My Name is Michael Sibley (16 page)

Cynthia spoke of practical everyday things. Her talk was full of what she had done, and what she proposed to do later in the day, tomorrow and next week. She related what people had said to her and what she had replied; what she had bought and what she would like to buy.

Kate did not strike me as very practical; having left home soon after she became an adult, she had not the domestic experience and interests of Cynthia. On the other hand, she had read widely and more selectively. She had in her bones a sense of history, a feeling for the past, a love of old things and ways, of traditions and customs. It is a curious yardstick by which to measure them, but I should say that of the two Kate was the more patriotic. Her great interest was in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and she had read the lives of Nash, Brummel, Sheridan, Parson Woodford, and many others.

She had also developed a pleasant facility for doing pen and wash drawings. They were not great art, but they had a freshness and spontaneity which were attractive. I presumed, and rightly, that she had developed this talent, for such it was in a small way, to give her something to do when she went away on her summer holidays. She usually went alone.

When I paid the bill after dinner, and said I supposed we had better be going home, she agreed readily enough, but I noticed that the sparkle died out of her eyes.

I thought: she is like a child who has come to the end of a party to which she had been looking forward for a long time.

She said frankly, “This has been one of the loveliest days I’ve had for months.”

“Well, maybe we can go out again some other time.”

“I’d love to.” She hesitated. “What do you do in the evenings? I suppose you are very busy?”

I told her that sometimes I wrote my stories, at other times I had a job for the office, or had to go round and see my aunt. Yes, I said, I was pretty busy on the whole.

I had no desire to leave myself wide open.

“Are you doing anything on Thursday? I was wondering if you would care to come along and meet Marjorie and have something to eat. Nothing much, or course. Just bacon and eggs or something, and a glass of beer. Rather dull, really. Still, if you’d like to come, just drop in. There’s no need to decide now. See what you are doing.”

“I’d love to come if I can.”

But I was pretty sure I wouldn’t go. I thought I’d like to see Kate now and again. She was a nice girl, but not wildly exciting like Cynthia under the sand dunes or even on the settee beneath the beady eyes of the little stuffed birds. Cynthia, for all her superficiality, had animal magnetism, and that is a deadly weapon when a girl is dealing with a young man.

I knew now I didn’t want to marry Cynthia; I just wanted to see her from time to time. If the price was a few endearing letters, it was well worth paying. It was a dangerous and unscrupulous game, and I knew it, but I didn’t care. I thought in the end she would fall for somebody else, that it would all work out somehow. I thought I had the world under control and the skies would always be blue, or if not eternally blue at least only clouded from time to time by occasional swiftly passing showers.

When I returned to my room after taking Kate out that evening, I found awaiting me a letter from Prosset which had been forwarded from Palesby. It was strange to find that the sight of his handwriting still gave me a curious twinge in the pit of the stomach. I thought I had got over that sort of thing. It was as though the ink itself radiated some strange aura of his domineering personality.

I looked at the writing, forward-sloping and regular, the downward strokes thick and determined. I realized then that, despite what I had accomplished, despite my independence, I still stood in awe of John Prosset, the ill-paid bank clerk.

As I took the letter to my room, I felt dismayed not because I was going to meet him again, but because I had not shaken off even now the feeling of inferiority which all those years before had made me rejoice when he went away to play a football match; and had left me, his so-called friend, free to talk and laugh as I wished without the threat of a sneer or a challenge from across the school dining-room table.

But I was wrong in one thing. John Prosset was by now no longer a bank clerk. His letter read as follows:

Could I have broken things off at this point? I could have left his letter unanswered, but nothing would have been gained. It would never have occurred to Prosset that I did not want to see him. He would have been told in Palesby about my transfer to London, and when he returned he would have sought me out.

Prosset’s letter was written on some cheap business notepaper bearing an address in Middlesex Street. I put the letter in my pocket and went to bed. The next morning I telephoned him at his office. He seemed pleased to hear from me and to learn that I was now in London permanently.

“What about a bite of lunch together?” he asked.

“Lunchtime is awkward for me. I never know where I’ll be.”

“Well, what about a drink and a snack this evening?”

“The last time I went drinking with you, you got me tight.”

He laughed. “I suppose you know you still owe me ten bob from that evening?”

“I’ll bring it along,” I promised.

We arranged to meet at the Six Bells in Chelsea at 6:30 p.m. I was there a few minutes early and saw him walk in with a middle-aged man who from the cut of his clothes and his complexion seemed to be a foreigner. Prosset saw me and waved, but rather to my surprise did not come up to me; instead he went to the other end of the bar with his companion and ordered some drinks. When he had paid for them, he said something to his companion and came over to me.

“Don’t think me rude, old man, but I’ve just got a couple of things to settle with this bloke and then I’ll be with you. OK by you?”

“It’s OK by me.”

I watched him walk back to the other end of the bar. He had filled out since I had last seen him and his face, instead of the healthy glow it used to have, had turned rather red. But he was still a remarkably handsome young man, his clothes were as well cut as ever, and he wore his pork-pie hat at a jaunty angle. When he walked he swung his arms across his body, in the way Cynthia did, but in a more pronounced manner.

