Marcia did not forget. On the contrary, she remembered all that night. While Mr. Bulping was still with her, in fact. But when morning came she didn’t see how she could very well do anything about it. Not unless Tony came back and asked her again, that is.
And the astonishing thing was that Tony did ask her again. Long after she thought that he had forgotten. They met quite casually. Just as Marcia was coming out of the Salon. Up to that moment, the one thing that she had wanted had been to flop down somewhere. Simply to get off her feet. But at the sight of Tony, she remained standing, one hand on hip, model fashion.
“Weren’t you going to ring me, or something?” he asked.
It was quite extraordinary the effect even his voice had on her. As soon as he began speaking, she might have been back on the dance floor with the band playing somewhere away in the distance. And the gold and silver lights. And her dreary old beige dress that she had chosen specially for Mr. Preece. And all those endlessly refilled glasses of champagne.
“Was I?” she asked. “Tell me. What about?”
She lowered her eyes while she was speaking. And then raised them again. As she did so, she realized with a start that it was a mannerism that she hadn’t used for years. Not since she was a girl. A mere beginner.
What was so annoying, however, was that Tony did not seem to have noticed. Possibly hadn’t even been looking. His voice still sounded entirely casual. Matter-of-fact.
“I asked if you’d care to come along to Giselle” he told her. “Can if you like. I’m going.”
She was a little disappointed that he should put it like that. It didn’t sound as though he minded either way. But it was definitely being asked again. And that was all that really counted.
“I’d adore it,” she said.
She was using her husky voice by now. It practically came natural to her when she was tired.
“O.K.,” Tony replied. “See you at six then. I’ve got the car.”
Because it was all so rushed and sudden, Marcia was in a difficulty. It was nearly a quarter to five already. And she had nothing to wear. The dress in which she had come to Rammell’s that morning was a strictly plain black one. Not even the dress for a cocktail party. And, of course, her shoes were all wrong, too. So was her bag. And her ear-rings. If it had been anyone else but Tony, she would simply have refused. But there was something in the sheer thoughtlessness that she found rather touching. It showed how impetuous he was. How boyish.
And with another walk-through in Model Dresses at five-thirty there was no possibility of going back to the flat to change. She therefore had to do what she simply hated doing. She was forced to borrow something from stock.
The dress she chose was one of the new Italian models. With a single shoulder-strap. And just absolutely no back at all. Definitely the kind of dress that required wearing. And definitely the kind of dress that she knew that she could wear.
She stood regarding herself in one of Rammell’s tall mirrors. And really the effect was quite lovely.
“But somehow it’s not ... not me,” she was forced to confess to herself. “It ... it might be anyone.”
There was no time, however, for regrets. It was nearly ten to six by now. She had managed to find a pair of shoes that weren’t too terrible. And Furs had sent her up the familiar, over-insured mink that she always wore when she was representing Rammell’s anywhere. The fact that it was old did not matter. There is something about mink that is always reassuring. Marcia felt a warm, suffusing glow of satisfaction beginning to run through her.
“Oh, God, have you gone and changed?”
She noticed as he said it that Tony himself was looking even untidier than usual. It was something to do with his shirt. The corners of his collar did not lie down properly. And his hair was all anyhow.
“I thought you’d rather,” she told him.
“I don’t mind, if you don’t,” he replied cheerfully. “I was only afraid that you might get knocked about a bit.”
It was not until they reached the car that she understood what he meant. Then it was obvious. Up to that moment, she had somehow expected it to be Mr. Rammell’s Rolls that they would be using. Or a taxi. Anything, in fact, but this low awful red thing to which Tony was leading her. The sides were cut away sharply. And the seats were nothing more than two little rubber cushions with curved backs.
“Thank God, it isn’t raining,” Tony remarked.
This time she saw at once what he meant. The horrible little car had a mackintosh sheet that could be pulled over it. But no hood. And, even though the sides had been scooped out, it was still difficult to get into. That was because a starting handle and a spare petrol can were lying on the floor where her feet were supposed to go. Tony moved the starting handle and the petrol can. But there was nothing that he could do about the hand-brake and the gear lever. Marcia had to gather her dress round her knees so that he could even drive.
“Better look out,” Tony reminded her. “This car’s filthy.”
Because of the cold and the rush of air on her face, Marcia did not attempt to speak. When Tony asked if she would like to eat something straight away, she merely nodded. She supposed that he’d understood. But she couldn’t imagine where he was proposing to take her. He had been doubling through the smaller back streets of Soho. And now he was making for somewhere on the other side of Seven Dials. The Ivy, possibly? Or Boulestin’s? Or Rule’s? Or was it another quick way through to the Savoy?
He glanced towards her for a moment.
“Pub be all right for a sandwich?” he asked. “Get a proper meal afterwards.”
This time Marcia did not even nod. She was too frozen. She simply sat beside him, shivering inside the mink, wondering what on earth her hair was going to look like when they got there.
On the whole, of all the parts of London that she knew, she felt that Covent Garden was the one she hated most. The surrounding buildings were either wired up and empty or shuttered like a row of catacombs. And up the narrow side streets barrows had been turned over on their sides and left roughly lashed to piles of empty baskets. The whole place had the air of having been evacuated after an unsuccessful spell of street-fighting.
It was not until they were actually inside the Opera House that Marcia began to feel better. The staircase was distinctly promising. And the chandeliers had just that note of elegance that had been so conspicuously lacking outside. Scarcely like a theatre at all, in fact. More like a private mansion. The sort that can be hired for charities and things. Marcia began to feel at home.
And as she went through into the auditorium she understood why Tony should have wanted to come. In a restrained cathedrallike way it was certainly impressive. It was the size that did it. And the emptiness. As though a giant oval gasometer had been cleaned up and furnished entirely on the inside. The one thing that was puzzling was why ballet of all things should have to be conducted on Cup Final scale.
The orchestra was just arriving. The players came trooping in, whole hordes of them, through the two doors leading from somewhere underneath the stage. It was the numbers that Marcia found astonishing. The whole thing was music-making as Cecil B. de Mille might have arranged it.
But from that distance, it was all unreal somehow. It might have been a marionette band that was being assembled. Then the puppet conductor himself was brought on. And all the real people near at hand began clapping. The house lights went down. And the conductor, very expertly manipulated, gave two peremptory taps with his toy baton. Immediately, the whole puppet orchestra—ingeniously hinged violinists, woodwind players, brass and percussion—straightened up as though the concealed strings had suddenly been pulled tight. The overture had begun.
“I wonder what time it all finishes,” Marcia found herself wondering. “I forgot to ask.”
But all that really mattered was that she was beginning to get warm again. And the music was pleasant rather than otherwise. Even though she couldn’t truthfully say that she enjoyed it, it was nice being able to watch it all happening. And it was heaven, sheer heaven, having Tony there beside her. She glanced across at him. His hand was up to his cheek. His eyes were half-closed. And on his face was an expression of sheer inward happiness. It was wonderful, seeing him as happy as all that. But, in a sense, he was too happy. Too abstracted. He seemed to have forgotten about her entirely.
The dancing itself, Marcia had to admit, was a just a teeny-weeny bit tedious. And—oh, so embarrassing. Really, those young men in sausage-skin tights. How they could do it. There must be someone who could have told them. One of the girls perhaps. They certainly looked serious enough. Not so much as a smile anywhere. Come to that, only about five out of ten for looks. And less for deportment. They all had a curious duck-like movement with their feet turned too far outwards. Marcia longed to go down on to the stage to show them just once how to walk properly. But why worry? Nobody else seemed to have noticed how much was wrong. And if you just sat there, not concentrating on anything, an agreeably anaesthetic sensation came over you. It was like taking a long hot bath without the nuisance of having to dry yourself afterwards. The only difficulty lay in being absolutely sure that you could keep awake.
“Like a drink?” Tony asked when the interval came round.
Marcia rose obediently. It was gratifying that he had even remembered that she was there. And he was actually looking at her now. That was better still. Because she could tell that he was admiring her. It was lovely to be standing there with him, and feel his admiration run all over her.
“Enjoying it?”
“Dreamy,” she answered. “Absolutely dreamy.”
But the drink, all the same, was a mistake. Because it wasn’t really a drink that these people wanted. It was talk. And such talk, too. It wasn’t enough apparently that they had just been watching all that dancing. They had to keep on about it. Go over it. Again. And again. And again.
Tony seemed to know so many people, too. Marcia found herself being introduced on all sides. To pale, untidy young men. And tall intense young women. And not very satisfactory introductions, either. Because immediately they met, they started talking. But not to Marcia. After one or two attempts, they were forced to give that up. Then they talked round her. Across her. Behind her. And all that Marcia could do was to stand there. Listening. Smiling. Looking beautiful.
“It’s worse than a point-to-point if you don’t like racing,” she found herself thinking.
And, at the thought, it all came back to her. The big cold house. The week-end parties. The bad weather. Her first husband. The endless talk about horses ...
The bell in the foyer started ringing. Tony took her arm.
“Not bored?” he asked.
By the time they got outside, the rain had started. Real steady stuff. The kind that always falls round Covent Garden. Marcia recognized straight away that it was hopeless. Nobody ever went out in rain like that.
Tony inspected things for a moment.
“Better bring the car right round,” he said. “You wait there.”
It was years—God knows how many years—since anyone had treated her like this. Not since the early thirties. But here she hurriedly checked herself. She mustn’t go on having thoughts like that. It was terribly morbid remembering dates. And it really did break her heart seeing Tony dashing off into the downpour for her sake. That pleased her. It showed that, unlike so many other girls, she really had been getting steadily nicer all the time.
And even sitting there in the car with that ghastly mackintosh contraption pulled over her, she still forgave him. Didn’t even mind the cold. Or the drips. Or anything. Because she had suddenly realized that this was the sort of girl she really was. Informal. Unselfish. Full of the simple joy of living. And so young, oh, so truly young, at heart.
Supper, too, was bliss. Absolute bliss. It was The Chalice that Tony chose. It might have been awkward, of course, if Mr. Bulping had dropped in on the off chance of finding her. But there was no sign of Mr. Bulping. He was up somewhere in the Midlands, arranging contracts and things. And, in any case, this wouldn’t have been the kind of evening that Mr. Bulping understood. To-night everything was different. Ethereal. Out of this world. Pure.
The only thing against it was the sadness. No matter what she did, it kept breaking over her. Not just waves either. Long devastating rollers. Even out on the dance floor, actually in his arms, she was ready to weep. And all because Tony looked younger than ever this evening.
“Oh, God, make him love me,” she kept imploring. “Make him feel that he can’t do without me. Let me take care of him. Let me be the one who sees that he doesn’t come to harm. I don’t mind how he behaves. Let him trample over me. Only don’t let him ever go away.”
It was nearly two o’clock when they got back to Marcia’s block of flats. By then, the streets were quite empty. And there were no lights showing in any of the windows. Everyone else in London was asleep.
Marcia was shivering again.
“T ... t ... thanks s ... so much for a w ... w ... wonderful evening,” she began, her teeth chattering.
But Tony did not seem in the least ready to go.
“Don’t I even get a drink?” he asked.
As they stood there by the horrible little car, it seemed to Marcia that they were quite alone. Not just alone in London. It might have been a desert island, or the moon, it was so silent. And ever since she had been a girl, the thought of desert islands and the moon had always affected her strangely.
“It’s t ... t ... terribly late,” she started to say and then stopped herself. “D ... d ... don’t ring. I’ve g ... g ... got a key,” she added.
It seemed to Mr. Privett as though life had unaccountably flattened out somehow.
There had been those existing few days down in the vestibule while Mr. Bloot was on honeymoon. But Mr. Bloot had been married for nearly three months now. Married. And missing. For all that Mr. Privett saw of him, it might have been Ultima Thule and not merely Finsbury Park where Mr. Bloot was now living. He never came near Fewkes Road at week-ends. Never suggested a meeting at the Highgate Ponds. Even seemed reticent and withdrawn at elevenses. In short, he had become a stranger.
And having no Mr. Bloot and no model yacht to sail, Mr. Privett was left with no definite purpose in life. Nor, the way things were going, did there seem much prospect of ever having one again. Mr. Hamster’s letters had eased off of late. There had only been two in the last month. The Court Case on which everything depended still seemed as far away as ever.
For Mrs. Privett it was not so bad. She had at least rediscovered Nancy. And they had been seeing each other again. First rather guiltily on neutral ground in the tea-room at Victoria Station. Then in Nancy’s own little flat in West Kensington. And finally in Fewkes Road itself. Secretly, of course. They both agreed that, in no circumstances, should it be mentioned to Mrs. Rammell. Nancy even added cryptically that it could only lead to further unpleasantness.
But secrecy is one thing. Reticence is quite another. And Nancy had been keeping everything bottled up for years. Mrs. Privett listened in amazement. She learnt how shamelessly henpecked Mr. Rammell was. How the only thing that Mrs. Rammell really cared about was a title, so that it could be as Lady Rammell that her name appeared in connection with all those concerts and recitals. How extremely Mrs. Rammell disliked Sir Harry. How cordially the dislike was reciprocated. And how worried they all were about young Tony who didn’t seem to want to settle down to anything.
“You don’t know how lucky you’ve been. About Tony and Irene, I mean,” Nancy confided. “He isn’t like anyone on our side. Father was always so steady until the crash came. There’s a streak of recklessness in Tony that’s pure Rammell. Not his father, of course. That’s why they don’t get on. More like Sir Harry.”
“So you think I did the right thing in stopping it?” Mrs. Privett asked.
“You’d have regretted it for the rest of your life if you hadn’t. And Irene after you,” Nancy replied. “I can tell you ...”
It was the third time already that Mrs. Privett and Nancy had enjoyed this particular conversation. Neither had added anything new. But as a subject it still seemed as fresh and promising as ever. It was because both women wanted to go on with it that they arranged to meet again. Early next month. Over in Nancy’s flat next time.
Mrs. Privett had not attempted to conceal these meetings from her husband. She did not repeat Nancy’s general indiscretions. That would somehow have savoured too much of treachery. But the bit about Irene was obviously intended for him. And Mr. Privett knew it pretty well by heart. By now he was able to repeat Nancy’s exact words before Mrs. Privett came to them.
Not that he was by any means convinced. He still admired young Mr. Tony. Envied Mr. Rammell having a son like him. But it was really of Irene that he was thinking. He knew how any girl must feel after her first love-affair has been suddenly broken up. That was why he admired her, too. If she hadn’t been the sensible sort she might have done something really terrible. Not just run away from home and come back again. And, ever since, she had been so quiet and controlled about it all. Not letting on to a soul about how she must really be feeling.
He mentioned this aspect of the tragedy to Mrs. Privett. But Mrs. Privett would have none of it.
“She’ll get over it,” she said. “She has already. It never was anything.”
“Then why ...?” Mr. Privett began.
“Because it might have,” Mrs. Privett told him.
“I still think ...” Mr. Privett began again.
But again Mrs. Privett interrupted him.
“Well, I don’t,” she said. “I know.”
That was why it was such a victory for Mrs. Privett when Irene began stopping in town in the evenings so that she could have dinner at the Hostel. Mrs. Privett had always guessed that it would work out that way. For some time now, Irene had been seeing less and less of her old friends from the Eleanor Atkinson. And it was only natural that she should be getting into a new circle, a Rammell circle, by now. It was the girl from Classical Records with whom she had become friendly—the one who had the brother in Travel.
“Why not ask her over for tea one Sunday?” Mrs. Privett finally suggested.
“I may do,” Irene answered. “Thanks, Mum.”
It was next Sunday that Irene chose. That showed how right Mrs. Privett had been in proposing it. And it showed, too, that Classical Records must be every bit as keen. Between them, Irene and Classical Records were taking the whole thing for granted.
“Do you mind if she brings Ted along with her?” Irene asked.
“Who’s Ted?” Mrs. Privett replied. “Is she engaged to him or something?”
“Ted’s her brother,” Irene told her. “You know. You met him at the dance.”
“What’s she want to bring him for?”
“Well, why not?” Irene demanded. “He’s only living in digs. You can’t expect him to spend every Sunday at the Hostel.”
“Haven’t they got a home?”
“I don’t know,” Irene answered. “I’ve never asked them.”
Mrs. Privett looked hard at her daughter. Indifference on that scale, she knew, could mean only one thing.
It was Mr. Privett, not Mrs. Privett, who objected. Not openly, of course. Just sulkily. He liked Irene to have her girl-friends to the house. They helped to keep the place cheerful. But a young man in the house was different. Young men smoked such a lot. And sat down heavily in chairs. And expected to be offered drinks. It wouldn’t seem like home at all if there were a young man about the place.
And particularly not if he were someone from Rammell’s. There are certain privacies that any father of a family demands. If he wants to keep his slippers in the alcove beside the fireplace there is nothing in law against it. But that doesn’t mean that he would necessarily like other people to know about it. Least of all other people in the same firm. Somehow he didn’t fancy having to walk through Travel and Theatre Tickets with the knowledge that the pair of wolf eyes on the other side of the counter shared even the smaller of his domestic secrets.
Not that the young man proved to be nearly so aggressively male as Mr. Privett had feared. He smoked only one cigarette. Proved to be good, even eager, about opening doors and passing things. And refused a drink when it was offered to him.
The only thing that marred the whole afternoon was the fact that when he did light a cigarette, Irene lit one, too.
Mr. Privett felt merely a sudden affectionate pang at the thought that Irene should have grown up so fast But Mrs. Privett was more outspoken.
“And when did you start smoking, I’d like to know?” she said.
There was a pause for a moment after she had spoken. Irene looked across at her friend—the one from Classical Records—and they both raised their eyebrows. Ted himself continued to look downwards at his feet.
“Oh, years ago, Mum,” Irene replied. “I’ve forgotten.”
“We’ll talk about it afterwards,” Mrs. Privett told her.
But Irene recognized her strength. With Classical Records and Ted both beside her, it was her moment more than Mrs. Privett’s.
“No, we won’t, Mum,” she said. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
Mr. Privett dreaded Monday morning. He recognized the signs. From the way Mrs. Privett was taking Irene’s rudeness, this was the sort of thing that might drag on right through the week.
But by the following morning it was completely forgotten. A letter from Mr. Hamster put the thought of everything else clean out of their minds. The date for the County Court case had at last been fixed. In consequence, Mr. Hamster wanted to see Mr. Privett as soon as possible.
Mr. Privett arranged the appointment by telephone. Not that there was any difficulty about it. Things were rather slack with Mr. Hamster at the moment. Any hour of the day would have been convenient. He would have stayed on until midnight if necessary. And Mr. Privett was only asking for six-thirty.
As soon as he got there, Mr. Hamster started. It was practically a dress rehearsal. Sitting back in his little swivel chair and with his thumbs tucked up into his waistcoat, Mr. Hamster gave his client a complete lesson in County Court procedure.
“ ... and remember, we’ve got nothing to conceal,” he said slowly and deliberately. “Just go into the box, and tell the truth. The plain simple truth. No hesitation. No pauses.” Mr. Hamster paused momentarily. “Don’t rush it, of course. Give yourself time to think what you’re saying. Don’t give the impression of being too pat.” Mr. Hamster paused again. “And speak up when you say it. No mumbling.” There was another pause. “Mind you, that doesn’t mean shout at ’em. They can hear you. And shoulders back so that you look as if you meant it.” This time the pause was longer. Mr. Hamster was a thorough man and weighed every word carefully. “Don’t try to look defiant or cocky, of course. No overdoing it. Be natural. That’s the whole secret. Be natural.” This pause was the longest of them all, and it was obvious that Mr. Hamster was leading up to something really important. “Above all,” he said, “don’t get rattled. If you’re rattled, you’re sunk. Keep calm. Calm and steady.” Mr. Hamster’s voice was now rising with excitement. “This case means a lot to you. Remember that. Very serious if it went the wrong way.” He glanced out of the window for a second. “You’re going to win. And you know it. But be prepared. That’s the great thing. Be prepared. If they turn nasty, show some spirit. No rudeness, of course. Nothing funny. Just stick to facts. And keep cool. Cool and confident. That’s the way. Be yourself. Be yourself, and you’ll be all right.”
Mr. Hamster rose. He thrust out his hand.
“I’ll ... I’ll try,” Mr. Privett said.
But Mr. Hamster had not quite finished with him. He had just remembered one other point.
“Ten o’clock on the 15th,” he said. “County Court. Brecknock Road. Don’t be late. If you are, they’ll hear the case without you. Remember that. But don’t get there too early. They’ll think you’re nervous. Just give yourself nice comfortable time. There’s nothing to worry about. Get your mind clear. Then forget all about it. Don’t lie awake thinking. And try to remember what I’ve said to you. It’s for your protection. It’s up to you now.”
The rest of that evening Mr. Privett was moody and preoccupied. He started drawing diagrams on the backs of envelopes, with X showing the motor coach and a poor demolished little Y that was himself right up in the corner practically under the stamp. But diagrams of moving objects are difficult to draw. They require dotted lines and arrows. And that is where the tricky part comes in. In some of the diagrams X and Y missed each other altogether. In others the dotted lines kept crossing as though he and the motor-coach had been playing dodge’ems up the whole length of the Kentish Town Road ...
And it was worse, not better, when he finally got off to sleep. Then the whole of Mr. Hamster’s advice rose up and overwhelmed him. He was in the dock already. And things were going pretty badly for him. He had created quite the wrong impression. That was because he’d forgotten his trousers. And the false nose that he was wearing had definitely counted against him. The judge had ordered him to remove it, but he had another one just like it underneath. And, even in the dream state, his own behaviour astonished him. There were some questions that he refused to answer at all. Others that he capped merrily with a quick joke or a snatch of song. He bawled. He whispered. He denied everything. He confessed and begged for clemency. He turned his back on the judge. He sat on the floor. He produced a banana and ate it. He blew soap bubbles ...
In the end, things got so bad that he started talking in his sleep and Mrs. Privett had to wake him up.
On the morning of the running-down case, Mr. Hamster woke an entirely happy man. And no wonder. Under his care and guidance, this case that might easily have been dismissed in a few minutes—might even never have come into Court at all—had branched and blossomed into an affair of unimaginable complexity. There were now claims, counter-claims, watching briefs springing up everywhere.
Mr. Privett, however, was already feeling the strain. He had not slept at all well. And he had a strange guilty feeling about turning right for the Brecknock County Court instead of bearing left as usual and popping into the Underground for Bond Street. Even though he had got special leave, it still felt like playing truant.
It was five minutes to ten when he reached the Court. The walk had helped to quieten his nerves. He felt righteous and confident. Then he met Mr. Hamster.
