John Braine - Room at the Top

He took out a gold cigarette-case and offered me one.

"No, thanks."

"You're sensible. Bad habit before meals. It's the only thing you are sensible about; in all other respects you've been a bloody fool."

I felt myself going red in the face. "If that's all you wanted to see me about, there's no point in me staying."

"Don't be any dafter than you can help. I've a proposition for you. Anyway - " he gave me one of his unexpectedly charming smiles, the hanging judge becoming a Santa Claus who would send absolutely every item on the list - "you might as well have lunch first. Not that you'll have a very good one; this place has gone down the hill since rationing started."

"No one here seems to be starving."

"Never said they were. Just that you couldn't get a decent meal here any more. This is the first time you've been to this club?"

"This or any Conservative club,' 'I said. "My father'd turn in his grave if he could see me."

"So would mine," he said, and winked. "So would mine, lad. But we're not bound by our fathers."

I looked at him coldly. The bluff friendliness approach no doubt came automatically; the fustian glove on the steel fist which, any moment now, I was going to be given a mouthful of. Why didn't he get it over with?

A waiter approached us and, with much bowing and scraping, led us to a table in the dining room. This was in the same style as the foyer; the linen was blindingly white and sailcloth-stiff and the cutlery heavy enough to be silver. It wasn't a room that any moderately good hotel couldn't duplicate; but there wasn't one chip, one scratch, one speck of dust anywhere, and you had the feeling that the waiters would, without flicking an eyelash, bring you anything that you wanted the way you wanted it, even, if you really insisted, their own ears and eyes, braised in sherry.

I was taking the first spoonful of game soup when Brown said casually: "I'm thinking of setting you up in business."

I nearly choked. "Are you serious?"

He scowled. "I didn't bring you here to play jokes. You heard what I said. You can name your figure." He leaned forward, his hands gripping the table. His nails were white at the top with pressure. "You're a clever young man. You don't want to stay at the Town Hall all your life, do you? Now's the time when accountants can do well for themselves. Supposing I lend you what's necessary to buy a partnership somewhere? I won't sell you a pup; and I'll even send business your way."

"There's a catch somewhere," I said.

"There is. I'll make you a rich man - a damned sight bet- ter off than you'll ever be in local government - on one condition." He paused; suddenly he looked old and sick. "Just one condition: you never see Susan again or communicate with her in any way."

"I'm to leave Warley too, I take it?"

"Yes, you're to leave Warley too." He wiped his forehead with a white silk handkerchief. "There's no need for you to think twice about it, is there? There's nothing for you if you don't take the offer. In fact, I'll go out of my way to make things unpleasant for you."

There was a roaring in my ears; I wanted to knock over the table and hit him until my arm had no more strength in it, then give him the boot give him the boot give him the boot - I drew a deep breath. "No. Definitely no. If you were a younger man, I'd knock you down, by God I would!" To my horror, I found my accent growing broader. "Ah reckon nowt to your bloody rotten offer. Ah'll dig ditches afore Ah'll be bought - " My voice stopped shaking as I regained my self-control. "Listen. You wouldn't understand, but I love Susan."

"I wouldn't understand," he said, dragging out the words. "I wouldn't understand about love."

"I'm not in love with her," I said. "I love her. She's absolutely the best girl I've ever met. I wanted to marry her the first moment I saw her; I didn't know who she was then, and I didn't care. Damn it, I'll bring it before the magistrates. She can stay at my home if you throw her out. The magistrates won't refuse us permission to marry, and even if they do, I'll kick up the hell of a row - "

"You'll do no such thing, Joe," he said quietly.

"Why won't I?"

"Because you're marrying her. With my consent. Right quick."

I looked at him with my mouth open.

He'd regained his normal floridity now, and was actually smiling. I could only gape at him.

"Finish your soup," he said. "There's many folk 'ud be glad of that and you're letting it grow cold."

I spooned it up obediently as a child. He looked at me with a bristling kindliness.

"Why did you make me that offer?" I asked.

"I wanted to be sure you were right for her. Mind you, it would have been a good investment anyway. You're a bright lad."

I remembered something that Reggie had said on the evening of the Carstairs party. "You've done this before, haven't you?"

"She was only sixteen," he said, almost apologetically. "He was a clerk at the works. Fancied himself as a writer. And a fortune hunter. I got him a job with an advertising firm. It wasn't anything - just calf love. He caved in straightaway. If you just spoke rough to that chap, he was licking your boots the next moment. But that's of no importance. The first thing is to fix the wedding date."

"You've been against us marrying right from the start," I said, "and you want us to get married quickly ... I still can't see why."

"The reason's very simple. Yes, I'm glad you've the grace to blush."

"But why didn't she tell me?"

Brown looked at the chicken the waiter had just brought him. "Chicken again," he grumbled. "I'll be turning into one soon. Well, Joe, she didn't tell you because she didn't want you to wed her just out of a sense of duty. And I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to wed her as a financial proposition. And why the hell should I present you with a gun to hold at my head?"

My respect for him increased. And then I was seized with the fact of sharing life, all life, of being in the main current - everyone talks about the joys of motherhood, but they say very little about the joys of fatherhood, when you feel an immense animal tenderness towards a woman; the Bible puts it exactly right when it talks of your bowels yearning towards someone.

"You mean that you'd let her have the baby and say nothing to me?"

"I'd sooner have that happen than have her miserable for the rest of her life."

"Susan with my son," I said, and smiled. I was dizzy with happiness. It was a happiness as wholesome as honey on the comb, I was a man at last. Instead of having the book snatched from me halfway I was reading in to the next chapter.

"You've nothing to grin about," Brown said roughly. "This isn't the way I'd planned to have my daughter wed." His eyes turned opaque as mercury and his voice had a knuckleduster menace. "Some fathers have sent their daughters away to - nursing homes. It's not too late for that."

"She wouldn't consent," I said in agony. "You couldn't do it either, you couldn't murder your grandchild. I can't believe that anyone would be so rotten. I'll take her away with me tonight, I swear I will."

"You don't know what I can do," he said. "I can get my story in first, and I can handle her better than you can."

"You try it. You try it. I'll take the matter to the police before I let you do it."

"I believe you would." He seemed pleased about it. "I really believe you would. You're an awkward customer, aren't you?"

"Being decent isn't the same thing as being awkward."

"True enough. I've no intentions of sending Susan away, in any case."

"Then what did you give me such a fright for?"

"Wanted to see what you were made of," he said with his mouth full.

"I suppose that's why you warned me off Susan, too?"

"I never warned you off Susan," he said, helping himself to roast potatoes. "My wife had a word with Hoylake at a church social and he took it upon himself to tell you to keep away from her. That is, as much as he ever tells anyone anything. Proper Town Hall type, that chap."