Part II – Winter



 

EVERYMAN’S STORES

For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

From  G Grant 

To Miss Fane

November 3rd, 1931

 

Subject

Personal

It occurred to me after our recent discussion that you were not altogether happy at the thought of further work in the Library.

I should like to take the opportunity of assuring you that I would not make the arrangement which I have in mind without being quite sure that you can, if you will, do work there which will be of real service to the firm.

M G GRANT

SN/MGG

 

 

November 3rd

My Dear,

Why shouldn’t I change my mind? That isn’t a truculent question: I’m quite good-tempered, but really anxious to know. Friday’s stupid letter was written in one of those impulses – you know what an outcry I always make in the fell clutch of circumstance. It oughtn’t to have been taken any more seriously than the ravings of any other temporarily irresponsible creature. Especially when I went to the trouble of recanting next morning at the cost of one and fivepence.

I thought that wire might amuse you. But you were furious. Why? Because, as you said, it was all a childish business to begin with and especially when I had those outbreaks and sent contradictory messages by following posts? Or was it because you wanted me to fail all the time that my telegram ruffled you? Or because you wanted to see me and were disappointed that I wasn’t coming home after all? I hope it was the last reason, but I can’t help feeling that if it had been you’d have found an excuse that’d have held enough water to bring you to London at least once during the last two months. So it looks rather as if it weren’t that.

But whatever the reason was, don’t you really think it’d have been ignoble to come crawling home? It wouldn’t have meant that I’d ‘seen reason at last’, but only that I’d been whipped. And I’d never have been able to forget that:

This little pig went squealing

All the way home …

Besides, if one’s been told by anybody who knows that one’s going to do ‘work of real importance to the firm’, it ought to be exciting to stay and see if that’s true. Don’t you agree?

Of course it’s nothing to do with us. And of course it doesn’t mean that I’ve ‘lost my sense of proportion so completely as to be blind to real obligations’. Why should it mean anything so grand-sounding and silly? You knew when I came up that I meant to work for a year. And I still mean to (with lapses). It’s quite evident that, as you say, you’ve been saving up for an opportunity to put your views before me. And now that you’ve spread out all the evidence against me I don’t know that I like the look of it much. Do you really think things out as thoroughly as that always? Do you let grievances pile themselves up, I mean, like cards in a card­-index till the moment arrives to catalogue them? I’d feel so much safer if you merely clouted me occasionally.

However, if you like things to be set out neatly you might as well have my tabulated replies.

Kindly note that:

(1) I am in receipt of your instructions.

(2) I don’t like them.

(3) I’m not coming home just yet.

(4) I repudiate the expression ‘tomfoolery’ as applied to my present work.

(5) I consider that you have been:

(a) Churlish.

(b) Rude.

(c) Entirely obtuse.

Yours faithfully,

Hilary Fane
Librarian

 

 

23 Burford Street

November 4th

My Poor Dears,

After twenty-eight years of me you ought really to recognise my ‘Wolf, wolf!’ bleat when you hear it, but I’m sorry to have given you such an anxious day.

What happened was this: they promoted me, rather without warning, and I thought it was going to be quite unbearable. Nothing but hurt feelings, black looks and savage little rows – all the time. The atmosphere was electric: I felt like a galvanised frog. Afterwards I wrote to Basil in a panic. I’m very ashamed, as I thought I’d changed my mind in time to prevent the clamour from reaching you.

It was all a very stupid fuss, and I feel better now. I had a long talk with Mr Grant. He’s the firm’s Organising Director, and rather over my (clerk’s) horizon, so you haven’t heard of him before. But he’s an enthusiast, with broods and broods of reforms, and I’m to foster one of them. It’s to be quite a position – not just a job. (I can hardly wait till Friday to see if there’s any recognition of the change in my pay envelope.)

We had an odd interview. Miss Ward (Staff Supervisor, and one of those large, Gorgon women) had unfortunately found a drawing of mine in my Sales Book and taken it to Mr Grant in the best tradition. He pulled it out of a drawer just as I was going away and handed it to me with: ‘Dangerous likeness. Draw the customers at home.’ (Do you remember the week-end when you came to fetch me home from school and were greeted by the news that I’d caricatured the Head and was in the Sick Room till Monday? How people’s methods vary.)

Honestly, though, you needn’t worry. The Library’s a revelation after the tomes and people of the municipal establishment. It’s a marvellous place, rather like the Zoo in a nightmare, because one’s so apt to feed the lions with literary sprats and the pelicans with horse flesh. So far, subscribers seem to divide up into those who insist on choosing their own books in order to curse the authors, and the others who prefer to leave the choice to us so that they can curse the Librarians. Other people, stranded in the grimmer suburbs, keep sending us lists of dead and moribund authors and demanding their latest books. So you see I’m all right, swelling with forbidden laughter, but exuding the requisite tact.

Much love,

Hilary

 

23 Burford Street

November 6th

My Dearest Family,

I like being an official investigator, on second thoughts. I’ve received instructions to look into the Library system, trace up the complaints, and evolve any necessary modifications likely to check them. So I’ve been quite definitely a person to placate. And numbers of innocent but apprehensive people keep coming up to me and saying how lucky I am to have a natural wave, and can they lend me things. My arch-enemy, however, who reigns there, has remained aloof without offering me the merest hairpin. I accept all attentions calmly, but they’re very good for the inferiority complex.

In my new capacity I’ve just spent the morning in our Filing Vault, checking up outcries from subscribers. Everyman’s filing system is stupendous, of course. An immense room is full of filing cabinets and sorting tables and short step-ladders and clothes-baskets spilling with letters and people in pinafores are busy among the electric light fans and telephones and dangling, humanely green-shaded lights.

Because, you see, every communication, every letter, telegram or picture post card that anybody ever sends us is stamped with the customer’s number and index letters as soon as it comes into the building: it finds its way to the Vault, with a copy of our reply as soon as it’s been answered. Then it’s filed for reference, with carbons of all invoices made out against that customer, for two years (and probably a day). After which it’s torn up.

So when I’d collected a bunch of typical grumbles the first thing to do was to look up the history of the grumblers in the Vault. (Occasional complainers, of course, receive preferential treatment to the habitual ones.) But the first thing I did in the Vault was to take out the correspondence of all the people I knew who dealt with Everyman’s – just out of sheer, furious female curiosity. It was rather a shattering experience. There they all were; nice, harmless, amusing people, giving presents with one hand and writing long, passionate letters about postal overcharges with the other.

Aren’t people odd? What happens to them the instant money leaves their hands? Sell your best friend a packet of biscuits or a toothbrush or a silk handkerchief or a library subscription, and the most angelic personality is immediately submerged by the obsession of Getting one’s Money’s Worth. I didn’t read through many files: it was too indecent. I went quickly on to my pile of letters from fulminating Colonels in Bedford and Bath and Harrogate who complain that they got nothing but ‘pert novels by pups’, and the women who are ‘quite at a loss to understand …’

I’ve made a rough record, and to-morrow I shall have to present it, suitably modified, to Authority as represented by Mr Grant, who also expects me to suggest remedies. But this afternoon I shall just meekly supervise Fiction C and plan campaign.

With my love,

Hilary

 

 

From Hilary Fane’s notebook

COMPLAINTS

These seem to resolve themselves into three groups:

(1) Personal vociferation in the Library, with which this investigation is happily not at present concerned.

(2) By telephone. Have encountered various.

(a) (Piteous.) ‘Is there no one in this building who understands …’

(b) (Truculent.) You are the seventh young woman to whom I have explained my requirements …’

(c) (Involved.) ‘One of your assistants – the name escapes me – sold me a book on bees to be sent to a friend in Spain, and charged to my brother in Scotland. I went straight home and sent you the corrected address  – on a post card, I fancy – but the book has not yet arrived. Can you explain?’

(3) By letter. May be subdivided as follows:

(i) From suburban subscribers, usually written in pencil on the back of one of firm’s worse-typed letters, and frequently illegible.

(ii) From subscribers with measles or something equally microbial, who do not see why they should be prevented from returning library books in the usual way.

(iii.) From subscribers variously disappointed with the Mail Provincial Subscriptions run in connection with Rational Reading or Rational Reading de Luxe Services.

