For Mrs. Rammell that untimely reunion between Mrs. Privett and poor sister Nancy had proved the last straw. It represented humiliation. Nothing less. She could never hold up her head again.
If only Mr. Rammell would have listened to her. If only he hadn’t been so brutally pig-headed about insisting that Tony should go into the shop at all. Couldn’t he have foreseen the consequences? Wasn’t it exactly what anybody might have expected with someone so young, so inexperienced, so fatally attractive as her Tony?
And because Mrs. Rammell was so angry, so inwardly seething, all her self-control went from her. She broke every promise of secrecy that she had made to Mrs. Privett. As soon as Mr. Rammell returned home that evening she blurted it all out to him.
“ ... and would you listen to me?” she asked. “Did you take the slightest notice of what I said? Do you ever listen to anything I say to you?” Despite her polite upbringing Mrs. Rammell had a distinctly vulgar side to her nature when disturbed. “And now see the mess that you’ve made,” she went on. “You and your father. I hope you’re proud of yourselves, the pair of you.”
Mr. Rammell poured himself out another whisky that he didn’t particularly want. Then he waited patiently for Mrs. Rammell to subside. If there was one thing that he hated it was talking to a woman who had red rims to her eyes and a catch in her voice that threatened a complete breakdown at any moment.
“All right. All right,” he said at length. “I’ll ...”
Mrs. Rammell had clearly reached the danger point. Logic, reason, argument counted for nothing any longer.
“It’s not all right,” she said. “It’s just like you to think so. It’s all wrong. As wrong as it could be.”
“I was only going to say that I’d have a word with Tony,” Mr. Rammell replied quietly.
But it was no use. He had made the mistake of using his soft reasonable voice. Mrs. Rammell had always found even the mere tone of it maddening. It was as though he were trying to treat her as no better than a silly child.
“You can’t. Don’t you see?” she almost screamed. “He hasn’t come in. He’s out somewhere with her.”
Mr. Rammell, however, was not unduly concerned by the delay. Unlike Mrs. Rammell he had managed to retain his composure. He wanted to make a few discreet inquiries before saying anything.
He therefore avoided Tony altogether next morning. Simply didn’t appear at breakfast and sent down a message that he was not going into the office at the usual time.
When he did arrive at Bond Street, the first thing he did was to work through the shop. And in Haberdashery, he lingered. He remembered the girl perfectly. He knew for whom he was looking. And there she was. Younger and prettier than ever. Very neat, too, in the black Rammell costume with the white collar and cuffs. At the thought that she was the cause of all the trouble Mr. Rammell almost smiled. It was ridiculous. Like being blackmailed by an unusually attractive schoolgirl.
But his mind was made up. And as soon as he got upstairs to his room he sent for Mr. Privett. This was something that he wanted to handle personally. Besides, he rather liked Mr. Privett. He was so much a part of the place. When he came in, Mr. Rammell invited him to sit down as though he were an important visitor.
“Everything going all right up on your floor?” he asked.
Mr. Privett smiled contentedly.
“Oh, yes, sir, thank you. A bit on the quiet side. But very smooth, sir. Everything going very smoothly.”
Mr. Rammell paused.
“Now about that daughter of yours.”
It seemed to Mr. Rammell that Mr. Privett leant forward a little nervously.
“Yes, sir?” he asked.
“Very good girl,” Mr. Rammell told him. “Excellent reports. Does you credit, Privett.”
“I’m so glad you think so, sir.”
“Time for a transfer, you know,” Mr. Rammell went on. “Can’t have a girl in Haberdashery all her life. I’ll speak to Mr. Preece about it.”
“I’m sure she’s very contented where she is, sir,” Mr. Privett began.
But already Mr. Rammell was speaking again.
“Oh, and there is just one other thing. She and Mr. Tony have been seeing rather a lot of each other just lately. Not a good thing. Starts people gossiping. I just thought I’d mention it to you.”
Mr. Privett swallowed for a moment.
“Thank you very much, Privett, I felt sure you would. Good morning.”
So that was that. Mr. Rammell felt like congratulating himself. If there was one thing which he really knew it was how to handle staff. Friendly, without being familiar. Firm, but not a trace of harshness. Brief rather than curt.
And the idea of a transfer was sheer genius. If they put the girl up in Gowns, or better still, Teen-age or Children’s, that would mean that she was as much separated from Shirtings as if she were working in another store.
Indeed, everything would probably have been all right if only Mrs. Rammell could have left things alone. But it was too much to ask of her. Ever since Mrs. Privett’s visit, she had lain awake at night listening to the heavy sound of Mr. Rammell’s breathing, and thinking of that dreadful, scheming girl lying in wait for Tony as soon as he reached Bond Street. And by day the thought was never from her.
In the result, she did the one fatal thing. She conspired to get Tony alone with her. She appealed to him.
“ ... don’t you see that it would be throwing your life away?” she pleaded. “She may be pretty. She may be amusing. She may be anything you like now. But think of how it will be in a few years’ time. Think of her, too. Cut off from anything. No friends. Not really belonging. Out of her depth socially ...”
Mrs. Rammell broke off.
“Tony, dear, put that magazine down while I’m talking to you. It’s rude.” Here Mrs. Rammell screwed her two hands together until the knuckles showed white against the skin. “Can’t you realize? It’s your whole future I’m talking about. It’s everything that matters. It’s ...”
It was at this point that Mr. Rammell came in. The day, like most days, had been long. And, like most days, tiring. At the sound of voices in the room he had nearly drawn back. But it was too late now. Mrs. Rammell had seen him. She was beckoning to him. Begging him to come in.
Tony looked up to see why Mrs. Rammell had broken off so abruptly. And at the sight of his father, he gave a little smile almost of sympathy.
“Oh, God,” he asked. “Are you in this, too?”
The discussion, though long, was inconclusive. Tempers were lost. Recovered. Lost again. And this time it was Mr. Rammell who blundered.
“I’ve a very good mind to get rid of the girl altogether,” he said. “Just give her back her card and see the last of her.”
“I call that bloody unfair,” Tony replied. “And I tell you this now. If she goes, I go too.”
“No.”
It was Mrs. Rammell who had spoken. The word had simply been forced out of her. Because this was too dreadful. It showed how far things had really gone. Her Tony was being loyal to someone else.
Mr. Rammell took out his cigar cutter and began fiddling with it.
“I haven’t said I will,” he pointed out. “I’m only reminding you.”
And then, because it wasn’t a conversation that he had wanted to start in the first place, he suddenly felt his own temper rising.
“And let me remind you of something else,” he added. “It’s gone quite far enough. Her father knows. The staff know. And ... and your aunt knows. If you want to have the whole of London talking about you, I don’t.”
Tony got up slowly and put the magazine that he had been reading under his arm. Then he walked over and kissed Mrs. Rammell on the forehead.
“Don’t let Father keep you up too late,” he said quietly.
Mr. Bloot had always assumed that it would be a white wedding. St. Asaph’s, the large red-brick block of Victorian medievalism at the end of Artillery Row was the nearest church to the bride’s home. And, in his mind’s eye, he had frequently pictured the whole scene. The organ pealing. Mr. Bloot himself wearing his best tails and the practically new pair of striped cashmere that he had bought specially for the Rammell anniversary celebrations. And, above all, Hetty smiling and effulgent, with a wreath of orange-blossom in her hair and a long expensive-looking train supported by tiny local bridesmaids.
Not that his wedding to poor Emily had been in the least like that. On that occasion he had worn his blue serge with four buttons. And Emily herself had looked thoroughly sensible, but still appealing, in a plain white shirt waist and her going-away costume. But then Emily was not Hetty. And Mr. Bloot simply could not imagine Hetty bringing herself down to his own simple level.
That was why he was so astonished when she refused even to consider a church wedding at all.
“Us? In church?” she asked. “You can if you like. I’ll wait outside, thank you. What’s the point of advertising it?”
“I ... I just thought you’d rather,” Mr. Bloot explained weakly.
He was surprised as he said it to find how strongly he felt about church weddings. He had, in fact, not been inside a church since Emily’s death. And then only to the cemetery chapel. Nevertheless he had not even considered the possibility of any other place in which to get married. Marriage at a Registrar’s Office savoured too much of film stars. And run-away society couples. And divorcées. And fly-by-nights generally.
“Then if you don’t want a church wedding,” he asked, “what do you want?” and his heart chilled as he put the question.
“Why a Registry Office, of course. Same as normal people,” Hetty told him. “It’s just as legal.”
Mr. Bloot shook his head.
“But it’s not the same thing,” he said.
“Of course, it isn’t.” Hetty answered. “It’s less fuss. Go along at nine o’clock, I say, and get it over quickly.”
Mr. Bloot drew in his lips. They were trembling.
“Ah can’t make you out,” he said at last. “Really, Ah can’t. Anybody’d think you were ashamed of marrying me.”
“Not ashamed, dear,” Hetty replied. “Just doing it the easy way.”
And when he asked her what she meant by that she did not answer. Instead she opened her arms and pursed up her lips at him.
“Oh, stop worrying,” she said. “You make me tired. Come and kiss me. You haven’t given me a single decent kiss all the evening.”
The kiss, though long and rather moist, was unecstatic. Mr. Bloot had too much on his mind to give himself over freely to his own rapture.
“You’re not going back on it, are you?” he asked, almost as soon as they had separated. “You still mean next month?”
“Of course I do, silly,” Hetty replied.
She was speaking now in the low throaty voice that always made Mr. Bloot feel utterly yearning and entirely helpless.
“It’s just that I don’t want you to fuss yourself. Don’t get so worked up about me. I’m not worth it.”
“Oh, yes you are,” he told her. “Yur’re everything in the world to me. Yur’re mah ahdeal.” He paused. “Shall Ah put up the banns?”
“Yes, if they have ’em in Registry Offices,” Hetty replied. “They probably need a fortnight’s notice or something. Better make it a Thursday. That’s early-closing.”
“Early-closing?” His heart missed a whole beat. “But ... but we are to ’ave er nunneymoon, aren’t we?”
“If my boy wants one.”
Hetty by now was stroking his cheek with the back of her hand. “Does he want one? With me? Is that what he wants?”
Mr. Bloot nodded helplessly.
“Ah do,” he said. “Yur can’t know how ah feel or yur wouldn’t even ask. It’s all Ah want.”
He paused again, and seemed to be working things out in his mind.
“And there’s one other little matter we ought to talk abaht,” he added. “If Ah move into your flat which of mah little bits and pieces would you lahk me to bring round?”
As it turned out, the matter of Mr. Bloot’s bits and pieces had to be decided even before he went along to put up the banns. That was because he was so excited about getting remarried that he had to tell somebody. And like most naturally reticent men he made a mess of it. Instead of waiting for a proper opportunity, he told his landlady when he happened merely to meet her accidentally on the stairs.
“Ah’ve got a piece of news for you,” he said, adding in the vein of jauntiness that so often conceals deep emotion, “Ah’m goin’ through the ’oop again.”
“Going through the ’oop?”
Mrs. Gurney regarded him cautiously. She had been conscious for some time that a change had been coming over Mr. Bloot. For close on twenty years, an ideal lodger, either married or single, he seemed suddenly to have developed flighty tendencies that had hitherto lain unsuspected. Drink, she decided, might prove to be at the bottom of it.
“Yurss,” Mr. Bloot went on. “Gettin’ married. Next month.”
“Have I met her?” Mrs. Gurney asked.
It occurred to her as she put the question that with the exception of Mr. and Mrs. Privett—and Irene Privett as quite a little girl—she had never met any of Mr. Bloot’s friends at all.
Mr. Bloot shook his head.
“Nevah,” he said. “That is because the lady ’as nevah been here.”
“Then when’s she coming?” Mrs. Gurney asked.
There was caution in the voice. Almost alarm. What would she be like? Would she be the right sort? Would she be difficult over things like stairs? Would she be trustworthy about locking up and about electric lights? Having Mr. Bloot under her roof was one thing. But a newcomer. A woman. And a totally unknown woman at that. The natural hostility of the sex began bridling.
And Mr. Bloot’s reply left Mrs. Gurney aghast and speechless.
“She’s not coming,” he told her. “Ah’m goin’ there. To ’er place.”
“Is she a widow?”
Mr. Bloot nodded.
“Yurss,” he said. “Very comfortably provided. Very comfortably, indeed. Wouldn’t like it ’ere at all I’m afraid. Er mansion flat. That’s what she’s got. Er mansion flat ...”
“Wouldn’t like it here?” Mrs. Gurney repeated. “You mean we’re not good enough?”
It was then that the simple honesty of Mr. Bloot’s mind betrayed him. He had no diplomatic reserves whatever. It was the truth, the plain flat-footed truth, that broke from him.
“That’s abaht it,” he said. “That’s the way it is.”
“Well, I like that!”
This time Mrs. Gurney’s voice—and until this moment it had never occurred to Mr. Bloot that Mrs. Gurney even had a voice—sounded strangled and choking. Mr. Bloot regarded her with astonishment.
