How Beautiful Are Thy Feet

by Alan Marshall

  ‘I see,’ said the accountant quietly. ‘Now what about the “Overs”? One of the girls has earned a pound extra in this way.’

  ‘Well, the “overs” scheme was introduced by Miss Claws following the lead of other Melbourne retail shoe stores.’

  ‘I am well aware of that; but what I want to know is how this girl,’ he tapped an envelope, ‘came to earn a pound in this way. It is the amount I am questioning.’

  ‘Well, that girl is our star sales girl. I trained her myself. She often sells shoes at half a crown over their listed price. For that she gets sixpence. Those she sells for five shillings over, she gets one shilling, and so on. Last week she sold two pairs of shoes for a pound over the correct price. She got eight shillings out of that deal.’

  ‘A pound over!’ exclaimed the accountant.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What was the correct price of those shoes?’

  ‘Well, they were a couple of pair of samples that came from the factory to be sold at twelve and sixpence.’

  ‘And she sold them for thirty-two and sixpence?’

  ‘That is right.’

  ‘What type of person bought these shoes?’

  ‘Oh! two women who wanted something exclusive. The leather in the shoes was good. We brushed them up a bit and they were perfectly satisfied.’

  ‘Don’t you think such a scheme encourages the girls to be dishonest?’

  ‘Not at all, Mr McCormack. The girls here would never think of keeping any of the “overs” they receive.’

  The accountant moved impatiently. ‘Not that.’

  ‘The paying of a percentage on “overs” encourages the girls to be honest,’ pursued Furness. ‘They know that for every ten shillings extra they obtain, they be paid two shillings. The firm never loses anything by theft under this scheme.’

  ‘No the firm doesn’t lose anything,’ said the accountant.

  ‘Quite right, Mr McCormack. I have trained all the girls here to be strictly honest in their dealings with the firm.’

  On Saturday morning the accountant received a letter:

  Station Street,

  Ivanhoe,

  Friday Night.

  Dear Mr McCormack,

  Do you remember that line, ‘They buried him darkly at dead of night,’ or something to that effect? Well, that was something the way I felt, only ‘wuss’ when Miss Claws arrived last night and asked me to come into the office.

  I knew what she was going to say but it made me feel very bad just the same. She was very nice about it — practically purred — said she wanted me to take a month’s holiday, etc. I was quite charming and asked if she would mind giving me a reference. She told me to call in on Monday. She also took my address and said she would write me when business brightened; but I feel certain that she promptly tore it up as soon as I left her.

  Shouldn’t I get a week’s pay, being put off without notice? And besides that I have only been paid up to Wednesday and it is against my principle to work for nothing. Yet I don’t like to demand it as, you never know, they might want me back at the end of the month. However I am not worrying. I am becoming most excited over the thought of applying for your job.

  I will miss you and the chocolate quite a lot. But there is still this deluge of letters from you to look forward to. How about beginning immediately?

  Yours sincerely,

  Coral Sanderson.

  19

  There was a snap in the air. The winter sun was bright on the footpaths.

  ‘I am glad there is a half holiday this afternoon,’ said Miss Trueman, looking out of the window.

  The accountant, standing behind her, said, ‘You know, I always feel sad when I look out of windows. I suppose it is because when you look out of windows you generally have nothing else to do. But that may not be the reason. I daresay it is a hang-over from the rainy days of my childhood.’

  ‘I don’t feel like that. I like looking out of windows. It makes everything look beautiful; like a framed picture.’

  She commenced opening the mail he had handed her.

  ‘Hurray! Another one.’

  She detached a small blue sticker bearing the word ‘Please’ from a statement, and with some paste stuck it among a collection on the wall above her desk. They bore such words as ‘Thank You,’ ‘Attention,’ ‘Can you oblige.’

  ‘You remind me of those people who collect “In Memoriam” notices from the papers,’ said the accountant.

  ‘Ghouls?’ queried Miss Trueman.

  The accountant laughed.

