John Braine: Room at the Top

I was a little surprised that Mrs. Thompson should so prominently display the picture of her dead son; I wouldn't have thought that she could have borne to be reminded of him. Then I remembered something that Charles had said: "Zombies always pass away or cross the Great Divide or go into the sunset. And they lose people like a parcel or a glove. And they can't bear to talk of It or to be reminded of It. They're dead already, that's why."

Mrs. Thompson wasn't a zombie; she'd be able to look at her dead son without hysteria. The room hadn't the necessary atmosphere for hysteria anyway. It was a drawing room furnished in what seemed to me to be very good taste with Sheraton-type furniture, thin-legged and graceful but not spindly or fragile, and pale yellow and cream wallpaper in an arrangement of colour rather than a pattern. There was a radio-gramophone and a big open bookcase and a grand piano; the piano top was bare, a sure sign that it was used as a musical instrument and not an auxiliary mantelpiece. The white bearskin rug on the parquet floor was, I suppose, strictly Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but it fitted in, added a necessary touch of frivolity, even a faint sexiness like scented cachous.

I looked at Maurice's photograph again. It reminded me of someone I knew. I was irritated with myself for not remembering; it was as if a catalogue card had been misplaced of a book which I knew was in stock. It seemed very important that I should recall the likeness; but the harder I tried, the more neutral and anonymous his face became. I gave up the attempt and went upstairs to unpack.

Cedric Thompson stood a good three inches above me, and I'm five foot eleven in my socks. He was very thin, though. I don't think that he could have weighed more than a hundred and forty pounds. He had a very deep, rumbling voice - it seemed too powerful for his body. His suit, a clerical grey worsted, had that close, heavy weave, that elasticity disciplined only by first-rate tailoring, which isn't bought for very much under thirty guineas; but there was chalk dust on the right sleeve and both the middle and the top buttons of his jacket were fastened, pulling it out of shape. And his red-and-blue Fair Isle cardigan and brown checked shirt, though smart enough in themselves, didn't go with the suit. My impression wasn't so much that he was wearing the wrong clothes because he thought that they looked nice, but that he just put on whatever was nearest to hand.

"I'm so glad that you're not a teacher," he said. "They never seem real somehow ... An accountant's is a sensible yet glamorous occupation. He made Homer sound like balance sheets and balance sheets like Homer ... "

"I saw it in London," I said.

"Oh, theatergoing's all right. It's reading that you should beware of. Healthy young men shouldn't read. They finish by becoming broken-winded ushers."

We were sitting in the dining room having lunch. Cedric was at the head of the table carving the chicken but he'd forgotten what he was doing and his carving knife was still poised in the air.

"Cedric," said Mrs. Thompson firmly, "stop practising your Literary Society paper on Joe and give him some chicken. He's been travelling since six this morning." She smiled. "With that knife flourished so menacingly it looks more as if you intended to eat him than give him something to eat."

We all burst out laughing. It was one of those remarks which aren't funny in black and white but irresistibly comic in actuality; our shared laughter had the effect of drawing me into their circle.

As Cedric was spooning out some mashed potatoes for me, Mrs. Thompson stopped him. "Oh dear, I'd forgotten. Joe, you do like onions, don't you?"

"They're my favourite vegetable."

"Splendid. These are my speciality - potatoes seethed in milk with chopped onions."

"All virtuous and handsome and intelligent men like onions," Cedric said. "But only paragons among women like onions." He forgot to serve the potatoes. "It was when I first discovered that Joan liked them that I decided to marry her. We used to go for long walks in the Dales and live on onions and cheese washed down with mild-and-bitter."

Mrs. Thompson's eyes sparkled and she began to giggle. "Remember what Father said? He thought we smelt so strongly that we'd have to marry each other because no one else would take us."

We all burst into laughter again.

When we took our coffee into the drawing room and I was lighting a cigarette for Mrs. Thompson, I found out whom Maurice reminded me of. Cedric suddenly stopped in the middle of what he was saying and looked at me as if he'd just noticed that I had three eyes.

"How could I have failed to see it?" he asked me angrily. "Don't move, Joe." He circled me as if inspecting a sculpture. "You have fair hair, that's what misled me. I wouldn't have believed it ... the same eyes, the same bone structure, the same expression - "

"I noticed it straightaway," Mrs. Thompson said. "He's the image of Maurice."

I looked at the photograph above the mantelpiece and saw my own face for the first time. It shook me for a moment: I was jerked into that zone of unreality one would inhabit for seconds at a time in the RAF, watching a Wimpey scarcely a wing tip away disintegrate into rather gaudy green and orange flames, knowing that the men inside, with whom one had been drinking a few hours ago, were being fried in their own fat like bacon.

"I'm sorry, Joe," Mrs. Thompson said. "Talking about you as if you weren't there - do forgive us." She put her hand on mine. "You know, we miss him very much at times. But we haven't built a kind of shrine to him, we're not always thinking of him. And we don't mind being reminded of him - that sounds mixed but you know what I mean."

"I feel like that about Father and Mother," I said to my own surprise.

Cedric was looking at me anxiously. He had a bony gentle face with bushy eyebrows and thinning black hair. "I'm an insensitive, crass, boorish, ill-mannered old fool," he said. "I do apologise if I embarrassed you, Joe."

"I'm not embarrassed," I said, and smiled at him. There was a silence, but not an uncomfortable one. We'd engaged top gear, as it were; the three of us were together in the best relationship possible to a young man and a middle-aged couple. We were on a basis of intimacy - if the Sunday papers haven't dirtied the word beyond use - because they were the sort of people with whom one couldn't live on any other basis. I had enough sense, though, to be aware that I mustn't presume too much upon the intimacy, that though we were in top gear the journey had only just begun.

After Cedric had returned to school, I went to my room to lie down. I hadn't slept well the night before and, having eaten a heavy lunch, was agreeably drowsy. I took off my shoes and jacket, put on my dressing gown (more for effect than for warmth) and settled down on the divan.

I didn't drop off straightaway but lingered deliberately on the borders of sleep, the taste of chicken and lemon pie and Turkish coffee still on my tongue, speculating what they'd be like at the Town Hall and particularly what kind of boss Hoylake the Treasurer would be. I didn't begin work till Monday and today was Friday so there was plenty of time for investigation ... The rain had stopped; it was very quiet in the house and I could hear Mrs. Thompson in the kitchen down stairs. It didn't disturb me, it didn't hold me back from the long smooth slope down which I was gliding into sleep; it was as if every sound - the wood fire's friendly crackling, the tinkle of crockery, the splash of running water - were invented especially for my pleasure.

I awoke at three, wondering for a moment where I was. Outside the sun was shining, pale but warm, the colour of Demerara rum. There was a blackbird perched on the cherry tree, sleek and glistening as if it had been bathed in oil, its beak the same clear primary yellow as the cup I'd drunk my coffee from that morning. It started singing as I looked out of the window, ending each phrase abruptly as if out of breath, a curiously amateur effect.