“Ah didn’t mean that,” he said. “It’s all raht for you and me. Very nahce in fact. Very snug. It’s just that it wouldn’t be raht for her.”
But he got no farther. For Mrs. Gurney, aged fifty-five, herself contentedly married and therefore in no sense jealous and unnaturally possessive of her lone lodger, had burst into tears.
At one moment she was standing on the stairs beside him; and, at the next, she had shot across the landing and gone into her and Mr. Gurney’s bedroom, slamming the door after her.
Mr. Bloot stood where he was for a moment. Then slowly he resumed his climb to the second floor.
“Ah can’t understand it,” he kept telling himself. “No feelings. Didn’t even wish me luck.”
It had been a brave decision on Mrs. Privett’s part to go to Mrs. Rammell’s in the first place. But no matter what the consequences, she knew that she had done the right thing.
And when Mr. Privett came back and broke the news that Mr. Rammell had spoken to him about Irene, she was more than ever convinced. Convinced and gratified. Because it showed that Mrs. Rammell had kept her word. She had respected Mrs. Privett’s secret.
For Mr. Privett, however, there remained all the bitterness of disappointment. Secretly, he had felt from the outset that Tony and Irene would make a lovely pair. He had boasted of it openly to Mr. Bloot. But he did not feel disposed to challenge Mr. Rammell. After all, Irene was still young. It wasn’t as though Tony were her only chance.
And, in any case, things were happening. It was too late now to start protesting. Irene herself announced the news. Innocently, as though she hadn’t guessed the full significance, she told her parents that very night at supper.
“I’m getting a transfer,” she said. “Right out of Haberdashery. Into Children’s. Sounds awful.”
Mr. Privett caught his wife’s eye as Irene said it. It proved that the wheels were turning. Showed that Mr. Rammell was tackling the problem the quiet, sensible way.
And then Irene said something that made both Mr. and Mrs. Privett suddenly sit forward.
“If I don’t like it,” she said, “I shan’t stay.”
“Not stay?” Mrs. Privett repeated.
“Why should I?” Irene asked. “It’s not fair about that transfer. I never asked for it.”
It was there that Mr. Privett intervened. As he was speaking he wished that Mr. Rammell could have been present to hear him.
“That’s not the point,” he said. “There’s more than you to be considered. You couldn’t run a store if everybody chose for themselves. They’re only doing what they think best.”
“Well, I don’t see it,” Irene replied.
She got up as she said it and went over to the door. Then she paused for a moment.
“And Tony doesn’t either,” she added as she went out.
“No,” Mrs. Privett said firmly. “You leave me to handle this. I’m going to have a word with that young lady.”
That was at about seven-fifteen. At seven-thirty Mr. Privett took his raincoat and umbrella and said that he was going over to see how Mr. Bloot was getting along. He would be back again shortly after ten he said. But by then it was too late.
“That you, Ireen?” he heard his wife’s voice call out as the front door closed on him.
“It’s only me, Mother,” he answered.
But, as he said it, it struck him that Mrs. Privett sounded unusually strained and anxious about something. Alarmed, even.
And a moment later, Mrs. Privett came out to meet him. Then he could tell at once that there was something wrong.
“Why, what’s the matter?” he began. “Is ...”
But he got no further. Mrs. Privett interrupted him.
“She’s gone,” Mrs. Privett told him. “Our Ireen’s gone.”
Because it was so unexpected he found some difficulty in understanding. The words simply did not make any sense to him.
“Gone where?” he asked.
“Gone away,” Mrs. Privett replied. “Packed a suitcase and gone.”
“I don’t believe it,” he answered. “I just don’t believe it. She’d never do a thing like that.”
“Well, she’s done it, I tell you.”
But Mrs. Privett could get no further. Quiet, controlled, unemotional as she normally was, she broke down and sobbed on Mr. Privett’s shoulder.
With his free arm Mr. Privett managed to get rid of his umbrella in the hall-stand. But there was nothing that he could do about his raincoat. All wet and steamy as he was he led his wife back into the living-room.
“You tell me what’s happened,” he said. “You tell me all about it.”
It seemed that it had occurred almost immediately after Mr. Privett had left. That fatal reference to Tony was what had started it. Mrs. Privett had warned Irene. Spoken to her frankly as any mother should. And, thereafter, so far as Mr. Privett could judge, the fault had been all Irene’s. She shouldn’t have been so rude. Shouldn’t have told Mrs. Privett to mind her own business. Because that was what had made Mrs. Privett tell her that it was everybody’s business by now.
Bit by bit it had all come out. Mrs. Privett’s misgivings. Her fears. Her patience. Her anxiety when she saw how things were developing. Her visit to Mrs. Rammell.
And it was the last that had done it.
“You never,” Irene had said. “Not about us. You wouldn’t have dared.”
“I did dare,” Mrs. Privett had assured her. “And let me tell you another thing. That’s why you’re being sent up to Children’s. So as to separate the two of you.”
That, it seemed, was what had decided Irene. According to Mrs. Privett she had jumped to her feet, knocking over a teacup that was on the arm of her chair beside her, and and said something—Mrs. Privett couldn’t remember exactly what—about not stopping there any longer. Then, some ten minutes later, when Mrs. Privett went upstairs to look for her, she had gone. And she had taken her attaché-case with her. The brown leather one that she had always used for school. She had packed pyjamas. Bedroom slippers. Tooth brush. Everything.
The whole lot. And then disappeared.
“You’ve got to find her. Now. Before it’s too late,” Mrs. Privett wound up. “She can’t stop out. Not all night. Not at her age.”
“But ... but how do we know where she’s gone?” Mr. Privett asked idiotically.
“We don’t,” Mrs. Privett told him. “But the police’ll find her. That’s where you’ve got to go. To the police station. I’d have gone myself only I was afraid that she might come back and find nobody here.”
At the thought of such a return to a house left silent and empty Mrs. Privett began crying again. Mr. Privett stood there, regarding her.
“The police?” he repeated doubtfully. “How’ll they find her?”
But already Mrs. Privett had recovered herself. She was pushing him out of the room in front of her.
“You go straight round there,” she said. “They’ve got their ways. They’ll find her all right. Only hurry.” She paused. “Before it’s too late,” she added significantly.
Irene herself at that moment was just getting into bed. It was a small bedroom. Rather like the bedroom in a nursing home. With white shiny walls and white painted woodwork. And the corridor outside was made of some kind of composition stuff that curved up at the sides and looked as if it would be very soft and yielding to walk on, and wasn’t.
Up to now, it hadn’t been so bad. Not bad at all, in fact. She had been in such a temper when she left Fewkes Road that nothing had seemed to matter. And for the last couple of hours she had been among friends. There had been two girls from Stationery, a middle-aged woman whom she didn’t know from Woollens. And another girl of her own age from Classical Records. The brother of the Classical Records girl was there, too. He was a tall, rather serious young man, who didn’t say very much. But he seemed to be listening all the time. And he had a nice laugh. He was something in Travel he told her.
Because there was so much chatter going on, Irene had found herself forgetting all about the trouble at home. It had been rather fun sitting there as one of a group that was ready to accept her as a grown-up person who could be talked to sensibly. Not treated as a schoolgirl the way her mother did.
But then 10.30 had come round. The young man from Travel had been forced to leave them. And the whole party had just broken up.
Now she was alone with herself in that white, clinical-looking little bedroom. Really alone. So much alone that she felt like the last person left awake in London. And immediately it all came crowding back on her. The row with her mother. The way she had dashed out of the house without even saying good-bye. The consternation that she must have left behind her. The thought—the perfectly horrible thought—of what people had been saying behind her back. The thought of what they would begin saying after this had happened.
Somewhere nearby she heard an unfamiliar church clock strike eleven. It was a thin, melancholy chime. It reminded her that in less than twelve hours’ time she would have to face it all again.
She began crying. Crying very softly, with her head right down among the pillows, so that all the girls in the other white, clinical-looking little bedrooms wouldn’t be able to hear.
Mr. Privett had just reached the end of Fewkes Road. The police station was a couple of hundred yards away on the right-hand side. And he was going straight towards it.
But something kept holding him back. All the way from the house he had expected to meet Irene. He was certain, in fact, when he got to the Kentish Town Road that he would see her coming back. That was why he was walking so slowly. Giving her time to catch up with him. And, because there was no sign of her, because the whole street was just so much emptiness, he felt lost. Utterly lost and bewildered. Mrs. Privett, it seemed, had not been exaggerating.
He had reached the police station at last. But even then, with his foot on the bottom step, he still hesitated. His opening sentences, “I’ve come about my daughter. She’s run away from home,” were all ready on his lips. It wasn’t even the shame of saying it that he minded. He was long past caring about that sort of thing by now. All that mattered was finding her.
And then, just as he got to the door with the blue lamp shining over it, he stopped dead. But only for a moment. Because turning round, he came back down the steps again. He was walking very quickly. And this time there was no looking over his shoulder to see if Irene were following. He just went straight along to the Underground Station and into the nearest telephone box.
It took him a long while to find the number. But that was partly because the light was bad. And partly because his hands were trembling so. Even then, after he had dialled, the pause seemed an unduly long one. He was just beginning to think that he had blundered with the noughts or something when a voice answered.
“Rammell’s Staff Hostel.”
“It’s Mr. Privett here,” he began. “You know, Fourth Floor. Is my daughter ...?”
When he got back to Fewkes Road, he naturally expected Mrs. Privett to go along to the Hostel with him straight away to bring Irene home. They’d be sure to get a taxi, he said, if the Underground had closed by the time they got there.
But Mrs. Privett only shook her head.
“Not if that’s where she is,” she said. “She’ll be all right there. Better leave her to herself.”
She paused.
“I only thought ...” Mr. Privett began.
“No,” Mrs. Privett told him. “It wouldn’t be fair on her. It’d only make her more conspicuous. There’s been enough talk about her as there is. I’ll go along by myself in the morning. First thing.”
Mr. Privett let out a deep sigh and sat down. He suddenly felt tired. Very tired. It had all been too much for him. And he felt hurt as well. Mrs. Privett hadn’t so much as congratulated him once on having thought of ringing up the Hostel in the first place. She had simply accepted the news without question. Calmly, sensibly accepted it.
“You go to bed now,” she said. “You won’t be fit for anything in the morning.” She hesitated for a moment. “Don’t wait for me,” she went on. “I haven’t even looked at the paper. I’m going to sit up for a bit.”
Mr. Privett made no reply. He was too shocked. This was more than calmness. It was downright callous, he reckoned, sitting down to read at a time like this. How she could ...
A faint sound on the other side of the fireplace made him glance up. Then he understood. The evening paper lay beside her untouched. Mrs. Privett had got her handkerchief up to her eyes. And her shoulders were shaking.
“Oh, my little Ireen, why did you?” she was saying.
It was difficult nowadays for Mr. Bloot. Merely going on living in Tetsbury Road was a strain.
Resentment was no longer limited to Mrs. Gurney. She had confided in her husband—told him of the slur on the house—and he had sided with her. The two of them down there together in the rather dark front basement had whipped themselves up into a fury. They no longer spoke to Mr. Bloot when they met him on the stairs. Simply brushed past him silently as though one or other of them was a ghost.
And the rent was now no more than a formal, real-estate transaction. Mr. Bloot left the book with the pound note, the ten shilling note and the half-crown in an envelope marked “Mrs. Gurney” on the little ledge of the hall hat-stand. And by next morning, as though mute impersonal genies had been in charge of the whole operation, the money was removed, the rent book receipted and the same envelope with “Mrs. Gurney” crossed out and “Mr. Bloot” substituted for it, was back again on the same little ledge.
Even without this unpleasantness, Mr. Bloot’s spirits were at a low ebb already.
Admittedly there was the excitement, the rapturous anticipation of the wedding night ahead of him. But, hanging over everything was the grey, tremulous sadness of remembrance. It is always a painful, heart-tugging sort of business breaking up a home. And 17 Tetsbury Road was the only real home he had ever had. Before he and Emily had moved there, they had lived with her mother at Stoke Newington. And though it had been placid, comfortable, undifficult, he had never known exactly that real Englishman-in-his-castle kind of feeling.
And now he was planning the deliberate destruction of this great part of him. To say that he had loved Tetsbury Road would have been pitching things too high. But, until he had met Hetty, he had never imagined anything else. Tetsbury Road and Mr. Bloot had seemed practically indissociable.
“Bring round any little things you like, silly,” Hetty had said to him. “We’ll find a place for them.”
But what little things? He was, for instance, almost inordinately fond of a bow-fronted mahogany sideboard with a bevel edged, oval mirror at the back. In the old days Emily had kept it polished like bronze. And with the Jubilee biscuit barrel, the cut-glass cruet stand and brightly-painted cheese cover with the design of roses on the top, he had sometimes passed his hand sensuously along the woodwork simply because he liked the sheer security of good living that the piece represented.
