Yet I must confess, in those terrible months following my sacking, I forgot my mother’s advice far too often. I was adrift. Though it took me less than half a cup of tea to decide to pull myself back up by the bootstraps, I found it was an easy thing to resolve but a difficult thing to effect. It’s very hard to find new employment when one’s chief reference continues to insist that one does not exist. It seems Coxon & Woodhouse’s took the rather ungenerous course of warning each prospective employer who contacted them that I was a dangerous madman whom they had only met on one occasion. I was perhaps to be feared, perhaps to be pitied, but under no circumstances to be hired, they said—which dimmed my employment prospects significantly.
So, I started leaving their name off my résumé. My luck improved immediately and I even managed to secure a few interviews. Unfortunately, the gentlemen who conducted these interviews had all sorts of questions about… well… I don’t even know what. Stocks, I suppose, and why they must be broken. Or how to break them. And they seemed very confused that I could not make better answers to these questions which—they insisted—were very basic ones about the function of the market. And in fact, I was rather upset that I couldn’t answer, too. Didn’t it make sense that I should be able to? I mean, if this had been my job for as long as I could remember, shouldn’t I know something about it? How might it be possible that I did not? So I would always shout, “Hip! Pip! Top! Derpy-derpy!” in the middle of my interview, which seemed to startle a few fellows, but did make me feel better.
What it did not do was furnish any knowledge of stock-brokery, and all my efforts came to nothing.
Nothing, that is, until the great English firm of Mawson and Williams’s entered into a rather heated, rather public feud with Coxon & Woodhouse’s. The day after that happy, happy day I received a letter from Mawson and Williams’s managing director. Now I’d never met the man, but I had written to inquire after employment. He said he regretted how hard he’d laughed at my letter when he first received it. (Apparently, it was clear I was not qualified for the position in question.) But present relations being what they were between the two companies, perhaps I might be a fine fit in the capacity of an entry-level stockbroker’s clerk—so long as I thought I might have one or two scandalous secrets regarding Coxon & Woodhouse’s dealings and a steadfast realization that I certainly did not owe them any favors. He offered me four pounds a week! Now, I’d no idea how much money that was, but he seemed very impressed by his own offer, so I decided to be impressed, too.
Oh, dear journal, let me tell you: I was over the moon! I rushed to Mary to share the good news. Then I told everybody at the employment agency and everyone at the local pub and everyone I passed on the street of my great fortune! I rather hoped this might help my household staff feel more comfortable in my presence. They had been treating me rather oddly of late—avoiding me as if there were something wrong with me, or I was a sick man. But what of that? It is perhaps natural for them to quail from their master’s fury, as hyenas who skulk into the shadowed bushes when the lion roars!
I thought I could not be happier. And yet—wonder stacked upon wonder!—it was only a few hours later that my fortunes redoubled! You see, that night I had a caller. I had many callers in those days. Strangers, usually, who insisted that they were patients of mine, somehow, and that I was supposed to be giving them medical treatments of some kind. Well, I always shouted that I did not care for this strange prank the whole neighborhood seemed to have agreed upon, and that they must go away. I was prepared to do the same to this latest visitor, but he insisted he was here on a different business entirely.
His name was Arthur Pinner, financial agent—a middle- sized, dark-haired, dark-eyed, black-bearded man. His second tooth on the left-hand side had been very badly stuffed with gold. He had a brisk kind of way with him and spoke sharply, like a man who knew the value of time. I was just about to explain to him that I was not a doctor, nor was my name John Watson, even though all the cards in my wallet and the plaque on my door said so—due to some strange misprint, the nature of which eluded me entirely.
But he said, “No, no! I am here for Mr. Hall Pycroft. Are you not he?”
And I heaved a huge sigh of relief and said I was.
And he said, “The truth is I have heard of you. Do you remember Parker, who used to be Coxon’s manager?”
And I said, “Yes. I believe he’s the fellow who pushed me out the window when I tried to reclaim my desk from the stranger I found there.”
