I'm All Right Jack (2 page)

“You want a helicopter,
you
do,” said the driver. “Whynchoo say so?”

An old man with sandwich boards was shuffling along in the gutter beside them, neck and neck. Sometimes he would even draw ahead. P
REPARE TO MEET YOUR
JUDGE
MENT
said the boards. T
HE
L
ORD’S
W
ALKING
W
ITNESS
.

“Could you tell me the exact time?” asked Stanley of him as he came by.

“Now is the time for repentance,” intoned the old man. “It is writ clear for all to read.” He offered a pamphlet.

Were all those hours spent skulking, clothed, in his
father’s hut, mugging up current affairs, to be wasted? Surely he should leap out and run?

The sandwich man was drawing well ahead of them now, handing out pamphlets opposite the Ritz. Stanley reached for the door handle, but the taxi suddenly plunged forward, coming to a stop outside the Royal Academy. A tight immovable column of vehicles stretched ahead of them to the Circus.

Stanley jumped out and paid the driver.

“Suit yourself, mate,” said the driver. “It’s only just round the block. Why don’t you nip straight through the Academy? It’s the same building, only the other side.”

The Lord’s Walking Witness, who now stood in the gutter beside the taxi, handed Stanley another leaflet.

“Thank you,” said Stanley, speeding away.

“Prepare for the Universal Judgement,” intoned the sandwich man to the taxi-driver, offering a pamphlet. “Here you are, mate. Do yourself a bit of good.”

*

In a fever, Stanley ran through the courtyard of the Academy and in through the front doors.

“Ticket, sir?”

There was an exhibition on. Agonized, Stanley
calculated
the time for rushing out again and round the block. It was quicker to press on through the building. In
tremendous
haste he bought a ticket, was let in, and began an irrationally fast walk, winding his way through viewers towards the rear of the building. He found the great bronze doors, yanked one of them open, and arrived, significantly through the back door, to try for his Civil Service career.

“Mr Windrush?” said a messenger. “We’ve been on the lookout for you. Upstairs for your Board, please.”

Up the marble stairs on the first floor, a group of young men sat waiting with the composure of death on them. They looked at Stanley, who straightened his clothing while the messenger went in to announce him.

“Go in now, sir,” said the messenger, and then followed him in to call loudly: “Mr Windrush.”

Stanley sank exhausted into the candidate’s chair.

“Mr Windrush?”

This must be the First Commissioner, across the room at the farthest point from Stanley of a great horseshoe table. There were eight, or perhaps nine, including two women.

“Yes, sir, good morning,” said Stanley, shifting on his chair. There was a little table in front of him, and a notice propped up on it. It said, tersely:
SPEAK UP
.

“I beg your pardon?” said the First Commissioner.

“Good morning, sir,” said Stanley, a little too loudly so that it echoed.

“M’m, good morning,” the Chairman repeated in an indifferent tone, looking through his papers.

None of the Board looked at all enthusiastic at having been kept waiting.

“Now,” began the Chairman, and at the word all the interviewers bent forward to their duplicated files, for all the world as if starting a game of housey-housey.

“Full name Stanley Clive Oliver Windrush British by birth,” read the Chairman rapidly, “Father Charles
Wind
-
rush
occupation independent means and your mother is deceased.”

“Yes, sir.”

All the Board looked up briefly as if to check that Stanley was still with them.

Stanley wondered if ‘Sir’ would really do to include the women, and flashed the two of them a nervous smile. One of them nodded a little severely and the other did not react at all.

“You were at Spaniels School I see,” the Chairman went on, “and then at Apocalypse College, Oxford.”

Stanley changed his position, trying to slither
unobtrusively
more upright.

“Then you went into the Army and you did a Japanese course. Then you went back to Oxford and in due course finished your time there, and you got a Third in English.”

Put like that it sounded much like aimless wandering. Stanley wondered if he could think of some remark to make it all sound more impressive. He couldn’t.

“Er, yes,” he said.

The Board all looked at him.

“Can you tell us, Mr Windrush, something of what you have been doing since then?”

“Yes,” said Stanley, with a show of confidence, “I can. It hasn’t been very long, of course, but I haven’t been idle. I’ve been at—home, with my father, reading up a good deal on the world situation, though I’ve spent some time in hospital.”

“Hospital? An illness?”

“Oh no, no,” said Stanley, “I mean yes, of course, but not a real illness. You see I’d been eating some edible fungi.”

“I see,” said the Chairman, without warmth.

“
In
edible fungi, by the sound of it, eh?” said a gentleman on the right wing of the board, smirking.

“Oh Lord, no,
edible,
sir,” said Stanley, “but some inedible got accidentally mixed with them.”

There was a short silence at this point, and the gentleman on the right wing looked displeased to have his remark corrected.

