As Far as You Can Go by Julian Mitchell Read Free Book Online Page A

Harold.
    “Sweden! Country of lakes and naked bathing! Modern architecture and ancient valour! No, of course not. But I’ve seen enough Bergman films to have a perfectly good idea.”
    “I went there once, for a day,” said Harold. “It was just like Denmark.”
    “And what was Denmark like?”
    “I can’t really remember. It was just after the war and all I can recall is the Tivoli Gardens.”
    “It certainly doesn’t sound very interesting,” said Dennis.
    Harold stared at the bar, which was short and narrow, so narrow that the barmaid, who was well-built and liked to show it, bulged continually towards the customers. That was why he always sat at a table. Behind her, on a specially constructed shelf, stood a collection of miniature liqueurs, now going brown round the labels. It was appalling to think how many such collections there must be in the country, all of them browning round the labels, the liqueurs probably evaporated by now, the pride of barmen and barmaids from Dover to Dundee.
    “Why do fads happen?” he said to Dennis.
    “Fads? What sort of fads?”
    “Well, collecting miniature liqueurs, for instance.”
    “Someone has a brilliant idea that miniature liqueurs will be a splendid advertisement for big liqueurs, and so everyone makes them, and then miniature men are sent round the country trying to sell them to the big fat men who own pubs, and then every pub-keeper gets terribly tickled by the idea, and then everyone has a collection. It’s quite simple, really.”
    “But why do all the pub-keepers get terribly tickled?”
    “Because if you sat behind a bar all day, you’d be tickled if you had a heart attack. You’d be bored out of your mind.”
    “I’m bored by my job, but I don’t go round collecting anything.”
    “Well, you’re probably a Don’t-Know by instinct. What’s wrong with your job, by the way? Don’t you make lots of money?”
    “Not yet. I will, though. It’s a boring job because it’s too easy. Don’t you ever feel you would like to do something that really occupied you full time, which used all your capabilities ?”
    “I have a series of jobs like that now.”
    “Oh, come off it, Dennis. You can’t enjoy reading all those dreary books and seeing all those tedious plays and films.”
    “That’s not the part which occupies me. I spend my time trying to be one step ahead of the people who read what I say. They all know as much, if not more, than I do about what I write. So I have somehow to outwit them. That’s a full-time job which also amuses me very much. Now I won’t review novels, because there it’s too easy—after all, it’s just a matter of opinion. But a book about, say, Voltaire, about whom I know next to nothing, there’s a real challenge.”
    “Well, the only person I have to outwit is Blackett, the chief clerk, and that’s only to get away early.”
    “It sounds to me, Harold, as though you’re one of the new young men. Not angry, that’s all over. But discontented.Wanting adventure. Fed up with the limits of a welfare state.”
    “I thought those people were invented when the Labour Party got in in 1945.”
    “Well, let’s bring you up to date a bit. You’re the sort of conscientious man who would have gone out and tamed a couple of colonies before breakfast in the old days, steadfast in duty, believing in what you were doing. But there aren’t any colonies left, and you have all that public spirit going begging.”
    “I don’t think that’s quite right either.”
    “Oh, I can see a whole article about people like you. No, it would go better on television. Chaps don’t have enough to do these days, they’re complaining about the drabness of Britain, and they’re right. They want to have a ball.”
    “You sound like an editorial in the Daily Mirror. ”
    “What else do you think TV personalities are but popular journalists?”
    “Good God, are you a TV personality already?”
    “Not yet, no. But I will be in a year or