Only it wasn’t, by any means, a little thing. And Hetty had her own sideboard. A small almost boudoirish affair in light fumed oak with chromium handles.
And it was the same with his dining-room table. It was undeniably large. Large even for the spaciousness of Tetsbury Road. But good. Good and strong. And solid. But, again, Hetty had her own table. Fumed oak like the sideboard. And built refectory-style with one of those magic sections that jump up in the middle when you pull at the two ends.
Nor was she in any need of a bedroom suite. Again, she already had a suite in bright, palpitating satinwood with glass knobs on all the drawers, and a low dressing-table stool that looked as if it had been designed for child pianists. And though Mr. Bloot’s suite was more comprehensive—it included a marble-topped washstand complete with jug, basin, soap-dish and tooth-brush stand—it would clearly be impossible to crush it into the bedroom in Artillery Mansions.
In short, as Mr. Bloot went round his little home, he realized sadly that it would all have to go. All of it. By the time he had moved in with Hetty he would simply have submerged his life in hers.
In the end he decided to make an exception of three things. A small bamboo table which he always kept alongside his bed at night. A practically new ironing-board that he used when pressing his trousers. And a glass-fronted corner cupboard that he refused to believe couldn’t be wedged in somewhere. Apart from that, nothing. Nothing at all preservable from the possessions of a lifetime. If Hetty had rescued him from the very gutter itself he could hardly have seemed more destitute.
Except, of course, for his budgerigars. Even if the rest of his furniture was a bit on the old-fashioned side there was nothing to be ashamed of about them. No matter how you looked at it, champion budgerigars in specially sprung, pavilion-shaped cages really were something worth acquiring.
And all the things that went with budgerigars—the millet seed, the grit, the vegetable salts, the cuttlefish bone, the sack of refined sand, the tin water-jug—could easily, he told himself, be stored away somewhere in the kitchen quarters, leaving the birds themselves, free and unencumbered for their social life.
Because the Gurneys were being so horrid to him, it was with a feeling of glorious relief when Sunday morning came round again, and Mr. Bloot went round to Hetty’s.
Indeed, as he shut the iron gate of the front garden behind him with its familiar, insistent screech, he felt better. By the time he had reached the Tufnell Park Road he was whistling.
And Hetty, as it turned out, was in the same mood of jubilation herself. Even though it was only eleven-thirty in the morning, she was already dressed and her face all made up. She suggested a cocktail as soon as he got there.
Mr. Bloot accepted it. He had grown used to cocktails. And then, because Hetty kept pressing, he lit a cigarette as well. Sitting there, glass in hand, watching the swirl of blue smoke coil upwards he felt like a big recklessly wicked Latin kind of lover.
“I like a man to smoke,” Hetty told him. “Seems more manly somehow. And after all it’s only natural. Everyone smokes cigarettes ...”
She came over and refilled his glass. And from sheer coyness she rubbed the cold frosted side of the shaker across the back of his hand as she did so.
“Not that you need to,” she went on. “Not really. You’re all right as you are. It’s just that it’s more friendly.”
“Ah love you,” Mr. Bloot told her, somewhat mechanically. “Ah will ’ave ’er noccasional smoke if you’d rather.”
It was after all the very least that he could say after Hetty had been so nice to him. And if she was happy he wanted to keep her happy. He would have agreed to smoke cigars if necessary.
“Ah’ve found out where to go,” he told her. “And they take three weeks. Ah couldn’t actually do anything yesterday because they’d shut. But Ah’ll go in on Monday. Ah’ve explained the position at Rammell’s. It’ll be all raht.”
“What will?”
“The registry yoffice. It’s in the Town ’all, Finsbury Park. Just round the corner. It’s er nomen. Er nappy omen.”
But Hetty only laughed.
“Don’t bother about it,” she said. “I’ve seen to it.”
“Seen to it,” Mr. Bloot repeated incredulously.
Hetty nodded.
“Done it all myself,” she told him. “And fixed the time. On the 26th, at 9.30. We’re the first that day.”
At the thought of such devotion Mr. Bloot’s eyes filled with tears. He was deeply, uncontrollably moved. But his sense of the proprieties remained.
“You shouldn’t of,” he told her firmly. “It’s not raht. It’s the man’s prerogative.”
“Don’t give it a thought,” Hetty told him. “After all, it was nearer for me, wasn’t it?”
Mr. Bloot reached out his hand and began fondling her wrist, thrusting in his fingers between the thick slave bangles that she was wearing.
“Yur’re such a dear,” he answered. “Saving me all that trouble. But it’s still wrong. All wrong. It makes me despahs mahself.”
He paused for a moment, his wide, pink face clouded with apprehension.
“But ’ow did you know the facts?” he went on. “About me and Emily, I mean. Things like ’er second name. And the date. And which church it was. They need all that, you know.”
“I asked Mrs. Privett,” Hetty replied. “That night when we went round there.”
She had removed his glass from his hand while she was talking, and now sat herself heavily upon his knee. He gave a sharp, involuntary gasp as her weight came bearing down upon him. But he still had enough breath left to kiss her. It was a real, full-blooded, rousing kiss. And he felt quite exhausted at the end of it.
“Now let’s talk about the honeymoon,” Hetty suggested. “I still think Bournemouth. It’s more select. And it’s warmer. Not that I mind so long as it’s just us.”
Because of the little additional squeeze that she gave him as she said it, Mr. Bloot could not reply immediately.
“Bournemouth it is,” he said breathlessly. “You’ve done the lahcence. Ah’ll look after the ’otel.”
“Make it a front room,” Hetty said softly. “So that we can lie there listening to the sea.”
“Leave it all to me,” Mr. Bloot told her. “We’ll ’ave the best.”
He paused, as his strong sense of the practical regained possession of him.
“After all,” he added, “it’s only for three days. And it’s not the season. If Ah knows anything abaht ’otels they’ll probably be very glad to ’ave us.”
They sat there in silence for a time, Hetty gently squeezing his ear and Mr. Bloot allowing his hand to stray upwards until it was toying with the thick coil of her hair.
“Ah’ve made up mah mind what Ah’ll bring round ’ere,” he said at last. “It’s nothing really. Just two useful bits, and one ornamental.”
Hetty gave him a little kiss on the top of his head.
“Whatever you say,” she told him dreamily.
“And then there’s mah budgies,” he went on.
“Your what?”
“Mah budgies.”
“You’re teasing.”
“If you’d ever been round to mah place you’d ’ave seen ’em,” he said. “Flying abaht, too. Not just in cages.”
He broke off for a moment as though wondering whether to disclose a secret.
“Ah’m teaching Joey to say your name,” he confided.
Hetty, however, did not seem reassured. He could feel a little shudder run right through her. Then she got up.
“Birds,” she said. “I can’t abide them. Give me the shivers. Even sparrows.”
Mr. Bloot shook his head.
“But not budgies,” he said. “They’re more like little ’umans. They can think.”
Hetty did not reply immediately. It was obvious that she was still battling with her feelings.
“Horrible smelly things,” she said at last.
Mr. Bloot himself had got up by now and was on his way over to her.
“Budgies aren’t smelly,” he blurted out.
But before he could reach her, she had turned round.
“Well, smelly or not, they’re not coming here,” she said. “And that’s flat. What sort of place d’you think this is anyway? A menagerie?”
Considering what the consequences might have been, the Staff Hostel incident passed off very quietly.
Mrs. Privett had gone along at breakfast time as she had promised. And that was all that Mr. Privett knew. What had actually taken place when she got there was a secret between the two of them. And had remained a secret.
Mr. Privett had peeped in at Children’s on his way back down from coffee. And he had seen Irene. There she was, standing underneath a sign marked Zipperwear. She certainly appeared to be all right. Showed no signs of the drama of the night before. But he couldn’t be certain from that distance. And, above all, he didn’t want her to know that he had been spying. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to wait until he could see Mrs. Privett when he got home. Not that this helped him very much either.
“We’re not going to talk about it,” Mrs. Privett told him. “Irene knows she’s been silly. And it’s not going to happen again. We’re just neither of us ever going to refer to it.”
Even so, Mr. Privett couldn’t help worrying. He knew how Irene must be feeling. And he tried to be extra nice to her to make up for it.
That was why he was so glad when the Staff Association Ball came round again. Not much of a dancing man himself, he knew nevertheless that it would be something that would take Mrs. Privett and Irene right out of themselves. Because, even including the Summer Outing and the Dramatic Society’s Annual Performance, the Staff Association Ball was easily the biggest thing in the whole Rammell year. Attendance was practically compulsory. Everyone from Sir Harry downwards was there. And not to have turned up would have been the cause of a lot of raised eyebrows next morning. Might have stood in the way of promotion, in fact.
From what Mr. Privett had told her about previous Staff Association Balls, Irene could tell that it was going to be a pretty fashionable turn-out. And the one point on which she was determined was that she wasn’t going to wear anything that her mother had made. She hadn’t forgotten the Miss Manhattan dress for the staff interview.
In consequence, she spent all her lunch hours in looking at dresses. She had never bought a dress in the West End before. Didn’t really know how to set about it. For a start, there were all the small shops, some of them not much more than a mere window with a door let in somewhere at the side. They looked very nice in their fancy paint work. And they had pretty names like Isobelle and Jacinth and Margueretta. Sometimes, too, the note of real class, ancient and hereditary, crept in with Christian name and surname as well, like Cynthia St. Cyr, or Gloria Grosvenor.
But the trouble with all small shops was that there was no selection. Unless they happened to have exactly what you wanted, you were stuck. Irene had peeped in through some of those discreetly frosted doors and had caught sight of the chief salesladies, a race of large, experienced-looking women like Assyrian priestesses, with sleek black hair parted in a straight white line down the middle. And she knew perfectly well that if it came to a tussle of wills with one of those Old Testament abbesses she might find herself bewitched into buying something entirely different, like a new tweed costume or a long padded house-coat or any other damn’ thing that the lady abbess happened to want to get rid of.
There was always Oxford Street, of course. She could have got exactly what she wanted if she had gone to somewhere like Bourne’s. But that was precisely what she couldn’t do. What none of the girls in Rammell’s could do. It wasn’t actually printed in the Rammell Staff Handbook that you mustn’t buy your clothes in Oxford Street. It was simply understood. To have gone openly into anywhere at all in Oxford Street would have been sheer defiance. And to have gone secretly would have been treachery.
That was why, in the end, Irene decided to do what she had been trying to avoid. She went along to Rammell’s own staff stores. If you were lucky you could get last year’s models—particularly if they were the sort that faded or got crushed easily—for as little as two or three pounds sometimes. They were such bargains, some of them, that the assistants were allowed to buy only one dress apiece. That was to prevent the more ingenious ones from going into the misfit gown business on their own account. To safeguard against anything like that, the girls had to take their Staff Association card along with them so that the transaction could be properly marked up.
The only trouble was that Irene had left everything so late. While she had been hanging round the Isobelles and Jacinths, all the real bargains had been snapped up. There was now nothing left except a great trailing gown of black velvet that a prima donna might have fancied for a contralto solo at a public memorial service, and something in lace and sequins that looked as though it had come straight out of a musical comedy of the twenties.
Miss Sulgrave, who had charge of the dresses, was broken-hearted about the poor selection. Because she knew exactly the sort of dress that Irene wanted. There had been an absolute little pet of a dress from the Débutante’s Salon. It would have suited Irene perfectly. But it had gone now. Someone from Towels and Bed-linen had positively pounced on it ...
She was a thoroughly nice woman, Miss Sulgrave. Warm-hearted and sentimental. She spent her whole life doing little things for people. Just for the sheer pleasure of it, too. She didn’t even expect thanks. But she did like recognition. Basked in it. Became suffused and radiant whenever she heard the words: “Ask Sullie. She’ll help you.” Then she fairly glowed. And no wonder. Because hers wasn’t a very happy existence outside Bond Street. She lived with an elder sister, invalid and unmarried, somewhere in the wilderness out beyond Penge. The two of them quarrelled incessantly up till the moment when Miss Sulgrave left in the morning, and started again as soon as she got back again in the evening ...
Irene was just going away when Miss Sulgrave called her back again.
“Now, I’ve got your measurements, haven’t I, dear?” she said. “I’m not promising anything, mind you. But if something should turn up ...”
It was worse, too, because Miss Kent had made arrangements to get herself all decked out in oyster satin. Irene hadn’t actually seen the dress. But she had heard a great deal about it. Had heard about nothing else for days, in fact. It was strapless with a divided skirt, and two perfectly darling little diamanté clips that looked just like the real thing. It wasn’t hers really, which was why she had got to be so hideously careful with it, and the last dance had been simply ghastly with everybody half tight towards the end. But it might have been made for her it fitted so marvellously. There was six yards of satin in the skirt alone. The girl she had borrowed it from had been able to get it only because her boyfriend was in the wholesale gown trade himself. All completely open and above board of course. But the very moment the dance was over this exclusive oyster satin dream had got to go back on to the hanger in the back of her chum’s boy-friend’s car.
