John Braine - Room at the Top

"No more of this prattle of beauty and sweetness," said Cedric impatiently. "I lust for strong drink. We'll see you at the Clarence if you're going backstage. Bob."

He went out into the street, his scarf tucked into a pocket of his raincoat and trailing almost on the floor. He was talking at the top of his voice. "No life, no vigour, no poetry!" I heard him say as he went out of sight, Mrs. Thompson walking sedately beside him with her head cocked slightly to one side, an attentive but slightly amused expression on her face.

"You really are smitten, aren't you, Joe?" Eva said as we walked down the passage behind the foyer.

"I suppose she's already attached to someone," I said gloomily.

"She's not engaged," Bob said. "But watch out for Jack Wales. Bags of money, about seven foot tall and a beautiful RAF moustache."

I laughed. "I eat those types for breakfast," I said. "Besides, my admiration is purely artistic." Even to me it didn't sound very convincing, but I felt myself being pushed into the position of the poor man at the gate, the humble admirer from afar.

The dressing room was already crowded when we reached it. It was a narrow room with a concrete floor and a long table with lighted mirrors above it. It smelled agreeably of make-up and tobacco and well-fed, well-washed bodies.

Susan had just taken off her make-up and was wiping the remaining cream from her face. I noticed with a shock of pleasure how white and delicate her skin was.

"This is Joe Lampton," Eva said. "He's come all the way from Dufton. He liked the show very much."

"Particularly you," I said. Her hand was childishly warm and soft and I would have liked to have held it far longer, but ineffectual contacts like that were Zombie habits - trying to make a dinner out of hors d'oeuvre - so I didn't extend the handshake for more than a second.

"I'm not awfully good, really," she said. I was close to her but I had to strain to catch the words. Susan always lowered her voice when she felt shy.

"If I'd known, I'd have brought you some flowers," I said. Her dark lashes came down over her eyes and she looked away from me for a moment. It was the kind of gesture which only a virgin could have got away with; because it was so natural and unstudied it moved me almost to tears.

"If you'd known what?"

"If I'd known you'd be so beautiful."

Her blouse had a button too many unfastened. She saw me looking at her, but made no effort to fasten the button. The revelation of some kind of promise, though it hadn't, I was sure, been deliberate.

"Coming over for a drink, honey?" Eva asked her.

"I'd love to, but Jack and I are promised home for supper."

"Bring Jack too," Bob said. "I want to explain the function of the cyclorama. His dawn came up like thunder, which is splendid for Burma but not the Home Counties."

"You're horrid," Susan said. "It was a perfectly sweet dawn." She spoke as if the dawn were a small cuddly animal.

They began to argue about it, and then Jack came in. I knew it was he straightaway. The big RAF moustache was worn with the right degree of nonchalance; he'd been an officer, it was an officer's adornment. I never grew one myself for precisely that reason: if you wear one and haven't been commissioned, people look upon you as if you were wearing a uniform or decorations you weren't entitled to. What annoyed me the most about him was that he stood four inches above me and was broader across the shoulders. He had an amiable, rugged face, the Bulldog Drummond type, and no doubt, I thought viciously, well aware of it.

"Hello there, Sue," he said. He looked at his watch. "One nine three oh precisely. Operation Supper to begin." He laughed, well pleased with his own facetiousness. "Lord, what a pong," he said. "Don't know how you stand it, Sue."

He looked at me sharply. "This is Joe Lampton," Bob said. "Jack Wales, Joe Lampton. You should have something in common. You were both intrepid birdmen, weren't you?"

Jack laughed and put out a hamlike hand. He tried to outgrip me but he couldn't manage it.

"Speaking for myself," he said. "I'm glad it's over. Flying's fun, but being shot at is most disconcerting."

"Too true," I said. "Not that the fun of flying didn't pall upon me eventually."

"What blasé young men you are," Eva said. "Can we ask you to have a drink, Jack?"

"Terribly sorry," he said, "but you know what a stickler for punctuality Papa Brown is. Some other time, we'd be delighted. Or rather, I'd be delighted - " he winked heavily at Eva - "we'll leave the others behind. Just you and me, eh?"

We were all listening to him as if he were royalty explaining graciously that it was impossible, owing to other engagements, to open the bazaar but perhaps some other time ... When he and Susan left there'd be an emptiness in the room, they'd be travelling into warmth and luxury and gaiety and we, somehow, would be left to a cold Monday drabness.

I didn't add my pleadings to Eva's; though I had an intuition that Susan would have liked to go with us.

"Tha doesn't have to coax me to sup some ale, lass," I said to Eva, deliberately dropping into broad Yorkshire to counterattack Wales's genuine officer's accent, as carelessly correct as his tweed suit. "Coom on." I turned to Susan, giving her my best smile, which I've had to practise a great deal because my teeth, though passable, only remain so by reason of a yearly agony at the dentist's. I would have liked to have teeth as white as my rival's (for so I had already thought of him) but a smile with the mouth closed and the eyes wrinkled a little at the corners can be just as effective with women as the showing of the teeth; or at least so I thought at that moment, seeing her blush. "I'll remember the flowers next time," I said.

"Thank you," she said. Her eyes were shining; I knew that this was due to excess moisture, possibly in her case to the irritation from too generously applied mascara, but it made her look like a child at Christmas. I wondered if she got many compliments from the big lummox standing possessively beside her.

When we were outside in the street Eva gave me another mock-playful blow in the chest.

"You're a very direct sort of a person, aren't you?"

"I always go straight for what I want."

Bob grinned maliciously. "Jack didn't like your promise of flowers. I detected signs of jealousy."

"He's not engaged to her."

"Ah, but he's known her all his life. Childhood sweethearts and all that."

"How pretty," I said.

Two months after, I was in the Public Library trying to explain elementary bookkeeping to the Chief Assistant, a dapper little man whom I'd met at the Thespians. He'd made a dreadful mess of his Cash Deposits book; such a mess that for a moment I suspected him of teeming and lading. Then I discovered that he'd overpaid by ten shillings out of his own pocket. Like a great many people who are very bright in other directions he lost all his wits when confronted with a column of figures; it had apparently never occurred to him that the deficit might be due to a simple error of entry.

"I'm no good at this sort of thing," he said querulously when I'd finally straightened the matter. "I'm spending an hour a day on these damned books. Seems a bit of a waste. Not to mention your time."

"That old boy's going to explode soon," I said, watching a white-haired man trying to explain what he wanted to one of the junior assistants, a thin youth, who'd already acquired the librarian's stoop. "Look, Reggie, I'll see Hoylake about the C. and D. There must be some easier way."

Either we could cut down the numbers of different receipts, I thought, or else take over the whole business ourselves, collecting the money and entering it up each morning. Whatever my suggestions were, Hoylake would listen to them. He was a great improvement over the Efficient Zombie. Even now, I don't like to remember the Efficient Zombie. He had a large head with short oiled hair and an absolutely immobile face. It wasn't dignified or even stony, it was dead; he seemed to take all the oxygen out of the air around him. I managed to flannel him into the belief that I approved of his particular brand of efficiency, and he liked me as much as he could like anyone. But working under him was always a strain.