‘Don’t you know me, then?’ a woman called, when he was on the street and wondering which direction to go in next. The voice jerked his heart. He had heard it before, though this time the accent was different, the tone in no way vitriolic or accusing. She faced him. ‘You should.’
She was gloved and hatted, carried a Harrods’ shopping bag, and a smart umbrella. An Italian leather reticule hung from the other arm, and her smile showed delight at the chance meeting. A boy of six, and a girl a little older, stood close, each in the stiff new clothes of their prep school. ‘It’s a long time ago, I know, but I’ve often thought about you.’
‘So have I.’ Her corn-dolly beauty had faded in ten years, but the make-up and smell of perfume attracted him. There seemed more of a gap in their ages compared to then, but he recalled her naked, and in every conceivable sexual position – as if it were yesterday now that he looked into her blue eyes and met the same intimate smile – the pines of Cyprus outside the room. Pangs of love and regret came from so long back, as she vividly recalled the times they’d had. Such memories were a luxury, blossoming out of instantaneous recognition. She laughed excitedly, and touched his arm. ‘I can’t get over bumping into you like this. I knew you straightaway.’
He stroked his scar, as if to hide it, but she had already taken note. ‘It’s amazing,’ was all he could say for the moment.
‘Mummy,’ the boy crowed, ‘will we be going soon?’
‘This is Samuel,’ she pointed out. ‘And that’s Dorothy.’
Sam sneered, and Dorothy glowered when he touched their heads.
‘Nice kids.’
‘They’re terrors.’ Her remark made them smile. ‘Are you happy these days?’
‘Very.’ Herbert thought it a strange question. ‘How about you?’
‘Oh, absolutely.’ Her lips told him otherwise, as she had meant them to, but who could be as happy as in the old days? ‘My husband has an accountancy firm,’ she said, and asked what he was up to in Town. He told her most of what had happened since their affair. The girl put out her tongue from behind Alice’s back, and Herbert glared, which delighted her.
‘Marvellous. You spent all that time on research in a factory? How brave! It must be good. I’ll look out for the reviews. But call me whenever you like. Here’s my number. My husband’s a great reader, when he has time, so I’ll buy him your book. We must go now: we’re for the National Gallery, then I’m taking these despicable sprogs to tea – just so’s they can be sick, I suppose.’
‘I’m not a sprog, I’m a schoolboy, aren’t I, Dorothy?’
‘No,’ she shouted piercingly, ‘you’re a fat little sprog.’
‘I’ll kill you when we get home.’
‘Oh no, not again,’ she yawned, a pale but capable hand across her mouth.
Herbert smiled. ‘They must be a handful.’
‘Not really. I give them a good smack now and again.’
‘Yes, and it hurts,’ Samuel shouted.
If I have children will they be Gedling or Thurgarton-Strang? Probably neither, he thought, though I don’t suppose I will have any. He turned to Alice. ‘Buy a copy of my book for your husband if you like, but I’ll send one for you alone.’
‘You are a darling.’ In a lower voice: ‘I loved you, you know.’
‘I adored you,’ he said. ‘I’ve always thought about you. None of it was forgotten.’ It wasn’t true, but the situation required such remarks from a Thurgarton-Strang, and maybe also from Bert Gedling. He wouldn’t call on her, but the picture of doing so, and resuming their passion, and eloping, and setting up house (maybe in Cyprus) unrolled itself like an obligatory film. The last words out of the pathetic group hurrying away came from the boy who wanted to know about that man’s scar, and Herbert assumed a passing bus muffled the smack Alice gave him.
During two hours’ practice on the day before the motoring test he was caught in traffic along Piccadilly and around Trafalgar Square, which made him confident that he could drive anywhere without fear or hindrance. ‘I’ll blind the bastards if I don’t pass,’ he said to his instructor, feeling as competent at the wheel as any of those brash pig-ignorant louts who had often tried to kill him on Belisha crossings in South London.
