Hangover Square (13 page)

‘Good lord!’ said George. ‘Well, of all people!… Good lord – this is great… Well, of all people!…’

It seemed to Johnnie that the other was almost beside himself with pleasure. Johnnie was even a little taken aback. But he let nothing of this be seen and vigorously returned each enthusiastic greeting and compliment.

‘Well,
you
haven’t changed a
bit
,’ said George. ‘still the same brilliant mathematical genius?’

‘You haven’t changed, either,’ said Johnnie. ‘still the same bloody fool?’

‘Oh – rather! Worse, if possible!’

‘
Impossible
,’ said Johnnie, and they laughed, shyly yet with rich friendliness.

It had always been humorously taken for granted that George Harvey Bone was a bloody fool, and so far from being offended by this query he was only too delighted to have had his personality thus vividly and affectionately recalled.

‘Still get your dotty moods?’ asked Johnnie, pursuing the joke.

‘Oh, rather!… They’re
much
worse,’ said George, in the boastfulness and flippancy of his cheerfulness. ‘I pass out for days on end nowadays!’

They finished off their beer, ordered some more, and soon enough passed into reminiscence. This, naturally, brought them to Bob Barton almost at once, and to what a great fellow he was.

‘I know I miss him,’ said George, in that naive, frank tone of his, ‘terribly.’

‘Oh, so do I,’ said Johnnie, but it occurred to him that he probably did not miss Bob in the same way as George, or to anything like the same extent. Bob Barton, he remembered, had had a curious influence on this big, sad, lumbering man. Whenever they were together George had been a different man – more alive, talkative, confident, happy. He had, as it were, sunned himself in the friendship which Bob had generously yet unthinkingly bestowed. There had, even, been something a little dog-like in George’s high spirits and devotion when with his friend – a relationship of which Bob had certainly never taken advantage, for it was true enough that he had been a great fellow. Looking at George now, and the signs of drink, smoking, misery and loneliness which showed so plainly on his face and bearing, it struck John Littlejohn that Bob had unwittingly done George a very bad service, indeed a permanent damage perhaps, by going to America like that.

‘Well,’ said George, ‘I’ve found
you
again now, so you’ll have to make up for it. I hope we’re going to see a lot of each other now.’

‘I should say we are,’ said Johnnie enthusiastically, for he was touched both by what the other had said, and the manner – so simple, and direct, too simple and direct in a hard and complicated world – in which he had said it.

They talked about other things, and a little while later George said, apologetically:

‘But I’ve just been talking about nothing but myself. What about you? What have you been doing? Who are you with now, Johnnie?’

‘Oh, I’m in the West End now,’ said Johnnie. ‘I’m accountant for Fitzgerald, Carstairs and Scott. The theatrical people. I dare say you’ve heard of them.’

At this an extraordinary change, a look of surprise, wonderment and admiration, came over George’s face.

‘Good lord!’ he said. ‘Fitzgerald, Carstairs & Scott!… Are you with them?’

‘Yes… What’s all the trouble about? Do you know them?’

‘No… It’s just extraordinary, that’s all…’

‘Why… what’s so extraordinary?’

‘Oh… nothing… Only I know a girl who knows them, that’s all…’

For a moment Johnnie found it a little difficult to see what might be considered so ‘extraordinary’ in George’s knowing a girl who in turn knew the firm. The firm knew millions of girls. Then he shrewdly realized that the extraordinary thing, in George’s mind, was not the situation, but the girl. When a man mentions a ‘girl’ to his friend, in just that vague and elusive tone, he invariably means a girl whom he regards as extraordinary. In other words it looked as though his poor friend George was in love. This was a new departure indeed. He wondered whether such an emotion would assist George’s happiness, and very much doubted it.

‘An actress?’ he asked, hoping that George might unburden himself.

‘Yes…’ said George. ‘Well, she was… She had small parts in films. But she doesn’t seem to be able to get anything now.’

‘Yes,’ said Johnnie. ‘That’s the way of it. It’s a tough business. Would I know her name?’

‘No… I don’t expect so… Netta Longdon’s the name… I don’t expect you’ve heard of her.’

