I took a seat by the window and ordered a pot of tea. It was a long curved window extending along the front of the café like a ship's bridge. My table was placed at the centre of the window, and I was able to see all the streets which led into the square. Market Street was the broadest, forming one side of the square; three other streets, narrow and cobbled, ran off it, one at each of the top corners, another, scarcely wide enough to take two walking abreast, halfway up the lefthand side. The two houses facing each other at the end of this street were half-timbered; I recognised them as genuinely Elizabethan, the beams an integral part of the structure instead of laths nailed on plaster. There was a bridge of wrought iron and glass connecting the next two houses; it seemed to be the only thing which prevented them from sagging into each other. The name of the street was Hangman's Lane; probably, I thought, a hangman had actually lived there, an interesting bloody-handed Elizabethan hangman, not a seedy little bore in a bowler hat.
Then at the moment the waitress brought the tea something happened which changed my whole life. Perhaps that isn't entirely true; I suppose that my instincts would have led me to where I am now even if I hadn't been sitting at the window of Sylvia's Café that afternoon. Perhaps I wasn't directed in the Ministry of Labour sense, but I was certainly shown the way to a destination quite different from the one I had in mind for myself at that time.
Parked by a solicitor's office opposite the café was a green Aston-Martin tourer, low-slung, with cycle-type mudguards. It had the tough, functional smartness of the good British sports car; it's a quality which is difficult to convey without using the terms of the advertising copywriter - made by craftsmen, thoroughbred, and so on - I can only say that it was a beautiful piece of engineering and leave it at that. Prewar it would have cost as much as three baby saloons; it wasn't the sort of vehicle for business or for family outings but quite simply a rich man's toy.
As I was admiring it, a young man and a girl came out of the solicitor's office. The young man was turning the ignition key when the girl said something to him and after a moment's argument he put up the windscreen. The girl smoothed his hair for him; I found the gesture disturbing in an odd way - it was again as if a barrier had been removed, but this time by an act of reason.
The ownership of the Aston-Martin automatically placed the young man in a social class far above mine; but that ownership was simply a question of money. The girl, with her even suntan and her fair hair cut short in a style too simple to be anything else but expensive, was as far beyond my reach as the car. But her ownership, too, was simply a question of money, of the price of the diamond ring on her left hand. This seems all too obvious; but it was the kind of truth which until that moment I'd only grasped theoretically.
The Aston-Martin started with a deep, healthy roar. As it passed the café in the direction of St. Clair Road I noticed the young man's olive linen shirt and bright silk neckerchief. The collar of the shirt was tucked inside the jacket; he wore the rather theatrical ensemble with a matter-of-fact nonchalance. Everything about him was easy and loose, but not tired or sloppy. He had an undistinguished face with a narrow forehead and mousy hair cut short with no oil on it. It was a rich man's face, smooth with assurance and good living.
He hadn't ever had to work for anything he wanted; it had all been given him. The salary which I'd been so pleased about, an increase from Grade Ten to Grade Nine, would seem a pittance to him. The suit in which I fancied myself so much - my best suit - would seem cheap and nasty to him. He wouldn't have a best suit; all his clothes would be the best.
For a moment I hated him. I saw myself, compared with him, as the Town Hall clerk, the subordinate penpusher, halfway to being a zombie, and I tasted the sourness of envy. Then I rejected it. Not on moral grounds; but because I felt then, and still do, that envy's a small and squalid vice - the convict sulking because a fellow prisoner's been given a bigger helping of skilly. This didn't abate the fierceness of my longing. I wanted an Aston-Martin, I wanted a three-guinea linen shirt, I wanted a girl with a Riviera suntan - these were my rights, I felt, a signed and sealed legacy.
As I watched the tail end of the Aston-Martin with its shiny new G.B. plate go out of sight I remembered the secondhand Austin Seven which the Efficient Zombie, Dufton's Chief Treasurer, had just treated himself to. That was the most the local government had to offer me; it wasn't enough. I made my choice then and there: I was going to enjoy all the luxuries which that young man enjoyed. I was going to collect that legacy. It was as clear and compelling as the sense of vocation which doctors and missionaries are supposed to experience, though in my instance, of course, the call ordered me to do good to myself, not others.
If Charles had been with me, things would have been different. We had evolved a special mode of conversation to dispel envy and its opposite, forelock-tugging admiration. "The capitalist beast," Charles would have said. "Give the girl her clothes back, Lufford," I would have said, "she's turning blue." "Those big pop eyes of yours are glinting with lust," Charles would have said. "Is it the girl or the car?"
We would have continued in this vein for some time, becoming more and more outrageous, until we'd dissolve into laughter. It was an incantation, a ritual; the frank admission of envy somehow cleansed us of it. And very healthy-minded it all was; but I think that it fulfilled its purpose too thoroughly and obscured the fact that the material objects of our envy were attainable.
How to attain them I didn't know. I was like an officer fresh from training school, unable for the moment to translate the untidiness of fear and cordite and corpses into the obvious and irresistible method of attack. I was going to take the position, though, I was sure of that. I was moving into the attack, and no one had better try to stop me. General Joe Lampton, you might say, had opened hostilities.
4
Bob and Eva Storr came to tea the next day. I was to be very friendly with them later; that afternoon I found them rather intimidating. At first I thought that they were brother and sister, they were so much alike - small, dark, with snub noses and big mouths. They talked a lot, mostly about the theatre, with special reference to the Warley Thespians.
They'd seen all the latest plays and ballets and knew all about the private lives of the famous. "And at the dress rehearsal fleets of taxis came," Bob would say, "disgorging hordes of pansies. The theatre smelt like a brothel. And that, my dears, is the British housewife's dream lover; they swoon over him in droves, the silly sluts."