NB – Find with reference to these, that subscribers in a fine heat of indignation almost invariably understamp letters. One communication reads: ‘I am sending this bill back to you unstamped to teach you not to pester me with such things again.’

Preliminary Record

Subscriber: R/R de Luxe Sub. 4532 (Canterbury)

Complaint: Ordered The Suez Canal And Its Traffic Problems. Received Clearing the Alimentary Canal.

Comment or Suggestion:

Recommend more careful use of digestive treatises in future.

Subscriber: R/R Branch Service Sub. 4567 (Ascot)

Complaint: ‘Why don’t you send the book I ask for: Accident in A Hotel by Baum?’

Comment or Suggestion:

Have sent all works of this author, seriatim.

Subscriber: Fiction A. Delivery 6 Sub. 8945 (Harrow)

Complaint: Where are my library books? I wrote three times last week. Still no books. Surely a firm of your standing …’

Comment or Suggestion:

Exhaustive inquiry has produced three post cards.

(a) Unsigned

(b) Without titles

(c) Quite blank

Subscriber: R/R Non-Fiction A. Fiction B. Prov. Sub. 4452 (Godalming)

Complaint: ‘Kindly note. I will not have:

Books by Women.

Books on sex

First novels.

Short Stories.

Realism or Morbidity.

Travel or Biography.

Essays.

Comment or Suggestion:

Return his money

Subscriber: R/R Prov. Non-Fiction A. Sub 5768 (Cheltenham)

Complaint: ‘Have subscribed to your library for six months and made my wishes abundantly clear to anyone with modicum of intelligence. But have received consistent stream of trash. Consider Shakedown absolutely beyond the pail (sic.).

Comment or Suggestion:

Curry-gutted Anglo-Indian

Soothe

Note – Find ‘Assistant’s oversight’ had been regretted in all cases. Do not consider this elastic phrase altogether happy and recommend variety.

 

November 10th

Darling,

I was thankful to find your letter waiting for me this evening. Last week has been abominable. In another two days I should have broken out into abject apologies. But your forgiveness arrived in time to save my face. So now I can say how really sorry I am about that last letter of mine. Considering provocation, you’ve shown enough forbearance to make me feel a worm and not enough to make me turn on you.

Letters are difficult though, don’t you think? I didn’t realise how mine would read, next morning, over Mrs MacQueen’s tea and kippers and blackened toast. And I’m sure that if you were here I could explain, and you would see why I’ve got to stay. Because you don’t quite, even now. I suppose it sounds unlikely that one should begin to count in a firm of this size after two months. But I think it’s true. Anyway, they’ve raised my salary. Isn’t that fairly convincing?

My pay envelope had Four Pounds in it last week. The extra notes were wrapped round a card, With The Compliments of the Management. So I’m not a clerk any longer. I’m a Business Woman. Unfortunately for my Budget, I brought neither of the extra notes home. I didn’t touch my basic £2:10:0 (I have a conscience), but I bought a hat in one of the unfashionable shops that stay open till seven o’clock, a flask of eau-de­-cologne, and fifty wickedly expensive Turkish cigarettes. I put my new hat on in the shop and dropped the old one into a perfect stranger’s dustbin. Then I felt better, so I had dinner at the Criterion and went on to an Upper Circle⁵⁷, spending sixpence at Piccadilly Circus Underground telephoning various ex-Oxford people who were all too startled and poor to come with me.

And I was so overpowered by affluence that I slept in this morning and had to take a taxi to work. Which means dipping into the Emergency Fund. I’ve always distrusted Sudden Riches.

And it also means that for the rest of the week I shall have to lunch on one and threepence and have No Tea. Which is sure to larn⁵⁸ me. Especially this weather. I always have a half­crown hunger in an east wind. And there’s one at present that seems to strip the clothes from your body and the flesh from your bones.

But it’s fun to play Spartan for a week, knowing that four pounds will come to the rescue on Friday. I punched an extra hole in my belt to-day with nail scissors, and went about feeling like an hour-glass. But I doubt whether it’s a practical expedient. My stomach got pins and needles in the middle of the morning, and I had to let myself out.

Heroically yours,

Hilary

 

 

EVERYMAN’S STORES

For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

From Staff Supervisor 

To Miss Fane

November 10th, 1931

 

Subject

Confidential

With reference to your appointment to the library (Fiction C) kindly note that this cancels your status as Junior Assistant S (T) 801. It will not be necessary for you to be given a library number in your new and more official capacity. Sister Smith will arrange accommodation for you in the Senior Staff Cloakroom. You will also have the privilege of entering by the West Door and of using the Lifts. (Except during the rush hours.)

I am sure you will appreciate that this position carries with it an added responsibility, not to be lightly assumed. I understand that you have Mr Grant’s authority to make a certain number of investigations, and I shall always be ready to give advice where necessary. You will, of course, realise the need for tact and moderation when introducing innovations likely to affect persons of longer standing in the Department than yourself.

M E WARD

 

 

November 12th

Really Basil,

How you and Miss Ward distrust me! She copes with me gingerly as if I were a bomb without a safety catch, and you say in effect that I ought never to have been promoted, because people are bound to resent it.

Actually, I’d thought of that for myself. Of course they would resent me, the people who had been clerks or typists for a dozen years and are going to be the same sort of underling for another twenty, unless they’ve saved enough money from a three-pound wage to buy themselves a little hat shop or one of those parrot­-painted restaurants where they manage to give business girls lunch for one and six with coffee extra.

Of course, they were going to resent my being picked out and given the extra thirty shillings a week that would have brought the tea shop so much nearer. There wouldn’t be any reason for the change as far as they could see: I typed worse than any of them, my labels weren’t legible, I knocked books off tables and made my bills out wrong. How could they see the justice of picking out anyone for promotion just because of some nebulous quality that they had never had or that had been beaten out of them long ago? They wouldn’t think it important that somebody anxious for responsibility should be in a position to take it (though later it might be very useful to be able to slide the responsibility for a misguided decision on to somebody else’s shoulders). They wouldn’t recognise that sort of ability. But they’d be bound to notice the messy typing and incorrect bills and things. They show so. And they’d put all the obvious things together and total Favouritism. That word would hiss round and round the Book Floor, only just out of my hearing. Oh, I knew. I’d been through it before.

So I was frightened, though I couldn’t let anybody – not even you, for some reason or other – know it.

And the first day was unpleasant. I sat behind Fiction C’s desk most of the time, and walked forbiddingly about, when I felt it necessary to show that I wasn’t even aware of other people’s eyes. I went into the Book Store and asked questions, and into the Clerical Department and asked more questions, and wrote the answers on little slips of paper which I was terrified of leaving about and which I usually lost through sheer panic. Then I stopped in the Shop to speak to Mr Salt. He was sympathetic, but cautious, so I guessed that he’d been hearing things about me. Obviously nothing would persuade him to discuss books with my sort of be-ribboned pi-dog⁵⁹ any more.

But, since that first day, they’ve been very good to me. Miss Dowland and I still have tea together: Miss Hopper told me this morning that Miss Pim isn’t half such a quick writer as I was, and Mr Simpson comes into the library specially to tell me about the re-binding of my very worst Fiction Cs, and stays beside my desk, staring into the distance, and talking about the sort of novels that people really like. ‘Nothing too psychological,’ he thinks (meaning sex). But I disagree. Fiction C adores sex. Suitably be­glamoured.

Mr Millet draws me into the Book Store and tells me how many little matters we must look into together, and how, in his opinion, various things (and people) require expediting. If we could see eye to eye we might make a clean sweep. And after all, two heads are better than one, as they say.

Miss Sparling, of course, is permanently hostile. But I think that’s more constitutional than anything else. She has one of those painful smiles at the best of times and even with our most influential subscribers.

Anyway, there are only one and a half more working days, and I’ve promised myself a Sunday out of London. Early breakfast, a packet of sandwiches, and a Metro train as far as it’ll take me.

I might ring up various people and get them to come too, but I don’t think I feel like company. When you work in a firm of fifteen hundred it’s a new idea to be alone. If you were here it would be different. But I just don’t feel promiscuous.⁶⁰

H

 

Burford Street

Saturday evening
November 15th

Dear Basil,

I came in half an hour ago, just as it was getting dark. I’ve walked all day: I’m full of bread and cheese, and country air and blown out with pride at having done something that was good for me as well as being fun. It was one of our kind of walks, but unfortunately not to be followed by one of Mrs MacQueen’s high teas. And I’d like one more than I can conveniently say.

