All The Nice Girls (20 page)

Dagwood slipped inside and shut the door. ‘I thought you looked rather lonely these last few weeks.’

Barbara shrugged, so that her bosom rose and fell. (Those breasts, shaped like mosques, each tipped with a rose of Macedonia.) ‘Not particularly,’ she said.

‘Been a bit quiet since the strike started, hasn’t it?’

‘So so.’

‘Our office has been like a graveyard.’

‘Has it?’ said Barbara noncommittally. She pouted. ‘Poor you.’

(Those lips, Curved, red and ripe, like the apple promised by the Prophet.)

‘I wondered if you might like to come out this evening somewhere?’

‘Where to?’ Barbara wriggled on her chair. (Those buttocks, spread so engagingly on the chair; which suleiman was it who said that heaven is the shape of a woman’s buttocks? The Great, probably.)

‘Oh, anywhere. We might go and eat somewhere, go and see a movie, anywhere you like ...’

‘All right.’

‘Splendid, shall I pick you up at home?’

‘No, I’ll meet you at the “Black Cat.” Do you know where that is?’

‘No, but I can easily find out. What time?’

‘About seven.’

‘I’ll be there.’

Humming like a contented suleiman, Dagwood skipped back to his own office.

‘The Black Cat?’ said Ollie. ‘I think I’ve heard of that. It’s where all the Oozemouth University types go and drink coffee and tell each other what a lousy world it all is. Our sixteen year old babysitter goes there. For kicks, she says. It doesn’t sound like your sort of run ashore, Dagwood.’

‘Never mind,’ Dagwood said, loftily. ‘You won’t find a hunter complaining if his quarry leads him over difficult country.’

‘Well, I suppose you know what you’re doing,’ said Ollie.

Nevertheless, as Dagwood mounted the wooden steps to the former tea warehouse under the western end of the Great Iron Bridge which was now the ‘Black Cat,’ he could not entirely suppress an uneasy reluctance to go on. Dagwood had never been enthusiastic about parties where there was very little to drink, where the only light came from the pilot bulb of the record-player, and where people lay on the floor stroking each other, stimulated by West Coast jazz. Whenever a party showed signs of tipping from the vertical to the horizontal Dagwood always felt a strong urge to turn up the lights and call for his hat and coat. From what Ollie had told him and from the ‘Yugga-dug-dug’ music he could hear coming from the top of the steps, the ‘Black Cat’ had all the signs of being a spawning ground for horizontal party-givers.

There was a figure leaning against the doorpost at the top. He was smoking a cigarette and tapping his foot in time to the music. Dagwood recognised him as Digby, one of Hilda’s friends at the point-to-point.

‘Evening, squire,’ said Digby.

A voice was now making itself heard above the music. ‘ . . . Luh-luh-,
love
yer bub-bayeebeeyah . . .’ it was saying.

Dagwood nodded towards the door. ‘Do you know if there’s a girl called Barbara in there?’

‘
Lovely
body.’

‘That’s her.’

‘Lovely body. God, you get around a bit, don’t you?’

‘Do I? I could hardly have missed Barbara, could I now?’

‘True, squire. That’s a whole lot of woman.’

The music had changed. It was backed now by another, woman’s, voice stringing rhymes together. Dagwood could hear them more clearly as he went through the door. ‘ . . . Blue . . . because of you . . . said you’d be true . . . like you’re steeped in glue . . .’

The ‘Black Cat’ was, and still looked like a former tea warehouse which had been fitted with a juke box, a coffee machine a soft drink bar, rows of hard wooden benches and some tables. There were no windows, the only lighting being provided by half a dozen naked light-bulbs hanging from the ceiling. A small fan set in one wall was struggling against the smoke and heat rising to the roof. The juke box provided a great pulsing heart for the tumult of conversation.

The place was crowded and it took Dagwood some time to find Barbara and when he did he hardly recognised her as the girl who sat every day in the office next door. Gone were the plain skirt and blouse. The hair which was carefully brushed and set in the day-time was now hanging loose to her shoulders. She was wearing skin-tight black pants, a tight black sweater and a short waistcoat of leopard or ocelot skin. Six or seven heavy metal bangles hung on each wrist and she seemed to be stooping forward under the weight of a necklace of colossal red beads. Dagwood goggled at her for he knew that in spite of her Middle Eastern appearance she was a local girl; Mr Tybalt (who of course knew all about her) had told Dagwood that her father was actually a senior draughtsman in Harvey McNichol & Drummond’s, and they lived in a semi-detached on one of the new estates Dagwood passed on his way from the farm to work.

