31st Of February (3 page)

“I forgot to tell you,” Anderson said. “That won’t do.”

“Won’t do, sir?” Lessing looked comically offended.

“Shaving. This is antishaving, not shaving. We need a name, and it mustn’t be comic or smart.
Nu-shave
and
Razorless
have received heavy frowns.”

“Depilo?”

“Too scientific.”

Lessing laughed. His laugh was surprising, a high-pitched scholar’s giggle. “You know, I can’t believe this. Somebody’s having a little joke.”

“Rev’s tried it and he says it works.” Anderson dismissed the question, and Lessing with it. When the copywriter was at the door he called him back. “I say, have you got a mother’s only son in there? Nephew of Sir Malcolm Buntz, answers to the name of Greatorex?” Lessing nodded. “What’s he like?”

“Nondescript but harmless. I kept him happy looking at our old ads in the guard books.” Lessing giggled again. “He kind of thought he’d like to do something creative. Do you want him?”

“Not now. I’ll see him this afternoon. But get him to work making out a list of names, will you, Charlie? He can’t break anything while he does that. And forage about a bit yourself.”

With a parody of VV’s most cooingly persuasive tone, Lessing said: “And don’t be inhibited by anything I’ve said. Think for yourself.” He went out.

Anderson sat down to look at the new Crunchy-Munch scheme. The telephone rang and the switchboard girl said: “Oh, Mr Anderson, Mr Bagseed’s been asking for you. He said it was important.”

“Get him for me, will you?” He was frowning at the head-line CRUNCHY-MUNCH SAVES SECRETARY’S JOB when Bagseed came through, nasal and anxious.

“Look here, Mr Arthur’s on my back about those drawings. You know, the ones for our summer campaign.”

“Ah yes.” Anderson unhooked the house telephone and dialled Jean Lightley’s number. “Jean,” he said, “drawings for Kiddy Modes that should have come in last week from Crashaw Studios. Find out what’s happened. Quick.” Bagseed had been talking about a check. “Yes,” Anderson said. “Yes. Yes.”

“I simply must have those drawings for Mr Arthur this afternoon.”

“I’m right behind those drawings, Mr Bagseed.” He improvised. “You’ll have them today.”

Nasal complaint became nasal friendliness. “Grand, Mr Anderson, grand.”

“Not a bit.” He improved the situation with a little invention. “As a matter of fact, these drawings are a bit late because I asked the artist to make sure they were right. And you can’t hurry an artist. You know what artists are, Mr Bagseed.”

“I do indeed, Mr Anderson. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“It’s what we’re here for.” They both said ha ha. Anderson put down the receiver. He saw that Lessing’s scheme was a series of strip movies, each containing four little pictures. In CRUNCHY-MUNCH SAVES SECRETARY’S JOB, Picture I showed a crestfallen secretary being reprimanded for carelessness by her employer. “You’re all right in the morning, Miss Jones, but every afternoon you make these silly mistakes.” In Picture 2, Miss Jones talks to her friend. “The fact is, Sheila, I get hungry and we don’t have time for a tea break.” Sheila replies: “A Crunchy-Munch keeps you going. Tastes good, too.” Picture 3: Miss Jones, with typewriter in front of her, letters at side, is eating a Crunchy-Munch bar and thinking: “Yum-yum, it
does
taste good.” Picture 4: Employer says: “These letters are perfectly typed. Congratulations on snapping out of the depression, Miss Jones.” Miss Jones (thinks):
Congratulations to Crunchy-Munch, you mean.
Underneath the story was a slogan: CRUNCHY-MUNCH THE VITAMIN-PACKED CHOC-COVERED BAR OF ENERGY. The other pieces of copy exploited the same theme in strip form. The Art Department had made rough layouts that looked very neat and clean.

Anderson sighed, shook his head, and scribbled headings on a sheet of paper. After ten minutes he looked at them:

AFTER LUNCH COMES CRUNCHY-MUNCH, CRUNCHY-MUNCH ROUNDS OFF YOUR LUNCH,

LUNCH TIME’S ALWAYS CRUNCHY-MUNCH TIME,

ALL THE BUNCH EAT CRUNCHY-MUNCH

He sighed again. Jean Lightley coughed. “Oh, Mr Anderson, Crashaw Studios say they can’t have those drawings until tomorrow. The artist’s away ill and somebody else is finishing them off.”