The trouble about London, of course, is that it lasts so long, and even when one’s twenty miles from Piccadilly Circus (or wherever they start the tape-measure) you find those Seven­Hundred-Pound Palaces festering all over perfectly good fields. But there was a west wind and a lovely curve of ploughed hillside against a pale sky, and the common I finally reached was purple and bronze and green with bracken and brambles. The sun came out as I was eating that bread and cheese in a circumspect little clearing among the bracken and silver birches. But even there the people were nearly as prevalent as the villas. Three gangs passed me: you know the type – sticks and mackintoshes and broad, sedentary beams⁶¹, walking to whistles blown by young men with pink spots.



They passed me at full tilt, but later a youth who looked like Christian⁶² before the bundle fell off came up, and asked me if I could direct him. I said, ‘What to?’ And he said, ‘The Windmill Inn’. So I told him, thinking it was because of beer, that I’d seen an inn of sorts at the edge of the common. Was I sure it was the Windmill. No, not a bit, but did it matter? He said it was vital, and did you pass a pond on the way to it?



I didn’t think so, but I told him that there were lots of ponds, and did it have to be a special one? He said yes, and I said why and he explained that it was Marked in his Diagram.

So I rose to the occasion and said (quite recklessly) that he must bear half-right and then left, and then half-right again at the blasted beech stump. And he did. I choked down my last bite and hurried off, in case he should work out my directions backwards and arrive to complain. Then I went and had a cigarette on quite a different part of the common, and walked back to the station.

The station reminds me: when I got into the train at Baker Street this morning I saw Mr Salt, of all people, fidgeting on the platform, looking odd without his celluloid collar. He had reverted to type and was wearing incredibly dirty flannel bags, with a comparatively respectable brown tweed coat and drastically striped tie. Of course I hung out of the window till the last minute to see who would arrive. And it was Miss Lamb! It’s startling, somehow, to think of Mr Salt as Miss Lamb’s Boy. They looked a little surprised at sight of each other, I thought. Miss Lamb was very grand but rather unfortunate in her dearest clothes, which were definitely high-­heeled and urban. But they went off together rather obviously hoping for the best.

They can’t have been out in the country before, in spite of the car that Miss Lamb was going to be allowed to drive when the summer came. What has he done with that car, anyway? And why Baker Street Station? Cheap day ticket, I expect. So much less exacting than sedentary amusements.

Six weeks till Christmas. Or is it seven? Shall I get longer leave now I’m so grand? Or none?

I love you,

Hilary

 

 

Burford Street

November 16th

Basil Darling,

Such disgrace! My relations have let me down.

You remember my dear Aunt Bertha, who took us to eat unseasonable things at the Carlton in my last Trinity term? She beamed on you and said surely there wasn’t much money in science, but everybody did do such odd things nowadays, didn’t they?

Well, I might have guessed that she’d be a Rational Reader de Luxe. (A. Fiction and A. Select, six books at a time.) And I did know that yesterday was Remnant Day in all Depts. Poor Aunt Bertha! Neither a pork pie title nor ranks of lackeys can keep her from plunging passionately into the Sales. I ought to have expected her.

I suppose she’d spent a happy afternoon in the Soft Furnishings, trying to pick up some dragoned chintzes for chair covers at one and eleven-three or something equally impossible. Then, of course, fate must arrange for her to think of tea. And in the lift, it would occur to her to pop into the Library and tell the girl just what she thought of the latest de luxe books: not what she calls good reading – nasty things, so thin, and such wide margins, and those wood-cuts! So peculiar! Nothing in the world to do with the story as far as one can see. (Darling Aunt Bertha buys books by the barrel, and wouldn’t really mind what we sent her as long as there were plenty of it for the money.)

If I’d been in retreat as usual, doing Fiction C, I might have escaped, but I’d just gone to help Miss Landry when Aunt Bertha exploded through the swing doors. She bore down on A. Select, flung her books on the desk, tugged her hat over one ear, pushed her furs off her shoulder and began her piece. Then she recognised me. The desk was between us, but that didn’t stop her.

Her arms, furs, plumes were all round me instantly. The whole room echoed with my name. (Platforms have made Aunt Bertha so devastatingly audible.) She said: how quaint of me to serve in a shop; and wasn’t it amusing to find that I was the gel who sent her those dreadful books; and why – why was I doing it and did my Mother not know? I said ‘Hush,’ and ‘Yes,’ and ‘Wasn’t it,’ and made faces, and tried to disentangle myself. But nothing stopped her.



‘Her arms, furs, plumes were all around me.’

Finally, she pulled me out, more or less by the scruff of the neck, tucked my hand under her arm, and announced that we would go and have a cup of tea. ‘Where we can talk quietly,’ she said, looking round the quite obviously enthralled spectators like Marie Antoinette from a tumbril. My dear, I absolutely ran her down the library. If tea would stop her, she should have it, even if I had to have it with her. Besides, I thought that no one knew me in the Restaurant, and anything to get her out of the Library, away from Sparling who seemed likely to have apoplexy behind her Michaelmas daisies.

I sat and listened to Aunt Bertha for forty-five minutes. She ordered muffins and went on to cream buns – because, as she says, if you are a little addicted to adiposity, you’d better eat what takes your fancy and be happy. She is, too. Both, bless her!

But of course we were in full view of the door by the Lifts, and I doubt if any creature in the Library, the Clerical Department, or the ‘Shop’ failed to find an errand to take him (or her) past it. The glass panes were so misted by their incredulous breathing that Mr Simpson had to wipe an eye-hole before he could locate me.

I never realised before quite what a Public Woman Aunt Bertha is. But since Uncle Tom was made a knight, she is in the public eye more or less continuously. Opening things, you know, and breaking bottles over liners. Quite one of Everyman’s star customers, in fact. What Miss Sparling would call a ‘familiar figure’.

So what with one thing and what with another, and food and guarded explanations and sociability it was more than three-quarters of an hour before I crawled back to Fiction C feeling rather bloated and longing for sleep, like a snake that’s over­eaten itself and would like to cast a skin. Miss Sparling looked at the clock, her watch and me as I came in; then she went on writing something so furiously that her pen spat.

When six o’clock eventually struck I was in such a bad temper that I just sat there for five unnecessary minutes clearing up to spite myself. Then I prodded my way out and climbed crossly on to a bus and sat down beside Mary Meldon.

You remember Mary? She used to live two doors away from us in University Close, and we’ve always been friendly. We’ve each known the other was in London for months, but in spite of all modern inventions we’ve lived within a ten minutes’ bus ride and never been able to get into touch. As one does.



So to-night, when I plumped down beside her we were both as startled as if the other had returned from somewhere as proverbially remote as Timbuctoo. But we were both very pleased with each other, and I took her and a pound of sausages home to supper. We thought that we’d go to a theatre afterwards, but our respective nine-to-sixes had left us both too exhausted to bear the idea of moving the body or exercising the brain any more.

So we sat and fed my gas fire to capacity with pennies and told each other the stories of our lives instead. It was such a success that we’ve arranged to do it again whenever life becomes overbearing.

I feel so cheered now that I could go on writing for hours. Except that nine o’clock next morning tends to drive one to bed by midnight.

And it’s that now. Good-night, my lamb.

Hilary

 

EVERYMAN’S STORES

For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

From Miss Sparling. Library  

To Miss Ward

November 16th, 1931

 

Subject Miss Fane

Memo

I have been charge of the Library for six years, and I hope I have given satisfaction. In the interests of the Firm, therefore, I feel I ought to point out that the appointment of Miss Fane can only cause trouble. No amateur can be expected to deal with such complicated and specialised work after a few week’s experience and no training whatever!

In my opinion at least, she is quite incompetent and a thoroughly bad influence for the other girls. She seems to enjoy making herself conspicuous, and this afternoon she so far forgot herself as to persuade one of our most important customers, Lady Barnley, to take her out to tea in the Restaurant, where she stayed twenty minutes beyond her regulation half-hour for tea.

I should just like to say that I cannot hold myself responsible for anything that occurs in the Library while Miss Fane is in it, which is most unfair to the other girls.

