at least Mr Bowling is a gentleman.’ On the bed, there was no difficulty about clothes, because the wretched child didn’t seem to go in for them. She had soft lips and elegant teeth and Cleopatra appeared to have nothing on her. And although he condemned himself for a cad, and thought about the old school and all that sort of thing, he repeated the performance at teatime, and many teatimes afterwards. It was a bit of a strain, craning the neck up at the basement window, to see if old Ivy was coming up the road yet. And needless to say the poor child clicked, as she called it, dead on the three months to the minute. This at least threw off a certain amount of reserve, and they went at their love affair hammer and tongs while the going was good. His health at once recovered, he liked women again, thought about Angel, and even contemplated marriage with dirty little Elsie. This didn’t last long, however, and he started in at insurance with new zest, now and again varying it by crowd work at Elstree, whence his accent very occasionally got him a line to say, or his dinner jacket got him a sitting part in a cabaret scene. Then he came home one day and heard, smelt and saw the fat sizzling in the fire. He couldn’t resist:
‘Well, my dear Ivy, you’ve asked for it, you know, I must say!’
Needless to say, she said:
‘How like a man! You’re a cad and a brute, and I hope you go to prison!’
‘Prison?’ he said, startled, and had quite a turn when it became apparent Elsie had lied about her age, and was really only a pullet-like fifteen, or had been ‘at the time of the alleged incident’. This was going back a bit, and he did some anxious arithmetic. Elsie stood about, sniffing and sobbing, and looking more like a slut than she ever had before, as if to increase his shame, and he thought: ‘Well, now perhaps I’ve achieved a divorce, which will be something!’ But not a bit of it. There was to be no freedom, and the threat of prison hovered for some time, together with the unpleasing rumour that Elsie’s dad, from the docks, was coming along presently to tear his block off. Unnerved by the general prospect, he hurried along to Queenie, confessed all, and was well ticked off for his lack of caution. However, it was worth it, for she took on her shoulders the entire matter, going to fix up for Elsie where she was to have the baby, firmly insisting that she got it adopted immediately afterwards, and the outlook began to look a little safer. Life with Ivy was then grim indeed. She threw it up at him for each meal, and she threw his music up at him, ‘not that you do any,’ and she threw money items up at him, ‘not that you earn any.’ They had frenzied scenes, and slammed doors at each other, and hated the very sight and thought of each other. Sometimes he went to the piano in a state of exhaustion, and composed a sad little tune which he knew was rather good. But when he saw music publishers about it, they just smoked cigars at him, said nice things, but were clearly thinking about something totally different. One winter he got a nice little job playing in a concert party at Eastbourne, but something or other happened, a quarrel or something, and he was soon back picking up the crumbs from insurance magnates’ tables.
‘I dunno, I’m sure,’ was what he thought about life. And he laughed helplessly. ‘I dunno, I’ll tootle along and see old Queenie. See if she’s really going to be married.’
Having had a good time with old Queenie, and learned that she was going to marry a crashing bore because he had a fiver coming in certain, apart from his job, he went out with the quid she pressed down his shirt, and had a couple at Victoria Station. He returned home to Ivy and silence, read a bit of If Winter Comes, the only book in the place, and chain-smoked in bed with it.
Life crept by, Ivy got older, he felt now older, now younger, and wondered what on earth the whole thing was about. Why be born a gentleman if you weren’t allowed to live like one? It was the most frightful punishment in the world.
He felt this most when he had to visit the office. He always sensed that it was resented. When he finally got on the salary list up at the office, he felt his particular department resented that too. Apart from the manager, who was usually too important to be talked to, there were only two blokes who concerned his little affairs at all, Mr Nash and Mr Rosin. They were two beauties. They both had hilariously witty things to say about his old school tie, and about Lord Baldwin and Mr Chamberlain. The things they had to say somehow seemed to appear to be Mr Bowling’s fault. Mr Nash was thin and sour, and Mr Rosin had a flat, stupid face like an uncut cheese. The really common man, Mr Bowling decided, was a nice chap, but these two belonged to the half-and-half species; they were really sprung from the common man but they thought they were old school tie whilst resenting that sorry class. They loved it when a public school man got sent to gaol, and took care to cut the bits of news out of their paper for when he next came in. ‘There you are, Mr Bowling,’ they pushed it forward, winking at each other, ‘there’s your old school tie for you. H’r! H’r!’ too stupid to realise that at any moment he could cut out a bit of news about Winston Churchill and say, ‘And there you are, Mr Rosin, and Mr Nash, there’s another of your old school ties for you! H’r H’r?’ But a chap wouldn’t stoop to it.
Coming in to collect the thousand quid, Messrs Rosin and Nash had appeared very different, almost admiring.
Such was the pitiful power of filthy lucre.
‘Money, money,’ he sighed time and again. You just could not ignore that miserable subject.
It was tough if a chap was bad at it.
He liked to ponder upon the illogical, in respect of money. You got paid for doing what was called ‘a job,’ but which was often and often nothing but sitting around. But for real hard work, like thinking out and writing something, more often than not you got Sweet Fanny Adams.
And they said when you had got money, you thought about it even more—in case you should lose it.
It was true of Mr Watson, at any rate.
The day he murdered Mr Watson, he got up early. Thinking about it had deprived him of a good deal of sleep, yet he felt a kind of exhilaration. He’d pasted the policy carefully on top of the other one, and it didn’t look too bad. There was the ridge at the bottom, of course, which old Watson would at once spot, but he’d explain to him: ‘Paper economy, old chap, if you don’t mind?’ and Mr Watson wouldn’t mind, because he liked to try and give the impression that he was doing something for the war effort, it was so obvious he was doing nothing. ‘All right,’ he’d say. If he didn’t, the deal was off. Something else would have to be thought out.
At breakfast, Mr Bowling felt a bit restive. He was a man of leisure, these days. He’d eaten into his thousand quid a bit, nothing much, but a bit, it was so nice being able to give old Queenie bits and pieces, after all her kindnesses when he was down. He gave her a nice bit of cat, thirty quid it cost, and she was so pleased. She kissed him and he laughed: ‘Just a bit of cat!’
‘And you be careful who you marry next time, my dear,’ she told him. ‘Come and see me first!’
And he’d thrown a bit of a party, here at Number Forty, yes, with the bombs still whistling down, you only died once, didn’t you. There was a din, and he played the piano and they sang, and the chap came down from upstairs to complain. He played about with chemistry or something of the kind, he’d been to Oxford and he was interested in Mr Bowling. He was a bit of a bore, that first day stopping him in the hall downstairs.
‘My name’s Winthrop. Alexandra Winthrop. I hear you’re joining us.’
‘Yes. Bowling’s the name.’
‘Miss Brown was telling me, Mr Bowling. I hear you were blitzed. Bad luck! Yes, she told me about it. I’m very sorry.’
‘Oh, well.’
‘You mustn’t be lonely. I’ll pop in, may I? And you must pop up.’ He frowned. ‘Usually busy. Eton?’ he guessed.
‘No.’
‘Ah. H’m. Well, I shall hope to see you. Bath water’s always hot,’ Mr Winthrop informed, and went out with a friendly nod.
Mr Bowling went up to his room. He didn’t want to know any of these people. Winthrop already seemed to know about Ivy having been killed.
He