Michael Frayn - Sweet Dreams

Felicity says nothing.

“And all right,” says Howard, “I’m enjoying it. I’m having a good time walking up and down here and being astonished that anyone could be so ignorant. It’s really made my day, to discover that there’s someone in the world who still doesn’t know who the seven major shareholders in GEC, Westinghouse, Con Edison, NBC, and CBS are!”

“All right,” says Felicity. “You’ve finished enjoying my not knowing. Now you can enjoy telling me.”

One day his father phones. It’s eleven years since he died, but Howard recognizes his voice at once, and is able to save him the embarrassment of deciding whether to say, “This is your father,” or, “This is Laurence,” or, “This is your dad.”

“It’s you!” he interrupts deftly.

“That’s right,” says his father gratefully. “It’s me.”

“Well, this is a surprise,” says Howard.

“Not too early in the morning to ring, I hope?”

“No, no — we’re all up.”

“Only I’m never too sure whether you’re going to be up or not.”

“Don’t worry. We’re all up.”

“I just thought I’d phone and find out how you are. It must be getting on for eleven years now since …”

“I suppose it must,” interrupts Howard neatly again, to save his father from hesitating over “since I died,” or, “since I passed away.” He knows instinctively that it’s not a subject his father would want to talk about.

“And Felicity?” inquires his father. “And the children? You’ve got some children, I should imagine, haven’t you?”

“Yes, four. They’re fine. We’re all fine. And you?”

“Oh, quite well, thank you. Yes. Not too bad.”

“And Mother, and Auntie Lou, and Mildred?”

“Oh, we can’t complain, all things considered.”

“Good. Good.”

Howard is very moved. Because this is what he always felt after his father died — that if he could just speak to him now , he could really open his heart and say everything, without feeling that strange mute on his vocal chords. And here he is, actually doing it!

“It’s nice to hear from you,” he says frankly.

“Well, I just thought I’d ring,” says his father. “I said to your mother, ‘I’d better just ring him and find out how he’s getting on.’ ”

Howard wants to make some huge impulsive gesture to express the naked love he feels.

“Why don’t you both come over and have a cup of tea some time?” he suggests. “Or lunch, perhaps, if that would make getting back easier?”

“Well, one of these days, perhaps. When the weather’s a bit warmer.”

“Yes, well, any time. Just give us a little notice, so that we can get the kettle on.”

There is a silence, during which Howard licks his finger and wipes at a mark on the telephone. When he realizes what he is doing he is amazed. Really, it’s fantastic! To be able to sit in silence with his father, without any need to make conversation — so relaxed together that he can sit there licking his finger and wiping marks off the telephone!

“You’re not just wasting your time here, I take it?” asks his father. “You’re not just lolling around?”

“No, no,” says Howard, smiling to himself, but touched by his father’s concern. “No, I’m rather busy, in fact.”

“You’ve got a job, have you?”

“Oh, I’ve got a job all right.”

“Because it would be a very sad thing to waste your opportunities in a place like this.”

“No, no, I’ve got a job.”

“Only too easy to lounge about all day enjoying yourself, I realize that. But you’d regret it in the long run, I think, wouldn’t you? You’d feel you hadn’t made the best use of your time here. Let your chances slip through your fingers. You’ve got to think about the future, you see.”

“No, well, this job’s got quite good prospects. Quite a generous pensions scheme.”

The sheer pleasure of being able to give his father pleasure like this!

“All right, then,” says his father. “I just thought I’d make sure you were getting on all right. Give my love to Felicity and the children. You did say you’d got children, didn’t you?”

“That’s right. Give my love to Mother, and Auntie Lou, and Mildred.”

As easy as that! After eleven years!

He has in fact got a job, now his father mentions it, and an astonishingly good one, too, for someone in his first year down from university. He is working with Harry Fischer’s design group, which is almost certainly the liveliest team in the profession at this particular moment. They all think so, at any rate, though they turn it into a joke. You can tell how lively they are by the fact that they work not in great white north-lit drawing-offices, like the more fashionable and established groups, but in a few cramped rooms on the fourth floor of an Edwardian commercial block, above a tobacconist and an employment agency, mostly looking out on an airshaft.

They are designing the Alps.

Each morning the members of the team come straggling into the dark and dusty offices, yawning and inert; and each morning, as coffee is brought round and work gradually gets under way, the little enclosed world comes alive. Harry Fischer comes out of his room in his shirt sleeves, hoisting his braces up with one hand, and holding in the other some letter or Ministry circular which has arrived in the morning post, and which he reads mockingly aloud to evoke their common derision at the obtuseness and bureaucracy of the world outside the office. They all cackle with pleasure at the absurdity of it; then, as soon as Harry has gone back into his room, they all mock him , walking back and forth about the room holding imaginary braces and letter, and talking with a German accent. As the day wears on they begin to mock each other, particularly Neil Strachan, the melancholy Presbyterian geologist who keeps ruling out half their best ideas as bloody tectonic impossibilities, and who can’t do a convincing German accent for the life of him. They talk in joke Scottish voices to each other and joke Scottish German voices, and act out the scenes of depressive Presbyterian fornication in which they affect to believe Neil’s evenings are spent. Jimmy Jessop, the glaciation expert, who is a skilled pickpocket, undoes the back buttons of Neil’s braces as they lean over a diagram together, until Neil loses his temper, and chases Jimmy round the office, shouting that he is going to bloody kill him. Then they all settle down for a bit and design some mountains.

Howard laughs more in his first few weeks on Harry’s group than he has ever laughed in his life before. He tries to convey the humour to Phil, but Phil looks at him sardonically and talks of other things. Howard also finds with pleasure that he is beginning to speak a language which is incomprehensible to anyone outside the office, even to Phil — schuppen structure, Pennine “windows,” and Dinaride outliers.

Another thing Howard likes about the job is the money.

Not that the salary is all that large. What tickles Howard is the principle of the thing. Paying him! Real money! Him! There’s something about it that’s delectably … grown-up .

There are other benefits, too, with a responsible adult ring about them. “My life’s insured by the department,” he explains to Felicity, “so that if anything happens to me you’d get both a lump sum and a regular income. And the pension arrangements are remarkably good, too. Under the regulations here they’re only allowed to pay up to eighty per cent of your salary from a contributory scheme. But they make it up, from a special noncontributory fund, to one hundred per cent of the highest salary level you reach.”

“How much will that be?” asks Felicity.