“Remember what I told you,” Mr. Hamster began. “Think before you answer. But don’t hesitate. Be natural. Don’t let them get you rattled. You’ll be all right. But look out for catches. And keep calm. Above all, keep calm ...”
It was not until nearly three-fifty when Mr. Privett was eventually called. It was the last case the Judge heard that day. And, in the interval, Mr. Privett’s morale had gone completely. If he had been asked to play a violin solo instead of merely giving evidence he could not have been more agitated.
He took the oath loudly and defiantly, as though he had been taking oaths and breaking them all his life. And then, having taken it, he simply stood there looking sulkily down at his feet, cutting everybody. The Judge even had to speak to him about it. He asked Mr. Privett to have the goodness to look in his direction when he was addressing him. Thereafter, Mr. Privett stared. It was a baleful, unflickering stare like a basilisk’s. And it would have been downright rude if it had gone on a second longer.
It was broken, in fact, only by the solicitor for the motor-coach company. He coughed twice rather loudly and then asked if Mr. Privett would mind sparing him a little of his attention, too. Mr. Privett thereupon turned his hypnotist’s gaze full on him. But he forgot about the voice. Twice the Judge had to ask Mr. Privett to speak up because neither he nor the opposing solicitor could hear a word that he was saying. And Mr. Privett promptly began using a high-pitched strident kind of voice as though he were arguing with them.
They were now hard at it, the motor-coach solicitor and Mr. Privett. It was real diamond-cut-diamond stuff.
“How fast were you going when you reached the Kentish Town Road?”
There was a pause.
“I haven’t got a speedometer.”
The solicitor frowned. He seemed a pressing sort of chap, Mr. Privett thought. His air of gentle patience only made him that bit more dangerous.
“I didn’t ask you whether you had a speedometer or not. I asked you how fast you were going.”
Mr. Privett began looking down at his boots again.
“I wasn’t going fast at all.”
There was a quick intake of breath by the solicitor, a sudden snake-like hissing.
“But I take it that you were moving?”
Mr. Privett thought for a moment. Then he gave a quick furtive glance in Mr. Hamster’s direction. Mr. Hamster was half off his chair with excitement and anxiety.
“Yes, sir,” he replied quietly.
“Speak up, please. I still can’t hear you. Were you moving?”
“YES I WAS!”
The solicitor pushed his glasses up on to his forehead and regarded Mr. Privett. Somehow the witness hadn’t looked the kind of man who was likely to give trouble of this sort.
“Thank you,” he said. “Well, was it, shall we say, five miles an hour?”
Mr. Privett looked again towards Mr. Hamster. But the strain had been too much for him. He was now crouching back with his face covered by his hands. Mr. Privett was utterly alone.
“I never timed it,” he said.
The solicitor leant forward. He was doing his best to be quiet, persuasive, reassuring.
“Oh, come now. I don’t want a stop-watch reading. I merely want your own estimate of your speed. Was it faster, say, than if you had been walking?”
Mr. Privett paused. Was it this that Mr. Hamster had warned him against?
“Will you kindly answer my question?”
“YES.”
“Well, may I have the answer?”
“Yes. It’s ‘Yes!’”
The solicitor sighed. At this rate he would be trapped in the stiffling atmosphere of Brecknock Road Court until next morning.
“Now perhaps we are getting somewhere,” he said. “Was it faster than anybody running?”
There was a longer pause this time.
“There wasn’t anybody running.”
“Well, then as fast as a horse and cart perhaps?”
Mr. Privett drew his tongue across his lips.
“I’ve never driven in a horse and cart.”
This was too much for the solicitor. He flung the batch of papers that he was holding down on to the desk in front of him.
“I put it to you that you have no idea how fast you were going. That you were scorching along with your head down and didn’t see a thing. That you haven’t the slightest idea what happened.”
There was no pause this time. It was obvious that if Mr. Privett had been holding anything in his hands he would have flung that down, too.
“YES I HAVE,” he replied. He was fairly roaring by now. “I WAS RUN INTO. RUN INTO FROM BEHIND.”
Mr. Hamster was waiting for Mr. Privett when he climbed down out of the box. And his eyes were moist.
“Magnificent,” he whispered. “Absolutely magnificent. Just like I told you.”
And it was now Mr. Hamster’s turn. He had always rather fancied himself as a cross-examiner, a sort of Marshall Hall of the County Courts. He had cultivated a way of holding his head to one side while regarding witnesses, as though he were trying to make up his mind whether he had ever seen them before. It cast a vague but valuable aura of suspicion.
“Did you see my client’s bicycle and trailer?”
“I did.”
The motor-coach driver was a large red-faced man who might have been a butcher. His expression was one of simple, beefish confidence. But that soon wore off as Mr. Hamster pursed up his lips and peered at him through one eye.
“Did you think you could avoid it?”
“I did.”
“But you couldn’t, could you?”
“No.”
“It cut across me.”
“So you expected the other vehicle to avoid you?”
“I did.”
“Do you always expect the other vehicle to do the avoiding?”
“No.”
“But in your view nothing you could have done on this occasion could have prevented a collision?”
“No.”
Mr. Hamster’s one weakness as a cross-examiner was that he never had the slightest idea of where his questions were leading. He just went on putting them. Everything had been going so smoothly, too. Right up to this point he could hardly have done better. But now, he realized, he had practically cleared the coach driver. He recovered himself hurriedly.
“Was that because you were going too fast?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then how did you come to demolish my client’s trailer?”
“I told you, he cut across me.”
“Were your brakes faulty?”
“No.”
“And you were not going fast?”
“No.”
“Just fast enough to cause this collision, eh?”
Mr. Hamster was purring to himself when he resumed his seat. That last remark had been brilliant. Really brilliant. A real scale-turner.
And there was still Mr. Hamster’s own cross-examination of Mr. Privett. By then Mr. Hamster was absolutely on the top of his form.
“ ... and upon entering a main road from a side-turning do you always look right and left and then right again as laid down in the Highway Code?”
“I do.”
“Did you do so on this occasion?”
“I did.”
“And did you see the motor-coach approaching?”
“No.”
“You are quite sure you looked?”
“Quite sure.”
“Then it can’t have been there, can it?”
Mr. Hamster passed his hand across his forehead. The line of reasoning was eluding him again. He reached out desperately.
“If it had been there you would have seen it?”
“But you didn’t see it?”
“No.”
“So it can’t have run into you?”
“No. I mean, yes. It did run into me. From behind.”
By now there was a red film across Mr. Hamster’s eyes. His palms were sweating. He could hear his own life blood beating against his eardrums. He was in the Brecknock County Court. He knew that much. Otherwise his mind was a clean and total blank. This worried him. Because it had happened to him before. Always in Court. And always in the winning moment of an important case ...
After Mr. Hamster had sat down there was a prolonged silence. Even the Judge seemed a little dazed. The solicitor for the motor-coach company began rubbing his hands together. And then, afraid that any premature show of jubilation on his part might prejudice his clients’ chances, he started to blow upon his finger-nails as if he were cold.
Mr. Privett sat, with head bowed, beside the still trembling Mr. Hamster and waited for the verdict. At any moment he expected the Judge to begin reaching out for the black cap.
That was why he nearly broke into tears of sheer happiness when the Judge did finally speak. And it was why the solicitor for the motor-coach company suddenly thrust his papers away from him as though they were contaminated. Because the verdict allowed of no possible misunderstanding. Fifty pounds’ worth of damage had been done, the Judge said; neither less nor more. And the division of responsibility for the fact that there had been an accident at all lay as four-fifths on the shoulders of the motor-coach company and one-fifth upon Mr. Privett’s own.
Mr. Hamster, however, was too much overcome to speak. It was the first case that he had won for months. The first since May, in fact. And, now that it was over, he realized how fortunate he had been. Because, when he had sat down after his blackout he had been under the impression that it was the motor-coach company whom he was representing.
But Mr. Privett with forty pounds of somebody’s else’s money as good as in his pocket was a transformed man. He could begin living again.
Camden Town was where he was bound for. Lumley’s in the Chalk Farm Road, to be precise. Just under the bridge and opposite the first lamp-post. But everybody knows Lumley’s. The window is full of models of all kinds—Bermuda rigs, remote-controlled gunboats, steam-driven cabin-cruisers, hydroplanes. Daisy II had originally come from Lumley’s. On a one-to-twenty scale of things Lumley’s has about the same kind of standing as John Brown’s or Vickers’.
And then an extraordinary thing happened. Mr. Privett had just got off his bus and was cutting through the open entrance hall of the Underground station when all the sparkle and exhilaration went from him. At one moment he was rushing along like an intoxicated schoolboy, and at the next he had stopped dead. That was because another sensation, at least as powerful, had suddenly taken possession of him. He was now filled with a strange savage joy that the saints know. The joy of renunciation. Within the last ten seconds he had decided to buy something for Mrs. Privett instead.
But it was not easy to be so generous. It was nearly five-fifteen already. And at five-thirty everything in Camden Town closes down. Mr. Privett therefore had precisely a quarter of an hour in which to ransack the place. In consequence, he rushed. He tore from jeweller to jeweller. He examined diamond engagement rings, christening mugs, an infant’s spoon and pusher, a cut-glass toilet set. He was almost frantic with frustration as he darted backwards and forwards. And then staring him coldly in the face from the Co-op’s plate-glass windows, he saw the very thing that he wanted. It was a new and very shiny, treadle sewing-machine. There was a whole box of accessories that went with it. And, folded suitably, the instrument miraculously transformed itself into a kind of bedside-table. The contraption cost twenty-six pounds ten.
Mr. Privett went straight in and bought it. But here he ran into a difficulty. He had only fourteen and six on him. There was nothing for it therefore but to arrange for the instrument to be sent round C.O.D. in the morning.
Mr. Privett was still feeling happy and excited as he stepped out of the now empty shop on to the pavement. And then suddenly his mood changed again. An overwhelming sense of defeat came over him. Despite the immense rush, the urgency, he had achieved nothing—nothing at all that he could show for it. He might, he realized, just as well have waited until the morning and then ordered the machine through the Staff Association in the ordinary way.
Flowers were thus the obvious solution. Considering that they were all paid for by the motor-coach company he could afford to be reckless. But trying to buy flowers at Camden Town at twenty to six on a Thursday evening is impossible. The only shop that was still open was a greengrocer’s. And even there the shutters were already going up. But Mr. Privett was desperate. Determined at all costs not to go home empty-handed, he pounced. In the absence of flowers, he bought everything that he could see. The greengrocer served him in stolid but mounting astonishment. It seemed like the preparations for some kind of vast vegetarian orgy. Brown paper bag after brown paper bag was filled. And still Mr. Privett was not satisfied. When he finally left the shop, he had become the owner of two pounds of Cox’s, two pounds of pale unhealthy-looking apples called Grannie’s Sweetheart, a pineapple, a pound of assorted nuts, a stick of celery, two pounds of tomatoes, a box of dates and half a dozen oranges.
It was nearly six-forty-five when Mr. Privett at last reached Fewkes Road. And Mrs. Privett gave a little scream at the sight of him. She had been worrying all the time about the court case. When six, six-fifteen, six-thirty passed she became convinced that the worst, the very worst, must have happened. Even if he weren’t actually in the cells already, he was probably tramping the streets afraid to come home and break the news that he had a new motor-coach to pay for.
That was why the sight of him with all those paper bags came as such a shock. If he had made himself up as a Red Indian she could not have been more amazed. As he stepped into the narrow hall, the odour of fresh fruit was overpowering. Mrs. Privett became seriously alarmed. Perhaps, under the strain, his poor overloaded mind ...
“What’s ... what’s happened?” she asked.
Mr. Privett was so excited that he was rather inclined to rush.
“It’s coming in the morning,” he told her. “C.O.D. And it’s not a table really. It does all sorts of things. Buttonholes and ...”
He was unloading paper bags all the while he was talking. The one with the nuts in it gave him particular trouble because the paper had burst open. They scattered. Mrs. Privett gave one glance and went back into the kitchen. She now suspected drink.
“It’s all right, Ireen,” she said. “It’s only your father. You stay where you are. I’ll attend to this.”
Marcia had made her big decision. She had decided to break with Mr. Bulping.
In the circumstances, it was the only thing that a nice girl could do. Because during the past month she had been seeing far more of Tony than of Mr. Bulping. Almost every night, in fact. And now that she had really got to know Tony she had discovered the most astonishing thing. For all his marvellous opportunities, the sweet darling boy was every bit as lonely and unattached as she was. That was why he had been so grateful, so pathetically grateful, for her company. And so appreciative in his own peculiar fashion. He had a way of running his hand over her hair and then turning her face towards him so that he could kiss it that she found quite irresistible. No one else had ever said: “Darling, do you know, corpse-like or not, you’re quite beautiful?”
And the attraction was not merely physical. That was what made it all so much worth while. It was a mingling of minds as well. They talked about so many things together. Marcia had discovered a three-and-sixpenny book entitled The A.B.C. of Ballet. And she had practically memorized it. If ever he invited her to Covent Garden again she would know exactly what to look out for. Because apparently it was all quite deliberate and intentional—even that funny duck-walk with the toes turned out too far. And so rehearsed, too. Marcia could see now that, in its way, ballet dancing was every bit as exacting as modelling.
Nor was ballet the end of it. There was music, as well. Tony, bless him, was absolutely swoony about music. But no matter how utterly Marcia adored music too—and she could tell as soon as she tried it how musical she really was—it was definitely harder than ballet. There weren’t even any simple books on it. There was nothing for it but to listen. And that took simply ages. It had been just darling of Tony to lend her his own record-player, because her little portable only took 78s. And he couldn’t have been sweeter trusting her with all those glorious L.P. records of his. One day, any day now, she intended to stay away from Bond Street altogether and play them all right through. Really get the hang of them. In the meantime, she had to do the next best thing. Leave one of them—a different one each time, of course—permanently on the turntable so that she could switch it on the moment she heard Tony’s ring on the door-bell.
Not that they spent all that much time in the flat. Most evenings they went out dancing together. And it was Tony’s dancing that really astonished her. It was not merely bad. It was appalling. As though it meant nothing to him. He held her so limply that, if she hadn’t known how much he cared, she could never even have guessed. Indeed, if it had not been for those rather special moments when he leant forward so that his cheek could rest against hers she would still have found herself doubting.
But really it was wonderful. Too wonderful, having him there when he brought her home afterwards. And there was nothing with which she could possibly reproach herself. She simply couldn’t have behaved better. Practically every time he came she said the same thing.
“Silly boy,” it ran. “I do believe you’re beginning to get fond of me. But you mustn’t, you know. It would be all wrong. You’ve got to go home now and forget all about me.”
To-night, for example, was being perfect. It was one of the dreamiest of evenings. They had only just got back. Marcia had automatically flicked the knob of the record-player and the cosy little flat was filled with the muted horns of L.P. (New Series) 736/7X.
Marcia herself had just gone through to change into something looser. When she came back she was wearing a long padded housecoat. She had kicked off her shoes, too. And oh, the relief! In the little flat mules that she now had on she could really begin to live again.
Tony himself was lying almost full-length on the hearth-rug. Only almost full-length. Because that end of the room wasn’t really quite long enough. His head was propped up against the wall. But that didn’t matter. The extraordinary boy hardly ever sat on chairs like other people. He preferred floors. Window-sills. Corners of fenders. He had poured out a drink for both of them. And, gathering the long house-coat around her, Marcia sat herself down on the hearth-rug beside him.
Rather to her disappointment, Tony leant over and switched off the record-player. For one awful moment Marcia feared that it must have been an L.P. that she had played before. But it seemed to be all right. Apparently, Tony just wanted to talk. And before he spoke Marcia wanted to get in her little piece.
“You can’t say, darling,” she began, “that I haven’t warned you. You mustn’t start letting yourself get fond of me. I’m not worth it. Really, I’m not. It’s only you I’m thinking of. I don’t matter. You ought to find yourself some big strong hockey-playing girl ...”
Her voice drifted off to nothingness because he was stroking her leg again. And here again she realized how different he was, how precious. Because it was with the back of his hand that he was stroking it. And so gently, too. It was like being caressed by a feather. But so exciting somehow. Out of all the men she had ever met Tony was the only one who seemed to have appreciated how desperately fragile she really was. And now—still ever so gently—he was pulling her down so that her head could rest against his shoulder.
That was how they were lying when Mr. Bulping came in. Marcia realized at once how silly she had been ever to let him have that spare latch key of hers. It was only because he had been so insistent that she had consented. But what else could a girl do? That was where it was so downright hellish being poor. And, after all, Mr. Bulping had been generosity itself about things like telephone bills. And electric light. And all the other accounts that keep popping up unexpectedly.
Mr. Bulping stood in the doorway regarding them. And compared with Tony he looked really quite horrible. So male. And so aggressive. Not that he was violent. Or anything like it. On the contrary, he seemed positively to be enjoying himself. With his hat pushed on to the back of his head—Marcia had never been able to break him of that habit of coming into the flat with his hat on—he was wearing a broad grin right across his face.
“’Ullo, ’ullo, ’ullo, ’ullo,” was all he said.
Naturally Marcia had got up as soon as he came in. But Tony continued to lie where he was.
“Am I in the way?” he asked.
Marcia could have wept because of the sheer humiliation that Tony must be feeling. And for being so restrained, so civilized, about it all. If only Mr. Bulping could have been the same. But the sheer absence of niceness in his nature had been one of the things that had always worried her.
“Don’t nobody move,” he said. “I’m just going to pick up my pyjamas and my toothbrush and then I’m clearing out.”
It was as he said it that Marcia decided to give up Mr. Bulping. For good. And for ever. Renounce him entirely. Cut him clean out of her life. It was madness, sheer madness, to have imagined that they could ever really mean anything to each other. At least, on her part it was.
And when he telephoned to her next day, her mind was already made up. All the apologies in the world weren’t going to move her. Only it wasn’t to apologize that he had telephoned. It was simply to be abusive. Straight vulgar abuse came pouring out at her. Which just showed how right she was to have nothing more to do with him.
Not that any real harm had been done. Not so far. It was simply that it had been horrid for Marcia to have to sit there—she was alone in the flat at the time—being scolded in that uncouth vulgar voice from Wolverhampton.
And her reading of Mr. Bulping was being proved the correct one. In short, he was not a gentleman. If he had been, he would have kept quiet about it. Not gone round repeating it. In Rammell’s of all places, too.
It was the chief buyer, Mr. Galbraith, whom he told. And on the very next day. Lunch was the time Mr. Bulping chose for it. But not until the end of the meal when he had got his man properly receptive and conditioned.
“I don’t say Rammell’s isn’t a valuable account,” he led into it quietly. “But there are others, you know. There are others.”
“Meaning what?” Mr. Galbraith asked, expecting some objection to the present discount.
He was an elderly man. Practically on the edge of retirement. And he was no longer up to these enormous business lunches. Every Monday he came into the office swearing that he would never eat another meal that he hadn’t paid for himself. And every week he was hard at it again, gnawing his way through great slices of smoked salmon and slabs of steak at the expense of Woollens, Worsteds, Knitwear, Rayons, Textiles, Model Gowns, Swimsuits and all the rest of them.
“Meaning that we all have our own standards,” Mr. Bulping replied. “I’m prepared to go so far and no further. Last night ...”
Mr. Galbraith drew in his breath sharply.
“You’re sure Marcia is that kind of girl?” he asked at last. “I mean there’s always a lot of talk about models.”
“I should know,” Mr. Bulping told him.
“And Mr. Tony? It’s easy to make mistakes. And in those sort of circumstances ...”
“I don’t make mistakes,” Mr. Bulping interrupted him. “I tell you I was introduced to the boy. At that blasted staff dance she dragged me to.”
“D’you think other people know?” Mr. Galbraith inquired cautiously.
“Talk of London,” Mr. Bulping replied. “Can’t keep that sort of thing quiet. Not the way those two are behaving.”
Mr. Galbraith sat staring glumly at the cigar that he was holding. It was something else he hadn’t really wanted.
“I wonder what we ought to do,” he said at last.
“That’s your affair,” Mr. Bulping assured him. “It’s no business of mine. I couldn’t care less about Rammell’s reputation. It’s mine I’m thinking of. Have another brandy?”
Mr. Galbraith was not the sort of man to be rushed into anything. Nor was he a trouble-maker. He had got where he was by a combination of known Tory principles, caution and, in his younger days, an astonishing capacity for going on drinking at the expense of other people. His first instinct was to do absolutely nothing.
But a new topic of conversation is always tempting. And more for something to say than for any other reason he mentioned it casually to Mr. Birt, the Chief Cashier.
Mr. Birt was no more than at the mid-point of his career. He constantly saw it stretching out ahead of him—Secretary, General Manager, Director. Even Managing Director if only the right sort of vacuum occurred. And he was constitutionally incapable of doing nothing. Up to that moment he had been thinking about a new system of slotted cards for the mail-order side. But this was every bit as interesting. He had to discuss it with someone.
The person he chose was Mr. Rappelly (Foreign Exchange). He brought the matter up while they were waiting for some bank statements to be brought down. They had been in the R.A.F. together, and this was by no means the first confidence that they had shared. Nor was it the first confidence that Mr. Rappelly had shared with Mr. Cousins of General Accounts.
Mr. Cousins in turn lived out at Esher and travelled home most days with a Mr. Sandalwood who was one of Mr. Galbraith’s own buyers—on the Boot, Shoe and Leather side. Secretly, Mr. Cousins was a little bored by Mr. Sandalwood’s company. He was glad to have something fresh to talk about. And Mr. Sandalwood, for his part, was a man always ready to talk to anybody. The first person he told was Mr. Galbraith.
That was what resolved Mr. Galbraith. Up to that moment he had decided that the sensible thing was to ignore Mr. Bulping’s warning. Why, he asked himself, should he get himself mixed up with any unpleasantness during his last six months. But if there really were rumours around the place, then it was clearly his duty to tell someone. And the person whom he told was Mr. Preece.
In consequence, Mr. Preece spent an entirely sleepless night. It was always in the matter of personal relations that Mr. Preece was at his weakest. And, once he had made his mind up, he did the entirely wrong thing. He questioned people. Starting with Mr. Rawle of Shirtings where Tony was still working he moved on steadily and relentlessly to Miss Bywater, the Salon Supervisor. And it was fatal. If he had called a Press Conference, complete with hand-out, he could not have started more people talking. Not until he had got the whole place fairly buzzing did he go along to Mr. Rammell.
“ ... so I thought I’d just mention it,” he said. “I’m sure there’s nothing to it but I thought you ought to know.”