“Hell!” Anderson sat looking at the desk. “Did you employ all your feminine charms?” Jean Lightley went red. “Did you speak to Crashaw himself?”

“To his secretary, but I don’t think—”

“All right, all right. You go to lunch. If Bagseed rings up again I’m in conference.” He talked to Crashaw and by a mixture of wheedling and threats obtained a promise that the drawings would be sent that afternoon. He was about to go out to lunch when he noticed the calendar. It read MONDAY, 4th FEBRUARY.

Anderson sat down and stared at the calendar. Somebody had turned it back again to the three-weeks’-old date. Why? But as he continued to stare at the neat “4” he felt an obscure uneasiness. Was he quite certain that he had made the alteration back to “25”? Was it not possible that he had forgotten? He said aloud: “You know perfectly well that you altered it,” and the spoken words seemed to give small reassurance. He put on his Homburg hat and dark overcoat, and went out.

3

Wyvern said: “What I like about you, Molly, is the way you pour it down. It might be the kitchen sink instead of your throat.”

“Pour it down fast and you don’t taste it. Only way to drink beer.” Molly O’Rourke’s hair was bunched in tight curls on her head and her long nose looked as if it was made of chalk. She had once read sociology at the London School of Economics and now ran the Research Department of the firm. “So I said to him you can take it or leave it. So he said if that’s the way you feel I’ll leave it. So I said all right, but don’t come crying back for more tomorrow. That’s original and good. It’s not good, he said, but you’ve certainly got something about it being original. Original, I said, you don’t know what originality means. If I—”

The Stag was crowded. Somebody dug Anderson violently in the ribs and he lost the end of Molly’s story, as he had lost the beginning. “So that was the end of a perfect romance.” She turned to Anderson. “You seem a bit low, pet. What’s up?”

“Nothing. Have another drink.”

“Thanks, another beer, beautiful chemical beer – how I love it. Wouldn’t recognize real beer if I met it nowadays.” They were standing at the counter, and the rising and falling swell of people pushed their bodies against each other and then gently ebbed away from them. The glass behind the bar reflected back at Anderson a yellow face, deeply lined and folded, with melancholy bloodshot eyes and thinning hair. He ordered drinks.

“Let the man alone,” Wyvern said in his deep croak. “He’s got every right not to be cheerful.”

“Because of his wife.”

“Partly because of his wife.”

Molly stuck her long nose forward. “So what? I never thought you were tied up all that tight to Valerie, pet.”

Anderson pushed over the beer. “It’s only three weeks.” He was annoyed that his voice sounded apologetic. “February the fourth. Three weeks today.”

“You ought to snap out of it,” Molly said. “In my time – if I may let my back hair down for your benefit – I’ve lost three husbands. Not to mention all those I mislaid before the ceremony. The first time I was young and innocent and went into it neck first. He used to beat me, but I didn’t mind that. It was when he wanted me to beat him in front of his girl friend that I stepped out. He was what you might call sophisticated.”

“You make it different each time,” Wyvern said admiringly. “And I will say you make it better. What happened then?” Molly gulped her beer. “Then? Then I got a divorce and married again. This time he was young and innocent, looking for his mother. You wouldn’t think I was the mother type, would you? But that’s the way he used to think of me, and perhaps he wasn’t so far wrong in a way. He was sweet, always bringing presents – nothing valuable, you know, cigarette cases, powder puffs, silk stockings, everything you can think of. Then the police picked him up in a store. Turned out to be a kleptomaniac. That was the end of another romance.”

“What about the third?”

“Oh, the third was a bastard. But what I want to show you, Andy pet, is that you’ve got to keep your chin up. Life’s nothing but a succession of kicks in the jaw, anyway.”

Anderson joggled the beer in his glass. “What else have I got to worry about?” he asked Wyvern.

“Eh?”

“You said partly my wife. What’s the other part of my worry?”

Wyvern bent his narrow head forward until Anderson saw, fascinated, the small pockmarks and blemishes in the sallow skin “Somebody’s whispering things in the office. Somebody’s saying you’re slipping and need a rest.”

“Who’s saying that?” Anderson was surprised by the sharpness of his own voice.

“A little birdie told me.” Wyvern put his head to one side. “I’d look out on this shave-me-quick account if I were you.”

“Rev suggested I should handle it.”

“Good old Rev, dear old Rev.” Wyvern’s smile was lopsided. “Know what he said to me the other day, with his pipe sticking out of his mouth. ‘Andy’s a good scout – puff puff – but he doesn’t quite – puff puff – believe in his work.’ When Rev says you’re not believing in your work, boy, that’s the time to look out.”