  Clynes emerged from Mr Fulsham’s office, and closed the door softly behind him.

  He crossed the office furtively and, entering the factory, slunk off among the racks and chattering machines.

  The buzzer on Miss Trueman’s table whirred imperatively. She rose and entered Fulsham’s office.

  ‘Tell Jack Correll I want him.’

  She went into the factory seeking him.

  The accountant brought a list of figures into Fulsham.

  ‘The shop’s takings for the week,’ he said.

  He returned to the office and met Correll coming in. Correll was flustered.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked of the accountant.

  The accountant did not reply.

  Correll, quaking, entered Fulsham’s office. ‘Sit down, Jack.’

  Correll sat down.

  ‘I want to have a serious talk with you,’ began Fulsham, deliberately intimidating. ‘I have been hearing rumours about you approaching different girls in the factory with the object of getting them to go out with you. Is this correct?’

  Correll’s jaw dropped. He looked blankly at Fulsham. He began to redden. He drew a slow, deep breath, then shot it forth tangled with words. ‘It’s a lie,’ he shouted. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Lower your voice,’ said Fulsham angrily.

  ‘I’d like to see the one who told you that.’

  ‘Didn’t you ask one of the girls to go to a football match with you?’

  ‘Go to a football match,’ repeated Correll, sparring for time. ‘I asked Gladys one day to meet me at the gate, “I’ll meet you at the gate,” I said. I was just going to stand with her, see. That’s nothing. What is there in meeting her at the gate? I said to her, “I’ll meet you at the gate,” I said. That’s all.’

  ‘Well, I won’t allow it,’ cried Fulsham, banging the table. ‘I won’t have responsible employees of mine taking girls from our factory to football matches. Now you remember that.’

  Correll’s expression again became blank. ‘Christ!’ he said. His face clouded.

  ‘All right,’ he replied sullenly. ‘I didn’t know there was any rule about it.’

  ‘That is all.’ Fulsham dismissed him.

  Correll sought Clynes. He found him hovering about his packing bench.

  ‘The Tall Fella has just been giving me hell,’ he said. ‘That bastard McCormack has been telling him that I have been putting the hard word on some of the girls. I saw him coming out of the office when I went in.’

  ‘What did he say,’ asked Clynes.

  ‘He said I was asking girls to go to football matches, the bloody liar. I stood up to Fulsham. I said to him, I said, “Look here, old chap. I’m quite capable of taking care of myself. Just forget it, see. Just forget it. Don’t go listening to yarns that don’t concern you, and if you hear anymore just bring the ones that told you in front of me. I’ll show ’em. I’ll go the bastards.” ‘

  Clynes listened, his head lowered. He envied Correll his courage in asking one of the girls to go out with him. He saw himself with the girl. He moved through a crowd with her. He leant over the fence with her. He pressed against her. He touched her. He smelt her. He hated Correll.

  He made resolves to follow this lead. He was asking Sadie. He was asking Leila. He was asking Mabel. He was charming. He was well dressed. He was kissing and being kissed. He was … The deep breath of him filled his lungs.

  He asked in a
sudden, intimate whisper: ‘Who did you ask to go out with you?’

  The firm was going bung. What did it matter. What matter anything now the firm was going bung. What did it matter what Correll thought of him?

  Correll stampeded. ‘I didn’t ask any of them to go out with me.’ (Christ! I must be careful. The wife …)

  Clynes felt suddenly superior to him. He said, ‘The way these girls throw themselves at you, though. It is hard to resist them sometimes.’

  They both turned and watched Leila Hale walk past them, carrying her head like the holy sacrament.

  ‘God bless the King,’ said Miss Trueman, putting on her hat. ‘I’m glad his birthday is not on the twenty-ninth of February.’

  The accountant was still writing.

  ‘Don’t you know it is a half holiday.’ Miss Trueman stood looking through the doorway. ‘Come on. Every one has left but us.’

  ‘Half a jiff,’ said the accountant.

