England Made Me (12 page)

The waiter did not understand. ‘
Bitte?
' he said anxiously, ‘
bitte?
' The head waiter came. ‘
Bitte?
' he said, ‘
bitte?
' He went away and fetched a woman who was cleaning the stairs. ‘What do you want?' she asked him in English. He could think of nothing to say; he had to order another beer while his glass was still full. He could see the waiters talking about him at the other end of the restaurant.

The trouble, in a way, was that they were waiters; if they had been waitresses it would have been so much easier to establish his English corner. Although he had travelled half-way round the world in the last ten years he had never been far away from England. He had always worked in places where others had established the English corner before he came: even in the brothels of the East English was spoken. There had always been the club (as long as he retained his membership), bridge-parties, the neo-Gothic Anglican church. He stared out through the foreign glass at the foreign rain and thought: Krogh won't give me a job. I'll go back tomorrow. Then he smiled and forgot his resolution because he saw England staring back at him through the glass with coat-collar turned up and dripping hat.

‘Minty,' he called, ‘Minty,' to the surprise of the waiters.

Minty came in cautiously, looking this way and that up the rows of tables. ‘I don't come here as a rule,' he said. ‘The fellows from the Legation – we don't get on well together.' He sat down and laid his hat under his chair. He leant forward and said confidentially: ‘The Minister sets them on me. I'm certain of it. He doesn't like me.'

‘What do they do?'

‘They laugh,' Minty said. He looked at the beer-bottles: ‘Are you expecting someone?'

‘No,' Anthony said. ‘Have a bottle?'

‘Well, frankly,' Minty said, ‘I'd rather have a cup of coffee. I don't like any form of strong drink. No moral objection, but my stomach won't stand it. It was the operation I had ten years ago, almost exactly ten years ago. August the twenty-first. The feast-day of St Jane Frances Fremiot de Chantal, widow. I hung between life and death,' Minty said, ‘for exactly five days. I always put my recovery down to St Zephyrinus. But I'm boring you.'

‘No,' Anthony said, ‘no. It's very interesting. I had an operation in August ten years ago.'

‘Your eye?'

‘No. That was – a wound. An explosion. I had appendicitis.'

‘Mine was in that neighbourhood,' Minty said. ‘But they didn't remove the appendix. It was far too dangerous. They made an incision and drained me.'

‘Drained you?'

‘Yes, drained me. You would never believe the amount of pus they removed. It would have filled a milk-jug, a large milk-jug.' He blew on the coffee the waiter had brought him. ‘It's good to have a fellow-countryman to talk to. And what a coincidence that you were at the old place, too.'

‘The old place?'

‘The old school,' Minty said, stirring his coffee, squinting upwards with sudden malicious amusement. ‘Kicking a fug about, eh. What a life. Were you a fez?'

Anthony hesitated. ‘No,' he said.

‘And whose house did you say –'

Anthony looked at his watch. ‘I'm sorry. I've got to be off. I have to be round at Krogh's this morning.'

‘I'll come with you,' Minty said. ‘I'm going that way myself. But you needn't hurry. Krogh's only just arrived at the office.'

‘How do you know?'

‘I had the porter on the phone a few minutes ago. One has to have an eye on these things. I lost him yesterday.'

‘Is everything he does news?'

‘Very nearly,' Minty said. ‘And anything he does secretly is headlines, special editions, wires to England. I'm a religious man,' Minty said, ‘and it's good to think that Krogh – the richest man in the world, who controls the market, lends to Governments, takes our money and turns it into – Krogh's, millions of money converted into Krogh's you can buy for a few pence in any general store, it's good to think he's merely one of us, that Minty keeps an eye on him, watches, records, perhaps now and then puts a drawing-pin on his chair (I wonder if you remember Collins who taught history?). Well, Farrant, it makes Minty feel all evensong, all
vox humana
– “and He shall exalt the humble and meek”. Partridge used to say – you know whom I mean, of course –'

‘Partridge?'

‘The senior chaplain. He only retired a year or two ago. How curious that you don't remember Partridge.'