That night Irene took out her old party frock and looked at it. There was nothing really wrong with the dress. It just belonged to a different world. A world of bridge-rolls and paper-napkins and one and threepenny blocks of Wall’s ice-cream cut into slices and served up on saucers. It was lemon squash and ciderette, that dress. Whereas what Irene wanted was something that was pure champagne.
All the same, unless Miss Sulgrave found something Irene knew perfectly well that, somehow or other, she would have to make that dress worthy of the Staff Ball.
There were plenty of things that she could do with it. Buy a new sash, for instance. Flame colour always looked well on black. And she could always try a rather dashing vivandière effect. Or, alternatively, she might get hold of a length of tulle with sequins on it. Wear it over her head and shoulders in a mysterious Eastern manner, remembering to look downwards all the time as though she had just slipped out of a zenana in Benares and would have to get back before the eunuchs started searching for her. But she knew in her heart that every other girl would recognize it for what it was. She had seen enough of those emergency ballroom jobs to know that they deceived nobody but the very youngest of young men. And they weren’t the ones with whom she hoped she would be dancing.
But there was nothing else for it. The Ball was less than three weeks away. And Irene simply had to do something. She had saved three pounds of her own money. The time had now come to begin spending it.
In the end she wasn’t quite sure that she could carry off the Eastern zenana look. So she bought the scarlet sash instead. In point of fact, she went one better. She bought a scarf of the same colour, too. They weren’t cheap, the sash and the scarf together. They cost twenty-five shillings for the two of them. But at least they were effective. And, above all, they were new. They added a great vivid flash of sheer recklessness to the old black dress. And Irene was grateful for one thing. At least, the dress was black. It had been her mother’s idea entirely. There was nothing like black, Mrs. Privett had always contended. You could wear absolutely anything with it.
And even with something over a pound gone on decoration, there was still enough left over for an evening bag. And it was rather a nice one that she found. Black, shiny plastic with a modern design stamped into it. And the clasp was striking. Also of plastic, it finished up with a large square knob practically the size of a door handle. And like the sash and the scarf, it had the supreme merit of being new-looking. Irene wouldn’t have minded going anywhere with a bag like that hanging over her arm.
It had been a bit of a rush getting all those things in one lunch hour. It was like the last-minute arrangements before Judgment Day. And she had been forced to go as far as New Oxford Street before she could find a shoe shop with the right shoes. There hadn’t been time even for a cup of coffee. But at least she had got what she wanted. And she had overspent her three pounds by only one and ninepence. That was just about the amount of overspending that she could easily put right again. For once, the personal budget of Irene Privett was nicely under control. In consequence, she felt cheerful. Courageous. Independent. A bit empty and wobbly inside. But still gloriously free. It was her own money. And she had used it well. Thanks to no one but herself she was going to be a success at the Staff Ball.
Then, when she reached the counter, Babs Kent told her that Miss Sulgrave had been asking for her. It was surprising that Babs remembered to mention it at all. Because Babs herself had rung up at lunchtime only to find that her chum’s boy-friend had let her down. He couldn’t let her have the oyster-satin after all. There was nothing but a ghastly cerise affair that clashed with every single blasted thing she’d got. It made Babs want to scream simply thinking about it. She had practically decided not to go to the Staff Ball at all ...
Because Irene had been a bit late getting back from lunch, she couldn’t go along and see Miss Sulgrave until tea break. And, when she got there, she found Miss Sulgrave in the last stages of agitation. She had very nearly made herself cry, she said, just imagining how Irene must be feeling.
In the result, she had gone through everything in the Débutante’s Salon to see whether she could find even the slightest excuse for drastic marking-down. What’s more, it was just as she had expected. There was a sweet little silver grey one with distinct lipstick stains on the collar. And it is the waking nightmare of the gown saleswoman, this lipstick business. That is because all the tissue paper in the world, no matter how carefully wrapped round the inside edges of the collar, won’t save the dress if the customer is a squirmer, a wriggler. What is more, the lipstick manufacturers are distinctly on the side of the despoilers. There are whole research laboratories doing nothing but ensure that the modern lipstick is kissproof, wetproof, chemical remover-proof.
That is not to say, of course, that a lot can’t be done with a bottle of Ronsonol and a pad of cotton-wool. Or even with a saucerful of hot water and a clean handkerchief. And the dress that Miss Sulgrave selected was very clearly on the borderline. At any other time she would have seen what could be done about it. But the memory of Irene was too strong for her. The temptation was there. And she succumbed. She rubbed the stains in a desultory smearing fashion with her forefinger, and then agreed with the Supervisor that the dress was unsaleable. Not that there is anything very astonishing in her behaviour. Dishonesty is one of the commonest by-products of compassion. The cells of prisons are full of sentimentalists.
And, at the sight of Irene, she swooped.
“Ah, there you are, dear,” she said, her voice rising with her excitement. “I was beginning to get so worried about you. I wondered where you were. I’ve got just the thing. Come round here and pop it on.”
Irene felt a sudden little chill run through her.
“Thank you ever so much,” she began, “but ...”
Miss Sulgrave, however, was in no mood for excuses.
“No need to thank me, dear,” she said patting Irene’s hand affectionately. “I like doing things for people.”
Already her arm was round Irene’s shoulders, and she was leading her towards the dressing cubicle.
Miss Sulgrave was so excited by now that she had ceased to behave like a normal woman. She didn’t merely walk any longer. She fluttered. With her head bent sideways and her little beady eyes fixed firmly on Irene, she kept up a shrill chirruping.
And the dress that she had discovered was beautiful. Simply beautiful. Irene had to admit it. Better than anything that she had imagined. It was pale silver. “Moonbeam,” Miss Sulgrave called it. And it made all old black dresses with fancy scarves tied round them look like old black dresses with fancy scarves.
As soon as Irene saw the dress, she knew that she was going to have it. It was paying for it that was going to be difficult. She had been along to the cashier after lunch. And had come away with her small buff envelope containing the pound notes. And the silver. And the strip of paper, that was like a robot’s rough note-book, showing all the deductions. By the time the robot had finished its homework there was only three pounds two shillings and sixpence left. And the dress that Miss Sulgrave had set aside for her was priced at a full four pounds. Miss Sulgrave would have liked to make it less, she explained. But how could she? Only twenty-four hours ago it had been standing in Rammell’s balance sheet at eighteen guineas. And there are limits beyond which even sentimentalists cannot go.
Irene decided to borrow the extra pound from her father. The mere sight of that milky moonbeam creation had reduced her to the morals of the bankrupt and the common gambler. She was ready to pledge everything. There would be no contribution that Friday to the family house-keeping. Nothing for fares. Nothing for lunches. No weekly hair-do. Simply a new dress. And an unexpected overdraft. But at least she would be brilliantly set up for the Staff Ball.
Not that there was any difficulty in getting the money out of Mr. Privett. A shopwalker is singularly defenceless in such matters. The one thing that he can’t risk while on duty is anything in the way of a scene. Mr. Privett paid up at once. Felt rather flattered, in fact. And he understood perfectly. Most women usually did need something when they were going out. He had known his own wife suddenly not able to show herself in public without a new pair of evening gloves.
And that had been merely for the ladies’ night at the North London Model Yacht Club in the Archway Rooms at Highgate.
Mr. Privett waited just inside the Hurst Place entrance so that he and Irene could go home together. And to-night he had to wait longer than usual. That was because Irene was picking up the new dress from Staff Stores.
This was one of the things about which Rammell’s were really strict. Positively sharp, in fact. There had been an unpleasant case, only a few years back, when an assistant in Model Gowns had been discovered in the act of running what was practically her own second-hand misfit department for the benefit of a private clientèle of trusted customers. It was after this incident that Mr. Preece, with the help of the Personnel Supervisor and the Legal Department, had produced the revised Manual of Staff Instructions. Now all staff purchases had to be collected after closing time. And not brought back into the shop unless the assistant was actually wearing them.
But everything was all right this time. The box alone was sufficient to prove it. Ivory white, it had the decorative Rammell “R” printed all over it. Mr. Privett felt proud and happy simply to see Irene carrying it. It wasn’t every night of the week that a box like that got taken by Underground all the way to Kentish Town.
When they reached Fewkes Road, Mr. Privett guessed that there was something brewing. That was because he saw Mrs. Privett looking out from behind the lace curtains as they came in. She withdrew hurriedly at the sight of them. But it was enough that she should have been there at all. Mrs. Privett wasn’t the sort to keep a look out if she hadn’t got something pretty big on her mind.
And when they got inside Mrs. Privett continued to behave just as mysteriously. She just stood there in the hall, staring. Not at both of them. Not even at Irene. Just stood there, staring at the Rammell dress box.
“Hallo, Mum,” Irene said to her.
But Mrs. Privett did not answer.
“You never,” she exclaimed at last.
And with that, she turned her back on both of them. Didn’t say another word. She went straight along to the kitchen, and slammed the door behind her.
Mr. Privett and Irene stood looking at each other.
“What’s upset your mother?” he asked.
He felt bewildered. Completely bewildered. And Irene’s reply was just as baffling as all the rest of it.
“She can’t have,” Irene exclaimed.
“Can’t have what?”
But already Irene had run along the passage and shut herself inside the kitchen with Mrs. Privett.
They were in the kitchen together for some time. And when they came out Irene had her arm round her mother. She was busy talking. But, as it was the same mystery language, Mr. Privett could not make head or tail of it.
“You shouldn’t have. Really, you shouldn’t,” he heard her say. “Why did you? You didn’t have to. Then I wouldn’t have.”
Because they went into the sitting-room, Mr. Privett followed. Then he understood. In the centre of the room stood the dressmaker’s dummy that Mrs. Privett used for all her serious work. And on it was draped a long silver evening gown with nothing but a pair of straps at the shoulders and a great billowing skirt like a half-folded parachute.
It was the sale of the furniture that broke Mr. Bloot’s heart.
It was one thing to think about it. But it was quite another to see it actually go. And the second-hand dealer in the Archway Road who bought the lot was so frankly disparaging. Definitely interested at first, even eager it seemed, he palpably lost interest from the moment he saw the stuff. And his manner did nothing to raise Mr. Bloot’s spirits. A small sad man in a bowler and raincoat, he cast his own gloom over Tetsbury Road. He went round the two rooms with pursed up lips, tapping doubtfully on the table top, the sideboard, the marble washstand with a small stub of pencil that he held between thumb and forefinger. The tap-tapping began to get on Mr. Bloot’s nerves. It was so hostile. From the way he behaved he might have been suspecting worm even in the marble washstand top.
And after it was all over he offered thirty-five pounds for the lot. Mr. Bloot had been expecting a round hundred at least. He would have been prepared to close on eighty. But thirty-five! If he had been living all those years in a horse caravan the fittings alone would probably have been worth that much.
But he had left it too late to get in counter-offers. He had already given notice. And if he left the stuff there, he would have to go on paying rent.
In the end, the little man tilted back his bowler and agreed on forty-two-ten if the china and glass were thrown in as well. And as a kind of makeweight he offered to deliver the bits and pieces to Artillery Mansions free of charge next time he was sending over in that direction.
Not that Mr. Bloot was entirely downcast. For with the quixotic generosity which was so peculiarly a part of her nature, Hetty had relented over the budgies. They could come with him, she agreed. There were terms, of course. She still wouldn’t have them actually in the flat. But they could go in the little, cupboardlike room beyond the kitchen, the one that had been a coal cellar before the gas fires had been fitted.
It had brought a tear into Mr. Bloot’s eye when she told him. He saw immediately how foolish—unfaithful almost—he had been to allow himself to worry when he was dealing with anyone as kind and loving as Hetty.
But he couldn’t simply shove the birds in there on the floor along with the empty bottles and the carpet-sweeper. He would have to put up some strong hooks for the cages. And make sure that the shelving was safe, because, even though the budgies were mere pigmies, their food weighed a terrible lot. The last thing he wanted was for them to see their lunch, tea and dinner go crashing to the floor while they, caged and helpless, were powerless even to raise the alarm.
Besides, he knew from experience how difficult it was to sweep up millet seed. He didn’t want Hetty to have any cause for complaint. Least of all about mice.
Originally, it had been Mr. Privett’s idea that the staff should give Mr. Bloot a wedding-present. But it caught on so fast that it was soon everybody’s idea. There was a house rule that Mr. Preece had to give his permission before the collection box could actually go round. But naturally in a case like this Mr. Preece raised no objection. He even said that he thought that some of the directors might like to give a little something themselves. And it was the same everywhere. There wasn’t a soul in the store who did not know Mr. Bloot. He was practically part of the fixtures. The only odd thing was that he should be getting married. In its way it was as astonishing as if one of the caryatids on the Bond Street frontage had suddenly announced that she was going to have a baby.
