WELL, all in all, it was a terrific ‘shvitz’ as Toby used to say—a mad rush—but worth it, if only in terms of having enough to pay cash to Mr. Acre at the end of the week. Actually, I enjoyed it. I’d forgotten how naturally gregarious I am—living alone is pleasant in a way, but it’s certainly much pleasanter at night by contrast with a dayful of people. But still, I felt I was only marking time until Dottie arrived and gave me my marching orders. I felt certain she would somehow take me over and get us both organised.
I found time to nip into the local estate agents (which was also the local lawyer’s office) and enquire about the shop. The rent was so high that I just stood aghast, but the man gave me a reassuring wink and muttered something about that being the asking-price and that the asking had been going on for a long time. I said, ‘Well, what’s the paying-price?’ but he looked quite shocked at that and said he really couldn’t undertake to say. It’s obvious that bargaining is just as necessary in the property business as in any oriental market—if you don’t want to bargain, they don’t feel you’re a proper customer or that the deal is a real live deal.
I was serving in the saloon bar on Saturday evening, while David slept the sleep of the full-bellied in the Davieses’ nursery. He was getting so active now that I was afraid to leave him alone to sleep in his carry-cot, but this was a minor problem that the practical ingenuity of Dora soon overcame. Her own baby was equipped with the largest drop-side cot I’d ever seen, of which she occupied perhaps 10% of the groundspace; so we simply waited till they were both asleep and then dumped them in together at opposite ends. Since Alf was constantly in and out to see that Eleanor (the baby) was still breathing, there was little danger of their suffocating each other. ‘Or of any other untoward incidents occurrin’,’ as Alf put it with his innocent leer. ‘Dunno what’s happening to the younger generation these days,’ he pursued relentlessly. ‘Start shackin’ up together in the cradle.’ Dora, in the Public, gave a shriek of laughter and insisted upon telling the customers that her daughter was already sharing her bed with a gentleman-friend.
I heard the door of the Private swing to, and slipped through to see who it was. It was Dottie, and there was a man with her. They were deep in conversation and he had asked her what she wanted, she had told him and he had given me the order before she noticed me. She stared at me from between the high wings of her sheepskin collar. Then she affected to be not at all taken by surprise and remarked, ‘Oh, there you are, Jane. We were just talking about you!’
‘This is her?’ asked the man in some amazement.
‘Isn’t it marvellous?’ I said to Dottie. ‘Six pun’ a week and it’s not my only job. Rare roast rib for lunch tomorrow, and steak tonight, if you can wait that long.’
‘You’re terrific!’ she said, with a genuine admiration which warmed me since I did feel a little bit embarrassed about it (oh God, how one’s middle-class conditioning haunts one even unto the grave!) ‘However, it occurs to me to wonder if you’re one of these bar-maids who stand gassing all day and forget what they’re there for.’
‘Oh! Yes, madam! Beg pardon, madam!’ I fixed their genteel drinks (no trouble at all, of course, after pulling pints; my nightmare always was that someone from the sophisticated world beyond the village would come in and ask for some complex cocktail like a Backlash or a Blue-tailed Fly that nobody had ever heard of). The man, whom Dottie introduced as Henry Barclay, offered me a ‘noggin’ but I thought better not and hurried back to the Saloon, which was still unattended since Eleanor had just been heard to give a tiny cough.
Dottie and her companion stayed until closing-time, consuming quantities of alcohol and seeming none the worse for it, talking away with their heads close together over the solitary table. Nobody came into the Private to disturb them. Even I didn’t; I was worked nearly off my feet as the rush-hour built up. It was my first Saturday and it practically killed me. Dora said she didn’t know how they’d ever managed without me. I didn’t either, unless it was because Dora had had to work harder previously than she did when I was there. She seemed to spend her time rubbing noses and exchanging cackles with her favourite customers while Alf kept the swing-door between the Public and the Saloon constantly whupping to and fro, doing most of the work, occasionally giving Dora’s ample behind an indulgent pat when it impeded him in his progress.
