Storyboard, page 4
Older people get set in their ways. Hugh wondered, as he often wondered, whether he ought not to make a change in the habitual order some day, eat a different sort of biscuit, take his tea in the living-room, try a lightly boiled egg instead of the usual peanut butter. He read, as he always read, the writing on the side of the biscuit tin: “The full flavour of these biscuits can best be appreciated if utilized with cheese.” Walking along Piccadilly on his way back to the Agency after lunch, he had observed the man on his right spit neatly into the trouser-turnup of a man in front. What strange things one saw every day in London, and how little surprised one was at the time! City life was not natural, of course, but it was natural to those who lived in cities. He buttered two biscuits, then spread them with peanut-butter, then broke them in half. A half for Jill, and a half for Jane; a half for Sue, and a half for Hugh. Human beings eat more tidily than dachshunds. Now Mrs. Rhodes had collected her bag from the hall, and put on her old black coat and a dusty hat which pulled down on both sides of her face, and stood at the kitchen door, blinking at him and shifting from foot to foot. “I’ll be off now,” she said, as she always said, and Hugh said, “Won’t you have a cup of tea, Mrs. Rhodes?” and Mrs. Rhodes said, “I’ve had mine,” and went.
The case against “getting set” (he knew because he had written copy for vitamin pills) was dietary. The vitamin people depended, if not for their sales at least for their sales’ message, on the fact that a certain proportion of elderly people living alone would stop bothering to prepare food for themselves, and would try to live on tea and bread-and-butter; behind the “Doctors know …” and the “as we grow older it is easy for the body to go short of essential vitamins and minerals …” and even the downright “Vitamins can PROLONG your life …” there would be the fact of some old man who had died of malnutrition in Wapping. Well, it was true, Hugh told himself; all perfectly true. Old men and women in Wapping and elsewhere couldn’t be bothered with buying liver, and fresh vegetables were a bother when one only wanted a quarter of a pound at a time, and if one could afford the pills instead, why not?—though he himself kept healthy with peanut-butter and eggs and nourishing stews which he heated up from day to day. It was not difficult. He had Mrs. Rhodes to shop for himself and his dogs, and for anything special he could send his secretary to Fortnum’s during the lunch-hour.
After tea they went for a walk round the block, as they always did when the weather was fine. And on Saturday and Sunday afternoons they would go to Kensington Gardens. There were people at the Agency who thought of Hugh as a friendless person, though self-contained. It was foolish to think so. A dog-owner is never without friends. All sorts of people whom Hugh would never have met, never have thought of meeting, would stop to admire the dachshunds and to chat. Kensington children would come up politely and ask to pat them. Nursemaids in brown uniforms would stop their prams, and throw up their hands, and exclaim to their charges, “Look, darling! Look at the pretty dogs!” Old ladies would say, “How sweet!” and grown men would pretend to be frightened. Once a woman who looked like the late Lady Mountbatten (though she, as it turned out, had been in India at the time) had asked Hugh where she could buy a similar dog, and a well-known actor who walked his Labrador in the park on Sunday afternoons had once sat down beside Hugh and talked affably for twenty minutes. Americans were always getting into conversation. Dachshund-owners in particular would go out of their way to cut across Hugh’s path, so that their dogs and his could play together while they discussed with Hugh the moodiness of dachshunds—how they had days when they just would not eat, how snobbishly they spurned most other dogs but dachshunds and poodles (and particularly seemed to dislike corgis, which was ridiculous when you remembered that the Royal Family was so attached to corgis), how obedient they were, how devoted, how intelligent, how disobedient, how fickle, how stoical when bitten by wasps, how timid, how you only had to scratch twice at the earth to start them burrowing, how they chased sticks, how they ate pencils. Hugh was the confidant of many dachshund-owners in the park. He was more; he was a sort of uncle, for he had three. The hour or so he spent there on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon was his most sociable time. And none of these people had any claims on him.