Dagwood need not have been so astonished. Barbara was merely wearing the dress
du pays
, the protective colouring being worn by almost every other girl present. Barbara was conforming strictly to the ‘Black Cat’ code. It was Dagwood, in his office-going suit and his submariner’s tie, who was incongruous.

Barbara caught Dagwood’s eye and waved him over to the table where she was sitting with some friends.

‘Come and sit on my knee, Dagwood,’ she said.

‘Ah no, actually I don’t think I will,’ Dagwood said uncomfortably. He perched himself on the edge of the table next to Barbara.

‘Who’s the business tycoon, Barbara? What’s he doing here, slumming?’

‘Oh Humphrey,’ said Barbara.

Before Dagwood could think of a suitable retort or even properly identify his opponent, another voice asked eagerly: ‘I say squire, did you go to the University of Western Australia? They are swans, aren’t they?’

Dagwood squinted down at his tic. ‘No, they’re dolphins. It’s a submariner’s tie.’

‘Submariner!’

Dagwood was startled by the apparently percussive effect of the word. A shudder seemed to run right round the table. A couple who had been crouched over a chess board at the other end of the table, absorbed in their game, straightened up. Slowly, their heads swivelled enough to enable them to gaze reproachfully at Dagwood. Next to them, a young man who had been idly plucking a guitar crashed a hideous chord with the knuckles of his right hand. His hand carried on with its swing and remained frozen at the end of the sweep. Meanwhile, he kept his eyes fixed on his guitar, as though he were unwilling to look into Dagwood’s eyes for fear of what he might read in them.

‘
Not
one of the nuclear boys?’

‘Unfortunately not,’ said Dagwood carelessly. ‘I haven’t been selected. I probably wasn’t intelligent enough. The competition’s pretty stiff, you know.’

‘ . . .
Unfortunately!
’

‘. . . Not
intelligent
enough!’

‘ . . . Competition’s pretty stiff,’ echoed Humphrey. ‘It chills one’s blood, this does.’

The guitarist took another sideswipe at his instrument, but still didn’t dare to meet Dagwood’s eyes.

It was already plain that in coming to the ‘Black Cat’ wearing a submariner’s tie Dagwood had committed a major social gaffe; he might just as well have burst into an anti-blood-sport meeting waving a fox’s bloody mask.

‘Would you go to sea in a nuclear submarine if you
were
selected?’ Humphrey asked. Dagwood marked him as the leader of the wolf pack. He was a lanky individual with straight black hair and a long nose. He looked intellectual, but down-at-heel. His thoughts might have been lofty but his brown wind-cheater was faded and stained, his shirt was torn at the collar and, having no buttons left on it, hung open to reveal a greyish vest.

‘Would I go to sea in a nuclear? Of course I would. Apart from anything else, I’m paid to do it.’

‘Even if it had nuclear warheads on board?’

‘Certainly.’

‘And would you press the button when the time came?’

‘Undoubtedly,’ said Dagwood cheerfully. ‘It would be a pleasure. I only hope to God it works.’

There was a hissing intake of breath all round the table and murmurings of ‘Hired mercenary,’ ‘Murderer,’ and ‘Cold-blooded, I call it.’

Dagwood was perplexed by their attitude. They were menacing, yet respectful. They wanted to attack him, while yet keeping their distance. They were behaving like mountain peasants who, having lived for years in terror of a certain notorious bandit, had now captured one of his lieutenants, with blood still on his hands and proud of it.

Dagwood concentrated upon Humphrey. ‘You seem to know an awful lot about submarines. What do you do for a living?’

‘I’m an artist. Something you wouldn’t understand.’

‘You mean you paint?’

‘No, I etch.’

‘Then why the devil don’t you scratch?’ Dagwood retorted viciously.

A girl in a white wool polo-necked sweater who was sitting next to Humphrey gave a cry of anguish. ‘How dare you! It’s not fair, a murderer like you saying things like that to Humphrey! At least he doesn’t go round killing people and saying he likes it. He creates things, not destroys them!’

The girl’s eyes flashed venom and contempt at Dagwood. Dagwood was intrigued by her. She was really rather a pretty girl. Her pointed chin, pale complexion, green eyes and ash blonde hair cut in a low fringe gave her, when she was not angry, a wistful elfin expression. Dagwood transferred his attention to her.