A G SPARLING

 

EVERYMAN’S STORES

For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

From Miss Ward  

To Mr Grant

November 16th, 1931

 

Subject Miss Fane. Library Assistant. Fiction C

Memo

I am sorry to trouble you again about Miss Fane, but her appointment to the Library seems to have caused more disturbance than I anticipated.

She has thoroughly upset Miss Sparling, who complains that she is unsettling the Library girls. Among other things, she prevailed upon one of our most important customers, Lady Barnley, to take her to tea in the Restaurant, where she stayed twenty minutes over her tea half-hour. I understand from Miss Fane that Lady Barnley is her aunt, but even allowing for the relationship, such conduct, as I have pointed out to her, was in very bad taste.

Perhaps you would like to speak to her yourself on this occasion.

M E WARD

BT/MEW

 

 

EVERYMAN’S STORES

For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

From  G Grant  

To Staff Supervisor

November 17th, 1931

 

Subject Miss Fane

Memo

I am not disposed to view this affair too seriously. At worst, it is a tiresome indiscretion. For your guidance in replying to Miss Sparling, I should perhaps mention that it has always been understood that the half-hour for tea allowed to members of the staff is at their own disposal. The majority prefer to take it in the canteen, but there is no regulation to prevent an assistant being taken out to tea in any public place by a relation, though the necessity for a punctual return might be pointed out to Miss Fane.

Further, Lady Barnley is, as we know by experience, easily offended. It might have been difficult had Miss Fane refused.

Miss Pane’s appointment to the Library will not, of course, be affected by this, on the whole, irrelevant occurrence.

M G GRANT

SN/MGG

 

EVERYMAN’S STORES

For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

From Staff Supervisor  

To Miss Sparling

November 17th, 1931

 

Subject Miss H. Fane, Library Assistant

Memo

While appreciating your point of view in this matter, I am asked by Mr Grant to inform you that no regulation has actually been infringed by Miss Fane, though the usual fine will be levied in respect of the twenty minutes over-time taken for tea.

Her position in the Library will, therefore, be unaffected by the incident.

M E WARD

BT/MEW

 

 

EVERYMAN’S STORES

For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

From  Fane  

To Mr Grant

November 17th, 1931

 

Subject Personal

Memo

I am most frightfully sorry. If I had realised:

Miss Sparling’s sensations at the Incident

Her rendering of it

Miss Ward’s reactions

Your probable exasperation at this woman’s wasp-nest

And the interruption of Departmental Routine,

Nothing would have persuaded me to have tea with Aunt Bertha. And I assure you that my own feelings while providing a Roman Holiday⁶³ for the Book Floor Staff were in themselves some penance. But I am willing to perform any other you may see fit to impose.

Hilary Fane

 

 

EVERYMAN’S STORES

For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

From  G Grant  

To Miss Fane

November 18th, 1931

 

Subject Your memo of yesterday’s date

Memo. Personal

Quite. But no more bread and circuses.

M G G

SN/MGG

 

23 Burford Street

November 18th

Dearest Mummy and Daddy,

The mountain has fallen upon Mahomet! In other words, it’s one thing for me to decide not to visit Aunt Bertha in her grandeur, and quite another (and impossible) for me to prophesy or prevent her visiting the Library in Everyman’s, and recognising me.

It caused rather a sensation, I’m afraid: I had to make my peace with the authorities afterwards. And also to go to lunch with Aunt Bertha and explain very elaborately why it would be better for those family reunions to take place in private.

It was a very amusing luncheon party. Just the two of us. Uncle Tom was away. Aunt Bertha adored hearing as much about Everyman’s as I thought safe to tell her, considering all her presidential connections with Welfare Societies and Boards. My own career, she says, will have her special attention. I only hope she won’t wreck it. Aunt Bertha’s such a haphazard guardian angel – so apt to trouble the waters!

But she gave me a superb, enormous meal and insisted on my drinking rather a lot of burgundy, because it was ‘so blood-making’. All this in her palatial club, as it would have been beyond me to reach Cadogan Square, eat a meal and be back in Everyman’s within an hour. And I’ve already mortgaged my ‘shopping hour’ for November. As it was, we discovered over coffee that I had three minutes in which to get back to the Book Floor. This, in Charles Street, aristocratically inaccessible by bus! I shot up, murmuring about taxis and trying to remember whether my bag had two shillings and a half­penny or two half-pennies and a shilling in it. But Aunt Bertha took charge of the situation, beaming.

‘I thought this might happen,’ she said. ‘So I told Edwards to wait. I know what it is to be a woman of many engagements.’ (Rather an exalted description of my activities, on the whole.) So I was borne, slightly comatose, up to the very Staff Entrance of Everyman’s, in an enormous, dove-grey, appallingly conspicuous Hispano-Suiza. I’d meant to tell Edwards to put me down at the corner, but the burgundy made the extra exertion of reaching for the speaking-­tube unthinkable. Also, between Fanes, it’s not every day that I have the chance of such an opulent return from lunch. But there were disappointingly few people about. The two shillings fortunately proved to be a half-crown, which I stoically gave to Edwards. I shall lunch on tick to-morrow … and to-morrow.

Aunt Bertha sent all sorts of messages to you both, and then, finally, said that she would write herself. So you’ll probably be amused.

Rumours of the Christmas Rush are rolling about already. As Christmas Day falls, mercifully, on a Friday, I ought to get away on Thursday night and have three clear days at home. I might even be able to get an extra concession because of my long journey. I’ll try and find out. Lovely to be back again. I wonder what leave Basil will get. That probably depends on your own conscience, though, when you’re as grand as he is, and that’s always so uncomfortable. Anyway, I’ll take every minute I can wring out of the management. Appalling to remember the fourteen weeks’ vacs that I thought nothing of in the Oxford days. Now a long week-end seems munificence.

This week-end I’m going to spend with the Meldons (who used to live next door but two in University Close). I’m expecting to enjoy it more than the Bellamys. The Meldons are poor but nice: like us.

With lots of love,

Hilary

 

Burford Street

November 19th

My Dear,

I agree. It was one of those women’s fusses about next to nothing, and I’m thankful to say that nothing much seems to be coming of it. But Sparling still goes about like one of those ancestral voices prophesying war.

I’ve done my best. I apologised to Authority and went to lunch with Aunt Bertha, and implored her not to call for me personally in the Library. I pointed out that people who were above such merely mortal emotions as jealousy might like me to have grand relations for the sake of the shop’s prestige. But people like Sparling couldn’t really be expected to enjoy seeing their latest interloper fêted by their special celebrities. Aunt Bertha quite understood that. I left her flattered, and conspiratorially promising me the cold shoulder for as long as I required it. ‘So romantic; quite a little kingdom of its own! I shall tell the Federated Women Citizens all about the inner workings of our Great Stores now that I’ve had a peep behind the scenes. ‘The Far Side of the Counter’ – how’s that for a title?’

So I only hope that no libel actions are pending, though I doubt if she can do much damage, with the best intentions in the world. If she’d really been behind the scenes, of course, she’d have had a very much better story for her Federated Women. Mine, for instance. I’ve just had another spectacular rise.

My scheme for improving the Library began it. I sent in a very discreet and modest memorandum, no names, of course, but quite disruptive. It was a really concise, dry-as-dust report for the Minor Prophet; all headings and numbers and cause and effect. Together with a sketch map of desks and shelves, and facts about waste of space and undusted corners and classification of subscribers. I used my imagination and sent the thing in, very proud and nervous.

Authority approved. The scheme is to be carried out almost to the last detail, but it has been considered wise to inaugurate the reforms as from headquarters, and safer for me to be out of the Library altogether while they’re in progress.

It was partly that and partly because Miss Ward’s Assistant Staff Supervisor has got engaged and downed tools on the strength of it that I’ve been moved up again. What I owe to appendicitis and holy matrimony, Basil! I’ve got the engaged one’s job.

Isn’t it grand? It means getting back to the sort of organising work that I really enjoy. Also, one comes less into physical contact with books and ink and labels and typewriters, which is so fortunate, considering how much I’m at the mercy of the malice of the inanimate.

