he was less important than a director. In Mr Pile’s room an executive stood up until he was told to sit down, and it was perhaps thirty seconds before Mr Pile looked up from his extensive study of the papers on his desk and said in a surprised tone:
“Sit down, Anderson.” Then Anderson sat down. Mr Pile stared at him, a little wizened old man with small, hard eyes behind the rimless pince-nez. Below the hard shell of his exterior was a layer of soft, warm shyness and embarrassment. And below the shyness, Anderson guessed, was solid rock. Now he seemed to have difficulty in forming his words.
“Did you – have a pleasant week end, Anderson?”
“Quite, thank you.”
“Did you – spend any time in the garden?”
“My flat is in town,” Anderson said. He had conducted this conversation many times, in half a dozen variations. Which would it be this time, he wondered – the Beauty of Getting Away from It All or Town Mouse and Country Mouse? As Pile talked behind the immense desk in the sombre room the electric desk lamp flashed ever so often upon his rimless spectacles, so that the eyes behind them were almost invisible.
“…so that in some ways,” he was saying, “the country cousin, ignorant and foolish as he may be in the way of the world, has an advantage over the – ah – more sophisticated town mouse. But I mustn’t push my little joke too far. All we advertising men are town mice, are we not?” Anderson covertly looked at his watch. “Are you an admirer of the immortal Walt? I refer,” Mr Pile said with a slight cough, “to Disney, not Whitman.”
Wasn’t this preamble more than usually lengthy? Was there a slight uneasiness behind the pince-nez? “I admire the early films very much,” Anderson said, and added: “I’m due for a conference with Mr Vincent in a few minutes.”
Mr Pile regarded him, apparently sightlessly. “You know of – ah – Sir Malcolm Buntz?” Anderson nodded. Sir Malcolm Buntz was a director of South Eastern Laboratories, one of the firm’s largest accounts. “Sir Malcolm has a nephew who contemplates –” Mr Pile coughed – “a career in advertising.” Anderson said nothing. “He is. I am sure, an amiable young man, but amiability is not, as I remarked to Sir Malcolm, the sole, or perhaps the chief, requisite for a successful career in advertising. Sir Malcolm, however, has been insistent.” He sighed to indicate the degree of Sir Malcolm’s insistence. “And it is difficult to refuse him. In short, the young man is coming here to serve a brief apprenticeship. I have agreed with Mr Vincent and Mr Reverton that he shall begin it under your watchful eye in the Copy Department.”
“We’re very busy.”
“So much the better. It will be a baptism of – ah – fire for him. Let me have a report on him, and do not,” Mr Pile smiled with wintry shyness, “spare Sir Malcolm’s feelings.”
“When does he begin?”
“He begins this – ah – morning,” Mr Pile said. Light shone on his pince-nez. “His name is Greatorex.”
2
Reverton and Anderson sat in armchairs in VV’s room. Wyvern, head of the Art Department, a thin dyspeptic man who wore a sports jacket and dirty grey trousers, sat staring out of the window into the street. The time was twenty to eleven. Wyvern said suddenly: “Here he is.”
There was a commotion outside, and then a little man rushed into the room. “Boys, boys, I’m sorry,” he said. “But wait a minute. This’ll kill you. Just wait a minute, that’s all I ask.” He flung on to the floor a briefcase stuffed with magazines and papers, whisked off hat scarf and overcoat, and darted out of the room again. There was the sound of a lavatory flushing, and then he was back. “Well,” he said. “Well. What’s all this on my desk? Books, magazines, papers, nothing but junk.” He threw a handful of art magazines to the floor and beamed round at them. His hair stood on end and his thick eyebrows stuck