Ice-cold attention to the test course made him neither slow nor fast, as if the hypercritical eye of Archie overlooked him instead of the middle-aged jaundiced cloth-capped examiner with his little moustache and poised clipboard. A railway bridge, a blind corner, the slope for a hill start, an obstacle course of crossings and traffic lights along the main street, a circuit of the gasworks, and backing into a quiet avenue – all was normal and predictable. He could quote the Highway Code from start to finish and inside out.
The test man filled in a sheet of pink paper. ‘I have to tell you that you’ve passed’ – as if his liver was going through the mincer with chagrin. Herbert supposed he was expected to jabber with gratitude, but his lips stayed locked as he took the permit, and gave a thumbs-up to the motoring school man by the kerb so that he could be driven back to his digs.
Twenty
People on the stairs made room for him so that Humphries at the top could grasp his hand and crow for everyone to hear: ‘Have you seen the reviews?’
‘No, I ain’t.’ Bert felt rough and surly, out of the sunlight into the hugger-mugger, the party no more than a chance to meet good-looking tarts from the office. Copies of the book had been displayed in shops for at least a week before publication. Herbert had seen a stack in a window on Southampton Row. ‘Is that by me? Did I write that?’ ‘You fucking bet you did,’ Bert told him. He stood back on the pavement for a wider view, Bert’s gloating stamped out by a sneer from Herbert, and confirmed by the horn of a taxi that nearly took his heels off.
‘We’ve had three good ones so far, and I’m sure there’ll be others.’ He was disappointed by Bert’s formal get-up, but Herbert knew that if he’d decked himself out in cap and muffler, and pulled a reluctant false pedigree whippet on a piece of old clothes line, people would begin to suspect, anyone in the know realizing that when a factory worker attended a party, or went out on a Saturday night, he wore the best in his wardrobe.
Humphries thought he looked like a slightly more eccentric Sir Richard Burton of Victorian exploring days – though without the beard – which was not surprising, since he had come from that largely unmapped expanse of territory beyond Potters Bar. Never mind, he’ll seem the genuine article as soon as he opens his mouth. ‘I’ll be introducing you to Jacob Wright later.’
Herbert, playing the part of Bert, felt threatened, disgruntled, almost paranoid among such people. Time must pass before a modification of his uncouth accent would seem a natural development of living in the south. ‘Who’s ’e, then? Is ’e a window cleaner?’
‘Oh, no.’ He wondered what the devil that could mean. ‘He’s from New Books Magazine, a very influential rag. It should get you in all the libraries, including Boots, so talk to him. He wants to do a full page. They’re even sending a photographer.’
‘I’m only interested in the crumpet.’ Bert turned to a woman with shapely breasts and a beehive hairdo, offering glasses of wine. ‘What’s yer name, duck?’
‘Fiona,’ she smiled, moving on.
‘Maybe you’d rather have beer?’ Humphries pointed to a gaggle of bottles on his desk. ‘We got these in specially.’
Bert took out his Waterman to script his moniker in a copy of Royal Ordnance for the firm’s archives. ‘It’s all right. This red vinegar’s OK, but I’d like some chips wi’ it the next time, and a bit o’ salt.’
The book jacket showed a group of brutal-looking workmen standing by a machine – which could have been anything from a one-armed bandit to a coffee dispenser – undecided whether to dismantle the contraption and walk out with the bits under their coats, or pick up hammers and smash it to pieces as representing all that was ugly in their oppressed lives.
‘Like it?’
He didn’t know what t
o say. Humphries obviously thought it was the best thing since he’d been to Rome on ten pounds and seen the Sistine Chapel. Herbert wouldn’t look at such a cover on a shop table. He’d run a mile. It was ghastly. Even a half-undressed woman on the front would be better. ‘Love it.’
‘We all do.’ He named the famous artist. ‘He did us a jacket for Walter Hawksworth’s novel a few years ago. The book wasn’t very good, though it sold well.’
