man considered it was a good idea to marry his boss’s daughter. To a really shrewd man it is so self-evident as not to require consideration – he just does it automatically. What I had not reflected on before was what the boss thought about it.
I kept thinking of the gleam of malice, light and clear, that Annette’s father had let out of the corner of his eye.