The Centre of the Green (4 page)

Julian Baker sat at his desk in a small office on the third floor of an advertising agency in Mayfair. Pinned to the wall above his head were a number of proofs of past advertisements and a coloured reproduction of Annigoni’s portrait of Princess Margaret, cut from
Woman’s Own
, and decorated with a fine, curling
moustache
. Julian shared the office with a fellow-copywriter named Hal Patterson, whose double-breasted dark blue jacket hung next to Julian’s own double-breasted dark grey jacket in the closet which took up most of one wall.

The day was humid, and Julian was sweating. His striped shirt stuck to his back, and his white collar was limp. He said to himself, as he often did, “I really ought to get a deodorant stick. God knows we advertise the bloody things.” One of the two windows in the tiny office could not be opened without disturbing the
tradiscantia
, or Wandering Sailor, which Hal was growing there; he had propped up the broad-based flower-pot which
contained
it on top of an old box-file, and secured the
tendrils
to the window-sill with sellotape. An office boy came into the room, and put one copy of
The
Confectionery
News
and one of
The British Medical Journal
into Julian’s in-tray. “Hi, Ace!” he said.

“Good morning, Alfred.”

The office boy picked
The Grocers
’ Gazette from the
out-tray
, and added it to the pile of magazines he carried
under one arm. Then he stepped back a pace, and eyed Julian critically. “You’re getting fat, Ace,” he said.

“I wish you wouldn’t call me ‘Ace’ in the office.”

“I call everybody ‘Ace’, Ace. Hal Patterson doesn’t mind. He likes it. He says it takes him back to Madison Avenue.”

“Well, sooner or later somebody’s going to complain.”

“You wouldn’t like that, Ace. I’m a responsibility to you, aren’t I? You shouldn’t have got me this job, you know. I don’t mind if I lose it, you know. I could get twelve quid a week in a factory, you know.”

“That’s very short-sighted. You ought to think of your career.”

“In this? Don’t make me laugh. Were you thinking of my career, Ace, when you asked them to take me on?”

“No. I was trying to help your father. If you worked hard, took an I.P.A. course, studied in the evenings, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t go a long way.”

“In which direction, Ace? What do you know of my ambitions?”

The telephone rang. A voice said, “Julian? Can you make it?”

“Oh yes, of course. Sorry I forgot. Just coming.” Julian put down the telephone. “I’m afraid I haven’t time to talk to you,” he said. “I’m due at a meeting.”

“Think nothing of it, Ace.”

Julian went to the cupboard to get his jacket. As he put it on, he could feel the weight of the cloth on his back above his wet shirt. Alfred said, “My sister’s going to tell, Ace. She’s got to now, hasn’t she? She’s going to tell our Dad this evening. You’d better stay late at the office, Ace.”

Julian buttoned the inside button of his jacket, and then the two outer buttons. He felt suddenly cold, but calm. “What do you mean?” he said.

“Oh, I know, you know.” Alfred left the room, to take his magazines to those next in line for them. Faintly Julian could hear him saying to Simon Purvis next door, “Hi, Ace. Want a look at
Vogue
before it gets to her
ladyship
?”, and Simon’s reply, “Of course I do, you wicked little boy. Give it here.”

But Alfred was not a wicked little boy; Alfred was sixteen, and a very knowing little boy. Alfred was only a year younger than his sister, and his sister was at least old enough to have a child. Why had she told Alfred? But they were fond of each other, those two; they had shared so much of their childhood among strangers. It must have been easier for her to tell Alfred than to tell her father—whom she would tell tonight. Now Julian began to feel dizzy, and he sat down at his desk again to recover. The telephone rang. “Just coming,” he said, “I got held up.”

His wife’s voice answered him. “What on earth do you mean, Julian? I just rang up to say I won’t be in when you get back. Make yourself some tea, and don’t wait for me.”

“Yes, of course, Penny. Must ring off now. I’m on my way to a meeting.” He heard his wife replace the receiver at her end before he could finish; Penny could not bear anyone to hang up on her. “You needn’t be so bloody hasty. I was going to wait for you anyway,” he said, and put down the phone. Immediately it rang again, and he left the room without answering it.

In Mike Barclay’s room, the meeting was already under way. There were the Art Director, the Television Director, the Marketing Man and the two Account Executives, who were Mike himself, and his assistant, Tony Barstow. “Ah, Julian,” Mike said. “Glad you managed to make it. Can you find somewhere to sit?”