Herbert was sure it did. Still, the cover wasn’t the fault of his book, which he lifted high to examine as the one object that might join his disparate parts. The greater the distance between them the more he felt himself an author, whether Bert Gedling who everyone should be wary of (or feel superior to) or Herbert Thurgarton-Strang who carried a bag of iron filings in his soul. Either way, he sensed people’s unease as he signed the book, and lifted another glass of wine as if such work was wearing to an extent that factory graft never could be, and he needed a reward for tackling the unfamiliar system with such panache. Despite its murkiness, the drink went down like a well-greased adder.
Dominic showed him into a small office. ‘It’ll be quiet in here.’
Herbert wondered whether sharp questions on his past weren’t about to commence, but Daniel Sloper the photographer turned Dominic and a couple of others out so that the flashing could happen in peace. ‘All the pictures I’ve ever ’ad took mek me look like the back end of a tram smash,’ Bert grumbled.
‘These won’t.’ Sloper was a tall and well-stocked man in his twenties. He threw his brown leather jacket over a chair in the best motorbiker’s style, but kept his silk scarf tied on like a Battle of Britain fighter pilot, which garment seemed to Herbert the social equivalent of his own white muffler.
Bert offered a glass from a tray of drinks on the desk. ‘Sup this, mate. It’s good for a cough.’
‘Chin-chin, old boy!’ Sloper took a modest swig and, as if knowing what real wine was, poured the remains into an ashtray. He set up screens and tripods, holding a light meter here and there, Herbert noting the thoroughness of a man who knew his trade. Using few words but with amiable and persuasive gestures, he got Bert to stand by the window, and then the door and, lastly, against a solid background of books. A dozen scar-side shots made Bert, in his formal suit and tie, look both villainous and interesting.
Sloper folded up the photographic trappings, waved cheerio, and trundled downstairs in his riding boots.
Herbert felt knackered already, as if his soul had been sucked out and spat into the gutter. ‘You’ll have to get used to it.’ Dominic tried for nonchalance in lighting a Black Russian cigarette, but the match broke in two, and fell flaring on to the carpet. Before he could get down and put it out, Bert stamped on it, glad to see Dominic’s face red with futile exertion as he came up. ‘Yer’ve got to be quick where I come from.’
‘I suppose it will take you some time to become accustomed to life in London. We had thought you’d come to the party wearing overalls. Just to play the part, of course.’ Being jocular, he was unaffected by Herbert’s scowl, who was wondering how he could enquire about Rachel he’d had such a crush on at school. ‘Ah well, where I come from yer put yer best rags on for a party. My sister Rachel allus towd me I’d got to dress smart. She’s good at that. ’Ave yo’ got a sister, Dominic?’
‘I did have.’ The cold-blooded toad-faced bastard was barely interested. ‘She married an oaf who works in the City. Hardly see her now. Got three nippers.’
‘If you don’t like her ’usband me and some mates can do yer a favour and kick the snot out of ’im. I’ll get some o’ the lads down from Nottingham, to mek a proper job of it. All you need to do is give ’em a bit of beer money and their train fares. It’ll be a day’s outing for them. They’ll love it.’
Dominic shuddered in trying to stop him. ‘No, I don’t think so, certainly not. We don’t do that sort of thing here.’
Herbert turned away. That was that, then. He knew Dominic’s old style, of being too icy to say his sister was also called Rachel, and not chiming in about her for a bit. Can’t let these low-born types get too familiar, was what no doubt swamped into his unfriendly prep school mind.
A girl with short brown hair leaned on the top rail of the stairs, glass in hand, talking to a man whose suit even Bert knew to be very expensive. ‘In’t she marvellous, that one there. Deborah, in’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Humphries said. ‘I think you saw her before. But come along, it’s time to be interviewed.’
A short-arsed putty-faced bloke smoking a curved pipe lifted himself from the sofa to shake the toiler’s hand. Touch it, rather. ‘I’ve read your book, and liked it. It’s unique, in its portrayal of the working class.’
‘You don’t say?’
‘I’m not the only one who thinks so.’ At least he had humour enough to laugh. ‘But I’m sure you must have read a lot to produce a book like that. You can’t deceive me. Impossible to fault it.’
‘Neither could I. That’s why I sent it ’ere. I suppose yer was just waiting for somebody to come up with that sort o’ novel and barge his way in. Still, I would say summat like that, wouldn’t I?’
