Room at the Top [antikvár]

I game to Warley on a wet September morning with the sky the grey of Guiseley sandstone. I was alone in the compartment. I remember saying to myself : 'No more zombies, Joe, no more zombies'. My stomach was rumbling with hunger and the drinks of the night before had left a buzzing in my head and a carbonated-water sensation in my nostrils. On that particular morning even these discomforts added to my pleasure. I was a dissipated traveller - dissipated in a gentlemanly sort of way, looking forward to the hot bath, the hair-of-the-dog, the black coffee, and the snooze in the silk dressing-gown. My clothes were my Sunday best : a light grey suit that had cost fourteen guineas, a plain grey tie, plain grey socks, and brown shoes. The shoes were the most expensive I'd ever possessed, with a deep, rich, nearly black lustre. My trenchcoat and my hat, though, weren't up to the same standard; the coat, after only three months, was badly wrinkled and smelled of rubber, and the hat was faintly discoloured with hair-oil and pinched to a sharp point in front. Later I learned, among other things, never to buy cheap raincoats, to punch the dents out of my hat before I put it away, and not to have my clothes match too exactly in shade and colour. But I looked weil enough that morning ten years ago; I hadn't then begun to acquire a middle-aged spread and - whether it sounds sentimental or not - I had a sort of eagerness and lack of disillusion which more than made up for the coat and hat and the ensemble like a uniform. The other evening I found a photo of myself taken shortly after I came to live at Warley. My hair is plastered into a skullcap, my collar doesn't fit, and the knot of my tie, held in place by a hideous pin shaped like a dagger, is far too small. That doesn't matter. For my face is, not innocent exactly, but unused. I mean unused by sex, by money, by making