After staring at the wall of my office for some few minutes I left the building. Almost everyone not directly implicated in bringing the paper out had done the same. Quite a few of them would have made their way, as usual at this time, to the Crown and Sceptre. Apart from my own staff I had never known more than a few of them, even by sight, and none was visible now. I carried a large Scotch over to a stool so placed that I either had to face the wall or turn completely round each time I put down or picked up my drink. I solved that one by holding it on my lap.
The racket was colossal, not just a lot of people talking loud and fast but with a kind of ferocity to it I had often doubted if you could find outside Fleet Street. I would stick it while I downed this and another and then go home and take a bottle in front of the telly. Susan was out, spending the evening with her mother, though when she debriefed me earlier over the phone she had said she would not be back late. Still, on the whole things were well placed for Lindsey to make one of her unscheduled appearances. You could say too well placed. She had been on my mind quite a bit over the past days — I had been very touched by her kindly concern when I told her about Steve. Not only that, though. Anyway, it was not she who pitched up at the bar just when I was thinking of leaving but Harry Coote, my short, bearded editor. He looked at me for a moment in the way he had, without smiling or raising his hand or anything, as though he had found out from somewhere that it was quite funny not to smile or anything at times when other people usually did. Then he came over.
‘Got time for one?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Large Scotch and water. No ice.’ It would normally have been a gross breach of pub protocol to specify the quantity, but that protocol included the clear provision that it was all right to do so when there was a reasonable doubt whether a large one would come as a matter of course. And in this case there was reasonable doubt. But one way or another it was indeed a double that Harry rather grandly delivered to me before taking up a standing position next to my stool. He was short enough for his head not to be so very much further off the ground than mine.
‘How are things?’ he asked, quite audibly because the uproar seemed to have fallen off a bit.
‘Fine.’ I could very easily have told him about Mr Two, true, but I kept quiet.
‘I suppose you haven’t seen anything of old Nowell recently?’
This was routine, Harry playing himself in with me, or it always had been in the past. If it turned out to be different this time, if he started being wise or quietly sympathetic or anything else about Steve, I was off. I said, ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I ran into her just last week. Had a nice chat with her.’
‘Did you, now? Oh.’ No, he had heard nothing. ‘Tell me, how was she? How was she looking?’
‘Great. She’s unchanged, you know. Absolutely amazing.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Harry, shaking his head, his eyes gone glassy with wonder.
‘Makes you think, doesn’t it? She’s all woman is Nowell, if you know what I mean.’
‘I think so,’ I said. I said to myself that if I hung on long enough he would tell me he had always thought it was a shame Nowell and I had not managed to make a go of things, but as it was he told me almost straight away and almost in those exact words.
After that he made a great business of lighting one of those rugged cheroots of his, peering at me every few seconds and generally behaving as though he had in mind some tremendously important project or request or revelation which he considered the time was not quite ripe for. This could still have been routine, though by no means a bit you took no note of. He asked after Susan in an intent sort of way, and seemed relieved at the news that she was very well, but I doubted whether hearing so was his whole objective. There was another of the same when he asked for and got my views on the Government’s financial policies. After he had given me his I went and bought him a drink, a predictable vodka and tonic. It occurred to me that having a round of Harry’s to return was indeed a rare experience.
At my return he intensified his weighty look, then switched off and said casually, ‘Going to the Boxes’?’
‘Eh? What sort of boxes?’
‘Julian and Paula Box.’ He seemed astonished when I shook my head in ignorance. ‘I could have sworn I’d seen you there. They’re on a barge. On the river.’
‘Oh, yeah.’
‘Why don’t you come along? Drinks party. Completely informal. They’re a very free and easy couple. Paula doesn’t give a toss.’ The noise had got up again and I missed the next bit, so he had another shot. ‘I thought we could, er, I thought we could have a chat on the way, like.’
After weighing things up I said, ‘All right. Where are we off to?’
