31st Of February (19 page)

When he reached the door of his room Anderson paused with one hand on the door handle, and then dramatically swung the door open with such violence that it struck the inside wall (but noiselessly, noiselessly). He saw then how he had been deceived, for a figure stood by the desk, back to him, and this figure also was wearing a duffle coat. Slowly, very slowly, the figure turned to face him, and Anderson saw, with a shock that was yet no surprise, the round face of Charlie Lessing. Lessing, too, was smiling, and he held in one hand, waving it with gentle mockery back and forth, a letter from Val. Even across the room Anderson could recognize the blue paper and the careless handwriting.

“You!” Anderson cried, and for the first time heard his own voice. “You, you. you!” Lessing stood there by the desk, waving the letter, smiling. His smile did not waver even when Anderson in a great spring across the room had him by the throat, forcing the hated face further and further away from him over the desk, gripping tighter and tighter the flexible round neck above which the gums still showed in a ghastly smile, while from the pink gullet came wild and agonized screams, while the eyeballs started outward and the throat screamed, while the face reddened and the throat screamed and screamed and screamed…

The screams echoed in his head long after he woke and lay staring at the ceiling in the half light of early morning. A nightmare, he thought; it was nothing but a nightmare; there was no reason to think badly of Molly or of Lessing because in a dream he had invested them with diabolical smiles. He straightened up in bed and saw that the hands of the alarm clock said half past five. On the floor lay Val’s photograph, out of its frame. He picked it up, put it by the bedside lamp, switched on the light and stared at it. The eyes looked lovingly back at him, the full mouth was smiling.

When one wakens after a nightmare, actuality may seem unreal. Anderson opened his eyes to see a patch of sunlight on the bed. His head ached violently and the skin of his face felt tight. The time by his alarm clock was twenty-five minutes to ten. This is another dream, he thought, and turned over in bed. But his head was still aching, the skin of his face still felt drawn. He stretched, yawned, closed his eyes, and then rolled over again to look at the clock. Twenty-five minutes to ten. He picked up the clock, and shook it, but it continued to tick. Had he forgotten to wind the alarm, or had it failed to wake him? The question was academic beside the fact that he was extremely late.

He jumped out of bed, washed hurriedly, applied Hey Presto to his face. In the dream, he thought, I felt nothing; it was as though my face were covered with varnish. Then when he removed the Hey Presto he felt none of the pricking or burning sensation that had accompanied previous applications – nothing except, perhaps, a slightly increased facial tension. It was not pleasant to have the dream pattern so nearly approached; fortunately his senses of touch and hearing appeared to be unimpaired. He had no time to discover whether his sense of taste was still functioning, because he left without eating breakfast. He put on a raincoat and his second-best black hat, and threw over his arm the overcoat collected at the party. When he had closed his own front door he remembered the Fletchleys. Elaine would be at
Woman Beautiful
by now, but he ought to apologize to Fletchley for the blow on the jaw. His wrist watch, however, said a quarter to ten. He decided to telephone later.

The sense of unreality stayed with him as he ran to the corner and jostled on to a bus. He stood; and there, sure enough, as in the dream, the person standing next to him held a newspaper in front of his face. The bus stopped abruptly and threw them against each other; Anderson, with a movement apparently involuntary, pushed at the newspaper and it was lowered immediately to reveal a petulant, small, indeterminately male face quite unknown to him. The journey continued without incident. Anderson jumped off the bus and ran across the road to the office. At the desk sat not duffled Molly O’Rourke but pneumatic Miss Detranter. She called to him, but Anderson, one hand raised in greeting, hurried down the corridor. At the door of his own room he paused with one hand on the handle, as he had paused in the dream. He flung open the door, and was surprised when it struck the inside wall with a crash. That was a surprise; but he received a shock that took him back to the dream when he saw Lessing standing by the desk. Lessing had his arm round a girl who was crying on his shoulder. He looked extremely uncomfortable, and on Anderson’s appearance said with relief: “Here he is.” He saw that the girl was Jean Lightley.

“Oh, Mr Anderson,” she said. “Oh Mr Anderson.” Her speech failed in a series of gasps.

Anderson took off his hat and raincoat and put the overcoat over a chair. The telephone rang. He moved over to pick it up and Jean Lightley called: “Don’t answer it.” She put her head back on Lessing’s shoulder.

“Listen,” Lessing said. “This is what’s happened. It’s pretty rough. Yesterday you wrote a stalling note to Bagseed about the drawings he’d sent back for correction. And you also wrote a fair stinker to old Crashaw. Well, somehow the letters got mixed up.” At these words Jean Lightley, who had shown signs of recovery, burst into great hiccoughing sobs. “Raper of Kiddy Modes has been on raising hell. That’s probably him on the line now.”

Anderson listened carefully to what Lessing was saying; and yet he could not forget that the villain of the dream was this same Lessing, spectacled, uncurious, amiable Lessing, who now looked at him with such friendly concern. The telephone rang again.

“You don’t seem very worried,” Lessing said. “I wonder if I’ve made it clear. Shall I take this call?”