“You’ve been reading up on the world situation, Mr Windrush,” continued the Chairman with faint distaste for the phrase. “The American Presidential Election looks interesting, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, I do agree, it does,” said Stanley.

“What strike you as being some of its more interesting features, Mr Windrush?”

“Well,” Stanley paused as if to give this weighty thought, but found it difficult to keep the pose.

“Our situation here in relation to their situation there,” he improvised. “That’s very vital. We all know what a shortage of dollars means, don’t we? If it results in a shortage of dollars it will be very serious for us.”

“Mr Windrush,” said the Chairman, “Perhaps if you were to explain how the Presidential Election might result in a dollar shortage …?”

“That’s one of the difficult things to see in this situation,” said Stanley. “The two don’t seem at first sight to be connected, but …” But what? “Let me put it this way,”
he plunged on. “If this country is short of dollars we can’t buy from America, and we must buy from somewhere else.”

“And why couldn’t we?”

“If we had to,” said Stanley, “if we were faced with that, well … we could.”

“Perhaps someone else would like to ask a question,” said the Chairman restlessly, looking round. “Would you like to start, Mr H’m-m’m?”

A man somewhere to Stanley’s left began to ask in a low tone, “Mr Windrush, do you consider family ties are more important than your work, or do you think one’s work is more important in all circumstances?”

What the devil was he getting at? Was he divorced, perhaps? And
who
the devil was it that was asking the question? It might have been any one of three men who were looking down at their papers. As whoever was asking the question finished, they all three looked up.

Stanley picked the one in the middle.

“I think you must be thinking of marriage,” he began.

“No I’m not,” said the one in the middle politely. “I’m married already. I wasn’t thinking of it at all.”

Stanley looked hurriedly at the one on the left, but he began writing something down.

“Would you like me to repeat the question?” mumbled the one on the right.

So this was the one.

“Oh, not a bit,” said Stanley hurriedly. “Yes, I think one’s work is jolly important, especially if it’s—important work. Much more important than one’s family.”

“Do you think, Mr Windrush,” put in one of the women, “that the decay in family life today is not important?”

“Oh good gracious no,” cried Stanley. “I think family life is terribly important. I think everybody ought to have a family, for instance.”

“Oh,” said the woman, now a little huffy. “You know, of course, that women in the Foreign Office
must
be unmarried?”

“Really, I didn’t mean it personally,” said Stanley in desperation.

There was a short silence, and then a man on the other side cleared his throat and said:

“How would you assess your Japanese? Fluent?”

“Oh, er, tolerably.”

“
Oto
san
wa
ikaga
de
gozaimasu?
”
1

“
O
kage
san
de
tassha
de
gozaimasu.
”
2

“Speak up,” said the Chairman, curious to hear the peculiar fluting tones of this reply again.

“Sorry,” said Stanley, and with musical emphasis
repeated
: “
O
kage
san
de
tassha
de
gozaimasu.
”

“Thank you, Mr Windrush,” said the Chairman. “That will be all.”

As soon as he had left there was a deep silence. The
Chairman
shook his head, expelling his breath.

“I must point out we’re terribly short of Japanese specialists,” said the man who had asked the last question, hurriedly.

The Chairman gave a very deep sigh.

“We-e-ell …” he said at last, in profound distaste. 

“I
MUST
say,” said Stanley, “there were a couple of nasty moments. I thought once or twice I’d lost hope of getting through. It was like some dreadful panel game on the television, only awfully intellectual. But I think I shook them with my Japanese. I didn’t know much about America, but I ought to be OK for the Far Eastern department. I wonder if I’ll get posted to Japan?”

“Well, you can’t very well stay here,” said his father. “I don’t suppose they’d approve, anyway, but the fact is I haven’t much room.”

“No, I know,” said Stanley.

His father was wearing a vest and shorts, for his
thermometer
was down to
56
, and was digging with a little fork
in the cultivated vegetable patch on the south side of his hut.

“They’ll expect you to live in London,” said his father, “and you won’t get fresh vegetables like here.”

“I suppose not. Well, I’ll have to think about digs.”

“
Digs?
”
said his father. “What nonsense. Stay with your aunts.” He burrowed about in the ground and brought up some radishes for inspection. “Not bad,” he said. “Put those on the table inside for me, there’s a good fellow.”

“But I haven’t got any aunts,” said Stanley, “except Aunty May who’s been put away.” This was a couplet from his childhood, but his father thought it in slightly bad taste.

“I must write to her this week,” noted his father. “She usually enjoys my letters.”

“But you don’t mean Aunty May, of course,” said Stanley. “Anyway, she’s in the—er—country.”