Nothing to it! Mr. Rammell could not imagine how anyone could be quite so idiotic as Mr. Preece. Of course, there was something to it. Mr. Rammell didn’t doubt that for a moment. And he was already determined that this was going to be something that he would deal with single-handed.
“Thank you, Preece. Thank you,” was all he said.
But before he went home that night he did two things. The first was to see if Mr. Adler of New York was still in town. And the second was to ask his secretary to fix up for Marcia to see him to-morrow.
Mr. Rammell was lucky to catch Mr. Adler. Another couple of hours and Mr. Adler would have been in the hired limousine on the way out to the airport. But a quarter of an hour was all that Mr. Rammell needed. And Mr. Adler needed no persuading. Seemed rather flattered, in fact. He was President of Adler’s Inc. in Fifth Avenue. Adler’s and Rammell’s. There was no tie-up that he could possibly have liked better.
“Sure, sure,” he said. “Suits me fine. I’ll have the boy. Just you send me a cable. I’ll be back there in the morning.”
Marcia decided to wear black for the interview. Not mourning black. Just black black. With pearls. And a dress ornament of some kind—a flower possibly—right up by the shoulder.
It was not until half past five, in any case. That gave her all the time in the world. She could cut short the afternoon tea parade. Only once round instead of twice. Above all things, she wanted to appear at her best when she saw Mr. Rammell. There was a new British fashion drive in Latin-America just about to start. Marcia had set her heart on going. And she had to admit that—to herself anyway—she had been looking the weeniest bit tired just lately.
But not half so tired looking as Mr. Rammell. He could hardly have seemed worse. Grey. Puffy. Dull-eyed. It had been one of the very worst of his bad nights. And after a thoroughly bad evening, too. He and Mrs. Rammell were no longer even on simple speaking terms.
“So you want to snatch the boy right away from me, do you?” she had demanded.
“Only for a year,” Mr. Rammell had replied patiently.
He had told her that six or seven times already. Had explained that it was not exile to which he was proposing to send Tony. Merely New York. To Adler’s in Fifth Avenue. So that the boy could learn something of American methods. See a bit of the world. Find his own feet, in fact. He had deliberately avoided all mention of Marcia.
“But why? Why?” Mrs. Rammell had gone on. “There’s no need for it. He’s had his lesson. If you hadn’t driven him into the shop in the first place none of this would ever have happened. Can’t you see that Tony’s whole future ...”
It had been nearly one o’clock when they finally broke up. And sometime after four when Mr. Rammell had at last dropped off to sleep. In consequence, he had been intolerably sleepy all day. After lunch, particularly. The clock now showed five-twenty. It was one of his really strictest rules not to drink before six o’clock. But to-day he felt he needed it. He went over to the big cabinet in Rammell-Chippendale and poured himself out a large whisky and soda. And he timed it perfectly. He had even finished the charcoal tablet as well by the time Marcia was announced.
Mr. Rammell was at his absolute best at these difficult personal interviews. He had, in the first place, developed a technique. It consisted in meeting the visitor right over by the door. This was a very important stroke. It helped to establish the fiction that Mr. Rammell had been hanging about all the afternoon simply waiting for his visitor to arrive. And the second master stroke was to occupy one of the two arm-chairs that stood in front of the desk. Not carry on the conversation across the no-man’s-land of the ink wells and blotter.
“Miss Tutty,” Miss Winters announced.
Marcia squirmed. It was only up in Management where the staff records were kept that anyone ever used the name nowadays.
But Mr. Rammell put it right immediately.
“Come in, Marcia,” he said. “Come in.”
He regarded her closely for a moment. And really it was impossible not to admire her. Here she was at one of the most awkward moments of her life. For all she knew she was going to be out of a job by to-morrow. And she was unperturbed. Absolutely unperturbed. She was, if anything, taking things even more placidly than usual. Scarcely even walking. Drifting rather.
“Cigarette?” Mr. Rammell asked as soon as they had sat down.
Marcia shook her head.
“No thank you,” she said slowly.
She had been reading lately about what cigarettes did to you. Years and years off your life apparently. Even a month or two ago that wouldn’t have mattered. But now it was different. She had so much to live for.
“Well, well,” Mr. Rammell went on. “I expect you know why you’re here.”
The pause was rather longer than he had expected. And then he remembered. Marcia always did take rather a long time before actually saying anything.
“How long would it be for?” she asked.
“How long?” Mr. Rammell repeated.
Another pause.
“Before I get back, I mean?”
Mr. Rammell got up and began to walk about. Without actually realizing that he had done so, he sat himself down behind his desk before he answered.
“What are you talking about?” he asked bluntly.
“About going away,” Marcia told him.
“Where to?”
The pause was even longer than usual this time. That was because Marcia wasn’t quite sure where Latin-America really was.
“Mexico,” she said at last.
“Mexico?”
“The tour,” Marcia explained. “The fashion tour.”
Mr. Rammell let out a deep sigh. Not of relief. Of sheer irritation.
“I’m not talking about any kind of tour,” he said.
Marcia did not raise her eyes. Mr. Rammell sat there regarding her. She really was quite strikingly beautiful. He had to admit that. The way she was sitting now, with her eyelashes brushing her cheek, he could understand everything ... He pulled himself together abruptly. Remembered his technique. Got up and came round to the chair on her side of the desk.
“What I want to talk to you about is Tony,” he went on.
Another pause. But still no sign of any agitation. Not even emotion. Marcia hadn’t yet raised her eyes.
“Tony,” she repeated softly.
It was then that Mr. Rammell realized that he would have to be quite brutal if they were going to get anywhere.
“Yes, and it’s got to stop,” he told her.
This time it was more promising. He could tell that Marcia was getting ready to say something.
“But Tony and I ...” she began.
Mr. Rammell got up and began to walk about. He was determined, absolutely determined, that he wasn’t going to lose his temper.
“I don’t care what you and Tony have been plotting together,” he said. “My mind’s made up. If this goes any further, out you go. Both of you. For good.”
He was studying Marcia closely while he was speaking. And he could see that he had finally made an impression. Very slowly she uncrossed her feet and folded them again the other way.
“Oh, but I agree with you,” Marcia said. “It’s ... it’s what I’ve always been telling him. But he wouldn’t listen. Really he wouldn’t. I couldn’t make him see it. I tried so hard, too.”
Mr. Rammell came over and stood facing her.
“You mean you’ve had enough of him?”
“Oh, no,” Marcia’s reply was almost immediate this time. “I could never have enough of Tony. It’s just that he’s ... so young.”
“You’re old enough to be his mother,” Mr. Rammell reminded her.
For a moment Marcia raised one hand to her cheek as though for protection.
“That’s what I tell him,” she answered, even more softly this time. “But he doesn’t realize. He’ll ... he’ll need all your help.”
Mr. Rammell took out his handkerchief and began running it across his forehead. He was aware that at last Marcia was actually looking at him. And not merely looking. She was staring. Those remarkable violet eyes of hers were fixed full on him. She was devouring and consuming him. Mr. Rammell looked hurriedly away.
But still Marcia’s gaze did not waver. It had absorbed him completely by now.
“The poor darling thing,” she was thinking. “How awful! He’s embarrassed! So strong and powerful, too, if he only knew. But so unsure of himself. So painfully unsure. And so ill looking. So haggard. And all because of me. Oh, why can’t I do something. How can I ever make him understand?”
Mr. Rammell had pulled out his cigar-case and was carefully removing a cigar. He fingered it gently. Lovingly. When he applied the cutter, he was delicate. Precise. It might have been surgery, not mere smoking, in which he was engaged.
Marcia’s whole heart went out to him.
“Now he’s just playing for time,” she reflected. “He doesn’t know what to say. That’s because he doesn’t really trust me.”
Mr. Rammell lit the cigar and blew out a cloud of blue smoke.
“I think you’re taking the whole thing very sensibly,” he said. “Very.”
“I’m ... I’m glad you do.”
“Must mean quite a wrench,” he went on. “I see that.”
Marcia raised her right hand again for an instant. But this time it was merely to run the back of her fingers across her lashes. She gave the tiniest of little sniffs.
“Oh, God,” thought Mr. Rammell. “I hope she isn’t going to start crying.”
He decided that he had better say something. And say it quickly.
“I can tell you one thing,” he said briskly. “I shan’t forget about this. You can rely on me.”
Marcia looked up again. Her eyes seemed even darker violet now.
“Don’t,” she said. “Please, please, don’t.”
Because it was so late, the adjoining offices were all in darkness. Only Miss Winters’s light was still burning. The corridor ahead of them looked empty and deserted. Marcia experienced that strange mountains-of-the-moon sensation again. It seemed that she and Mr. Rammell were the only two people left alive. Survivors, as it were. In a world that had died around them while they had still been talking.
“Better use this lift,” she dimly heard Mr. Rammell say to her. “Staff entrance’ll be closed by now.”
And again in the lift she had it. This extraordinary feeling of twoness. Of twoness that was somehow oneness. It was as though she and Mr. Rammell had been on terms of intimate confidences all their lives. When the lift reached the ground floor Mr. Rammell had to nudge her before she even noticed.
Outside the Downe Street entrance, however, Marcia drew back. It was raining. Real heavy stuff. As though Covent Garden had moved up on Bond Street.
Marcia looked hard at the big Rolls-Royce parked opposite the doorway.
“Do ... do you think someone could possibly get me a taxi?” she asked helplessly.
Mr. Rammell did not attempt any resistance. He did the simple, manly thing.
“Get in,” he said. “I’ll drop you.”
They drove round the Park in silence. Marcia was sitting back, the rug drawn round her and her eyes half-closed. Her hand, her long pale hand with the blue veins faintly showing, lay on the broad arm-rest between them.
“I ... I feel terribly guilty,” she said, “dragging you out of your way like this. Do ... do let me offer you a drink when we get there.”
But this time Mr. Rammell was prepared.
“No, thank you,” he said. “I’m late already. Must be getting along.”
The car had already reached Knightsbridge before Marcia spoke again. There was barely two minutes to go.
“It’s ... it’s funny it should be New York you’re sending him to,” she said.
“Why, what’s funny about it?” Mr. Rammell asked.
“Because I’ve been asked to go, too.”
Mr. Rammell started.
“You mean Tony’s asked you?”
“Oh, no.”
Marcia gave a little laugh.
Her laugh was noticeably better than her speaking voice. When she laughed it was low and rather husky. “An agent. It’s Adler’s he wants me for. They ... they like English models over there.”
The car had stopped by now. And the chauffeur was standing out in the rain ready to open the door.
“What have you told him?” Mr. Rammell demanded.
“I ... I haven’t really decided,” Marcia replied. “It’s ... it’s all so difficult now.”
Mr. Rammell glanced across at the small gilt clock let into the walnut woodwork of the partition. It showed six forty-five. He was certain, absolutely certain, that he was late for something. But he couldn’t let matters rest where they were.
“Just a minute,” he said. “We ought to discuss this together. Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I ... I didn’t think of it,” Marcia answered truthfully.
“When have you got to let him know?”
“To ... to-morrow,” Marcia told him. “F ... first thing.” She paused. “Well, g ... good night. And thank you ag ... again.”
But Mr. Rammell had laid his hand upon her arm.
“Not so fast,” he said. “I’ll come in for a moment. We’ve got to get this thing settled one way or the other.”
The astonishing thing had happened: Mr. Bloot was beginning to come round to Fewkes Road again.
And after so long, too. It was getting on for a year now since he had last dropped in alone. There had, of course, been the formal prearranged visits. Sunday evening suppers for Gus and Hetty at the Privetts’. And too much to drink, and a lot of gelatiney fancy stuff from the local delicatessen for the return visits to Artillery Mansions. But even these family reunions had lapsed.
Try as she might, Mrs. Privett could not help disliking Hetty. Disliking Hetty, and despising Mr. Bloot. Particularly when at Artillery Mansions. While the other three sat round, usually with a pack of cards stacked hopefully on the table in case Chick should drop in, it was impossible to be unaware of Mrs. Privett’s disapproval. She remained silent and subdued in the corner, like a book-end. With her glass untouched and the ash-tray beside her empty, she loyally remembered poor Emmie.
But nowadays it was quite like old times. The unannounced ring on the door bell. The mumbled greeting. The insatiable thirst for tea.
And the difference in Mr. Privett was enormous. Having Mr. Bloot in the house again—and unaccompanied—had made a new man of him. He was like someone in the throes of a late love-affair.
Nor was Mr. Bloot’s return the only reason for Mr. Privett’s high spirits. He was about to become the owner of Daisy III. That was what really counted. Any day now he expected to receive the post-card from Lumley’s saying that she was ready. Twenty-two pounds ten to pay, admittedly. But why worry? The money was there all ready in the Post Office to meet it. That was because Mrs. Privett had refused the new sewing-machine. And more than refused it. Rejected it point blank. Her old one was quite good enough for her, she had said. A pearl among machines, in fact. They didn’t even make machines like it nowadays. She had been so emphatic, in fact, that there had been nothing for it but for Mr. Privett to get off at Camden Town on his way in next morning and cancel everything. Not that he had any choice in the matter. It was bad enough, Mrs. Privett had said, to have all that fruit to get through. Let alone trying to fit a convertible sofa-table-sewing-machine into the drawing-room.
And it was just as well, as it turned out. Because Mr. Hamster lost no time in sending in his bill. He did not come of the school of solicitors which allow charges to go on mounting up month after month to a final reckoning at the end of the year. Why should he? Mr. Privett’s was practically the only case on his books at the moment. He spent almost every evening gloating over it. In consequence, he knew to a halfpenny where the costs stood as he came out of the Brecknock County Court. And what he knew he slammed in immediately.
The bill came as a shock to Mr. Privett. A nasty shock. When he saw how large it was he felt frightened. And disgusted. The damages, or rather four-fifths of them, amounted to forty pounds and Mr. Hamster’s bill was for thirty-two ten. Apparently being knocked off a bicycle, rolled in the gutter and having a famous model racing yacht demolished in front of his eyes was worth only about seven pounds ten in the eyes of blindfold Justice.
It was Mrs. Privett who underwrote Daisy III. Seven pounds ten was still seven pounds ten, as she put it. And fifteen pounds could perfectly well be found from her dressmaking account. If it would help to get Mr. Privett out of the house on Sunday mornings, eager to go and with a sense of purpose, she reckoned that the price was, on any showing, remarkably reasonable.
It was the absence of a telephone in Fewkes Road that made the newly-restored visits of Mr. Bloot so exciting. Telephones are remarkably convenient. Doctors and dentists, for instance, have come to rely on them. But they are the ruination of surprise visits. Take any home that is on the telephone, and unexpected callers hardly ever occur. Take any home that isn’t, and the front door bell may still mean absolutely anything.
The bell on the Privetts’ door was a good loud one. And simple in construction. It was screwed straight on to the back of the panel. When you pressed the little china button outside, the whole thing sprang to life right under your finger-tip. It seemed to explode.
Not that Mr. Bloot need ever really have touched the thing at all. He had a naturally massive tread. Mr. Privett was usually aware of his approach as soon as he reached the metal drain-cover at the bottom of the front step.
It was like that this evening. A dull rumble outside like distant summer thunder, and Mr. Privett looked up from his paper.
There was a pause. Then came the harsh whirr-rurrk as the bell mechanism unwound itself.
Mrs. Privett looked up, too.
“I’ll put a kettle on,” was all she said.
And it was needed. As soon as Mr. Privett saw his friend he could tell that there was something wrong. Mr. Bloot didn’t look at all himself to-night. His collar had escaped altogether from the collar stud at the back. And below his right eye was a patch of angry redness as though he had bumped into something.
Mr. Privett stood there, staring.
“What’s happened to your—?” he began.
But he got no further. Mr. Bloot raised his forefinger and placed it vertically across his lips.
“Ssssh!” he said. He glanced over his shoulder for a moment and added, almost in a whisper: “Later.”
It was then that Mr. Privett became seriously alarmed. Large as Mr. Bloot was, he tried to put his arm right round him.
“Better come in here, Gus,” he said. “Then we shan’t be disturbed.”
It was cold in the little sitting-room. Mr. Privett shivered as they went in. But Mr. Bloot did not seem to notice. He was breathing so hard that he might have run all the way there. He sat down heavily, collapsed almost, into the arm-chair by the fireplace.
“Ah’m all raht,” he said. “Just shaken up a bit.”
Mr. Privett took a small chair opposite. Then he leaned forward to pat his friend reassuringly on the knee. As he did so, he noticed to his surprise that Mr. Bloot was even more dishevelled than he had realized. On both feet, his bootlaces were undone nearly the whole way down.
“Sit back and take it quietly,” Mr. Privett advised. “Eileen’s making us some tea.”
But, for once Mr. Bloot did not respond. Not even to tea. He was too much consumed by his own secret thoughts.
“Take it quahtly,” he repeated bitterly. “Take it quahtly. How d’you lahk—?”
It was Mrs. Privett who interrupted him. She opened the door and stood there in the doorway, not attempting to come in.
“Are you two trying to catch your deaths of cold?” she demanded. “It’s like an ice-box in here.”
She broke off because, now that she could see him properly, the sight of Mr. Bloot amazed her.
“What on earth have you been doing to yourself?” she asked.
Mr. Privett winced at the sheer callousness of the question. He had noticed many times before that Mrs. Privett seemed to have simply no idea how sensitive Mr. Bloot really was.
“Eileen!” Mr. Privett said sharply.
But he need not have bothered. Mr. Bloot had risen to his feet.
“Ah’m all raht. Ah’m all raht,” he repeated.
He went across and stood in front of the small oval mirror that hung above the bamboo side-table. The light always had been bad there. Mr. Bloot had to crane right forward in order to see anything. And even he seemed to be surprised by what he saw. He refixed his collar. Flattened down his hair. Rubbed the back of his hand reflectively across the sore patch beneath his eye.
But that was not all. From where Mr. Privett was standing he could see that Mr. Bloot’s lips were moving all the time. He seemed to be rehearsing something.
Then he turned round.
“Ah’m sorry if Ah upset you, Ahleen,” he said. “Ah’ve ’ad er naccident. That’s all it is. Just er naccident.”
Mrs. Privett came forward. She was peering closely.
“You’d better have something on that cheek,” she said. “When did it happen?”
The question obviously caught Mr. Bloot by surprise. The period of silent rehearsal started up again.
“On the bus,” he said at last. “Coming dahn the stairs. Ah slipped.” He paused and gave a not very convincing little laugh. “Maht have been really nahsty. Maht have been fatal.” He paused again and added, unnecessarily: “Yes, that’s raht. On the bus. Coming dahn the stairs. Er 27 bus.”
Mrs. Privett, however, was no longer listening. Either that, or not believing.
“You come in the other room where it’s warm,” she said. “And for goodness’ sake do your shoes up or you’ll be falling down again.”
It was fortunate that they had some of the dark cherry fruit cake that Mr. Bloot liked. He ate two large slices. And ate them ravenously. As though he had been without food all day. But it was the tea that saved him. By the third cup, his naturally rather florid colour had returned. And a familiar light perspiration broke out across his forehead.
“Stoopid of me, wasn’t it?” he kept saying at intervals. “Lahk er chahld. Falling dahn stairs. At mah age.”
As soon as Mr. Bloot had finished his tea, Mrs. Privett left them. The skin on Mr. Bloot’s cheek was not actually broken. And she did not press the offer of first-aid. She could tell that the two men wanted to be alone together. And the sooner she went the sooner she would be able to get Mr. Privett’s full report afterwards.
“Good night, Gus,” she said.
“Good naht, Ahleen,” he replied. “Thank you for everything.”
It was getting on for eleven o’clock by now. Mr. Privett was leaning forward. Right on the edge of his chair, in fact.
“You mean this isn’t the first time?” he asked. “She’s actually hit you before?”
“Yurss,” Mr. Bloot admitted. “Raht from the start. In the yotel. That was the first tahm. It wasn’t mah fault, either. Ah didn’t know how much she mahnded.”
“Minded what?”
“Abaht mah shoes. Mah black ones. She prefers brahn on holidays.”
“Was that all?”
“It was quaht enough.” Mr. Bloot told him. “Lahk to-naht.”
“What did happen to-night?” Mr. Privett asked.
“Nothing as you maht say. Absolutely nothing. She asked if Ah’d lahk to go to er cinema and Ah said ‘no.’ Then she asked if Ah’d lahk to play bezique with her and Ah said ‘no’ again. Ah was sitting there quahtly reading mah bird magazine when she flew at me. But Ah controlled myself. Ah didn’t even answer. Ah put mah hat on and came round. Ah didn’t even wait to do up mah boots.”
Mr. Privett shook his head.
“Would you believe it,” he said.
“She’s lahk that,” Mr. Bloot replied. “Sudden. And impeturous. A real woman. Not lahk mah Emmie.” Mr. Bloot let out a deep sigh in which despair, nostalgia and the fading relics of admiration were all mingled. “Ah’ve been black and blue, Ah tell you. Only I haven’t let on. Not to a soul. Not until nahw. It’s been a matter of prahd.”
“What are you going to do?” Mr. Privett asked.
Mr. Bloot sighed again.
“Injoor it, I suppose,” he said. “Just injoor it.”
There was silence between them for a moment. Mr. Privett sat back and stared gloomily downwards at his feet. His whole heart went out to Mr. Bloot in his misfortune. He wondered if he ought to offer to make him some more tea. Cut another slice of the dark cherry fruit cake. Then a faint sound made him glance up again. For a moment Mr. Privett could not believe it. But, when the sound was repeated, there could be no mistake. Mr. Bloot had broken down. He was in tears.
“Don’t take on so,” Mr. Privett said gently. “Things’ll turn out all right. You see if they don’t.”
But Mr. Bloot was past comforting. He was crying quite openly by now. Handkerchief up to his eyes, and everything. His voice in consequence sounded sniffly and strangulated.
“It’s not me Ah’m thinking of,” he replied at last. “Ah can take care of mahself. It’s Billy.”
“Billy?”
“One of mah budgies. She ’ates ’im, Ah tell you. Yurss, ackshually ’ates ’im.” Mr. Bloot paused long enough to wipe away a tear that was trickling slowly down his cheek. “Ah feel guilty leaving ’em. For fear of what might ’appen.”
Mr. Privett was leaning forward again by now.
“Such as what?” he asked.
This time, however, Mr. Bloot could not answer immediately. He was struggling with emotions that were too deep for words. He blew his nose loudly before he could even attempt to speak.