Prosset and the other man talked together for some fifteen minutes. Now and again they seemed to be disagreeing about something. The other man supplemented his words with quick little movements of his hands. Once, across the bar, I heard the stranger mention Herbert Day’s name. Prosset smiled and shook his head and did not seem to be much impressed. When they had finished their business, the other man went out and Prosset came over to me.

“Sorry about that, old man. Max will talk such a lot.”

“What are you having?” I asked.

“A whisky, if I may.”

I noticed that he still had his old habit of talking with his cigarette in his mouth, so that it bobbed up and down as he spoke. I ordered two large whiskies and sodas and we raised our glasses to each other.

“So you’ve left the bank?”

He nodded. “I don’t think I was cut out for a banking career. Not in England, anyway.”

“I don’t think you were. What sort of business are you in?”

“We buy and sell. Do a little importing, too.”

“And they pay you all right?”

“Not too badly. But I have a feeling that Herbert Day will be paying me more soon, or else he and Max will find themselves in—” He broke off.

“Find themselves in what?”

A hint of fire, indicative of excitement or anger, flickered for a moment behind Prosset’s eyes and was extinguished.

“Find themselves in—difficulties,” he answered lightly. “That’s all. Just in difficulties.”

“What sort of stuff do you deal in?” I said at length.

He took a deep pull at his whisky. “Anything really. We’ve got one or two chaps who go round the country buying up bankrupt stocks. Then we sell them again, cheap. I have to travel about a good deal at the moment, as I told you in my letter. But when we get really going, of course, I’ll just do the organizing.”

I could well believe it. I thought it would just about suit Prosset to sit back and tell other people what to do.

“It must make a change after being stuck in a bank.”

“We could do more, if we had a bit more capital. I suppose you haven’t got £250 you want to invest in a nice, growing concern? We’re going to do big things one day.”

“Newspapermen don’t have much opportunity to acquire capital. How’s Margaret?”

He signed to the waiter to fill our glasses again.

“Margaret’s all right, I believe. She got married, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know,” I said in surprise. “I thought she was rather keen on you.”

He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “As far as she could be stuck on anybody, I think she was. But Number One came first for little Margaret, you know.”

“Whom did she marry?”

“Some producer chap. You remember how keen she was on the stage. I’ve no doubt he dangled a few minor parts before her eyes. The funny thing is, from what I hear, I understand that no sooner were they married than he decided that he would like to have a wife who looked after his home and who would give him some children. I believe she more or less had to give up her acting ambitions. You never know what turn life is going to take, do you?”

He thought for a moment.

“Take ourselves, for instance. You imagined you were going out to Africa or somewhere, and I thought I was going to end up in charge of our Shanghai branch or something like that. Now you’re a reporter stuck in London, and I’m buying and selling things. Oh, well, I suppose it might be worse.”

He gave one of his careful smiles. “Good old Mike. I’m glad to see you again. You bring back some happy memories.”

“So do you. Do you ever hear from David?”

He shook his head. “I wrote a few times, but he hardly ever answered, the lazy swine.”

We stayed drinking and talking about old times until nine o’clock, and then went to a nearby restaurant and had a meal. I told him about life in Palesby, and how lucky I was to be transferred to London. I think I wanted to show him that all in all I had so far made more of a success of life than he had done. I thought that he would be impressed that I was now a Fleet Street man. But he was not.

I was irritated and disappointed at his attitude. I could tell from the disinterested, patronizing tone with which he greeted my remarks that while he was inclined to regard all journalists as inkstained and shabby, he saw himself, already, as one of the directors of a large and flourishing business.

He talked about the pleasure one got out of building something up out of small beginnings, about the zest it gave one to be organizing—indeed, to be creating something almost from nothing. And how enjoyable it would be in due course to be able to regard one’s creation and find it good.

“You sound rather like God,” I remarked.

He looked at me thoughtfully. “You’ve changed, you know.”

“Have I?”

“You’ve sharpened up, somehow. Frankly, you needed it. I always thought you a bit of a dope at school, you know.”

“I dare say I was in some ways.”

“A nice dope, of course. David and I used to talk about you. We agreed that it was almost impossible to imagine you in bed with a girl. It seemed ludicrous, somehow.”

“I suppose it did.”

“You looked so funny. I remember once, when we had been beaten in a House match, I mentioned to some chap that we weren’t up to full strength, and I said you weren’t playing, for one thing. Do you know what he said?”

“I’ll buy it. Go on.”

“He said, ‘Who’s Sibley? Oh, you mean that chap who looks like an influenza germ.’”

“Complimentary sort of chap.”

When I got home that evening I looked at myself in the mirror. I saw what he meant. My face was dark, irregular, bespectacled and pale.

I went to bed and lay thinking about Cynthia. I recalled her circle of friends, and her sudden change of mind about wanting to get married when she heard that I had been transferred to London. Doubtless I seemed to be heading at least for a greater measure of success than the lads she already knew in Palesby.