Man Overboard (12 page)

Mr Sweeting was a large, middle-aged man with a pouched eye and an easy but somewhat elusive manner, as if his attention was only half engaged. His suit and shirt were good and the appointments of his office elegant, down to the last polished leaf of the trailing plant in the window. The Major intruded into Ben’s head again with his observation about the Savoy Grill. It was easy to imagine Mr Sweeting lunching there.

Ben sat in a comfortable chair and waited for him to start the ball rolling. After the preliminary pleasantries, Mr Sweeting fell silent, looking unhurriedly through some papers on his desk as if he were alone in the room.

Perhaps he did not know why Ben was there, and was waiting for him to elucidate. Could one plunge in and say: “About the job———,” or must one sit humbly and let Sweeting play cat and mouse with one’s nerves? Remember you are a naval officer, Amy said from the café two hundred yards away, and Ben straightened his back and looked at the cigarette-box which was open on the desk. He had not had a cigarette all morning. Geneva had run out, and the Major smoked cheroots.

Mr Sweeting did not offer him a cigarette. “Can’t find the letter,” he said at last, looking up about two inches to the left of Ben’s head. “Let’s see, I think the agency said you were in one of the Services.”

“The Navy. I was retired as a commander,” Ben said, trying to make it sound impressive.

“Well, that’s against you for a start.” Mr Sweeting had a thick, catarrhal voice. After he spoke, his mouth remained slightly open. “The Navy is a strenuously efficient organization, though not, I regret, a profitable one.”

He drew out a large, crumpled handkerchief and blew his nose with a noise like an enraged elephant. When he had finished gasping and sniffing and stowing away the handkerchief, he continued: “Our organization is efficient too, of course. At the top. At the lower levels, we are served by all kinds of well-meaning amateurs whose charitable instincts sometimes fail them if they think they’re being treated too militantly. We had a lieutenant-colonel once.” He shuddered, looking beyond the opposite wall into memory. “Ghastly failure. An entire ladies’ committee walked out on him and went over to tuberculosis. What do you know about women?” He shot the question at Ben suddenly, without bringing down his eyes or changing his tone.

“Women, sir?” Damn, he had said it. He had vowed not to, but with Mr Sweeting holding the reins of this situation, it was almost impossible not to treat him like a senior officer. “Well———” He spread his hands. “The usual amount, I suppose. Do any of us know what really makes them tick?”

“Don’t ask me.” Mr Sweeting declined to be won over by this
sprightly platitude. “I’m asking you. You ever worked with women?”

“Wrens. Yes, of course.”

“Did they have more money than sense and swallow half a bottle of aspirin because their deadly rival was appointed chairman of the Come-as-you-are Ball?”

“I doubt it. One of them had hysterics once. In a harbour launch. We held her over the side to cool off.”

“Very good.” Mr Sweeting’s face was blank, like the sadistic oral examiner who gives no indication of whether an answer is right or wrong. He took a cigarette and lit it, coughing harshly. Catching Ben’s eye, he said: “Excuse me,” and offered the box. Before he could stop himself, Ben heard his voice say: “Thanks, I don’t smoke.”

Idiot. A smoke might have pulled you through this, and the man will think you’re not convivial. He’ll expect you to say next that you’re a teetotaller, and that won’t get you very far at the Savoy Grill.

“Tell me,” said Mr Sweeting amiably cnough, leaning back and squinting at Ben through the smoke of the cigarette which hung on his open lip, “what are your qualifications for this job?”

Ben assumed the debonair face he had practised before the mirror. “My experience in this field may not be very extensive, but I’m confident I could do a good job for you.” He had rehearsed that. It was designed to disguise the fact that he had only a vague idea of what the job entailed.

“What do you know about research and statistics? The donation ratio between season and area and class of subscriber, and so on.”

Ben felt his debonair face slipping. Seeing Mr Sweeting’s open mouth, he realized that his own was hanging open too, and shut it quickly. “Of course.” He stalled for time. “Research. Yes, I see, all the usual paper work. I’ve had plenty of that in the Service, naturally. The Navy is laid on a keel of S forms, they say.”

Mr Sweeting did not smile. He trained his pouched eyes on Ben, looking at him directly for the first time. “What the devil is an S form?” he asked irritably.

