faults in this world? He’d been happy, as far as Wilkinski had ever made out, with his sister and their dog in Purley, a few friends in on a Saturday night to cheese and wine, old films on the television. Anything to do with films had interested him, photography being as much of a hobby as his do-it-yourself stuff. In 1971, when Wilkinski’s elder daughter married, Mulvihill had recorded the occasion with the camera he’d just bought. He’d made an excellent job of it, with titles he’d lettered himself, and a really impressive shot of the happy couple coming down the steps of the reception place. Unfortunately the marriage had broken up a year ago, and the film was no longer of interest. As dead as poor old Mulvihill, Wilkinski thought sadly: my God, it just goes to show. Ernie Tap low, the art buyer’s assistant, came in at that point, shaking his head over the shock of it. And then Len Billings came in, and Harry Plant, and Carol Trotter the typographer.
Elsewhere in the building life continued normally that morning. The confectionery manufacturers arrived to see the proposals Ygnis and Ygnis had to put to them concerning the promotion of their new chocolate bar. Ox-Banham displayed posters and advertisements, and the labels and window-stickers Mulvihill had designed. ‘Go,’ one of the confectionery men said. ‘Yes, I like that.’ Ox-Banham took them down to the television theatre and showed them a series of commercials in which children were dressed up as cowboys and Indians. Afterwards his secretary, Rowena, poured them all drinks in his office, smiling at them and murmuring because it was part of her duty to be charming. Just occasionally as she did so she recalled the conjunction that had taken place in the office on Friday evening, Ox-Banham’s wiry body as brown as a nut in places, the smell of his underarm-odour preventive. She liked it to take place in the dark, but he preferred the lights on and had more than once mentioned mirrors, although there were no mirrors in the office. They took it in turns, his way one week, hers the next. The only trouble was that personally she didn’t much care for him. ‘I want you to fix it immediately,’ she’d said in her no- nonsense voice on Friday, and this morning he’d arranged for her to be moved into the copy department at the end of the month. ‘I’ll need a new girl,’ .he’d said, meaning a secretary. ‘I’ll leave that to you.’
Ox-Banham introduced the confectionery men to R.B. Strathers, in whose office they had another drink. He then took them to lunch, referring in the taxi to the four times Strathers had been a reserve for the South African rugby team: often a would-be client was impressed by this fact. He didn’t mention Mulvihill’s death, even though there might have been a talking point in the fact that the chap who’d designed the wrapper for the Go bar had had a heart attack in a lift. But it might also have cast a gloom, you never could tell, so he concentrated instead on making sure that each of the confectionery men had precisely what he wished to have in the way of meat and vegetables, solicitously filling up the wine-glass of the one who drank more than the others. He saw that cigars and brandy were at hand when the moment came, and in the end the most important man said, ‘I think we buy it.’ All the others agreed: the image that had been devised for the chocolate bar was an apt one, its future safe in the skilful hands of Ygnis and Ygnis.
‘Wednesday,’ said Miss Mulvihill on the telephone to people who rang with messages of sympathy. ‘Eleven- thirty, Putney Vale Crematorium.’
As the next few weeks went by so life continued smoothly in the Ygnis and Ygnis building. Happy in the copy writing department, Rowena practised the composition of slogans and thought up trade names for shoes, underwear and garden seeds. She wrote a television commercial for furniture polish, and explained to Ox-Banham that there would now be no more Friday evenings. She began to spend her lunchtimes with a new young man in market research. Unlike Ox-Banham, he was a bachelor.
Bloody Smithson telephoned Strathers to say he was dissatisfied with Ygnis and Ygnis’s latest efforts for McCulloch Paints. Typical, Ox-Banham said when Strathers sent for him: as soon as little Rowena’s home and dry the old bugger starts doing his nut again. ‘Let us just look into all that,’ he murmured delicately to Bloody Smithson on the telephone.
‘There are private possessions,’ Wilkinski said to Mulvihill’s sister, on the telephone also. ‘Maybe we send a messenger to your house with them?’
‘That’s very kind, Mr Wilkinski.’
‘No, no. But the filing-cabinet he had is locked. Maybe the key was on his person?’
‘Yes, I have his bunch of keys. If I may, I’ll post it to you, Mr Wilkinski.’
Everything else Wilkinski had tidied up: Mulvihill’s paintbrushes and his pencils, his paints and his felt pens. Strictly speaking, they were the property of Ygnis and Ygnis, but Wilkinski thought Miss Mulvihill should have them. The filing-cabinet itself, the drawing-board and the green-shaded light, would pass on to Mulvihill’s successor.
When the keys arrived, Wilkinski found that Mulvihill had retained samples of every label and sticker and wrapper, every packet and point-of-sale item he had ever designed. The samples were stuck on to sheets of white card, one to a sheet, and the sheets neatly documented and filed. Wilkinski decided that Mulvihill’s sister would wish to have this collection, as well as the old Four Square tobacco tins containing drawing-pins and rubber bands, a pair of small brass hinges, several broken pipes, some dental fixative and two pairs of spectacles. Mulvihill’s camera was there, side by side with his projector. And in the bottom drawer, beneath ideas for the lettering on a toothpaste tube, were his films.
Pleased to have an excuse to walk about the building, Wilkinski made his way to the basement and asked Mr Betts, the office maintenance man, for a large, strong cardboard carton, explaining why he wanted it. Mr Betts did his best to supply what was necessary and Wilkinski returned to his office with it. He packed the projector and the camera with great care and when he came to the vast assortment of neatly titled films, all in metal containers, he looked out for one that Carol Trotter wanted, to do with her father’s retirement party. ‘A Day in the Life of a Scotch Terrier’, he read, and then ‘A Scotch Terrier Has His Say’ and ‘A Scotch Terrier at Three’. A note was attached to the label, ‘Mr Trotter’s Retirement Occasion’, a reminder that the film still needed some editing. Wilkinski put it aside for Carol Trotter and then, to his surprise, noticed that the label on the next tin said, ‘Confessions of a Housewife’. He examined some of the others and was even more surprised to read, ‘Virgins’ Delight’, ‘Naughty Nell’ and ‘Bedtime with Bunny’.
Closer examination of the metal film-containers convinced Wilkinski that while most of the more exotic titles were not Mulvihill’s own work, two or three of them were. ‘Easy Lady’, for instance, had a reminder stuck to it indicating that editing was necessary; ‘Let’s Go, Lover’ and two untitled containers had a note about splicing. ‘My God!’ Wilkinski said.
He didn’t know what to think. He imagined Mulvihill wandering about Soho in his lunch hour, examining the pictures that advertised the strip joints, entering the pornographic shops where blue films were discreetly for sale. None of that fitted Mulvihill, none of it was like him. Quite often Wilkinski had accompanied him and his camera to Green Park, to catch the autumn, or the ducks in springtime.
Wilkinski sat down. He ran the tip of his tongue over his rather thick lips. They had shared an office since 1960, yet he had never known a thing about this man. Clearly Mulvihill had bought ‘Virgins’ Delight’ and ‘Bedtime with Bunny’ to see how it was done, and then he had begun to make blue films himself. Being in terror of losing his job, he had every day passed humbly through the huge reception area of Ygnis and Ygnis, its walls enriched by pictures of shoes and seed-packets and ironworks, and biscuits and whisky bottles. Humbly he had walked the corridors that rattled with the busyness of typewriters and voices in trivial conversation; humbly he had done his duty by the words and images that were daily created. Wilkinski recalled his saying that he’d always wanted to be a photographer: had he decided in the end to attempt to escape from his treadmill by becoming a pornographer
