John Braine - Room at the Top

"You've had enough," the landlord repeated. I scowled at him. There was no reason why I shouldn't have walked out; but my feet seemed bolted to the floor.

"I'll buy you one, dear," one of the pansies said. He had dyed hair of a metallic yellow and smelled of geraniums. "I think you're awfully mean, Ronnie." He smiled at me, showing a mouthful of blindingly white false teeth. "You're not doing anything wrong, are you, dear?"

"You'll get yourself into trouble," the landlord said.

"Yes, please ," the pansy said, and they all giggled in unison. I let him buy me a double brandy, and then asked him what he'd have. It was tonic-and-lemon; pansies only use pubs for picking up boy friends. They don't booze themselves, any more than you or I would if surrounded by bed-worthy women who might be had for the price of a few drinks.

"My name's George," he said. "What's yours, handsome?"

I gave him the name of the Superintendent Methodist Minister of Warley, who'd Struck Out Fearlessly Against Immorality (meaning sex) in last week's Clarion .

"Lancelot," he said. "I shall call you Lance. It suits you. Isn't it a funny thing, how you can tell just what a boy's like from his first name? Will you have another brandy, Lance?"

I went on drinking at his expense until five minutes to three, then slipped out on the pretence of a visit to the Gents'. Then I bought some peppermints at a chemist's and sat in a news theatre until half past five. Joseph Lampton was doing the sensible thing, keeping out of harm's way until the rum and the beer and the brandy settled down; and Joseph Lampton was keeping a barrier of warmth and darkness and coloured shadows between himself and pain. I came out into the acid daylight with that headachy feeling that matinees always induce; but I'd stopped thinking about Alice and I was walking steadily.

I went into a café and ate a plateful of fish-and-chips, bread and butter, two queer-tasting cream cakes (that was the time that confectioners were using blood plasma and liquid paraffin), and a strawberry ice. Then I drank a pot of mahogany-coloured Indian tea. When I'd finished my third cigarette and there wasn't a drop of tea left in the pot I looked at my watch and saw that it was half past six. So I paid the bill and strolled out into the street; I was pretty well in control of myself by then, and it occurred to me that my becoming hopelessly drunk wasn't going to help anyone, least of all Alice. I'd go home - for Warley, after all, was my home, I'd chosen it myself - and go to bed with a hot-water bottle and a couple of aspirins. I wasn't Alice's keeper; let George take over whatever guilt there was to bear. Then I saw Elspeth.

She stood in my path, a henna-haired, tightly corseted old woman swaying slightly on her three-inch heels. I had never seen her look such a wreck; her face was so bedizened with powder, rouge, and lipstick, all in shades meant for the stage, that only her red-rimmed eyes were human.

"You pig," she said. "You low rotten pimp. You murdering little - " she glared up at me - "ponce. Are you happy now, you bastard? Got rid of her nicely, didn't you?"

"Let me go," I said. "I didn't want her to die."

She spat in my face.

"You can't punish me anymore," I said. "I'll punish myself. Now for Christ's sake leave me alone. Leave us both alone."

Her face changed; tears began to furrow the make-up. She put her skinny hand on mine; it was dry and hot. "I phoned this morning and they told me," she said. "I knew what had happened. Oh Joe, how could you do it? She loved you so much, Joe, how could you do it?"

I shook off her hand and walked off quickly. She made no attempt to follow me, but stood looking sadly at me, like a young wife watching a troopship leave harbour. I half ran through the maze of side streets off the city centre, making my way to the working-class quarter round Birmingham Road. Birmingham Road, if you keep on for about a hundred and fifty miles, does eventually take you to Birmingham; that was another reason for my wanting to become really drunk. All the voyages of the heart ended in a strange city with all the pubs and the shops shut and not a penny in your pocket and the train home cancelled without notice, cancelled for a million years - Leave us alone , I'd said to Elspeth; but who was us ? Myself and a corpse, a corpse that would soon be in the hands of the undertaker - a little rouge, a little wax, careful needlework, white silk bandages over the places past repair, and we wouldn't be ashamed to face anyone. I was the better-looking corpse; they wouldn't need to bury me for a long time yet.

It was the trains and the warehouses which forced the drill against the decay inside me. Each time a tram ground and swayed past me, missing unconcerned pedestrians by inches, I saw Alice under the wheels, bloody and screaming; and I wanted to be there with her, to have the guilt slashed away, to stop the traffic, to make all the bovine pay-night faces sick with horror. I didn't mind the other traffic, I don't know why; and I don't know why I thought of such an irrelevant kind of death. Nor why I didn't dare look at the warehouses. There was one with a new sign - Umpelby and Dickinson, Tops and Noils, Est. 1855 - that still gives me bad dreams. It had sixty-three dirty windows and four of the raised letters on those adjacent the main office were missing. Umpelb and D kinso are the three most terrible words that I have ever seen. I think now that I was frightened because the warehouses didn't care about what had happened to Alice; but why did I hate the innocent friendly trains?

I went on for about a mile, going farther and farther from the main road, but still with the sound of the trains grinding in my ears. It was a fine evening for the time of the year, with an unseasonably soapy warmth trickling along the mean little streets; most of the house doors were open and the people were standing inside them, just standing, saying nothing, looking at the black millstone grit and the chimneys and the dejected little shops. It was Friday and soon they'd go out and get drunk. At this moment they were pretending that it was Monday or even Thursday and they hadn't any money and they'd be forced to sit in the living room among the drying nappies looking at their wife's pasty face and varicose legs and hating the guts of the bastard in the next street who'd won a cool hundred on a five-shilling accumulator; then they'd stop pretending and gloat over their spending-money, at least three quid -

I stopped and leaned against a lamppost because I couldn't go on any longer. I should have gone into the country. You can walk in the country without wanting to vomit, and you're not hurt because the trees and the grass and the water don't care because you can't expect them to, they were never concerned with love; but the city should be full of love, and never is.

A policeman walked past, and gave me a hard inquiring look. Five minutes later he walked past again; so there was nothing else to do but go into the nearest pub. I went into the Bar first, where the customers mostly seemed to be Irish navvies; even when they weren't talking, they gave an impression of animated violence. I was out of place there, as they would have been out of place at the Clarendon, and they knew it. I sensed their resentment with a deep enjoyment. It was what I needed, as satisfyingly acrid as cheap shag; I took half my pint of bitter at one gulp, looking with a derisive pity at the stupid faces around me - the faces of, if they were lucky, my future lorry drivers and labourers and warehousemen.

I drank another pint. It changed taste several times: bitter, scented, sour, watery, sweet, brackish. My head was full of an oily fog that forced its way up through my throat, the pressure increasing until it seeped into my eyes, and the chairs and the mirrors and the faces and the rows of bottles behind the bar blurred together into a kind of pavane on the slowly heaving floor. The bar had a brass rail, and I clung to it tightly, taking deep breath after deep breath until the floor, under protest like a whipped animal, stayed quiet.