The Love Department

by William Trevor

  ‘They are doing all right, Mrs Bolsover. I have peeled seven potatoes. Is that a fast enough speed?’

  ‘Gracious, yes.’

  The Bolsover children entered the kitchen and asked for something to eat. Eve refused this request, drawing their attention to the fact that it was almost their suppertime. Mrs Hoop winked at them, and slipped them two biscuits which she had earlier secreted in the pocket of her apron. She placed a finger on her lips, indicating that their mother mustn’t know about this. ‘How’s Miss Fairy and Miss Crouch?’ asked Mrs Hoop, and the children said that they were quite all right, actually, and went away with their biscuits.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t give the children food, Mrs Hoop. All this eating between meals isn’t at all good for them.’

  ‘I’ve brought up five,’ lied Mrs Hoop, peeling potatoes and sniggering triumphantly.

  ‘Hurt not the earth,’ said Beach, ‘neither the sea, nor the trees. I read of chemicals, sir, that are absorbed through the leaf and destroy the Lord’s handiwork without a by-your-leave. I read it in the Radio Times. The name is Beach, sir.’

  ‘I know you well, Mr Beach,’ said Edward, disappointed that Beach should take him to be a stranger when every night for almost a week he had been sharing the old man’s company. He was feeling melancholy in any case, after his conversation with Lady Dolores. He felt, as he had attempted to explain to her, that he could never go into people’s houses dressed up as a window-cleaner or other such person; he felt that it was steadily being proved that he was not of the ilk to track down Septimus Tuam.

  ‘I am a weeder by trade, sir,’ said Beach. ‘I am a weeder of flower-beds in London parks. They have found this stuff, sir, that the weeds take in through the leaves. It does not damage the flowers. Mister, I may never weed again.’

  ‘A weed-killer,’ said Edward. ‘I’m sorry to hear it.’

  ‘It goes through the leaf. It’s a new invention, sir.’

  With a heavy sigh, Edward rose and carried their two glasses to the counter.

  ‘Untimely weather,’ said Harold, drawing the beer. ‘Not a shadow of a doubt about it.’

  Edward agreed. He felt so small and so inept that he suddenly said, with brazenness, ‘Do you stock whisky?’

  He had seen Lady Dolores pouring out a glass of whisky. He had smelt the stuff on her breath. He had heard from others, listening to conversations, that it was powerful stuff. He had read the same in newspapers.

  ‘Give me a glass of whisky,’ said Edward, and added, as he had heard others adding in public houses, ‘like a good man.’ He felt better even before he tasted the liquor, even before Harold poured out the measure. He thought there would be nothing pleasanter than to spend his days in this small snug, drinking beer and whisky, and keeping out of the way of Lady Dolores.

  ‘As well as the bitter?’ asked Harold. ‘Spirits on top of beer, is it?’

  ‘Whisky,’ said Edward, inclining his head. ‘And whisky for Mr Beach.’

  ‘Four bob,’ said Harold, before pouring a drop.

  ‘What’s wrong with four bob?’ Edward placed the coins on the counter. He said to himself that he had aged ten years in the last half minute.

  ‘By the holy Lord,’ said Beach, ‘you’re a generous man. Here’s to your health, son.’

  ‘I’m celebrating my freedom from the influence of a woman,’ said Edward, ‘if you follow what I mean, Mr Beach.’

  ‘I’m influenced by Emily Hoop. I’d lay down on the floor for her.’

  ‘You’re in love, Mr Beach. It’s not so with me. I’m employed by a woman who sets me impossible tasks. I spend my day riding around on a cycle, making a fool of myself with strangers. I’m the laughing stock of London, when I might be sitting at a desk. Deskwork’s my ambition, but I see no sign of it. I’m got down, Mr Beach. Did you ever play draughts?’

  ‘Where?’ said Beach.

  ‘Draughts. You have them on a board. You can play draughts all day and be perfectly happy. Maybe we would one day, Mr Beach?’

  ‘Women is a problem,’ said Beach. ‘Take Emily Hoop.’

  But Edward was thinking that first thing in the morning he would telephone Lady Dolores and tell her that he was resigning his post. He would do it and be left only with the regret that he would never see the love department again and would never now discover the true meaning of the words that hung about the air there. ‘That dog,’ said Edward to himself, drinking his whisky and feeling nostalgic already.