“After all, I’m a consumer myself,” the Marketing
Man was saying to Tony Barstow. “I work with
consumers
. I live among them. My wife’s a consumer. So are most of my friends.”

“Surely.”

“If you haven’t got the consumer slant on this sort of thing, you might as well not try. It’s all very well to be clever and gimmicky—it’s a great temptation; we all know that—but you’ve got to offer the consumer some sort of benefit, or your advertising doesn’t work.”

“No,” Tony said intelligently, “it just doesn’t work, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t.”

Mike said, “Herbert—Tony—shall we just put Julian in the picture before we go any further?”

“Sorry, Mike.”

“That’s all right, Tony.” Mike placed the tips of his fingers together, and leaned back in his chair. Tony gazed at him, his brown eyes earnest and intelligent. The Marketing Man began to fill an old pipe from an oilskin tobacco pouch. Art leaned forward, Television back. The telephone rang, but Mike did not answer it. Instead he said pleasantly, “Do something about that, Tony, would you please, like a good chap?” and Tony slipped
obediently
from the room; the others could hear him, saying to the secretary outside, “I say, Sheila. Can you cope? Mike doesn’t want to be disturbed.” They sat in silence, waiting for him to return. Then Mike said, “Julian, we called this meeting because we feel the time has come to rethink this whole problem of Buttertoffs altogether. I think we really want to consider very seriously whether we’re on the right lines.”

“Client turned down the campaign?”

Mike smiled. Clients did not turn down campaigns when Mike submitted them. “Tony and I had a little
talk before Client came in, “he said,” we decided not to show him anything. Of course, he was disappointed, but we told him we’d like to consider our thinking a little longer, and then we had a general discussion on—oh, a number of points.”

“What’s the matter with the campaign? I thought we agreed——?”

“Of course, we did. My dear Julian, nobody’s
criticizing
your copy. It’s just that Tony and I had the feeling —didn’t we, Tony?—that it’s—well, a little bit
pedestrian
. That may be the right approach, of course. I’m just not sure.”

The Art Director said, “Well, I thought it was all a bit dull at the time. I said I thought it was a bit dull, didn’t I, Julian? I remember I said I thought it needed something a bit extra.”

“Exactly. Some sort of plus quality.”

“I thought we were going to get it in the art work,” Julian said.

Mike smiled easily. “Let’s not bicker about it, shall we?” he said, “life’s too short. After all, an advertisement’s only as good as the thinking behind it; we all know that. And that’s why we’re here—to rethink our thinking.”

“But I thought——” Julian said, and then, realizing that he had slipped out of using the jargon for a moment, corrected himself, “I mean,
my
thinking——”

“Yes?”

“My thinking on Buttertoffs is that the best approach is a straightforward approach. You Can Taste the Butter in Buttertoffs. It’s true. So why not say so? All we really need is that headline. The rest is spinach—just lines on a page for the sake of the layout.”

“I see.”

“I mean, if there’s a consumer benefit at all, it’s in that headline.”

The Marketing Man said, “It does rather depend, doesn’t it, on the assumption that people
want
to taste butter in toffees. Have we ever asked ourselves the
question
why they buy toffees at all?”

Tony said, “Oh, I don’t know. Something to suck, I suppose. Or chew.”

“Exactly.”

The Television Director said, “Well of course, I’m just talking out loud. I mean—I don’t want to try to teach you chaps your own business. I’m just an amateur at this game really. But it seems to me that if you’re going to advertise food, you’ve got to show people actually eating it, whatever medium you use.”

“Surely.”

“And enjoying it,” the Art Director said.

“Surely. Surely.”

“But are Buttertoffs food?”

“Butter’s food, isn’t it?”

“We’re not advertising butter.”

“That’s rather the point, isn’t it?” Mike said. “We’re not advertising butter, but if your headline makes
Desmond
think we are, then there’s something wrong with the thinking behind that headline.”

“Yes, I suppose there is.”

“Let’s start from scratch again motivewise, shall we?” Mike said. “Why exactly do children buy Buttertoffs?”

“But
do
children buy them?” Julian said, “If we’re going to rethink anything, let’s start by rethinking that.”

“What makes you think they don’t?”

