THIRTY-THREE

Friday, February 19th

‘You’re off then?’

‘A week on Sunday, yes.’

‘Surprised you stopped so long,’ she said.

‘Me too,’ he said. ‘I’m taking Paddy back with me this weekend. My parents are going to look after him. He’ll miss you.’

‘Not as much as I’ll miss him.’

He noticed that Sally, beneath her overcoat, wasn’t wearing her Kardomah uniform. He asked if it was her day off.

‘I’ve packed the Kardomah in,’ she said. ‘There’s work at Player’s cigarette factory down the road in Radford, pays a pound a week more. But the hours wouldn’t have let me take Paddy for walks regular, so it’s a good thing you’re going, I suppose.’

‘Isn’t the work rather... monotonous?’

‘I don’t mind. At least I won’t be on my feet all day. You get a bonus every year, and paid holiday. Then there’s the free fags.’

‘I didn’t know you smoked.’

‘I don’t, not yet, but a girl’s got to start sometime. Or I could sell them. I ought to start saving to get married, too.’

‘You’re engaged?’ Graham asked, with surprise.

‘By the time I’ve saved enough money, I expect I will be.’

Here was Graham, expecting to get engaged without a paying job or a penny to his name that didn’t come from his father. Whereas this girl, five years his junior, was already making practical plans for the future.

Later, towards the end of a long session, on the bus to a town called Beeston, Trollope talked about the importance of charitable giving. A collection plate came round at every mass, as it did in a Church of England service, but this wasn’t what the priest meant.

‘Everyone, no matter how poor or disadvantaged, has the means to improve other people’s lives. Small acts of generosity can make a great deal of difference.’

A life without rewards. He didn’t think he could take that. Back at All Saints Terrace, he read his catechism in anticipation of his next meeting with Trollope, but couldn’t concentrate, so had his afternoon meal. Today, for a change, the boiled potatoes were accompanied by two fat slices of salty corned beef. He gave half of one thick slice to Paddy, who devoured it in a single bite, then fixed his yearning eyes on Graham until he succumbed and gave him a quarter of the second piece. At least, unlike the salmon, the meal showed no signs of making the dog sick.

He had time to go to a film before starting work: Kiss Me Again, an amusing picture based on a French play about divorce. A mistreated wife, infatuated with her music teacher, threw her husband out and he had to move into his club. By the time the husband returned to collect his things, the music teacher’s charms no longer amused her. The wife decided to seduce her husband, whom she wanted back.

The potentially adulterous wife, played by an engaging actress called Marie Prevost, had one speech that stuck with Graham. She complained that men like her husband were allowed, nay, encouraged to sleep with as many women as they could before they settled down, whereas women were required to stay virginal. It was far from fair. The husband also had his own love interest, Grizette, played by young Clara Bow, known in Tit-Bits as the ‘It’ girl. At Oxford, one of the rugger types had passed round tattered photographs in which Bow displayed her pert bare breasts. Graham tried to visualise them when he watched her scenes, but his recollections weren’t strong enough to fuel his imagination.

The film had a light touch that Graham enjoyed, although the subject matter made him uneasy. Vivienne hated being a child of divorce. Despite having broken away from her father, she acknowledged that her mother had some share in the responsibility for her marriage’s failure. Mummydar, Vivienne had implied, loathed the physical act of love, calling it ‘nasty’.

‘Maybe it is nasty if you let it be,’ Graham had responded. ‘But not always, surely, or there’d be far fewer children in the world.’

His intended hadn’t responded to that rationalisation. It wasn’t clear if she wanted children or not. Graham was ambivalent on the issue, willing to go along with whatever she desired. He knew that, for his intended, marriage was for life. Vivienne didn’t blame her mother for divorcing. Her mother, after all, was not a Roman Catholic. But Vivienne was.

He was five minutes late for work, but nobody commented. They weren’t paying him, after all. He’d originally hoped to work on the Journal’s evening edition, where the deadlines were more pressing and you saw your work in print the same day. But having his days free was useful for writing (and movie going). Starting work when he did, however, meant he spent little time with the office full of secretaries, a uniformly young bunch who seemed to have been chosen for their looks rather than their skills. Several were astonishingly beautiful.

There was a chubby young man called Harold whose task it was to relay letters to the post room and dispatch other missives via the complicated tube system that ran around the building. He seemed in constant awe of the pretty secretaries, continually blushing.

‘Who got to select the women in the secretarial pool?’ Graham asked him. ‘Mr Roberts, presumably. Did they have to pass some kind of audition?’

He toyed with adding a risqué comment about the girls having to be good with their hands. However Harold already looked ill at ease, so he left it.

‘I’m not sure Mr Roberts is that way inclined,’ Harold replied, in his quietest voice. ‘Mr Derwent’s in charge of the secretaries.’

Graham took in this hint without commenting. He was looking forward to meeting Mr Roberts.

Thanks for reading Greeneland. The next chapter will appear next Wednesday.

If you’re enjoying the novel, please tell your friends about it in whatever way suits you best. Word of mouth is by far the best recommendation.