  ‘Emily Hoop is all I ever want,’ said Beach. ‘I would live with the girl, wedded man and wife; we’d be happy as a pair of fireflies. Where’s the harm in it?’

  ‘No harm in happiness, Mr Beach.’

  ‘I’d take her in,’ said Beach. ‘I’d take the girl in tomorrow. I’m keen on Mrs Hoop, son.’

  ‘Put it to her,’ said Edward. ‘Employ a bit of cunning. You’ve got to be careful with women.’ Edward laughed coarsely. ‘Bring us two more of those whiskies,’ he demanded in a loud tone, addressed to Harold. ‘Have one yourself, Harold. It’ll put a bit of lead in your pencil.’

  ‘I know right well,’ said Beach. ‘I’m no fool, son. Women is all right, but you got to know your way. Where’s Emily Hoop?’

  ‘I’ll bring in a draughts-board,’ said Edward, ‘and you and I’ll play many a game, Mr Beach. That’s the safer thing.’

  ‘Listen to me, son,’ said Beach, placing his glass of beer in the centre of the table and finishing his whisky. ‘There’s chemicals being absorbed through the leaf. Night and day. You’re right in that, sir.’

  ‘Drink up,’ cried Edward. What would she say, he wondered, if she could see him now? What would she say if she could see him sitting about in a bar parlour with a gardener, telling the barman to put lead in his pencil, advising the gardener to play cunningly with women? Edward laughed. He raised his whisky glass above his head, winking his right eye.

  ‘Hurt not the earth,’ said Beach, ‘neither the sea, nor the trees.’

  ‘Hurt not the earth,’ repeated Edward, coughing, and laughing the louder. ‘Here’s to Septimus Tuam.’

  For five days Septimus Tuam had read the stories in magazines, and had relaxed on his bed. He had done some mental mathematics from time to time, working out the length of certain relationships he had engaged upon in the past, and working out sums of money that were connected with them. He considered that he had no brain, and so in his calculations he took great care, checking all results several times. He considered that his only gift was an instinct, and even that was flawed, as though as a punishment for having it.

  As Edward laughed and spoke his name in the Hand and Plough, it happened that Septimus Tuam’s eye fell on the calendar beside his bed. He saw the first ringed date, September 8th, and he knew that tomorrow was that day. ‘Eleven Crannoc Avenue,’ he repeated to himself. He remembered approximately where that was, having been more than once in adjoining roads.

  Septimus Tuam rose briskly from his bed then, and shaved himself. He left his room and walked out into Putney, where he caught a 93 bus to Wimbledon. He strode to Mrs FitzArthur’s house and let himself into it, glancing about to ascertain that all was well there, since he had promised to keep an eye on the place. He made some coffee in the kitchen and, having drunk it and washed the cup, he climbed the stairs to Mrs FitzArthur’s bedroom. She was a woman who bought stockings in quantity, Bear Brand invariably, and always Autumn Mist. He found a pair still in their box and, rooting around, discovered a piece of gay wrapping paper that bore as a design the flags of many nations. He noticed as he wrapped them up that the stockings were not the correct size; he shrugged his shoulders over that, thinking that this Mrs Bolsover couldn’t expect everything. He left Mrs FitzArthur’s house and instead of returning to Putney walked for half a mile in the other direction, to Crannoc Avenue. He looked at it from behind a pillar-box, establishing the nature of the place so that the lie of the land might be fresh with him when he made his first moves. He walked along it, since he
had nothing to lose by doing that if he kept his face correctly averted. He passed by Number Eleven and saw to his considerable surprise that a man and a woman were approaching the house in the company of a monkey.

  12

  When Eve Bolsover opened the door to the Clingers and saw a small tartan-clad animal in Mrs Clinger’s arms she was aware that surprise registered in her eyes. Had the creature been a Pekinese or even a kitten she could have thought little more of it, expecting only to hear by way of explanation some story of the pet’s pining during the absence of its owners. But there was something altogether singular about the presence of a monkey at a dinner party, and Mrs Clinger, a stout, shy woman dressed in blue, with blue hair, was well aware of it. In a low voice she apologized profusely, saying that the man who usually came to sit with her monkey had caught a summer cold and was confined to bed.

  ‘He’ll go into a corner,’ explained Mr Clinger. ‘He’ll be no trouble at all.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Eve.

  Mr Linderfoot, the heaviest of the eight board-men, arrived without addition, without, in fact, his wife. He was a hearty man with a ready smile who had a reputation for hanging about the office corridors seeking the company of young girls.