“Said she’d give ’im to the cat,” he blurted out suddenly. “Let the cat ’ave mah Billy if Ah didn’t stop messin’ abaht with ’im.” There was another pause. Another paroxysm. “Mah Billy,” he repeated. “Three Firsts and a Mention. It’d be murder. That’s what it’d be. It’s drahving me raht aht of mah mahnd.”
“She’d never do it,” Mr. Privett assured him. “Never. She’s only jealous.”
“Ah know,” Mr. Bloot replied. “Jealousy’s a very terrible thing. She watches me. There’s er crool streak in her somewhere. Er nard, crool streak.” Mr. Bloot paused again, his shoulders heaving. “If anything ’appens to Billy,” he went on, “Ah shall do something desprit. That’s what Ah’m afraid of. Something desprit.”
By now, Mr. Privett was rocking backwards and forwards in his chair in sheer misery. In the last quarter of an hour, he had grown to hate Hetty. Hate her bitterly. For being so horrible to Gus. For holding out threats to little Billy. Then, suddenly, he saw it all quite clearly. It was the voice of true friendship that was speaking.
“Why not have him here?” he said. “Bring him round cage and all. Just till it blows over.”
As he said it, he wished that there were a spare bedroom in Fewkes Road. Then he could have invited Gus to come as well.
But Mr. Bloot was too much bowed down by the sheer misery of things even to remember to be polite.
“It isn’t only the cage,” he said. “It’s the company. They’re like little oomans. They fret if they’re with strangers. Ah’ve ’ad Billy since the egg ...”
He broke off for a moment and looked at his watch. It showed just after eleven-thirty. A flicker of apprehension, of fear almost, passed across the face of Mr. Bloot.
“Well, back to the fray,” he said wearily. “Back to the fray. Ah’d better see what’s ’appening.”
It was after midnight by now. The lights were out in the front bedroom. But Mr. and Mrs. Privett were still talking.
“I told you so,” Mrs. Privett had just said. “I knew the sort she was the first time I set eyes on her.”
But Mr. Privett’s thoughts had been racing on ahead of her.
“What about over by the dresser?” he asked. “In the corner. Out of the draught. Billy’d be all right there. He’d see Gus as soon as he came in.”
The other person who was glad that Mr. Bloot had resumed his visits was Irene. It made things easier for her.
For some time now, the friend from Classical Records and her tall silent brother, Ted, had been coming round to Fewkes Road on Sundays. They were regulars. And, even when Classical Records herself couldn’t make it, Ted came along without her. Mr. Privett raised no objections. He found Ted a most agreeable young man. Polite. Respectful. And obviously very much attached to Irene. Even Mrs. Privett was prepared to accept him. She liked the way he got up and opened doors for her. And it was useful having someone for Mr. Privett to talk to while she and Irene washed up together. But she did draw the line at leaving Ted and Irene alone together. She also disliked the idea of young people spending all their time in cinemas. In consequence, there had been a whole succession of Sunday evenings when Ted and Irene just sat.
It was Mr. Bloot who settled that. He filled up things so. With him in the one really comfortable arm-chair, there was no room for the young people. And no future, either. Mr. Bloot had only a limited number of topics of conversation. But he believed in going over them. There was some sort of trigger mechanism that meant that, in the same room and with the same company, he went over them all in the same order. On the third Sunday when they had heard Mr. Bloot’s views on women in the police force (against), Socialism (against), young men with beards (against) and the smaller cage birds (in favour), Mrs. Privett recognized that she would have to let Irene escape from it. The only hold that she maintained was in telling Ted that he mustn’t bring her back later than ten-thirty.
As a result, Sunday evenings were now perfectly heavenly. Her good work done, Classical Records had obligingly fallen out completely. It was just Ted and Irene. And they set off for the cinema together almost as soon as tea was over.
Not that they were alone when they got there. The local Odeon was full of other Teds and Irenes all sheltering from their own homes. It was warm. Discreetly dark. Deeply upholstered. No sharp corners anywhere. And it smelt nice. There were ashtrays for smokers within arm’s reach. And, for the hungry and thirsty, there was popcorn, orangeade and ice-cream brought politely to the bedside. All life’s needs had been provided for. Even the route to the lavatories was indicated by illuminated signs. And on the screen in front a film of some kind was showing.
Irene sank down into the deep arm-chair that Lord Rank had provided. Ted carefully rolled up his raincoat and thrust it under the companion-piece divan alongside hers. Then he reached out his hand. And hers was ready for him. They had been holding hands for the past three Sundays now.
At first, it had been no more than a loose, lingering contact. Like a handshake that wouldn’t let go. Now it was the real thing. Fingers laced. And palms pressed closely together. It was hot. It was sticky. But it was what they were there for. And it was what they wanted.
It had come as an entire surprise to both of them to find how much they wanted it. For a start, it wasn’t a bit like Ted. But a most distinct change had come over him lately. He was still keeping up his bookkeeping and accountancy classes in the evenings. And in a sense they seemed more than ever important now. But his mind was no longer really on them. It kept drifting towards life insurance. And impossible house mortgages. And domestic budgets worked out on the backs of envelopes.
Irene had changed, too. She was still an actress at heart. But somehow she never managed to get to the theatre. Hadn’t been to one for months, in fact. That was because of Ted’s evening classes. She didn’t really enjoy going anywhere without Ted nowadays. But what was even stranger was that she didn’t even read plays nowadays. Couldn’t really settle down to them. When she tried, her mind kept straying off and wondering whether Ted got enough to eat on the evenings when he dashed off to the Institute. And how he would manage, supposing he felt ill. And who looked after his socks and things ... Fry and Rattigan and Priestley and Anouilh might simply have been living on pensions for all the support she was giving them.
Even on Saturdays they didn’t go to theatres. It was only just lately—during the past month—that they had been seeing each other on both days during the week-ends. But after being cooped up in Rammell’s all the week, Ted needed exercise. Lots and lots of it. Walking was the kind he principally fancied. And it was because it was hard to keep up with him otherwise that she had begun to take his arm.
There is something about arm-taking that is important. More important than cinema hand-holding. It is public. With hand-holding, usherettes don’t see. But with arm-taking, everybody notices. Also, it is part of the training. There is nothing like arm-taking for reminding you that you can’t just go on going your own way any longer.
Irene was used to it by now. Arm-in-arm, she and Ted had tramped over half London. There was one regular route that they took. It started off from Bond Street across Grosvenor Square into Hyde Park. Then over the bridge at the Serpentine. And it finished up at a small tearoom in South Kensington. By the end of it, Ted was beginning to feel nicely loosened up. All ready for the walk home again, in fact. And Irene was wondering what sort of shoes a girl could buy that would stand up to it. Something that would do for pavements. Gravel. Wet grass. Tea shops. Everything.
It was getting on for ten-forty-five when she and Ted came out of the Odeon. That in itself was promising. Mr. Bloot rarely stayed later than eleven. And it was important that Mr. Bloot shouldn’t be there to-night. Ted and Irene had something that they both wanted to say to Mr. and Mrs. Privett.
But that was as far as agreement went. Left to herself, Irene would have done it the simple way. Just said: “Oh, by the way, Ted’s asked me to marry him. And I’ve said ‘yes.’ So we’re engaged. And we’re going to get married.”
But Ted was obstinate. Mulish. Adamant. He adopted a know-better, take-it-from-me kind of manner that she found maddening. He might have been going round getting engaged all his life he was so absolutely certain how the thing should be done.
“I’m only doing what’s right,” he told her. “After all, he is your father.”
“Well, I think it’s silly,” Irene answered. “And there’s no need for it. It isn’t as if they didn’t like you.”
Ted shook his head.
“It isn’t only just a matter of liking,” he said. “This is different.”
“Oh, well, have it your own way then,” she replied. “Only don’t blame me if anything goes wrong. My way it couldn’t have.”
She had removed her arm from his while they were talking. They were now walking along side by side like strangers.
“You ... you don’t think there will be any objections, do you?” Ted asked suddenly. “I mean about not having enough money, or anything.”
But Irene was maddened with him. Really furious. She’d no idea he could be so stupid. That he cared so little for her feelings. She had planned everything. Got it all ready for him. And he had deliberately spoilt it.
She did not turn her head as she answered.
“That’s your affair,” she said. “Better ask him. Then you’ll find out.”
They had reached Fewkes Road by now. The light was still burning in the front room. And Ted followed her up the path without speaking. It was not until they were inside the house that she noticed how nervous he was. He stood there, with his back to the front door, pulling at his tie and going through a kind of dry, swallowing action in his throat. He looked grim. And awkward. For no reason that she could explain, she found herself loving him again.
She went up and kissed him.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’ll be all right. I know it will.”
His arms went round her so tightly that he left her breathless.
“It’s got to be,” he said.
They were still embracing when the door of the sitting-room opened. Mrs. Privett came out into the hall.
“That you, Ireen?” she asked.
Irene broke away hurriedly.
“We’re back, Mum.”
There came a gulp from close beside her.
“Good evening, Mrs. Privett.”
Irene went up and took Mrs. Privett by the arm.
“Come along, Mum,” she said. “Ted’s got something he wants to say to Dad.”
“Then tell him to go in,” Mrs. Privett said. “Dad’s only got Gus with him.”
“ ... well, why didn’t you say so before?” Mr. Privett was asking. “Then he’d have left us sooner. He’s not the kind to stay if he isn’t wanted.”
He felt rather resentful as he said it. Up to that moment he’d always liked Ted. Even looked forward to seeing him. But this was rather overstepping it. He’d practically ordered Mr. Bloot out of the room just now.
“I had to see you alone,” Ted explained. “It’s private.”
Mr. Privett stood in front of the fireplace regarding him. He’d never noticed before what an extraordinarily jumpy kind of young man Ted was. He was fiddling with a button with one hand. And tugging at the lapel of his coat with the other. And his feet weren’t still either. He was shifting around all the time like a boxer.
“Well, what is it?” Mr. Privett asked.
There was a pause. Ted swallowed hard again.
“Irene and me want to get married.”
“You want what?”
Mr. Privett had heard perfectly. But he had to play for time. He had guessed for some time how things were going. Known that sooner or later it might come to this. But he had always put the thought clean out of his mind. Never once really faced up to it.
“To get married,” he heard Ted say again.
There could be no further avoiding it. He couldn’t pretend that he hadn’t heard this time either. He would have to say something.
“Ireen’s only eighteen remember,” he said reproachfully.
More fiddling. More swallowing. So far as Mr. Privett was concerned this was another habit of Ted’s that he had never noticed before. The boy gave a distinct, audible gulp every time he attempted to say anything.
“I know,” Ted answered. “That’s why we ... we’d like to be engaged first.”
Mr. Privett considered for a moment. There seemed to be a possible let out here.
“I see,” he said. “You want to get engaged.”
Ted gave another gulp.
“That’s right, sir” he replied. “Get engaged.”
He was glad that he’d remembered to say “sir.” It was one of those things that were expected at such moments. But it hadn’t really helped. Instead it seemed rather to have embarrassed Mr. Privett. To Ted’s surprise Mr. Privett seemed to be nervous too. Rattled. He kept pulling at his watch chain. Moving from one foot to the other.
“How long have you known each other?” he asked at last.
“Nearly six months, sir. You remember. At the last staff dance.”
“The staff dance,” Mr. Privett repeated dully. “Oh, yes. The staff dance. I suppose it must be about six months.”
“Yes, sir. Nearly.”
He paused.
“Does Ireen know you’re asking me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, she does.”
“Yes, sir.”
It wasn’t getting any easier for either of them. Indeed, for Mr. Privett it was getting appreciably harder every moment. He couldn’t go on asking questions for ever. Eventually he would have to say something. Be decisive. In the meantime, he wasn’t going to be rushed by this nervous young man opposite.
“And does she want it?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
Mr. Privett paused.
“Well ...” he began.
But he got no further. The door opened. And Irene stood there. She was wearing the excited, eyes-shining expression that he remembered from the time when she had been quite a little girl. She looked younger than ever this evening. So young that it didn’t seem possible that this tall, gulping, tie-pulling young man was seriously thinking of getting married to her.
“What did you tell him, Dad?” she asked.
Mr. Privett began pulling at his watch chain again.
“We hadn’t quite got there yet,” he admitted. “I was just ... just asking him things.”
Then Mr. Privett looked up. Over Irene’s shoulder he could see Mrs. Privett. And beyond Mrs. Privett glowed the pink, moonlike face of Mr. Bloot.
“Maht Ah be the first ...” he began.
Mr. Privett had just come back from the bathroom. Mrs. Privett was already in bed. She was sitting up rubbing some cream into her hands.
“Whatever were you two talking about all that time?” she demanded.
“I was asking him things,” Mr. Privett told her. “About him. And Ireen. About both of them.”
“What sort of things?”
“About how long they’d known each other.”
“And what else?”
“Whether Ireen wanted it.”
Mrs. Privett put the cream jar down with a thump.
“Of course, she wants it. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been asking you.”
“I had to make sure,” Mr. Privett replied. “It’s very important.”
“I know it’s important. That’s what I’ve been saying to you. What are his prospects?”
“You mean how much he earns?”
Mrs. Privett nodded.
“There wasn’t time to ask,” he told her. “I was only just getting round to it.”
“Well, he gets eight-ten at the moment,” Mrs. Privett continued. “And it’ll be twelve if he gets the Counting House job. But that isn’t certain. So they’ll have to wait. About three years, I told her. Till she’s twenty-one. And, of course, there’s the commission. That’s another thirty pounds.”
“How d’you know about that?” Mr. Privett demanded.
“I asked Ireen.”
“When?”
“While he was in there talking to you.”
Mr. Privett went over to the window and pulled the Venetian blind half-way up.
“It all came so sudden,” he said. “I wasn’t really prepared. I like him all right myself. But I didn’t know how you’d take it if ...”
But Mrs. Privett interrupted him.
“Do you think I’d have let him go on coming here if I hadn’t thought he was suitable?” she asked. “It’s been standing out a mile. She could have done better. But she hasn’t. That’s all there is to it.”
“Ted’s a nice boy,” Mr. Privett said slowly.
“Well, I haven’t said he wasn’t, have I? All I said was our Ireen could have done better.”
Mr. Privett went back across the room to put the light out. Instead of feeling pleased about Irene’s engagement, he felt miserable. Utterly miserable. Miserable about everything. About how inadequate he’d been. And about how little Ted earned. And about how it might have been young Tony Rammell himself if only Mrs. Privett herself hadn’t stopped it. And about the way Mrs. Privett kept on reminding him that Irene could have done better. She was exhibiting a kind of heartlessness that left him speechless and aghast.
When he reached the switch, however, Mrs. Privett stopped him.
“Don’t put the light out,” she said. “I’m just going through to Ireen. I never kissed her good night properly.”
The chair in which Mr. Rammell was sitting was quite the wrong shape. Modern. Undeniably modern. And undeniably wrong.
Built of thin struts of some dark, sinister-looking wood, the seat was so close to the ground that Mr. Rammell could hardly see over his knees. The arms, too, were low. So low that Mr. Rammell wondered what to do with his own arms. Even the striped, zebra-ish cushions were hostile. Stuffed with a kind of rubber-sponge material they fought back again when pressed against.
The table alongside matched the chair. Same wood. Same height. The entire suite might have been made by pygmies for other pygmies. And the table itself was of an extraordinary near-oval shape that was scarcely a shape at all. Mr. Rammell had an uneasy feeling that it was still forming.
But the drink that stood on it was reassuringly normal. He had seen to that himself. The amount of soda was just exactly right. And even with the silly furniture, and the pictures that might have come out of the same factory as the chair and table, Mr. Rammell had to admit that he somehow felt relaxed. Relaxed. Rested. And refreshed.
It had been the same on the last two occasions when he had visited the flat. Each time a strange guilty sensation of complete freedom had come over him. Of holiday, almost. He had kept telling himself that it was an error of judgment on his part to have set foot in the place at all. It was that damn’ rain that had been responsible. But for the rain he would never have had Marcia in the car with him. And if they hadn’t shared a car he would certainly never have gone to her flat. Not even had considered it. But it hadn’t proved all loss. Not by any means. It is always a ticklish business discussing intimate family affairs against an office background. And he was glad to have avoided it.
In the ordinary way, of course, he would simply have got Marcia to come round to Eaton Square. But that would have involved Mrs. Rammell. And keeping Mrs. Rammell out of it had always been his chief thought.
It was interesting, too, from his standpoint to see how a girl like Marcia really did live. On the whole, it was pretty much what he had expected. White paintwork. A trace of perfume and cigarette smoke in the air. Copies of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar left lying around. Drinks on a side table. And photographs of Marcia herself, heaven knows how many of them, stuck up everywhere. Dimly he wondered how she could afford it all. And then he remembered the Outside Activities clause in the Staff Agreement. That he reckoned must be bringing her in quite a packet. Probably doubling up, in fact. And perks on the side, of course. That goddamn-awful chair and table, for instance. Given to her by one of the agencies probably.
He glanced at his watch. If he had been at home at this moment, for instance, he would have been changing into a black tie ready to be dragged off to dinner with the Burnetts.
Avoiding the Burnetts was always its own reward. But there was another reason altogether why he was glad that he was not going. That was because he and Mrs. Rammell were not yet properly on speaking terms. They were out of the vulgar, recriminatory phase. Out of the silence phase, too. They were now in the third stage of the cycle, the ghastly politeness phase. Mr. Rammell held doors open for her. She thanked him. He passed her things. She thanked him. He asked if she had had a tiring day. She thanked him. He inquired after her neuritis, her slipped disc, her sinus. She said, “Better, thank you.” As conversation goes, however, even a Trappist couldn’t have pretended that it added up to very much.
But it wasn’t simply to avoid the Burnetts that he had come. There was still some tidying up to be done on his own account. And he was not a man who liked leaving things half done.
“So we can take it that you’ve put New York right out of your mind, can we?” he asked.
Marcia was seated just opposite. Perched half on, half off, the zebra-striped divan that had evidently come out of the same herd as the cushions. She was listening intently.
“Oh, definitely,” she said at last.
Mr. Rammell took another sip from his glass. Then he went on being business-like.
“You saw Mr. Preece, didn’t you?” he asked. “The new arrangement quite satisfactory?”
Mr. Rammell was getting to understand Marcia by now. That was why he wasn’t concerned when at first she made no reply at all. He knew that if he waited long enough it would eventually come.
“Yes, thank you,” she said after an unusually long pause. “Thank you.”
It had been specially difficult having to answer two questions at once. But, really, there had been more to it than that. It was blissy of course having a new contract. Just when she had begun to wonder whether the old one would ever be renewed at all. And Rammell’s had been more than generous. Absolute sweeties, in fact. There was no denying that. But there were still all those horrid old debts of hers. The ones that she knew that Mr. Bulping would have taken care of if only she’d remembered to ask him in time. And God knows that no one could accuse her of being mercenary. She had never once even mentioned money to Tony. Theirs had remained a boy and girl friendship right the way through.
The memory of it brought a tightness to her throat. She would simply never have believed that he could be so callous. There had been that one completely dreamy, swoony evening when he had come to the flat to say good-bye. He had even remembered to bring a bottle of champagne with him. And there had been that last telephone-call actually from the airport itself. But, after that, nothing. Silence. Simply silence. Not even a post-card of the Manhattan sky-line. She could see now how foolish she had been ever to squander so much love on him. He would never know, could not possibly imagine, how much she had really been prepared to give. It was as though they had been separated throughout by one of Rammell’s own thick plate-glass windows.
And there was, she had to admit, something of the same strange remote quality in Mr. Rammell. As though he were an emotion short somewhere. Born without the complete set of feelings. He had behaved marvellously. Quite marvellously. She would have been the first to admit that. Wouldn’t any father have been worried about a boy who was so obviously just drifting until Marcia had rescued him? And now that it was all over, now that she had explained everything, she could tell how relieved he was. How pathetically grateful. Like a dog that had just escaped punishment. But he was so cold. So terribly cold. Even now, after everything that had happened, if she were to go up to him and put her arms around him, explain that she knew everything that was in his mind, he would only misinterpret it.
And it only made it all the harder for her because she could tell how lonely and miserable at heart Mr. Rammell really was. Facts like that cannot be concealed from a woman. What Mr. Rammell needed more than any man whom she had ever met was someone to cherish him. Pet him. Make a fuss of him. Soothe him. Flatter him. It would have to be all one-way love, of course. She saw that. With his attitude towards life, Mr. Rammell himself could never be the lover. But did that matter? Hadn’t there always been a place in this world for the kind of woman who was selfless? Dedicated? Giving?
She glanced upwards for a moment to make sure that Mr. Rammell was still there. But it was all right. He had just taken a cigar out of his case. And he was now engaged in clipping the end off. There was a degree of absorption in the job that she found deeply moving. He was so entirely self-centred. Like a child, she told herself. And gracious what an unattractive child he was. Even though he was quite important really, he looked seedy. Downright seedy. The only thing that could put him right was a holiday. Right away from Bond Street. Away from telephones. Away from everything ... She saw herself in some unknown spot completely off the map. Like Cornwall. Or Majorca. In quite a small sort of cottage, too. Just the two of them, with her nursing him. Literally waiting on him. Hand and foot. Fetching and carrying. Day and night. Slowly, wearily, thanklessly, building him up again. Restoring him. Making a new man out of him from the infinite reserves of her own devotion.
“Well, that’s that,” Mr. Rammell’s voice said from a point located somewhere in space. “I just wanted to be sure that everything was all right. I’ve got to be going.”
These moments of snap decisions were always difficult for Marcia. She knew that unless she spoke now, at once, she would lose him. Probably for ever. Then there would be no one, simply no one, coming to her little flat at all.
It was in a flash that the words came to her.
“Won’t ... won’t you have another drink?” she asked.
In the matter of drinking, Mr. Rammell had frequently marvelled at himself. The weakness of his character was truly astonishing. Apparently, whether he wanted another drink or not, he simply couldn’t refuse. Not that it was alcoholism. He rarely drank too much. It was merely that he automatically accepted.
Which was why he was still there. The time was now after eight-thirty. At this rate, he’d be there the whole evening. Either waiting for Marcia to say something, or wondering what to make of it when she had said it. Admittedly, it was restful. But it was also indescribably dull. “The moment I’ve finished this drink I must be on my way,” he told himself.
The pile of long-playing records caught his eye.
“You musical?” he asked.
Marcia raised her eyes. Her deep violet eyes. They met his for a moment.
“Definitely,” she answered.
She got up as she said it and moved slowly over to the machine. There was a record already on the turntable. She switched it on. Then she sat herself down again on the edge of the divan wearing her far-away expression. The one that Tony had always loved so much.
