Settling Down By BERTRAM GILES YEAR ago I was a
free man. I used to get up when I liked, make coffee and toast in my room, walk out to shop and meet my friends, most of whom were as independent as myself. What work I had to do I used to leave till the evening, for after eleven at night the traffic would die down, the streets would clear, and one could concentrate in the quiet assurance of privacy. Nor were my essays any the worse for being done under the influence of coffee and the 3 a.m. cigarette.
Now I have left the university and taken a job in London. I suppose it isn't such a big change as all that, but it seems big to me. I used to pity the bowler-hatted crowds I occasionally saw on my visits to town : now I am one of them myself, a black-beetle to be squashed at zebra crossings and in under- ground trains. All sorts of things bother me that I never expected. For instance, work in the afternoons. Never since I was born have I been made to stay indoors between lunch and tea; even at school one was in the fresh air, playing games or marching about with the J.T.C. Now the afternoon shift is the longest part of the day, with 2.45 as its most hateful time. I get bored; I get indigestion, and feel perpetually half-alive.
Another less mundane thing that worries me is the dichotomy of home and office. At the university, it seemed, people let their work overflow into their pleasure; indeed, for many work was part of the pleasure. Here in London one's personal life is kept entirely separate; I hardly know which of my colleagues is married and which not. Doctors, schoolmasters and clergy- men must be able to lead a more integrated life, but the majority of office-workers, civil servants and business-men lead this double life, shutting one half of the mind at ten o'clock and opening it again at six. That is why week-ends and holi- days bulk so large; why half-days are so eagerly sought. Office life is for so many just a means of earning one's living, having no importance outside the world of files, secretaries and telephones.
Money is awfully important. At the university everyone was broke, but a shortage of cash was taken for granted, and one could live for long spells by borrowing from friends and by using the internal credit system of the college. Here in London I earn quite a fair bit, but all my payments have gone up, and the money for them has to be found m cash. Items like rent and laundry crop up in conversation, and gradually exclude the abstract discussions beloved by undergraduates. I wait eagerly to learn, when I meet an old friend, how much his new flat is costing, or how, by bulk-buying, he has cut his food expenses. I economise in ways that should have occurred to me before, by drinking bitter instead of stout, by waiting for a good film to reach the suburbs, by using, when I write to friends abroad, air-letters at 6d. rather than stamps at 1s. I have even come to keeping accounts, but I dread the result of the quarterly check.
Taxes and tailors' bills will take their toll of the final sum. I can no longer spend the whole day in corduroy trousers and an open-necked shirt, but need three suits, when at the univer- sity I managed quite well with two. With the suits goocces- sories like gloves, umbrellas and overcoats, white shirts that become dirty in a day in this smoky atmosphere, and the expense of keeping all these things clean. How the secretaries, earning half my salary, manage at all I can't understand, though most of them save by sharing a large flat with anything up to five others. My own room, a bed-sitter in N. London, costs me £2 10s. a week, with breakfast included, and I count myself very lucky to have found it. Many of my friends pay more for less, and I can at least leave my departure till 9.40. Twenty minutes in the bus or on foot, depending on the weather, bring me to the office door.
I suppose I am already getting into a rut, or, as my family calls it, settling down." Already I catch the same bus, buy my paper from the same corner each morning, and make the same remarks to my colleagues. I was always afraid of this happening when I was a boy, and I'm still afraid that I may stay in this job just because I dare not go out and look for another. People ask me why I stay in an office if I dislike it so much, and I am constantly hearing of attractive jobs that others seem to be able to hold down—teaching English at a high school in Miami, working for a Canadian bank at £1,200 a year, or Unesco'ing in Paris. But I like England, and, though I have an idea that a young unmarried man in good health can go anywhere and do any work that comes his way. I don't want to make my home abroad.
I am coming even to like London, to know her secrets and her charm. She is seen at her best in winter; or, even if this is not true, one hasn't the mad craving to be elsewhere that afflicts all city-dwellers in the spring. Offices in winter take on an almost domestic atmosphere of warmth and security, and on the way home one sees enough of wet streets and windy corners to make the most sordid bed-sitter seem attractive. Even in summer, though there are moments on the hottest days when one feels like throwing a typewriter through the nearest window, there are moments of pleasure and happiness. I play a little cricket on Saturdays, but on Sundays I go on foot, guide-book in pocket, to the City or the river, taking sandwiches with me and eating them in a pub. I am fascinated by the Docks. I think the small squares and the grand, decayed houses round Chelsea and Holland Park are among the most beautiful sights I have ever seen, especially in winter, when a blanket of mist softens the outlines of buildings and trees. I admire the railway-stations, especially Waterloo.
And there are lots of small things every day that help to cheer one up : office misprints like " St. Pancreas," a one-man band in Shepherd Market, puppies in a shop-window, and the pleasure of the midday meal (though today I had one of those bits of rabbit that look like aeroplane fuselages and have about as much meat on them). Best of all, perhaps, was the fashion- ably-dressed man who lost his cane down a grating in Picca- dilly. I think London must be the most habitable city in the world, better than New York, Paris or Johannesburg, and I don't think I would spend many week-ends at home even if the recent fare-increases had not put it out of reach of my pocket. But I don't want my wish for security, and eventually a wife and family, to dull my sense of discovery and adventure. I like to feel, as I look out at the damp canyons of streets, that I can at any moment walk up to the boss and say : " I'm leaving. I want a change." And while I can still do this, perhaps I am still free, after all.
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