‘No,’ said Johnnie, ‘I haven’t… as a matter of fact…’

He added this apologetic ‘as a matter of fact’ in order to show that it was a mere accident, an inconsequent freak of nature, that he individually had not come to hear of the girl – thus hoping delicately to avoid the infliction of any blow to the pride which George might be presumed to take in her. He was also now instinctively persuaded, from the look on George’s face when he mentioned her name, that George had ‘got it badly’. He was faintly amused, and faintly concerned.

George did not seem to want to say any more about it, and they went on to talk about other things. They ordered some more beer, decided to have some sandwiches at the bar instead of going anywhere to lunch, and went on talking. But at last Johnnie looked at the clock, and saw that he had to go. George also had an appointment with a dentist, and time was getting
short. They drank up their drinks quickly and came out into the noise, and traffic, and sunshine. Here, a little dazed by the brightness and the din of their midday drinking, they made renewed protestations of their pleasure in having met each other again, and entered into an arrangement to get into touch by telephone. They were to have a night out in a few days’ time, and they decided that it would probably be best if Johnnie came over to meet George at Earl’s Court.

When they had parted Johnnie strolled back through Leicester Square towards the office. His body basked in the warmth and brightness of the day, but this very warmth and brightness tinged his mind with a certain sadness, an apprehensiveness, which had taken to visiting him at this time of day and which he was unable to dispel. Now it had been warm and fine like this for three weeks without a break…

In the thick green of the trees the birds screeched and sang above the subdued thunder of the traffic. In the middle of the square the effigy of Shakespeare stared greyly out in the direction of the
Empire Cinema
with its bright advertisements of ‘Good-bye, Mr Chips’, with Robert Donat and Greer Garson. A pigeon had alighted on the head of the poet, who seemed to be watching the red coat (like an old-fashioned golfer’s coat, yet giving a touch of hot exotic colour to the whole scene) of the man who cleaned shoes on top of the Men’s Lavatories. Fine, fine, fine… Blue and sunshine everywhere…

Fine for the King and Queen in Canada…

Fine for the salvaging of the
Thetis
…

Fine for the West Indian team…

Fine for the I.R.A. and their cloakrooms…

Fine for Hitler in Czechoslovakia…

Fine for Mr Strang in Moscow…

Fine for Mr Chamberlain, who believed it was peace in our time – his umbrella a parasol!…

You couldn’t believe it would ever break, that the bombs had to fall.

Chapter Two

An unfortunate series of conflicting engagements disabled Johnnie and George from meeting as soon as they would have liked: and it was a fortnight or so after their encounter in the West End that Johnnie took the tube train from his work to meet George at a quarter to seven one evening at Earl’s Court station.

Although he was seven minutes too early he found George waiting for him in the Arcade. This struck him as being decidedly pathetic – both because George had nothing better to do than hang about a station, and also because of what it revealed of George’s affectionate eagerness to meet his friend again – and a sudden feeling, almost of responsibility, came over the little man in regard to the big one.

They went to the ‘Rockingham’ over the way and when they had had their first beer George suggested they should go on somewhere else. George had a look in his eye when he suggested this which made Johnnie fancy that he had some ulterior motive in moving on, but nothing was said about it, and they went out into the street.

They went past the Post Office and A.B.C. and then turned down a narrow road on their right which led indirectly towards the Cromwell Road.

Half-way down this they came to a small pub into which George led him. They got beer at the counter, and then sat at a table covered with green linoleum near the door.

The long, warm, bright days still persisted, and the door of the pub was flung and fastened back. It was cool, dark, and restful inside and pleasant with the peaceful beginnings of the little house’s evening trade – two men talking quietly, another reading a newspaper, the flutter of a canary in a cage, the barmaid vanishing into the other bars and returning, the occasional oily jab of the beer-engine and the soft spurt of beer. It was good to sit back in this cave of refreshment, and stare at the blinding brilliance of the day outside, the pavement, the dusty feet of temperate but jaded pedestrians.

‘This is one of my regular places,’ said George.

‘Oh yes?…’ said Johnnie. ‘Very nice.’

