John Braine - Room at the Top

"Why didn't you say something to me?"

"Why should I? If you had owt about you, I knew you'd damn my eyes and go ahead. If you were gutless, you'd let yourself be frightened off by a few vague threats, and everyone'd be saved a lot of bother. The point is, lad, that a man in my position can't get to know a man in your position very well. So I let you sweat it out."

"Jack Wales didn't have to sweat it out," I said sulkily.

Brown chuckled. "You should have seen to it that your parents had more brass. I didn't make the world."

There was now the luxury of confirming the details of my good fortune, of admiring the pretty colours of the check. "There's one thing I don't understand," I said. "I thought that you had it all fixed between him and Susan. There was talk of a merger ..."

"There was nothing fixed and the merger had nowt to do with it. I'm not a sort of king, I don't give my daughter away to seal a bargain."

"Will this mess up the merger?"

"You've some peculiar notions about business, young man. I never for one moment thought seriously about joining forces with Wales. For one thing, I've been boss of my own works too long to relish being just another co-director; and for another, I don't like the way they're going. They're makbig money hand over fist, but anyone capable of counting up to ten can do that nowadays... However, I didn't bring you here to talk about the Wales family. I want you to leave the Town Hall as soon as you can."

"I've not qualified as a cost accountant yet, you know. I've only got the C.S. - "

He silenced me with a wave of his hand. "I judge people by what they do, not by little bits of paper. I've no time to go into much detail now, but what I need, and need damned quick, is someone to reorganise the office. There's the hell of a lot too much paper; it started during the war, when we took everyone we could get hold of, thinking we could always find use for them. I'm an engineer, I'm not interested in the administrative side. But I know what we can and what we can't afford."

"So I'm to be an efficiency expert?"

"Not quite. Don't like those chaps anyway; there's bad blood wherever they are. Alterations have to be made which are best made by a new man. That's all."

"I've a wife and family to support," I said. "How much salary?"

"Thousand to begin with. Nowt at all if you don't make a success of it. You can have one of the firm's cars; there's depots at Leeds and Wakefield you'll be visiting a good deal."

"It's too good to be true," I said, trying to look keen and modest and boyish. "I can't thank you enough."

"There's just one matter to be cleared up," he said. "And if you don't, then it's all off. You've been too bloody long about it already." He scowled. "God, you have a nerve. Whenever I think about it, I could break your neck."

He fell silent again; after a minute I couldn't take it any longer. "If you tell me what's wrong, I can do something about it," I said. "I can't read your mind."

"Leave off Alice Aisgill. Now. I'm not having my daughter hurt any more. And I'm not having my son-in-law in the divorce courts either. Not on account of an old whore like her."

"I've finished with her. There's no need for you to use that word."

He watched me through narrowed eyes. "I use words that fit, Joe. You weren't the first young man she's slept with. She's notorious for it - " I suddenly remembered, down to the last intonation, Eva's crack about Young Woodley - "there's not many likely lads haven't had a bit there. She has a pal, some old tottie that lends her a flat ... Jack Wales ..."

On a trip over Cologne the bomb aimer got a faceful of flak. I say a faceful because that takes the curse off it somehow; it was actually a bit of metal about two inches square that scooped out his eyes and most of his nose. He grunted when it happened, then he said: "Oh no. Oh no."

That is what I said when Brown spoke Jack Wales's name and, pressing his advantage home, went on to give chapter and verse.

There was a handshake, there was talk of a contract, there was tolerance - I've been young and daft myself - there was praise - You're the sort of young man we want. There's always room at the top - there was sternness - See her tomorrow and get it done with, I'll not have it put off any more - there was brandy and a cigar, there was a lift back to Warley in the Bentley; and I said yes to everything quite convincingly, to judge from Brown's satisfied expression; but inside, like that sergeant until the morphine silenced him, all that I could say, again and again and again, was the equivalent of those two syllables of shocked incredulity.

The month was September, the time was eight o'clock, the weather was unsettled, with a sky mottled with indigo, copper, and tinges of oxblood red. The place was Elspeth's flat, the exact point of space from where I told her it was all over was the brown stain on the carpet in the lounge, just by the door into the corridor. I knew that stain well; I'd spilled some cherry brandy there one night before Christmas. By the time I'd finished telling Alice that I didn't love her, I could have drawn a coloured map of it and its surroundings, correct down to the last scroll of the silly little gilt chair next it.

I couldn't bring myself to look at her and I didn't want to come close to her. I did look at her, of course; she was wearing a black silk dress and a pearl necklace and a sapphire on her right hand which I'd not seen before. Her hands were clenched by her side, and the rouge which she had so carefully applied stood out in two patches on her cheeks. She wasn't wearing her usual lavender but something strong and musky with an animal smell in the background like a newly bathed tiger, if anyone were ever to bathe a tiger.

"So you've finished with me, Joe?" Her lips scarcely moved and she was breathing very quickly.

"I love Susan."

"That's very sensible of you."

"There's no need to be bitter."

"I'm not bitter. Only surprised. How quickly you've changed. How long is it since you - ?"

She described everything we'd done together in Dorset, using the simplest Anglo-Saxon words and talking with a cool, dry detachment.

"It hasn't left any mark on you, has it? It was only our bodies that did these things - your young one and my - my old one that's well past its best. Why don't you say it, Joe? I'm thirty-four and she's nineteen - you want someone young and strong and healthy. I don't mind, I should have expected it anyway, but why in God's name can't you be honest?"

"It isn't like that," I said wearily. "I did love you, but I can't now. Let's leave it at that."

I couldn't tell her about Jack Wales; it didn't seem important any longer. The knowledge that once she'd made love with him, him of all the people in the world, here on the very bed where I'd lain with her, had come between me and sleep all night; but now that I was with her it didn't matter, it was as dead as yesterday's newspaper. That she had let him make love to her had proved only her contempt for him; she'd used him in an idle hour - as a man might take a quick whisky when tired and depressed - and forgotten him. He was a trivial detail of a past era, dead millions of seconds Before Joe, just as my own dreary copulations in Dufton and Lincolnshire and Germany had been Before Alice.

"It wasn't wise for us to go on," I said. "It would have blown up in our faces anyway. Eva's found out about us, and it's only a matter of time before George does. He's too crafty to be found out himself - I'm going in no mucky divorce courts, and that's flat. And I'm not going to be thrown out of Warley either. What would we live on?"

Her mouth twisted. "You're a timid soul, aren't you?"

"I know which side my bread is buttered on," I said.