Reckoning in Ice, page 7
I decided to ask Caroline out to lunch. ‘I only got home at the weekend,’ I said, ‘when I found your note. It was nice of you to write. The people I was with were a bit fussy – kindly, of course – and they made me stay in bed. It’s miserable to be in bed in someone else’s house. I wanted to get home, but I couldn’t decently get away before the weekend. And I did feel pretty rocky.
‘You’re quite right about post-influenzal depression. I’m on my feet again all right, but I feel as if I’d been run over by a truck. Can you be very nice and have lunch with me to cheer me up?’
She seemed delighted. ‘Well, with Mr Morgan-Jones not here, he’ll not be wanting me,’ she said. ‘I’ve rather a lot to do, all the same – and you may have something to give me when you’ve gone through your mail. But I could probably manage to get out about 12.45.’
‘That’s really splendid,’ I said. ‘You’re a thoroughly good Samaritan. I’ll collect you a few minutes before a quarter to one, and we’ll go to my club.’
The decor of the Mariners Club has been described as ‘late Pullman or early German Lloyd’. The description was meant to be wounding, and there is certainly much about the place that invites criticism in this technological age. But both Pullman trains and German Lloyd ships had solid virtues, and the description, intended to convey a sense of archaic bad taste, may contain more of a compliment than was meant. Big rooms at least offer breathing space, and huge leather armchairs are more comfortable than most of the things provided to sit on nowadays. Gilt mirrors may be unnecessary, and large oil-paintings of once-distinguished but long-deceased members may take up a lot of wall space, but they combine to produce an atmosphere both friendly and secure.
The Mariners Club was founded as a sort of rival to the better known Travellers Club, which stands a few doors away. The masters of the famous clipper ships were nearly all members, and there has always been a sprinkling of Naval officers as well as master mariners. Economic trends have gone against exclusiveness, and the club, like many other London clubs, has to struggle to survive. Soon after the First World War members of yacht clubs were regarded as eligible for membership – a dinghy sailor now who can find a proposer and a seconder has little difficulty in getting in. But the club’s traditions somehow live on. Members may be as eccentric as they like in their views, but all tacitly accept a code of civilised behaviour. It is a companionable place.
The Mariners have made one outward concession to the twentieth century – the club has a pleasant drawing room specifically provided for members to bring women guests. Women nowadays may also lunch or dine with their hosts in the main dining room, built to represent the great saloon of an East Indiaman. Perhaps the decorations in the drawing room suggest a celibate shipmaster’s ideas on femininity – the wallpaper is a flowery chintz, and there is a remarkably well-stocked bar. Women tend to smile at the place, but I think that most women rather enjoy it.
Caroline had not been to the Mariners Club before, and she reacted as I had hoped. The hall porter’s ‘Good afternoon Mr Garston’ was impressive, and she loved the drawing room.
‘What a marvellous place,’ she said.
‘I need a stiff gin and French. What about you?’ I asked her.
‘Well, not too stiff,’ she replied a little dubiously.
The club’s measures are generous but I felt that I could do with a double. I ordered a single for her.
When the steward had brought our drinks she said, ‘Why do men have all the best clubs? It’s most unfair.’
‘Women are individuals. As a sex, I don’t think that you are really clubbable.’
She considered this. ‘Perhaps. But why?’
‘Lord, why are women women and men men? Quite unanswerable. As far as clubs go – well, I suppose men have had to live together in armies, ships at sea, in all-male communities since the dawn of time, and have just got into the habit of it. Do women really like all-women communities? I doubt it.’
She laughed. ‘You’re right there,’ she said.
The main dining room was another pleasure to her. Our chef (ex-P & O) is particularly good at curries and rice dishes. We ordered curry, and the array of bits and pieces that the chef provides to go with it delighted her. Over lunch we talked about the office. I asked her how long she had been there.
‘Three years, no, nearly four,’ she said. ‘I started as third girl in the small typing pool attached to the managing director’s office. Then I was lucky. The girl who had been Mr Morgan-Jones’s secretary left to get married, and he gave me her job. The others were a bit jealous, I think, because I was the junior, but it was fair enough – my shorthand was better than theirs. They’ve all gone now, anyway.’