With a supreme effort Anderson brought himself back to reality, this kind of reality, the reality of advertising and of holding down a good job. He put on even (but with what an effort, what an effort) the mask of language and of manner that had served him so well in the past. “I’ll handle it,” he said. “Get that weeping Jenny out of here. No, wait a minute; I want a copy of the letter I wrote to Crashaw.”

Jean Lightley removed the handkerchief from her face long enough to say: “It’s on the desk.” Then she ran wailing from the room. Lessing sat at one corner of the desk and swung his leg.

Bagseed’s voice was quaveringly severe. “Mr Arthur would like to speak to you. Please hold the line.” Anderson stared at Lessing’s foot. A voice like ice water dripped into the telephone, “Mr Anderson, this is Arthur Raper speaking.”

“How are you, Mr Raper,” Anderson said heartily. “A long time since I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you.”

The voice said politely: “That can be remedied. Perhaps you will make it convenient to come up and see me now…”

“Right, Mr Raper. I’m just making some inquiries about —”

The voice said: “Now, please, Mr Anderson.”

“I should like ten –” The line went dead. Lessing got up. He was plaintive. “I wanted to talk to you about Hey Presto. How’s the personal test doing? You look a bit funny.”

“What do you mean, funny?” He could feel the tightness of the skin round his cheekbones.

“Strained or something, I dunno. Are you going up now? Is there anything I can do to help out?”

“No, I don’t think so. Yes, there is.” Anderson remembered the Crunchy-Munch conference fixed for ten-thirty.

“Will you present those two Crunchy-Munch schemes instead of me?” Lessing nodded. “Strictly anonymous, you know. They don’t know anything about them yet.”

“Strictly anonymous,” Lessing said and winked. “But I shall do my best on my own behalf. I say, the Crunchy-Munch meeting won’t take long. There’s something on this morning at eleven-fifteen, Board Meeting or something. Rev’s saying nothing, but looking full of it. Maybe they’re going to give us all a raise.”

“Maybe.” Anderson put on his raincoat.

“I say,” Lessing’s curiosity seemed inexhaustible this morning. “That your coat on the chair?”

“Why?”

It looks uncommonly like one Greatorex wears, that’s all. Got a paint mark on the sleeve like his. Good luck. Don’t let Raper rape you.”

“Thanks,” Anderson went along to the secretaries’ office where Jean Lightley sat red-eyed, staring at her typewriter. Anderson said kindly: “Jean, I’m sorry I blew off. I’m going up to see Kiddy Modes now.” She looked up at him. Her underlip was quivering. “While I’m up there I want you to find out exactly what happened about these two letters, just how they got sent to the wrong people. Try and trace them right from the moment I handed them to you yesterday after-noon. It’s not a question of responsibility; I just want to find out what happened. Understand?” he nodded, As he closed the door he heard a fresh storm of sobbing.

2

Arthur Raper was a small grey man wearing a neat bow tie, who would have been identifiable as a rather respectable elderly clerk if one had met him in the street. But he was not now in the street, but behind a large desk in a large room. To one side of the desk, springing up from an uncomfortable chair at Raper’s command, was Bagseed, a stringy, indigestible, nervous, old-middle-aged kind of man, obviously nervous for the security of his job. At the other end of the room, separated from Mr Raper and his henchman by some yards of mulberry carpet, sat Anderson, bolt upright on the edge of an overstuffed chair. In a thin, polite, exhausted voice Mr Raper said:

“I am going to read you a letter, and I want you to tell me what you think of it.” With a little cough he picked up a sheet of paper from the desk. It was, Anderson saw, the letter to Crashaw. “Dear Crashaw,” Mr Raper said. He read the letter very slowly, pronouncing each syllable with care. At the word “pest-i-len-tial” Bagseed shook his head gravely, at in-com-pe-tent, irr-el-ev-ant and im-mat-er-i-al,” he plucked with dry fingers at his skinny neck. Mr Raper did not speak loudly, and at the other end of the room Anderson did not hear him very well, but he tried to give the impression of a keen and interested executive. It was necessary to crawl, he had decided in the taxi, but it would be fatal to crawl too fast or too far. We’re all human, that was the line, we all blow our top sometimes and write things we regret five minutes afterward. So when Mr Raper asked him to give an opinion of this document Anderson said firmly: “I take full responsibility for writing that letter, Mr Raper.”

“Are you proud of your handiwork?”

“Far from it. I don’t want to excuse writing such a letter. But I’d like to explain it.” Anderson launched the speech he had prepared in the taxi. “That letter, sir, was the product of a week at the office in which we haven’t known whether we are on our heads or our heels. It’s the kind of letter all of us sit down and write a few times in our lives. Five minutes after we’ve written it we regret it. If we’re sensible enough to delay posting it for half an hour we look at it again – and tear it up. I’ll be frank, and say I wish I’d done that. I’ll be franker still, and say that when Mr Bagseed received the letter and saw the kind of thing it was, and that it had come to him by mistake, I should have expected him to read it, laugh at it, tear it up, and perhaps write me a line saying that we were the most pestilential advertising agents he’d ever dealt with.” Mr Bagseed’s hands clutched at his high, old-fashioned collar as though he were being strangled.

