My Name is Michael Sibley (9 page)

Prosset looked a little less suntanned than usual, as a result of working all day in a bank, but otherwise fit. He greeted me warmly enough, and as he showed me his flat pointed out with satisfaction that although he paid no more than other lodgers in the house, he had a private bathroom; probably this was thrown in as an added inducement to somebody to come and live in this basement. Lodgers were choosy in those days, and landlords were glad to get them. But the place certainly had one advantage, in that it had its own outside door at the foot of the area steps, so that you could go in and out and usually be unobserved.

He had bought a couple of bookcases, a wireless set, a table lamp, two or three cheap prints showing people hunting foxes, and a couple of extra cushions for the divan. After chatting for a while, he produced a pork pie, bread, butter, cheese, and a bottle of beer, and we fell to. He was, it seemed, getting on very well at the bank.

“Only doing unimportant routine stuff, of course, but I think the manager likes me all right. He hasn’t said anything, of course.”

“But you can tell by his manner?”

Prosset nodded. “He’s keen on rowing, too. Thank God I did rowing at school instead of cricket. I’ve joined the bank rowing club. They’re not too hot, frankly. I think he’s glad to have somebody from his own branch with a few guts, if you ask me.”

“What about going abroad?”

Prosset looked a bit rueful. “I don’t suppose they’ll let me go until I’ve done a couple of years, at least, in London. There are a lot of chaps keen on going East, of course, but I think my manager’s fairly influential. If I get to know him well, down at the rowing club, he’ll probably wangle something.”

“As long as he wangles it in the right direction,” I said.

“How do you mean?”

“He may like to keep you, if you row too well.”

Prosset’s chin went up defiantly in the old way. His eyes darkened. “If he did, I’d leave.”

“What would you do?”

He shrugged his shoulders and took a pull at his beer. “I reckon I could turn my hand to most things.”

I thought he probably could, too, and I wished I felt so confident about myself. He lit a pipe. I think he smoked a pipe largely because he thought it suited his face; he also smoked cigarettes, but later I noticed that when women were present he stuck to his briar. He smoked a short, squat pipe with a round bowl and a silver band; more often than not it was unlit and he sucked at dead ashes.

“What about you?” he asked at length, filling my glass. “What about the Sudan Civil?”

“That’s all washed out. They won’t have me.”

“Won’t have you? What on earth happened?”

“I don’t know. They just turned me down.”

“Good heavens!” He pondered for a few seconds. “I suppose they just thought you were not the right type.” He said it in a tone which indicated that, viewing the matter dispassionately, he reluctantly saw their point of view, unpleasant though it was for me.

“Well, what are you going to do, old man?” he asked.

“I’m going to be a newspaper reporter.”

“A reporter? Good Lord!”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. Only it means you’ll be stuck in England. Poor old Mike! When do you start? Which newspaper?”

“I start in a month or so on some provincial paper or other. My aunt knows somebody who knows somebody else—that sort of thing.”

He looked at his watch absent-mindedly. “It may be quite fun. You never know.” It was clear he thought it a somewhat remote possibility. “You may be investigating murders before long, like on the films,” he added.

“And I may not. What do you do with yourself every evening?” I asked, to change the subject.

“Muck about, you know. Go and have a beer in some pub, or poke about in Soho, or go to a flick.”

“Alone?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I go with some chap from the bank. And I’ve met a girl I’m quite keen on. As a matter of fact, I told her I’d probably bring you along to the Mitre, off Dean Street, about 8:30, if you’d care to come. Do you know the Mitre?”

I said I did not. Prosset smiled, brushed some ash off the lapel of his coat, and stood up. “It’s about time you began to see a bit of life. Care to come along? She’ll be pleased to meet you. I’ve often spoken about you.”

It was obvious he was rather proud of this girl and wanted to show her to me. I agreed readily enough, and in due course we set out.

“Yes, this girl’s a bit of all right, old man,” said Prosset as we sat on top of a bus.

“How did you meet her?”

He smiled in what seemed to me a rather embarrassed way. “I met her when we were all having some beer one evening after a practice row. As a matter of fact, she used to go around with one of the chaps in the rowing club; he wasn’t in my branch, though.”

“And now she goes round with you?”

“He was rather peeved about it, I believe, but she said she was fed up with him, anyway.”

“That must have been a consolation to him.”

Prosset said nothing. He looked at me sideways, cigarette in mouth. He appeared faintly surprised, and I felt I had scored a delicate hit.

The Mitre was like many public houses which have been patronized at one time or another by theatrical people. There were a number of signed photographs of actors and actresses on the walls, and various cartoons. There was a long counter which curved round to the right, with a reasonable cold buffet at one end. There were high stools at the bar, upholstered in green leather, and half a dozen small tables, with modern metal chairs upholstered in leather of the same colour. The walls were panelled with some sort of light-coloured wood; the place was brightly lit, and the barmen wore white jackets.

A girl stood at the bar at the far end, one of a group of five people. Prosset spotted her as we entered, and said, “Oh, my God, the whole gang’s here.”

The girl looked round as we approached and said, “Hello, John, you’ve just come at the right moment. It’s Herbert’s round.” She glanced briefly at me.

The man who appeared to be Herbert said, “What are you having, John?”

After a slight hesitation, he looked at me and asked me what I would have. Prosset ordered a whisky and soda; I said I would like a mild and bitter.

Prosset turned to the girl, and said, “Margaret, meet Mike Sibley. Mike—Margaret Dawson. We were at school together. You remember, he’s the chap David and I did everything with.”