‘Do you like Mr Morgan-Jones?’
‘He’s a wonderful person,’ she said with conviction. ‘He really has put International Metals on its feet.’
This seemed a somewhat unusual view of the company, but I said nothing. I asked if she had ever worked for Paul Villeneuve.
‘Of course, I know him,’ she said. ‘I’m called in sometimes to do confidential work for the board, though he’s not often there. But I’ve been to his place in Scotland several times. Mr Morgan-Jones has to go up there to discuss things with him – to give advice, you know. If he wants a note taken, or a confidential memorandum typed, he takes me with him. It’s a frightfully long way to go. I can’t think why Mr Villeneuve lives there.’
I remembered that I had never been anywhere near Hee House.
‘What’s the place like?’ I asked.
‘Well – Mr Villeneuve has pots of money – he must do very well out of the firm. I suppose he likes the Highlands – I believe his wife came from somewhere around there, though she’s been dead for years.’ She thought for a bit, then went on, as if doing her best to be fair, ‘You have to admit that it’s beautiful, all mountains, and a big lake, near the house. But it’s miles from anywhere – not a shop or anything for miles and miles and miles. We go up on the night train to Inverness – Mr Morgan-Jones takes me first class – and Mr Villeneuve sends his Bentley to meet us. It’s another long journey from Inverness. We have breakfast in the station hotel there, and we get to Mr Villeneuve’s place about lunch time.’
‘Does he live alone?’
‘Oh no. He’s got lots of staff – he does himself pretty well, but why not, if you’ve got the money? And there’s a daughter, Paula Villeneuve, who lives with him. She must be fairly barmy.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, I ask you! If your father’s rolling in money, would you go and bury yourself in the middle of nowhere? She’s got no shops, no theatres, not even a cinema within about fifty miles. I don’t think she ever meets anybody.’
‘What is she like?’
‘Hard to say. Not pretty – one of those pale, schoolmistressy types. Not a bad figure, if only she’d dress properly. With all that money – oh, well.’ She sighed, then smiled at me. ‘Takes all sorts, doesn’t it?’
‘What do you do when you go up – when you’re not working, I mean?’
‘Look at scenery, mostly. Of course, I have to be polite to Paula. She seems to like going for walks, and if Mr Morgan-Jones doesn’t want me I have to go with her.’ She gave me an exaggerated little shudder. ‘Let me see, when was I last up there? It was in the autumn sometime, yes, it must have been in October. That wasn’t so bad. The weather was lovely and instead of toiling up the hillside Paula took me in a boat. They’ve got a big launch on the lake, with a nice little cabin. It’s got a stove worked by Calor gas, and a table and settees. We went across the lake a couple of times and then we threw out an anchor and had tea on board. That was rather fun.’
The coffee came, and Caroline looked at her watch.
‘Good Lord, it’s twenty-five to three. It’s all right for you – men again! – but I’m supposed to be back from lunch by quarter-past two. Still, Mr Morgan-Jones is away today, and it’s only the other girls who may be a bit catty. But they don’t matter. You’ve given me a lovely lunch, and I hope it’s helped to make you feel better. Thank you ever so much. Now I really must fly.’
‘Finish your coffee,’ I said, ‘while I ask the hall porter to get a taxi. He’s pretty good at it, and I’ll take you back straightaway.’
Back at the office, I made my number with my friends in the accounts department, was commiserated with about flu, and collected some figures with which I could at least look busy. When I’d started the IM job I’d brought my own small typewriter and it had lived since on the desk in my room. I put in a sheet of paper and headed it ‘Preliminary Report on Structure’. It seemed quite pointless, but I had to do something. I began a careful analysis of the various divisions of the company. The professional part of my brain acted more or less mechanically and one page of typescript was added to another. The rest of my brain was concerned solely with Caroline. Why had she told me about the launch trip? Why had she lied?
