John Braine - Room at the Top

She and Jack were part of a little circle of which Brown, his face red and beaming, was the centre. Hoylake was in it too; he was looking straight at me but gave only a brief flicker of a smile. They were at the far side of the room; I turned away from them and got my drink. There was a bad taste in my mouth, the indigestion which always attacks me when I'm angry.

I drank my beer quickly and ordered a whisky. I stood there with my back to the little circle, wondering whether to join it. I took out a cigarette, fumbled in my pockets, and asked the man next to me for a light. I caught Susan's eye; she smiled dazzlingly and, riding on its crest, I went over to the little group which, as I made the terribly long journey across the room, looked more and more impregnable and dangerous, like one of those circular ironclads with revolving turrets which they used in the American Civil War.

"Good evening, Susan," I said.

"Hello, Joe." She hesitated perceptibly. "Have you met my mother and father?"

"How do you do, Mr. Lampton." There was real warmth in Mrs. Brown's voice. Seen at close quarters she looked even more formidable; she had a face which I felt could set like stone with the pride of caste.

"Ah've met you at t'Town Hall lad," Brown said. He gave me a quick appraising look from brown eyes the colour of Susan's. He looked as sure of himself as Jack, but in a different way; the Yorkshire accent, which I suspected him of overdoing a bit, was one of the marks of that self-assurance. "Well, what are you drinking?"

"Scotch, please."

He snapped his fingers and a waiter came up apparently out of thin air. I glanced at Hoylake. There was for a second a sort of dry glow on his face. He made his excuses and moved off quickly; the room was crowded but he made his way through it without brushing anyone. He wasn't looking where he was going either; I remembered the old story of Queen Victoria, who always sat down immediately she felt the desire to, never for an instant bothering whether or not a chair might be there. The light winked on his black spectacles and bald head, his evening suit was the uniform of some complicated and cruel Byzantine hierarchy; the King and Queen were looking at me thoughtfully and coolly now the servant was handing me a glass of hot amber, which the thought of drinking made my stomach twist away from in fear, as if it were some potion which would force me to divulge the whole unforgivable truth, the Princess was whispering something polite and giving me a social smile as if we'd only that moment met, and the Prince from his superior height was preparing to say something gracious to the poor vulgar ex-sergeant who might perhaps be ill at ease among his betters.

"By the way, weren't you at Compton Bassett?" he asked.

"The Fifty-first," I said.

"A very great friend of mine was with that squadron. Darrow, Chick Darrow. Thoroughly decent chap, went to school with him. Went for a Burton over the Ruhr."

We noncoms used to say got the chopper . Going for a Burton was journalist's talk. It sickened me a bit; though I suppose that he was merely making an attempt to talk what he thought was my language. "I don't remember him."

"Oh, you must have met him. You couldn't miss old Chick. Bright red hair and a terrific baritone. Could've been professional."

"I never met him," I said, and kept saying for the next fifteen minutes during which he, assisted from time to time by Brown and his wife, played the Do You Know So and So game hard and fast from all angles, social, political, and even religious - they were astounded that I didn't know Canon Jones at Leddersford, he was very High of course but he was the only clergyman of any intellectual distinction whatever in the North of England ... It's a well-known game, its object being the humiliation of those with less money than yourself; I wouldn't exactly say that they were successful in this, but I certainly paid dearly for Brown's whisky and the whisky which Jack also bought me. The extra refinement, the grace note, was Jack's waving away of my offer to buy the drinks. ("No, old boy, frightfully dear stuff this.")

I've never in all my life felt so completely friendless; I was at bay among the glasses of sherry and whisky, with the vicious little darts laden with the pride-paralysing curare of Do you know - ? and Surely you've met - ? and You must have come across - ? thrown at me unceasingly. Susan said very little but I could see that she knew what was going on. She would have helped me if she could but didn't possess the necessary experience or strength of character to do so.

I'd had two pints of old at the St. Clair before I went to the dance; combined with four whiskies and my increasing irritation they made me forget my usual caution. I wasn't drunk; but I wasn't fully in control of myself. Jack asked me if I knew the Smiling Zombie's son.

"Amazing chap," he said. "Mind you, he'll kill himself in that old Alfa. Drives like a maniac. You must know him, he's always around Dufton."

"I don't know any tallymen," I said.

There was a silence.

"I don't follow you, old man."

"A tallyman sells clothes on credit," I said. "In effect it's moneylending. You buy direct from the manufacturer and sell at a retail price about fifty per cent above what I, or any other person with eyes in his head, would pay. Then you charge interest - "

"It's business," Jack cut in. "You wouldn't refuse the profits, would you?"

"It's a dirty business," I said.

Mrs. Brown's face had up to then been quite blank. It was a well-shaped face with large eyes and a pale clear skin which accentuated the soft blackness of her hair. As I spoke, she admitted an expression of faint disgust to her face; she wasn't, the expression said, a friend of this vulgar person with the bulging shirt front and the chromium cuff links, nor did she wish to be after being a witness of the crude and ill-balanced way in which he had answered a perfectly civil remark of dear Jack's; Jack had been remarkably kind, speaking to him almost as if he were a human being, and naturally it had gone to the creature's head. She took Brown's arm.

"This is our dance, dear. Goodbye for the present, Mr. Lampton."

Brown grinned at me. "Don't worry about the way the world's run, lad. Enjoy yourself when you're young." He gave me a pat on the shoulder and moved off into the crowd. He had the same way of talking and the same Edwardian solidity as my father; I found myself wishing that I wasn't, for the sake of my self-esteem, compelled to hate him.

"I must see you, Alice," I said.

"Must you really?"

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry about it all."

"It's taken you a long time to find it out."

"I can't explain over the phone," I said. "I wouldn't have made all that fuss but - "

"But what?"

"You meant so much to me. I was so happy with you ..." The words wouldn't come out of the stable from which they'd pranced so readily to take Susan into a world of fantasy; I knew they were there, they were the groomed and saddled horses waiting to take us away from lies and loneliness, from the humiliation of the hired evening suit and the whiskies flung at me like hot pennies. But it wasn't the time yet.

"I might have found someone else," she said.

"Oh God, no." But I wasn't really frightened; I was sure she'd sensed the unspoken words too.

"I haven't. I love the cool way you assume that I've just been sitting here waiting for you to crook your little finger. You take too much for granted."

"All right then. I suppose I was a fool to expect you to forgive me - "

"Wait. I'll be at the St. Clair. About nine. I must go now. George is coming down."

"But it's past ten," I said stupidly.

She laughed. "You're incredible, darling. Goodbye."