And embarrassing. She could not look him in the eye. She became frightened he might display weakness and weep. But it was right, he
She did not regret the years. She valued them. She valued the strength they had given her. If she had spent the years working with him she would, probably, have had her skill blunted, her perfectionism tainted with pragmatism. There were no greater teachers than the Advertising Annuals she studied, no harsher critic than herself. If she had worked with him, she would have been good. But now she was not just good: she was great.
'Don't be sorry,' she said. A cold, polished consolation she gave him, a hard-starched handkerchief for his tears. And anyway, she did not want to veil his eyes with tears or remorse and blubbering about the past. She wanted nothing to come between his eyes and the crystal clarity of the images in the advertisement. There was nothing in the past to discuss, only the future.
'I'm really sorry,' he said slowly.
'Don't be sorry.' She lined up three cardboard-mounted ads on the mantelpiece. 'Are they great ads or are they great ads?'
She arranged them around him in a magic circle, along the couch, propped on chairs, along the skirting board. She did not intend a ritual. She was merely being practical. He stood in the middle of the circle and blew his nose.
What he saw in those advertisements, in their shimmering reflections, was the possibility of safety. With advertisements like that you could make a lot of money. You could be rich and even, in a limited way, famous. You would be undeniably Harry Joy and there would be no one to take it from you. No one was going to steal your shirts or suits or shoes. If anyone tried to give you Therapy you could give them money. The principle was so simple, it delighted him.
He did not, for an instant, forget Honey Barbara. He would find her. He would bring her here. She could be safe too. There were so many silk shirts here, so many suits.
'When do these appear?' he asked Bettina.
'They've been rejected. We can't sell them.'
'We?'
'Joel, me,' she still had the vulnerable air of the amateur. 'We.'
The cretins couldn't sell them. Other morons couldn't buy them. He (money plus anger equals success) would sell them: He, Harry Joy.
From nowhere, for no reason, an erection forced itself up sideways along his leg and he eased it upright, secretly smiling at Bettina. He wanted to fuck her, to celebrate their life, their power, their joys of freedom, fame, riches, safety, no Therapy, anything and everything.
'I'll sell them for you, Bettina. They're beautiful ads.' He knew how to survive here. He stood up to hold her, to forgive her, to be forgiven, to congratulate her, to push his hard cock against her little stomach.
But she made it a stranger’s embrace: all angles, bones and stiff hard lips.
'Thank you,' she said.
Honey Barbara would have understood this ceremony: the powerful circle of advertisements surrounding him.
Had the neighbours been able to see the advertisements the way Bettina did they would have been in no way surprised. They knew that something decadent was going on in number 25 Palm Avenue and the only firm sign they had of it was this great derelict Cadillac parked in the middle of the nice neat lawn. Around this Cadillac they had watched Lucy and her new boyfriend dance with wrenches and electric drills, but they did not see that as the problem, more as a symbol.
It was a straight-laced suburb where people brought home alcohol in special little cases. And only the clink of two bottles as they went through their front gates gave them away. The children, what few there were, all had clean nails and in many houses they still said grace.
Perhaps if they had stumbled into number 25 on this night at half-past six and found the stove unlit, the fireplace full of cold ashes and only two lights turned on in this big empty room where Harry and Bettina (madman and wife) stared at these cellophane covered mock-ups of advertisements, they might have guessed at their black magical powers, but they would not have seen. Few people in the world could see, perhaps fifty in England, eighty in America. Most of the people who made advertisements for a living could not see.
Even Harry could not see what Bettina saw: the combination of all the complexities of a product, a market, competing forces, the position, the image, this writhing, fluxing, strug-gling collection of worms all finally stilled, distilled and expressed in its most perfect form, which, to Bettina's taste, was in one big picture and one single line of type running underneath it.
But the neighbours could not see this witchcraft, nor could they ever understand what these advertisements meant to Bettina who sought, as the apotheosis of her endeavours, something as unbearably perfect as the English Benson and Hedges advertisements, which had, against all possibility of government regulation, produced a totally new language with no words, only pictures.
As English society had broken slowly apart it had produced these wonderful flowers which grew amongst the rubble. But Bettina had never seen the rubble, merely these flowers, as exotic as anything stolen from a landscape by Rousseau.
Bettina had known how to see advertisements since she was Billy McPhee's daughter living in her vibrating little room above the air compressor, which switched itself on and off throughout the long hot afternoons. And she had known then that one day she would be a hot-shot and this afternoon, at half-past six, she could not get the smile off her face. Her eyes crinkled and her large mouth could not keep in its place. Even Joel's arrival could not take the shine off her happiness. He, poor man, could not see advertisements, and failure had done bad things to him. She felt sorry for him. It was her fault, her bad judgement, that had brought him unstuck. She had given him a chance too big for him. Bettina was amazed at what fragile props held up some personalities, tiny twigs, a frail hope, an almost possible conceit, not enough, you would think, to hold the whole structure together until you pulled it out and you not only snapped the twig, you brought everything down around your ears.
'Harry.'
'Joel.'
She watched them for animosity. She saw the glint in Harry's eye, a slight squint almost. She was not to know that when he squeezed Joel's hand he did it with a punishing viciousness, so she did not understand the red '0' of surprise Joel formed with his fleshy lips.
'You look well, Harry.'
'You too.'
'Hospital doesn't seem to have hurt you.'
'Done me good.'
'You're feeling better?'
'Yes, much.'
'That's good.'
But in the middle of this awkward exchange Harry noticed Joel's damaged suit. He had always admired the effort Joel put into his suits. Joel had an excellent tailor and he followed the most conservative lines and used only the best material. His suits were like his business card and people who did not really trust him still, somehow, could let themselves trust him because of his suits. For a man blessed with no natural taste, his suits were a triumph.
Harry had already stooped down. 'What in Christ's name have you done to your suit?' The burnt fabric crumpled in his inquisitive fingers. It was pure wool and still it had burnt, right up one trouser leg, one arm, and half across one breast. It was a dark material, or he would have noticed immediately.
'It's nothing, nothing.' Joel shook his head. 'Come on, stand up. Tell me your news.' And he walked away and drew up a chair at the table, shifting one of Bettina's ads to make room.
Bettina winced. She winced for shame, not at Joel, but at herself. She knew about this burn. She did not know its details, but she knew. It was as if she'd been left to look after someone's cat and let it be run over or savaged by rats. She had not acquitted herself well with Joel.
'What happened, snooky?' she asked softly.