Then there were those in the Agency who thought of Hugh’s dachshunds as being in some way a “tie”. The dachshunds would have been miserable without company, it is true, but they had company. By day they had Mrs. Rhodes, and in the evening, if Hugh should want to go out, they had each other. Hugh didn’t go out very much, as it happened; he didn’t want to do so; he didn’t feel the need to “keep up”, as they say, with the theatre or the cinema, and he didn’t care for visiting. In the evenings, he would usually potter about the flat, doing little things, or he would read or watch the television, with one dog in his lap and the other two dispersed where they could find a comfortable place between his body and the sides of the big armchair. Every summer Hugh spent three weeks in Italy, and the dachshunds went to the country to live in the Kennels run by Hugh’s cousin, Janice, from whom he had first had Jill, and who had arranged her mating, and sold the other pups. And if ever he were to be ill, Hugh would tell you, Janice had promised to take care of them. So there was no question of their being a tie. Everything had been arranged. People said that one shouldn’t keep dogs if one lived alone in London, but anything could be done if one were a careful, planning sort of man like Hugh.
On the Sunday after that first meeting, he sat on a bench in the park, and watched the three dachshund bitches as they sported round him, running in wide circles over the grass, their ears like brown furry pennants in the wind of their own speed. There were no rules that he could tell in their game, which was simply a mock-battle of shifting alliances, which sometimes stopped, but never ended. Now it was Jill’s turn to be chased by the other two. She stood facing them, her thickened body planted on the ground, but light and ready to leap away, her gray muzzle open, laughing at them, her eyes narrowed and cheerfully wary. She backed and tossed her head, and jumped first to one side and then to the other, and then she was away, bouncing, giving the illusion of speed (since she was not built for any great speed), her tail waving, her ears flapping, and they were after her, one following her in the same arc, the other cutting across to intercept her, and she was over, bowled over, with Jane at her throat and Susan yapping and tugging at one ear, until suddenly with a growl, a snarl, a flash and whirl of brown fur, they had changed positions, and now it was Sue who was on her back with her paws imploringly in the air, while Jill stood over her, jaws just not closing on the skin of Sue’s throat, and Jane stood back, wagging her tail and ready in her turn to run away. Hugh whistled, and at once they left the game, and ran to him, Jill jumping up on the seat beside him, while Jane and Susan pretended to worry his trouser-turnups. “Come on,” he said. “Time to go home!” and even as he stood up, they were away again, bounding on in front, behind, pausing for a moment with head cocked and one paw lifted (for all three had the trick of it) to hear—who knows what dachshunds hear? Who knows whether they are even listening on these occasions, but simply play at listening as they play at fighting, for devilment?
Hugh had a rule that he would not allow himself to think about advertising problems, except at work, when he was paid to do so, or sometimes after breakfast when, sitting on the W.C. with his feet on the side of the bath so as to bring his body into the position advised by a book called The Culture of the Abdomen, he found that cogitation passed the time agreeably. Advertising was not important enough to take charge of your life, Hugh said; it didn’t really matter very much if a particular housewife bought Glo or Gentle when she went shopping. If you expected to grow old in advertising, you had to learn to take it lightly. So far it had never occurred to any of Hugh’s hearers to ask him what, then, was important.
Meanwhile Hugh was not bothered by thoughts of Foundation Soap. Keith might fuss, and P.A. might fume about “looking for an idea”, but Hugh knew perfectly well by now the sort of thing that Hoppness, Silch would expect and accept, and it wasn’t a new idea. The Hoppness people liked their ideas familiar by long usage.
3
LOOKING FOR AN IDEA
On a pad of ruled yellow paper, Hugh had written:
“SKIN SOAP
GLAMOUR—the new Cosmetic Soap (No—already in use).
NEW!
IMPROVED!
NOW—FOR YOU—AMOUR! (No)
DAY-LONG L’AMOUR
DAY-FRESH. STAY FRESH
STAY FRESH! GO DAY-FRESH! (No! Deodorant approach.)
NEW IMPROVED X——
NOW NEW X——.”
And then— “PETAL?”
At the bottom of the page, he had added: “A PRODUCT OF HOPPNESS, SILCH LABORATORIES” in careful printing. “Something like that, I should think,” he said to Sophia. “You know the sort of thing.”
