As in a royal palace, the water closet was of the gracious valve type. Small trays sprinkled with small breakfasts, were beginning to fidget towards the bedrooms as Griselda descended. In the Lounge sprawled several residents of a different type: one of them even whistled through his front teeth as Griselda passed. It was hard to believe that these residents needed bedrooms of their own: they seemed to live in the Lounge talking shop: and when they needed a bedroom, to have recourse, inevitably, to someone else’s.
Griselda had noticed a Tariff in the Hotel which stated ‘Breakfast 3/6. With Meat 5/6. Preserves Extra’; and set out to look for a teashop. She found one open, and breakfasted excellently for one shilling and sevenpence plus twopence gratuity (forbidden but extracted). She then found that she lacked twopence with which to telephone Lord Roller, and had to return to the cash desk a suppliant. A further sixpence having been reluctantly converted into four pennies and four halfpennies (it was clear from her manner that the harridan in the little box lost hopelessly on the transaction), Griselda realized that she did not know the name of Lord Roller’s firm. Nor was Lord Roller himself in the Telephone Directory, even at a private residence.
At a loss, Griselda peered through the glass of the telephone cabinet. The morning rush was over; the crowds had vanished into air. There were much refuse, two dogs, an ineffective cleaner, and a belated young man with a bowler hat and umbrella, obviously bound for the City.
‘Excuse me,’ cried Griselda, breaking out from her place of confinement. ‘Could you very kindly tell me where I might find Lord Roller?’
The young man immediately stood quite still, staring round him, and blushing almost purple. ‘I – don’t – know,’ he said after a long pause, forcing out the words through lips shuddering with embarrassment. ‘Sorry.’ He lifted his hat, looked at his wrist watch, and hastened on towards his world of familiar things.
The cleaner was also standing immobile, regarding. Suddenly she spoke: ‘You try Arkwright and Silverstein. That’s where you’ll find ’is lordship, dear. Arkwright and Silverstein. London Stone double two double two. You try and you’ll find ’im.’
‘Thank you very much,’ said Griselda.
‘Don’t forget to remember me to ’is lordship.’ She gave a gurgling laugh and began to clatter furiously with her bucket. This made telephoning difficult, but Griselda did not care to complain.
Lord Roller had not yet arrived, but his secretary, on learning that Griselda had met him at the All Party Dance, made an appointment for her at ten forty-five.
‘Ask for Miss Guthers,’ said the secretary.
The Inner Circle, which bore Griselda back to Charing Cross and then on to the Mansion House, was now almost deserted. Apart from a small intrusion of foreign tourists at Victoria, the clanking train had become a very fair place for hearkening to the inner voice. Griselda’s inner voice remarked to her that she was wrongly dressed for seeking a job.
This contention received support when Griselda encountered Miss Guthers. Miss Guthers was dressed expensively and fashionably, though she did not look expensive or fashionable owing to years of overwork and the effort to control cheeky and lazy subordinates upon always just too little authority for the purpose. She regarded Griselda kindly, and seated her in a minute mahogany waiting-room like a large coffin, lined entirety with bound volumes of The Merchant Banker. A small table bore a single newspaper, a copy of The Times. Griselda opened it and read the principle headline: ‘Aftermath Of The Roller Report’. She looked at the first leading article: ‘The Roller Report: What Next?’ She turned to the Court News: ‘Reception for Lord Roller’ (provided two nights previously, she read, by Edwin’s dazzling friend, Lady Wolverhampton). The paper contained only one photograph: a special study by a staff photographer of the typical English village of Lydiard Bust, with an entirely new crop of oats filling up the foreground, and much of the background also. Griselda began to read Mr Morgan’s glittering comments on last night’s play.
‘Lord Roller will see you now.’ Miss Guthers almost conveyed concern that the interview should go well. There is no one it is easier to like than a first class woman private secretary; and Griselda liked Miss Guthers.
Lord Roller, however, wore an expression of extreme gravity. He rose as Griselda entered, and personally offered her a mahogany chair.
‘I must tell you quite frankly, Miss de Reptonville,’ he said, ‘that I did not expect to see you quite so soon. That, none the less, would have been entirely in order, and I should have been pleased to assist you in your project of leaving the Secretariat of Sociology. But under the circumstances which now obtain, you will, I am sure, understand that any help from me is out of the question. Please do not hesitate to smoke.’ He extended an open cigarette case: it was made of gold and was one of a consignment sent out the previous year as Christmas presents by the Ministry of Mines.
‘Thank you, Lord Roller,’ replied Griselda, ‘but I don’t smoke.’
‘An excellent thing. I wish my position allowed me to follow your example.’ He sat back watching her: his fine head reflected in the many photographs above the fireplace of past Permanent Secretaries to the Treasury, all of them signed, and many with warm words of greeting added.
‘I have not actually got a job in the Secretariat of Sociology. I’ve merely been offered one. You very kindly advised me against taking it and said that you might be able to offer me something – something better, I think – yourself.’
‘I recall our conversation perfectly, I assure you. Miss de Reptonville. A good memory is unfortunately required by the nature of my work. I say “unfortunately”, because it is seldom that I have anything to remember which is so agreeable as was our little talk.’
‘That is charming of you, but I understood you to say just now that you were unable to help me? I gathered that you must have found me a pest, after all.’
‘Not in the least, Miss de Reptonville. I found you a most engaging young woman. I still find you a most engaging young woman.’ Lord Roller rotated his swivel chair and took a large cigar from a silver box on a table behind him. ‘Nor must you suppose, not for one moment, that I am passing any kind of judgment whatever. Not in the very least: I know much too little of the world to attempt any such thing.’ He took a match from a little ivory box on his desk, struck it, and drew heavily but gracefully on his cigar.
‘But the offer of a job is closed?’
‘It would be quite inconsistent with the obligations I have accepted. I know you will appreciate that. I do not have to say that the matter is entirely impersonal. I am subject to various duties, which take many decisions out of my hands. Very narrow lines of conduct are laid down. For better or worse. I frequently think for worse. But now let us say nothing more about these particular matters. I am sure you will agree. Let us discuss something else. I have no other engagement, I am delighted to say, for the next ten minutes.’ Lord Roller consulted his watch, a fine inherited repeater, and added: ‘Indeed, eleven minutes.’