She was about nineteen, I suppose, slightly built, and wore a wine-coloured jumper under a coat and skirt of light grey. Her hair was bobbed close to her head, and was light brown. But the things I remembered mostly about her were her eyes and her complexion. Her eyes were not very large, but they were a very dark, unusual grey, so dark that they seemed to be streaked liberally with black and her skin was of that curiously pallid, almost mottled colour which reminds you of an orchid. It is rare, and the texture is uncommonly soft. She wore no rouge, and only a touch of lipstick, and she applied the tweezers to her eyebrows with restraint. She smoked a great deal, almost continuously, out of a plain, black, unpretentious holder. When she offered me her hand, it was soft and limp; she did not so much shake hands as place her hand in yours, and allow you to do the shaking.

She said “Hello, Mike” without much enthusiasm, and left it at that.

I must confess I looked at her with interest. She made Kate look like an unsophisticated country bumpkin.

John Prosset and Margaret Dawson, one aged twenty-one, the other nineteen or so. Two kids. Life seemed full of promise to them then.

Herbert Day I disliked at sight, and I have had no reason to alter my opinion. He was of medium height, thinly built, with a pale, dark face. He was dressed in a black pinstripe suit, a white shirt, and a grey tie in which he wore a pearl pin. He had a habit of passing his tongue quickly over his lips which made one think of a snake. He seemed to speak partly through his nose. Prosset introduced him as, “Mr. Day. He’s on the Stock Exchange.” He smoked Cyprus cigarettes, which gave off a peculiar, slightly acrid smell.

A nondescript married couple, aged about thirty, were introduced more informally as “Ada and Ronnie Mason.” They had with them a red-haired youth in his twenties whose only name seemed to be Fred. They were all drinking spirits except me.

After a few moments, Margaret spoke to me. “You’re the one who’s going to be an engineer or something in Africa, aren’t you? Or are you the one whose father has a farm in Cornwall? I always get mixed.”

“I was, once upon a time, the one who was going to Africa. They won’t have me, though. They don’t like my face.”

Prosset said, “Never mind, Mike. You can become a theatre critic and give Margaret some good reviews. Mike’s going to be a reporter, Margaret.”

Margaret looked at me for a moment with interest.

“How exciting. Which paper?”

“It’s not settled yet. Somewhere out in the wilds. Are you on the stage?”

“Only in amateurs at present. I’ve got a job as a librarian. I hate books.”

Prosset bought the next round and I switched to gin and lime. Then the Masons went through some rigmarole of tossing to see who should pay for the next, husband or wife. Then Fred bought a round.

I have never had a very good head for spirits, and by this time my brain was not as clear as it could have been. I was aware that common courtesy required me to stand the next round of drinks. There were seven of us. When I had accepted Prosset’s invitation I had not reckoned on going out on a drinking bout. I had 5s. 10d.

I thought that seven whiskies and gins would be 4s. 1d. If one or two of them had lime or orange or lemon, it might cost a few pence more. I would just have enough.

It was Herbert Day who upset everything by saying, “Do you mind if I change and have a brandy, old man?”

The barman brought the drinks. He said, “Six and three altogether, please.”

I stood looking at the change I had dragged out of my pocket. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Margaret Dawson watching me curiously. I was trying without much success to think of what to say. I put all the change clumsily on the counter while the barman waited. In those days I had a tendency to blush and now, already flushed with drinks, I felt the colour mounting to my cheeks. I pulled out my wallet and pretended to look for some money. Prosset had his eye on me. I felt they were all watching this funny-looking youth who lavishly ordered drinks for which he had not the money to pay.

Suddenly Prosset said in his calm, self-assured way, “Are you short? Here’s ten bob I borrowed from you.”

He handed it to me without a smile, quite smoothly and naturally. It was beautifully done. The timing was so perfect that everybody would know that I had not lent him 10s, yet they would admire his exquisite tact for the way he had stepped forward to help me out. Just for a second his eye caught mine. “Poor old Mike!” he seemed to be saying, just as he had said it the day when he and Collet had been discussing tailors in the train.

Closing time was not the end. I found myself in the back of Herbert Day’s car. Ada Mason was sitting with her husband in front; Day was snuffling through his nose, saying something about keeping clear of the gear lever. I was at the back with red-haired Fred on my knee. Prosset was at the back, too, with Margaret between us. Inevitably her firm thigh was pressed against mine, and I liked it.

But her head was on Prosset’s shoulder, and his arm was around her.

I remember later picking at a greasy fried egg and a rasher of bacon which Ada Mason had cooked in her flat. Some of us were sitting in chairs or on the sofa, and some on the floor, and I was dimly aware that since the evening had begun the party had somehow grown in numbers, and there were two or three other people whom I did not know. Prosset’s voice, sounding a long way off, said, “Old Mike’s looking a bit green.”

Somebody gave me a cup of coffee, which improved matters a little, but only temporarily. The smell of fried food in the room, the cigarette and tobacco smoke, especially the smell of Herbert Day’s cigarettes, were too much. I rose unsteadily to my feet. Bill Mason, who was more sober than the rest and was doubtless watching for this moment, led me from the room.

When I came back, I had some more coffee and a piece of bread and cheese and felt better. I just felt tired and cold and could hardly keep my eyes open. I wanted to go home, but did not wish to be the first to make a move. Some of them were drinking more beer. I saw Prosset and Margaret and Herbert Day sitting on the sofa. Day was talking ten to the dozen. I watched his tongue flickering in and out.

Suddenly Fred, who had been sitting quietly in a chair, burst into violent life. He began to hum music; then he rose to his feet, pirouetted on his toes, flung his arms out, stood on one leg with the other stretched out behind him, and gradually swung into an energetic ballet dance. Nobody took much notice.

Herbert Day said, “Now he’s off. There he goes.”

Prosset said, “Fred always does that when he is tight.”

“Why?” I asked.

Prosset shrugged his shoulders. “God knows. Sometimes he starts in a pub. Then we have to restrain him.”

At about one o’clock we left.