The Centre of the Green Read online

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Had a chap in here the other day,” the doctor said. “Same trouble. Pills, stomach pump—all that fuss! He said he’d taken the pills by mistake in a cinema. It was some sort of Western, and he couldn’t stand the racket. Thought he’d go to sleep for a while, had the pills in his pocket, took one, and couldn’t stop. Said it was like eating sweets. Same sort of compulsion. I believed him. I’d believe any story under these circumstances, you know.”

  Charles said nothing.

  “I mean it. When you came into this hospital, we saved your life. You may think that was interfering, but it’s our job; we have to do it. The next job, as I see it, is to make sure you’re not prosecuted for attempted suicide. We don’t think that being prosecuted does people much good, you see. In our experience, it sometimes depresses them so much that they go straight off and try again. This chap I was talking about, now; he’d come down in the world a bit. Thrown out of his job with an insurance company for doing a bit of fiddling, found work as a waiter, gone to live in Stepney, and felt the difference. I take it you’re not in any trouble of that kind.”

  “I was tight.”

  “That’s a start. You mistook the bottle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Can you think of anything you mistook the bottle for? Indigestion tablets? Alka Seltzer? You had to go out, and didn’t want people to know you’d been drinking.”

  “What people?”

  “Well, that’s a point, isn’t it? Haven’t you any friends who’d care whether you were tight or not?”

  Charles said, “It wasn’t premeditated or anything. I really was tight. It was just a sort of impulse.”

  “You haven’t thought of suicide before then?”

  Again a silence. “I suppose I have,” Charles said.

  “Often?”

  “Not often. I get moods of depression.”

  “What’s your job?”

  “Journalist.”

  “Sounds interesting.”

  “I work for a trade paper. It’s mostly advertisements and reports of conferences. The University Appointments’ Board put me on to it after the Foreign Office had turned me down. Does that answer your question?”

  “I’m sorry. You live on your own?”

  “Yes.”

  “Parents far away? I hope you don’t mind my asking all these questions.”

  “That’s your job, isn’t it? My parents live in Devonshire on the edge of Dartmoor. My father’s retired. He was in the Army. I have two brothers. One works in an advertising agency. I don’t see him often because I don’t like his wife. The other’s in a bank in Bombay.”

  “How did you get hold of the pills?”

  “Hay fever.”

  “Of course. Have you got any more? You won’t need them. It’s late in the season.”

  “I took them all.”

  “Good. Of course there’s always the gas. We can’t have that cut off. And we can’t take away your braces and razor blades or blunt the edges of your kitchen knives. We can’t isolate you from high buildings or buses or railway trains or the river Thames. You’re quite free to make a better job of it next time if you want to. Do you want to?”

  “What do you expect me to answer?”

  “You could tell the truth, if you know what it is in this case. Even if you say ‘Yes’ we shall have to discharge you, now you’re well again.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about going home to Devon for a bit? Think things over. Would that be a good idea? We’ll give you a bit of paper to show to your boss.”

  “You won’t tell them?”

  “No, of course not. A minor breakdown. You need a week in the country to get over it. You should even get paid while you’re away. It’s only actors and builders’ labourers nowadays who don’t get paid when they’re sick.”

  “I could go home,” Charles said.

  “If you get on well with your father and mother. Some don’t.”

  “About as well as most people do, I suppose.”

  “Well, we haven’t got time to go into that now.” The doctor sighed. He was so brown in his white coat, so middle-aged and secure, smelling so pleasantly of antiseptics and tobacco, that suddenly Charles felt the urge to be rude to him. “I suppose this is all part of the routine,” he said, “even the sigh.”

  “More or less,” the doctor said equably, “after all you are a patient, you know.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No need to be. I’m glad to see you taking an interest.” The doctor stood up. “Of course, if while you’re home you should decide to talk things over with your parents— or just with one of them—father?—mother?—whichever’s easiest, you might find that would help you to work things out a bit. But I’ll leave it to you. After all, you know them much better than I do.”

  Charles smiled. “Thank you,” he said. “I don’t think…. Well, it’d be a bit much for my father. He’s getting on and all that.”

  “Perhaps you’d rather talk to one of us about it when you get back. Ring me up, and we’ll make an appointment. All right? Better still—we’ll make one now.” He produced a white card from the pocket of his doctor’s coat, scribbled on it, and put it on top of Charles’ locker. Then off he went, purposefully down the ward, followed by Sister who had materialized suddenly when he rose to go.

  Charles watched him go. Then, since there didn’t seem to be much else to do, he listened to Music While You Work for half an hour, and then to another half hour of some Reg or Stan or Steve on the cinema organ, and then to a record programme of requests by people in the armed services, and then, just as the News came on, so did lunch, which was poached white fish, boiled potatoes, and cabbage rather over-steamed in a pressure cooker. “Can I buy a postcard?” Charles said to the nurse who brought it, and she replied, “Well, really! You’ll be discharged this afternoon. Can’t you get one then.”

  So that afternoon Charles brought a coloured picture postcard of the National Gallery, showing part of Trafalgar Square, and sent it to his parents to tell them that he’d be arriving on Saturday morning.

  Julian Baker

  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.”