Jacob looked as if thinking he might not turn out to be as naive as he appeared. ‘How did you start writing? But let’s sit down, and be comfortable.’
‘I’m used to standing on my feet eight hours a day. Well, I don’t know. I just got into it. When I was twenty-five I looked round and thought I might ’ave summat to say about the world. Are you doin’ shorthand?’
‘I am. But go on. It’s interesting.’
‘So I got a pen and a packet of paper, and wrote about what I knew. One o’ my mates sold me a typewriter that fell off the back of a lorry, and I was on my way. Mind you, it took a few years to gerrit all clear.’
‘So how many drafts did you take it through before sending it to Humphries?’
‘You’ve got more questions than a copper who puts his hand on your shoulder after a bust-up in a pub. I lost count at fifteen.’ Bert set the tone to be aggressive rather than complaining, wanting only to get back among the booze and women. What else was he here for? Such a party had nothing to do with Royal Ordnance, though it was obvious Jacob must be dealt with. ‘It looks like you’re writing your own book about me, putting everything down on that jotter.’
‘It could happen one day. We haven’t had a book like this before, from a real working-class novelist.’
‘How is it different?’ Bert asked naively.
‘Well, you’ve written about men who don’t even think to better themselves.’
‘Better themselves? What would they want to do a thing like that for when they’ve got good jobs in a factory?’
Jacob’s shorthand swirled along. ‘I see what you mean. It does give authenticity.’
Bert thought a lecturing tone was called for. ‘I’m not a working-class novelist, anyway. Where I come from, if you call somebody working class, they smash yer face in. But I suppose you want to pigeonhole me, like everybody else. I’m just a novelist, or I will be when I’ve done a few more,’ which intention Herbert thought a fair ploy to confirm that he would go on to become a real writer, certainly a better occupation than standing at a lathe. ‘In a few years the fact that I’m an author from what you fucking well call a working-class environment’ – let him wonder where he got that word – ‘won’t get anybody on the hop, because everybody’ll be doing it.’
Jacob wiped sweat from both sides of his face. ‘I’ll quote that statement, but tell me something about your family.’
‘Family?’ He gave a suitably grim laugh, and settled himself, as if the burden of revelation might become too great, and he’d collapse into a fit. ‘The owd man was on the dole when I was a kid. Not that he couldn’t get a job, though. He was just bone idle.’ He recalled the unsolicited account of Archie’s younger days, listened to one Saturday night in a pub when they hadn’t been able to get a nobble on from any of the women, about his father and the means-tes
t man and the starvo times in the thirties, before the war started that drummed everyone into work. Archie was too pissed and despondent to care what he was saying, and went on till Herbert felt he had lived through such miseries himself.
‘The old man kicked me out to work at fourteen, to bring some beer money into the house. Then the family was killed in an air raid, except me, who was in bed with a married woman – or I would ’ave been if I hadn’t bin a bit too young. She was a cousin at my auntie’s, as a matter of fact.’
Jacob nodded, and tut-tutted, and scribbled, and nodded again, till even he thought Bert was trowelling it on a little heavily. ‘Let’s talk about politics.’
Bert scratched his left ear, which hadn’t been bothering him, till the finger-chafing brought an itch out of its burrow and refused to be eliminated, so he stopped, and closed his right eye to gain more control, looking sceptically at Jacob with the other. ‘Politics? Well, it’s allus been Labour for me, like the rest of us up there, though you do find a few fuckpigs that vote Tory.’
‘That’s always been a problem,’ Jacob said, showing his own colours as if to encourage him.
‘My temperament,’ Bert went on, ‘is a bit bolshie. I happen to think Darwin was right,’ Herbert interjected. ‘It’s the survival of the fittest in this chronic world, which suits me fine. I reckon the country’s over-governed. I don’t like the idea of conscription, and I think income tax should be scrapped.’ Herbert, though in danger of spoiling matters, maundered angrily on against every ruling institution and useful organization in the country, and stopped just short of appearing a fool or, worse, betraying his real background.