My respect for him increased. And then I was seized with the fact of sharing life, all life, of being in the main current - everyone talks about the joys of motherhood, but they say very little about the joys of fatherhood, when you feel an immense animal tenderness towards a woman; the Bible puts it exactly right when it talks of your bowels yearning towards someone.
"You mean that you'd let her have the baby and say nothing to me?"
"I'd sooner have that happen than have her miserable for the rest of her life."
"Susan with my son," I said, and smiled. I was dizzy with happiness. It was a happiness as wholesome as honey on the comb, I was a man at last. Instead of having the book snatched from me halfway I was reading in to the next chapter.
"You've nothing to grin about," Brown said roughly. "This isn't the way I'd planned to have my daughter wed." His eyes turned opaque as mercury and his voice had a knuckleduster menace. "Some fathers have sent their daughters away to - nursing homes. It's not too late for that."
"She wouldn't consent," I said in agony. "You couldn't do it either, you couldn't murder your grandchild. I can't believe that anyone would be so rotten. I'll take her away with me tonight, I swear I will."
"You don't know what I can do," he said. "I can get my story in first, and I can handle her better than you can."
"You try it. You try it. I'll take the matter to the police before I let you do it."
"I believe you would." He seemed pleased about it. "I really believe you would. You're an awkward customer, aren't you?"
"Being decent isn't the same thing as being awkward."
"True enough. I've no intentions of sending Susan away, in any case."
"Then what did you give me such a fright for?"
"Wanted to see what you were made of," he said with his mouth full.
"I suppose that's why you warned me off Susan, too?"
"I never warned you off Susan," he said, helping himself to roast potatoes. "My wife had a word with Hoylake at a church social and he took it upon himself to tell you to keep away from her. That is, as much as he ever tells anyone anything. Proper Town Hall type, that chap."
"Why didn't you say something to me?"
"Why should I? If you had owt about you, I knew you'd damn my eyes and go ahead. If you were gutless, you'd let yourself be frightened off by a few vague threats, and everyone'd be saved a lot of bother. The point is, lad, that a man in my position can't get to know a man in your position very well. So I let you sweat it out."
"Jack Wales didn't have to sweat it out," I said sulkily.
Brown chuckled. "You should have seen to it that your parents had more brass. I didn't make the world."
There was now the luxury of confirming the details of my good fortune, of admiring the pretty colours of the check. "There's one thing I don't understand," I said. "I thought that you had it all fixed between him and Susan. There was talk of a merger ..."
"There was nothing fixed and the merger had nowt to do with it. I'm not a sort of king, I don't give my daughter away to seal a bargain."
"Will this mess up the merger?"
"You've some peculiar notions about business, young man. I never for one moment thought seriously about joining forces with Wales. For one thing, I've been boss of my own works too long to relish being just another co-director; and for another, I don't like the way they're going. They're makbig money hand over fist, but anyone capable of counting up to ten can do that nowadays... However, I didn't bring you here to talk about the Wales family. I want you to leave the Town Hall as soon as you can."
"I've not qualified as a cost accountant yet, you know. I've only got the C.S. - "
He silenced me with a wave of his hand. "I judge people by what they do, not by little bits of paper. I've no time to go into much detail now, but what I need, and need damned quick, is someone to reorganise the office. There's the hell of a lot too much paper; it started during the war, when we took everyone we could get hold of, thinking we could always find use for them. I'm an engineer, I'm not interested in the administrative side. But I know what we can and what we can't afford."
"So I'm to be an efficiency expert?"
"Not quite. Don't like those chaps anyway; there's bad blood wherever they are. Alterations have to be made which are best made by a new man. That's all."
"I've a wife and family to support," I said. "How much salary?"
"Thousand to begin with. Nowt at all if you don't make a success of it. You can have one of the firm's cars; there's depots at Leeds and Wakefield you'll be visiting a good deal."
"It's too good to be true," I said, trying to look keen and modest and boyish. "I can't thank you enough."
"There's just one matter to be cleared up," he said. "And if you don't, then it's all off. You've been too bloody long about it already." He scowled. "God, you have a nerve. Whenever I think about it, I could break your neck."
He fell silent again; after a minute I couldn't take it any longer. "If you tell me what's wrong, I can do something about it," I said. "I can't read your mind."
"Leave off Alice Aisgill. Now. I'm not having my daughter hurt any more. And I'm not having my son-in-law in the divorce courts either. Not on account of an old whore like her."
"I've finished with her. There's no need for you to use that word."
He watched me through narrowed eyes. "I use words that fit, Joe. You weren't the first young man she's slept with. She's notorious for it - " I suddenly remembered, down to the last intonation, Eva's crack about Young Woodley - "there's not many likely lads haven't had a bit there. She has a pal, some old tottie that lends her a flat ... Jack Wales ..."
On a trip over Cologne the bomb aimer got a faceful of flak. I say a faceful because that takes the curse off it somehow; it was actually a bit of metal about two inches square that scooped out his eyes and most of his nose. He grunted when it happened, then he said: "Oh no. Oh no."
That is what I said when Brown spoke Jack Wales's name and, pressing his advantage home, went on to give chapter and verse.
There was a handshake, there was talk of a contract, there was tolerance - I've been young and daft myself - there was praise - You're the sort of young man we want. There's always room at the top - there was sternness - See her tomorrow and get it done with, I'll not have it put off any more - there was brandy and a cigar, there was a lift back to Warley in the Bentley; and I said yes to everything quite convincingly, to judge from Brown's satisfied expression; but inside, like that sergeant until the morphine silenced him, all that I could say, again and again and again, was the equivalent of those two syllables of shocked incredulity.
29
The month was September, the time was eight o'clock, the weather was unsettled, with a sky mottled with indigo, copper, and tinges of oxblood red. The place was Elspeth's flat, the exact point of space from where I told her it was all over was the brown stain on the carpet in the lounge, just by the door into the corridor. I knew that stain well; I'd spilled some cherry brandy there one night before Christmas. By the time I'd finished telling Alice that I didn't love her, I could have drawn a coloured map of it and its surroundings, correct down to the last scroll of the silly little gilt chair next it.
I couldn't bring myself to look at her and I didn't want to come close to her. I did look at her, of course; she was wearing a black silk dress and a pearl necklace and a sapphire on her right hand which I'd not seen before. Her hands were clenched by her side, and the rouge which she had so carefully applied stood out in two patches on her cheeks. She wasn't wearing her usual lavender but something strong and musky with an animal smell in the background like a newly bathed tiger, if anyone were ever to bathe a tiger.