“But how can you believe in your work?” Molly asked. “You can only do it. Don’t tell me VV and Rev believe the stuff that goes in their own advertisements.”

“I know what they mean,” Anderson said. He remembered Rev’s head by the side of VV’s, the sombre faces quickly changing to false geniality.

“You not only know what they mean; you know they’re right.” Wyvern tapped a nicotine-stained finger on the dirty knee of his trousers. “You want to be a successful advertising man. All right. You’ve got to be able to draw or write a bit. But that’s not much. You’ve got to be intelligent, so that you see it’s parasitic, you see it’s a bloody fleecing of the public. All right. But that’s not all. In fact, that’s not much. Because then you’ve got to believe it all while you’re working on it. You’ve got to believe that Crunchy-Munch is the most nutritious and delicious chocolate bar ever made, that Kiddy Modes really make the best baby clothes. That some stinking patent medicine which can be made for a penny a bottle is really a remedy for physical states that should he treated by a doctor, that this bloody little device for avoiding shaving in the morning is something that can revolutionise people’s lives. And it’s because he can see through advertising and be deceived by it at the same time that VV’s a bloody perfect advertising man.” He ordered more beer.

“What about you?” Anderson said. “I’ve never noticed you showing much belief in blessings of advertising.”

“Don’t talk about me,” Wyvern cried in a passion of delighted frustration. “I’m no advertising man. I’m just a painter who took to commercial hack work because he had to keep his mother. And Molly is just doing a job. We don’t have to believe; we aren’t inside the charmed circle. I can afford a bit of irresponsibility, a few drinks too many, dirty trousers and an old jacket. But you’re different, Andy boy, you’re
it
. You’re the next best thing to a director. You talk to clients and soothe them down. You’re a big boy, not just a technician like Molly and me. You’re all set for your directorship if Rev doesn’t trip you up before you get it. You’ve got to wear that black hat, you’ve got to be serious. I can stay silent in a conference if I want to, but you’ve got to have an opinion of everything. In short,” Wyvern croaked happily, “if you want to be saved you’ve got to believe.”

Anderson drank his beer, ordered another round, and argued it out as he was expected to argue it out. The same discussion, he reflected, was going on between hundreds of advertising men over lunch-time drinks. Dozens of commercial artists were blaming the mothers or wives or children who had made them take the road to commercialism instead of the road to high art, a herd of copywriters were busy biting the hands that fed them when they should be regretting their own lack of talent or toughness. But he had got beyond all that himself; he was reconciled to advertising, he was prepared to take it as seriously as anything else. The pub got more and more crowded. They ate sandwiches. Wyvern began to talk to a commercial artist named Harvey Nicols, Anderson found himself standing thigh to thigh with Molly O’Rourke, who was telling him about her third husband. People all round them were talking so loudly that he heard only snatches of what she said, mixed with other fragments of conversation.

“—Left Rayson, Jones and Johnson and went to Palefox, Wiggins and Grass—”

“—One of these schemes stinks, they said, and it’s not your competitor’s—”

“—He gave me a black eye.” That was Molly.

“—A new slogan, he said, so I told him—”

“—There’s absolutely nothing down
that
alley—”

“—So she said, really I’m too Jung to be a Freud—”

“—Ask for a thousand and he’ll offer eight fifty. Ask for twelve hundred and he’ll offer—”

“—And we Adler good time together. Like it?”

“—So I gave him a black eye.” That was Molly again. He had heard it all before. Wearily, he said he must go away and work. Molly went to talk to Wyvern and Harvey Nicols. When Anderson got outside, his head was slightly fuzzy with beer.

4

After lunch Anderson interviewed Sir Malcolm’s nephew Greatorex. He was fair-headed, wore a neat brown suit, and was perhaps in his middle or late thirties. Anderson was surprised both by his age, and by the fact that he was not obviously a booby. Greatorex talked about himself readily enough, and with a pleasant absence of bumptiousness or embarrassment. He had travelled a good deal, and had been farmer, shorthand typist, journalist, factory worker, and a dozen other things.

“And now you want to be an advertising man. Why?”

“During the war I edited our regimental wall newspaper. That was fun.” For the first time Greatorex showed a trace of embarrassment. “When I came out I took a course in advertising. I thought it would give me some background, but Mr Pile said advertising people don’t think you learn much from courses.”