‘I was thinking of something else,' Anthony said. ‘It's stopped raining. I must get to the office before it begins again. I haven't a coat.'

He walked very fast to the office, but Minty kept up, indeed Minty showed the way, a hand on the sleeve here, a check there, a direction across a street. He talked the whole time about the use of chasubles. He seemed to have quite forgotten Harrow. Only at the entrance to Krogh's he suddenly reverted to the school. ‘I'm trying to organize an Old Harrovian dinner here,' he said. ‘Of course you'll take a ticket, and later I'll ask you to approach the Minister. The Minister doesn't like Minty, and if Minty were a swearing man, what names,' he raised his yellowed fingers episcopally: ‘Oh, Holy Cnut.'

Anthony looked back and England was again outside, keeping a watch on him through the iron patterning of the gateway, one bloodshot eye on each side of a tender branching iron plant. He knows about Harrow, Anthony thought, he wants me to admit it; great heavens, he thought, turning suddenly to escape from Minty's gaze, that statue, fountain, what you call it, they have queer tastes in Krogh's; you wouldn't find a thing like that off Mincing Lane, what is it meant to be? inhuman. Following the porter through the glass door into the glass lift, he forgot Minty in the familiar pain of being a supplicant. There was nothing he hated more than asking for a job, and it looked like being his life-work. Already he felt a grudge against Krogh for refusing him, for taking him. If he takes me, it'll be charity for Kate's sake. What right has he to be charitable? At least, no one can say I'm inhuman. The fountain slipped away below him, damply dripping into the grey basin, and he thought with pride: I'm human. I may have my faults, but they are human faults. A glass too much, a girl now and then, there's nothing much wrong with that. It's human nature, I am Human, and he blustered out of the lift with his shoulders squared to find Kate waiting for him on the landing, Kate smiling, Kate welcoming him, Kate quite ready to embrace him in front of the lift-man, in front of the clerk hurrying by with a portfolio of papers, and I am human, his spirit whispered weakly, faintly, dying out in gratitude, like a band of street musicians moving away down a long street, while another band approached playing more loudly, with a more urgent appeal: Good old Kate, she's always done her best, she's never let me down.

‘You've come at last,' Kate said.

‘I got caught by the rain. I had to shelter.'

‘Come to my room for a moment.' He followed her across the landing, a steel chair, a glass table, a bowl of yellow roses; on the walls a succession of charts made of inlaid wood, showing the time of day in every capital of the world, showing the mailing dates to every country, showing the movements of liners. In her own room, the same steel chairs, the same glass tables, the same yellow roses, she turned back to him. ‘You've got a job.' She clapped her hands together once; she looked ten years younger. ‘I've always worked for this.' She watched him with an undisguised devotion that startled him, a devotion of the blood, not of the brain. ‘Oh, Anthony, how good it'll be to have you here.'

He tried to respond with the same intensity. ‘Good. I should just think so.' He wanted her to enjoy his triumph, he was grateful, but his love was blurred, was dispersed, was thinned out like pastry over a large area. Love was not gratitude, love was not this dependence of the brain, this thought-reading, this inconvenience of shared pain, this was the unfortunate trick of being twins; love was fun, love was a good time, love was Annette, was Mabel. ‘What's he making me do, Kate darling?'

‘I don't know. But listen. You needn't worry. It's a real job, not charity. He wants you.'

‘Of course it may not be quite my cup of tea.'

‘Oh, but it will be, Anthony, I'm sure of it. Give it a trial, anyway. I want you here. Listen. We'll be able to do things together, see things, go to places.'

‘That'll be fine, won't it?' Anthony said, smiling at her, ‘but don't forget I shall be doing a spot of work now and then. Where will it be, do you think? At the factory perhaps. I've always been interested in machinery. Do you remember the old car I put together and did twenty miles an hour in it down the Brighton Road? But I suppose it'll be book-keeping. That's where I've had all my experience.'

‘And it'll be no longer you in China, me in London, you in India, me in Stockholm.'

‘We'll see plenty of each other. You'll see too much of me perhaps.'

‘No.'