Of course, the immediate result of the change hasn’t been imposing, so far. I’ve been running round after Miss Ward, carrying her pencil on her tours of inspection, making notes on the state of staff lavatories, the number of assistants absent and why, ringing up obscure departments to send people to show tongues to Sister Smith, running a finger along window-sills to demonstrate to cleaners where they’ve become weary in well doing, and chivvying typists out of the cloakrooms. ‘Training me,’ Miss Ward calls it. And it’s been most illuminating. I feel that I’m beginning to have an idea of the fabric of the business: it’s thrilling because everything’s woven into it; pots and pans and silks and carpets and wood and brass and sales books and typewriters and people’s lives. I don’t suppose I shall ever write: ‘Dear sir, – Will you send me a cake of soap to the above address and charge my account. Yours faithfully …’ quite unthinkingly again. I shall always see the wheels that I inspected this morning grip my letter and hurry it away.



‘Chivvying typists out of cloak-rooms’

I went with Miss Ward to the Mail Order Department (the Central Mail Orders, of course, not the Book Floor’s own very minor corner run by Mr Simpson and company.) The central Mail Order Department is housed on the other side of Manifold Lane, in a hygienic, red brick building, mostly windows. A covered way runs above the garages across to the main block, and trolleys thunder along it from nine to six. We walked gingerly among them, and a child (Miss Ward called her a Query Clerk) swung open doors for us.

‘Mail Orders,’ said Miss Ward, with a casual flip of a finger towards the immense, grey room.

‘All of it?’ (That single department runs across the thickness of two buildings, back to back, from Manifold Lane to Severn Street.)

‘We deal with seven thousand letters a day in the course of ordinary routine,’ said Miss Ward. ‘And twelve thousand in a rush season. Sales, you know, and Christmas.’ I believed her. That room looked like the photographs of the Irish Sweep⁶⁴ on Mixing Day. There was a sort of horse trough running down one side of it and divided into a dozen alphabetically labelled compartments. Six girls shovelled letters into the compartments, six more snatched them out, pounded them with rubber stamps, shot them into trays marked Soft Furnishings; Piece Goods; Turnery; Juvenile; Gowns; Furnishing Fabrics … and so on. Boys with satchels came round and grabbed them out to take them to the right place in the main store.

The last tray was marked To be Dissected: a young man collected the letters in it and took them to a long table. Here four other harassed­-looking young men were dealing with the letters of people who had been thoughtless enough to order silk stockings and pillow slips and tinned peaches and writing paper on the same letter. The men flapped catalogues and wrote the orders down on forms with the name of the department printed enormously at the top and carbons underneath. Everybody’s lightest wish is recorded there, world without end, and the dissected, original letter goes to be filed, in a maze of rubber stamps. It’s humbling to watch it all: if it weren’t for the fallible human factor, it’d be nearly perfect as a system.

Miss Ward insisted on telling me all about it when I just wanted to stand and soak in all its exciting complexity instead. Then a very small man with the inevitable bowler came up and distracted her attention so that I could gape undisturbed. He sounded plaintive.

‘I can’t do it,’ he said. ‘Not without I have another clerk. Them four’ – he jerked a thumb at the toiling dissectors with their catalogues – ’just can’t keep up with the orders. They’re two hundred behind as it is, aren’t you, Thomas?’

‘One hundred and eighty,’ said Thomas, licking his fingers and whirling from the Fashion Shoes to the Perambulators.

‘It’s this Character from your Handwriting what does it,’ said the man in the bowler. He waved a double sheet of dark-blue, crested paper splattered with hieroglyphics at us. ‘Here’s an order as long as your arm from yours faithfully Gawd-knows-wot.’

‘Don’t they ever type?’ asked Miss Ward.

‘Do they not! With their feet by the look of it. No, the only hope for most people’d be block caps. And now, miss, wot about that clerk you promised me?’

‘Well, will you have a man or a girl?’ said Miss Ward, taking out her note-book. ‘I can get you a couple of nice girls by this afternoon.’

The small man’s voice rose to a squeak. ‘No, Miss Ward, I will not have a gel. I’ve told you before how it is. I can’t do with gels. Not on this job. They talk too much. Sifting’s about their mark. Can’t do much harm without bein’ noticed by somebody, even if it’s only them Jimmys.’ And he jerked his bowler at the scuttling boys.

Miss Ward said she’d see to it, quite meekly, I thought, and I made a note in my book. We went on to the next section. This room was lined with steel bins belching parcels.

‘The Assembling Room,’ said Miss Ward.

All the bits of dissected orders come here to join up, and are packed in boxes and put on a moving band that takes them on to the Packing Room, which is a sort of primeval chaos of brown paper, shavings, straw and string. It’s staffed by very large men in shirt sleeves who make up packages, slap labels on their sides and heave them on to a sort of moving staircase which empties them into the goods lift.

After that we went to some of the Store Rooms, where part of the stock is kept before it reaches departmental shelves. Things like gowns and cosmetics and lingerie live in the main building, but all the bulky items, like garden rollers and crates of cheap and nasty china to be found in the humbler seaside lodgings and impoverished ‘quaint’ tea-rooms are stored on the far side of Manifold Lane.

One of the biggest and hottest of shirt-sleeved men came up to us with his bowler pushed well back and a red rim bitten into his forehead. He positively scolded Miss Ward, and I prepared for thunderbolts which somehow didn’t come.

‘Now, look ’ere, miss,’ he said. ‘Wot about them gels you promised me? Day before yesterday it wos that I spoke, and I asks you now, w’ere are they? Wot I wants to know is can I count on you for six gels this afternoon or can I not? Because if not how’s the best line of bedroom china we’ve bought this year to be unpacked? I’ve got to ’ave ’ands. I mean, I put it to you, can you expect a miracle to get the paper off them lovely ewers and …’



‘Wot about them gels?’

‘I quite see,’ said Miss Ward. ‘And I’ll send you all the help you want. I’ve got a string from the Labour Exchange outside my door this minute.’

‘Gels!’ said the large, hot man to himself as we went away. ‘Try the patience more’n a cats’ concert. You can always take your boots to a cat …’

After that we went back across the covered way among the trolleys and errand boys. ‘We’d better have a look at what the Labour Exchange has brought,’ Miss Ward said. Rather as if she were going to pinch arms in the slave market, I thought, remembering that same Labour Exchange and my feelings there.

‘Have you ever done any interviewing?’

I said, ‘Yes.’ And Miss Ward said, ‘Oh.’ And we walked on.

But as we were going up to her room in the Lift, she said: ‘Well, I think you might help me by weeding out some of the obviously hopeless ones. You can have the room next to mine and send away anybody who looks unfit or mentally deficient.’

Could one be given a more dreary job? But I could hardly refuse. So I gathered paper and a pen and my most official expression, and went into the room next to Miss Ward’s. Then I told the first in the queue to go to Miss Ward and the next to come to me. The rest of that morning is a story in itself, and too long to add to this letter. Because if I miscalculate and it’s too heavy, Mrs MacQueen is quite fit to return it to the postman before you have time to appear grandly and say that to a man of your means a penny is neither here nor there. Rather than risk that I’ll tell you about the interviewing next time.

H

 

 

EVERYMAN’S STORES

Oxford Street
W1

‘Our business is your pleasure.’

November 22st
Saturday morning

Basil Dear

This is an extra letter, wrongfully written in the firm’s time and on the firm’s best notepaper. I’ve never been grand enough to use either for letters before. But now I’m writing in my own office, at my own desk. If, that’s to say, one can so glorify the six-foot space between two frosted glass partitions, a window and a door. Probably it used to be a stationery store, for brown paper parcels fill the shelves along one wall and people rush up now and then to ask if they may take one away. But the half-glass door has been newly painted, and to sit and spell out ASSISTANT Staff Supervisor backwards is worth any number of boxes of envelopes and quires of typing paper.

I still have to poke out occasional letters on the typewriter myself, of course. Which is not so grand. I cope with Miss Ward’s more compromising memoranda, all about the greater members of the firm, which is often rather terrifying. I look at buyers like Mrs Banbury, and wonder if she can really be going to have her teeth out⁶⁵ at Easter and what she’d think if she knew that I knew about it. People have such a complex about teeth. If they’re having an appendix out or a toe off they talk to you about it, willy nilly, for months. But teeth are only extracted in secret. I suppose it’s these advertisements for disinfectants that ‘do the work while you sleep’, and the thought that any burglar would have you entirely at his mercy till you found the tumbler.⁶⁶

Then I still have to carry Miss Ward’s pencil and make notes for her when she tours the departments. But she also expects me to do a certain amount of what she calls ‘weeding’ among the applicants from the Labour Exchanges, and that means that I have to look over the ten most unlikely creatures, and try to think of ten ways of telling them that they haven’t a chance.