But this time she wasn’t thinking of the tiny cottage where, for Mr. Rammell’s sake, she would gladly, oh, so gladly have been wearing down her fingers to the bone. Instead she kept remembering the bleak, unhappy present. The last lot of photographs from The Tatler, for instance, that had come out all wrong because the studio had changed her make-up. The bill for the chair that Mr. Rammell was sitting in, and for the horrible little table beside it. What the dentist had said last time about having to crown it because ordinary stopping wouldn’t work any longer. The fact that her mother’s postal order was overdue again ...
“Turn it off,” Mr. Rammell’s voice said quite distinctly.
Marcia moved just as slowly back to the machine. She turned the switch. The automatic arm lifted, swung clear and ingeniously stowed itself away. The room, to Mr. Rammell’s relief, became entirely restful once more.
“Sure you don’t mind?” he asked.
“Definitely not.” Marcia assured him.
And then, as she turned, he saw that Marcia was crying. Not openly, noisily. Nothing spectacular. It was simply that her eyes were moist. She was holding a handkerchief up to them.
“What’s the matter?” Mr. Rammell demanded.
“Nothing,” Marcia told him. “Really it’s nothing. Nothing that I could explain.”
Mr. Rammell, all knees and elbows, struggled up out of his chair and came across to her.
“I want you to know how much I appreciate the way you’ve been taking all this,” he said slowly. “If there’s anything else I can do ...”
“Thank you,” Marcia replied huskily.
“Well, is there?”
Marcia raised her face again. Her lower lip was trembling. How could she explain, how could she possibly explain, that she was crying only because she had just remembered that she had put that record on for Tony? Left it in the machine so that she could simply turn the switch the moment she heard him ring. That was weeks and weeks ago by now. And she hadn’t had the heart to go near the damn’ thing ever since.
“Well, is there?” She heard Mr. Rammell’s words again.
“N ... no, really. Please don’t ask me. You wouldn’t understand.”
She was crying quite openly by now. A large tear formed itself in the corner of her eye and began to trickle down her cheek. Mr. Rammell looked at it fascinated. He had never watched a tear in live close-up before. Come to that he had never watched Marcia herself in live close-up before.
And now that he did so he was startled. The leading model look had disappeared completely. She seemed such a little girl. It was like having a limp, unhappy child standing there. Instinctively he put his arms out to her. And automatically she came into them.
Marcia could tell at once how pure the embrace was. And, really, she rather loved him for it. It was so obvious that he had never properly held any other woman before. He didn’t know even the elementary things, like where to put his hands, and about not breathing down her neck. It was all as impersonal as if he had been comforting a sad aunt. Merely friendly. Nothing more. But even that was something. In her present deprived state it was wonderfully reassuring to have a shoulder again. Any shoulder. Just something to lean on. Something that smelt woollen. And cigarry. And male.
Because it seemed, even to Marcia, that her head had been there for a long time, and because nothing very much seemed to be happening, she raised her face to his. Mr. Rammell kissed it just as she knew he would. It was a paternal, affectionate sort of kiss somewhere right up on the cheekbone. She started to move away from him.
“I ... I’m sorry I was so ... so silly,” she began.
But Mr. Rammell checked her. He reached out and took hold of her hands. They were slim, delicate hands. The only thing that Mr. Rammell could feel was the large costume-jewellery ring that she was wearing. And it was the simple fact of Marcia’s childlikeness and fragility that moved him. She seemed so completely defenceless. Unprotected. Without any armour against life at all. And at the very moment when he was telling himself that it was his duty—yes, his duty—to provide protection, to stand between her and the world, he pulled her roughly to him. She offered simply no resistance at all. But, by now, Mr. Rammell was conscious only of the fact that if there had been any resistance he would have overcome it. Holding Marcia in a close and suffocating bear hug he started to kiss her with a sense of conquest and possession that astonished him.
When he paused for a moment—and it was purely to catch his breath—Marcia spoke. This was one of the few moments in life when Marcia had never been at a loss for words. Suddenly, it all seemed so easy. So natural.
“Darling,” she said. “Darling.”
The effect of the words, however, were greater than she had anticipated. That was scarcely her fault, however. She was not to know that she was saying them to someone who had not heard them addressed to him personally for over a quarter of a century. Mr. Rammell responded. And he responded violently. He began kissing her again.
It was wonderful, of course. Quite wonderful. To think that on their third meeting—because all the other fifteen years simply didn’t count—he should have come to care so much. In the ordinary way she would have been ready to stand there in his arms for ever. But somehow it seemed so pointless. So silly, even. Because it was perfectly obvious that he didn’t know what to do next. So long as he could come up for air every so often, he would probably still be kissing her by midnight.
She managed at last to break away from him. They stood there regarding each other. And she knew that this was just the moment for her smile. The slow, enigmatic one. But once again her instinct helped her through. She guessed that he would need more than a three-quarter turn away smile. Would need some definite reassurance, in fact. Something positive so that he wouldn’t start saying anything ghastly like, “You really must forgive me. I’m afraid I was just carried away.”
Marcia had known what it was to have that said to her. And it was horrible. Short of being vulgar and clinging, she had never known how to be able to start things up again.
But this time, she was prepared. She raised her eyes to his and smiled straight into them.
“Darling,” she said.
And then, remembering what had happened last time, she added hurriedly: “Just ... just look what you’ve done to me. I ... I must go and p ... put my f ... face back on again.”
It was after eleven by now. Marcia had changed into her long house-coat—the one that Mr. Bulping had given her. And she was wearing a pair of plaited-straw mules that poor darling Tony had discovered somewhere and had insisted on lavishing. The perfume, just a trace too sophisticated for purely informal occasions, had come out of Rammell’s sample stores.
“You know, Marcia, you’re a strange girl,” Mr. Rammell said.
He uttered the words slowly and reflectively as if they meant something.
And to Marcia, they did. This was just the kind of conversation in which she could keep level. Even lead if it came to it.
“Am I?” she said slowly.
“Yes,” Mr. Rammell went on. “I can’t make you out at all.”
This was harder. Definitely harder. For a moment nothing whatever occurred to her. Then it came back to her in a flash.
“You ... you could try,” she said.
But it was no use. She had taken Mr. Rammell out of his depths by now. He was floundering, too. But there was more to it than that. He was ill. Downright ill. If he had been at home he would have mixed himself one of his patent emergency draughts—six drops of chlorodyne in half a medicine glass of warm angostura and water. And no wonder he needed it. It had been madness, sheer madness, ever to have eaten that omelette that Marcia had insisted on making for him. Eggs were the one thing that the specialist had warned him against. And now he was paying for it.
Because of the twinges, the pangs, he forgot all about trying to understand Marcia. He was intent on trying to understand the furniture instead.
“Why on earth did you get this bloody awful chair and table?” he asked at last.
Marcia hesitated for a moment. Really meant to hesitate this time.
“You ... you won’t like it if I tell you,” she said.
“Why not?”
He was getting sick of the whole thing by now. Wished that he hadn’t asked. Apparently even the simplest thing he said got itself trapped into some kind of complicated reply.
“Because ... because it was Tony who made me.”
Mr. Rammell shifted his weight in sheer irritation. The chair in reply bounced back again.
“I thought it probably was,” he said.
Marcia paused. Was this the moment? Possibly not. But it had to be said some time.
“I ... I haven’t paid for them yet,” she said softly.
Mr. Rammell’s reply was immediate. And abrupt.
“Well, don’t,” he told her.
But this was Marcia’s other good subject. The one where she could keep things going for hours. The one where she really came into her own.
“That record-player over there,” she said. “That’s really Tony’s.”
Mr. Rammell thought for a moment.
“I’ll have it collected,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll send you another one.”
Marcia raised her hands to her face. It was a quick, birdlike little gesture. Quite different from her usual slow-motion movements. And wonderfully effective if only she remembered not to use it twice in the same evening.
“Oh, but you mustn’t,” she said. “Really you mustn’t. They cost the earth.”
“I’ll send you one,” Mr. Rammell repeated.
Marcia drew in a long, deep breath. This was obviously it. A chance like it might not present itself again for weeks. Never perhaps.
“If ... if you would like to give me something,” she said; “but ... but only if you really mean it, I mean you don’t have to because ... because why should you? Then I wish you’d ... but I can’t ask you, I just can’t—it all sounds too awful ... but ... but you see, if you really did send me another record-player I ... I’d only have to ... sell it because I’m so ... so overdrawn or whatever it’s called at the moment. And it ... it feels so horrible. I ... I lie awake thinking about it.”
Mr. Rammell sucked in his lips.
“Which bank?” he asked.
Marcia paused. Really paused this time. It seemed such an extraordinary question. She was still wondering what to answer when Mr. Rammell repeated it.
“Oh, Lloyd’s,” she replied at last. “Definitely.”
But, as she said it, she realized how unfair she had been. How disloyal. Besides, she couldn’t possibly afford to say anything that might upset Lloyd’s Bank.
“It ... it isn’t the Manager’s fault,” she added hurriedly. “Really, it isn’t. He’s ... he’s an absolute sweetie. He doesn’t mind a bit. He’d be ready to wait for ever. It’s ... it’s something to do with the rules. It’s ... head office, I think he said.”
Mr. Rammell clapped his hands down firmly on his knees and started the long struggle to get up.
“Tell him not to worry,” he said. “Tell him I’ll guarantee it.”
“Guarantee it?”
“That’s what I said. How much?”
This was really worst of all. Marcia had never been quick at figures. Certainly not in her head. All that she knew was that the horrible little statement from the bank simply kept on coming out in red. And the bank kept writing her letters that she couldn’t bear to open. Carried them about in her handbag for days, in fact. And there were all the other things that would have made the statement so much redder if she had ever dared to write out the cheques.
“Would ... would a hundred be all right?” she asked, adding quickly before Mr. Rammell could reply. “It’s just ... just too wonderful.”
“I’ll see to it in the morning,” he told her.
It was obvious that Mr. Rammell wanted to get away. He seemed suddenly to have grown distant somehow. That was one of the things that Marcia hated about money. It had such a way of coming between friends.
“It’s terribly sweet of you,” she said vaguely. “Really, it is. I ...”
But it was obvious that so far as Mr. Rammell was concerned, the evening was now over. He did not appear even to be listening. And, when Marcia raised her face to his, it was hardly a kiss at all that he gave her. Merely a pressure.
“Time you were in bed,” he said heartlessly.
But Marcia did not go through to the bedroom at once. She sat there, gazing romantically into the twin elements of the electric fire. Her life past, present and future flowed through her mind in chance, uneasy instalments. For no reason at all she remembered the time when she had been just a little girl and had been watching some pigeons ... Then her American husband came back to her. Of all the men whom she had ever known, he was the one who used by far the nicest kind of after-shaving lotion ... Next it was old Mrs. Tutty who suddenly became so real that she might have been in the room there with her. And Marcia knew exactly what her mother was thinking. She was wondering when the next postal order would be arriving. Soon. To-morrow perhaps? Next week? The week after? Never? ... But, like the pigeons and the American, Mrs. Tutty did not stay for long. She faded. And in her place it was young Tony who was there with her ... This was worse. Much worse. It wasn’t merely that Marcia could see him. She could feel him, too. If she arched her neck ever so little, there were the backs of his fingers passing gently backwards and forwards across her hair. Even though she despised herself for it, she began crying ... Then Tony, too, returned where he belonged, somewhere three thousand miles away right over on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. And Marcia was left by herself in that top service flat off Sloane Square with the unpaid-for furnishings. She shivered. Not from cold, but from sheer downright loneliness.
“Oh, God,” she began thinking, “I might as well be dead. I hope Mr. Rammell doesn’t forget. I could ...”—there was a slight stammer, an impediment, even in her thoughts—“could mean so much to him. Even if he doesn’t know it, he still needs me. It stands out a mile. I’m what he’s been waiting for. There’s so much I could do, if only he’d let me ...”
She didn’t feel tearful about Mr. Rammell, however, Merely miserable. It was nice about the hundred pounds, of course. But, after that, what was there? Something lasting and permanent—and, if she could have her way, beautiful too, perhaps? Or nothing. Just more loneliness. And more debts. And more birthdays. Where would it all lead to? A nervous breakdown? In a Home somewhere? Suicide?
Marcia got up and began patting the cushions back into their right shape, straightening the covers. She was humming. That was because she had just remembered that the agent had told her that her new picture was going to be released to-morrow. It was of Marcia in a sun-suit. She would be on the back of all the buses. In the Underground. On hoardings. In the newspapers. Everywhere. It would be like waking up to a new life knowing that the sun-suit photographs would be appearing.
For the moment she had forgotten even Mr. Rammell.
The news of Irene’s engagement had come as a great relief to Mrs. Rammell.
She heard of it first from Nancy. Breathlessly and eagerly imparted. And, as she listened, she felt her whole mind lightening. Not that she approved of her sister’s newly-revived friendship with Mrs. Privett. On the contrary, the mere thought of it made her shudder. She winced every time she remembered. Because it only went to show what Mrs. Rammell had all those years kept on trying so hard to make herself forget—how common at heart poor Nancy really was. Common and insensitive. Any woman with real feelings would have recognized that there was only one thing that could have been done after that unfortunate chance encounter in Mrs. Rammell’s own drawing-room. And that was to drop Mrs. Privett again as soon as she had rediscovered her.
But it was not of Nancy that she was thinking. It was of Tony.
She knew nothing of the Marcia affair. And with Irene out of the way, it meant that her poor, darling Tony could come home again. His exile among all those dreadful New Yorkers was no longer necessary. He could return at once to Eaton Square. And Mrs. Rammell would see to it that he could pick up again the suddenly sundered strands of his young life ... interior decoration, ballet production, print-collecting, or whatever it was for which his starved lonely soul was craving. This time Mrs. Rammell was determined. She was ready, if necessary, to carry the issue to a straight fight with her own husband.
She was, in point of fact, particularly critical of Mr. Rammell at the moment. And more than critical. She openly despised him. Hitherto, she had felt a mild sense of obligation. Of gratitude, even. That was because—even though he had absolutely no charm, no feelings—he had at least always been generous. Whenever she had been forced to speak first at Charity Committee meetings saying that she would take a dozen seats at five guineas, or a full-page in the programme, or throw her house open for the reception afterwards, he had supported her. Financed everything. Without even asking what it was all about. Anything so long as he didn’t actually have to attend it himself. It was this freedom of action on her part that had made her so dynamic, so much sought-after. It was what had brought her to the very pinnacle of patronage. And, only this morning, she had toppled. Just when the Opera Guild and the Ballet Group and the Friends of Chamber Music were all beginning to turn the corner she had suddenly been demoted. Snubbed in the only way that really matters to any lifelong Charity patroness.
The insult had appeared in all the daily papers. In the second column of the Honours’ List. Just where everyone would read it. And really she had scarcely been able to believe her eyes. Because the husband of her own Appeals Secretary, the insignificant little Mrs. Tom Davey, who always attended meetings carrying a small limp notebook like a typist’s, had actually been knighted. For political services, too. It was unbearable. Even though Mr., so soon to be Sir Tom, Davey was a shoe manufacturer in quite a large way of business, wholesale as well as retail, Mrs. Rammell could not stand for it. It showed how hopelessly, irretrievably, her own husband had failed her. If she had said it once, she had said it ten thousand times that he ought to have asked more politicians to the house. Not only Ministers. Junior Ministers as well. Parliamentary Private Secretaries, too. The whole run of them. And what had he done? Nothing. All that he had ever thought about was Bond Street, Bond Street, Bond Street ... She realized now that she didn’t only despise him. She hated him.
And she saw so little of him. That was another thing. Mrs. Rammell always took her breakfast in bed. Mr. Rammell, on the other hand, ate his downstairs. Naturally, he was out all day. The small luncheon parties that Mrs. Rammell gave to visiting singers, artists, dancers, choreographers, took place entirely without him. And nowadays he was scarcely ever in even during the evening. He arrived back in Eaton Square towards midnight, gave himself a final whisky and soda followed by a draught of two Alka-Seltzer tablets and slipped up silently to bed.
Just like to-night. It was after eleven already. Mrs. Rammell had long ago changed into a loose house-coat. And with her books and brochures, her magazines and folders, her Glyndebourne prospectus and her Festival Hall calendar spread around her, she was killing time waiting up for him.
She was at her most masterful, too. Felt the little electric thrills of nervous energy tingling through her. To-night she intended to get everything cleared up. As soon as she had arranged about Tony’s return passage—and that immediately—she wanted to draw his attention to silly little Mrs. Davey’s husband’s absurdly undeserved title. Put things to rights for the future, as it were.
Even though he wasn’t actually there beside her, Mr. Rammell himself wasn’t far away. Only just off Sloane Square, in fact.
He was sitting as far back as he could manage—which wasn’t far enough—in one of those ridiculous chairs that he disapproved of, quietly reflecting on the fact that Marcia had the most beautiful shoulders that he had ever seen on any woman. Smooth. And white. And rippling. Like a schoolgirl’s. Only without any puppy-fat, of course. Just the firm, delicate bone structure showing underneath. Mr. Rammell had a particularly good view of them because Marcia had seated herself on a cushion at his feet.
He wondered dimly what thoughts, if any, were passing through that lovely smooth head of hers. As he wondered, he stroked. Gently, as one strokes a cat. And, like a cat, Marcia responded. Mr. Rammell could feel a faint, answering quiver coming back through his finger-tips.
“That’s what she needs,” he told himself. “Affection. Starved for it. Absolutely starved. Just love and be loved. That’s her formula. Does something to her. Like rain and sunshine. Brings her out.”
And as he sat there, still indolently stroking, it occurred to him that affection was what he had been in need of, too. The thought had never struck him before. But he saw it clearly enough now. Not that he would call his marriage a bad one. Or a particularly good one. Scarcely a marriage at all, in fact. No common interests. No topics of conversation. No friends in common, even. No sense of relief and relaxation when he got home.
And really it was incredibly restful just being here. Restful in an unpassionate, middle-aged fashion that completely lulled him. There were moments, of course, when it was otherwise. But were they, he had sometimes asked himself afterwards, entirely spontaneous? Or were they because the other partner had felt somehow that it might be expected? Whatever the cause they were not frequent. Not overwhelming. For the most part it was like having a darling daughter, grown up and still entirely dedicated to him.
The last three months with Marcia—and it was only during the last three months that he had really come to know her at all—had made him strangely introspective. He was now aware of emotions that he had not previously known that he possessed. Complicated, unfamiliar ones. Like compassion. And apprehension. And solicitude. He woke nowadays wondering whether Marcia was safe. Happy. Contented.
And even though she was there beside him—leaning right up against his knees in fact—he still had to ask her.
“Everything all right, dear?” he inquired idiotically. “No worries?”
It was another of those terrible double questions that Marcia dreaded. But this time it was easy. There was no need even to attempt to answer. Instead of replying, she snuggled closer to him and pressed her left cheek lingeringly against his kneecap.
“Anything you’d like?” he went on, snatching at the last few crumbs of reassurance before it was time for him to go.
Marcia did not reply immediately. She turned and placed her other cheek up against his knee. Now she was facing him.
“Only to ... to go away somewhere,” she said.
“Go away,” Mr. Rammell repeated. “Where?”
“Anywhere,” she replied. “Anywhere that’s ... that’s right away from here.”
“How long for?” Mr. Rammell asked.
“Months and months,” she told him. “For ever.”
He had stopped stroking by now and was looking at her in amazement.
“You mean you want to move?” he asked.
“I want to go away,” she said again.
Mr. Rammell paused. He recognized that it would be no use trying to rush her. This was one of those moments when she needed to be helped along. Prompted.
“You mean somewhere like Brighton?” he asked her.
Marcia shook her head.
“Farther,” she said. “Right away.”
Her clear, deep eyes were staring up into his as she spoke. They were profound, beautiful eyes. Mr. Rammell felt sure that there was a meaning behind them somewhere.
“South of France,” he suggested. “Get some sun.”
But again Marcia shook her head.
“Farther,” she said. “Everyone goes there.”
For a moment Mr. Rammell became suspicious. He wondered whether Marcia was slowly, tortuously trying to tell him that she wanted to go to New York. To Tony. But her next remark reassured him.
“An island,” was what she said. And, to explain her meaning, she added: “An island in the sea somewhere.”
“You name one,” he told her.
Naturally, she hesitated for a moment. She didn’t want to say the wrong thing. And she had never been good at names. But it was all right this time. She had seen it written right across the beach-wear advertisements in big capital letters that were easy to read.
“Bermuda,” she said.
“What would you do there?” he asked.
“I’d have you,” she answered.
“You mean you want me to come along too?” he asked.
Her eyes were fixed on his more deeply than ever now.
“Of ... of course.”
Mr. Rammell took a deep breath.
“I’ll see,” he said.
“You ... you promise?”
“I’ve told you I’ll see,” he said cautiously.
This was difficult again. Dreadfully difficult to put into words. But she struggled on.
“I mean you’ll promise you’ll see?”
“I promise.”
“Then you will?”
“I’ll see.”
When Mr. Rammell left Marcia it was nearly midnight. He had to walk back to Eaton Square. That was because he had sent the car away long ago. There are moments when a car can be an embarrassment. The sense of freedom, of cutting loose, somehow gets whittled right down to nothing in the knowledge that the chauffeur is sitting outside timing things.
And, in any case, the walk was just what Mr. Rammell needed. It helped to clear his head. He hadn’t the slightest intention of going off with Marcia to Bermuda. Or anywhere else for that matter. Indeed, as a lover he recognized that he was only somewhere in the second class. He wasn’t the kind of man to do anything dramatic of that sort. Not that the idea wasn’t attractive. The thought of endless sunshine and coral reefs and palm trees and ... and Marcia of course—he had very nearly forgotten Marcia—made him feel restless and dissatisfied. Also uneasy. Because that last remark of Marcia’s was just one more symptom of what he had been noticing for some time now. Marcia herself was changing. She no longer accepted things as they were. In a vague dreamy fashion she was becoming too loving. Too possessive. And that frightened him.
When he got back he went straight through to his study and poured himself a final whisky. He had just reached the pleasant moment of putting off any kind of decision until to-morrow when Mrs. Rammell came in. She looked austere, majestical, in her long house-coat. And Mr. Rammell’s heart sank at the sight of her. He knew that there must be something very much on her mind if she was wandering about the house at that time.
And she began immediately. Before she had even closed the door. All in a rush. Speaking in the way in which only a distraught, agitated woman is capable.
