They say that things always work out for the best. But people who make that statement are always lapped in smug security at the time. I agree that life is cumulative and that the threads of each defined period of a man’s life are woven into the pattern. But it is not always possible to pick up the right thread just at the moment when you need it most. And I was feeling pretty desperate when I met Engles.
Before the war I had had a nice little family business — a local paper in Wiltshire. But that went under and when I had been overseas three years and became due for release, I found I had no job to go back to. I was longing to get back to Peggy and the kid, but we agreed there was nothing for it but to sign on for another year. Then a friend of mine suggested starting up a publishing business in Exeter. He asked me to join him in the venture. When I came out we put all we had into it. It lasted six months — the paper shortage and lack of capital were too much for us.
I wrote to everyone I knew — people I had known before the war and contacts I had made in the Army. I combed the ‘Situations Vacant’ columns in the papers. But there were too many of us in the same boat. I sent Peggy and Michael back to our cottage in Wiltshire and here I was in London in search of a job.
It was five years since I had seen London, and in the meantime I had been halfway round the world. I had run big towns in Italy and Austria. I had lived in the best hotels in Europe. I had had servants and transport. And that morning I stood in the rain in Piccadilly Circus, an unimportant molecule in the great flood of London, feeling alone and a little lost. I was excited and at the same time depressed. Excited, because London is an exciting place. From Westminster to the City you can climb dingy stairs to offices whose ramifications cover the entire living globe. Anything is possible in London. The whole world seems to be under your hand. If you have the right contact and are the right man for the job, London holds the key to every country in the world. But I was also depressed, for there is no city in which you can feel so small and lonely and lost as London, especially if you have no job.
But because I needed some toothpaste as well as a job, I strolled up Shaftesbury Avenue and walked into the first chemist’s I saw. And there was Engles.
I had been his Battery Captain back in 1942. We had gone overseas together. But after Alamein, he had transferred to the Intelligence and I had taken the Battery into Italy and had finished up as a Town Major. He had been an exacting Battery Commander. He had broken my two predecessors and everyone had said that I wouldn’t last six weeks. But I had. I had even enjoyed working with him. He had been brilliant, moody and erratic. But he had an exciting personality and terrific drive and energy when things were difficult. Now he was back in films and, according to the papers, his directing of K. M. Studios’ latest production, The Three Tombstones, had put him right at the top.
He nodded casually at my greeting, put the empty beaker down on the counter and looked hard at me for a moment as I made my purchase.
‘What are you doing now, Neil?’ he asked at length. He had a quick abrupt way of speaking as though his tongue worked too slowly for his mind.
‘I haven’t been back very long,’ I told him. I had heard him sneer at failure too often to let him know the truth.
‘Demobilised?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve been in a long time, haven’t you?’
‘Yes. I signed on for an extra year.’
‘A good-time Charlie, eh?’ he jeered.
‘I don’t get you,’ I said. But I knew what he meant. Living conditions had been pretty good at the end — much better than at home.
He gave a harsh laugh. ‘You know very well what I mean. All the bright boys were getting out when I left nearly eighteen months ago. The only ones staying on, apart from the regulars, were the duds and the adventurers — and the good-time Charlies. That’s what is wrong with our European administration. There’s no real future in the job, so it doesn’t appeal to the sort of men we ought to have out there. Well, which category do you put yourself in?’
‘Of the three categories you mention,’ I replied, ‘I think I’d prefer to be classed among the adventurers.’ My voice sounded sullen. I couldn’t help it. I was angry. I wasn’t going to tell him how I had hated signing on for that extra year, when I had seen so little of Peggy since we had been married and I had barely seen the kid since he was born. And I felt uncomfortable, too. In the old days I had managed to stand up to Engles; not because my personality was as strong as his, but because I knew my job. But to face up to his volatile and domineering personality now, when things were going badly, was too much. I wanted to rush out of that shop before he pried too deeply into my circumstances.
‘And now you’re back,’ he said. ‘Still running that tuppenny ha’penny little rag down in Wiltshire?’
‘No, that went smash,’ I told him.