‘Got the car, have you? Oh it’s,’ he hesitated, ‘it’s out by Chelsea.’
‘Chelsea? Not artists, these mates of yours, are they, or writers?’
‘No, no,’ he said reassuringly, ‘they’ll all be in accountancy and insurance and suchlike. No trouble. You’ll enjoy yourself, Stanley. You see.’
Outside it was blowing half a gale but hardly raining at all, and there was lots of daylight left. All went well for a time, just one hold-up on the way down to the Embankment and no trouble after that. We slid along the river at a rate that left to itself would have got us to Chelsea in about five minutes, so I held back to give Harry a chance to finish talking about the World Cup and start recruiting me into MI6 or whatever it was he had in store for me. He was cutting it pretty fine, I decided, when we reached the corner of Tite Street and he had still not done with the referee problem.
‘Where to now?’
‘Well, I’m afraid I’m not much of a navigator, Stanley. Comes of not running a car, you know. The best plan is for you to make for Putney Bridge and we’ll think about it there.’
You bleeder, I thought wearily. So much for Harry’s famous lack of subtlety. Not that subtlety of a very high order had been needed to con Muggins into saving him the taxi fare to Walton-on-Thames or Reading or Oxford or wherever this perishing barge was going to turn out to be and back, not forgetting the time and difficulty that finding transport at the far end would have cost him in the ordinary way, all for the price of a large Scotch and a slice of somebody else’s hospitality. But no getting away from it, I had wanted to come on my own account. It was years since I had gone to a party with any intention of picking up a girl, and a Harry-generation get-together was unlikely to feature many or any girls, just females, and I was someone’s husband, but you simply never knew.
We came to Putney Bridge and thought about it, or Harry thought about it, and then we crossed over and went along the A205 until it became the A305, and not much later he made me stop while he thought about it again. After another couple of goes of this and only one wrong turning we reached a yard where a number of other cars were parked and drove in there.
The rain had finally packed up, the wind had risen a little if anything, the sun was shining low down through a hole in a great mass of black cloud and producing the rather unpleasant effect usual at such times. When we started walking there was no sign of the river, but it came into view at the first bend down a long alley. None of the buildings here had probably been touched since the beginning of the century, by human hands at least, though they had certainly got a great deal dirtier, slimier, damper, more battered and no doubt smellier in the meantime. Huge piles of rubbish smeared with oil, tar and soot, from postcard-sized pieces of creased paper to what could have been ship’s boilers, went back about as far. I was expecting a trudge through half a mile of mud at least, but when we made it to the waterside there was gravel and then a paved strip, and a long college-type structure on the far bank really looked pretty good after all with the sun on it.
Four barges were moored in line in front of us, moving about quite a bit, it seemed to me, also faster than I would have expected, never mind preferred. Ours was evidently the second along. Harry moved ahead of me across a rope-and-board gangway, which turned out to be al
l right but not the sort of thing to make sure of not missing. I reached the deck successfully and found two lots of noise going on, a remarkably loud and varied mixture of creakings and groanings from parts of the structure and, further off, the gabble of a party into its second half-hour, loud enough for anybody but without the Fleet Street snarl. Following Harry I ducked through an opening, crossed a narrow platform and, still not too comfortably, went down a short steepish flight of stairs into what, but for the lack of windows, looked very much like the sitting room of a rather well-off house in North London. Clearly the Boxes were living here on purpose, so to speak, and had had the sense to rip out or plaster over every possible trace of what had been there before.
When produced by Harry, the Boxes turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag. He seemed perfectly sound, the kind of fellow who, one minute flat after the last guest had gone, would be in an armchair in front of the large TV set in the far corner, in fact by the look of him I thought he could have done with being there now. She let you know she was the one behind the party, as if you had been in any doubt, and behind a lot else as well, like them being on the barge in the first place. I was given a full and satisfactory explanation of that part and what it entailed.