“Do I understand you to say that Bagseed should have concealed this letter from me? That he should have…”

The rest of the sentence was inaudible to Anderson.

“I didn’t quite hear you, I’m afraid.”

The ice tinkled more sharply. “That he should have betrayed his duty to me? You suggest that?” Bagseed shook his worn old head in anguished denial of such a possibility.

“Why, of course not. But he’s got to make a distinction between a piece of spontaneous emotion like a man swearing when he kicks his foot against a stone—”

“I regard bad language as bad manners at any time,” said Raper. Bagseed sucked in his false teeth sharply.

“Ah, you’re too good for the rest of us erring mortals, Mr Raper.” Anderson managed a laugh.

“Leaving aside your curious view of Mr Bagseed’s responsibilities, I must confess surprise that I have heard no expression of regret from you regarding the contents of the letter. But perhaps you think no regret is called for. If that is your view it would be honest to say so. I respect honesty, Mr Anderson, above all things.”

It was the crawl then. “Of course, I regret extremely the expressions I used in a heated moment.”

“But some of them, perhaps, you still feel inclined to justify.” Mr Raper’s lips moved, but no words were audible. Had his voice, perhaps, been deliberately lowered?

At the other end of the mulberry carpet Anderson said: “I beg your pardon?”

“I said, ‘Out of our many pestilential clients, Kiddy Modes are perhaps the most pestilential of all.’ Does that phrase have the ring of truth to you, Mr Anderson?”

Not only a crawl, but a belly crawl. “Certainly not. I should like to apologize for the use of that phrase.”

“‘Their criticisms on this occasion, as on others, are incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial.’ Does that seem to you a fair observation?”

“It was thrown off in the heat of the moment.”

“That is not an answer to what I asked. Do you wish to justify that remark?”

“No no, certainly not. I should like to apologize for it – to you and to Mr Bagseed.”

Mr Bagseed looked startled. Mr Raper made the very faintest inclination of his head.

“‘Kiddy Modes demand just about six times as much attention as any other client of their size.’ Was that a proper remark?”

“I apologize for that, and, for the whole of the letter unreservedly.” Is it possible for the head to get lower than the belly when you crawl? It is at least possible to try. “I don’t wish to make excuses, but a few weeks ago my wife died. I have not been myself since then.”

“Please accept my sympathy in your bereavement,” Mr Raper said primly. “But I am sure you would not wish that factor to influence my judgement of this deplorable letter in any way.”

“Naturally not. I only—”

“I am very glad to know that you agree with me about the nature of this letter. Had you seriously thought us at fault I should have felt bound to make a thorough investigation of the circumstances. Nevertheless, I had to make up my mind whether a firm which expressed such views would be quite happy with our account.” The thin voice was now penetratingly clear. “I consulted with Mr Bagseed, and he agreed with me that once the perfect confidence that should obtain between client and agent has been broken it can never be mended.” Bagseed was picking at the knees of his trousers and staring at the floor. “Do I make myself clear, Mr Anderson?” Anderson was speechless, “Do I make myself clear?”

“You’re taking away the account?”

“Precisely. Here is a letter terminating the contract. Formally, it has still two months to run, but I imagine that in view of this,” Mr Raper tapped Anderson’s letter, “Mr Vincent will not wish to argue that point. Mr Bagseed will make all the necessary arrangements for our change-over to another agency.”

So the belly crawl was useless, had been useless even before he contemplated it. He had been a perfect mouse for this neat sadistic cat, a mouse who gave the greater pleasure because he clung to the illusion of free will. And what could he say now? It would be a mild pleasure, perhaps, to call Raper names, but by doing so he would give the little man one more satisfaction. But even while his thoughts moved thus rationally, Anderson was inarticulate with rage. He stood up, walked stiffly over the mulberry carpet to the big desk, and picked up the letter terminating the contract. The temptation to put his fist into the small face upturned toward him was almost, but not quite, irresistible. Anderson folded the letter carefully, put it in his pocket, and left the room.

3

We all of us retain, for the greater part of our conscious lives, the impression that we are in control of events; not exactly in any world-shaking, Hitlerian or Napoleonic way, but in the sense that the performance of certain actions has predictable results. The exact nature of the links that make up the chain of cause and effect is concealed from us, and to most people, indeed, the links are of no interest; but it is essential for our mental well-being that the chain itself shall not be broken. When a switch is pressed the electric light must shine; the formal conversational gambit admits of only one formal reply; a letter, stamped and posted, must reach its addressee. No common logic is, in fact, applicable to the postal service, the return of conversation and the supply of electricity; few of us are concerned, however, to trace such things to their origins, but merely to receive a traditional result from a traditional action. It is upon this illusion of free will (an illusion in the cases mentioned because the effect of our actions is really based upon the inventive genius, the courtesy or the labour of others) that our civilization has its slender basis; damage to this illusion in the case of an individual may render him incapable of dealing with the simplest problems, so that he is afraid to push the bell of a street door or to pull a lavatory chain because he has come to believe that life is in its essence illogical and irrational.