‘I don’t know why
you’re
getting so heated about submarines,’ he said. ‘That’s a submariner’s sweater you’ve got on, if ever I saw one! ‘

The girl gave a gasp and put her hand to her mouth. The others looked at her sweater as though it were a badge of shame.

‘Vera,’ said Humphrey, in a pained voice.

‘Humphrey darling, I’d no
idea
. In the shop it said they were ex-Air Force.’

‘They’ve got
far
more nuclear weapons than we have! ‘ Dagwood said cruelly, following up his advantage. ‘Look, before we go any further, I might point out that we’re only employees. We don’t decide when and where to use these weapons, or any weapons in fact. The politicians do that. If I could be impartial about it, which of course I can’t, I would have said that the stronger armed forces you had the less likely you were to get blown up. In time of peace prepare for war sort of thing.’

The last was an unfortunate remark. It was exactly what Dagwood’s audience had expected him to say; it was a key phrase which touched off an even more violent chain reaction of protest and mutterings of ‘Gun-boat politics,’ ‘Jingoism,’ and ‘Throwback to Kitchener.’

The attack was taken up by another young man who was almost a replica of Humphrey. They were so alike they might have been brothers. Their opinions were also similar. His name was Donald and Dagwood soon found in him a more dangerous opponent than Humphrey.

‘That argument is plain nonsense,’ said Donald, categorically. ‘For two reasons. First, neither the Navy nor any of the armed services are capable of protecting this country at the moment in any sort of war, global or limited. Even our deterrent is not really a deterrent. It’s more of a detergent. The Navy in particular is the biggest confidence trick played on the nation since Horatio Bottomley went to jail. When I look at the number of ships we’ve got and what they’re armed with, it makes me wonder how you’ve got the nerve to collect your pay at the end of the week …’

‘Here, just a
minute
. . .,’ Dagwood protested indignantly.

‘ . . . Second,’ Donald went on, as though Dagwood had never spoken, ‘even a deterrent is no deterrent against irresponsibility. ‘We’ve got to live with this bomb, for years and years ...’

‘Oh we’re talking about the bomb now, are we?’

‘ ... As the years go by we’ll get used to it, we’ll get careless with it, more and more small countries will get hold of it and one day, some time, somewhere, one of them will use it to settle some private parochial squabble of their own. And then, before you can say ‘Megadeath’ we’ll all go up together. If you honestly believe that
no
politician
anywhere
will
ever
use this bomb, from now until Doomsday, then all I can say is you’ve got a pretty naive idea of human nature. One of them is
bound
to. It may not be for five years, ten, maybe fifty years, but it’ll come . . .’

‘All right,’ said Dagwood, swiftly changing his stance, ‘supposing it does come. There will be a period afterwards, what we call the ‘broken-back’ stage, where the Navy . . .’

‘And what makes you think the
Navy
won’t have its back broken as well, along with the rest of us lesser mortals?’

It was a good point. Dagwood made a mental note to put it to the next staff officer he met.

‘Yes,’ said Humphrey, ‘what makes you think you’re all demi-gods?’

Dagwood was astonished by the heat these people had managed to generate on frothy coffee. They had achieved a height of argumentative fervour which would only have been reached in a wardroom after many, many whiskies late into the night.

‘Anyway,’ he said placatingly, ‘as long as they keep on calling each other names in the newspapers and over conference tables, I reckon we’re safe. It’s when all the shouting and tumult
stops
and there’s a deathly hush,
that’s
when I shall take to the hills.’

‘No you see, that’s just where you’re wrong. That’s exactly the attitude they want you to have. You’ve been brainwashed …’

It was a girl whom Dagwood immediately recognised as one of those who would worry deeply about the Meaning of Life, the Future of Mankind, the Place of the Citizen in a Power-Mad World, and other abstracts. Her face was round, her nose was snubbed and her spectacles were large and horn-rimmed. Her hair was done in two thick plaits and she was wearing a square-necked jersey which looked as though it had been knitted in some form of coarse dark rope. With her nicotine-stained fingers and her quick nervous gestures, Dagwood was convinced that she was the type to take matters to heart and put her whole life and soul into a project where her conscience or her compassion were touched; Dagwood forecast that she would die an old maid, honoured by an obituary in the local newspaper warmly commending her lifelong struggles for the sick parrots of her neighbourhood.