Odd or not, the money certainly flowed in. When Mr. Chilvers in Accounts came to empty the boxes and add in the directors’ personal donations, the total stood at twenty-eight-ten already. And that wasn’t counting the fifty pounds—minus P.A.Y.E. of course—that the Board voted.
Because of the Board’s generosity towards him, Mr. Bloot was naturally in a very bland and complacent frame of mind. He had known about the collection, of course. But he hadn’t known how much. And, when he heard, he gave a great sigh. A sigh of sheer happiness. Life, after all, had not always been kind to him. He had known what it was to walk down long avenues of steadily darkening depression. And now, suddenly, everything was radiant again.
“Ah suppose Ah cahn’t be such a bad sorter chap affter all,” he confided in Mr. Privett. “Or they’d neverer done it, would they?”
“Well, that’s how much it is,” Mr. Privett told him. “So you’d better make up your mind, and tell me what you’d like.”
For a moment Mr. Bloot’s face clouded over. All decisions presented difficulties. It was the making-up-his-mind part that he found so trying. And obviously this decision was a vital one. No one had ever before suggested giving him a great enormous present like this.
“Ah’ll have to think,” he said cautiously. “That’s what Ah’ll have to do. Ah’ll have to think.”
“There isn’t much time,” Mr. Privett warned him. “Only another week.”
But Mr. Bloot was in no mood to be rushed.
“Ah know. Ah know,” was all he said.
He took out his watch while he was speaking and glanced down at it. The watch, which was rather thick and slightly lemon-coloured round the rim, showed 10.32. Whereas the restaurant clock plainly showed 11.16. Mr. Bloot shook the watch for a moment and began playing with the winding key. But there was nothing wrong with the winder: he knew that. It was simply that the watch itself was old. Old. And overworked. And exhausted. He began shaking it again.
Then his face cleared.
“Woterbouter watch?” he asked eagerly. “Er watchun chain. Something good. Er reel gole watch.”
Mr. Privett hesitated.
“Don’t you think that perhaps it ought to be something for both of you?” he asked cautiously. “Cutlery, for instance.”
Mr. Bloot looked astonished.
“Wot would ’etty want with cutlery?” he asked. “She’s gotter ’ole canteen of it.”
“I was only suggesting cutlery,” Mr. Privett explained. “Perhaps ...”
But Mr. Bloot shook his head.
“It’s no use,” he said. “She’s got everything. Everything er woman could want.”
Mr. Privett was silent for a moment.
“Why not ask her?” he inquired. “There may be just some little thing. Something she’s never actually got round to.”
The smile had gone entirely from Mr. Bloot’s face by now. But so had the anxious look.
“Ah see watcher mean,” he said. “Something personal perhaps. Joolery, for instance.”
And by next morning Mr. Bloot had the answer all ready. For again Hetty had shown the warm side of her nature. It was not anything for herself that she had chosen. It was something for both of them. She had decided on a television set.
“Only do be careful,” she had warned him. “Don’t let them give you one without doors. They look terrible. And make sure it’s walnut, not mahogany. I can’t bear the dark kind.”
Mr. Bloot would have liked Hetty herself to come along and choose it. But with the shop on her hands, there was no chance of that. And, finally, he went down himself to Rammell’s Radio Salon. It was lunch-time. And he had Mr. Privett with him. But because he hadn’t given any warning, Mr. Gore, the real electronics chief, was out. Mr. Asplett, his second in command, was there. Programmes rather than engineering was Mr. Asplett’s forte. And naturally with Mr. Bloot for audience he showed off everything he knew. He went reeling through lists of celebrities and famous artists of whom Mr. Bloot had never heard. And he described sporting events—ice hockey, table tennis, badminton, swimming galas and the rest—that Mr. Bloot had never thought of attending. The TV had them all, Mr. Asplett assured him, as well as guessing games and classical plays and weather reports and visits to big engineering works and Church Services and political discussions and variety programmes from Forces’ canteens.
Mr. Bloot listened in amazement. And he suddenly realized how right his clever Hetty had been to ask for television instead of joolery. Without television, a man was only half-alive, it seemed.
In the end, it was a light walnut table model, so highly polished that the case might have been made of satin, that he selected. It had white Bakelite knobs with a narrow gold ring round them that he felt sure that Hetty would appreciate. But what really decided him was the picture in the glass front. Instead of being empty and staring like the rest of them there was a view of a cathedral or something pasted into the frame. It was almost as though the thing had somehow started working before the man had even connected it and switched it on.
Mr. Bloot was excited all day thinking about the television set. And, even though Hetty had begged to be left alone so that she could do what she referred to mysteriously as getting herself ready, he went across that same evening to tell her all about it.
“It’s worlnut just like you said,” he began breathlessly. “And it gets table tennis and visits to engineering works and swimming galas and weather reports and everything. It’s mahrvellous. That’s what it is. Mahrvellous. Mr. Asplett says so. He looks in every night. Every single night.”
“What’s it called?” Hetty asked.
Mr. Bloot looked up in astonishment.
“Television,” he told her.
“No, silly. The make.”
Mr. Bloot paused.
“Ah don’t rightly remember,” he had to confess.
“Has it got a guarantee?” Hetty demanded
“Oh, yurss,” he replied. “It’s gotter guarantee. If anything goes wrong ...”
“It will,” Hetty interrupted him.
The remark seemed to Mr. Bloot to be querulous and in bad taste. But it only showed how much on edge she must be.
“If anythink goes wrong,” he repeated, “we’ll ’avver nother one ’ere the same day. Ah give you mah word.”
“Oh, it’s not that,” Hetty answered. “It’s just that I couldn’t bear to think of you being diddled.”
Mr. Bloot was aghast. He saw the golden gates that were ajar already about to close on him again. Visits to big engineering works had sounded very interesting.
“Give me the pictures every time,” Hetty went on. “I like to go out to enjoy myself.”
Mr. Bloot’s voice began to tremble.
“Then ... then why did you ask me to buy it for you?”
Hetty got up and came over to him.
“Because we’d look such fools not having one,” she said. “It doesn’t follow you’ve got to use it. Besides, I shall have you, shan’t I? There won’t be time for anything once we’ve got each other.”
And before Mr. Bloot could uncross his legs she had sat herself upon his lap.
“Aaah!” he exclaimed in a gasp in which pain and delight were mingled. “That’s more lahk it. That’s more mah girlie.”
The Staff Ball was really on them at last. And there is nothing like a Staff Ball for upsetting the normal smoothness of life. By six-thirty that evening some four hundred and fifty homes in all parts of London were seriously affected. There was a tense, keyed-up, D-day sort of atmosphere in every one of them.
Not that Rammell’s could be blamed for that. Most marriages proceed smoothly from one week’s end to another until they are put to the supreme test of husband and wife going out together. It is the common bedroom, the shared dressing-room, that is at the root of the trouble. By the time they are ready to set out for the evening, most wives have the feeling that they have been responsible for dressing two entirely different people.
For a start, things weren’t going any too well inside the Rammell household. Tempers were badly frayed already, in fact. That was because Mrs. Rammell had a headache and didn’t want to go to the dance at all. It had been like that last year, Mr. Rammell reminded her. And, in the end, in sheer exasperation he mixed her up one of his own magic draughts—two aspirins in a half a tumbler of warm liver salts—and told her brutally to drink it. As he did so, he let slip the remark that for once she knew how he felt when she had one of her blasted musical evenings. That was why the Rammells weren’t even speaking to each other when they set out.
And it didn’t help to raise their spirits that Tony was with them. He had made a mix-up with the dates. And right up until he had left the office he had imagined that he was going to spend the evening at Covent Garden. In consequence, he was silent and sulky.
Nor, for that matter, were Mr. Preece’s arrangements any smoother. Going out anywhere was always an ordeal for the Preeces. That was because Mrs. Preece disliked setting out alone. Mr. Preece, therefore, always had to make the effort of slipping down to Carshalton by an early train, and then returning to town by a slightly later one.
He had made the effort today. And now he was sorry. Sorry that he hadn’t simply gone along to the Staff Dance alone and told Mrs. Preece about it afterwards. It was his daughter, Julia, who had ruined things. A large, athletic girl, with a fondness for horses, she had been promised the dance for a special treat. But Mrs. Preece had insisted that first she must do something about her hair. She seemed to have more hair than most girls. And there was an untameable healthiness about it which Mrs. Preece did not quite approve. What might have been all right with the wind rushing through it on the Downs would clearly have been unthinkable on the dance floor. Mrs. Preece and daughter had therefore spent nearly two hours at Isobel’s Beauty Parlour in the High Street while the assistant snicked away and thinned it out and finally waved and set it.
Mrs. Preece had been really quite delighted with the result. But she had been reckoning without Julia’s highly developed open-air talents. It had rained that same afternoon. And Julia had gone out without a hat. There was now nothing left but dense dark fuzz. Miss Preece looked like a princess from one of the Solomon Islands. She carried with her a strong hint of hibiscus and roasted missionary.
In consequence, Mr. Preece who hadn’t been late for anything in years, kept walking up and down the hall. He went from the front door to the wall-bracket barometer and back again, click-clicking with his tongue as he went, and reminding his wife that they had missed the 8.2 already, and the way things were going looked like missing the 8.17 as well. But Mr. Preece was not thinking of himself. He was thinking of Mr. Rammell. “Can’t turn up after Mr. Rammell,” he was saying. “Look very bad.”
And at that moment Mr. Rammell was thinking of Mr. Preece. Thinking of Mr. Preece and talking to Mrs. Rammell. “Wear whatever you like,” he had just said to her. “Nobody’ll notice. Only hurry. There’s Preece coming right up from Woking or somewhere. Look all wrong if the Preeces get there first.”
Things were bad, too, in Sloane Square where Marcia lived. She was tired already. She had been on her feet all day showing off what was left of the Rammell Autumn Collection. The one thing that she wanted was to be left alone. In any case, she hated these staff dances more than anything else in the whole world. Unless you were careful, you found yourself becoming familiar with all the wrong people. Awful young men from Hardware or Provisions cut in during the Excuse-me dances, and moved off jubilantly, leaving a wake of violet haircream and cheap shaving soap behind them.
Of course, if Mr. Bulping had been available there would have been no problem. Any girl can relax if she has arrived in a Bentley. But Mr. Bulping was not available. Very much the reverse, in fact. It was his son’s twenty-first birthday. And he had explained—rather callously, Marcia thought—that he had to be present for appearance’s sake.
That was why Marcia had accepted Mr. Preece’s invitation to sit at his table. It would scarcely be exciting. But it would at least be respectable. And remembering the company, Marcia decided on her beige dress. The beige dress. And her moonstones. It promised to be a pretty pale colourless kind of evening. And Marcia decided to fit in perfectly.
She had just finished dressing when the telephone rang. It was Mr. Bulping. He sounded large. Male. And uninhibited.
“How’s my little girlie?” he asked.
“I ... I thought you were in Wolverhampton,” she told him.
“Not me when my little girlie’s in London,” he answered.
“But ... but what about your son?” Marcia said.
She could have bitten out her tongue as soon as she said it. The last thing on earth she wanted was to remind Mr. Bulping of his first marriage. It was the sort of unfeeling remark that she had always been very careful to avoid.
Mr. Bulping, however, did not seem to be put out.
“Didn’t need me,” he told her. “Takes his mother’s side in all this. That’s why I’m here. Let’s make a night of it. Coming round straightaway.”
And before Marcia could explain, Mr. Bulping had rung off.
There was, however, one person who was thoroughly looking forward to the whole evening. That was Hetty. She didn’t mind what dance it was so long as the floor was all right and the band leader really knew his stuff. There was, indeed, in Hetty a quality of enthusiasm, a sheer appetite for enjoyment, that Mr. Bloot found vaguely disquieting. He had never known anyone get so much pleasure out of life. And he kept telling himself that he must not disappoint her. Nevertheless, the prospect sometimes scared him. Because the more he saw of it the more he realized that being engaged to Hetty looked like being a very expensive business.
The ring alone had nearly ruined him. Eighteen pounds ten it had cost. The one disappointing thing was that the diamond solitaire still looked small on Hetty’s hand. That was because she had a large hand. And because she couldn’t bring herself to discard the other rings that she always wore. These were enormous. Not necessarily valuable. Just enormous. The new engagement ring could do no more than peep coyly through the great panes of amethyst, garnet, topaz and sheer ordinary coloured glass.
And it wasn’t the ring alone that made him uneasy. This evening itself was going to set him back quite a bit. The tickets alone were twelve-and-six each. And that would be only the beginning of things. Because somehow or other he couldn’t see Hetty keeping up her magnificent high spirits for the whole evening on the tall jugs full of orangeade and lemon that the management provided. Before he was through there would be Graves or Sauterne as well. Not to mention gins and tonic and probably whiskies and Baby Pollies, too.
Not that there was anything that he could do about it. He had invited her. And it was up to him to make a go of it. Vital, in fact. For yesterday evening, all because of one thoughtless remark, he had very nearly lost her.
