‘Doll, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Really, sir? I’m awfully sorry, I was sure Mr Archer would have told you long ago. When was he telling me about it, now? Yes, I can remember exactly — it was the earlier part of the evening on which Colonel Davison met with his accident. Mr Archer and I went on to discuss the Election results — that’s right — and then we—’
‘All right, I don’t want the story of your life. I asked you to tell me—’
‘Do forgive me, sir — I’ve got this bad habit of letting my tongue run away with me, I know. It’s just that the events of that evening are so indelibly impressed on my memory, sir, if you know what I — Yes, sir. Well, Mr Archer showed me a letter from the head of his college in Oxford, the Master I think he called himself. It said they were arranging his release from the Army and reckoned he’d be out in good time to go into the college when the term begins, which I gather is about the 10th of October, though no doubt you could put me right there.’
‘But he’s only been in for three or four years. You and I and most of the blokes have been in for six.’
‘Seven in my case, sir; you’ll recall that I was one of the 1938 militiamen. Yes, I know it seems strange, Mr Archer getting out so soon, but apparently this is something called the Class “B” Scheme — we had a memo about it a couple of weeks ago which I’ll look out for you if you’re interested.’
‘Don’t bother.’
‘How funny Mr Archer hasn’t told you yet. I expect he’s waiting for a suitable opportunity, sir, don’t you?’
‘Get out and leave me in peace.’
‘Glad to, sir.’
Left in peace, the major sat on at his almost-empty table. The bulk of 424 Wireless Station was evidently moving out on to the main road along Raleigh’s Alley, making full use of that thoroughfare for the first and last time. The major’s eye missed a letter from the British Drama League saying that Journey’s End was not available. It caught an order informing him that with effect from two days’ time the area of which he had hoped to become chieftain would be known as No. 9 Independent Transit Area and would fall under the command of a full colonel despatched from HQ. He picked up a newspaper headlined IT’S NO JOKE-IO TO LIVE IN TOKYO: 600 Super-Forts Blast Jap Heartland and put it down again. The other paper contained a large Election supplement. He summoned the resolution to study the details of what he had so far been able to take in only as an appalling generality. Turning to an inner page, he read:
WINKWORTH (WEST) R. Jack (Lab) 28,740 Maj.-Gen. P. O. de C. Biggs-Courtenay, DSO (C) 9,011 Lab majority 19,729
LABOUR GAIN FROM CONSERVATIVE
1935: Maj.-Gen. P. O. de C. Biggs-Courtenay, DSO (C) 19,495; W. Mott (Lab) 9,319: C majority 10,176
The major dropped his head into his hands. This, he supposed, was the bottom. And yet he felt a stirring of hope. Having sunk to the lowest depths his nature was capable of, he could not help seeing the future as some sort of upward path. Nobody and nothing in his immediate environment gave him the smallest reason for confidence. Doll, Cleaver, Hammond, Davison, Archer (whom he had tried so hard to train up as a conscientious Officer), the Company, the Signal Office, chances of leadership — all in their different ways had turned out to be not worth depending on. But the world was wide. Bad things could happen and it all went on as before. The thought of his friends in Potsdam filled him with encouragement now, not envy. Much of what he believed in must survive.
And the guarantee of that was England. England had been up against it in 1940, in 1914 and no doubt earlier, with the Napoleon business and so on. She had weathered every storm, she had never gone under. All that was needed was faith. Despite everything that Hargreaves and Archer and the rest of them might do, England would muddle through somehow.
MORAL FIBRE
‘Hallo,’ I said. ‘Who are you?’ I said it to a child of about three who was pottering about on the half landing between the ground floor of the house, where some people called Davies lived, and the first floor, where I and my wife and children lived. The child now before me was not one of mine. He looked old-fashioned in some way, probably because instead of ordinary children’s clothes he wore scaled-down versions of grown-up clothes, including miniature black lace-up boots. His eyes were alarmed or vacant, their roundness repeated in the rim of the amber-coloured dummy he was sucking. As I approached he ran incompetently away up the further flight. I’d tried to speak heartily to him, but most likely had only sounded accusing. Accusing was how I often felt in those days, especially after a morning duty in the Library Reference Room, being talked to most of the way by my colleague, Ieuan Jenkins, and about his wife’s headaches too.
I mounted in my turn and entered the kitchen, where my own wife, called Jean, was straining some potatoes into the wash-hand basin that did, but only just did, as a sink. ‘Hallo, darling,’ she said. ‘How were the borrowers this morning, then?’
‘They were readers this morning, not borrowers,’ I said, kissing her.
‘Aw, same thing.’
‘Yes, that’s right. They were as usual, I’m sorry to say. Who was that extraordinary child I saw on the stairs?’
‘Ssshh… Must have been one of Betty’s. She had to bring them with her.’ Jean pointed towards the sitting-room, where clicks and thumps suggesting domestic work could be heard.
‘Betty’s?’ I whispered. ‘What’s going on?’
‘She’s just finishing up in there. Betty Arnulfsen. You remember, the girl Mair Webster was going to fix us up with. You know.’
‘Oh, the delinquent. I’d forgotten all about it.’
‘She’s coming to lunch.’
‘Betty Arnulfsen?’
‘No, Mair, dull.’
‘Oh, Christ.’
‘Now, don’t be nasty, John. She’s been very kind to us. Just because she’s a bit boring, that doesn’t mean she…’
‘Just because. A bit boring. If it were only that. The woman’s a menace, a threat to Western values. Terrifying to think of her being a social worker. All that awful knowing-best stuff, being quite sure what’s good for people and not standing any nonsense and making them knuckle under and going round saying how she fully appreciates the seriousness and importance of her job, as if that made it all right. They bloody well ought to come and ask me before they let anybody be a social worker.’
‘Then there wouldn’t be any. You can take these plates in. She’ll be here any minute.’
It was all most interesting, and in a way that things that happened to me hardly ever were. Mair Webster, who knew us because her husband was a senior colleague of mine on the staff of the Aberdarcy (Central) Public Library, had brought off what must have seemed to her a smart double coup by providing, as the twice-a-week domestic help we craved, one of the fallen women with whom her municipal duties brought her into contact. It had turned out that the woman in question wasn’t really fallen, just rather inadmissibly inclined from the perpendicular. She’d had an illegitimate child or two and had recently or some time ago neglected or abandoned it or them — Mair had a gift of unmemorability normally reserved for far less emphatic characters — but that was all over now and the girl was taking proper care of her young, encouraged by her newly acquired husband, a Norwegian merchant seaman and a ‘pretty good type’ according to Mair, who went on about it as if she’d masterminded the whole thing. Perhaps she had. Anyway, meeting Betty Arnulfsen was bound to be edifying, however imperfectly fallen she might be.