“It’s a printed form, sir. You use it to report anything from the loss of a tin opener to the grounding of a ship. There’s an S form
for almost everything—drawing stores, writing-up the character of a rating. S.264, that is.”

“You amaze me,” Mr Sweeting said coldly. “And now suppose you stop playing the fool with me and tell me what you know about advertising, drafting brochures, financial statements and the preparation of budgets. Take one at a time if you like.”

Ben did not like any of them. All he could say was: “I’m not trying to play the fool, sir.”

“Look here.” Mr Sweeting leaned forward to stub out the cigarette, which was making him cough. “You are Francis, aren’t you?”

Ben nodded.

“I can’t find the agency’s letter. That girl tidies this desk every time I go out of the room. Do you know what they said about you? Perhaps you wrote the letter yourself? No? Well, that’s something. They implied that you’d been working with charitable groups for some time. I got the impression—perhaps I’m the fool —that you’d been running some sort of sailor’s benevolent association, and that most of your time in the Navy had been spent raising funds.”

Miss Arkwright, what have you done?

Ben sighed. “Most of my time in the Navy was spent in a submarine or a depot ship. The only thing I ever raised was a beer mug.”

“I can only suppose,” Mr Sweeting said heavily, “that the agency hoped that you would keep the fiction going, in the feeble hope that I wouldn’t ask for references.”

“How could I? They didn’t tell me what they’d said.”

“Then,” said Mr Sweeting, who was shrewder than he looked, “they just wanted to bluff me into interviewing you, on the chance that I’d like you so much I’d employ you anyway.”

Ben and Mr Sweeting looked at each other solemnly for a moment, and then they suddenly burst out laughing.

Mr Sweeting’s laugh was like a bronchial donkey. His sunken eyes oozed a few drops into the folds of flesh. His large body shook. He pulled out the handkerchief and mopped his face, passing the handkerchief right over his bald head and round the back of his neck.

When he had finished, Ben asked: “I say, could I have a cigarette?”

“I thought you said you didn’t smoke.”

“I said it by mistake. I was scared.”

This made Mr Sweeting laugh again. He went through the whole process of braying and shaking and wiping his eyes and his head and neck. “Oddly enough,” he said, when he had achieved the second recovery, “I do like you. Can’t think why. You haven’t said a sensible thing since you came into this office. Except about the Wren. Dunked her in the sea, eh? I wish I’d been there.”

Ben told him some more about Sylvia. With the tension broken, he felt more like himself. It was quite a shock when Mr Sweeting reminded him that he had failed to get the job.

“I wish I could help you, though,” he said. “It’s going to be hard for you to find something worthwhile, I’m afraid. What can you do, anyway?”

“A few things. I’m an expert at handling drunken sailors. Ask anyone. And at one time I was said to have the best periscope eye in the Mediterranean fleet.”

“At the moment, I fail to see how we could use that. Perhaps later on———”

“Meanwhile you’ll keep my name in your files in case a suitable vacancy arises,” Ben quoted cheerfully. Mr Sweeting had seemed at first like a man you could not like. Now that they had shared a laugh together, he was suddenly a friend, and Ben did not mind what he said to him.

“You took the words out of my mouth.” Mr Sweeting’s eyes no longer wandered disinterestedly round the room. They rested on Ben with an amused favour. “I might find you some junior post. I’d make one if I could, but I can’t play around with other people’s cash. We have to save money wherever we can.”

“You might start right here,” Ben said, looking round the office.

“Don’t be beastly, my dear chap. You have to spend money to get money. Don’t you know that?” He stood up, smiling, and held out his hand. “I hate to throw you out, but I’ve got serious work to do. I have to draft another advertisement that won’t land me with another dead loss like you.”

They shook hands, and he went with Ben to the door. As Ben went down the corridor, Mr Sweeting called after him: “Let’s lunch some time.”

The girl in the reception-office had stopped typing at the sound
of Mr Sweeting’s convivial voice. She was surprised into asking Ben: “Did you get the job then?” “No. Didn’t you think I would?”

She shook her well-brushed head. “I can always tell. I have a feeling about people. I’m sorry,” she offered, smiling for the first time.

“It’s all right. I shouldn’t have come after it.”