And he said, “Well that’s funny, because he speaks very highly of you.”
Ah, how happy I was that he had repented of all those rather ungenerous things he shouted at me as I lay in the dirt outside that window. One can never have too much faith in humanity! We are wonderous in our capacity to grow and forgive—second only to the divine.
Apparently, Mr. Pinner had heard of me and had come to the opinion that he might have an even better job for me than Mawson and Williams’s! He asked if I’d been keeping up with the market while out of work and I began to sweat a little and said of course! Of course, of course, of course, of course, of course! Why wouldn’t I? Ha, ha! I knew what was coming next: he was going to ask me the horrible kind of questions that had doomed all my previous interviews. And sure enough, he asked me, “How are Ayrshires?”
Now that doesn’t seem like any kind of proper sentence, does it? I didn’t know the answer. But I did know what the answer should sound like, so I told him, “Oh, twenty-five or six to four.”
And he asked me, “And New Zealand consolidated?”
And I said, “867–5,309.”
And he smiled at me and said I was perfect. “You see, Mr. Pycroft, I represent Franco-Midland Hardware Company Limited, with 134 branches in the towns and villages of France, not counting one in Brussels and one in San Remo. We are preparing to expand our trade, but we require a new business manager. From what I can tell, you are the perfect candidate.”
I thanked him, but told him I could not possibly accept. After all, I had just received a generous offer from Mawson and Williams’s and did not wish to appear the sort of fellow who has no gratitude. But Mr. Pinner waved that concern off and asked if they could match a salary of 500 pounds a year, with commissions on my underlings’ sales that were expected within a year to clear over 500, just by themselves.
Which made me realize something very odd: I did not know if they could match that. Certain vital facts were absent from my memory. Mawson and Williams’s had offered four pounds a week. But how many weeks were in a year? And weren’t pounds a measurement of weight, not of money? Why did I not know such things? Wouldn’t I have needed to, to be the successful stockbroker I was sure I had been?
I think my brow must have begun to look rather wrinkly and worried, for Mr. Pinner’s expression started to darken as he watched me. So I quickly shouted, “Hip! Pip! Top! Derpy-derpy! That sounds great!” and he looked very relieved.
“Excellent!” he said. “Most excellent! Here is a letter of introduction to my brother, Harry Pinner. He must confirm your appointment, of course, but between you and me: it will be fine.”
“Where shall I find him?” I asked.
“The office,” said Mr. Pinner, as if this were the silliest question in the world. But then he suddenly recoiled and said, “Oh, bugger! The office!”
I did not understand why he seemed so upset, so I asked, “What is the address of this office?”
“Right, well it’s… it’s… far from here, clearly,” he stammered. “Birmingham! Yes, Birmingham. Now I… erm… I cannot recall the exact address. It has slipped my mind. Which is a natural thing that could occur to anybody.”
“Of course,” I agreed.
“So, I must wire the address to you. Do not fret, Mr. Pycroft, you shall have a cable with the exact address late this evening or early next morning. You will then report to that address and present that letter. Agreed?”
“I should think that would be all right,” I s
aid.
“Good. Very good. Now, for the conditions of your employment. Firstly, it is of paramount importance that you do not inform Mawson and Williams’s that you are declining their offer.”
“Why ever not?” I wondered.
“Erm… well… it’s their office manager, you see. I know him. And he… oh! He said he’d hired you for much less than you were worth and he seemed to think you were rather stupid for accepting their offer.”
“No!”
“But, yes,” Pinner assured me. “I must say, it struck me as very rude of him to call someone stupid before he’d even met them. And I thought that if you came to work for me instead of him without informing him, that would be no less than he deserved.”
“Oh, the cheek of him!” I shouted, shaking my fist at the ceiling. “Yes, I agree absolutely; it’s no less than he deserves!”