“It’s about Tony,” she said. “I’ve got to talk to you. Now. To-night. Because I never really see you. Not to talk to properly. It’s all right. He can come home again. That girl he was so fond of has got engaged to someone else. The danger’s all over. He can come back straight away. I want you to cable him. Better still, speak to him. Time’s quite different in New York. It’s always earlier. Or later. Or something. He’s sure to be up. Speak to him now. Tell him to get on to the first plane. Bring him back where he belongs. Let him feel we need him ...”
There was more of it. Much more. All in the same vein. Urgent. Impetuous. Slightly hysterical. Not that Mrs. Rammell could be blamed. She’d had it bottled up inside her all the evening. She had to say it. But it was no use. Mr. Rammell had stopped listening. Simply refused to go on hearing. He knew that it was no use trying to pacify her. Not yet, at least. That would have to come later. And when it did come, what the devil could he say?
Even if she had been quiet, reasonable, restrained, it would have been difficult to explain precisely why Tony’s presence would have been quite so peculiarly awkward just at this very moment.
“The boy’s all right where he is,” he began quietly. “It’s a wonderful chance for him. The experience ...”
“Experience!” Mrs. Rammell’s voice rose to a shrill scream as she repeated the contemptible word.
And then the worst happened. Remember Mr. Rammell was tired already. He had quite as much on his mind as Mrs. Rammell had on hers. And that last drink had been too much for him. He could feel it burning up his inside. In the result, he lost his temper. Quite suddenly he heard himself saying all the things that he had meant not to say.
“Oh, for God’s sake be quiet,” he shouted. “Go back to bed and leave me alone. I don’t interfere with your blasted music. And don’t you interfere with Tony. I don’t want to see him turn into one of your long-haired kind. He’s in New York. And that’s where he’s staying.”
There are some people who are naturally prone to intruding. They are not usually the brash, pressing kind. Simply unfortunates who find themselves projected by Fate into situations that are better left unpenetrated.
Poor Nancy was one of these. Her re-meeting with Mrs. Privett was typical. Five minutes later and she could have saved her sister all that embarrassment. As it was, she inevitably became involved. Without any conscious effort on her part, she was now helplessly and inextricably tangled up in Mrs. Rammell’s own most intimate affairs.
And Mrs. Rammell’s private life was, at the moment, complicated and delicate. As a result of the last row, there was now a breach—a real breach between herself and Mr. Rammell. If she had been seeing comparatively little of him before, she saw absolutely nothing now. They lived a parallel rather than converging existence. Mr. Rammell’s business kept him out later in the evenings. At week-ends he left the house early, accompanied by golf clubs. And, in consequence, Mrs. Rammell lived her own life harder. More musicians. More sculptors. More painters. More choreographers. But still no Tony. That was where the bitterness lay. And that was why Mrs. Rammell was so implacable. So savage. She was ready to do anything. No longer cared how much it might hurt Mr. Rammell. Damage him. Ruin him. Kill him, even. He was now not a husband at all. Simply an enemy. And it was Nancy—stupid, unthinking, well-meaning Nancy—who handed her the murder weapon. Ready sharpened. Removed from the scabbard. Point outwards.
It was inevitable. Mr. Rammell had been seeing even more of Marcia. Practically every evening, in fact. And on Saturdays and Sundays, too. But he had kept her off the dangerous subject of islands. Had simply not referred to it. Whenever he had seen that fatal, far-away-from-it-all expression coming into her eyes, he had started hurriedly to talk of something else. Mink wraps, for instance. It was one mink wrap, in particular, a pale, electric blue one, that had been the cause of all the trouble. Marcia had worn it—heavily insured, of course—at a Charity Ball the previous evening and had forgotten to take it back into Bond Street the next day. She was wearing it, absent-mindedly draped round her shoulders, when Mr. Rammell arrived on the following night. And she looked marvellous, Mr. Rammell reflected. Simply marvellous. The blue of the mink, the dark violet blue of her eyes, the smooth sheen of her hair, the blackness of her dress that made her arms seem somehow whiter, more slender, all affected Mr. Rammell deeply. “My God,” he thought, “that’s how I’d like to have her portrait painted. Just ... just to show people. Show ’em how beautiful she really is.” But because he had never been brought up to pay compliments, didn’t really know how to set about them, all that he said was, “You’re looking very nice to-night, Marcia.” And Marcia, knowing her line by heart, replied: “I’m glad you think so.”
As she said it, she removed the mink wrap slowly, reluctantly and folded it across the end of the couch.
“I ... I ... shouldn’t really be wearing it,” she admitted. “Not now. It’s ... it’s out of stock, you know.”
But Mr. Rammell would not hear of it.
“Put it on again,” he told her. “I like it.”
It was as the pale fur went round her shoulders again, stroking her, that Mr. Rammell noticed her expression changing. Like a cat, it occurred to him: like a cat when its chin’s being tickled. She looked soft, sensuous, purry. He wanted—and this was unusual with him—to get up there and then so that he could embrace her. But Marcia saved him the trouble. She came across to him herself, walking with the upright, faintly swaying motion of the trained model, and knelt down beside his chair. She looked lovelier than ever now that she was near him. Her forehead was faintly puckered. And her eyebrows were arched even more steeply upwards. Mr. Rammell recognized the signs. Knew that there must be something on her mind. Guessed that she was going to say something probably.
“Have ... have you thought any more about it?” she asked him.
A little shudder of apprehension ran through him.
“About what?” he asked cautiously.
But Marcia was playing for time now. Being discreet. And tactful. The very last thing that she wanted was to appear to be rushing him.
“About seeing,” she said. “You ... you remember. You promised. Not really promised.” She was pouting a little now. Looking schoolgirlish. As though ready to smile or break into tears according to the answer. “Just promised about seeing. You ... you do remember, don’t you? You did say you’d see if you could see.”
Mr. Rammell paused.
“You mean about ...” he began.
Marcia nodded. It was a smile after all. And one of her very sweetest smiles, too.
“I knew you wouldn’t forget,” she assured him. “I was quite sure you wouldn’t. About ... about seeing, I mean.”
This was it. There was no escape from it now. Mr. Rammell braced himself.
“Well, I can’t,” he told her. “I have seen. And I can’t. Can’t get away from Bond Street. It’s impossible. Absolutely impossible. Just can’t be done. That’s all there is to it.”
He felt better when he had said it. More confident in himself. But he was totally unprepared for the effect that it had on Marcia. She covered her face with her hands as though he had hit her.
And when Mr. Rammell took her hands in his and looked down at her he saw that she was crying. Her eyes were big with tears. Real tears. The kind that go sliding down and make a mess of eye-black.
“You ... you do mean now, don’t you?” she asked brokenly. “Just now. Not ... not never?”
“Of course not, dear,” he lied to her. “It may be easier later on. But I can’t at present. Not suddenly, I mean. You understand, don’t you? I’ll see again later.”
“How ... how much later?”
Now he was really cornered. He could feel himself sweating quietly inside his collar band.
“In the spring,” he told her, adding unromantically: “After the Sales. When everything settles down again.”
But this came as no comfort to Marcia. It wasn’t definite enough. She was crying openly by now. Her make-up had started to run already. And her shoulders were heaving.
“It’s ... it’s no use,” she said. “We shan’t go for ages and ages. I know we won’t. And then I shall be too ... too old.”
Now she was really past consolation. The forbidden word had slipped out. And, in consequence, every little bit of her was miserable. She ached with sheer wretchedness. Putting her head down on her forearm, she wept and wept.
It was, in point of fact, the very last kind of manifestation that Mr. Rammell felt in need of. He had come, precisely as he had come on so many other nights. Not for passion. Not for sentiment. Not even for the sake of any immediately recognizable form of emotion. Simply for rest. For quiet. For relaxation. And here he was being practically blackmailed into booking a double passage to Bermuda.
He reached down and took Marcia’s wrists in his. Again, as he did so, their smallness, their fragility, troubled him again.
“Don’t cry, darling,” he said gently. “Please don’t. It only upsets me, too. You know it does.”
This was, as it happened, a little better than Marcia had expected. Right up to the last moment she hadn’t intended to carry things so far this evening. Hadn’t really meant to do more than remind him. And all the time she had been crying she had been afraid that he would be angry. Even be horrid. Possibly lose his temper, too. But the way he had taken it all was quite different. It showed that he minded. That he cared. That, even though he still didn’t show it properly, her life had become part of his by now.
“I ... I’ll try not to,” she promised. “It was silly of me. It’s ... it’s only because I ... I mind so much about ... about us.”
Because she was shivering a little now that the outburst, the crisis, was over, Mr. Rammell got up and fetched the wrap. He folded it round her shoulders rather as a parent covers up a child. And as he did so, he noticed how she gathered it around her. Snuggled down into it. Burrowed, almost. Soon only her eyes were left showing. And even these had begun to smile again.
A thought came to him.
“D’you like that wrap?” he asked.
“It’s a heavenly wrap,” Marcia answered.
“Care to keep it?” Mr. Rammell asked, trying to keep his voice as casual-sounding as possible. “For your own I mean.”
The reply, even after making all allowances for something appreciable in the way of a time lag, did not come as soon as Mr. Rammell had expected. That was because this time Marcia was wondering what to say. Not merely how to say it. Because right up to the moment when Mr. Rammell had spoken she had still been thinking about Bermuda. And not about the mink wrap at all. Hadn’t so much as hinted. Let alone asked. The idea of actually owning the mink wrap—or one just like it—had not crossed her mind since she had put it on before Mr. Rammell had arrived.
“It’s a heavenly wrap,” she repeated.
“But would you like it?” Mr. Rammell demanded. “That’s what I want to know. Would you like it?”
As he said it the second time, Marcia felt almost like crying again. Or laughing. Because it was all so odd and mixed up. Really, she had done nothing for it. Nothing special, that is. Except be a nuisance. She hadn’t led into it. Not been extra loving. Or thoughtful. Or endearing. It had just come.
And at the realization of what it meant—that this was love—she reached out her arms towards Mr. Rammell. Her eyes, still swimmy from the recent tears, were gazing full into his. The words she spoke were the plain, simple truth. Truth as Marcia herself saw it.
“I ... I don’t deserve it,” she said.
Mr. Rammell was a business-like man. As soon as he left Marcia, he took out his little Morocco-leather notebook and made the single entry “mink-wrap.” Then, relieved rather than otherwise that this was how the evening had ended, he made his way back to the Square.
But he was reckoning without Miss Winters. She was behaving in a more intense fashion than ever just lately. And she had taken to a new style of hairdressing. Instead of wearing her fringe cut square across the forehead like a neat Venetian blind, she now wore it ragged and serrated. It might have been a limp black comb. In the result, she looked distraught as well as intense.
And she was obtuse, too, when Mr. Rammell spoke to her. She stood there, obviously wondering, her large frightened eyes staring out from under the saw edge of what had been her hair.
“Note to the Fur buyer, copy to Accounts,” Mr. Rammell told her. “I shall personally be buying the mink wrap worn by Marcia at the Charity Ball last Tuesday. Kindly arrange for it to be charged to my account at the bought-in price.”
Mr. Rammell paused. In the ordinary way, he would have inquired the price. Even called the buyer down to see whether between them they could have discovered a flaw, a poor skin, a pulled seam—anything that might justify knocking a hundred or two off. All Mrs. Rammell’s furs had been subjected precisely to that kind of scrutiny. But this was different. The one thing that Mr. Rammell wanted was to be done with it.
He looked up. Miss Winters was still standing there. Still staring.
“That’s all,” he said.
“Where do you want it sent?” she asked.
“Don’t bother about that,” he told her. “I’ll attend to it.”
“Will Mrs. Rammell be collecting it personally?”
“I’ll let you know.”
“Do you want any special arrangements about storage?”
“No,” Mr. Rammell replied briefly. And to show that he had already had quite enough both of the mink wrap and of Miss Winters he repeated: “That’s all.”
She was back again within ten minutes, however. An efficient girl with a strongly developed sense of doom, she had run down to the Fur buyer before actually typing out the memo. Just to make sure, as she put it. And thank goodness, she had! Because the wrap wasn’t anywhere in the building. Marcia should have returned it yesterday and the buyer simply hadn’t done a darn thing about it.
“About that wrap,” Miss Winters began, her voice taking on all the deeper voice tones of the true drama student.
“Yes, what is it?”
“It isn’t there,” Miss Winters told him. “But they’re getting it.”
Mr. Rammell started forward.
“What do you mean?”
“From Marcia.” Miss Winters went on. “She didn’t return it. But the buyer was sure it’d be all right. So she didn’t do anything. She’s on to it now. She’s asked for it back. They’re sending round to Marcia’s flat for it.”
“Then stop them,” Mr. Rammell shouted. “Stop them at once.”
Mr. Rammell paused.
“And ask Marcia to come up and see me,” he said. “Now.”
Marcia was charming about it. Absolutely charming. She was sure all the time that there must have been some horrible mistake, she said. But naturally when they had asked her for it, she couldn’t refuse, could she? And what should she do now? Because unless Mr. Rammell did something it would go straight into storage. She wouldn’t be allowed even to look at it. And she did love it so. Positively adored it. But above all things—and Mr. Rammell knew that, didn’t he?—she didn’t want to be a nuisance. Not the least little tiny bit. If Mr. Rammell himself hadn’t suggested giving her the wrap the thought of it would never even have crossed her mind ...
Even with Marcia so reasonable, it still took up time. And to prevent anything else going wrong, Mr. Rammell told Miss Winters to have the wrap sent up to his own room. He would deliver it himself, he said. When all that was over, he mixed himself a glass of bismuth and water. Took one of the small, unpleasant charcoal tablets that usually seemed to do the trick. Washed his hands which somehow had become strangely sticky for so early in the morning. And got down to the routine business of the day.
On the whole, it was a rather quiet, ordinary sort of day. Sir Harry rang up twice. Once to say that he had come to the conclusion that they were wasting their time with Soft Furnishings and ought to shut the department down completely. And the second time to say that he had a scheme for enlarging it, making it something that would knock the rest of the trade for six ... There was the usual batch of letters to dictate. The quarterly accounts to go through. A long session with Mr. Preece about overtime and special pay. A telephone conversation with the auditors about stock write-off. Two or three callers. A twenty-five-year bonus to present. An interview with the architect about the new dispatch bay in Hurst Place. And then, after lunch, more letters. A deputation from the Staff Association about a separate rest room for the Juniors. Another session with Mr. Preece. A telephone call from Sir Harry warning Mr. Rammell that they were missing all the main chances and ought to begin opening new branches at once in places like Cheltenham, Buenos Aires, Johannesburg ... A long meeting with the buyers about special discounts. Preliminary discussions with a firm of business efficiency experts about electronic computers for the counting house. An emergency call from Mr. Preece about possible Union trouble on the transport side. A message—quite a brief one this time—from Sir Harry reminding him that it was no use trying to build up an overseas business unless it was all properly researched, planned, provided for ... and what was wrong with Canada? Hadn’t Mr. Rammell ever heard of Toronto? Or Melbourne for that matter? And would he please do a paper for the Board next Tuesday? ... And then finally the day’s letters to sign, fresh from Miss Winters’s electric typewriter all looking very black and white and impersonal as though Mr. Rammell had bought the whole batch ready-made from a printer’s.
Just a normal, routine day, in fact. And now at last it was over. But not quite. Miss Winters came in. She was carrying one of Rammell’s big white boxes.
“The wrap,” she said. “It’s been sent up. Like you told me.”
Mr. Rammell felt more relaxed again by now.
“Thank you,” he said. “Get it sent down to the car, would you?”
Then a sudden thought crossed his mind.
“Just a moment,” he said. “Bring it here, would you?”
It was as he feared. The label on the box was addressed to Mrs. Rammell.
But already Miss Winters was speaking again. Beneath the windswept, urchin fringe, her eyes seemed wilder, more frantic than before. But it was obvious that she was doing her best to end the day on a cheerful note.
“I posted the insurance note to Mrs. Rammell,” she said. “That was right, wasn’t it?”
It was only Irene’s second day in the Fur Salon. She had been transferred there, temporarily, because the Junior assistant, Miss Anstey, had fallen sick. And suddenly at that. Pains. Shocking ones, too. Midnight call for the doctor. Appendicitis diagnosed. Ambulance at three a.m. On the operating table by nine. Off the danger-list by lunch-time. No further cause for anxiety. Nothing at all for the family to worry about. But still an awkward gap in Furs. And when a customer has screwed her courage up to the thousand-pound mark, it simply doesn’t make sense to keep her hanging around until she may have cooled off.
Miss Anstey herself was tall, ash blonde, willowy. Irene, on the other hand, was small, dark, springy. There was nothing that they had in common. Except good looks. And undoubtedly of the highest order, too. Because there is no higher tribute that can be paid to an assistant in any big store than to be transferred to Furs.
Irene loved it there. It was scarcely like being in a shop at all. More like being seconded to Buckingham Palace. Holiday relief for one of the ladies-in-waiting, as it were. Thick, mossy carpet. Walnut chairs. Little, elegant tables with just the least fleck of gilt on the corners. Flowers, gladioluses mostly, in white vases on thin pedestal affairs. Mirrors that might have been doors. Discreet private rooms with still more mirrors. And silence. A plushy, expensive silence hung over everything. Even staff messages were passed on in whispers. Asking for a tape measure sounded like something out of a Shakespearian balcony scene. Only reverent, rather than romantic. All in all, the Rammell Salon might have been the inner-vestry of some well-endowed, go-ahead American cathedral.
And amid this calm, this quietness, burst the mink-wrap bomb. Fired off regardless of the consequences by Mr. Rammell, the barrage was taken up by Mr. Preece. Under the double fire, Mrs. Westlake, the buyer—fifty-five, perfectly groomed, blue hair, poised, soignée—went entirely to pieces. Called first to Mr. Rammell’s room in the morning to be asked who had told her to make out an insurance note to anyone, and then whisked off to Mr. Preece’s offices to explain why she allowed thousand-guinea wraps to drift about London, unchecked and apparently un-remembered, she became hysterical. First tears. Then laughter. And meaningless, contradictory explanations. Too many of them. Too garbled. In the end, there was nothing for it but to send Mrs. Westlake—still breathing, but by now hair all anyhow, tottery, pink-eyed—off to Welfare Supervisor, and then on to Earl’s Court in a taxi.
And then, with the assistant buyer, Miss Hanson—plump, fortyish and unrufflable—in command, the astonishing sequel occurred. Marcia herself came into the Salon. Not in a rush. Dreamier than ever, in fact. Practically sleep-walking. Ever so slowly, as though along some imaginary line. At her most ethereal looking, too. A pale, inner radiance seemed to be escaping from her. She shone. And over her arm, hanging in the soft, oceanlike folds of which only the best mink is capable, was the wrap ...
It was something to do with the collar, she explained. Heavenly, quite heavenly as it was, it still didn’t seem quite right. Not ... not absolutely. She didn’t know what was wrong. Just felt it. So would Miss Hanson look at it, please. Tell her whether there was anything. Even though looking wouldn’t help, really. You had to wear it to know.
Even though Miss Hanson couldn’t be ruffled, she could still stare. Marcia felt that she had never had such enormous, un-beautiful eyes fixed so intently upon her before. Or, for some reason, such unfriendly eyes. She couldn’t understand it. Hostile, almost. Suspicious anyhow. Indeed, the whole atmosphere of the Salon seemed to have changed somehow.
Almost as though something had gone wrong, Marcia reflected. As though somewhere amidst the plush and the gilt and the silence someone had recently been unhappy about something.
It was Irene’s early night. She was back at Fewkes Road at six-thirty. That was because, every Tuesday, Ted went along to his cricket practice. Love and romance, the engaged state and new responsibilities had made no difference to him. Wet or fine—even that didn’t matter because the nets were under cover, anyhow—he went along to bowl, bowl, bowl against men who knew his leg-breaks quite as well as he did and to bat, bat, bat against bowling that changed only when someone was away sick or something. But it helped to keep your eye in, he contended. And it kept the fellows together. And it kept you fit. And it wasn’t expensive. And it had been on B.B.C. television. All in all, in fact, chaps who didn’t belong to the Rammell Cricket Club were certainly missing something.
Irene resented the Club. Nowadays, she was living in that desperate half-life condition when to be parted from Ted even for a single evening meant misery. Wretchedness. Despair. But tonight was different. She had too much on her mind. News. And hot news at that. She wanted to tell Mrs. Privett all about it.
“ ... and she went absolutely as white as a sheet, when she heard that Mr. Rammell and Mr. Preece both wanted to see her.” She finished up breathlessly. “And then all the fuss about getting Miss Hanson to take over. But when Marcia came in actually wearing it. You could have knocked us all down with a feather. You never saw anything like it. Miss Hanson just stood there, staring. I thought she was going to faint, or something.”
Mrs. Privett did not reply immediately.
“Does your father know?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Irene answered. “I suppose so. Everybody else seemed to. You can just imagine.”
“Well, until you know for certain I shouldn’t say anything,” Mrs. Privett told her. “It’s not right. Not from someone in your position. There are some things best forgotten.”
“Oh, this one won’t be, I can tell you,” Irene answered. “It’s all over Bond Street. It is reely.”
“We’ll see,” was all that Mrs. Privett said. “You leave this to me.”
It was, in point of fact, by way of a victory for Irene that Mr. Privett no longer hung about the Staff Entrance waiting for her. But it was really Ted’s doing. He was always there himself for certain. A couple of escorts would have been too many. And on Tuesday when net-practice night came round and Ted had to go off in the opposite direction, Mr. Privett had somehow got out of the habit of it.
They had to wait until nearly seven o’clock for Mr. Privett to arrive home. Irene had gone upstairs by then. And Mrs. Privett tackled him immediately. Not that she need have troubled. It was on the tip of his tongue, too. And it was worse than she had feared. Much worse. Apparently there had been goings-on for some time past.
“ ... and he’s out with her every night,” Mr. Privett said despondently. “Dancing, you know, and all that sort of thing.”
“How d’you know?” Mrs. Privett demanded.
“Gus told me,” Mr. Privett replied, as though that were all the proof that could possibly be needed.
“Has Gus ever seen him?” Mrs. Privett persisted.
The question was a troublesome one. Mr. Privett didn’t want to say “No.” Because that would be like letting down a friend. On the other hand, he couldn’t possibly say “Yes.” Because, so far as he knew, Gus never went anywhere except back to Finsbury Park.
“He hears things,” he said loyally. “Keeps his ear pretty close to the ground. Doesn’t miss much.”
“And you say he’s paying for it himself? On his own personal account, I mean?”
Mr. Privett nodded.
“That’s what Gus says. Got it straight from the Counting House. That’s why there was such a row when they sent off the insurance note to Mrs. Rammell. And the label. You see ...”