Sophia was near the end of her time with Hugh, and, although she had grown fond of him, she would be glad to move. Most copywriters new to the Agency spent a kind of apprenticeship with Hugh, and then asked to be moved, or were moved. Hugh only went through the fiction of being a Group Head. You would have ideas about a problem; you would discuss them with him; then you would go away to write the advertisement. When you brought it to him for approval, you discovered that he had already written his own. If for some reason he was unable to do this, he would take your advertisement and lose it among the papers on his desk. Then he would write his own anyway. So Sophia only said, “You don’t think we might do something really big about making an announcement out of it?”
Hugh added the words “IT’S HERE!” to those already on the yellow sheet, and drew a circle round them. He turned the circle into an apple, and wrote the words “AT LAST! FOR YOU!” Sophia decided that she had a duty to speak her mind, and said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about this, as a matter of fact.”
Hugh twinkled; it was one of the things he did. He said, “Well, I suppose it’s what we’re paid for. I can’t think why.”
“I thought P.A. might want something sort of dif-ferent.”
“Oh, do you think so?”
“Well, Hugh—you heard what he said.”
“Yes…. Yes…. He always does say things at first, of course. He’s like that. He gets calmer later. I always think it’s a matter of waiting things out with P.A. Do you know, I read a very interesting story the other day—I think it was in John Bull—one of those magazines the messenger boys keep bringing round—so many people want to get into advertising nowadays, you have to find something for them to do, I suppose. One of them was in the Guards, he told me. I didn’t ask whether he was commissioned. It seemed——”
“P.A.”
“Yes. Well, this was a very interesting story about a man who waited things out all winter. He was snow-bound. I may still have it here somewhere. I always start reading these magazines when the pile gets over a foot high, but somehow I always stop.”
“What happened to this man?”
“He starved to death. Still, the principle was sound.”
“Hugh, this is important. We can’t go back to P.A. without——”
“Well, I thought an announcement, of course. And then some sort of testimonial treatment.”
“Housewives?”
“Actresses. Personalities. Beautiful women. People like that. Young, but not too young. Early thirties.” There were a great many files on Hugh’s desk, and a great many reports, and a great many pieces of copy paper which didn’t seem to belong either to the files or the reports. Hugh said, “I worked something out. Just a rough sketch. I expect you’ll be able to improve on it.” He found an old smudged carbon of a piece of copy for precision watches. “I can’t think what that’s doing here,” he said. “We lost the account two years ago. I’m sure they have more jewels than that nowadays.” He picked up a copy of the Chemist and Druggist, scratched a line through his name on the distribution list, and put it into his Out Tray. “Perhaps I gave it to Helen to type,” he said. “I do that sometimes.” He pressed the communicating buzzer on his telephone, and spoke to Helen, his secretary. “She says it’s in the In Tray,” he said, putting the phone down again.
Sophia picked the typed draft out of the In Tray. “AT LAST—FOR YOU!” she read. “EXCITING! NEW! “PETAL—the NEW IMPROVED COSMETIC SOAP.”
“Announcement, you see,” Hugh said modestly, “and the first two lines rhyme. I thought that was rather clever. Except that it was accidental, as it happens.” Sophia read the next sheet, which began, “Famous Personalities tell the story of—PETAL!—NEW IMPROVED COSMETIC SOAP.”
Hugh said, “I’ve had to put an X——X—— there for the personality. Some people make names up. There was rather a nice girl on Juke Box Jury last night, I thought. We might ask her, if I can remember her name. Fidge said he wanted something modern, so perhaps television people are more modern than actresses. Only”—he sighed—“they do go out of fashion so quickly.”
Sophia was reading the body copy of the advertisement. She said, “Hugh, this is the same stuff. I mean, this is Foundation Soap. Some of the things in your copy are things I’ve read in——”
“Not exactly the same. I’ve changed the words about. It means the same, of course. This sort of stuff always does.”
“But you must say something new. I mean, I was working on something last night——”
“Something for me to read? I love reading things. I expect it’s very good.”
