Bliss

The petty cash clerk!

'Five thousand dollars,' David said, enunciating the words very carefully and looking straight at Bettina.

'Look,' Joel said to Bettina, 'do I have to listen to this.' He sifted angrily through the American Express and Diners Club bills that littered the table. 'Look at these.'

A mental dwarf! Look at him stacking his little bills into a neat pile. David curled his lip and revealed a neat row of small white teeth.

'I'll pay the five grand,' David said. He hadn't planned this, but it didn't matter. It was worth every cent of it.

Look at Joel, his frog mouth wide in disbelief, and Bettina too, staring at him. But she, his mother, had a smile waiting to accompany her astonishment.

'Where would you get five thousand dollars from?' Joel said.

It was wonderful.

'I want something,' he told his mother. 'When Harry is committed, let me drop all this university thing. I'm not going to go. I want to go into business.'

'You're astonishing,' his mother said. 'I don't believe it. For God's sake,' she turned to Joel, 'don't you ever tell Harry about this, or I'll kill you.'

'You must really hate your father,' Joel said to David.

'No... '

'Five thousand dollars,' Joel shook his head. 'That's a lot of money.'

'I don't hate him,' David said, 'he's sick.'

But Joel was sitting there, smiling smugly, shaking his head. 'Oh boy,' he said.

'You're a hypocrite,' David said hotly.

But Joel was smiling that big revolting red-lipped smile, as if he had won.

'I didn't want to do it,' David told his perplexed mother, 'I didn't want to have to do it... ' And startled everyone by bursting into tears.

He waited to be acted on, as he always had, having the pecu-. liar good luck to be at once passive and attractive, so that he had rarely been left to moulder by the roadside, but had been picked up, cared for, involved in schemes, .affairs, businesses, the conception of children. Even love had come to him like this, delivered to him where he stood in his wonderful white suit. Appearing to need nothing, he attracted everything, women in particular, who found in him something feline, graceful, as slow and sensuous as a snake.

He waited and doctors came to him. He said nothing to them of his pains. He knew their game and played it and they went away. In those first few days he felt, like the plotting members of his family, that he was on the brink of something new, although in his case he did not anticipate improvement, but the reverse.

Yet the days passed and nothing happened. He watched the ugly goods yard beneath his window and looked out over the whole expanse of Hell which lay under a poisonous yellow cloud. The doctors ceased coming. The phone did not ring. Actors came and went. They carried food, emptied ashtrays, vacuum-cleaned the floor and made the beds. Their performances were lack-lustre, their eyes dull. They were thinking about other things they would rather have done. They did their jobs and would not talk to him.

This had never happened to Harry Joy before, and it was only happening now because the whole hotel knew about the madman in room 2121. There had been conversations between doctors and management, management and family, and so on. You cannot keep secrets in a big hotel. The staff treated him politely, but with great caution and great reticence.

He bought himself little treats, like his family: magazines, flowers, candies, Premier Cru Bordeaux wine. He had more white suits made and ordered an exercise bicycle which was delivered by two youths who giggled before and after entering the madman's suite.

The pain was continual. A tightness across the chest produced some invisible steel bands so he could hardly breathe. He drank heavily to eliminate the visions of his fam-ily. But somehow, it seemed, he could not get drunk, or not drunk enough, for they remained before his eyes and would not go away.

It was in this painful mood that he at last telephoned Krappe Chemicals, but not, one would guess, having any great faith in Goodness, but simply to find a diversion, a person, some action that would take his mind away from the razor-blade tortures of Hell.

When Adrian Clunes, Marketing Director of Krappe Chemicals (Consumer Products), was summoned to meet Harry Joy at the Hilton, he did not ask why. He assumed he was at the Hilton because he had left his wife. (Everyone had been waiting for it.) Adrian was surprised and pleased that Harry had turned to him.

All he said was: 'When?'

'Whenever you like. How about today?'

'I'll be there at one.'

And at exactly one o'clock Adrian Clunes slouched through the door in his donnish uniform of grey slacks and leather-patched tweed sports coat, a style only made possible by his air-conditioned car. He dumped his unfashionably large briefcase on the middle of a table, pushed his round tortoise-shell spectacles back on to his slightly melted nose, and clapped his hands together in the manner of one about to get down to hard work.

'Well,' he said, squinting across at Harry who was reclining in a white towelling dressing gown. 'This is a jolly nice place to be doing business. What are we going to do? Drink champagne?'

Adrian Clunes, as is obvious enough, was English. He had not, originally, made a thing of being English but finding himself admired for it, he had ceased trying to hide it. His Englishness gushed from him untempered and brought him a reputation for an intelligence he did not possess.

'Nice dressing gown,' he said quizzically.

'I'm having a new suit made. I tore my trousers.'

There was a flatness about Harry Joy he had never seen before. The man looked dull. Even his voice seemed to have become tighter as if there was a constriction in his throat. He was taking it hard.

'Beer then,' he said, 'if there's no champagne.'

'I got a special fridge,' Harry said mournfully. 'They have these damn silly little self-service things full of rubbish. Would you like San Miguel?'

'Thank you.'

Harry walked to the bar slowly and then poured the beer slowly; then he seemed to forget why he had done it. He sipped the beer himself and put it down on the bar.

'I didn’t want to talk on the phone,' he said, 'or in the office.'

'Are you drinking alone?'

Harry looked at the beer and then he poured another one which he handed to his guest.

'They can all go to hell,' Adrian Clunes said, collapsing into one of the Hilton's low chairs.

'I'm not going back there today. Let them stew,' he said. 'Let's have a nice lunch.'

Harry leaned against the bar and played with his San Miguel. He did not bother about who Adrian Clunes was, although he remembered with some sadness they had once, somewhere, enjoyed each other's company.

'Jolly nice beer,' Adrian said with froth on his big lips. 'Why don't we go somewhere and have dozens of oysters.' He giggled and freckles jumped around on his face. He was shocked with Harry Joy. He would not have thought it pos-sible. 'God it's nice to get into the city, Harry, it's so horrible out there. It is ghastly. They live on curried egg sandwiches! What a disgusting thing to do to an innocent egg. They don't even taste of curry.'

Harry Joy's face expressed nothing.

'Come on,' Adrian said, 'let's go to Milanos and terrorize Aldo.'

'Adrian, I can't have you as a client any more. I have to fire you,'

'Well, I'll pay for the lunch.'

Harry came to sit opposite him. Their knees (Harry's bare, Adrian's flannelled) nearly touched. 'No,' he said with a feeling of unreality, 'I'm serious.' But all he could think about was the nights he had gone on drunks with Adrian Clunes and ended up at the Spanish Club, drinking vodka at three in the morning. 'I'm serious,' he said again. 'It's not you. It's the products.'

'Is this what you got me here for?' Adrian put his beer down slowly and it made a sharp clink when it touched the low glass-topped table. He started to wipe the beer froth from his top lip and then, half-way through the motion, stopped. He whistled and a little froth sailed through the air.

'Holy Jesus,' he said quietly. 'You're serious, aren't you?'