“No, of course not. Your
mother’
s
aunts,” said his father. “Pass me over that hoe, will you. Thank you.” He moved away, clearly of the opinion that all was explained.

“But Father, look,” said Stanley, “I’ve never heard of them. Are they still alive?”

“Good God, of course they are,” said Mr Windrush. “They’ve been living in Eaton Square since
1905
. Still alive! Go and see them. I used to see them occasionally before I married your mother. The younger one was a suffragette, I remember. I suppose she got a vote in the end. You care to make some tea?”

“When did you last see them?”

“
1920
or ’
21
,” said his father. “Oh, they’d quite settled in. Said they didn’t think they’d move.”

Stanley went in for the tea things.

When notification of his success came through, Stanley paid his four pounds for a Civil Service stamp at the post office and his certificate of qualification was filed by the Civil Service Commissioners (as is their practice) in one of their basements. A few days later his letter of
appointment
arrived, and having made no other arrangements,
Stanley wrote to the London aunts, the Misses Dorothy and Mildred Tracepurcel, at their Eaton Square address.

This letter brought no reply of any sort.

“I felt all along they must be dead,” said Stanley.

“Rubbish,” said his father. “Just because you don’t get an answer to a letter.”

“I’ll book an hotel for a couple of days,” said Stanley.

“That’s a very expensive thing to do,” objected his father. “Why don’t you call on ’em?”

When Stanley had booked in at his temporary hotel, he discovered that it was twenty-five past three. Anyone faced with this time in London goes out, and Stanley was by no means an exceptional person.

Once out of the door he. began walking in the rough direction of Eaton Square, mildly curious about the fate of his mother’s aunts. It was fairly obvious that they must be dead.

There were three bells to the Eaton Square house, and, to Stanley’s incredulity, the card by the bottom one read T
RACEPURCEL
. He pressed the bell.

When the door was answered, it opened thirty degrees and clonked against some obstruction inside. The top half of a brawny old lady leaned out round it.

“Good afternoon,” said Stanley. “Miss Tracepurcel?”

“Yes?”

“My name’s Stanley Windrush,” said Stanley. “I think I’m——”

“Wait!” cried the woman, clapping a hand to her
forehead
and shutting her eyes tightly for some seconds, muttering.

“Constance’s boy, of course,” she said, opening them. “Squeeze in.”

Stanley edged through the opening and then round the bath-chair which was obstructing the door.

“Very pleasant to meet you,” said the old lady, pumping his hand vigorously. “You’ve come to tea, I take it?”

“Oh, you were expecting me, then?”

“No, no, of course not. Why should you think that?”
She hitched up her tweed skirt with masculine movements and marched off, Stanley following.

“Actually, I wrote you both a letter,” said Stanley. “At least, I presume it
is
‘both’?”

The great-aunt stopped and faced him.

“
Both?
”
she repeated. “Of course. You didn’t think that was
my
bath-chair in the hall? I’m seventy-four but I don’t need one of
those
‚
thank you. Occupation, relaxation,
that’s
what muscles need.
And
joints. And
breathe,
breathe
.”
She gave him one great, brimming example of this, thumping her chest at the end. “Dolly never believed in anything like that,” she resumed. “Well, there you are.”

“I see,” said Stanley. “So you’re Great-Aunt Mildred.”

“Yes, yes. Come along,” she said, entering a room and calling energetically: “Dolly! A visitor. He says he thinks he’s Constance’s boy, Stanley.”

Another, but more delicate, old lady, sitting reading, took off her glasses and smiled.

“Goodness,” she said. “How nice. Come and let me see you better. We don’t see any young people nowadays.”

A group of small dogs and Siamese cats round her rose, stretched, and rearranged themselves.

“I’ll make the tea,” said Great-Aunt Mildred. “I’ll muck out the budgies later.”

Mildred Tracepurcel had been making the tea since
1939
‚ when their last maid had left to do nursing. She had never been fully replaced, and the house, now made into three maisonettes, was cleaned by a daily woman who left after the luncheon washing-up. This left the tea and a compromise evening meal to the sisters, but Dolly had been successfully lame for years, which made trays out of the question, so the muscular Mildred did it all.

“I wrote you a letter, you know,” said Stanley.

“Goodness, did you?” said Great-Aunt Dolly. “Well, the animals do have the run of the place, you know, and I’m afraid some of the dogs
do
occasionally eat some of the letters. If they’ve started on one we don’t usually bother trying to read it, and let the people write again.”

“Unless it’s from overseas, of course,” said Mildred. “Then we feel we ought to dry ’em off and unravel them.” She moved the heap of animals a little to put down a
cake-stand
, and went off again to the kitchen.

“I see,” said Stanley. “I thought of telephoning, too, but it seems you haven’t one.”