“Ah, good,” said Mr. Pinner, appearing most relieved. “Now for the other matter: we require your services immediately. Tomorrow. In Birmingham. The hours are likely to be quite long and we would need you at our disposal, so you may need to move your residence—at least temporarily. I trust, for the sum involved, this would not be too much of an inconvenience?”
“Hmmm…” I said. “It seems like I should ask my wife.”
So I popped upstairs and told Mary to disregard what I’d told her earlier about getting a new job. That was my old new job. Now there was a fellow downstairs whom I had never met or heard of before, but he was offering me a new new job, and all I had to do was agree not to tell my old new job that I wasn’t coming, pack up all my things that very night, then first thing next morning I must leave her and go live in Birmingham for an indeterminate amount of time.
She said that was fine.
Overjoyed, I ran back down to tell Mr. Pinner the happy news.
“Very good,” Mr. Pinner said. “Now, there are just a few formalities to attend to. Here is a sheet of paper. Kindly write, ‘I am perfectly willing to act as manager to the Franco-Midland Hardware Company Limited, at a minimum salary of 500 pounds’ and sign at the bottom.”
Which I did. But when I handed it back to him he got all frowny, as if there had been some kind of mistake. “Um…” he said, and stared at me long and hard, as if appraising my character or wondering how far he could push his luck. “Do you know, I’ve just remembered my brother is terribly frightened of zebras. I know it’s a funny thing, but he often suspects that some of the people he meets might be zebras in disguise. I don’t suppose you’d mind adding ‘I am not a zebra’ to the bottom of the note and initialing the change?”
Dear journal, I got the strangest feeling. From somewhere deep inside of me came a wave of doubt. Yet the oddest thing was this: it didn’t feel like my doubt. It seemed as if someone else who lived inside of me was waking from a deep slumber, horrified at my recent behavior. He seemed to feel it was very important that the word “zebra” contained a “z” and a “b”, which the rest of the note did not. Was it perhaps possible that Mr. Arthur Pinner might be trying to obtain a complete sample of my handwriting? I could feel the other mind welling up within me, struggling to be heard. I think I nearly stumbled. Fortunately, I gasped out a quick “Hip! Pip! Top! Derpy-derpy!” and he receded into my inner depths once more. Mr. Pinner was staring at me, waiting. So, with shaking hands, I took the paper and wrote what he had asked.
He watched patiently over my shoulder. Part way through, he gave a cluck of frustration and asked if I could add “j”, “k”, “q”, “v” and “x” to the lower corner. Some sort of Latin inscription, I think it was. So, I added it.
With a happy smile, he took the note, folded it once, pressed it into his breast pocket and told me he would see me tomorrow. But then he corrected himself and said that what he meant, of course, was that his brother would see me tomorrow.
Dear journal, I was so excited I could hardly sleep. I had the profound joy of a man who had stumbled—who had failed, for a time, to fulfill those duties of modern adulthood upon which the fortunes of his family and his self-worth depend—but who had now regained his stride and found himself redeemed entirely. I felt so blessed! The expression of Mary’s sleeping face might seem neutral to the untrained observer, but to me I was sure I could read a kind of triumph in the silence between her snores. She was proud of me! And I was glad of it. I knew that despite all the servants’ mutterings about how suddenly I had changed and how surely Mary seemed to be changing too, everything would be all right.
Oh, I forgot to mention that, journal. All the servants seemed convinced that Mary’s personality had transformed.
In a particularly dark and worrisome way.
Especially Chives.
He had mentioned something about it to me some months ago.
Right before he disappeared.
Sure enough, I rose the next morning to find a telegram waiting for me with the address of 126B Corporation Street. As a special dose of luck, the train to Birmingham was one of those pretty red ones, which made me happy.
Pausing only long enough to hire myself a room at a hotel on New Street, I made my way to Corporation Street, eager to see the office. Imagine my surprise when the building at 126 contained no signage for Franco-Midland Hardware Company Limited. For a moment, I had this terrible sense that I might have been made a fool of and that the whole situation was just rotten. Luckily, at that very instant came a tap at my shoulder. Turning, I beheld the smiling face of Harry Pinner.
