England Made Me Read Free Page B

notes: ‘See you later’, ‘Off to the baker’s’, ‘Leave the beer outside the door’, ‘Off for the week-end’, ‘No milk this morning’. There was hardly one patch of whitewash unwritten upon and the messages were all of them scratched out. Only one remained uncancelled, it looked months old, but it might have been new, for it said: ‘Gone out. Be back at 12.30, dear’, and I had written her a post-card saying that I would be coming at half-past twelve. So I waited, sitting there on the stone stairs for two hours, in front of the top flat and nobody came up.
    Feet on the stone stairs, running, scrambling, pushing, up to the dormitory; Kate gone and the room full and the prefects turning out the lights. Not a moment of quiet even at night, for always someone talks in his sleep the other side of the wooden partition. I lay sweating gently unable to sleep, forgetting the pain under my eye, waiting for the thrown sponge, the rustle of curtains, the hand plucking at my bed-clothes, the giggles, the slap of bare feet on the wooden boards.
    Old faces, faces hated, faces loved, alive or dead, sick or dying, a lot of junk in the brain after thirty years, the prow rising to the open sea, the lightship behind, and the gramophone playing.
    Down the stone stairs with money in my pocket meant for her; thirty bob to the good because she was not there; once gone, lost, not to be seen again. Fill the room with film actress photos, tear the portraits out of the Tatler : ‘Will you sign this for an unknown admirer? One shilling enclosed for packing and postage.’ Whores in plenty in Hollywood, but no whore like my whore. Unhappiness always makes a man richer: thirty bob to the good and no one to visit.
    I knew at once of course what it was about when they said: ‘The Manager wants to see you.’ I’d expected it for days, so every morning I put on my best bib and tucker and cleaned my teeth extra well. I’ve forgotten who it was who told me once I had a dazzling smile, not knowing the practice before the glass, the constant change of paste, the expensive dentists for invisible fillings. A man’s got to look after his appearance the same as a woman. It’s often his only chance. Maud, for example.
    Nearer forty than thirty, blonde, a little over-blown about the blouse. ‘There are things a man won’t do,’ I said, ‘and one is to take money from a woman,’ so she respected me and gave me presents and I popped them when I needed some ready. We met on the Underground. All the way from Earl’s Court to Piccadilly, eyeing each other down the length of the carriage; I had a hole in my sock and couldn’t cross my legs. Slow. Slow approach. Meeting at last on the moving stair.
    How quick with Annette. Ringing the bell of the flat, expecting another girl; then she opened the door and I thought: ‘She’s the goods.’
    When I opened the door he pretended to be writing; it’s a stale trick to make you feel inferior and it never fails to work. ‘Oh, Mr Farrant,’ he said, ‘I want to ask you about a complaint I received from the shippers. I have no doubt that you can explain.’ Well, if he hadn’t any doubt, I had.
    And so on to Bangkok.
    Spit and hiss of water, the gramophone quiet. The lights out along the deck, nobody about.
    Lectures, my God, how many lectures in a man’s life? Only Kate, I think, never; simply said do this and that, never nagged. And Annette, content and quiet and affectionate behind the drawn blinds in the half-light. Maud lecturing, Father lecturing, managers lecturing. God in Heaven, I’m Anthony Farrant, as good as they are. I can add up two columns of figures in my head, multiply by three, take away the number I first thought of. Even the managers know that. ‘Brilliant,’ they say at first, ‘a quite brilliant piece of work, Mr Farrant,’ because I’ve put