I thought back to Friday night in Paula’s sitting room. My recollection was definite and clear. I could both see and hear Paula talking, and her father listening. On Caroline’s October visit there had been neither walk nor launch trip. I remembered Paula’s phrase – Caroline had complained of ‘a tiresome period’, and had spent most of the time in her room. I had no doubt that Caroline had been on the launch – on one of her visits to Hee House Paula must have been thankful to substitute tea on the loch as an alternative to a walk with Caroline. But that had not been in October. Why had Caroline said that it was?
Did it matter, anyway? How well did I know Caroline? Scarcely at all. I called her Caroline because Morgan-Jones called her Caroline, and she was temporarily my part-time secretary, though I had hardly any work for her. She was in her mid-twenties, bright and quite pretty – you could see her when you read those agency advertisements inviting top girls to apply for jobs with top executives. She was good at her job – her shorthand was excellent, and she could purr into a telephone making someone her boss didn’t want to see feel that if only it had not been for that unfortunate conference at Harrogate there was nobody in the world he’d have enjoyed meeting more. I suspected that she was rather a bitch with other women in the office. But many good secretaries are rather bitches, and it was none of my business.
She had obviously wanted to impress me with her first class trip to Scotland to visit the chairman – but then I’d wanted to impress her with my club. It was a mild engagement in the sex war that goes on all the time in offices. She’d liked being taken out to lunch, and I had quite enjoyed taking her. She would scarcely have confided to a casual male acquaintance over the lunch table that she had been inflicted with a tiresome period. She’d wanted me to understand that she went to Hee House as a guest, and not as a typist, that her standing was such that she went on outings with Paula. Natural enough. But she needn’t have dated the launch trip – it didn’t make any difference on which visit Paula had taken her on the loch. Did it make a slightly better story to tell it of the most recent trip? Perhaps, though I didn’t see Caroline’s mind working quite in that way. But then I didn’t really know anything about her mind.
My imaginative brain came to no conclusions, but my professional brain worked steadily and by 5.30 I had a respectable pile of typescript. I took it across to Caroline, hoping that I’d catch her just before she left. I did. She gave me a brilliant smile. ‘Still here? I thought you’d have gone home early.’
‘Work is supposed to be the best tonic,’ I said sententiously. ‘And seriously, if I didn’t do something I’d just feel sorry for myself. Could you get one of your girls to type this out decently – five copies, if she can manage it.’
‘Of course.’ She took the typescript and put it in a tray. ‘Thank you again for lunch. It was a real treat for me.’
‘Thank you for coming. I’d have been twenty times more miserable without our lunch. I enjoyed it immensely. Now that you’ve found your way to the club, perhaps you’d come again one day.’
‘I’d love to.’
Again the brilliant smile. I said goodnight and went home.
I wanted badly to talk to Paula, but she was not due to telephone me until tomorrow night, and I had no news to justify invoking our plan for emergencies. I cooked myself an omelette and tried to read. But I kept puzzling over Caroline. Was this a discrepancy – one of the little gaps I was looking for into which a piece of the jigsaw of truth might ultimately fit? But what piece could possibly be fitted into such a gap? What did it matter whether Caroline had been indisposed or not back in October? I went to a pub where I was a fairly regular customer and played darts. I enjoyed neither the game nor the evening.
*
That Tuesday morning I woke up with the feeling I remembered from birthday mornings in childhood, the feeling ‘something nice is going to happen today’. Paula was going to telephone. But she was not due to ring up until 8.30 in the evening, and I had first to get through the day. I went mechanically to the office and began Part II of my unenthusiastic memorandum on International Metals. I headed this ‘The Place of the Scientist in Modern Industry’. I was pleased with this heading – it was a good subject, and perhaps I could manage an intelligent essay on it. I was getting almost interested when the door opened and Morgan-Jones walked in. He was very friendly.
‘Good morning, Richard,’ he said. ‘Caroline tells me that you got back yesterday. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here – I had to be at Wallingford all day. You must have had rather a rough time – this year’s flu seems a nasty variety of the virus from Hong Kong or China or wherever it starts. You must look after yourself.’
‘I’m feeling very much ashamed,’ I said. ‘Flu at Christmas time always looks bad.’