It was over at her flat that it had all happened. She had been showing him her new evening-dress. Quite a striking looking model in orange-coloured satin, with a big feather flower on one hip. And Mr. Bloot knew at once that she would look magnificent in it. Even a little too magnificent. Opulent. Also a shade on the undemure side. Even though she hadn’t actually got it on he could guess how much bosom would be left showing. And he very diffidently suggested that she should wear a little lace hankie or something, in front.
That was what had upset her. She had simply flung the dress down and told him that, so far as she was concerned, he needn’t bother his head about her any longer because her mind was quite made up, thank you. To prove it, she had wrenched off the diamond solitaire that he had given her.
It may have been that the ring was tighter than she had realized. Or possibly she was a little overtired. Whatever it was, her reserve went completely. The niceties just left her. Instead of merely thrusting the ring into Mr. Bloot’s open palm, she added that he knew what he could do with it.
In consequence, it had been a day of phone calls. And it had been nearly teatime before he got Hetty to listen to reason. She softened suddenly. “Silly Boy,” she said to him in the old purry-purry voice that he had always found so affecting. “What’s the matter with him?” she asked. “Can’t he even stand a little tiff without getting all worked up about it? Hetty’s going to be cross with her Gussie if he starts behaving like a great big cry baby. Hetty wants her Gussie to be a big strong man ...”
There had been a great deal more in the same vein. Including some pretty remarkable baby talk. It was a staff line on which he was speaking. And the baby talk was so remarkable that the switchboard operator simply threw up all the other keys, and sat back to listen. All telephone operators have an uncanny ear for voices. This one recognized Mr. Bloot immediately. But, when the call was over, she had begun disbelieving herself.
It was not, in fact, until nearly five-thirty that she had the final proof. The call was an incoming one. A woman’s voice, the same, deep, unmistakably husky voice, was there. And it was asking for Mr. Bloot. The operator put the call through to Main Foyer, and waited. It was worth waiting for. Because the caller didn’t indulge in any silly baby talk this time. She got down to business straight away.
“Where’s my ring anyway?” she asked. “I’m catching cold in my finger.”
The Medina Rooms certainly did their dances very well. That was something you had to hand them.
Admittedly, the entrance hall with the brass rails and the mosaic flooring and the sign-poster’s fingers pointing in the direction of the separate cloakrooms were a little on the formal side. And there was a strange hot stuffiness peculiar to all entrance halls. The queer thing was that once you were actually inside the hall this smell vanished completely and was replaced by quite different ones. The thick, varnishy aroma of beeswax floor polish. Very efficient central heating. And the faintest possible trace of gas escaping somewhere.
But by the time you were in the hall itself it wasn’t the smells you were thinking about. It was the decorations. And in them was displayed a streak of lavishness that had remained carefully concealed outside the big swing doors. Gold and silver were the two colours. The walls, which were dimpled all over in the very latest neo-cinema style, must have been sprayed from a variety of paint tanks. They started off near the floor with an opulent sunset lushness and finished up at the ceiling, pale and gleaming like winter moonlight. Alternate banners of gold and silver, some thirty or forty of them at least, hung down from the high roof. And the big chandeliers, apparently suspended from nothing, appeared at intervals between the banners like something that had drifted in through the air from old Versailles. The professional lighting—the coloured spots and the snowstorm reflectors—were up in the balcony along with the strings for releasing the balloons. It was gold and silver everywhere like the budget of a mad Chancellor.
Amid the gold and silver gaiety, the Preeces’ table presented a sad, rather forlorn appearance that even the two bottles of South African hock did nothing to dispel.
That was because there were too many men. Too many men. And too few women. It was like a dance table in a monastery. But what else could Mrs. Preece have done but invite young men? she kept asking herself. It wasn’t as though there had been only Marcia to be considered. There was her own darling Julia as well. And the young man whom Mrs. Preece had rounded up for Julia was really a very nice young man. A bit on the silent side, perhaps. And slightly under average height. But extremely personable and well turned out. A kind of pocket prospective son-in-law, in fact. And how was she to know that her darling Julia, without saying a word about it, was going to invite someone on her own account?
What made it so peculiarly maddening was that Julia’s young man might have been the twin brother of the young man whom Mrs. Preece herself had cornered. Same size. Same colour hair. Same silence. When they were not dancing—which was most of the time—they just sat there, quietly sipping their hock, saying nothing.
Mrs. Preece realized now what a mistake it had been to add their new family doctor to the party. He was young. He was handsome. He was a Scot. Every time he had swept into Two Gables she had been impressed. Even rather excited by him. He was always so vigorous. So quick. So incisive about everything. But it was extraordinary how much he seemed to have changed now that she saw him against the background of the dance hall. Rugged, rather than handsome, was the word that she would now have applied to him. Like a great block of Aberdeenshire granite. If a fine drizzle had sprung up on his side of the table it would not have surprised her in the least. And, compared with the other two young men, he might have taken a vow of silence just as he was leaving the surgery. He was mute.
Not that Mr. Preece himself was being any help. He was sitting with his back to the company and keeping his neck screwed round so that he could see towards the door. That was because Marcia had most mysteriously failed to arrive. Mr. Preece could not understand it. Simply could not understand it at all. The last thing that he had done before leaving was to ring down to Model Gowns. And he had spoken to Marcia personally. Nine o’clock was when she had said that she would be there. And it was now after ten, getting on for five past in fact.
But Mr. Preece was never really at his best on this kind of occasion. The heat. The noise. The lights. The people. They were all rather too much for him. Secretly, he wished that he had not come. Then he could have been sitting in his comfortable chair in Carshalton, his beaker of Ovaltine within arm’s reach on the table beside him, and that week’s issue of Popular Gardening open upon his knee.
As it happened, Mrs. Preece too wished that she were back home. But for quite a different reason. A nervous woman at all times, she was convinced that at the last moment, just as they were ready to leave, she had gone back and turned on the gas fire in the bedroom. Turned it on. But not actually lit it. She could remember everything else. The bending down. The stiffness of the key. The hiss. Even the smell of the gas itself. But nothing, absolutely nothing, about the scraping of the match box on the match. In consequence, she was certain that the whole room, practically the whole house, must by now be full of gas. Simply one vast lethal chamber. With her loved ones, her cherubs, all peacefully asphyxiated in their beds. Or worse. For all she knew, the maid—deficient anyway—might already have struck a match somewhere in the kitchen or the scullery ... As Mrs. Preece sat there, gripping the sides of her small gilt chair, she could almost hear the whoosh, see the blinding sheet of scarlet flame, as Two Gables, Thirsk Avenue, Carshalton, disappeared for ever.
That was why she kept leaving the table to go out to one of the telephone boxes in the hall. And every time she came back she wondered whether it was merely the charred ends of a telephone cable that kept giving her the engaged tone, or whether the deficient maid was really talking to someone.
It was when she returned from the fifth attempt that she found that Marcia had arrived. And more than arrived, she had brought another man with her. That meant that there were now four sets of hungry male eyes all fixed on Marcia. And no one was paying even the slightest attention to her darling Julia. Marcia’s friend seemed such a dreadfully coarse, vulgar sort of man, too, Mrs. Preece thought. Compared with Marcia, who was wearing her new, slightly corpse-like make-up this evening and looked too spiritual to be in a dance hall at all, her companion might have spent his whole life at race meetings and the wrong sort of hotels.
At the offer of a glass of hock, he gave Mrs. Preece a wink and explained that he never drank anything stronger than whisky. What’s more, he was going to do something about it, he said. While Mr. Preece was still trying to attract his own waiter’s attention, Mr. Bulping managed somehow to get hold of another one. There was the distinctive rustle of a note, and the waiter went off towards the service door while Mr. Preece was still futilely snapping his fingers and beckoning.
Mr. Bulping did not seem so far even to have noticed Julia. Or the three young men. Or Mr. Preece, for that matter. He leant right across and addressed Mrs. Preece.
“Nice of you to invite me,” he said. “Marcia said you’d be short of men.”
In Sir Harry’s suite in the Royal Park Hotel, dinner was just being cleared away. It had been a good meal, and Sir Harry and his companion had a warm, comfortably full, slightly flushed kind of feeling.
“Eshtrornary woman, m’daughter-in-law,” Sir Harry remarked suddenly. “Really most eshtrornary.” He came up close to Major Cuzzens and tapped his forehead significantly. “Up there,” he added. “Mental.”
Major Cuzzens pursed up his lips, and took a long slow pull at his cigar before replying.
“Bad show,” he said. “Very.”
“Always been that way,” Sir Harry went on. “If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Like a kitten. Never know what’ll be next. Can’t tell for twenty-four hours. Remember that snake dancer?”
“Indian fellow, y’mean?”
Sir Harry nodded.
“Probably been murdered by now,” he continued. “Got his throat cut or something. Happens to most of ’em in the long run. Wanted me to go over to dinner.”
Major Cuzzens swung round in his chair.
“Who did? That snake dancer johnny?”
“No, m’daughter-in-law.”
The ash from Major Cuzzens’s cigar had fallen on to his waistcoat and he had to brush himself clean.
“Asked us, too. Remember now. Judith told me.”
“What d’you say?”
“Said I’d got a prior engagement.”
“Me, too.”
There was so much natural good fellowship and understanding in the situation that both men instinctively raised their glasses. Then Sir Harry started nervously.
“Didn’t mention my name, did you?”
Major Cuzzens considered.
“Don’t think so,” he replied. “Just said ‘a chap’.”
Sir Harry looked relieved.
“Better that way,” he explained. “Might have led to un-pleashantness. No point in dragging the two of us in.” Sir Harry paused. “Mad as a tiger if she could see us now,” he added. “Don’t like it if two men get along together. Makes ’em feel left out of it. Shows we can do without ’em.”
That remark struck Major Cuzzens as penetrating and profound. He was frequently amazed by the sheer wisdom that Sir Harry kept displaying. That was what made Sir Harry’s company such a tonic.
But already Sir Harry was speaking again.
“Shouldn’t have been having a little dinner party at all,” he said. “Not to-night. Firm’s got a dance on. Ought to have been there. Both of ’em. Can’t neglect the business like that. Always used to go when I was a bit younger.”
“No use taking chances,” Major Cuzzens agreed with him. “Got to look after ourselves.”
“Never did like those modern dances,” Sir Harry remarked. “Not my line of country. Give me the old-fashioned waltz every time. That’s what I call dancin’.” He leant back and hummed a few bars under his breath while his feet moved idly on the hearthrug. “‘Blue Danube.’ That was a good one,” he said at length. “And The Merry Widow. Better than those blasted foxtrots.”
“Can’t stand ’em,” Major Cuzzens agreed again. “Not like proper dancin’ at all.”
Sir Harry glanced at the clock. It showed ten-fifteen.
“What about lookin’ in for half an hour? Just to cheer ’em up. Can’t offend the Staff Association y’know.”
“I’m ready,” Major Cuzzens agreed for the last time. “Does y’good to get out for a bit.”
Sir Harry poured out another drink.
“Better have this first,” he said. “Nothing much to drink when we get there.”
Because it was the big night of the year, Mr. Rammell had ordered champagne for everyone at his table. It was so much sheer poison for him. He knew that. But there was nothing that he could do about it. It was just one of those things that were expected of him. Like inviting senior members of the staff over to the table to share a glass. Mr. Bloot’s turn, in fact, was just coming up.
Only this year, there was a difference. Hetty had asked for champagne at the table, too. And, when he arrived, Mr. Bloot showed an unusual degree of self-assurance.
Raising his glass, he toasted Mrs. Rammell as though she had been an ambassadress.
“Maht Ah say, ma’am,” he observed, with a wide, shiny smile, “on beharf of the whole starf what pleashah it gives us all to have Mr. Rammell and his lady here to-naht.”
Mrs. Rammell smiled back at him without rising. She was still in a thoroughly bad temper about having been made to come at all. And, above all things, she wanted to see what Tony was up to. Was he, or was he not, still fussing around that Privett girl? What made it so particularly maddening was that at the moment she couldn’t see either of them ... Then, hurriedly, she recovered herself. Turning to Mr. Bloot, she assured him that this was an evening that she and Mr. Rammell had been looking forward to all the year. Ever since the same time last year, in fact.
It was with something of a flourish that Mr. Bloot drained back his glass and returned it to the table. He was, however, just a shade impetuous. The base of his glass caught the edge of an ash-tray that was already standing there, and there was a little tinkle of glass falling on the gilt table top.
Mr. Bloot drew his breath in sharply.
“Pud’n me, ma’am,” he said. “Pud’n me.”
And to show that he wasn’t the kind of man who would allow broken glass to litter up the tables, he took out his handkerchief and began flicking at the chips. But table-flicking is an art. Only waiters can perform it with impunity. On the upward sweep of the handkerchief Mr. Bloot caught one of the red carnations in the tall vase in the centre of the table. At one moment, there was Mrs. Rammell, smiling up politely at a tall florid man whose name she had forgotten and, at the next, she was frantically backing away from a cascade of water and red carnations ...
