John Braine - Room at the Top

"No shop," she said. "Don't you ever get tired of it?"

He threw up his hands in a gesture of mock resignation, the diamond on his little finger glittering coldly. "You'll never understand that we men live for our work. As soon as we talk about anything interesting, you complain we're talking shop."

Against my will I felt pleased that he should have considered my remarks interesting, though I knew that it was Dale Carnegie stuff, a small, apparently casual compliment. The others imperceptibly gathered round him, in much the same way, I thought, as they'd gathered round Jack Wales. He represented the power of money as Jack did: he was another king. As I watched them all paying court to him, I wondered how on earth he came to marry Alice, how the thin lips under the neat moustache brought themselves to frame - as they surely must have done - the words I love you . I just couldn't imagine them in bed together, either. They weren't the same kind of person; they hadn't, as all the happily married do, acquired any likeness to one another.

I rose and said to Alice that I was going.

"You're coming our way, aren't you?" she asked.

"There won't be room," I said.

"Nonsense," George said. "You haven't an engagement, have you?"

"There's plenty of room," Alice said. "Do come, Joe."

I looked at her sharply. It was as if she were asking me for protection.

George's car was a Daimler 2˝ litre. I settled down in the back with Johnny Rogers and Anne Barlby. I'd never ridden in a privately owned Daimler before. George switched on the roof light for a moment: the soft light enclosed us in a private world, warm and cosy, tough and adventurous too, arrogant with speed and distance.

Johnny passed round cigarettes and I leaned back against the deep cushions, letting myself be absorbed in the private world, letting the atmosphere of luxury rub against me like a cat. Johnny talked cars with George; he was, of course, going to buy one soon. We used RAF slang, which personally always makes me want to vomit: unless exceptionally well done it stinks of newspapers and films. "I wish you could see this Bug," Johnny was saying. "It's wizard, sir. Bang-on ..." But he was harmless, only just twenty, with a snub nose and curly hair and an air of morning baths and early to bed and plenty of exercise.

Anne Barlby was his cousin. She was talking to Alice, or rather, trying to make her feel thoroughly uncomfortable by references to her good fortune in possessing a Daimler and to the good looks of her lover - "The spit-and-image of Jean Marais, darling." I was Alice's lover of course; the joke was wearing thin.

Anne wasn't like Johnny in temperament, but looked very like him, with the same fresh look and curly hair. Unfortunately, she had a nose which would have better suited a man, big and shapeless, nearly bulbous. It didn't look bad from some angles and was passable on the stage; but she was unduly sensitive about it. She needn't have worried: she had a trim figure, was bright and intelligent and, though not exactly an heiress, had money behind her. In the meantime she was inclined to be bitchy. She especially disliked me and never lost an opportunity to be unpleasant. Looking back, I know the reason for her dislike: I didn't take sufficient pains to disguise the fact that I found her physically unattractive. A little gentle flirtation, even a discreet sort of pass, would have changed her attitude entirely. She behaved as if she wouldn't welcome sex from me in any shape or form; and I took her at face value. Which is the last thing that any woman wants.

The Daimler took St. Clair Road with no effort. It was like being in a mobile drawing room; except that it was a great deal more comfortable than many drawing rooms. George drove with a chauffeur's neat efficiency; I couldn't help comparing his technique with Alice's slapdash recklessness.

"We'll leave you here," Anne said halfway up St. Clair Road. "It's a lovely car, Mr. Aisgill. Much nicer than the Fiat. You can only squeeze two into the Fiat, can't you, Joe?"

"My God," Alice said, when George had started the car again, "what a poisonous little cat she is. Dripping nasty insinuations in that chorus-girl accent! She'll wait a damned long time before I ride in the same car with her again. Shall I confess all, George? Shall I throw myself upon your mercy? I gave Joe a lift home last night and we called at the St. Clair. There now, our guilty secret's out. Of all the scandalmongering, gossiping, evil-minded places - "

"All small towns are like that," George said indifferently. "Anyway, why bother with the St. Clair? Take Joe home if you don't like people gossiping. There's plenty to drink in the house, isn't there?"

He overshot Eagle Road and I didn't notice myself until we were half a mile past, nearly at the top of St. Clair Road.

"I'll walk down," I said to him.

"You might as well come and have some supper," he said. "You can phone the Thompsons."

"Do come," Alice said.

"The rations - "

She laughed. "Don't worry about that, honey. It won't be a banquet anyway, just bits and pieces."

We'd reached the top of St. Clair Road. From Eagle Road it was open country - pasture land bordered by trees, with a few big houses set well back from the road. On the left, half hidden by pines, there was the biggest house I'd seen in Warley. It was a mansion, in fact, a genuine Victorian mansion with turrets and battlements and a drive at least a quarter of a mile long and a lodge at the gate as big as the average semi-detached.

"Who lives there?" I asked.

"Jack Wales," George said. "Or rather the Wales family. They bought it from a bankrupt woolman. Colossal, isn't it? Mind you, they don't use half of it."

My spirits sank. For the first time I realised Jack's colossal advantages. I thought that I was big and strong; but there was a lot more of the house than there was of me. It was a physical extension of Jack, at least fifty thousand pound's worth of brick and mortar stating his superiority over me as a suitor.

The Aisgills' house stood at the end of a narrow dirt road just off St. Clair Park. It was 1930 functional in white concrete, with a flat roof. There were no other houses near it, and it stood on the top of a shelf of ground with the moors behind it and the park in front of it. It looked expensive, built to order, but out of place, like a Piccadilly tart walking the moors in high heels and nylons.

Inside it was decorated in white and off-white with steel and rubber chairs which were more comfortable than they appeared. There were three brightly coloured paintings on the walls: two of them were what seemed to me no more than a mix-up of lines and blobs and circles but the other was a recognisable portrait of Alice. She was wearing a low-cut evening dress in a glittering silver cloth. Her breasts were smaller and firmer and there were no lines on her face. The artist hadn't prettified her; I could see the faint heaviness of her chin and the beginnings of lines.

"Don't look at it too closely, Joe," she said, coming up behind me. "I was ten years younger then."

"I wish I were ten years older," I said.

"Why, Joe, that's very sweet of you." She squeezed my hand but didn't release it straightaway. "You like the room?"

"Very much," I said. But I wasn't quite sure that I did. It was a strange room, very clean, very bright, in good taste, but somehow without comfort. The low white-painted shelves across the wall opposite the fireplace were full of books, mostly brand new, with the jackets still on; they should have humanised the room but they didn't; it seemed impossible that they should be read; they were so much a part of the room's decorative scheme that you wouldn't have dared to have taken one.

"Drink?" George asked, going to the cocktail cabinet. "Gin, whisky, brandy, rum, sherry, and various loathsome liqueurs which I can't really recommend."