At last time was called, we mopped the bar, and Dottie, bless her, ducked under it, put on an apron and helped wash the myriad glasses while Henry Barclay had another gin-and-lime and looked on, watching her with a bemused expression. I still had no idea what their relationship was, but it was clear he was rather taken with her. He was a somewhat unimpressive figure, no taller than herself, stocky, with a square, ruddy face and a flat top to his head covered closely by hair of the same colour and pattern as a beach when the tide is far out—little shallow, regular sandy waves. He didn’t smile much and from this, and his rather po-faced reaction to my job and Dottie’s timely help, I adjudged him to have little or no sense of humour and to be possibly somewhat of a stodge. However, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
When we’d cleared everything up, I collected David, put him in Dottie’s arms in the front seat of my car and drove off, leaving Henry Barclay to follow in his rather new Triumph. I had to have a private word with Dottie to find out how the land lay and why she’d brought him.
‘My dear, he’s a find!’ she began at once. ‘Don’t be deceived by his looking like Dick Tracy’ (I hadn’t thought he did, which just shows how different people look to each other); ‘he could be the answer to our prayers. Actually, what he is, is a sort of private money-lender. You know, he’s got a bit to invest and he doesn’t want shares, he wants to put it into something he can take an active interest in. No, no, now don’t put that face on! He’s just what we need.’
‘I thought you said you had enough capital.’
‘Well, I haven’t. I had no idea then what things cost. Anyway, why should we put our own money into it if somebody else is willing?’
‘Because it’s better to lose our own than somebody else’s.’
‘Is it really? You must be mad. If money’s going to be lost, let it be someone else’s every time, say I! But there’s no reason to suppose we’ll lose it. We’ve got the know-how—’
‘Have we?’
‘I have,’ she said with superb confidence which quite swept me along with her. ‘I’ve spent the last three years selling things, arranging things, buying things to sell. I know how it’s done, Jane, and I’m telling you, there’s gold in them thar hills, providing you’ve got two things—the money to get started, and flair.’
‘Flair …’ I didn’t care for the word, somehow. It had a reckless sound.
‘Henry has £5,000—’ (I gasped)—‘which he’s willing, subject to finding everything satisfactory, to put into a modern fancy-goods shop run by us—’
‘God, what’s a modern fancy-goods shop? It sounds ghastly.’
‘Nonsense, it’s what I told you. Glass, wood, ceramics, hand-woven fabrics—toys, perhaps. Since David was born I’ve been looking at a lot of toys. I’ve had a million ideas. Maybe we could find some old craftsmen in the countryside near here who hand-carve things or weave and make pots and so on, whom we could employ in a sort of cottage-industry way to supply us. Of course we’d have to show them exactly what we wanted—no fusty old tat, everything’s got to be bang up to date.’
So she rattled on. Her enthusiasm was dangerously infectious. By the time we had bounced over the last splashy rut, I could almost see it all myself—the little shop cleaned out and stripped for action, its basic beauties revealed or highlighted to provide the best possible background for our wares, which Dottie would arrange in the finest Heal’s tradition of display. The wares themselves would combine Dottie’s intrinsic love for the finest in contemporary urban elegance and taste, with her new-found desire to patronise and nurture the simple talents and produce of the countryside—hand-carved dolls, hand-thrown white-glazed pottery, hand-woven wall-hangings and rugs, hand-hammered iron and copper-ware. Not to mention hand-painted pictures. ‘Because as I see it, it will be part art-gallery as well as shop. I mean, if Catesby’s can use oil-paintings as background dressing, and sell them too, why can’t we? We can seek out local artists—maybe uncover an unknown primitive like that marvellous man who does the suits of armour in little dots or those gorgeous steam-engines.’
‘They aren’t primitives.’
She brushed this aside. ‘Jane, this is going to be wonderful. I know it. Henry falling into my net like that is a sign from heaven that it’s going to be a success.’
‘How did you capture Henry?’
‘Ad. in the Times Personal.’
‘Yours or his?’
‘Oh, his. I wouldn’t have thought of it.’
‘So you fell into his net, really.’
‘Don’t put it like that! Henry’s not a bit like a spider.’
‘And you’re not a bit like a fly. Still, he doesn’t look to me like a manifestation of the Heavenly Will, either.’
‘You know what I mean,’ she said impatiently as we climbed out of the car. ‘Why aren’t you being more excited?’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘The whole thing’s moving too fast for me. I hope you haven’t forgotten that in less than a year I’m going to New York?’
‘Oh, that … Well, you never know, you may not want to go by then.’
‘Oh yes I will. And then you’ll be annoyed at my going off.’
