She’d put a rose in, she thought as she ate her scrambled egg, the way you could in the grounds of the crematorium, a living thing to remember him by.
A year went by in Ygnis and Ygnis. The new man who shared Wilkinski’s office was young and given to whistling. On the telephone he addressed his wife as ‘chick’, which began to grate on Wilkinski’s nerves. He possessed a 1951 Fiat, which he talked about; and a caravan, which he talked about also.
Established now in the copy department, Rowena Smithson was responsible for a slogan which won a prize. She had been put in charge of a frozen foods account and had devised a television campaign which displayed an ordinary family’s preference for a packet of fish to a banquet. In Ygnis and Ygnis it was said more than once that Rowena Smithson was going places. Foolish in her dishevelled middle age, Lilia was said to be slipping.
During the course of that year Ox-Banham interested himself in one of Ygnis and Ygnis’s three receptionists, a girl who wanted to get into the art department. The Trumpet Major continued to profit from the drinking requirements of Capstick, Lilia, Tip Dainty and R.B. Strathers. Several office parties took place during the year and at the end of it the Ygnis and Ygnis chairman was awarded an OBE.
‘Well, I quite appreciate that of course,’ Ox-Banham said on the telephone one morning after that year had passed. He was speaking to Bloody Smithson, who had not ceased to give him a bad time, forgetful of all that had been arranged in the matter of placing his daughter in her chosen career. Rowena was shortly to marry the man she’d begun to go out with, from the market research department. The man was welcome to her as far as Ox-Banham was concerned, but when her father was disagreeable it gave him no satisfaction whatsoever to recall how he’d repeatedly pleasured himself with her on the floor of his office. ‘Let’s iron it out over lunch,’ he urged Bloody Smithson.
The lunch that look place was a sticky one, bitter with Bloody Smithson’s acrimony. Only when coffee and glasses of Hine arrived on the table did the man from McCulloch Paints desist and Ox-Banham cease inwardly to swear. Then, quite unexpectedly, Bloody Smithson mentioned blue films. His mood was good by now, for he’d enjoyed being a bully for two hours; he described at length some material he’d been shown on a trip to Sweden. ‘Awfully ripe,’ he said, his large blood-red face inches from his companion’s.
Until that moment Ox-Banham had forgotten about the metal containers he had locked away after Mulvihill’s death. He didn’t mention them, but that evening he read through their neatly labelled titles, and a week later he borrowed a projector. He found what he saw distasteful, as he’d known he would, but was aware that his own opinion didn’t matter in the least. ‘I’ve got hold of a few ripe ones that might interest you,’ he said on the telephone to Bloody Smithson when he next had occasion to speak to him.
In the comfort of the television theatre they watched ‘Confessions of a Housewife’, ‘Virgins’ Delight’ and ‘Naughty Nell’. Bloody Smithson liked ‘Virgins’ Delight’ best. Ox-Banham explained how the cache had fallen into his hands and how some of the films were apparently the late Mulvihill’s own work. ‘Let’s try this “Day in the Life of a Scotch Terrier”,’ he suggested. ‘Goodness knows what all that’s about.’ But Bloody Smithson said he’d rather have another showing of ‘Virgins’ Delight’.
Ox-Banham told the story in the Trumpet Major. ‘Not a word to my daughter, mind,’ Bloody Smithson had insisted, chortling in a way that was quite unlike him. The next day all of it went around the Ygnis and Ygnis building, but it naturally never reached the ears of Rowena because no one liked to tell her that her father had a penchant for obscene films. Mulvihill’s name was used again, his face and clothing recalled, a description supplied to newcomers at Ygnis and Ygnis. Wilkinski heard the story and it hurt him that Mulvihill should be remembered in this way. It was improper, Wilkinski considered, and it made him feel guilty himself: he should have thrown the films away, as his first instinct had been. ‘Mulvihill’s Memorial came to be called, and the employees of Ygnis and Ygnis laughed when they thought of an overweight advertising manager being shown ‘Virgins’ Delight’ in the television theatre. It seemed to Wilkinski that the dead face of Mulvihill was being rubbed in the dirt he had left behind him. It worried Wilkinski, and eventually he plucked up his courage and went to speak to Ox-Banham.
‘We shared the office since 1960,’ he said, and Ox-Banham looked at him in astonishment. ‘It isn’t very nice to call it “Mulvihill’s Memorial”.’
‘Mulvihill’s dead and gone. What d’you expect us to do with his goodies?’
‘Maybe put them down Mr Betts’ incinerator.’
Ox-Banham laughed and suggested that Wilkinski was being a bit Hungarian about the matter. The smile that appeared on his face was designed to be reassuring, but Wilkinski found this reference to his origins offensive. It seemed that if Mulvihill’s wretched pornography brought solace to a recalcitrant advertising manager, then Mulvihill had not died in vain. The employees had to be paid, profits had to be made. ‘It isn’t very nice,’ Wilkinski said again, quietly in the middle of one night. No one heard him, for though he addressed his wife she was dreaming at the time of something else.
Then two things happened at once. Wilkinski had a telephone call from Miss Mulvihill, and Ox-Banham made a mistake.
‘It’s just that I was wondering,’ Miss Mulvihill said. ‘I mean, he definitely made these little films and there’s absolutely no trace of them.’
‘About a dog maybe?’
‘And a little one about the scouts. Then again one concerning Purley.’
‘Leave the matter with me, Miss Mulvihill.’
The telephone call came late in the day, and when Wilkinski tried to see Ox-Banham it was suggested that he should try again in the morning. It pleased him that Miss Mulvihill had phoned, that she had sought to have returned to her what was rightfully hers. He’d considered it high-handed at the time that Ox-Banham hadn’t bothered to divide the films into two groups, as he had done himself. ‘Oh, let’s not bother with all that,’ Ox-Banham had said with a note of impatience in his voice.
Wilkinski hurried to catch his train on the evening of Miss Mulvihill’s call; Ox-Banham entertained Bloody Smithson in the television theatre. ‘No, no, no,’ Bloody Smithson protested. ‘We’ll stick with our Virgins, Ox.’
But Ox-Banham was heartily sick of ‘Virgins’ Delight’, which he had seen by now probably sixty times. He thought he’d die if he had to watch, yet again, the three schoolgirls putting down their hockey sticks and beginning to take off their gymslips. ‘I thought we were maybe wearing it out,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d better have a copy made.’
‘You mean it’s not here?’
‘Back in a week or so, Smithy.’
They began to go through the others. ‘Let’s try this “Day in the Life of a Scotch Terrier”,’ Ox-Banham suggested, and shortly afterwards a dog appeared on the screen, ambling about a kitchen. Then the dog was put on a lead and taken for a walk around a suburb by a middle-aged woman. Back in the kitchen again, the dog begged with its head on one side and was given a titbit. There was another walk, a bus shelter, the dog smelling at bits of paper on the ground. ‘Well, for God’s sake!’ Bloody Smithson protested when the animal was finally given a meal to eat and put to bed.