“—but if you’re going to use the same copy platform——”
“Surely there’s room for two on it? Or at least, come to think of it, I suppose there isn’t. That’s the whole idea. Of course I can never think of anything original to say anyway, and I’m not sure anyone would want to read it if I did. So I thought we’d call whatever it is ‘Cosmetic Soap’, which is as near to Foundation Soap as we can get, and just tell the same story, only more often and in bigger spaces. And saying New and Improved helps. I suppose it is rather immoral and sinister and maybe we shouldn’t do it; you’re quite right.” Hugh was always anxious to please when he’d forestalled one of his copywriters in composing an advertisement. He scuffed among the papers on his desk, and found his pad of copy paper. “We needn’t stop at X——X——,” he said. “You could do one for Y——Y——if you like. I was going right on to Z—— Z——myself, but then it was five-thirty, so I went home instead.”
“You’d like me to do Y——Y——then?”
“If you think it’s a good idea, Sophia. Don’t stop working on your own ideas—I don’t want to inhibit creative thinking, as they say—why do they say that, I wonder?”
“Well….”
“Only I’m sure you’ll do this so much better. I don’t think I’ve ever written beauty copy before. You’re bound to improve mine no end.” Gratified, he repeated the last two words. “No end! Doesn’t that sound like Tony Barstow? I must have picked it up from him. I hope I lose it again. I suppose you haven’t found me a lodger yet?”
“Not yet.” This was definitely propitiatory. Hugh’s lodger was an old joke between them, and to make it now meant that he knew, in his withdrawn gray-cat way, that she was upset, and he was saying he was sorry. Because she was fond of him, Sophia had stayed with Hugh longer than most copywriters could bear. They had both begun by being shy of each other, and had needed a joke as a bridge. Hugh had been fussing then about the empty room in his flat. His mother was lately dead, and partly perhaps to change his grief and a sense of loneliness into a semi-comic, and so manageable, concrete anxiety, he had played with the idea of letting her room to a lodger. It had been Sophia’s first piece of copy for him, playfully undertaken, to write a card for a tobacconist’s notice board, and since then they had drafted many advertisements for many media—the Personal Columns of the literary weeklies, the back pages of House and Garden, and even a rather scandalous advertisement for Marilyn; “dulcet” and “decorous” were favourite adjectives, and “dog-loving” an invariable one. None of the advertisements had ever appeared, and the room remained empty, remained, even though the need for it had passed, a joke.
“I’m looking, though,” Sophia said. “I’m always looking.”
“He’d have to know his way about a dachshund, of course. Someone from the country. Germany maybe. Not one of your Bohemian friends. Except that Bohemia is in Germany, isn’t it?”
“Czechoslovakia.”
“I suppose that isn’t quite the same thing!”
“I only know advertising people nowadays.”
“Oh dear me!” Hugh said. “I’m afraid advertising people wouldn’t do at all. You’ll have to do better than that.”
*
It is good to get out of London for the week-end. Sometimes Sophia went to Oxford, to stay with Deborah and Simon Hobbs, who lived in a cottage with a garden in the little village of Iffley, a village almost enclosed now by the City of Oxford’s housing estates. It is as if Oxford, spreading in nearly identical semi-detached boxes south-east along the river, had suddenly found Iffley in its way, already there, compact and indestructible, and being unable to digest it had simply evaded it, so that the village remains in a pocket between the River Isis and the Cowley Road. There are several cottages in Iffley with thatched roofs and apple trees, there is a Post Office which is also a general store, and the little Norman church is one of the oldest in England. Deborah Hobbs’ kitchen had a floor of stone flags and a huge oven in which she baked her own bread, but hot water ran from the kitchen taps, and there was electric light and a telephone; the floors of all the upstairs rooms were rippled like gentle wooden waves, but the old outdoor privy was now only a toolshed, and there was a warmed towel-rail in the bathroom and central heating in inconspicuous pipes along the walls. Simon’s firm had made him an interest-free loan to convert the cottage. He worked in the Personnel Management Division of a large industrial firm near Oxford. The amount of the loan was deducted from his monthly salary in small instalments, and would be paid off altogether by the time he was forty-five years old. If Simon should ever wish to leave the firm, he would have to pay back the balance of the money all at once, but he did not think he would wish to leave. He was happy to stay with such a progressive firm, which treated all its staff on the management side in the same generous paternalistic way.