‘It may well be running on its own momentum by then.’
Henry drove up behind the Maggot and climbed out backwards, bringing out a small, neat overnight bag.
‘You can put him up for the night?’ Dottie whispered.
‘Yes, if he doesn’t object to the sofa. Here, we must get David to bed, it’s cold for him out here.’
We were soon sitting round the fire eating underdone steaks from plates on our knees. Dottie was chatting away, I was answering in indistinct monosyllables due to extreme hunger, and Henry was keeping very quiet. I hadn’t got Henry’s number at all yet. He had vaguely asked if there was anything he could do, but in the end had taken no for an answer and had let me light the fire and get the supper while he sat staring rather moodily into the flames with a glass in his hand. He had brought his own bottle, though, for which I gave him points, even though Dottie had probably told him to.
After the meal Dottie announced that Henry had to leave after lunch the next day to spend Sunday afternoon with his mother, and that we must begin talking business. She said this very briskly and authoritatively and then looked from one to the other of us expectantly. A long silence followed.
‘I’d like to look at the—er—premises,’ said Henry at last. ‘In the morning, I mean, of course.’
‘Of course,’ said Dottie. ‘We can get the key from the agent, he’s sure not to mind, even if it is Sunday. And then we’ll start negotiations right away. I’ll go back to town with you tomorrow, Henry, and we’ll finalise everything. Then I’ll drive back, Jane, and while you earn our bread and butter in the pub, I’ll drive round the countryside tracking down sources.’
‘Er,’ said Henry tentatively.
‘What?’ asked Dottie, raising her eyebrows in surprise that even such a timid hesitation should be shown.
‘Well, only—I mean—you want to finalise everything tomorrow?’
‘What’s the point of waiting?’
‘Of course I don’t know a great deal about business, but isn’t that a bit …I mean, wouldn’t that be pushing it a bit?’ He spoke with a fairly marked Cockney accent—not gorblimey, but quite noticeable. It made him more interesting, because his clothes were so tweedy and Austin Reed—he even had a matching waistcoat on, and very conservative shoes that looked as if he’d had them for years and polished them every night. It was hard to place him—town or country, posh or com, rich/idle/shrewd/thrifty/Lib/Lab/Tory, or permutations of the same, it was impossible to tell. He didn’t, for instance, look the type who would hurry home from a business meeting to have Sunday tea with his mum. I found myself watching him closely for clues, at the same time thinking how Toby would have enjoyed doing the same from a writer’s viewpoint.
Dottie looked jarred, like someone whizzing blithely downhill on a toboggan and hitting a submerged stump.
‘Look,’ she said, with half-concealed impatience. ‘This whole thing is such a wonderful idea—and everything is falling into place so perfectly—it’s obviously destined to be on. Can’t you see that?’ She looked from one to the other of us. I tried to look encouraging but at the same time not wholly committed. Henry looked worried and rather mentally windblown. ‘I can’t see the point of delays!’ Dottie exclaimed, stubbing out her cigarette. I saw Henry look along the length of her straight, tense, slender arm and stop at the thick silver bracelet on the wrist. There was a faint, puzzled frown on his face; it could have been simply unease at the way Dottie was pushing him into something he wasn’t sure of, but to me it looked like the frown of a man who is beginning to feel something that he never wanted or expected to feel and doesn’t know how to cope with it. He suddenly got a pair of heavy-rimmed glasses out of his top pocket and put them on, then leaned back with an air of greater assurance as if wearing them made him invisible and he were now free to observe us and the situation from a position of immunity. The glasses became him; I suddenly saw that for all his stockiness and lack of expression, he was not unattractive—he looked like a nice cuddly koala bear in his hairy brown tweeds, and his rather large ears added not unpleasingly to the likeness.
‘I think,’ I said, ‘that we shouldn’t plan too far or too definitely ahead. Let’s look over the shop tomorrow and then see.’
‘I agree,’ said Henry. ‘After all, it’s no use worrying about “sources” until we’re sure we’ll have a market. It’s only a little village, after all. Who’s going to buy the stuff?’
‘Oh, nobody around here, probably,’ said Dottie airily. ‘Not at first, anyway. But look at Tenterden.’ She grinned at us triumphantly, like a child who has done its homework.
‘Who’s he?.’ asked Henry unwarily.