“I know,” Mrs. Privett interrupted him. “You told me.”
But Mr. Privett was still mooning over the tragedy of it.
“I do hope nothing comes of it,” he said. “Nothing serious, I mean. Like a divorce. Or a scandal. Something that might get into the papers. There’s never been anything like that at Rammell’s. And that’s really all Gus cares about. Avoiding a scandal.”
“He’ll be lucky,” Mrs. Privett replied tartly. Then she paused. It was obvious that she was working up to something. “I still think it’s wrong talking about it,” she said. “It only makes it seem worse. And there may be a perfectly innocent explanation. You and Gus are as bad as the rest of them. You two ought to set an example. And you don’t. When Irene comes down you go on just as though nothing had happened.”
“But she was there,” Mr. Privett objected.
“I don’t care where she was,” Mrs. Privett told him. “So far as you’re concerned it’s never happened. And perhaps it never will.”
Mrs. Privett was in no doubt that she had done the right thing. It was with her a point of pride that she had never indulged in gossip. In her own shop days she had learnt, taught herself indeed, to ignore the ceaseless scum of rumour, tittle-tattle and invention that goes drifting round the surface of all staff cloakroom conversation.
And she had another reason at the moment for preserving silence. It was because of Nancy. She and Nancy saw quite a bit of each other nowadays. Every other week or so. Not that it was always easy to get hold of her. During her long wilderness years, while her sister in her own separate world had soared steadily upwards, Nancy herself had developed a kind of timid furtiveness, a self-protective and unnatural caution. She spoke nowadays as though she were running the gauntlet of invisible posses.
“I’ll see if I can slip up again. Not next week. The week after,” she would say each time at the moment of departure. “But don’t count on it. Only if I can get away. I shall have to see how things are. I know what I’ll do: if I can I’ll send you a post-card. If it’s inconvenient you just let me know ...” And with these words of politeness, hesitation and indecision Nancy would go back to her little back bed-sitter, where every day was the same and there was no one to miss her no matter how often she went out or how long she stayed away.
But the post-card always came. And Mrs. Privett always replied, again by post-card and by return of post. Nancy’s card had come yesterday. That meant that Nancy herself would be arriving to-day. Mrs. Privett had been preparing for it. She had baked a small seed cake and made some scones. The massive block of cut cake that Mr. Privett was accustomed to feed, slowly and lovingly, slice by slice to Mr. Bloot was something that Mrs. Privett would never have considered serving to a friend. Not, for that matter, that Mrs. Privett had many friends. None at all, in fact, now that poor Emmie had gone. In the ordinary way, she saw no one from the moment her family left in the morning until they came back again at night. That was why it was so exciting having Nancy. Why, having found her, she had pounced.
And Nancy, just as friendless, cherished these meetings quite as ardently. She opened up astonishingly. If it had been neat gin and not tea that Mrs. Privett had poured out for her, she could not have been less discreet. Less reticent. Never really at ease with her own sister, she confided in Mrs. Privett. The fears, doubts, misgivings, and foolish hopes of a whole lifetime came gushing forth. With Mrs. Rammell, she was always afraid that she was being pitied, despised, laughed at, disapproved of. Here in Fewkes Road she was at her ease. Blissful and unguarded. And all because, as she kept reminding both herself and Mrs. Privett, she knew that whatever she said wouldn’t go any further. Mrs. Privett’s front sitting-room with the sewing machine under the window and the seed cake and scones at her elbow, had, in fact, become Nancy Parkinson’s confessional.
And to-day she was more open and incautious than ever. Pushing back a stray wisp of hair from her forehead and dabbing at a corner of her lips where the butter from her scone kept running, she discussed Mrs. Rammell. Her woebegone state. Her estrangement from Mr. Rammell. The whited sepulchre that their marriage had become ... Nancy knew all the right phrases.
“ ... and she’d never have let on, not to me at least she wouldn’t, not if things weren’t serious,” Nancy rambled on. “I’m the last person she’d tell. It’s Tony, really. That’s where the trouble lies. And Mr. Rammell”—even in her own mind Nancy had never got on to first name terms with her own brother-in-law—“won’t discuss it. Simply won’t let her mention it. She told me so herself. Not that she ever sees him. He might be dead for all she knows.” She paused for a moment and began dabbing with her handkerchief again. “Or cares,” she added as a frank afterthought.
“It’s shocking,” Mrs. Privett agreed with her. “That’s what it is. It’s shocking.”
Nancy was silent for a moment. Not that she was too unhappy to speak. Overcome by her own sister’s misery. Nothing like that. To be honest, she found it all strangely stimulating. Finding Mrs. Rammell’s private affairs in such a mess had somehow promoted her. Made her superior. Now even her own dependent state, her near-poverty, her loneliness, her spinsterhood seemed suddenly to hold unforeseen compensations. It was with real relief that she realized that she herself was un-letdownable.
“And mark my words,” she added, “there’s more in this than meets the eye. There’s something going on somewhere. I don’t know what. But I can feel it. There’s something fishy somewhere.”
Mrs. Privett forced the words out.
“You mean another woman?” she asked.
Nancy shook her head.
“Not that,” she said confidently. “He isn’t that sort. Hasn’t got it in him. It’s debts. Or gambling. Or some big deal he’s on to. He’s got something on his mind. That’s what it is.”
It was not easy for Mrs. Privett. Up to that moment it had not even occurred to her to mention the silly little slander about the mink wrap. That was something that she had promised herself she would keep locked away for ever. But, faced by stupidity on such a colossal scale as Nancy’s, she wavered. And more than wavered. She succumbed. She wanted to hit the woman. Thump her. Anything to wake her up.
“That’s what you think,” she said. “Some of us may know different.”
The words alone would have been enough to startle. But it was the tone of voice in which they were uttered that really overcame Nancy. Spoken quite quietly, whispered through tight lips that were scarcely parted, the remark sounded venomous and alarming. Nancy’s big silly heart gave a bump and she sat there staring.
“What ... what do you know?” she asked.
After that, it was no use pretending. Mrs. Privett did not tell her at once, of course. That would have been wrong. Downright wicked, in fact. She denied having said it. Claimed that she didn’t mean it anyhow. Affirmed that wild horses wouldn’t drag it from her. Swore Nancy to secrecy. And told her everything.
The effect was disastrous. Nothing less. After remaining silent for a moment, she began sniffing. Then little sobs came. Then tears. Soon she was weeping quite openly. The wisp of grey hair came down again across her forehead and she didn’t notice. Didn’t care. She was just a collapsed, unhappy woman—no longer young, no longer strong enough to bear it—contemplating the ruin of the one thing in her life that had always seemed secure.
And the shame of it! Divorce was something that she held in peculiar horror. Like blackmail. Or bankruptcy. Or being sent to prison. The mere thought of it gave her the shudders. Her own sister, too. It was easily the most dreadful thing that had happened to the Parkinsons since poor father’s business failure. Even though she didn’t pretend to understand about such things, she supposed that divorce was inevitable now. And immediate. For all she knew it might be in the papers to-morrow. Displayed there, blatantly, for all the staff to read. She remembered those shockingly frank little paragraphs that were usually made worse still by the portrait-photographs: “ ... misconduct was admitted ... intimacy took place ... the Judge exercised his discretion in respect of the petitioner’s own misconduct ...” Nancy’s heart gave another great bump. But no! That at least was unthinkable. Her own sister would never do a thing like that. Even without it, however, it was still quite bad enough. She had never been able to understand how, once the details had appeared in all the papers, either party ever dared appear in public again.
“Mind you, not a word of this to anyone,” she heard Mrs. Privett’s voice saying from somewhere quite remote, quite unconnected with her own thoughts. “I’d rather have had my own tongue cut out if I thought you were going to repeat it.”
Nancy nodded her head. It was the best that she could manage. When at last she did contrive to speak, the words were little better than a moan.
“As if I would,” she said reproachfully. “As if I would.”
There are some people, women especially, who are born without the usual sense of self-preservation. They are the sort that cut themselves on kitchen knives. Shut finger-tips in cupboard drawers. Drop heavy objects on their feet. Catch their heels in gratings. Their nightdresses catch fire. They drink medicines out of wrong bottles. They spill acids over themselves. They engage in missions.
With Nancy, it was a mission that was the trouble. She left Fewkes Road a dedicated woman. Someone who was determined to save her own sister’s marriage. All the way home by bus and Underground she thought of nothing else. And all night, too. By breakfast-time next morning she was exhausted, hollow-eyed, headachy. And more determined, more fanatically purposeful, than ever.
The only thing that escaped her was the method. Between two and three a.m. it had all seemed simple and straightforward. Demand a private interview with Mr. Rammell. Go in and denounce him to his face. Shame him, threaten him if necessary, into reasonableness. But somehow in the full light of day the scheme did not seem so attractive. She couldn’t, now that she was back on the job, even think of any good threats. And she didn’t know whether he had a sense of shame. But there were still other means left open to her. Subtle, feminine means. She could go behind his back. Undermine him. Appeal to Marcia’s sense of fair play. Her pity. Arouse a guilt feeling. Then she would have to give him up. Have to renounce him. But again, as nine a.m. came round, she foresaw the same disadvantages, the same awkwardness. If Mr. Rammell had no sense of shame how was she to know whether Marcia would have any sense of fair play? And if she hadn’t, Nancy would simply be wasting her time. And worse. Because of them the enemy would be alerted. On their guard. Ready to pop off any Good Angels that so much as showed their heads.
But there were still other ways. Nancy had thought of them all. Anonymous post-cards sent to Mr. Rammell’s office. “WHO IS THE ATTRACTIVE MODEL WITH WHOM YOUR NAME IS BEING LINKED?” or “BEWARE. OTHER EYES ARE WATCHING YOU. LOOK OUT.” That kind of thing. Indeed, as Nancy turned her mind in that direction, she was surprised to find how good she was at it. The texts came rolling out by the dozen. And this surprised her. Because she had never before realized that she was a born anonymous letter writer, a natural. But post-cards, she remembered, can be traced. Even when a typewriter is used, the typescript reveals its own secrets. And ordinary pen and nibs are nothing less than self-accusatory. Something to do with the thick strokes and the hair-lines, she recalled. On the other hand, there were always telephone kiosks. A few pennies in the slot. Button A. The poison message. Hang up. And away again, mysterious and undetected. Provided the pennies held out, she could conduct her wandering-voice purity campaign for years that way.
It was all terrible. Nightmarish. Nerve-racking. She sat there, clasping and unclasping her hands. Indecision was no answer. She had got to do something. And, if she was not strong enough to do it alone, she would have to find a partner. Have to tell someone.
It was Mrs. Privett who insisted. Lumley’s of Camden Town had at last written to say that they had done up the yacht for which Mr. Privett had been waiting—practically the replica of Daisy II—and they were keeping her for him. The price was a stiff one. Over twenty pounds. On the other hand, she had cost nearly forty when new, Mr. Lumley said. And she had just been completely rerigged under Mr. Lumley’s personal supervision. “This class racing craft” was how the letter described her.
Mr. Privett’s heart gave a great bump simply at the thought. To be back amongst the brethren! An owner once more. But the price. It was a real shocker. Not the sort of thing that a man with the expenses of a grown-up daughter could even contemplate.
That was why he was so surprised when Mrs. Privett didn’t even hesitate. He had waited long enough, she told him. And if he didn’t do something about it now he might as well put it out of his mind for ever. He’d be too old for it, she added brutally.
What Mr. Privett did not know was that Mrs. Privett had been working things out in her mind for months past. She was living in a state of morbid trepidation for the future. With Mr. Bloot married and Irene getting ready for it, what was to become of Mr. Privett, she had kept asking herself. The thought of him left behind, with nothing except his own wife to cherish, nothing to occupy his mind, filled her with misery and foreboding. She became disconsolate for his sake. And if Mr. Lumley could provide happiness and a new purpose in life all for twenty-two pounds ten she felt that the offer should be snapped up.
Not that it was easy. There were still difficulties. Practical difficulties. Like how to get the thing, once Mr. Privett had made the purchase, up to the Highgate Ponds so that he could begin playing with it. And here Mrs. Privett was adamant. No cycling, she said. Either push it. Or nothing. And, she added, she didn’t want some great ungainly perambulator-carrier blocking up her front hall. If Mr. Privett cared anything for her feelings he’d keep it right out at the back where Ted wouldn’t see it ...
It was on Thursday when Mr. Lumley’s letter came. And on Friday morning first thing Mr. Privett got off at Camden Town and dropped in a note saying that he would be back the same evening if Mr. Lumley would keep open for him. In consequence, it was a restless, preoccupied day for Mr. Privett. He could not keep his attention from straying. When an angry, important-looking woman demanded to be directed to the Complaints Department he sent her absentmindedly up to Toddlers and Nursery Furniture. And it was only around teatime that he realized that he had not once been down to the Fur Salon to see how Irene was getting on. In the ordinary way, these fleeting little visits, scarcely more than a peep, were something to which he really looked forward. Something, in fact, from which he got quite a kick.
But he didn’t forget about Lumley’s. And Mr. Lumley didn’t forget about him. Even though it was getting on for seven, Mr. Lumley was there. And waiting. Nor did Mr. Privett need any further persuading. There was only one sailing yacht of the size, amid all those other miscellaneous steam and electrical contraptions. And Mr. Privett went straight up to her. She was called the Dianthe. As soon as he saw her, Mr. Privett knew that he would have to have her. For a moment, even, he was unfaithful to the memory of Daisy II. The hull of Daisy II had been simply a dark, business-like brown. Dianthe on the other hand was pale duck-egg blue. She was easily the most beautiful thing, after Irene, that had ever come into Mr. Privett’s life.
And Mr. Lumley was helpful and understanding. He saw Mrs. Privett’s point about bicycle trailers. He had known of nasty accidents with them before, he said. For an additional thirty bob he offered, therefore, to throw in a two-wheel carrier that he had picked up with an earlier lot. In the result, Mr. Privett was not only able to buy Dianthe but actually take her home with him the same night. Pushing the carrier in front of him, he marched proudly up the Kentish Town Road. Like a grandparent allowed for the first time to take the pram out. And this time he was so cautious—so extra cautious—about traffic that a policeman who was holding up a bus and two private cars specially for him had to call out, “Come on, Dad,” before he could get Mr. Privett to venture off the pavement and come over.
It was nearly midnight when Mr. Privett finally went to bed. Not that he was doing very much. There are limits to what can be done with sailing yachts in a back kitchen. The sheets tend to get entangled. And the sails flap idly. He nearly got butter on one of them. From eleven-thirty or thereabouts, he just sat there, staring. Gloating. Humble. And adoring. Remembering all the time that to-morrow was Saturday.
And there was another piece of happiness in store for him. Pure rapture. Because when he told Mr. Bloot about Dianthe, Mr. Bloot offered straight away to come up and watch her sail. Actually offered. No prompting. He added, not on Saturday afternoon, of course. But Mr. Privett understood that. Saturday afternoons had always been reserved by Mr. Bloot for his budgies. Sunday morning was a different matter entirely. And it was to be just the two of them. The way it had been before Daisy II had been reduced to matchwood and Mr. Bloot himself had taken on a wife.
“Ah reckon it would do me good,” Mr. Bloot observed vacantly, staring down into his cup almost as though speaking to himself. “Get me aht of the flat for a bit. That’s what Ah need. Er noutlet.” He paused as though conscious that he had been allowing his thoughts to run away with him. “Mahnd you,” he added, “if Ah should be requahred, you go ahead without me. Ah’m speaking without Mrs. B. If she’s got plans, that does it.”
There is no place in the world quite like the Highgate Ponds. Especially early on a Sunday morning. There may be other places that are more central. And more fashionable. Like the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, for instance. But fashion never had any connection with serious yachting. And centralness is exactly what isn’t wanted. There is no real feeling of escape, of being away from it all, with just the wind in your face and the splash and ripple of water coming up at you, if you can hear the sound of motor horns from all quarters and see the red sides of the buses as they go trundling along Knightsbridge.
Up at Highgate, there is nothing but green Nature. Great park-land trees. And rolling meadows. And the placid, duck-bearing surface of the lake. Standing on the little wooden jetty there is not a house to be seen. Not one. Not even in the misty distance. Just reed-beds and osiers. And willow-herb. And the massive forest skyline of Ken Wood where the whole dangling necklace of ponds begins in a dark, ferny grotto. Admittedly, by turning round you can see the top stages of the L.C.C. diving-board over in the bathing-pool across the path. That belongs to a lower order of things altogether. And on a fine day it can become quite unpleasantly crowded. But you can’t expect everything. Even the farthest of the ponds, the fenced-in one, with its coot and moorhens, its dragon-flies and its water rats, is only five miles from the City. And at any time up to about nine-thirty you’ve got the whole thing entirely to yourself. It’s like being a great landowner. But without the threat of death duties, of course.
Mr. Privett was the first person up there. At least he thought he was until a tall, sad-looking man with a large, damp dog passed him disconsolately homeward bound already. Anyhow, the pond was all his. It was like a one-man regatta. And it nearly had its incident. The first racing fatality of the season. Because the Dianthe was longer than Mr. Privett had realized. And heavier. A good fourteen ounces more of her than there had been of Daisy II. Also, the keel was entirely different. It was a scooped-out, backward-facing C-shaped affair like modern sculpture. The bit that Mr. Privett tried to get hold of wasn’t there. When he grabbed, he missed. And, when he missed, he went forward with his left leg in the water right up to his thigh. The little lozenge with the word “Dunlop”, on the top of his wader was completely covered.
But he clambered back on to the jetty all right. Heaved himself up with the thick bamboo rod with the rubber ferrule on the end. And after that he was extra careful. For a model yachtsman to fall in is to risk being made a laughing stock. He had seen it happen. And he knew. It wasn’t easy to be careful, however. He was too excited. Trembling all over, as he finally lowered the Dianthe into her own native element. And not only excited. Slow as well. He had to keep on stepping back to admire. First, stepping back. Then leaning forward to stroke. Fondle. Caress. He might have been a bridegroom.
But science, cold and analytical, has a way of cutting across life’s rapture. When Mr. Privett did finally push the Dianthe off from the jetty—and it was the merest nudge, a request rather than an order—he saw at once that she wasn’t sailing properly. Instead of sliding artfully, cheek-by-cheek alongside the wind, she turned into it, fighting. She shuddered. Her sails flapped madly. She shipped water. For a moment the Dianthe had ceased to be beautiful.
It was nothing serious, however. No basic fault on the drawing-board. Nothing that Mr. Privett himself couldn’t put right in a jiffy. And, in a way, he loved the Dianthe all the more because of it. It showed that she had her secrets. Temperament. A streak of overcomable obstinacy somewhere. And he alone understood her. Give her to any other man, no matter how experienced, and she would make the same lamentable exhibition of herself.
By ten o’clock, the Dianthe had made her measure of the pond. Running with the wind. And against it. She was big. Unbelievably big. A good head taller than Mr. Privett himself. She towered. And, now that she was tamed, disciplined, she was unbelievably beautiful again. She became one with the water. Temporarily dividing, rather than cutting through it. As Mr. Privett hurried along the bank to her, she might have been a huge, white bird, a swan straight out of legend, that he was standing there so romantically to meet.
But romantic or not, he was sweating. After all, he had run three times round the pond already. Before he left home Mrs. Privett had reminded him about his thick undervest. The woollen one. And he had not disobeyed. In consequence, he might have been on fire underneath his flannel shirt, his reefer-jacket and his raincoat. He could feel ants crawling all over him. There was nothing for it but to take a breather. After he had swabbed the Dianthe out, even using his handkerchief to get up the last tiny droplets, he sat there on the jetty, his collar undone and the Dianthe in dry dock beside him, an entirely happy man. He basked.
By eleven o’clock there was still no sign of Mr. Bloot. But the jetty had become populated by now. The members of the N.L.M.Y.R.A. were there in force. All five of them. And all wearing the little flag and anchor badge that matched Mr. Privett’s own. As a reunion it could not have been more cordial. There were wet handshakes all round. The North London Model Yacht Racing Association was a body of nice steady men. They were genuinely pleased to see Mr. Privett. Most sailing yacht owners are somewhere on the other side of middle age. Distinctly elderly some of them. And prolonged absence from the jetty may mean anything. Even the worst.
Also, they were openly eager to see the Dianthe. They crouched round her on their haunches, gum boots creaking, like a group of elderly, heavily-breathing infants. At one point Mr. Privett got elbowed completely out of it. But he didn’t care. There is nothing in life more profoundly satisfying than to be envied for one’s possessions.
And it was only natural that the Dianthe should cause a bit of a stir. She was a stranger to these parts. A complete stranger. It was from somewhere up north by Bridlington that Mr. Lumley had bought her. All her previous sailing had been under steely grey skies, with the threat of sudden squalls and a hint of ice in the rigging. This morning’s was her first voyage in the balmy, southern lagoons of Highgate. Blue sky. A gentle breeze. Barometer high. Temperature in the upper sixties. It might have been angel-fish and coral gardens rather than sheer London clay over which she was sailing.
Not that the water was without its dangers. Every five minutes or so a new menace arrived. And not merely the litter of small craft that children with parents kept bringing. There were unpleasant, mechanical-looking men with bottles of methylated spirit and petrol, bent over motor boats. Miniature two-stroke engines that roared and crackled like machine-guns and then spat themselves out in fury somewhere in the mid-channel. Hydroplanes with whirling aeroplane propellers that went bouncing along the surface like demented tea trays. Scale models of gunboats with bows like an ice-breaker’s, churning up the surface, ready and waiting to ram anything with sails.
But just when the N.L.M.Y.R.A. had decided that there was nothing for it but to sit back and wait for the lunchtime lull, Mr. Bloot arrived. And that took Mr. Privett’s mind off everything. Because Mr. Bloot was looking particularly imposing this morning. Like glossy and prosperous autumn. He was wearing a brown top-coat with a black velvet collar. And a brown Trilby with a bound brim. It was a costume, including the brown shoes, that Hetty had personally selected for him. Originally inclined towards tweeds, she had finally compromised on gaberdine. Provided it was brown. Anything, she had said, rather than his Sunday black which was too much like a mute’s and gave her the creeps anyway.
The others, too, were pleased to see Mr. Bloot. He had been away just as long as Mr. Privett. With his friend absent, there had been simply nothing to come up for. And it gave a certain un-definable note of class to the Club simply having him standing there. The sleek brownness of the coat, the bound brim, the broad stock and the gold-banded umbrella suggested the Chairman of the line rather than merely an interested spectator.