“No telephone? Good gracious yes, we’ve had one since
1905
. One of the first. But what you mean is, we aren’t in the book. I didn’t want to be in, you know, when I was first here alone. That was the year before the Liberals got in and began spoiling everything.” She shook her head. “Then, years later, when Mildred came out of Holloway, and joined me here, we didn’t bother. So we’ve never been in.”

“Aunt Mildred was in jail?”

“Oh yes. She and that woman Pankhurst used to be a nuisance. I knew the Home Secretary then, but he wouldn’t act in Mildred’s case. Mind you, I don’t know the present one, if
you
start chaining yourself to railings.”

“Oh no,” said Stanley. “I won’t be doing that. I’m starting at the Foreign Office tomorrow.”

“Well,” said Great-Aunt Dolly, “if you must get a job. Ah, it’s a long time since I was there.”

“You worked there?”

“Oh no, Stanley. I knew the Foreign Secretary. I wasn’t supposed to go to the office, of course, but I was so bored one day I did. Poor old Bubbles. He was
so
embarrassed.”

Great-Aunt Dolly had known a number of such people in the Edwardian period. Her parents had objected violently to her leaving their Norfolk House and coming to London to go on the stage. They were quite right in this, as it happened, for she quickly descended to the company of the highest circles in the land. She did not marry, but produced one child whom she had christened Bertie. The reason for this name was never discussed. This child grew up to be Stanley’s Uncle Bertram, though strictly he was a second cousin. Dolly had been set up in the convenient house in
Eaton Square, suitably furnished with what was now the grandiose junk among which the two sisters lived their calm lives.

Dolly’s still-living friends included two forgotten elder statesmen and several other octogenarians, all men. These she would sometimes visit in the country, if they had lost their wives and kept their money, being driven down for weekends by the Daimler Hire Service. One she sometimes had tea with at Gunter’s. Her favourite reading was of memoirs, though she had never written her own. It gave her pleasure to listen to the wireless when the BBC put on recorded reminiscences by famous old men. Dolly kept the dogs and cats.

Her younger sister Mildred’s friends were all female, and all quite impossible in Dolly’s eyes. They included
ex-suffragettes
and radical women who did not ask her away to stay. Mildred walked a lot, kept fit at a ladies’ gymnasium, and birds in the house. These birds had a high mortality rate, and Mildred was usually unwilling to leave Dolly alone in the house, suspecting that Dolly’s earthborne pets were sometimes allowed to feed on her airborne ones, and preferring to push her sister in her bath-chair to the shops, rather than take the risk.

Dolly’s mysterious annuity, Mildred’s money from her parents’ will, and the income from the other two
maisonettes
kept the two sisters in reasonable style.

Great-Aunt Mildred brought in the tea tray and bounced herself down in a winged chair.

“You staying long in London, Stanley?” she asked. “Don’t go to seed if you do. So many people do. You look nicely tanned now. Keep that way.”

Stanley’s pale skin had taken on some reluctant colouring at Sunnyglades.

“I don’t quite see how …” said Stanley. “I can’t go on as I have been doing….”

“Walk,” said Mildred. “Take my tip.”

“Don’t be tiresome, Mildred dear,” smiled Dolly. “The best thing to avoid infection is to keep off the omnibuses. Take a taxi and open the windows.”

“Well, I was saying,” said Stanley, “I’m going to be at the Foreign Office.”

“Where will you live, Stanley?” asked Great-Aunt Dolly.

“Oh, I’ve an hotel to start with,” said Stanley.

“That’s far too expensive,” said Dolly definitely. “Live cheaply and eat expensively’s the right approach. Why not live here?”

“Good idea,” said Great-Aunt Mildred. “Can you do painting?”

“Well, that’s really very kind,” said Stanley. “Just till I find somewhere, if you really have room.”

“Both the bathrooms need doing,” said Mildred. “That’d keep you active. They’re peeling.”

“You share my bathroom, Stanley,” said Dolly. “That reminds me. Could I have my stick. Excuse me. I like to go before tea.”

She rose and limped out, declining help. One or two of her animals followed, irresolutely.

“Another thing, Stanley,” said Mildred in a low tone. “It would be useful your being here at times. I don’t like going out and leaving Dolly alone here. You understand?”

“Oh, of course, old people …”

“Nonsense, she’s only three years older than me. It’s the budgies, poor beggars.”

So Stanley cancelled his booking at the hotel and moved into Eaton Square, dutifully filling in a buff Change of Address form issued by the Civil Service Commission. He left this with other letters to be posted on the hall table, and later one of the dogs selected it from the pile and chewed it for some time experimentally. Aunt Dolly picked it up from the sitting-room hearthrug, saw that it was buff and bureaucratic, and threw it in the kitchen bin.