He laughed. ‘Not for you, my boy,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about that. I’m only sorry that it wrecked your Christmas. You were staying with friends, I believe?’
‘Yes. A man I was at school with, now married with two nice kids. Their mother was a bit scared that I’d give it to the children – I think that’s partly why she insisted on keeping me in bed. But they were very decent about it – looked after me jolly well. They wouldn’t let me go home till the weekend. The kids hadn’t got it by then, anyway.’
‘Well, that’s something. I expect they’ll probably be all right – as an experienced father I know how tough young children usually are. Now look, Richard – I’d rather like to have a talk with you about your report – see how your mind’s moving, perhaps offer one or two suggestions. It’s hard to have this sort of talk in the office – you know how the telephone keeps ringing. I was wondering if you could come to my home for dinner tomorrow night. We could have a chat after dinner.’
‘That’s awfully nice of you – I’d welcome an interim discussion, it would be a great help to me. I’ve done some notes on the present structure of the company – mostly factual, of course, but you have to start with facts. Caroline’s getting some copies typed now – perhaps you’d take one and have a look at it. Then I’m trying to work out some ideas on the precise function of the scientist in a science-based company like this. I can’t give you a final version by tomorrow, but I can probably let you have a draft – I’m doing it now.’
‘Excellent. You’re tackling the job in just the way I hoped. We can go into things in more detail tomorrow. Don’t overdo it – that’s always the danger with chaps like you. We want you fit.’
He turned to go, then paused at the door.
‘By the way, will you be coming in from Richmond by car tomorrow?’ he asked.
‘I haven’t thought about it. I can, easily enough.’
‘Well, if you can, it would be a help to me. I want to get the Rover serviced, and if you’ve got your car we can go home together. Then, of course, you’ll have the car at my house to go back to Richmond afterwards. I hope you don’t mind my asking this.’
‘Not a bit. I’ll be delighted. And if you’re good enough to invite me to dinner, it’s silly to use two cars. My Mini Traveller is a poor exchange for your Rover, though.’
‘I’m not so sure. Yes, of course the Rover’s better on a long journey. But I’ve a great respect for the Mini – Anne has one at home, it’s our second car. I’ve got long legs like you, and there’s at least as much room for your legs in the front seat of a Mini as there is in the Rover – a bit more, I think sometimes. Anyway, your Mini will get us home all right. Thanks a lot.’
He went off, and I returned to the scientist in modern industry.
*
Science and industry kept me reasonably occupied until a bit after six. I went from the office to the club, had a drink at the bar, and had dinner at the round table that is supposed to encourage members dining alone to talk to one another. Only one other man was there. We did not know each other, but had a desultory conversation about conditions in Malaya, of which he appeared to have recent experience. I was not sorry to be through dinner by eight.
Paula would not ring up for another half-hour, but I was too restless to go to the bar or smoking-room and wait to be called. I hung around the telephone room trying to read an evening paper. A practical thought struck me. Paula would be ringing up from a call box in Scotland: if we were to have anything of a conversation she would need a suitcase of small change. When she came through I’d better tell her to ring off, and call her back. It would do no harm to conduct some preliminary negotiations with the switchboard.
The club’s switchboard is normally staffed by girls – there are three of four of them, and they share the job from eight in the morning until eight at night, working on a shift system. At 8 p.m. the girls go off, and one of the night porters comes on. In an interlude when no calls seemed to be coming through I went to the window of his glass cubby-hole. Most of the club’s porters are ex-seamen, and we’re lucky to have them. The man on duty was an old Royal Mail hand.
‘Good evening, Mr Garston,’ he said.
‘Good evening, Adams. Look, will you do a kindness for me? I’m expecting a call from Scotland – it’ll be from a call box. I may want to go on talking for a bit, and if I do my friend will have to find the Lord knows what in tuppences. This is the number –’ I gave it to him written on a piece of paper – ‘when the call comes through I’m going to ask the lady to ring off and wait while you ring back. Then you can put the call on my bill in the usual way. Will that be all right?’