  Miss Trueman sat on the table’s edge and began reading the paper.

  The factory was silent. Only the scamper of rats like pattering fingers between the walls. Out in the factory the racks huddled together. The belts were still. The dark machines, fatigued from their bitter conflict with men, stood spent and silent along the walls gaining strength for the morrow’s battle. The untormented air was heavy with the weight of leather’s smell. The long benches, lonely of girls, slumbered in peace.

  The accountant and Miss Trueman stepped out on to the street.

  The street too was silent. The factories were deserted. Beyond their roofs and beyond that again were other factories and streets — all deserted.

  ‘These streets depress me on holidays,’ said the accountant. ‘They seem wistful or something. They seem to be conscious that everyone is away enjoying themselves, and they are left.’

  ‘They don’t affect me that way,’ said Miss Trueman.

  ‘I always think they look nicer when I knock off early or on a holiday. Everything looks nice to me on a holiday.’

  ‘You are going to have a marvellous time if we go bung.’

  She laughed. ‘But how sad for you.’

  ‘For a day or two, perhaps.’

  ‘It won’t be long now. Mary gone, Freda gone … Who next, I wonder.’

  ‘We will all go together next time, I think.’

  ‘Freda said that she thought she could get a position at Rollow’s. Did she get it, do you know?’

  ‘Yes. She started in his office next day.’

  Miss Trueman glanced at him with a twinkle in her eye. ‘You won’t see so much of your fiancee now. You will miss her passing your table each morning.’

  He smiled and said, ‘I will that.’

  ‘Terrible thing to be in love, isn’t it?’

  ‘You should know.’

  She laughed and continued on her way. He turned into his street and commenced the climb up the hill.

  20

  ‘Don’t you go with Leila now, Ron?’ asked Shorty. They were seated on the bench beside the consol laster eating their lunch.

  ‘No,’ said Ron shortly.

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘She got in the family way and we had a bust up over it.’

  ‘You’ll get caught some day.’

  ‘Not me. Never again.’

  He drank deeply from a tin pannikin. Shorty rolled a cigarette. Rain beat on the window beside them.

  ‘Girls that are too easy are on the coat with me,’ went on Ron. ‘I’d like to track square with some piece that would knock me back.’

  ‘Where you gonner meet a girl like that?’

  ‘I dunno. I’d like to take Sadie Bryce out.’

  ‘Have you put it on her to go out?’

  ‘Yes. She won’t come at it.’

  ‘You won’t get anything from her.’

  ‘That’s what I like about her. She could make me happy, that girl. And when a bloke’s happy he don’t want a woman so much. It’s when he is sad a bloke wants a woman. After a bloke works here all day he is just about done at night. He’s frightened of losing his job, and he’s frightened of Clynes and he’s frightened of getting sick … That all makes you tired. And when he is tired he wants a woman. And then he goes out with a woman who goes all ga-ga as soon as he puts a hand on her. And he treats her rough. It is the factory’s fault; it’s Clyne’s fault … He don’t give a bugger for the girl, this bloke. He handles her rough because he’s sad and because she don’t know how to make him happy without giving him the lot. And then a bloke begins to think that it is the only thing in the world that will make him happy. And he studies it. And he becomes a hum-dinger at it. And then that bloke is buggered because it is the only thing that makes him happy.’

  ‘Christ Almighty!’ exclaimed Shorty. ‘What’s gone wrong with you, talking like that?’

  Ron folded his lunch paper.

  ‘When I asked Sadie Bryce to go out with me, she said, “When you learn how to treat a girl decently I will.” That’s what she said.’

  The accountant was speaking on the phone.

  ‘Your cheque has been returned, Mr Bentley.’

  ‘Something tragic has happened here Mr McCormack. I only took forty pounds last week.’

  ‘Yes. But what about this returned cheque, Mr Bentley?’