And, at twelve-thirty when Mr. Bloot announced that he would have to be getting back, Mr. Privett left with him. He would have liked to stay longer—one more run against the wind at least—but he felt that he couldn’t let a friend down like that. And, for the first time since the wedding, Mr. Privett felt grateful to Hetty. Because this time Mr. Bloot himself suggested a drink at the Woodman on the way back.
They didn’t walk quite side by side on the way there. Mr. Bloot tended to step out a little. And Mr. Privett followed up a few paces behind with the carrier. But that was only natural. The pavement down from the ponds is a narrow one. And, in any case, Mr. Bloot wasn’t dressed right to be shoulder-to-shoulder with anyone pushing anything.
But in the saloon bar it was different. Crowded. Elbow-jogging. Convivial. Mr. Bloot and Mr. Privett forced their way into the window so that they could talk unimpeded, and Mr. Privett could keep his eyes on the Dianthe up on her two bicycle wheels outside.
Mr. Bloot, moreover, was at his most confiding.
“Er nawkward journey,” he said. “Ah’ve been travelling for er nouranerarf. Three changes. Ah ought to ’ave trahd a one-one-six. Then Ah could have walked dahn the hill.”
Mr. Privett felt quite ashamed of himself. “I should have thought of that,” he said. “I could have suggested it.”
But Mr. Bloot was bland. Indifferent.
“No matter,” he said. “Ah’m not pressed. Not this morning. ’Etty’s got a few friends in.”
“But oughtn’t you to be there?” Mr. Privett asked.
Mr. Bloot shook his head.
“’Er friends,” he said briefly. “Not mine.”
He paused for a moment as though undecided whether to continue.
“Ah reckon Ah’ve learnt something,” he went on at last. “Abaht marriage, Ah mean. Live and let live, I say. Works out quahter that way.”
“D’you mean you don’t like her friends?” Mr. Privett asked.
Mr. Bloot blew his cheeks out.
“Just not mah kahnd,” he said. “That’s all there is to it.”
He was silent again for a moment. And when he spoke it was in that intimate undertone that sets the seal on all old friendships.
“Funny thing,” he said. “Ah never ’ad any of this trouble with Emmie. No trouble, at all. But then you see she didn’t ’ave any friends.”
“There was me and Eileen,” Mr. Privett corrected him.
Mr. Bloot acknowledged the rebuke. He raised his glass in Mr. Privett’s direction.
“Present company,” he said, “excepted.”
Then he stretched his legs out in front of him and sat looking at his brown shoes.
“Ah’ve enjoyed this morning, Ah have,” he went on. “Lahk old tahms. Away-from-it-all as you maht say.”
Mr. Tattan (Garden Furniture) suggested it. Mr. Cuffley (Export) thought it was a good idea. Mr. Maple (Household Appliances) disliked rushing things. Mr. Langdale Senior (Restaurant and Catering) considered that the claims of Mr. Langdale Junior (Television and Radio) were somehow being overlooked. Mr. Privett naturally was delighted. Mr. Bloot said that he would drop a word in the raht quartah. And Mr. Finlay (Sports Goods) was completely opposed. Offended, even.
But that is always the way it is with staff changes. There is nothing that upsets people like promotions. They have a disturbing effect all round. People who are left entirely unaffected still resent them. And no one could pretend that Mr. Finlay wasn’t affected. After all, it was his Sports Department. He had built it up from a few golf clubs and a cricket bat or two into something that stretched right across the fourth floor, with a Wimbledon at one end, Gleneagles over on the Downe Street side, Lord’s over in the corner and even a canoe and sailing dinghy section—practically a small Hayling—over by the lift.
It was obvious, however, that something had to be done. Mr. Finlay was now sixty-four. Coming up to sixty-five in July. You couldn’t have a he-ancient in charge of a Sports Department. Mr. Finlay saw that all right. But, he kept telling himself, it wasn’t necessary to make things over to a mere youngster. And Ted Waters, at twenty-eight, was less than half his age. Surely somewhere in Rammell’s, he kept telling himself, there was someone in the middle fifties, respected, reliable, hard-driving.
But who? Mr. Preece had asked himself the question a hundred times. The list, the short list, was lying there on the desk in front of him. Mr. Bennett (Cycles and Touring)? No initiative. Mr. Gibbs (China and Glassware)? Too specialized. Mr. Langdale Junior (Television and Radio)? Not the right type at all for Sports Goods. Too glossy: he looked like a ladies’ hairdresser. Mr. Waters (Travel and Theatre Tickets)? A bit on the young side, admittedly. But did that matter? Mr. Preece liked to think of himself as a discoverer of new talent, a seer. And Mr. Waters certainly looked right. Tall. Clean-shaven. The open-air type. Women customers would undoubtedly respond. And he was a member of the Sports Club: Mr. Preece had established that. Subject to Mr. Rammell’s approval, Mr. Preece was prepared to appoint him.
It was not Mr. Rammell, but Sir Harry who opposed it. Not for any personal reason. Simply because he was feeling unusually skittish and alert at the Board Meeting. Why not a well-known sportsman? he asked. Get in someone from outside. A County cricketer. Like ... like Tyldesley. Dead, they told him. Or a leading jockey? But Rammell’s did not sell saddlery, Mr. Preece pointed out. Or a Davis Cup player? He would lose his amateur status, Mr. Rammell snapped back. Or a woman golfer? Or a track athlete? Or a table-tennis champion? Or a rugger Blue? Or a cross-Channel swimmer? Or a ... But, unusually fertile though his mind was this morning, here Sir Harry paused for a moment. He had only just realized that there was more than management that was wrong with the sports department. It needed livening up, enlarging, re-thinking. Why not a swimming-pool? he started off again. Or a putting green with real turf? Or a rifle range? Or a ski-jump packed solid with artificial ice? Or ... It was while Sir Harry was replanning the whole department, that Mr. Preece was able to slip Mr. Waters’s name quietly forward again. Perhaps only an acting appointment, he suggested tactfully. But that was his blunder. Why only acting? Sir Harry demanded. Hadn’t Mr. Preece got the guts to back his own hunches? What was going to happen to morale when the staff discovered that the management didn’t trust them? Planned promotion was the most important thing in any large firm, he went on. If boards of directors had to begin looking round for strangers to come in and run the business for them they might as well put the shutters up ...
Over the directors’ lunch afterwards, Sir Harry was unusually silent. He merely toyed with his lamb cutlets. Left the pear flan untouched. It wasn’t that he was exhausted by his performance in the board room. Simply saddened. Depressed by the sheer lack of energy and ability all round him. It didn’t matter so long as he was there to step in and take charge. But he couldn’t last for ever. Wasn’t immortal, he reminded himself. And, after he had gone, what then? Who would there be to make decisions? How would anything ever get done? Where would the drive come from? Just waffle-waffle-waffle round the board table while the whole place went to pot downstairs ...
Mr. Preece lost no time. The board lunch—at which he was no more than a regular, resentful guest—was over at two-thirty, and at two-forty-five he had sent for Ted Waters. Had him there standing a little awkwardly in front of him at this very moment.
“Take a seat, Mr. Waters,” he said. “Take a seat.” He paused for a moment and pushed the box of office cigarettes forward.
“Would you like to smoke?” he asked even though he was known to be a non-smoker himself. “Do by all means if you want to.”
This was one of the moments in life that Mr. Preece really enjoyed. There was the subtle delicious savour of power. Reprimands and dismissals produced something of the same sensation inside him. They made him wriggle, too. But he did not really enjoy them. Because his one defect as manager was that he liked being liked. Promotions therefore were perfect. At the mere thought of them he could feel himself becoming bland, majestic, godlike. With his pale, hairless hands clasped together beneath his chin as though he were praying, he fairly basked in himself.
“Now, Mr. Waters,” he resumed. “I wonder if you know why I’ve asked you to come and see me?”
He was observing his visitor very closely while he was speaking. Trying to find out whether managerial secrets really did leak out as he had always suspected.
But it was obvious that Mr. Ted Waters knew nothing. His whole expression was one of honest bewilderment.
“No, I’m afraid I don’t, sir,” he said, hope and untruth mingled.
“Ah!” Mr. Preece separated his finger-tips for a moment and then brought them together again. “The board has authorized me ...” he began. That was at two-fifty. At three o’clock precisely Mr. Preece had reached his winding-up.
“Very well then,” he concluded. “You can start in next Monday morning. With Mr. Finlay, of course. He’ll show you everything. You’ll have one month’s overlap with him. And then you’re off on your own. Don’t hesitate to come back to me at any time you want to. That’s what I’m here for. And remember the future is up to you.”
As he spoke the last words, Mr. Preece got up from his chair. He came round to the other side of his desk with his hand stretched out all ready for the formal handshake, the accolade.
“And let me offer my own congratulations,” he said. “I’m sure you’re not going to disappoint us.”
What is more, he really meant it. There was one infallible sign. The box of cigarettes had been open at Mr. Waters’s elbow all the time. And Mr. Waters had not so much as reached his hand out towards it.
As soon as Ted had left Mr. Preece’s office he went straight along to the staff lavatory on the second floor. Now that the interview was over he felt shaky and slightly sick. He needed support. The tiles round the walls were too cold to lean against. And he chose the cleaners’ cabinet over in the corner instead. Then, taking out a packet of ten Players, he lit a cigarette.
He didn’t attempt to finish it, however. After a few puffs, he went over to the washbasin and pushed the unsmoked end out of sight down the little grating. Finally, he passed his pocket comb a couple of times through his hair and pulled the knot of his tie smartly back into position. When all that was done, he felt calm enough to tell Irene the news. She was temporarily in Gowns.
But this was not easy. Irene was in the middle of trying to serve a somnambulist. A large, middle-aged woman, she was clearly deep in the dream state. Whenever Irene brought her anything she merely smiled and shook her head sadly to show that she didn’t like it. And as soon as Irene had left her, she would go across herself to the racks and run her fingers thoughtfully along the dresses as though counting them might help.
“Had you anything particular in mind, madam?” Ted heard Irene ask at last. She was wearing her most attentive expression, Ted noticed. Half sales assistant, half sick nurse. It might have been a thermometer and not a pencil that was tucked under the flap of her sales book.
But the direct question had somehow got through.
“Oh, just something different,” the woman explained. “Something new, you know. Like the little black one. Only different.”
This time when Irene went back towards the stock room, Ted caught up with her. He was breaking all the Rammell rules by being in the dress department at all. But somehow for the moment ordinary staff regulations didn’t seem of any real importance.
“It’s all right, Irene,” he said. “I’ve got it. I start in next Monday.”
It was then that Irene risked losing her job, too. Because, instead of concentrating on something different for the large sleepwalker, she gave Ted a kiss. Not a real kiss, admittedly. But it was enough to have got her the sack. And it was enough for Ted, too. It showed that getting married meant as much to Irene as it did to Ted himself.
“I’m going up now to tell your father,” he said.
But here Irene stopped him.
“No, don’t do that,” she said. “Better leave that part to me.”
At five forty-five when they all met in the Staff Entrance the news of Ted’s promotion came as no surprise to Mr. Bloot. But it was obviously immensely gratifying to him. Of late he had been looking thoroughly run down. Out of sorts. Peaky. Mr. Rammell had been worried about him. And this piece of good fortune in the family seemed exactly what he needed to revive him. He blew his lips out almost as if he were drinking tea.
“What did Ah tell you?” he said exultantly. “Ah told you Ah would and Ah did.”
“Did what?” Mr. Privett asked.
And then he learned, even though he knew it so well already, what a friend it was whom he had in Mr. Bloot.
“Ah dropped er nint or two,” he said slowly, as though Mr. Privett should have known all along that without this intervention nothing would ever have happened. “Er nint or two in the raht quartah. Ah’m normally a bit on the aloof sahd. So when Ah do come dahn it means something.”
Mr. Privett was so grateful that he could have hugged Mr. Bloot. He felt fonder than ever of him at this moment.
“I suppose there wouldn’t be any chance of getting you round this evening, would there?” he asked hopefully. “Just for a cuppa and chat, you know.”
And again it seemed as though this was exactly what Mr. Bloot was needing most.
“Ah maht,” he said, not even attempting to conceal the eagerness that was in his voice. “Yurss, Ah think Ah maht. Does you good to get aht a bit in the evenings.”
“Well, if Gus’s coming round here I’m going up to bed,” Mrs. Privett said firmly.
As she spoke she began gathering up the socks that she had been darning. Rolling them up into a small, tight cocoon, she thrust them abruptly down into the bottom of her work bag as though burying something.
“Won’t you just stay down long enough to say good evening?” Mr. Privett inquired.
“Not to-night,” Mrs. Privett told him. “I’m tired.”
Mr. Privett gave a little sigh. He had noticed before that Mrs. Privett somehow did not share his enthusiasm for Mr. Bloot. Not fully, that is. But manners were manners. And it would have been nicer if she could have been there to pour out the first cup of tea. Even ask after Hetty, perhaps.
“Gus only wants to congratulate us on Ted,” Mr. Privett started to explain.
But it was no use. Mrs. Privett’s mind was made up.
“I’ve had quite enough about Ted for one evening,” she said. “Just when we’d got everything arranged, too.”
Mr. Privett looked at her in amazement.
“What’s the matter, Mother?” he asked gently.
Mrs. Privett did not reply for a moment. When she did, the words came in a sudden rush.
“Ireen’s still only a child,” she said. “That’s what’s the matter. If things had gone on as they were, we’d have had her here for another couple of years. As it is, they’ll think they can get married to-morrow. And if Gus wants to talk about that, I don’t.”
She gave a little sniff as she finished speaking and began to move off towards the door.
“We ... we don’t know about that, Mother,” he said. “Not for certain. Not till we ask them.”
“And where are they now?” Mrs. Privett demanded, her hand already on the door knob. “Out somewhere. Planning. If Ireen hadn’t been concealing something she’d have come straight home and told me.”
Mrs. Privett paused for a moment. Then she spoke again.
“You can take it from me,” she said. “We’ve as good as lost her already. I only wish Ted had been turned down. I do really.”
The room seemed suddenly to have grown very quiet. Quiet and cheerless. Mr. Privett went round tidying up for Mr. Bloot’s arrival, pulling the chair covers straight and folding up the evening paper into its original creases. This, in itself, was an indication of Mrs. Privett’s distress. Usually she insisted in doing the tidying up herself. Regarded men as incapable of the necessary thoroughness.
As soon as the room was to rights again, Mr. Privett went through into the scullery and put on the kettle. Then he arranged the tea tray with the cups and saucers. And going over to the cupboard he took out the large circular cake tin with the portrait of Queen Mary on the lid. It was the remains of a chocolate cake that was inside. Thick chocolate on top. Then broad veins of brown sponge with white cream running thickly across it. It looked rich and geologic. Mr. Privett cut two generous slices and put them on a plate beside the empty teapot. Even so he was sorry that it was chocolate. Fruit cake, he knew, was what Mr. Bloot preferred. Cut from the solid block. The dark kind with preserved cherries in it. Marzipan icing on the top if you like. Even shredded coconut. But definitely fruit. And preferably cherry.
By nine-fifteen everything was ready. And by nine-thirty Mr. Privett had turned off the gas and refilled the kettle. Nine forty-five. Ten o’clock. Ten-fifteen. And still no Mr. Bloot. Mr. Privett began to wonder if he was coming. There was something queer about his non-appearance. Unaccountable. Because when Mr. Privett had invited him Mr. Bloot had seemed so eager. Had fairly jumped at it, in fact. Mr. Privett could not help being vaguely anxious.
And then a strange feeling came over him. It was as though Mr. Bloot were already beside him. If not actually in the room, at least in the passageway just outside. And needing him. Urgently. Requiring help and assistance. Bodily and spiritual. Desperately crying out for it. The feeling was so strong, so suddenly overwhelming, that Mr. Privett got up and reached out instinctively for his jacket.
“Perhaps I ought to go round to him,” he told himself. “Perhaps something’s happened. Perhaps he’s ill, or something.”
It was only when he was actually standing up that he realized how foolish it was. Mr. Bloot had behaved this way before. It wasn’t the first time that Mr. Privett had arranged the cake, the tea things, the extra jug for the hot water—only to have to put them all away again. And at ten-thirty it was obviously too late to expect him now.
The sensible thing, of course, would have been for Mr. Privett to make himself a cup of tea. Just sit there, quietly sipping it on the off chance that Mr. Bloot might after all pop in if only to say good night. In the ordinary way a cup of tea would have been just what Mr. Privett would have liked. But he was too dispirited to go to the trouble of making it. Even if it had been there ready on the table in front of him, he doubted if he could have brought himself to drink it. That funny feeling about Mr. Bloot being there when he wasn’t, had upset him. Left him feeling faintly sick. Twingey. Out of sorts.
He started nervously when he heard a sound outside. And at the front door, too. But it was only Irene. She had her own key. And compared with Mr. Bloot’s movements this was nothing. Just a light tap of a heel on the top step. The thin slither of the key sliding into the lock. The door closing almost silently behind her. It was only since her engagement had become official that Mrs. Privett had allowed her to stay out like this. And Irene had responded wonderfully. Her old schoolgirl banginess had disappeared overnight. She was now so quiet that Mrs. Privett had to leave her bedroom door open to make sure of hearing her.
Irene did not come through to him. She ran straight upstairs. Down below in the kitchen, Mr. Privett caught the sound of voices, Irene’s and Mrs. Privett’s. Then there was the faint noise of Irene’s door shutting. And, after that, silence. Mr. Privett himself had not called out. This was strange because in the ordinary way he always looked forward to kissing Irene good night. The day did not seem complete somehow without. But to-night he was too much preoccupied by thoughts of Mr. Bloot. He didn’t feel like kissing anybody.
By ten-forty everything was put away again. Mr. Privett switched out the light and went along to the front door to lock up. It was the same every evening. He opened the front door. Took a deep breath or two of the fresh air that blew straight in down the Kentish Town Road from the north. Peered out to make sure that the ornamental iron gate was closed properly. Then shut and bolted the front door top and bottom as though border raiders might have been expected. Put the chain up as an extra precaution. Kicked the mat straight. And went up to bed.
But to-night when he opened the front door he let out a little cry of sheer surprise. That was because Mr. Bloot was standing there. Simply standing. Entirely stationary. Half-way between the gate and the front door. Massive and motionless, he was staring up at the Privetts’ bedroom window.
At the sight of Mr. Privett he started. It was the first time that Mr. Privett had ever seen his friend give a little nervous jump like that. And it showed how much on edge poor Gus’s nerves must be. But what was more remarkable still was the fact that he made no attempt to come forward. Instead of moving, he was standing there. Beckoning.
Mr. Privett went along the little path to greet him.
“Ah hoped Ah’d see you,” Mr. Bloot said in a hoarse, half-whisper. “Ah was afraid you’d gone to bed.”
“Where’ve you been?” Mr. Privett demanded.
“Aht here,” Mr. Bloot told him. “Aht here. Waiting. Ah was just going to ring when Ahreen and Ted came along. So Ah moved off. They’ve been saying good naht to each other. Ah thought they’d never stop. Ah’m cold.”
Mr. Bloot shivered a little as he said it and pulled at his fawn overcoat with the black velvet collar.
“Well, come on in,” Mr. Privett replied. “I’ll make you a ...”
But Mr. Bloot stopped him. He laid his large, soft hand on Mr. Privett’s arm.
“Ah couldn’t,” he said. “Not to-naht. Ah’m too upset. That’s why Ah couldn’t face Ahreen.”
Mr. Bloot turned slightly, and the light of the street lamp fell on his face. Mr. Privett could see then that his friend had been crying. Either that, or drinking. But his words sounded distinct enough. And between sentences he kept giving little telltale sniffs. They were tears all right, Mr. Privett decided. Big, wet ones. They meant that something really dreadful must have happened. And whatever it was had knocked Mr. Bloot out completely. He had the appearance of a man who had been drained. Usually slightly flushed, rather mulberryish in complexion, his face in the lamplight showed up chalk-white and sunken.
“Not come in?” Mr. Privett asked incredulously.
Mr. Bloot shook his head.
“Not to-naht,” he repeated. “Ah’m not stopping. Ah couldn’t face it. It’s just that Ah had to tell someone. Had to get it off mah chest.”
“Is ... it Hetty?” Mr. Privett inquired.
Mr. Bloot nodded.
“Has she left you?”
The reply was slow in coming. Mr. Bloot was on the verge of tears again. And he could speak only with difficulty.
“It’s worse,” he said at last. “Much worse.”
“Then what is it?”
“She’s let mah budgies aht,” he said. “Deliberate. Cold and deliberate. Opened the cages. Let ’em flah away.”
But the reminder of his loss had been too painful for him. He had reached for his handkerchief while he was still speaking and was now mopping damply at his face.
Mr. Privett felt ashamed at himself for feeling so relieved. In the face of bird-love such as this, he was no better than an outsider.
“They’ll come back,” he told him. “You’re always reading about it in the papers. They’ll come back. You see if they don’t.”
But Mr. Bloot was beyond comforting.
“Not with her there,” he said, still from behind his handkerchief. “And not with Billy’s chest. Think of him. Aht there”—Mr. Bloot raised his face for a moment and gazed upwards into the empty sky—“aht there on a naht lahk this.”
“Then what are you going to do?” Mr. Privett asked him. “You’ve got to do something.”
“Do?” Mr. Bloot repeated. “Ah’m going to leave her. Ah’ve had enough. If Ah lay mah ahs on her again Ah may do something desprit.”
“You mean you’re not going back there?”
“Only to pick up mah possessions. What’s left of them. Then Ah’m orf. Scarpering. Done with it.”
“Would ... would you like to come here?” Mr. Privett inquired. “Just till it blows over?”
“It won’t blow over,” Mr. Bloot answered. “Not this tahm. And not with me in charge.”
“We could put you up, you know,” Mr. Privett persisted.
But Mr. Bloot was too much preoccupied with his own misery even to say thank you.
“Not with friends,” he said. “Not any longer. Ah’ve got to face this aht alone.”
He turned as he said it and began to walk towards the front gate.
“Ah’m glad Ah told you,” he said over his shoulder. “Nahw you understand what Ah’ve been through.”
Mr. Privett went after him. He couldn’t bear to see his friend go away from him like that.
“Would you like me to come round with you?” he asked.
But again Mr. Bloot only shook his head.
“Better not,” he said. “If she’s still awake things may get ugly. Ah’d rather keep it prahvit.”
He closed the gate behind him, and paused for a moment.
“Juhst think of it,” he said. “Billy. And Tiddleywinks. Ah was going to exhibit him. And nahw ...” Mr. Bloot spread his arms out in a little gesture that indicated Fate and the unknown.