‘It's never been like this before since we were small. There was always school. Holidays never seemed to last long.'

‘I'm only afraid that this will be the same,' Kate said.

‘How do you mean?'

‘That this won't seem to last long either.'

It occurred to him with astonishment and pain that he had been wrong just now, that this after all was love, that he had been damned to bad luck from birth: she was his sister. He was conscious of a great waste, a great disappointment. Nobody, he thought, can put it over her on looks, she's got class, she's swell. The inadequate words fumbled at his heart. She says what she means, she knows what she wants, she does what she likes, a fellow can trust her. He wanted to tell her that he loved her, but a light went on above a door, and she said: ‘That's Erik. He's ready for you.' The opportunity had gone, leaving a sense of guilt, of melancholy, of opportunities lost, as if, hearing the limping music of the lame band fade round the corner of the street, one had to admit want of charity and indecision. The pennies had been there, he wouldn't have missed them, and who knew what luck might have been his in return for one spontaneous gesture.

‘I'll go in. Am I all right? No smuts on the nose, a close shave . . .'

‘You're all right. Erik wouldn't notice, anyway.'

Erik this and Erik that, he thought, and tried to feed his envy by imagining Krogh's face triumphant because Kate was his, but saw only the stone stairs to a familiar flat, the whitewashed wall, the pencilled messages. ‘Back at 12.30.' ‘No Milk Today.' He has this and I have that; we divide the world between us.

Kate opened a door. He touched her as he passed. Brother and sister, affection, she knows me and I know her, the deep comfort of no pretence. Why should I envy him? he wondered, remembering love, remembering the bell ringing in the empty flat, the search for messages, entwined hearts, ‘Gone Round the Corner to the Pub', ‘Back at 12.30', ‘No Milk Today', the stone stairs slippery with soap going down, first the good time and afterwards the despair.

‘Well, Mr Krogh,' he said, ‘it's good of you to see me.' He was frightened, he was breezy, he was bitterly happy because after all this was the end, one couldn't go lower by any club standard than to ask for work from your sister's lover. He turned on Krogh the deep deceptive candour of his gaze.

But it was wasted. Krogh didn't look at him. He nodded at a chair, ‘Sit down,' he fumbled with a lighter. Anthony thought with incredulity: He's shy.

Krogh said: ‘I hadn't thought at first there was any job I could offer you. Our accounts department is fully staffed. I think that was where you have had most experience?'

‘Yes,' Anthony said.

‘You understand I don't know the details of all these things. I depend on my manager's reports. He was dissatisfied with no one. You can hardly expect me to get rid of an experienced man who has given satisfaction . . .'

‘Of course not.'

‘I felt sure you'd understand,' Krogh said. ‘But on the other hand, I want to do something: you are Miss Farrant's brother. Miss Farrant is –' he searched for a word; he lifted a dry passionless, for some reason anxious, face towards his secretary's door. He looked at the light switch on his desk; he seemed on the point of finding out from Kate herself what the word was he required. ‘She's invaluable to me,' he said at last, and hurried on. ‘Do you know America?'

‘I was in Buenos Aires once.'

‘I mean the United States?'

‘No,' Anthony said, ‘I was never in the States.'

‘I have interests there,' Krogh said. Again he was at a loss for words. ‘A cigarette?'

‘Thanks.'

Krogh held out his lighter and began in a loud uneasy voice which withered at once in the rather close air between the sound-proof windows and the sound-proof door: ‘The suggestion I've got to make may seem odd. You may not want to accept it.' He was painfully embarrassed. He said, as if he had forgotten that he had explained nothing: ‘It's not a thing I can go to the police about.'

Anthony said gently: ‘What do you want me to do? Steal something?'

‘Steal,' Krogh said, ‘of course not.' He fidgeted, swallowed, took the plunge. ‘All I want is a personal guard. I thought yesterday – I know that it was nothing but a car back-firing, but it gave me a shock – how defenceless I am against any really unscrupulous . . . It must seem fantastic to you, but these things are done in America. I had trouble only yesterday at the factories. You may not believe . . .”