‘I suppose it’s not often as rough as this?’ I asked after a time. The movement had not eased at all since I came on board, indeed just as I spoke an old boy near by staggered and clutched at the woman next to him, burning his hand on her cigarette, but then he was drinking.
‘No no no no,’ said Mrs Box, frowning and shaking her head, ‘it’s only the turn of the tide. Either that or the wind blowing against the tide. Happens quite regularly.’
‘Oh, well that’s all tight then.’
At that she screamed, or rather at that point she made the female sound meaning someone more interesting had appeared, and was away past me without a word or a look. I wondered whether this was her not giving a toss. I also wondered whether the general clearance as regards artistry and writing that Harry had given could be applied to her. She had the look of wondering whether to agree with some of the things you said, and not listening at all to others, that I had noticed in some of Susan’s mates.
While I was wondering I took two glasses of Scotch and water off the white-coated waiter and made a drink out of them that was somewhere near what I would have poured myself at home. It lasted me while I made a thorough circuit of the scene that did me no good beyond what I got out of taking a pee in the very nice little toilet I found near what could have been the blunt end. The snag was not exactly that all the women were females, more that they all seemed to be wives or daughters, bar an aunt or so. And establishing the absence of anything pursuable or worth pursuing meant the party was a write-off, did it? Of course not, I could try and get a conversation going. Yes, about cars, golf, advertising, whisky or the price of onions. Oh, and women. Good God. Sometimes I wondered how Susan put up with me.
That last section saw me halfway into another jar. It would be easier if I found someone I knew, even Harry. Had he gone? No, there he was talking to a tall fat man who had his back to me but looked somehow familiar. When I got round to his front I found it was Bert Hutchinson. Yes, Harry and he shared a pub.
‘Hallo, Stanley,’ he said, and added ‘Christ’ when the floor dipped slightly more than usual and sent him lurching to one side. Again, the drink could have been helping, but he looked comparatively sober, more so than when I had last seen him, at least. ‘You know, people can only take so much of this. If it goes on they’ll be throwing up all over the bloody shop. Well, how have you been?’
‘Not too bad.’ I was going to move on as soon as I decently could, very soon, in fact. ‘I haven’t seen Nowell anywhere.’
‘She’s not here.’ He spoke flatly.
‘Stanley kindly drove me down,’ said Harry.
Bert stared at me through his bluish glasses. ‘What have you got?’
‘Apfelsine. FK 3.’
‘Oh, you have, have you? They’re very quick, I’m told. What we used to call a quick motor. Dear oh dear.’
‘Hey,’ I said, remembering, ‘haven’t you got one of the first Jaguars? I saw it outside your place that time.’
‘Yes. I have it, I own it, I possess it, and I derive from that fact such satisfaction as I am able. And that is all there is to be said.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘How do I mean? How — I beg your pardon, Harry. This is very boring for you. As a non-driver. Lucky man. Who doesn’t know what he’s missing. Unlike those who once upon a time … I’m sorry, I mustn’t go on.
‘No really, Bert,’ said Harry, who I thought looked a little bit tousled. ‘Do carry on. It’ll interest Stanley.’
Bert made a great growling noise and then stayed quiet for so long, looking towards his feet, that I started thinking he had forgotten all about whatever he had been going to say. With his head tipped forward like that he gave me a first-rate opportunity to inspect his scalp and the condition of the strip of hair he wore stuck down across it. I reckoned it, the strip, had become both narrower and less dense or luxuriant as the growth area above his left ear declined, but I would have had trouble remembering when I had last seen it close to. Finally he spoke.
‘I suppose in a way I shouldn’t complain,’ he said wisely and like someone completely above the struggle. ‘My generation received a wonderful gift —well, earlier generations had had it too, but in a less fully developed form. And the name of the gift was — motoring. For a few brief years after the second war and before the advent of the motorway and all the, all the vile things it brought with it,’ he went on, in some danger now of losing his calm, ‘it was possible to take an evolved automobile on to the roads of Great Britain and… drive, by what way and in what way, er, you could do as you liked. No longer so. No longer so. I have my Jaguar, I own my Jagular, fuck, Jaguar, but I don’t drive it. No sir. Not a chance. It’s all over. Thing of the past. Ancient history. Now Stanley, you tell me, am I, has the, is that complete balls? Or what? You be the judge.’