  ‘This is driving me mad, Mr McCormack. I can’t sleep at nights. I’m too near Wiley and Hales. That shop is a killer. I’m doing the best I can. I’m a sick man. I’m all nerves. The doctor says I’m a sick man.’

  ‘Yes, yes. But what about this cheque?’

  ‘I can’t make out why they sent the cheque back, Mr McCormack. I told the bank manager. He said it would be all right. I’ll go down and see him again. I’m a sick man.’

  ‘I am sorry you are ill, Mr Bentley, but I must insist that this cheque be met. I will present it again this afternoon. In the meantime please make provision for its payment.’

  There was silence, at the other end, then a wandering voice, ‘I am a sick man,’ then the slow, heavy click of a returned receiver.

  The accountant hung up and ran his fingers through his hair.

  ‘Damn and blast it,’ he said wildly. ‘I was never made for this.’

  21

  It is cold when the wind blows and the rain comes down … it is cold in the cleaning room when the big side door is opened and the wind slips in and curls round your legs … close that door … who left that door open? … And the thin clothes, and the cold that comes in the door … and Rene Gaunt is so small … Rene Gaunt had a slice of bread for breakfast … Rene Gaunt’s father is drunk this morning … Rene Gaunt’s father said, take that, blast you … and that … and that … and Rene Gaunt’s mother said, you bloody swine … leave her alone … and the shouts and the screams … never mind, dear, mother loves you … and the shouts and the screams … and the single slice of bread and the cold that comes through the door … and Mrs Bourke smiling … Lovely Mrs Bourke smiling … Lovely Mrs Bourke who gave her a job … 1 love her, mum, next to you I love her most … Lovely Mrs Bourke saying, you stupid child, getting your feet wet … you will get a chill, you stupid child.

  And the cold that comes through the door … and the horrid men who stagger, laden with shoes, through the door … and return … up there, baby … and a thumb jerked upwards … and a leer … and Fanny beside her: you dirty buggers … and fear … and frantic fear … and a frightened, uncomprehending laugh … following Fanny … Fanny laughing … Fanny telling dirty stories … ha, ha … isn’t that a beaut … and the fear: but not so great a fear … and a laugh: but not so frightened a laugh … and Fanny: I’ll train her … have you heard this one, Rene? … and confusion; but no fear … gradually no fear … gradually no confusion …

  The early darkness … black cones that gape with blazing mouths above their heads … the cold and the gloom and the walk home …

  Don’t walk through the puddles, you stupid child …

  A pain … A stabbing, terrible pain
…

  You will get a chill, you stupid child …

  A pain … a terrible pain … but there are holes in my shoes … Lovely Mrs Bourke, there are holes in my shoes … and the cold that comes through the door … the pain … THE PAIN … MUM …

  Rene Gaunt writhed on the floor, her hands clasped low on her belly. She doubled up, her eyes closed, calling, ‘Mum — Mum — Mum.’

  ‘Pull those racks round her,’ called Mrs Bourke, darting forward.

  The girls hurried to obey.

  ‘Get your overcoat, Fanny. Roll it up and put it beneath her head.’

  ‘Mum — Mum …’

  ‘You will be better in a moment, dear. It won’t last long.’

  ‘Annie, run downstairs and bring up a hot ginger. There is some ginger on the shelf in the lav. Hurry now.’

  ‘What’s the matter with the little sheila?’ asked Correll, peering over the encircling racks.

  ‘Oh! Mum — Mumma …’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with her at all. You get out of here,’ snapped Mrs Bourke.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘You mind your own business. Get out.’

  ‘Will I get Martin?’

  ‘If Martin comes in here I’ll throw him out. Hop off.’

  Correll edged away still eagerly peering. Mrs Bourke drew up more racks.

  ‘Go on with your work now, girls,’ she ordered quietly. ‘She will be all right in a minute.’

  The racks round the little girl formed a concealing wall. The little girl opened her eyes. The shoes on the racks looked down on her. Shoes that sneered with long noses, with short, fat noses; that gazed at her with mocking, comprehending eyes.