It doesn’t usually surprise them. Some are so obviously unfitted for any but the brighter professions.

Some are straight from school, drearily submerged in mother’s cast-off coat and almost any sort of hat: and some are just those aimlessly stubborn people who resent any effort to employ them. When they’ve demanded employment and been refused the matter ends. I had one of them this morning: she seemed rather more hopeful than most. So I said that we might be able to do something for her if she were less untidy. She said: ‘Quite all right, thank you, miss. I’m on the Dole. Sign my card, please.’



But one child looked so wretched when I said no that I took it back, and let her go on to see Miss Ward. But Miss Ward just said: ‘My dear Miss Fane, why on earth did you bother me with her? Didn’t you see her feet?’ So then I stayed and listened to Miss Ward interviewing her batch of applicants. No mere customer realises the elements of a successful Lift Girl even after years of watching the contemptuous young women in blue leather breeches and silver piped Eton jackets who run ours. But Miss Ward has a way of unerringly selecting Lift Girls in embryo from the rows of shiny-hatted, brass-buttoned young women who present themselves. She has flair: she just knows that for some reason not apparent to the rest of humanity one young woman has the elements of a successful Lift Girl or a Query Clerk or an assistant for the Gramophones or Wireless or Lingerie or Perfumes or the makings of a waitress or a Rest Room attendant, and the twin next her hasn’t. So useful. I blunder along by taking thought, but the results haven’t been nearly as good so far.

Now and then, when I’ve dismissed one queue and my next job isn’t too imperative, things are quiet in my office, and I can look out of the window which is the best thing in it – apart from its being new and mine. The window looks over Manifold Lane and the garages and the Stock-and-Store Rooms that belong to us and all the small shops on the far side of the Lane which don’t.

There’s a barber’s saloon and a pub and a grocer’s and an antique shop crammed with oddities; plush chairs and bronze statuettes and palm pots and milking stools and witch bowls and old pictures and muskets and finger-bowls and china figures and a pale ivory crucifix and candlesticks and chessmen. And there’s a mirror that’s tilted up this morning to reflect an oval of clear sky with puffs of cloud.

When I walk down the Lane at lunch time I always see an old man sitting in a back room reading his paper among all the frowsty bits of things and some perfectly lovely pewter. He never seems to sell anything, or to mind.

Three or four barrel organs are always up­ended outside the pub, and sometimes a flower seller leaves his tray of out-of-season snowdrops tied up with ivy leaves outside too. Which seems rash. But nobody notices them.

And I’d no idea till I got my office how many people earn a living by singing ‘Annie Laurie’. They walk up and down the Lane between the barrel organs and sing outside the pub till they’ve got enough pennies to go inside it. Then someone comes out to claim his barrel organ and goes off down the Lane with it. Presently a cheerful, tinny tune gets the better of the gear­changing outside the garages. I suppose barrel organs will mean Manifold Lane to me for the rest of my life.

Later

I was interrupted then by the Head Post Girl, who’s lean and thirty-five, but will be a girl, ex­-officio⁶⁷, till she’s superannuated. She tramped into my office and presented a sniffling junior clerk more or less by the ear. Presumably she had told the child what she thought of her on the stairs. At any rate, she had no breath left when she arrived, and could only thump a letter and an envelope zig-zagged with post-marks in front of me and point at her victim. Then she stood there, purpling, while the poor little clerk quivered and squeaked.

I picked up the letter. It was one of our more effusive ones and the customer had sent it back, enclosing our envelope, which she had covered with the sort of hand-writing typical of one’s moneyed aunts. Part of it was a further order, but the last sentence said:

‘I think it only kind to tell your clerk that it costs 2½d to send letters abroad.’

Of course I was paralysed. It struck me as comic, but rather less than kind. There was a pause. ‘After six weeks on the post,’ said the Post Girl. And waited expectantly. I was blank. Miss Ward would have seized the opportunity for a talk on the importance and inter-dependence of detail and discipline and duty. But I only wished that they’d dealt with the crime in the Post and Despatch. Finally, I said that if the Post Girl weren’t there to supervise, the other clerks would be sending out letters without any stamps at all. That must have struck home, for she went. And left me with the criminal, longing to laugh. Finally, I pulled myself together and asked her if she’d anything to say. I believe that’s always done by Inquisitors, from one’s first nurse to the hanging judge. But she just burrowed in the pocket of her overall and bleated: ‘I’ll never be able to stamp another letter right, I know I won’t.’ Which seemed so likely that I looked up her dossier and the Staff List, and turned her into an errand girl on the spot, changing a very tough errand girl, who’d done well at school, into a post clerk. I only hope that Miss Ward won’t go through her records till it’s past history, and I can say: ‘Oh, don’t you remember making that alteration?’ with some hope of carrying conviction.

By the way, did I tell you that I was going to change my rooms again? That flat has been at the back of my mind ever since I got my first extra pay. And now I’ve found it – two rooms and a kit-bath where you fry your bacon in one corner and turn on your bath in the other and iron things on the bath lid. Most compact and not necessarily sordid. The present tenants haven’t moved out yet, which suits me, as I shall move in over the New Year, much as I’d like to be settled in before Christmas. But with the rush beginning next month, and an hour’s overtime every night up to Christmas Eve, I doubt if anything like a move would be humanly possible.

I hope you’ll like the flat: it’s at the top of one of the houses in Christchurch Street, Chelsea. The river’s only half a street away, so that I’ll hear the water slapping at the Embankment on quiet nights and the steamers always. Unfurnished, of course, but better people than I have set up house with a bed and a packing-case. Rent thirty shillings a week. Gas fires, unfortunately, but the meter’s decently hidden in the cupboard and, anyway, I’ll rip one out of the sitting-room. I must have one coal fire.

What do you think about Christmas? Will you be as busy as you were last year? Or is it impossible to tell? Would you like to come to us over the week-end? I must see something of the family and as much as I can of you and that might be a way out of the difficulty. But I suppose if you have to be at Christopher’s a lot, Mrs MacQueen’s is more convenient, being on the doorstep.

Do just what you think. But come if you can.

H

 

 

EVERYMAN’S STORES

For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

From  E Ward  

To Miss Fane

November 23rd, 1931

 

Subject 
Seating accommodation for Clerical Staff (Book Floor)

Memo

It has been brought to my notice that a number of chairs in use by the Clerical Staff are of an inconvenient size and that some clerks are in the habit of bringing cushions to sit on.

Please report on the necessity for these.

M E WARD

BT/MEW

 

EVERYMAN’S STORES

For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

From  Fane  

To Miss Ward

November 23rd, 1931

 

Subject 
What our typists sit on

Memo

I have to report that no chairs in the Clerical Department, Book Floor, seem to be the right height, size or shape for people who type. The following expedients are in use:

Miss Dowland sits on a pink cushion provided by herself.

Miss Hopper sits on a jersey and Roget’s Thesaurus. Her chair is intrinsically high enough, and she does not type much, but she says that the seat is cold and therefore injurious to her health.

Miss Watts sits on Aristotle.

Miss Lamb sits on Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, Vol 3.

Mr Millett sits on a packing-case.

Mr Simpson sits on his coat.

There is a good case for cushions, except perhaps for Mr Simpson who should not be encouraged to sit, and Mr Millett, who hardly ever does, and prefers a packing-case, anyway.

 

 

23 Burford Street
WC1

November 26th

My Dear Basil,

I’m writing most uncomfortably, with my hair hanging over my face in wet strands and dripping on to my paper. I’ve been swimming. In the depths of winter. Definitely heroic, don’t you think? I admit that the idea wasn’t mine: actually I was more or less shamed into it by Mary Meldon. We had been discussing the difficulty of playing games in London over one of our rapid lunches, and I was mourning the lost grand days when I’d been rather good at hockey, and giving the impression (without actual boasting) that I hadn’t been bad at anything athletic. But what with the hour it took to get to any club ground and the other hour it took to get back, and the time wasted over tea and team sociabilities, I couldn’t bear to think of giving a whole half-Saturday to getting exercise. I said it was incredibly unfortunate, but by the end of the winter I should look like one of those long, white, unhealthy bits of grass that survive under planks.

