John Braine - Room at the Top

"My God," I said disgustedly, "don't turn moral on me. He can well afford it."

"That's not the point, you fool. If she'd do it to him, she'd do it to you."

I rose quickly. "I ought to hit you." I felt sick and murderous; the blood was drumming in my ears and there was a nasty sugary taste in my mouth.

Charles smiled. "Don't, Joe. It wouldn't help, believe me. Besides, you know perfectly well that it's true."

I didn't answer him, but walked round the room as if taking an inventory for the bailiffs: Windsor chairs, horsehair sofa, scrubbed deal table, a radio with a separate receiver and amplifier, a big Gramophone cabinet, a glass-fronted bookcase.

"Who owns the place?" I asked.

"An actor. Friend of Roy's. He's working for once, so he thought he might as well sublet the place. Why do you ask?"

"I wondered. It has an odd feeling at times. Cold."

"It's supposed to be haunted. This is the Black Magic area. Not that you'll have noticed. You'll have been too much under her spell."

I poured myself a cup of tea and lifted it to my lips with both hands. Roy began to snore, his snortings and rumblings competing with the steady hiss of the Aladdin lamp.

"A man of twenty-six can marry a girl of sixteen," Charles said. "The only reaction will be one of envy. Look at all these society weddings: grooms of thirty and thirty-five and brides of nineteen and under. And all these elderly film stars buy dewy-eyed young brides, too. Sometimes a man marries an older woman for her money - people call him nasty names but as long as he's got the money why should he care? In our class we marry women of our own age, which I suppose is the most decent arrangement. But you want to make the worst of both worlds. You want to marry an older woman who hasn't any money. It would be bad enough if she were unmarried; but in addition to everything else you'll be dragged through the midden of the divorce courts."

"He has a mistress," I said. "They only live together for the sake of appearances."

"God give me patience! He has a lot more money than you, chum, and he's a lot brighter. He won't be caught out whatever he does. Did you enjoy your nude bathing with her, by the way?"

"I never told you that."

"You haven't told me much at all. That's why I know that you're serious about her. I was given a full report of your activities on the beach, right down to the last sigh. In the village pub yesterday. Such an ancient gaffer he was too. Her only had a red bathing cap on , he said. Her even took that off . You certainly cheered his declining years; he went blue in the face with excitement when he remembered it."

"Apart from making me feel mucky all over," I said slowly, "what does all this add up to?"

"You're very dense tonight. If Mr. Aisgill wanted a divorce, he could afford detectives to trace you here. That would be enough in itself, but for good measure they'd ferret out the old boy too. Can't you imagine it? Can't you imagine the story in the Sunday papers? Face facts, Joe. You couldn't bear to be shown up like that. You don't belong to the class that thrives on scandal. You'd have your heart broken." He looked away from me and said in a low voice, "And you'd break the hearts of a lot of other people. People who don't wish you anything but good."

I tried to think of Alice just as the person I loved, the one with whom I could be kind and tender and silly, the one whom I was certain of to the last breath, the one who'd tear her heart out for me to eat if I wanted it; but all I could remember was the lifted skirt on the sofa where Roy now lay snoring, the soft naked body on the beach where we'd bathed that morning; I could only remember pleasure, easy pleasure, and that wasn't enough to set against his words.

"And what about Susan?" he asked.

"That's all over. You know perfectly well that it's all over."

"I don't. You've made no attempt to get her back."

"It wouldn't be any use." I yawned. "I'm tired." I got up and stretched myself. "The floor's steady. We've drunk ourselves sober."

"Never mind that. Look. Joe, I don't often ask you a favour. This isn't for me, either. It's for you. Promise me to write to Susan."

"Gosh, isn't it hot?" Susan said.

We were lying in a clearing in the bracken above the Folly; the afternoon sun beat down upon us like a pleasurable peine forte et dure .

" You shouldn't feel hot," I said, looking at her off-the-shoulder blouse and cotton skirt. "You've nothing on."

" Wicked!" she said, and pulled up the blouse till it covered her shoulders. "Happy now? Joety happy now his Susan back?"

I pulled her blouse off her shoulders again. I kissed each shoulder gently. "Happy now. Only happy now I'm with you."

Women over thirty look younger at dusk or by candlelight; a girl nineteen looks younger, childish almost, in the hard glare of the midday sun: at that moment Susan looked no more than fourteen. Her lipstick had been kissed away, her powder had disappeared; her lips were still red, her skin flawless.

"It was a lovely letter," she said. "Oh Joe, I was so miserable until I got it. It was the best surprise I've ever had in my whole life."

Charles had helped me to write it, after a long argument, in the course of which he'd called me, among other things, a sex-besotted moron and an unsuccessful gigolo. "There now," he'd said when I signed it, "that should bring the silly bitch running back with the lovelight in her eyes. You can always depend upon your Uncle Charles."

Indeed I could; and there was Susan to prove it. I'd been back from Dorset a week and she'd only just returned from Cannes; she'd phoned me the minute she'd read the letter. The sour smoky smell of the bracken caught at my throat; I raised myself on my elbow and looked down at Warley in the valley below. I could see it all: the Town Hall with the baskets of flowers above the entrance, the boats on the river at Snow Park, the yellow buses crawling out of the station, the big black finger of Tebbut's Mills in Sebastopol Street, the pulse of traffic in Market Street with its shops whose names I could recite in a litany - Wintrip the jeweller with the beautiful gold and silver watches that made my own seem cheap, Finlay the tailor with the Daks and the Vanteila shirts and the Jaeger dressing gowns, Priestly the grocer with its smell of cheese and roasting coffee, Robbins the chemist with the bottles of Lenthéric after-shave lotion and the beaver shaving brushes - I loved it all, right down to the red-brick front of the Christadelphian reading room and the posters outside the Coliseum and Royal cinemas, I couldn't leave it. And if I married Alice I'd be forced to leave it. You can only love a town if it loves you, and Warley would never love a co-respondent. I had to love Warley properly too, I had to take all she could give me; it was too late to enjoy merely her warm friendship, a life with a Grade Six girl perhaps, a life spent in, if I were lucky, one of the concrete boxes of houses on the new Council estate. People could be happy in those little houses with their tiny gardens and one bathroom and no garage. They could be happy on my present income, even on a lot less. But it wasn't for me; if the worst came to the worst, I would accept it sooner than not live in Warley at all, but I had to force the town into granting me the ultimate intimacy, the power and privilege and luxury which emanated from T'Top.

"Joe," said Susan. "You're very naughty. You're not listening."

"I am, honey," I said. "It wasn't a lovely letter, though. I was too agitated when I wrote it. I was frightened that you'd recognise the writing and throw it away. I haven't had a happy moment since you told me it was all over between us."

"You promised me never to see Alice again. Have you told her?"