And he looked around as though politely to appreciate the nature and savour the quality of his friend’s background. But, of course, he could not see what George could see – the wet winter nights when the door was closed; the smoke, the noise, the wet people: the agony of Netta under the electric light: Mickey drunk and Peter arguing: mornings-after on dark November days: the dart-playing and boredom: the lunch-time drunks, the lunch-time snacks, the lunch-room upstairs: the whole poisoned nightmarish circle of the idle tippler’s existence. He saw merely a haven of refreshment on a summer’s day.

In the course of the next forty minutes they had two more beers, and the place began to fill up. Then two people entered, a dark girl without a hat, and a fair man with a moustache, to whom George said ‘Hullo, Netta… Hullo, Peter…’ and who went to the bar, and stood there talking.

There was something in George’s eye when he greeted this couple, which closely resembled the something which had been in his eye when he had suggested they should move on from the ‘Rockingham’, and which led Johnnie to suppose that there was a direct casual connection between the two looks. In other words, it looked as though he had been brought in here, either by the conscious or only half-conscious volition of his friend, to see or meet these two. Then, as he continued to talk to George, who was now a little vague in his manner, he remembered the name ‘Netta’ as being the one given to the girl mentioned by George in their last meeting, and he at once understood everything. George had brought him here either because he wanted him to meet or see the girl with whom he was in love, or, perhaps, simply because he was unable to keep away from any place where she was likely to be. Johnnie had a momentary feeling of disappointment, of faint jealousy even, that on this, their evening out, George’s real thoughts should be lying in another direction. He also had a slight fear of being bored in the near future as the recipient of confidences. But he showed nothing of this.

In the meantime, while he talked to George, he took what
opportunity he could of studying the girl and the man as they stood at the bar. He was not pleased by what he saw, either from his own point of view as a judge of individuals generally, or from the point of view of George’s happiness in particular. It flashed across his mind, in fact, that George had got in with a rather ‘bad lot’. He didn’t like the look of the man at all. He did not like his general carriage, his fair, cruel face, his fair guardsman’s moustache, his eccentricity of dress, his hatlessness, his check trousers and light grey sweater with polo neck – ‘sensible’ enough, no doubt, but in this case assumed, one was certain, not by a humble man who desired to be sensible, but by a scornful, ultra-masculine man who desired to single himself out from the herd and wear a ‘uniform’ while others made do with a plain shirt and collar.

Here, Johnnie reflected, were the outward signs of the same sort of vanity and exhibitionism as distinguishes the third-rate practitioner of the arts, but the art instead of being that of poetry, of music, or of painting, of Bloomsbury or Chelsea, was of Great Portland Street, of transactions with secondhand cars, of dubious deals with men, of persuasions in public houses, borrowings and post-dated cheques. And he did not like the look of the girl very much better. She was decidedly attractive, he saw, but in an ill-natured, ungracious way. Because of his connection with Fitzgerald, Carstairs & Scott, Johnnie had an extensive knowledge of the external appearance and different modes of behaviour of a great variety of attractive women: they came up to the office in shoals, with their nails dipped in blood and their faces smothered with pale cocoa. And some were charming and simple beneath their masks, and some were complex and arrogant. This girl belonged to the latter type, the type which would ignore or stare surlily at him if he spoke to them, until they learned that the actual money came through him, when their manner sweetened wonderfully. This girl wore her attractiveness not as a girl should, simply, consciously, as a happy crown of pleasure, but rather as a murderous utensil with which she might wound indiscriminately right and left, and which she would only employ to please when it suited her purpose. They were like bad-tempered street-walkers, without
walking the street. They walked, instead, the offices of inferior film agencies and studios, and they sat in dirty snack bars with tall, pimply young men, and they went about in open sports cars and they lived in the suburbs, or in Maida Vale, or Earl’s Court. They had not the smallest talent for the theatre, nor the slightest interest in it save as a dubious means to a dubious end.

Roughly of this type Johnnie judged this girl to be: though he was aware that he might be misjudging her because of the bar and neighbourhood she was in, and the unpleasant-looking man she was with. As the type of person for George to fall for, however, he was certain that she was disastrous. No type could be less calculated, he surmised, to make his big, simple friend happy. He wondered how far it had gone, and what relationship there was between the two.