Mary Meldon said: ‘My dear, that’s quite true.’ (Which I thought unkind.) ‘And what you ought to do is to swim. It only takes half an hour, after work, and you feel you could push a street down when you come out.’

I said, ‘Really? ‘And Mary said, ‘Really!’ in the tone that people use when they mean to make you do something for your good, from trying a new face cream to buying a house. I struggled feebly, but I knew it was all settled. We arranged to meet at the Oxford Street end of Manifold Lane, at six o’clock on Thursday. Mary said she would take me to her favourite baths. Quite new, she told me. And warm.

That sounded reasonable, but this evening it rained and the cold pounced round the corner at me as soon as I came out of the Staff Entrance. I blundered along Manifold Lane, praying that she wouldn’t be there, or wouldn’t see me or something, so that I could climb into a bus and be carried safely home. But:

‘Here you are, darling. Marvellous!’ said Mary. ‘Just the night for a swim. The colder it is outside the better one feels afterwards.’ (Which struck me as just nonsense.) ‘We’ll take a penny bus – people won’t believe it, of course, but one does. Glad you’ve got some sense.’

Obviously there was to be no escape.

‘People are just sheep,’ said Mary. ‘They get an idea that because it’s a cold day it’s going to be cold in the water. All rubbish. Here’s our stop.’

We climbed out into the east wind again. By the time we’d reached the baths I’d drafted the telegrams which would bring you and the family to my bedside before pleurisy carried me off.

‘Tickets ninepence to-night,’ said Mary. ‘Mixed. You get two towels.’

I surrendered my ninepence and took my two hard, dish-cloth-like bits of towel feeling most unwilling to be butchered just to provide Mary with her holiday. But it seemed useless to protest so we went through swing doors into a sort of wet Bedlam. The bath was really enormous, new and white marblish, with a great ruffled oblong of startlingly blue water under the arc lights in a remote domed roof. ‘The disinfectant makes it that colour,’ said Mary unnecessarily, as I was enjoying it.

There were ranks of seats mounting to the dressing cubicles, which were indiscreet little hutches with wooden doors as far up as your waist and curtains after that.

As we climbed up the nearest stair I had that uncomfortable feeling that something was wrong somewhere, but I couldn’t think what it was till an attendant chased after me to say that we were forcing our way into the Gents Only section. I was covered by confusion but Mary said they ought to have a placard up on Mixed Nights. Could we be expected to know by instinct? And, anyway, wasn’t it just like men to charge you an extra penny, because they’d be there too!

I took as long as I dared to undress, but finally I had to crawl out and Mary shamed me into jumping in with eyes and mouth screwed shut because of that disinfectant. But she pranced on to the spring-board, and did an irrelevant hand-spring into the water. Once in, it really was rather marvellous. I began to believe all the things that Mary said about winter swimming. Movement through that blue, warmed water is such a queer, clean pleasure. I decided to take real exercise, and started swimming lengths. But I’d calculated without the other athletes and kept being beset by the young women who hurled themselves off the side, approximately parallel with the water, and raised frightful fountains just in front of me.



Nearer the shallow end there were groups of non-swimmers, or chin-held performers, who stood about waist-deep, talking passionately. I just kicked those obstacles in the stomach and swam on. But the deep end, on the return journeys, was very terrifying. Dozens of Greekish young men were propped up against the high diving boards, looking like statuary, except that every now and then one of them would come to life and wander up the ladder to the very highest board. He’d stand a bit there and push back a wet forelock and pummel his muscles while I frogged⁶⁸ despairingly out of the way, miles below. Eventually he’d launch himself off with a couple of somersaults or a sideways twist or a jack­knife touch-toes-and-out movement. This happened nearly all the time. Sometimes they shouted ‘Hi!’ and sometimes not.

It was all very dangerous.

I did four lengths, quite humbly, between the splashes, and Mary kept up the credit of the party by taking turns with the young men for the spring-boards, and allowed people to show her new dives and was thoroughly athletic.

Afterwards we went and had an enormous, crazy meal of tea and bacon and eggs and bread and butter and honey and plum cake at a small restaurant which makes rather a good thing out of dripping, ravenous people from the baths. I told Mary at least half a dozen times that life was worth living, and I meant to swim every Thursday evening for the rest of the winter. And she was heroically enthusiastic every time.

But now my hair’s dry I shall have to go to bed. All my muscles are feeling stretched and warm, and I’m sleepy beyond possible resistance. It’s lovely to feel as well as this. Do you suppose that fish race about rivers and jump out of sheer glorification, or is it the dreary, natural history of catching flies after all?

Now – SLEEP … darling.

Hilary

 

EVERYMAN’S STORES

Oxford Street
W1

‘Our business is your pleasure.’

November 27th

Basil My Dear,

I’m bothered. Badly. I’ve let myself in for something more than I can cope with on my own. And till I remembered you and Christopher’s, I was scared.

Mildred Lamb came to see me this morning. I think I’ve written about her; that rather nice child from the Book Floor Clerical. She said she wouldn’t have dared speak to Miss Ward or to Sister. But I was different. She was in trouble⁶⁹: wanted advice. Of course I’ve met this Victorian complication before, but it was startling to find that it could obtrude itself in these sophisticated surroundings. Surely typists don’t have babies; even on the films? Miss Lamb isn’t a likely victim either: she’s a semi-educated, competent, but badly frightened young woman with no family and a landlady out at Cricklewood with ‘her own living to earn’. It’s the sort of crisis in which the shillings in the Superannuation Fund won’t help much. Neither will Authority. Authority might shame the two into marrying each other, but Mildred is honest enough to admit that she doesn’t want to. She’s perfectly willing to accept the consequences if somebody will tell her what to do. And I think that sort of attitude always appeals, don’t you? All convictions apart, I mean.

So I told her rashly that I’d see to it, without an idea in my head except that the situation had to be coped with, as reasonably as possible. This afternoon I thought of you.

She’ll leave, of course. But if you could take her into Christopher’s later on, I gather that an obscure Scots aunt might help her afterwards. Then her savings would probably last till she got another job, perhaps in Edinburgh.

I told her, futilely, not to worry. But you’ll let me know what you think you’ll be able to arrange for her quite soon, won’t you? I’m going to post this on my way home, so I won’t write more. This isn’t a letter, just an SOS.

With my love,

Hilary

 

 

EVERYMAN’S STORES

For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

From  G Grant  

To Miss Fane

December 2nd, 1931

 

Subject 
Miss Lamb, C. 284. Book Floor

Memo. CONFIDENTIAL

In accordance with this morning’s request I will arrange for Miss Lamb to draw out the total amount of her Superannuation payments at the end of March. She may then take a month’s holiday on full pay prior to her resignation for reasons of health. I will then make a recommendation to a doctor of my acquaintance.

In your place, I should advise her to try to obtain work in Scotland when she wishes to take another post. If she is not successful, she may apply to me.

M G G

NS/MGG

 

23 Burford Street

December 2nd

Dear Basil,

I disagree with you entirely. But your letter leaves no more to be said, does it? Except that your attitude to ‘such sentimentality gone mad’ is fortunately not universal, and I have been successful in making other arrangements.

Hilary

 

EVERYMAN’S STORES

Oxford Street
W1

‘Our business is your pleasure.’

December 10th

Dearest Mummy and Daddy,

I’m writing at once to make sure of the country post. I’ve just been arranging my holiday. Most people get from Thursday, after work, to Monday morning. But what with one thing and what with another and being Scots and looking tired I’ve got till Wednesday! Nobody who hasn’t worked in Oxford Street knows what an Immense Concession those two days are. If it hadn’t been for Sister Smith weighing me and shaking her head I doubt if Miss Ward could have put through the recommendation. But Sister Smith said, most reasonably, that it’d be worth the firm’s while for the work I’d do afterwards. And Miss Ward’s so surprised and pleased at my usefulness that she agreed at once.

Tell Basil when you see him, so that he can arrange to be free. Letters are impossible just now.

In a fortnight I’ll report in person.