Mr. Bloot was still saying “Pud’n me. Pud’n me,” long after Mrs. Rammell had gone across to the Powder Room to dry herself. But he was not really thinking of Mrs. Rammell at all. He was thinking about Hetty. Something told him that she wouldn’t like being left so long. And he was right. Hetty was sitting at a table with the Privetts. At that moment, Mr. Privett was retelling the story of his accident. And Hetty, with her shoes half-kicked off beneath the table, was wondering how in God’s name she was ever going to be able to stick her future husband’s friends.
But Mr. Bloot himself was behaving magnificently. He had overcome his embarrassment. And, in a mood of arch gallantry, he was now leaning over Mr. Rammell.
“Maht Ah presume to introdooce mah brahd-to-be?” he asked. “It’s what you maht call her first public appearance.”
Considering how much he disliked staff dances, young Tony Rammell was diligently doing his stuff. Under his father’s directions he had already danced with a thin, hawk-faced creature who looked like minor European Royalty and really came from Handbags. With a pale, rather frightened-looking Elliot-Fisher clerk out of Invoicing—that was because his father had said that the behind-the-scenes girls never got any proper notice taken of them. With Miss Sulgrave who had fitted up Irene Privett with the new party dress that she wasn’t wearing. And with a big motherly creature who turned out to be Corsets. On his own account he had managed to slip in a couple of dances with the tall, Cleopatra-like Miss Anson from Hairdressing, and two more with a small, pretty, nameless one who worked in Cosmetics.
So far he hadn’t danced even once with Irene. That was partly because he had been kept working so hard by his father. And partly because the Privetts’ table was so far away. Irene herself didn’t seem to be missing him. She had danced the last two dances with the young man from Travel whom she had met that night at the Staff Hostel. And, Mrs. Privett was pleased to notice, she was looking her absolute prettiest.
Not that there was anything exceptional in that. There were pretty girls practically everywhere you looked. But that is the way it is with all staff dances. The transformation is sudden and complete. Generations of employers have been amazed because of it. It is always hard to believe that even the plainest girls can leave the office at five-thirty, dim and colourless and with hair all anyhow, and re-emerge two hours later looking like sleek professional beauties who would faint clean away at the mere thought of having to earn their own living.
And Rammell’s, remember, had at least more than averagely presentable ones to start with.
Hetty’s arrival at the Rammells’ table coincided almost exactly with that of Sir Harry and Major Cuzzens. And altogether it was very nearly too much for Mrs. Rammell.
In the first place, Sir Harry wasn’t expected at all. Nor, for that matter, was Major Cuzzens. And the big flamboyantly-dressed woman whom Mr. Bloot had brought over was a complete stranger to her. But it was not merely the matter of overcrowding that was worrying her. It was Sir Harry. She had detected a glint in his eye that seriously alarmed her. Apparently, at the mere sight of Mr. Bloot’s lady friend, he had been bowled clean over. He stood there simply gaping at her. And, as soon as she had been introduced, he insisted on having her sit next to him.
“So you’re a new girl, are you?” he said. “Don’t expect you know a soul. But don’t worry. I’ll look after you.”
A moment later, when Mrs. Rammell looked across, Hetty and Sir Harry were holding hands.
Over at the Preeces’ table things were quieter. A great deal quieter. Altogether too quiet, in fact. Even Mr. Bulping’s champagne had done nothing to raise Marcia’s spirits. She sat there pale and spiritualised. Like a despondent lady-angel. Mr. Bulping felt more than a bit despondent himself. He didn’t see what more he could have done for her. It had been all her idea to come to this god-awful dance in the first place. And it had been left to him to make more of an evening of it by buying the champagne.
He leant forward.
“What’s the matter, girlie?” he asked. “Don’t like the bubbles, eh?”
Champagne was exactly in his line, anyway. And he had just the thing for it. It was a dainty little toy that opened up like a flower as soon as the end was pressed down. He bent over and started twirling it in her glass in a bland, proprietorial manner as though anything that was hers belonged to him already.
“Drink it up and say ta-ta to everybody,” he whispered as soon as his head was down close to hers. “You’ve made your number. Let’s be getting back to your place.”
Marcia smiled. But she seemed scarcely to have heard him. And it was in any case purely her professional smile that she gave him. The one that had been photographed so often. It didn’t mean a thing. She was far too depressed to do any real smiling. But she couldn’t possibly explain. Didn’t even know herself what it was that was depressing her so much. It wasn’t anything in particular. It was everything. The staff dance. Mrs. Preece’s fidgets. The boy-scout expression on the face of the Aberdonian doctor. The state of her bank balance. The way she wasn’t sleeping. The fact that Woman and Beauty had just brought out a picture supplement for the under-twenty-fives. The sudden realization that she still hadn’t been to see her mother. The knowledge that she ought to go to the dentist. The pressure of Mr. Bulping’s knee up against hers beneath the table. The size of his hands. The way he kept mopping his forehead after every dance. His breathing. Everything about him, in fact.
It was Tony who interrupted her thoughts. Sent over by his father, he came obediently across and asked Marcia for a dance.
For a moment it seemed to Mr. Bulping as though she were hesitating. So, cupping her pale white hand with his hot red one, he gave a little squeeze.
“O.K.,” he said. “Have this one. Then we’ll be getting along.”
But it was not really hesitation on Marcia’s part. It was simply her natural daze-state. She had hardly even noticed that anyone had spoken to her. Instead of replying, she rose slowly and gracefully and started to go on to the dance floor.
It was usually at this moment that she felt happiest. Most sure of herself. Out there in the centre of the room people would be watching. Admiring. Other women would simply cease to exist as she came near them. But to-night it was different. It was this terrible despondency. This despair. At the sight of Tony, standing there waiting for her, she very nearly began weeping.
“Oh, God,” the thought formed itself inside her. “How young he looks. I’m beginning to notice things like that nowadays. It shows what’s happening to me. I must be growing ...”
Just in time she managed to suppress the forbidden word. She even continued to brighten up enough to give Tony one of her really sweetest smiles. Smiled, while inside her there continued the same gnawing, the same heartache. Through a thick mist she heard Tony asking what she thought of the band. And, through the same mist, came back the answer in her own voice that it was marvellous, simply marvellous.
It may have been because of her thoughts that Marcia looked so beautiful. All that emotion going on inside had definitely helped. Even Tony noticed the difference. In a sad, elemental fashion Marcia seemed suddenly to have come to life. She kept reminding Tony of something. Someone. Somewhere. He couldn’t remember what. Who. Where.
Then it all came back to him.
“D’you ever go to the ballet?” he asked.
Marcia’s eyes were half-closed already. She opened them, just for a moment.
“Of course,” she replied dreamily.
What else could she say? It would have sounded too silly to explain that her kind of men somehow hadn’t turned out to be the ballet-going sort. And she never went anywhere alone.
“Like to come to Giselle sometime?”
“Adore it.”
“Next Tuesday?”
She began thinking round desperately in her mind. Was there anything on? Had she promised anything? Would Mr. Bulping be in town? Would ... would he mind?
“I’ll have to look at my book,” she said safely.
“Let me know in the morning.”
“Promise.”
They were up at the quiet end of the room by now. Away from the band. And their heads were close together. Marcia’s last words were almost whispered.
And as she danced, she could feel a change coming over her. She no longer felt sad. Merely ethereal. The way saints must feel. It was a kind of rapture that she hadn’t known since she was first engaged. Only this was sweeter. Sharper.
“But how young he is,” the thought kept coming back to her. “How inexperienced. I know that he’ll be hurt sometime. Wounded. If only I could help him somehow. Shield him. Look after him. Show him that ...”
The band had banged itself noisily to a close. Everyone started back towards the tables. But Marcia did not move. The trance-state had come over her again. She wanted the band to go on playing for ever. So that she and Tony could just dance. Just dance. And dance. And dance.
Anything, in fact, to postpone the moment when it was all over and, back at the flat, Mr. Bulping started to say good night in his own peculiarly enthusiastic fashion.
But this time the band had done more than simply stop playing. The boys had pushed their chairs back, and the saxophonist was wiping his mouthpiece. Up in the ceiling heights, the big gold and silver chandeliers were coming on. The moment had come for Mr. Bloot to take charge of things.
He had already reached the Rammells’ table. And at the sight of him Mrs. Rammell nervously drew back a little. But it was not Mrs. Rammell whom Mr. Bloot wanted. It was Sir Harry. And this was difficult. Because Sir Harry was still too much engrossed in Hetty to notice anyone else. It was her ear-rings that seemed to fascinate him. He had already adjusted one of them. And he was now at work on the other. Because it was on the far side of her, he had his arm right round her neck. Mr. Bloot had to cough twice quite loudly before Sir Harry even noticed that he was there.
“Pud’n me, sir,” he said, slowly and as distinctly as he could manage through the enormous smile that he was wearing. “The prahzes. The nuffelty and speshiulity prahzes. Would you be so kahnd as to excort our lady patron on to the plahtform?”
Already on the other side of the table Mrs. Rammell was gathering herself together, smoothing out invisible wrinkles in her long black gloves. But for Sir Harry there was only one woman in the whole roomful of nearly six hundred of them. And his mouth was close against her ear at this moment.
“What about my little kitten presentin’ ’em?” he asked.
The words that Sir Harry had intended to be whispered had reached Mrs. Rammell quite distinctly. She immediately put her bag back down on the table again, and folded her hands in her lap in the attitude of a woman who has not been listening. Motionless, she sat there waiting for the impossibly big woman opposite to refuse.
But it was not left to Hetty. Already Sir Harry was hauling her up on to her feet. If she attempted to resist now there would be a struggle.
“Up’s a daisy,” he said. “Give ’em something worth looking at for a change.”
The wedding-day had come round at last.
Mr. Bloot, naturally, was feeling a bit keyed-up. Edgy. And it wasn’t merely the solemn fact of matrimony that was worrying him. He was worried about Rammell’s as well. Because, even though things were usually pretty quiet on a Saturday morning, he still didn’t like the idea of no proper direction in the main vestibule.
To-day, moreover, Rammell’s wouldn’t have Mr. Privett either. That was because Mr. Privett had agreed to act as best man.
Mrs. Privett herself hadn’t been any too sure about it. There was so much connected with the wedding of which she disapproved. In particular, register offices. Second marriages. Husbands who moved in on their wives. Wives in business on their own. Hetty herself. And Mr. Bloot for wanting to marry her.
And in the end, Mr. Privett had been forced to appeal unashamedly to pure sentiment.
“Think of Emmie,” he had said. “She’d rather you were there. It ... it’ll be a link somehow.”
Mrs. Privett had been thinking a lot about poor Emmie during the past few weeks. It was as though it had been yesterday she had last seen her.
“All right,” she had finally said. “Just this once. But only for her sake. Not for theirs.”
Even though the ceremony was not until ten o’clock, Mr. Privett insisted on setting out shortly after nine. Kentish Town to Finsbury Park via Tetsbury Road is rather a tricky little journey. And Mr. Privett guessed that Mr. Bloot would be in the need of company.
As it turned out, their early visit was just as well. They found a morose and disconsolate bridegroom, sitting in a practically empty apartment. The second-hand furniture dealer from the Archway Road had two jobs on hand that day. And he had made the collection from Tetsbury Road his first.
“Mah favourite chair,” Mr. Bloot told them. “Raht from underneath me. And mah table. Before Ah’d even finished.”
To keep him from brooding, Mr. Privett suggested that they should leave straightaway. Mrs. Privett, however, insisted that she should stay long enough to wash up. There was Mr. Bloot’s cup and teapot that had been left standing on the mantelpiece. It was the only place that he could find when the table had been whisked away from him.
“It won’t take a moment,” Mrs. Privett said. “And it’ll look better.”
Mr. Bloot watched her go.
“There was another cupper tea there,” he observed. “Ah’d only had one.” He paused. “Seems funny to think Ah shan’t never see Tetsbury Road again,” he went on. “Ah could find mah way here with mah eyes shut.”
The thought of permanent departure visibly saddened him. Even though Mr. Privett tried hard to cheer him up, it was plain that Mr. Bloot was drooping. And by the time they had left the house his spirits were even lower.
“Did you notice?” he asked. “Nothing from the Gurneys. Not even er nandshake. Ah wouldn’t treater dog that way.”
As much as anything else to take Mr. Bloot’s mind off his last bitterness, Mr. Privett suggested that they should hurry. And he was so insistent on speed, that Mr. Bloot panicked. He began striding out. Disregarding his two smaller companions, he forged remorselessly ahead until Mr. and Mrs. Privett were almost running.
In the result, it was 9.30 sharp when they reached the Register Office at the Town Hall. The porter seemed surprised to see them. And slightly resentful. He had the air of a man who dislikes being caught unawares with mop and bucket. But the waiting-room was at their disposal, he said. They could make themselves comfortable in there if they liked.
