thought about what she had given up to send him there? She had pushed him on to the train, almost desperately, as if given a second thought she would have taken the money and travelled the world, visited his father at what ever place he was in then, seen the great galleries of Europe, the Uffizi, the Villa Borghese. Did it ever occur to him that she was the one who wanted to go to art school, that she had given him her dream and he had taken it without realizing what it was?
He had asked her if she’d be lonely.
'Lonely?' she laughed. 'How can I be lonely? All my friends are here.'
Yet it wasn't true. She had no close friends. She had people she helped, others she did favours for. There were those she felt sorry for and those she liked a chat with. As time passed pity would be her dominant emotion as she tried to help those she felt sorry for. She took to religion with a new enthusiasm that he soon found almost embarrassing.
Yet that night there was no talk of God, just giddy dancing and golden wine.
'Throw your glass into the fire.'
He didn't understand.
She showed him.
The glasses crashed in ecstasy. The wine sparkled in the lantern light. Outside the wind moaned in sheer pleasure and the great fir trees swayed under the night sky and great white clouds skudded across the heavens and Orion's belt lost its handle.
She found more glasses, long-stemmed and delicate, hidden in the back of a cupboard. She splashed a little wine into one and threw it.
'There,' she said, 'the end. Finito.'
It felt dangerous and thrilling. He followed her example. 'Finito,' he said.
'Now,' she said, and they toasted with two more glasses. 'Now, for both of us, a new stage.'
He did not understand. He looked at his mother's glowing eyes, her laughing lips and felt nervous, alone in territory he did not recognize.
'Now,' she sipped the wine and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. 'Now, you go to be an artist and I,' she emptied the glass and hurled t into the fire, 'I go to polish floors.'
'Oh no.' He stood up hugged her. 'Oh, no.'
But she did not look unhappy. She was bright, almost feverish. 'Oh yes,' she said, 'Oh Harry I want to. I am happy, happy, happy.'
'You don't want to polish floors.'
'Polish, polish,' she waved her hand. 'Not just polish. I am trying to explain, Harry, this is new stage. I have planned it. Harry, I am going to be good.'
She was crying now but still smiling. Tears sprang to his eyes in sympathy.
'No, no,' she said, 'don't cry. I'm happy. I'm crying because I'm happy. This is my new life. I'm going to be good.'
He did not understand.
'I promised God,' she smiled, 'if I won the lottery.' The wine was drunk. His childhood over. Few things ever happened afterwards to match this moment of tingling promise where Harry and his mother had trembled on the edge of life.
Alex Duval spent his Saturday morning as usual. He was the only person on the floor occupied by Joy, Kerlewis & Day and so allowed himself some laziness in dress. His grey gardening pullover was unravelling at the neck and a bright red shirt shone through the holes in the elbows. As he walked along the corridor to his office he carried two Italian doughnuts (the kind with a big blob of apricot jam hidden in the middle) and triple espresso coffee. Soon he would go down for another coffee and he'd probably (certainly) buy another doughnut or two.
The last of the corridor's neon lights finished its nervous flickering as he entered his office. He pulled a face at the stale aroma of pipe tobacco and placed his coffee and doughnuts on his large clean desk. He took from the top drawer a little L-shaped metal key which he now used to unlock the double-glazed windows. It was raining. He sniffed the air, yawned, and stretched.
Today, as usual, Alex Duval would write his second set of conference reports. A conference report is written in an advertising agency any time the agency and its client decide to take action on anything. It can record a budget allocation, the acceptance of an advertisement, approvals and rejections of media schedules, marketing strategies; all the business of a client and the agency's role in it is documented and then kept for up to seven years. In disputes between clients and their agencies, the conference report is regarded as a binding document.
And every Saturday morning for the last ten years Alex Duval, Account Director, had sat at his desk and written and typed a set of conference reports in which his role, seen by the revolutionary investigators he imagined would one day sit in judgement on him, would be blameless.
He was physically a large man, but there was a softness about him, the look of someone who has just stepped out of a hot bath. He was unnaturally pink, and his face with its pale intelligent eyes still carried, in some marks as subtle as the smell of white camellias, the signs of defeat. Alex Duval was a man of principle who had decided, a long time ago, that men of principle can never win. Yet he hoped and feared he was wrong. He voted for the Communist Party and rewrote his conference reports every Saturday morning. He ate cakes. Now and again he had an affair with a secretary. He no longer expected anything good to happen to him and sincerely hoped that the world would not be destroyed until after his death.
In spite of such pessimism, he derived real pleasure from the doughnut, which was perfectly oily, and the black coffee, which was very strong. He did not rush this second breakfast, but savoured each mouthful of it, and if he was impatient at all it was only to contrast the slightly bitter taste of the coffee with the sweet oiliness of the doughnut.
Before he began work on his conference reports he washed his big soft hands and carried a heavy black IBM electric typewriter from his secretary's desk to his own. Although she didn't know it he could type faster than she could: one hundred and thirty words per minute.
And so he began, his belly sagging over his trouser belt, the natural stoop of his shoulders inclining him towards the black machine, the high intelligent forehead marked with creases of concentration. The hands flew. An observer would never have remarked that this was a man involved with a tedious chore, but rather one in the throes of a sometimes difficult but often exciting creation. For as he wrote these conference reports Alex Duval emitted a strange series of little cries: an ejaculation of triumph, a snort of disgust, an attenuated giggle. He typed quickly, perfectly, in complete command of his mat-erial, using the fixed language of the conference report with consummate ease: Client requested that Agency should prepare such and such. Agency expressed the opinion that such and such. Agency warned client that this practice was unprincipled, that this promise should not be made, that this chemical was carcinogenic, that this product could cause liver damage.
He was not so mad as to not know he was mad. He knew, almost exactly, how mad he was. But he also allowed himself the 1 per cent chance that he was taking a useful precaution, and so his Saturday morning sessions had continued. Later, going down in the lift, he would feel the damp sour shame of a perversion finally practised, a lust satisfied. And in the street, walking amongst other men, be would feel at once self-hatred and a strange sense of superiority.
So when Harry Joy came to find out who were Actors and who were Captives on that Saturday morning, he came down the corridor walking softly on his sandshoes. He had adopted a white shirt and white trousers, and he walked loosely, not at all like someone come to spy. He heard the typing and imagined one of the copywriters. He followed the metallic clatter through the stale weekend air to Alex's office, where, standing at the doorway, he watched the process of creation.
Alex was chuckling. He kept typing with one hand while he reached for the coffee. Harry thought of Winifred Atwell playing 'Black and White Rag'.
Harry had left Lucy sobbing in her bedroom because he had remembered to treat her like an Actor. He could no longer act consistently – treating everyone as his mortal enemy one minute and then, totally forgetting where he was, as an old friend the next.
He hadn't seen Alex for three months and he smiled now, forgetting he had come to spy. He leant against the doorway and watched him work, giggling at his manic energy.
'Christ… Harry.' Alex rocked back and held his heart, dropped his head. 'Oh shit.'
He tried to cover the paper, to stand up, to shake Harry's hand. He was flustered and couldn't pay attention