So much love,

Hilary

 

Burford Basement

December 16th

My Dear,

I’m sorry not to have written to you for the last fortnight, but as you only wrote once yourself I don’t feel really guilty. And what Aunt Bertha calls the Far Side of the Counter is not a leisured place during the Christmas season.

Miss Ward says she’s run off her feet, so I’ve been promoted from carrying her pencil and making her notes and weeding out the unsuitable applicants to engaging extra staff on my own. Which is much more cheerful. It’s so much easier to say:

‘Yes. Report for work to-morrow. Health and Unemployment cards, of course,’ than the dreary:

‘I’m afraid …’

And then, in my official capacity I have to take the pulse of at least a dozen departments daily, and decide whether their buyers are really over­driven and under-staffed as well as proclaiming to heaven that life is intolerable and their one desire a decently quiet grave. I settle disputes, administer sal volatile and good advice, placate and guide any customers I may meet clamouring for mechanical toys among the ironmongery. And so few people have the remotest capacity for grasping directions. Tell a couple of harassed aunts that the Crackers and Caps are ‘Straight through, second on the left’ and they set off, go through two archways, turn to the right and arrive, flustered and unbelieving, among the Perfumes and Bath Salts.

And nobody reads notices. Ours are so blatant, too. Enormous red and white placards sprayed with holly hang just high enough to miss people’s heads, but nobody ever lifts a nose the necessary two inches. We might as well not have printed things like:

PRESENTS FOR HIM FIRST TO THE LEFT

PRESENTS FOR HER SECOND ON THE RIGHT

BOOKS FOR BAD BROTHERS FIFTH FLOOR UP

BARGAINS DOWNSTAIRS

They always ask: they always choose an assistant who is audibly adding: and they leave snow­drifts of nameless lists among the Gents’ Haberdashery or the Handbags and Umbrellas. Such anxious, calculating things they are, with rows of names and ticks and prices and question marks.

Silk stockings for Beryl, say 5/11?

Bath salts for Aunt Mary (if cheque)

Mrs Jameson. Calendar. (Or shilling card?)

The assistants gather them up philosophically and send them to Inquiries in sheaves with a ‘Wait till called for’ notice on them. And on the 27th of December, I understand, they are summarily destroyed.

The Temporary Staff, heaven help them, all develop an appalling tendency to add on their fingers in a crisis. (Just like me.) I suggest fiercely that if they must use their fingers they might have the grace to barricade themselves behind a show-case. Some customers mind so. Of course some laugh, and this morning I heard one humane woman in the Provisions say to a terrified Temporary: ‘Look here, you seem to hate arithmetic as much as I do. If we did that sum together we might manage, don’t you think?’ Salt of the earth!

But can you wonder at things like manual arithmetic and those occasional flares of temper when you remember how exhausted everyone is? I’ve kept Christmas with the best but I’ve never provided it before. I hadn’t an idea what December could be like for the people who did. I looked down from the third floor gallery this morning in half a second’s lull: the ground floor was solid with desperate-looking people – screwing heads and jutting elbows and flapping lists on one side of the counters, and a rattish scurry of assistants on the other.

And the evenings are pandemonium. That’s the worst of all this rivalry in illuminated, jack-­in-the-box window-dressing. Such crowds come to watch our life-sized Father Christmas sledging across electrically moon-lit roofs to drop presents down real chimneys. What’s the use of exhorting the suburbs to shop early when the fun doesn’t begin till after dark? And it certainly helps to fill the basements with bargain hunters. Most of our girls don’t get home before ten o’clock at night during the weeks before Christmas. And no number of overtime shillings make up for the strain of that sort of a day.

Well, there it is. I expect the family’s told you that my particular holiday is to be specially extended till Wednesday morning. I shall travel north by night on Thursday and come south by night on Tuesday. That’ll give us five complete days together, which will be much better really, than the snippets of evenings and the short week-ends we’d have had if you’d been able to come up to London when I wanted you to. (That’s not to mean, of course, that I despise any such evenings or week-ends that may be possible in the future. It’s just present vainglory.)

Five days at home! When I think of it the toes curl inside my shoes with excitement. I love night journeys. I know they’re either stuffy or arctic: I don’t sleep and the other women snore: I always arrive looking filthy and hag looking. But it’s so marvellous to get into my sleeper (3rd class) at Euston and out of it in Edinburgh. I wouldn’t miss a single uncomfortable, anticipatory minute. I like watching everything before we start. The platform’s mounded with H M Mails and pillows, and people’s queer luggage. There’s a good minute when the train begins to rock across the points … Oh, fun, Basil.

All my love,

Hilary

 

University Close
Edinburgh

December 28th, 1931

I’m sorry I didn’t come to the station, my dear. I admit that I was rather sore. Can you wonder, on the whole? I’ve come north, for the first week-end since September to find that you’ve arranged to rush to London on Sunday night for a conference and banquet. Nothing dragged you there during the four months I’ve been south, but you leave me here at a moment’s notice and pay London a twenty-four hours’ visit because of an invitation which had been lying forgotten in some pigeon-hole for the last six weeks, and found by accident two days ago.

You must know how proud I am when you’re asked to grand functions of that kind. And I’d hate to feel that I kept you from them. But if I’d known – if you’d had the sense to ask me what my plans were when that invitation came I’d have arranged to take the extra day before Christmas instead of after it.

I can hardly alter my arrangements now. After all, I haven’t seen the Family for four months either, and when they’ve killed so many fatted calves for my homecoming I can’t leave them to eat the carcases alone. So I’ll travel down on Tuesday night as I told you.

H

 

 

Train

December 29th

Dearest Mummy and Daddy,

Another of those train-written letters! I apologise. Still, you’ve brought this one on yourselves. But for your representations I’d be travelling south to-night, and harmlessly asleep. This is a criminal way of spending a whole day of my specially stretched-out Christmas leave. Nothing but your lurid descriptions of my exhausted state and certain blunders after a night in the train would have persuaded me to allow such an anti-climax. Probably one day isn’t a tragic sacrifice, either, but this journey’s a gruesome end to any holiday, you’ll admit.

We’re crashing through the Midlands now, past slag-heaps and pools scummed with empty tins and cigarette cartons and twisted, hopeless bits of iron and old boots. Rows of drearily identical little houses have their washing flapping among the smuts. If I were going north instead of south, I’d be noticing the way the sunset circles the carriage as the train swings round, and the gas flares tossed about high in the air outside factories, and the furnace-red inside them. But you know how I hate things ending. Even holidays.

It’s been a grand week-end: you’ve both been so lovely to me. And the last two days have been more of a rest than they could have been if Basil hadn’t had to go south so unexpectedly.

After three months in digs it’s been so marvellous to be able to go up and downstairs and along the passages of a house that wasn’t divided up among a dozen irrelevant lives. So nice to smell dog and books again, too, instead of kippers and people’s washing. There’s something about home meals, apart from knowing that nobody’ll come up to you with a bill afterwards. (Though that’s a comfort too.) I hate eating in restaurants – one reason why I’m looking forward to having my flat. I take possession on the first of January. Did I tell you? Lovely, but think of the flitting!⁷⁰

Does anybody collect junk as infallibly and chronically as our family? Not with any particular end in view, I mean, like jumble sales or things Coming in Useful. Just cheerful magpie­ness. I came into Burford Street three months ago with one big suitcase and one little one, but I don’t see how I can possibly get out of it without a pantechnicon.⁷¹

I hadn’t even the sense to annex an extra trunk this morning, from the glory-hole under the stairs. I shall importune the local grocer for packing-cases, so on and after the first of the year write to me in Chelsea. I’ll be there – in the intervals of carting possessions across London.

With very much love,

Hilary

 

 

Chelsea

January 2nd, 1932

My Dear Basil,

Am I to take your letter as an ultimatum? I understand that you accuse me of spending four months in a picnic existence of which you tried to show your disapproval from the first, and therefore you resent my calling you inconsiderate. Evidently you were merely applying my own methods when you left Scotland last Sunday.

You also consider that I try to use your professional prestige for my own convenience (that’s Mildred Lamb, I suppose). Also that I am sentimental, illogical and unbalanced.

I’m repeating what you wrote, not because I want to be dramatic or anything, but only to make sure that you both wrote and meant those things – of me.

I’d like to know, please.

Hilary

 

From the records of H M Post Office

January 7th, 1932