‘“He” is a village in Kent,’ said Dottie. ‘It’s full of antique shops. Super ones—I drove out there the other day. It’s a lot further from London than this, but people flock there to buy antiques.’
‘Dealers.’
‘Not only. And it has a modern fancy-goods shop, which the locals now go to—thriving. It’s all imported stuff there, too. Ours would be local products, cheaper, nicer. And think—we’d be helping to prevent local crafts from dying out. I read somewhere that there’s hardly anybody left who knows how to make real rocking-horses any more.’
‘What about all those ones in toy-shops?’
‘Factory made,’ said Dottie scornfully, as if they were somehow fakes.
‘And very nice too,’ said Henry unexpectedly. ‘I hope you’re not going to turn your nose up at everything that hasn’t been turned out by some doddering old bugger sitting on a sunny bench whittling away with a bowie-knife.’ I snorted into my brandy and received a frosty look from Dottie.
‘What’s wrong with that?’ she asked him.
‘Everything. I’ve no objection to a few bits of handicrafts dotted around the place, but the main bulk of the stock’s obviously got to be manufactured. I may as well tell you,’ he went on, now warming up—it seemed to be a side effect of the glasses—‘that if I go into this—if, I said—I’m going into it as an investment. I got this bit of money by working damn hard for it and there’s no more where that came from; I’m not planning to chuck it away on any airy-fairy artsy-craftsy nonsense. I’ll have another of those,’ he said to me, passing his glass.
‘Help yourself,’ I said admiringly, passing him his bottle. He did so, liberally, while Dottie gazed at him with totally new eyes.
‘I think I’ll have another one too,’ she said faintly.
‘You shouldn’t drink so much,’ he said.
Dottie was now flabbergasted. ‘Who says so?’ she asked dangerously.
‘I do. It’s not womanly.’
‘Don’t talk cock,’ said Dottie distinctly.
This shocked him into temporary silence. Dottie reached for the brandy and deliberately poured herself a fair old tot. I couldn’t help finding all this by-play very amusing, and was watching it with a faintly maternal smile when Henry suddenly turned the full force of his new-found belligerency on to me.
‘And what about you?’ he said. ‘You’re keeping dead quiet, I notice. What’s your contribution to all this going to be?’
‘I don’t really know,’ I said pleasantly. ‘Work, I should think. You know, nothing skilled—just black-work. There’s bound to be some of that, isn’t there?’
‘There’s black-work behind every success,’ said Henry tersely. ‘I know. I’ve done some.’ Clue! But it didn’t lead to anything. It seemed Henry was an early retirer, because although it was only just on midnight he suddenly jumped up and said, ‘Here, it’s late! I want to get up early tomorrow and I must get my sleep. Can you show me my bed?’
‘That’s it you’ve been sitting on,’ I said.
‘Oh, well, that’s fine,’ he said, and stood rather awkwardly waiting for us to take ourselves off. I brought him sheets and blankets and showed him the downstairs loo and then Dottie and I went up to my room feeling rather ousted; if we’d been alone we’d have undoubtedly sat talking for another couple of hours at least.
‘There’s more to that one than I thought,’ said Dottie rather grimly as we closed the door of David’s room behind us.
‘Who, David?’ I asked wickedly.
‘No. ’Ennery.’
‘Did you think he was just a fall-guy?’
‘Really, Jane! One would think I was out to rob him. I only mean I expected him to be a sort of—well, sleepy partner, if not actually a sleeping one; I mean until this evening he hardly had a word to say for himself.’
‘What were you talking about then, all evening in the bar?’
‘Oh, he wasn’t talking at all. I was.’
I believed her. ‘Do you like him?’
‘How?’ she asked at once.
‘That way.’
‘No, of course not! With those ears? With that funny hair?’
‘He likes you—that way.’
‘Too bad,’ she said callously. ‘Or rather, no, it’s good. Useful.’
‘Dottie!’
‘Oh, don’t look so shocked. I’m fed up with men using me. I’m going to do the using in future.’
‘Even if it’s somebody nice?’
‘Show me a really nice man,’ she said, ‘a really nice man, and I’ll use him—till death do us part. But Henry’s not it. He’s too damn chutzpahdic for one thing.’
‘Where did you hear that?’
‘You’re not the only one who’s had a Jewish lover,’ she said as she climbed into bed.