Scoop-Evelyn-Waugh [6]
� for he had once been blown up and buried while sheltering in a farm in Flanders. It was his single intimate association with the soil. It had left him with the obstinate though admittedly irrational belief that agriculture was something alien and highly dangerous. Normal life, as he saw it, consisted in regular journeys by electric train, monthly cheques, communal amusements and a cosy horizon of slates and chimneys; there was something un-English and not quite right about "the country," with its solitude and self-sufficiency, its bloody recreations, its darkness and silence and sudden, inexplicable noises; the kind of place where you never know from one minute to the next that you may not be tossed by a bull or pitchforked by a yokel or rolled over and broken up by a pack of hounds. He had been round the office canvassing opinions about the subjects of conversation proper to countrymen. "Mangel-wurzels are a safe topic," he had been told, "only you mustn't call them that. It's a subject on which farmers are very touchy. Call them roots ..." He greeted William with cordiality. "Ah, Boot, how are you? Don't think I've had the pleasure before. Know your work well, of course. Sit down. Have a cigarette or" � had he made a floater? � "or do you prefer your churchwarden?" William took a cigarette. He and Mr. Salter sat opposite one another. Between them, on the desk, lay an open atlas in which Mr. Salter had been vainly trying to find Reykjavik. There was a pause, during which Mr. Salter planned a frank and disarming opening: "How are your roots, Boot?" It came out wrong. "How are your boots, root?" he asked. William, glumly awaiting some fulminating rebuke, started and said, "I beg your pardon?" "I mean brute," said Mr. Salter. William gave it up. Mr. Salter gave it up. They sat staring at one another, fascinated, hopeless. Then: "How's hunting?" asked Mr. Salter, trying a new line. "Foxes pretty plentiful?" "Well, we stop in the summer, you know." "Do you? Everyone away I suppose?" Another pause: "Lot of foot-and-mouth, I expect," said Mr. Salter hopefully. "None, I'm thankful to say." "Oh." Their eyes fell. They both looked at the atlas before them. "You don't happen to know where Reykjavik is?" "No." "Pity. I hoped you might. No one in the office does." "Was that what you wanted to see me about?" "Oh no, not at all. Quite the contrary." Another pause. William saw what was up. This decent little man had been deputed to sack him and could not get it out. He came to the rescue. "I expect you want to talk about the great crested grebe." "Good God, no!" said Mr. Salter, with instinctive horror, adding politely, "At least not unless you do." "No, not at all," said William, "I thought you might want to." "Not at all," said Mr. Salter. 'That's all right then." "Yes, that's all right..." Desperately: "I say, how about some zider?" "Zider?" "Yes. I expect you feel like a drop of zider about this time, don't you? We'll go out and have some." The journalists in the film had been addicted to straight rye. Silent but wondering, William followed the Foreign Editor. They shared the lift with a very extraordinary man, bald, young, fleshless as a mummy, dressed in brown-and-white checks, smoking a cheroot. "He does the Sports Page now," said Mr. Salter apologetically, when he was out of hearing. In the publichouse at the corner, where the Beast reporters congregated, the barmaid took their order with surprise. "Cider? I'll see." Then she produced two bottles of sweet and fizzy liquid. William and Mr. Salter sipped suspiciously. "Not quite what you're used to down on the farm, I'm afraid." "Well, to tell you the truth I don't often drink it. We give it to the haymakers, of course, and I sometimes have some of theirs." Then, fearing that this might sound snobbish, he added, "My Uncle Bernard drinks it for his rheumatism." "You're sure you wouldn't sooner have something else?" "No." "You mean you wouldn't?" "I mean I would." "Really?" "Really; much sooner." "Good for you, Garge," said Mr. Salter, and from that moment a new, more human note was apparent in their relationship; conversation was still far from easy but they had this bond in common, that neither of them liked cider. Mr. Salter clung to it strenuously. "Interesting you don't like cider," he said. "Neither do I." "No," said William. "I never have since I was sick as a small boy, in the hayfield." "It upsets me inside." "Exactly." "Now whisky never did anyone any harm." "No." Interest seemed to flag. Mr. Salter tried once more. "Make much parsnip wine down your way?" "Not much .. ." It was clearly his turn now. He sipped and thought and finally said: "Pretty busy at the office I expect?" "Yes, very." "Tell me