Let me say, the family resemblance to Arthur Pinner was striking! Harry was the same height, the same weight, and had the same voice. The same age, even! But his clothes were different. And where Arthur had had dark hair, a dark beard, and dark eyebrows, Harry Pinner had none of these features at all. He must have quite recently, though, for the skin was still pale where his hair, beard, and eyebrows should have been—as if it had not felt the touch of the sun in some time.
He greeted me and asked if I was the remarkably gifted man his brother had told him about. I blushed, and admitted that I was. We shook hands in a firm but friendly manner. Oh, and I even thought to extend him my personal assurance that I was, in no way, a zebra.
He told me not to worry about the lack of a plaque to proclaim the business; he had only just rented the premises and had not yet labeled them. I was very excited as I followed him up the stairs, but instead of a bustling office, he ushered me into a disused storage room. There were plenty of desks and chairs, I had to admit, but they were stacked along the walls. He laughed at my dismay and explained that he was only in the most early stages of assembling the English branch. Yet, what was that? He had a promising new business manager; the rest would follow. Now, didn’t I want to know what my duties would be?
And I said, “Yes! Very much!”
He set me up with a desk and chair in the middle of the room and deposited a heavy, three-volume set of tomes in front of me. This, he explained, was the extended Paris directory. Here I would find the name, address and occupation of everybody who lived in and around Paris. The problem, he said, was that there was no reliable list of the hardware sellers. To serve the deficiency, he would very much appreciate it if I could go through all three volumes, finding every person associated with hardware in the greater Paris metropolitan area, and write their names and addresses down for him.
I told him that of course I would and—since there didn’t seem to be any employees for me to manage yet—this was a fine use of my time. He stared at me long and hard, as if trying to determine if I were in earnest or not. I looked back at him and—as I could not guess which expression he wanted me to show—kept my face as neutral as I could. After a time, he gave a shrug and went off to fetch me a pen and paper. He then took his leave, saying that he must go do “business stuff ” but that he would return later and check my progress.
He returned several times over the next few days. He often smelled of drink and sometimes even seemed a bit unsteady on his feet. I asked if he was quite all right, and he assured me
he was. “Business often requires a lunch meeting, where drinks are served,” he told me. “And at some meetings, it isn’t lunchtime, so drinks are all we’ve got.” He seemed always glad to find me at my desk but took little note of my progress on the list. This, I ascribed to his great trust in me and I resolved not to disappoint him.
Thus, I would report to the office every morning, open the tome, then write my little heart out, as fast as I could. Sometimes my eyes would hurt from the lack of light. Or my fingers from clutching the pen. Oh, and I’d get nosebleeds from concentrating so hard for so many hours. But what else had I to do? I could go sit in the hotel room, but that was no fun and not nearly as industrious a way to spend my time. And hadn’t Arthur Pinner told me the hours would be long? So, there I sat, and applied myself with every ounce of resolve I could muster.
It was Sunday when I began it—a strange day to report to work, I now realize as I put it to paper. On Saturday afternoon, Harry Pinner came to see me. He jarred me from a deep reverie. Almost sleep. I don’t know how long I’d been sitting at that desk doing very little, really, except deep and ragged breathing. I must not have looked very well, for in a cautious, doubtful tone, he asked, “Mr. Pycroft? Are you quite all right?”
“Oh! Mr. Pinner! Why… I am done.”
He stared for a moment at the book that lay on the table before me, open to its last page.
“But no,” he said. “I mean… it’s quite an accomplishment, no doubt, but we must ask you to complete all three volumes. The whole directory.”
“I did,” I told him.
He got quite pale at that point. “Already?” he asked, his voice a whisper. “God’s socks... The whole directory?”
I didn’t quite understand. I had the feeling, dear journal, that I had done something wrong—that Harry Pinner didn’t really want me to complete his task.
The Finality Problem Page 23