“Well, what are Buttertoffs? They’re just toffees in a packet. I don’t think children bother very much about how sweets are packaged. They just want a lot for their money. Sweets aren’t an impulse purchase with children; they’re a budget purchase. And Buttertoffs are appalling value. You only get eight in a packet, and that’s——

“——Three farthings each,” said the Marketing Man.

Mike said smoothly, “I don’t think we’ll get very far by knocking the product, shall we? If we don’t believe in Buttertoffs ourselves, we aren’t likely to make the
consumers
believe in them.”

“No, I mean it. I think Buttertoffs are good—very good—for secretaries to keep in their handbags, for people going to the cinemas or trying to give up smoking, for—oh, for lots of people. But I just don’t think we should aim at the children’s market.”

“If you felt like this, Julian, why didn’t you say so before?”

“I’ve had a lot on my mind. I mean—it’s something that’s been growing on me.”

“We haven’t any research on Buttertoffs?”

“No, Mike. I don’t think Client felt like spending the money.”

“No, of course.” Mike took up a pencil, and began to draw triangles on his blotter. “Well, Julian’s certainly given us something to think about.”

Nobody said anything for a while. The Marketing Man found something wrong with his pipe. Tony said, “Well, of course we do know there’s a strong adult market for mints and that sort of thing. I’ve always thought of toffees as rather a childish sweet. I mean, I do think Buttertoffs are actually excellent in every way actually, but actually I don’t eat them myself. Rots the teeth for one thing.”

Julian felt that he had won a point. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “—and don’t think I’m generalizing from a sample of one—it was my landlord’s daughter who started me thinking about this. I mean, she always carries a packet of Buttertoffs in her bag, and I began to wonder——” He was cut off in mid-sentence. The
dizziness
began again, and he felt his hands and feet grow cold. He could not think any longer. Fear and memory,
memory and fear made a confusion in his mind. He heard Mike say, “I say, are you all right? You’re making some very strange faces. Look out, Tony. I think he’s going to faint.”

“No,” Julian said, “no; don’t bother. I’m sorry. I’m not feeling very well. It’s probably flu or something.”

“My dear chap, you should have told us. I thought you looked a bit off colour.”

“I feel awful. I think I ought to go, if you don’t mind.”

“Would you like Tony to go with you?”

“Where?”

Tony said, “Well—take you home or something.”

“No. No, thanks. I’ll manage, thanks. I think I’ll go now.”

Everybody stood up as Julian left. He wanted to say, “I’m not bloody royalty, you know,” but then he felt himself begin to shake, so he got out as quickly as he could. He went out into the corridor, found a lavatory, and washed his face in cold water. He had no towel, and there were none in the dispenser. He tried to dry his face with toilet paper, and while he was still doing this, a boy from Production came in, so he left with bits of tissue still sticking to him. He went down the stairs and into the street. He had no idea where to go, but he knew that he ought to keep moving. Only in that way could he kill the hours.

*

At Julian’s semi-progressive prep school, the
authorities
had believed in reason; before any child could be punished, he had to be convinced that he
should
be punished. “What did you hope to solve, Baker, by
running
away?” they had said to him, and Julian, twelve and a half years old then, flushed and feverish after a night huddled among old pads and batting gloves in the pavilion, had answered, “Nothing, sir”.

“Quite right, Baker. Perfectly right,” the headmaster had said, “nothing is solved by running away.”

Nothing is solved, because there is nowhere to go. There is no compartment, no watertight bulkhead, that will close as you pass through it, shutting off the past and beginning the future from scratch—a new man on a new road, responsibility and memory all left behind. Nothing had been solved for Julian then, because there was
nowhere
to go. And now that he found himself in the street outside the agency, why there was still nowhere to go. He could not go home. He could not stay where he was. He walked about the West End until he was tired. He sat in Hyde Park, paid the attendant for his deckchair, then threw the ticket on the grass and began to walk again. People left their offices. The public houses opened. He could get drunk, but he was afraid to get drunk, and only had a couple of drinks to pass the time. He bought an evening paper, and read it. He went to a cinema. If only he could spend the rest of his life in the anonymity of parks and pubs and cinemas, and never meet anyone he knew! He saw the programme through one and a half times, and then the cinema closed, and it was only eleven o’clock. The cinemas were closed, and the pubs were closed, and still he could not go home. He had a cup of tea at the Coventry Street Corner House. He must find somewhere to spend the night. He had heard that a Turkish Bath is cheaper than a hotel. Julian went to a Turkish Bath.