As he picked up his hat, he glanced once more at the picture. The figure in the lighted kitchen was a man. No wonder it looked inviting to see him rolling up his sleeves at home. He had a job, one that made him honestly dirty. He was not supposed to know about anything he could not do with his hands.

Amy was no longer in the café when Ben returned to her. She was standing outside with her hands tucked into the sleeves of her coat, looking anxiously along the pavement for him. She was quite tall for her age, but she looked tiny standing against the wall to be out of the way of the heedless, hurrying people, with her toes turned in and the beautiful pony-tail flattened against the steamy window of the café.

Ben came up to her grinning, but it was not his usual grin, and she said at once: “You didn’t get the job.”

“Not this time. I’ll get the next. Excuse me.” A woman with a shopping cart bumped into him and glared, looking back at him as she trundled away, as if she suspected him of accosting a child.

Ben was going into the café to pay Amy’s bill, but she said: “I paid it. No, don’t pay me back. You need it more than me.”

What kind of a father am I? She shouldn’t have come. Seeing her sympathetic face, Ben despised himself for involving the child in his problems, and yet, knowing Amy, he knew that she would not want it any other way. Her consolation for not having a mother or a proper family life had always been the feeling that she was necessary to Ben, because she was all he had.

“Come on. It’s cold.” He took her hand and put it with his into his overcoat pocket.

“Do you feel like I did when they turned me down for the junior choir?” She looked up at him anxiously as they walked away.

“I suppose so. No. No, I don’t really. You cried in front of the music mistress. I didn’t. I laughed. So did Mr Sweeting, because
it was so absurdly hopeless. Can you see that? I don’t want you or Grandma or anyone else to feel sorry for me.”

Amy thought for a moment, watching her walking feet. “Yes, I see. Grandma will, too, if you tell her the right way. But I don’t suppose Miss Kelly will.” She had stubbornly refused to call her Aunt Rose.

“I’m not going to tell her. I’m supposed to meet her for lunch. Do you want to come?” Rose would not be pleased, but he could not put Amy on a bus for home when she had been through this with him.

“No, thanks, Daddy.”

“All right, let’s find a telephone. If she’s still at the flat, I’ll tell her I’ve got ‘flu, and take you to lunch instead. And a museum, if you like.”

“I’ve gone off museums,” Amy said. “It’s French films now.”

“Well, that’s better.” Ben stopped and released her hand to pull some silver out of his trouser pocket. “We might even manage the Curzon if you don’t have cider at lunch.”

“How could you do it? How could you do this to me?”

Miss Arkwright lowered her head, for her eyes were reddening. “I know,” she said. “Don’t tell me. I’ve already had Mr Sweeting on the phone. He told me.”

“Did he tell you it was a criminal offence to make false claims for your clients?”

Miss Arkwright nodded, and fumbled in the sleeve of her apple-green angora jersey for a handkerchief. She could not speak, so Mrs French took over.

“He laughed at Phoebe, that was the worst of it. If he had been angry, she could have given him back as good as he gave. You don’t know Phoebe when her dander’s up. But he laughed at her.” She raised her voice to where Jessie was typing listlessly in the little closet. “Tea’s wanted here!” she called, like a ward sister calling a nurse for emergency coramine.

Ben tried to explain to them that Mr Sweeting had been sympathetically amused, but they would not be comforted. They had believed so firmly that Ben would come whistling back to them with the job in his pocket that their second-floor world was temporarily at a standstill. Jessie had broken out in a cold sore, and Mrs French had taken two sleeping-tablets last night and slept right through the alarm clock, and her husband had been late for work in the catering department at Barkers for the first time in twenty years.

Rallying a little after the tea, Miss Arkwright racked her brains and her files for other possibilities. Slightly drunk with contrition, she offered all kinds of random ideas from male modelling through crowd work in films to night porter in a private hotel, all of which were rejected out of hand by Jessie and Mrs French, as being insulting to Miss Kelly. They knew about Rose, and had transferred some of their proprietary interest in Ben to her, especially since he had obtained for them a signed photograph, which was tacked to the wall, curling in the fumes from the gas fire.

Not only Miss Arkwright, but Miss Arkwright’s sister and her
sister’s friends were working for Ben. One of the friends, who had been teaching shorthand in a boy’s residential settlement for two weeks before she was bowed out for lack of discipline, came up with the news that the warden was being bowed out too, for a different reason.