John Braine - Room at the Top

"Hush now, silly. You'll see me again. You'll see me again often. For the rest of our lives, remember?"

"Do you love me? Even now, you don't have to lie about it. Do you really want me to divorce him?" Her eyes were ugly with weeping, her clothes had lost their bandbox appearance; I suddenly remembered the cool well-dressed Alice I'd met that first evening at the Thespians, and felt like a murderer.

"I swear it." I looked straight into her eyes. "I do love you, Alice. I'll love you till the day I die. You're my wife now. There'll never be anyone else. I'll be with you every inch of the journey."

"There's nothing more I can say to you, Joe." She started to make up her face briskly and expertly. "Do something for me before the train comes, will you, darling? Get me some cigarettes and some matches. And walk away when I board the train. Walk away and don't look back. And think of me all the time. Keep on thinking of me."

After I'd seen her off on the London platform of the odd little station - far too clean and green and white, not like a real railway station at all - I went into a hotel for a drink, having an hour to kill before Charles and Roy came. Under the blazing sun the whole town seemed dedicated to pleasure. It wasn't the pleasure of Blackpool or Margate or Scarborough, a happiness set apart from the workaday. It was a highlighting of a pattern of living that was already crackling with comfort like a five-pound note: the people round me in the thickly carpeted hotel bar were enjoying themselves because for a while they hadn't to worry about briefs and contracts and reports, not because they were drinking shorts before a slap-up lunch. The de luxe bar and the iced Pimm's and the light worsted suit and the silk tie and Panama hat were part of my holiday, just as the taxi to and from Cumley had been; but such things were no treat - only necessities - to the higher grades. I finished the Pimm's and beckoned to the white-jacketed waiter; he came over immediately, so I knew that he'd accepted me as being the kind of customer the management liked. If you want to discover which grade people think you belong to, go to any cocktail bar when it's crowded and make a note of how quickly you're served.

I met Charles and Roy after lunch. Charles was wearing biscuit-coloured linen slacks, white and brown shoes, a bright red shirt, and a white cap with a green visor. Beneath the cap his face was brick-red. Roy, a tall and stooping young man who worked at the library in the borough adjacent to Charles, was wearing blue suede shoes, blue linen slacks, an orange T-shirt, and white sunglasses. Both were smoking cigars.

"My God," I said, "you look like mad film directors."

"That's the idea," Charles said. "A dozen former virgins are now awaiting contracts."

"It's easy," Roy said. "You just say, Now be nice to me and I'll be nice to you, little girl." He scrutinised me slowly and shook his head. He had a Lancashire comedian's face, long and immobile, with deep furrows that gave the impression of a sardonic amiability. "You look tired, Joseph. No doubt you have been working your fingers to the bone preparing our little home for us."

"It's not his fingers he's been working to the bone," Charles said. "Examine that natty suit, the dazzling white shirt and, by God, the Panama. Observe the bags under his eyes, the look of lascivious satisfaction - he hasn't been thinking of us at all these last four days, Roy. Do you know why he's got those knife-edge creases in his pants? Because today's the first time he's worn any since he came to Dorset."

"You've not even admired our passion wagon yet," Roy said.

It was a prewar Hudson Terraplane with a gangsterish raffishness about it. "We hired it from Roy's uncle at cut rates," Charles said. "You know, the jovial type you met in the Smoke at Christmas."

"Not so bloody jovial," Roy said. "She's killed three men. Nunky thought he was very clever when he bought her cheap and patched her up, but he can't sell her. Mean old blighter, the bloodstains are still on the front seat."

Charles clapped me on the back and thrust a cigar in my mouth.

"There now, picture of the perfect English gent. Well fed, slightly drunk, and in the last stage of sexual exhaustion." He looked at his watch. "Quick one before they close, or a slow wallow at the cottage?"

"The cottage," I said. I sat beside him in front, and Roy stretched himself out across the back seat.

"I'm engaged, did you know?" Charles scratched the side of his nose, a trick of his when he was embarrassed.

"It wouldn't be Julia?"

"That's right. She's a good girl. You really must meet her."

"It'll make her discontented. Mind you, I'm glad you've decided to settle down. You're too old for sleeping around. You've not kept your looks as well as I have. She's Grade One now?"

"All the grades are rolling into one. Never a dull moment."

I had a feeling of change, a change as inevitable and natural as the seasons, a tide that I should be moving with but wasn't.

"I've been earmarked for matrimony too." Roy said.

"Congratulations." A thought struck me. "You're not inviting them to the cottage, are you?"

"Calm yourself, boy. Mine is in Ireland and Roy's in Scotland."

"Our mothers-in-law don't trust us," Roy said.

"No wonder," Charles said, taking the gap between a farm wagon and an approaching motorbike at fifty. "Lucy was one of Roy's juniors. A sweet little girl of sixteen when she first came down - "

"Slow down," I said, "or I'll ruin the upholstery too. My God, what must you have been like on a jeep?"

"I was there with Errol Flynn on the day of victory. Driving over a causeway of Jap corpses. Mountbatten and Slim and the rest followed at a respectful distance. Beautiful Burmese girls smothered us with kisses and flowers and the Warner Brothers hovered overhead singing Te Deums ..."

The motorbike cut in on us, scraping the front wing with a fraction of an inch to spare. Charles shook his fist at him.

"You stupid bastard!" be yelled.

"I'll take over," I said. "Whenever you're at the wheel you forget that you're no longer in the glamorous East where you can mow 'em down in their hundreds and be let off with a caution."

"Caution be damned," Charles said. He stopped the car and moved over to make way for me. "A coolie cost me a hundred chips once."

"Imperialist brute," Roy said. "Men like you lost us the Empire." I started the car with a jerk, but I soon got the hang of it. The steering was low-geared and more than a trifle soggy but the engine had plenty of power and I found that I was enjoying myself. Charles and Roy started to sing "In Mobile," and I took my cigar out of my mouth and joined in the chorus.

In Mobile, in Mobile Here's a health to the drinking classes in Mobile When they've finished with their glasses -

I looked at the cigar and remembered that I'd given up smoking. The guilt began to work inside me again; but when we'd finished the song, I put the cigar back in my mouth. It was too good to waste.

Charles slapped me on the back. "Those sensitive features are set in a mask of pain. A tear quivers in those bloodshot blue eyes. Does our little ditty arouse memories of the time when you were an inordinate user of Brylcreem and never wore an overcoat even on the coldest days?"

"He's been like this all the way from London," Roy said. "He's grooming himself for Chief; he'll make some poor little squirt writhe under a flow of sarcasm one of these days."

"It might be you," Charles said. "After the usual remarks about the necessity for senior members of my staff setting an example etcetera, I shall get down to cases. Maidstone , I shall say, belching slightly after my lunch at the Savoy Grill, Maidstone, I can hardly believe it possible that a man occupying so high a position is unaware of the existence of the age of consent. It is of no avail to asseverate that the juvenile issues have considerably increased ..."