‘Then — I’m sorry Michael — but there was nothing I could do about it. I forgot everything. He did, too, because he’s told me so since, and while we were there, his wife came in and saw us. She’s tall and thin and has nearly no breasts, though she’s very good-looking at the face. She shouted it was the last straw, packed her things, and went in a taxi. The next day she came with a vehicle and took half the furniture. I was surprised she didn’t take Smog, but she didn’t because Donald told me she was going to live with her own lover who wouldn’t have put up with him for a single minute. Then I found out that they were divorced already, had been for a year! So we got married because he said he loved me, and we were still living together, anyway. I liked him, just a little bit, you know.’
‘I phoned you,’ I said bitterly, ‘night after night, and I called at the flat as well.’
‘We went to Scotland for a fortnight, and then we gave up the flat. We live in Hampstead now in a house.’
‘Things happen too fast to me. I’m still in love with you.’ It was the truth. She was no longer dressed like the gorgeous au pair girl of old, but had put on a few years of maturity with the clothes of a London wife, not to mention her added responsibilities.
‘I can’t say anything,’ she nudged me. ‘You understand?’ — a glance at Smog who now had all three cups in front of him and was filling them with the remains of the tea, water, milk, and sugar, as well as the stinking contents of the ashtray.
‘At least give me your telephone number so that we can have a secret word together now and again. There’ll be no harm in that.’
‘I hope not,’ she said, smiling as she wrote it out for me. She stood up to go. ‘Come on, Smog.’
‘I haven’t finished my chemical experiments.’
‘Smog, don’t be a little bastard. Come on.’
He stood up and put on his cap, backwards. ‘I’m not a little bastard. I want to go with Michael.’
‘You can’t,’ I said, ‘not yet.’ As I shook hands for the farewell she said: ‘You look more prosperous.’
‘Changed my job. I work for the Bank of England. Just been to see a client who has an overdraft. If we can get him to settle it, England’s balance of payments will be OK — for this month anyway. I get all sorts of special missions like this. Mother pulled a few strings to get me the job. I don’t mind using her if I’m in an especially tight corner.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she laughed. ‘But we won’t go into that.’
I smiled, as if I thought she was being facetious, not trusting me on such a trifle: ‘That’s all right. So we’ll be in touch?’ I put an end to it rather coolly, though I feel we parted with mutual twelve per cent interest in each other.
I was too occupied in the next few weeks even to talk to anybody on the telephone. The day arrived when William, who claimed he’d put in an excellent word for me, said that the man in the iron lung would like to make my acquaintance. Before this came we went on the longest walk of all — to Highgate and back — after which I felt as fit and lean as a tiger, for the continual weight I carried was turning me into a savage, though in my face I had to show no emotion at all, unless it was that of a man mulling over some mild assignment that may possibly be fatal for others but in no way for himself.
We went to an immense block of old-fashioned flats near the Albert Hall, and William was greeted at the entrance by the doorman as if he himself had been a millionaire tenant there for twenty years. He took us up in the lift and rang the bell so that neither William nor I need take off our gloves. We were shown into the richest flat I had ever seen, a hall with pictures and vases that my fingers itched to latch upon. Then I remembered my newly opening prospects in life, and in any case they were things I couldn’t properly hide on me. A butler took us into a smaller room, which had a few simple chairs around the walls and a table in the middle. There were copies of Country Life and The Connoisseur on the table, though neither of us read, but sat there without talking.
I felt my heart trying to push its way through to fresh air, and I wanted to light a cigarette, but sensed that William would have disapproved, and in any case there were no ashtrays. So I calmed myself by saying I was man enough not to get upset at this ordinary happening of being forced to wait. The last few weeks were beginning to show me that emotion must always be kept in the negative, must never be developed into a picture for the rest of the world to see. A man who shows nothing of his inner turmoil is always more formidable than one who can’t help but do so and who doesn’t even realize what a fool he makes of himself when he does. At the same time you have to be careful not to let this façade of calmness destroy the actual feelings inside, because that would be cutting off your nose to spite your face, as they say. I was mulling on the fact while we waited, that thought and self-examination, more than anything else, was what kept you looking as if nothing could ever break in from the outside world.
We were shown in by a tall young man with dark hair, and a soft, half-smiling face. The room was so long that the ceiling seemed lower than the one outside. There were no carpets on the floor, but a black and white design in soft lino tiles. It was less furnished in every respect, except for a few maps that had been framed, and hung in odd places along the walls. At the other end of the room a large relief map of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, had been fixed to the ceiling. Red string connected various places on it, so that it looked like the sales map of some large export firm, except for its peculiar position.
What drew me most of all was a huge glass case built from the floor almost up to the ceiling, and a sort of bed inside this aquarium, with one large face — so large that it must have been in some way magnified — looking out of it at the top end. From this immense transparent construction came pipes and wires, and by the side at the other end was a huge rubber bag inflating and deflating the heart of the man inside this miracle of modern science set before my eyes. He lay under a counterpane, but with enough of his body visible to show that he was dressed in a normal suit, with a collar and tie at the neck. He sloped on a backrest, it seemed, though only a little, so that he could look sideways at the ceiling. Papers and booklets were spread over the bed, but at the moment he was mainly interested in me, as I advanced with William across the room, still carrying my briefcase. His face was pale, and rather fat, and his small brown eyes fixed me firmly. ‘Good morning, sir,’ William said. ‘I’ve brought the new man along.’
‘Let’s see him then,’ a voice replied, not from the iron lung, but out of a speaker by the side, though there was no doubt that it was the man within the iron lung who had spoken. As I went close I saw, on a built-in ledge within reach of his hand, a Luger automatic pistol. What good that would do him in a dust-up I couldn’t imagine, yet I suppose it gave him some comfort to have it close by.
‘A man,’ said the rather cracky voice that came out of the speaker, ‘must be able to carry half his own weight, without showing it. Can you?’
I made a quick reckoning. Last time, the scales had spun up to well over twelve stones, so six times fourteen came to more than eighty pounds. The idea frightened me, but instead of telling him to hire a team of yaks, I said I could, providing the packer knew his job. The speaker laughed. It surprised me that during the whole interview he asked so few questions, but I supposed that William had kept him well supplied.