Not that this was easy. The oilcloth was still damp under foot from its morning wash down. And the hard chairs and dark green dado round the walls might have come out of an infirmary. The only decoration in the room was a framed notice advertising local vaccination facilities.
“Well,” said Mr. Privett brightly. “We’ve got here before the bride. That’s all that matters.”
But Mr. Bloot did not seem in any mood for brightness. He was still noticeably depressed about something.
“It’ser pity abaht that other cuppertea,” he said broodingly. “Ah could ’ave done with it now.”
Because Mr. Privett realized that it would be entirely up to him to keep things going, he crossed over and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.
“Cheer up,” he said. “It’s only for life.”
Mrs. Privett winced at the sight. So long as she could remember she had always been irritated by the way her husband kept fussing over Mr. Bloot. He treated him as though he were some kind of gigantic toddler. And she felt suddenly that she could stand no more of it.
“Go and open the door,” she said. “Otherwise they may miss us.”
After that, they all three sat there in a draught as well. But at least they could see what was going on. And at ten minutes to ten when a tall, important-looking man went into the room opposite with his arms full of papers they knew that they had seen what they were waiting for.
“That’s him all right,” Mr. Privett observed over his shoulder. “Won’t be long now.”
But Mr. Bloot was past consolation. He might have been a condemned man having his own executioner pointed out to him.
“Not if the lady’s on time, that is,” he replied. “Not if she is.”
But he need not have worried. It was still two minutes to ten when the glass doors at the end of the corridor opened and Hetty began to come towards them. At the sight of her, Mr. Bloot’s heart gave a great bump. She was wearing a bright, peach-coloured coat, with a fox fur slung over one shoulder. But it was the little hat with a veil that did it. It added just that note of demureness that might otherwise have been missing. Mr. Bloot wanted to rush up and embrace her.
And, to Mr. Privett’s relief, she was obviously in top spirits. She came straight in as though she were thoroughly accustomed to being married.
“Hadn’t any of you got a shilling for the gas?” she asked. “This place is freezing.”
It was not until she was actually inside the room with them that they noticed that she was being followed. Hidden somewhere behind the peachiness came her escort. He, too, was dressed for the occasion. He was wearing a light, rather large check suit that showed beneath his brown overcoat. And his tie, all circles and lightning flashes, seemed to have come straight from California.
Mr. Bloot recognized him gloomily as one of Hetty’s poker companions. And could not help wondering why he had been invited.
Not that there was any time for introductions. The porter had put away his broom and bucket and now presented a brisk, civic appearance. He asked if they would mind stepping into the next room, please.
It was the tall, important-looking man all right. A registrar of nearly thirty years’ standing, he was doing holiday relief work for the resident Registrar. He exuded professionalism and efficiency. And he was quick in sizing up things. One glance at the little company and he knew that it was the light check that was marrying the pale peach.
“Here in the middle if you please,” he said to Hetty and her companion. “And”—he turned to Mr. Bloot and the Privetts— “at the side if you don’t mind.”
Mr. Bloot was obediently making his way towards the fireplace when Hetty stopped him.
“Oh, no you don’t,” she said. “You can’t slip out of it like that.” She turned to the man beside him. “Hop it. Chick,” she added. “You don’t want to get mixed up in this.”
The Registrar sat back in silence while the game of musical chairs went on before him. He was not taking any further chances. There is nothing that more easily makes a laughing stock of a good Registrar than for him inadvertently to marry the wrong couple.
“Are we all settled?” he asked finally.
But Mr. Bloot was too much on edge to reassure him. Now that the moment had actually come, he was feeling distinctly faint and swimmy. He hoped only that he would be able to sit through the ceremony without fainting. The premature arrival of the furniture dealer, the wastage of his second cup of tea, the pace of the road race through Tufnell Park had all been too much for him. He was sweating.
That was why he made such a seemingly reluctant bridegroom. Whereas Hetty each time answered up loudly and cheerfully, Mr. Bloot might have been having second thoughts. He kept wiping his face and gulping audibly. Twice Hetty had to nudge him. And the second time the Registrar asked her quite sharply to let Mr. Bloot speak up for himself.
It was in the same mood of vacancy and dreamlike remoteness that Mr. Bloot signed the register and put out his hand for the certificate. “Aaah!” he said when he got hold of it. “Ut lahst.” And he began to read. “Augustus Archibald Bloot, widower, of 17 Tetsbury Road ...” that was him all right. And there in the next line his loved one. “Amy Henrietta Florence, divorced, of 23b Artillery Mansions ...”
Divorced! Mr. Bloot’s heart missed a beat. Thank goodness that he had come to in time to save Hetty’s good name.
He leant over and addressed the Registrar.
“Wot’s the meaning of this Ah’d lakh to know?” he demanded, pointing at the offending word. “Oooze responsible?”
The Registrar bent anxiously forward over the sheet of paper, and even Chick came round and peered across his shoulder. Only Hetty herself and the two Privetts were temporarily out of the discussion. That was because Mr. Privett, to Mrs. Privett’s great astonishment, had suddenly become remarkably skittish and had announced that he was about to kiss the bride.
It was not much of a kiss, however. For no sooner had Hetty pushed up her veil than she heard the one word, “divorced,” being indignantly repeated by Mr. Bloot. And she immediately thrust Mr. Privett away from her.
“Give it to me,” she demanded, going up to the table and snatching the certificate clean out of the Registrar’s hands. “It’s my marriage so I suppose I’m entitled to it, aren’t I?”
Then folding it up as though it were a circular she prepared to thrust it into her handbag.
“But it says you’re ...” Mr. Bloot began.
He got no further, however. For Hetty kissed him. And it was a real kiss, this time. The little man in the check suit looked on, aghast and incredulous. He had merely read about such kisses. Never actually seen one. When she released him, Mr. Bloot was too exhausted to speak.
“Why don’t you stop worrying?” Hetty asked. “You’ve got me, haven’t you?”
It was early for a wedding breakfast. But after the cold of the November day outside, the interior of the flat seemed unusually warm and welcoming. And Hetty had thought of everything. She’d even got the daily woman to come in two hours before her usual time so that it should all be ready.
In the result, it was a spread that was waiting for them. Running her eye hurriedly over the table Mrs. Privett noted sausage rolls, three kinds of sandwich and a plate of shrimp vol-au-vent as well as mixed gateaux and a white wedding cake. But she also noted something else. Nothing on the whole buffet was home-made.
Not that there was much time for reflection, however. Chick had been put in charge of the drinks. And he was undeniably quick. They had scarcely fitted themselves inside the room when there was a loud plop. The first champagne cork had already been prised out. Then, at an hour in the day when Mrs. Privett would normally have been still tidying up the home, she found herself glass in hand preparing to drink the bride’s and bridegroom’s health.
It was Mr. Privett who proposed it. And for the second time that day, his social jauntiness amazed her. It was a side of his nature that he normally kept concealed. But there was a simple explanation. It was merely that he wanted to do his best for Mr. Bloot and not let him down in Hetty’s eyes. He was therefore deliberately arch and facetious. He referred to “the young couple”. He predicted that Hetty would be the making of Mr. Bloot and complimented them both on the snug little home that they had waiting for them. He even said that he was afraid that the front stairs might prove a bit tricky for the baby carriage. And in the result, Hetty was delighted. Simply delighted. She hadn’t known that the little man could possibly have had it in him. Mr. Privett was rather pleased, too. But not Mrs. Privett. She was remembering poor Emmie. And she could not imagine how Mr. Privett could apparently have forgotten her so completely.
The other person who did not seem to have appreciated the toast was Mr. Bloot himself. He seemed hardly to have heard it. He just stood there beside Hetty, dazed, incredulous, uncomprehending. Every time Chick handed him a glass of champagne he took it automatically. But without enthusiasm. It might just as well have been medicine that he was accepting.
Not so Mr. Privett. He took it. And he liked it. And took more of it. In consequence, he became talkative. Putting his arm round Chick’s shoulder, he confided in him.
“ ... thass why I’m so glad iss all worked out this way,” he went on. “Comfobly settled for life. He d’serves it. Iss no more than his due.”
Here he dropped his voice and taking a firmer grip on Chick’s shoulder he lowered his face until he was speaking confidentially into his listener’s ear.
“I don’t mind telling you,” he finished up, “he’s had a hard life. No home comforss. I only hope she makes him ver’ ver’ happy.”
But Mr. Privett was forgetting that Chick was Hetty’s friend, not Mr. Bloot’s. It was evident from the way in which he reacted that he didn’t give a damn for Mr. Bloot’s happiness. All that he was thinking about was Hetty. And from the way he kept glancing from one to the other he might even have been jealous. In any case, he was certainly loyal. He was also more accustomed than Mr. Privett to taking an occasional glass or two of champagne out of hours. He was not in the least garrulous. Merely a shade touchy.
“What about her?” he asked. “Doesn’t she deserve it? My God, she had a hell of a time with her first one, I can tell you. I wonder she was prepared to go through with it again ...”
They broke off because Mr. Bloot was already sidling over in their direction. He still wore a look of complete unconsciousness as though he were sleep-walking. But it was evident that somewhere behind the mask the wheels were again slowly turning.
“Don’t forget about the budgies,” he said brokenly. “It’s ... it’s not just the food. It’s company they need. Someone they can trust. Someone to ... to talk to.”
Then, as soon as the others had gone, Mr. Bloot threw his arms around Hetty. And holding her in an embrace so fierce that she cried out involuntarily, he unburdened his heart.
“You should er told me,” he said brokenly. “Ah never even guessed. Ah’ve never known anybody who was divorced before.”
There is always something faintly depressing about a holiday resort out of season. Bournemouth is easily one of the best. The resident population sees to that. And the hotels are the kind that keep open all the year round. But it was still cold. Undeniably cold. The little clump of pine trees at the end of the road looked pinched and frost-bitten.
In the circumstances, Mr. Bloot would not have minded if the Royal Meadway had been a little farther inland. The wind came in straight off the sea. And the hotel, protected only by a low hedge, seemed to be getting most of it. As he stood outside paying off the taxi driver, he could hear it—practically solid ozone—whistling past him to flatten itself against the uninhabited balconies and the deserted sun lounge. Even the hotel itself was not quite so warm as he had hoped. Or so airtight. Inside the lounge, the only really comfortable-looking person whom he had seen since he had left London was the receptionist. Dressed in a knitted jumper with a thick cardigan on top, she was crouched inside her small glass cubicle over a portable electric fire, drinking tea.
But she was expecting him all right. And she could not understand why he seemed to be in such a state of indecision about signing the register. With the hotel pen on its little captive chain held firmly in his hand, he just stood there doing nothing.
That was because he was still in a daze. He scarcely recognized himself. It seemed that since getting up that morning he had become someone else. The Mr. Bloot whom he knew was a widower who went quietly home every evening to bachelor apartments in Tufnell Park. Whereas this Mr. Bloot, the new one, stayed with divorced women in private suites in expensive hotels. Twice the other Mr. Bloot put the pen down and wiped his forehead.
“Forgotten your name, dear?”
It was Hetty. Tired of waiting for him by the lift, she had come over.
“Well, go on,” she said. “Put down anything you like. I don’t mind. I’m frozen.”
It was because he was being so rushed that Mr. Bloot made the silly slip of writing down his own name first. But, having started, he had to go through with it. And with a little mumble of apology he passed the pen over to her. But she ignored it.
“Just put ‘Mr. and Mrs.’ in front,” she said. “It saves paper.”
The alteration, however, was not a success. On the clean, orderly sheet of signatures it had a strangely illicit kind of look. The receptionist by now was obviously doubtful of the whole episode.
Hetty, however, was not put out. The one thing that she wanted was to get up to the suite and kick her shoes off. And because Mr. Bloot was still scratching and blotting, she picked up the key and went ahead of him. If he hadn’t hurried, he would have missed the lift altogether.
As it was, the sight of the bedroom with its twin beds was almost too much for him. He felt dizzy again. And he found it strangely embarrassing the way the porter went round switching on lights and opening cupboards as though he were going to move in along with them.
He wished that the man would go away. So, apparently, did Hetty.
“Well, why don’t you give him something?” she asked rather irritably. “How’d you like to have to carry up four suitcases?”
Even after the porter had left and the door had been shut on them, Mr. Bloot remained there, motionless.
“It’ser rum go,” he said at last. “That’s what it is. A proper teaser.”
“Whatever’s come over you?” Hetty asked.
She had gone over to the dressing-table and was carefully smoothing out her hair.
But still Mr. Bloot did not move.
“Wot was he lahk, your first?” he blurted out suddenly. “Wot was he lahk?”
“What was he like?” Hetty repeated. “He was no good. That’s what he was like.”
She paused.
“And for goodness’ sake ring down for a drink,” she told him. “This is supposed to be my honeymoon.”