‘No, no, Bert, you’re absolutely right,’ I said. Well, I did think he had a point of a sort. ‘All too sadly true.’ Admittedly I could have done without the king-in-exile approach. ‘Never again.’ But it would have been unkind and perhaps dangerous to disagree with him. ‘Absolutely right.’
He sent me a look that was not so much kingly as saintly, as though after that affirmation of mine he could face the lions with a quiet heart. Then his glance shifted and he nodded his head emphatically. ‘I knew it. There goes one now. Told you, didn’t I?’
I turned round in time to see an elderly man who looked like a retired ambassador, hand over mouth, making for the corridor that led to the toilet at an unsteady run that included a glancing collision or two with other guests. This caused comment.
‘It could be just the drink,’ said Harry, who for the last couple of minutes had been looking from Bert to me and back again in amazement at all this emotion he had had no suspicion of. He looked as if he thought he had missed something important in life.
Bert shook his head just as emphatically. ‘Oh no. A fellow that age, he wouldn’t be taken suddenly like that, the way a youngster might. No, that was motion sickness and no mistake. Look,’ he said in some excitement as a similar chap, white-faced and staring-eyed, stumbled over to the foot of the stairs, ‘there’s another one. No doubt about it. Not that I’m feeling any too clever myself, let it be said. Ah, bloody good.’
This was addressed to the waiter who had just approached, or more likely was just a reflex reaction to the tray of drinks he was carrying. There were quite a few glasses of Scotch on it, but even so I would not have dared to repeat my tactics under these conditions if Bert had not poured one into another on the tray itself. I did the same. Harry took a white wine rather slowly.
‘How did you get here?’ I asked Bert.
‘Taxi.’ He pointed his head at my drink. ‘Aren’t you afraid of being picked up?’
&
nbsp; ‘They’ll get me in the end, I expect. But probably not in the middle of the evening, like eight o’clock, which is when I intend to be on my way. If that’s all right with you, Harry.’
‘Super,’ said Harry unenthusiastically. He had put his wine down untasted and there was sweat on his forehead and under his eyes. ‘Think I’ll … have a pee.’
‘You do that,’ said Bert, and went on almost before it was safe, ‘Right, let’s bugger off.’
‘I can’t leave him, Bert. I brought him here.’
‘You bet you did. But what of it? It may be a bit off the beaten track here but it isn’t the middle of the bloody Sahara exactly. Three minutes’ walk and he can get a taxi. Do the little bastard good. To put his hand in his own pocket for a change.’
‘I thought you and he were supposed to be drinking mates.’
‘Christ,’ said Bert, but because the floor had misbehaved again. ‘It’s getting worse, it’s like the Bay of bloody Biscay. I’m not going to be able to stand it much longer. What did you say?’
‘He told me he sometimes saw you in some pub in Notting Hill.’
‘Unfortunately he does. I grin and bear it. I’m not going to let a little sod like that drive me out of my pub, am I?’
‘You were talking to him when I came over.’
‘He was talking to me. He thinks he’s a buddy of mine. And I don’t seem to know anyone else here, except you.
‘Who invited you?’
‘I can’t remember. It wasn’t Harry. Look, what the bloody hell is this, a bloody inquisition? You’re like a bloody chick, you are. Actually it is quite interesting. I found I had this very neatly drawn map and all the details written out, you see, so of course I assumed it was them, the Boxes or whatever they’re called, and I’d forgotten who they were. Then when I got here I not only didn’t recognize them, but they didn’t recognize me. Took some getting round, that. The missis turned quite stroppy. I had to tell her I was in TV to quieten her down. A right one, she is. Well, is that enough for you?’