  While Mr Linderfoot was standing in the hall, the Poaches arrived, and James thought the opportunity a suitable one to explain to Mr Linderfoot and Captain and Mrs Poache that the man who usually sat with the Clingers’ monkey was ill, a fact that had obliged the Clingers to bring their monkey with them. ‘Oh, no,’ said Mrs Poache, and made as though to leave the house. She and the Captain had once been invited to tea on a Sunday with the Clingers, and she had considered them socially inferior. ‘That blue hair,’ she had afterwards commented to the Captain, ‘and the monkey wetting the cushions.’ James said that the Clingers’ pet had settled down in a corner of the sitting-room and would not be noticed. ‘Are they in business with the thing?’ said Mrs Poache. Mr Linderfoot laughed at this, shaking his head back and forth in a slow manner, saying it was amusing, the idea of the Clingers doing an act with their monkey.

  In the sitting-room, James poured drinks and heard a desultory conversation develop around him. He was thinking of the past and of the future; of his childhood in Gloucestershire, and of the years ahead of him, striding into ironmongers’ shops, drinking beer with the man who had the R.A.F. moustache. He wondered what kind of timing Lake had worked out, or what precisely the lay-out of his plans was; he hoped Lake wasn’t going to bungle it. He saw himself lying again on the ground in Victoria Station, late at night, near a bookstand. He saw himself wholly discredited, a man who let his children go without essential clothing and allowed his wife to work in the trimming rooms of a dog shop. And then he saw himself pulling himself together.

  ‘I must say,’ said Mrs Poache to James in confidential tones, ‘I consider it a peculiar thing.’ She was a thin woman, firm of manner and of medium height, attired for the occasion in several shades of pink, with a string of small pearls.

  James drew her attention to the weather, reminding her how poor the summer had been.

  ‘To keep a monkey as a pet,’ said Mrs Poache. ‘And not only that, Mr Bolsover, but to insist upon bringing the thing into people’s houses. Is it unusual? Or some new fad?’

  ‘Mr Clinger has a theory about cats and dogs,’ said James. ‘He believes they carry disease.’

  ‘And what on earth does this thing carry, I’d like to know? Monkeys are notorious in ways like that.’

  Mrs Clinger asked Eve if she had heard of mattress ticking as an item of decoration. As a covering for lampshades, she understood, it was increasingly popular. Eve said that she had not come across this idea, and Mr Clinger wished to know what his wife was talking about. Mr Linderfoot was opening and closing his lips and scribbling something on the back of an envelope. Eve, noticing to her surprise that the Clingers were entering into an argument between themselves on the subject of mattress ticking, smiled at Mr Linderfoot, who said to her that he liked to make a note or two on social occasions, so that he could relay the details of the evening to his wife. He whistled as he wrote something further on the envelope. Eve asked him how his wife was, and Mr Linderfoot replied that his wife, he thought, would be a woman after Eve’s heart. He was sitting beside Eve on a sofa, inclined towards her and looking closely at her head. ‘You have very beautiful hair,’ said Mr Linderfoot, moving his right eyelid. ‘Quite charming.’

  Eve smiled again, thinking that tomorrow she would tell Sybil Thornton every detail of this dinner party. She heard herself doing so, repeating parts of the conversation, sitting in Sybil Thornton’s immaculate kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee and hardly smiling at all.

  ‘Mattress ticking,’ she heard Mr Clinger mutter fiercely to his wife. ‘Wherever did you get hold of a screwy notion like that?’ She heard Mrs Clinger whisper that she had read about it in a magazine, in an article to do with interior decoration in New York. Mrs Clinger was wriggling uneasily on her chair. She said it didn’t matter, but her husband contradicted that: he said it mattered to him that she should suddenly begin a screwy conversation about mattress ticking. He thrust his jaw out and advanced it towards one of Mrs Clinger’s ears. ‘You’ve made a bloody fool of yourself,’ he said with violence, ‘saying a thing like that. This Mrs Bolsover is a sophisticated woman.’ He rose and moved to another chair, away from his wife.

  Eve listened to Mrs Clinger’s modestly pitched voice relating more about her readings on the subject of interior decor. She lit a cigarette, keeping a smile on her face. ‘It’s tasteful here,’ said Mrs Clinger, and Eve acknowledged the compliment. She was thinking that in the past, before the children had gone to school, her days had been full and busy. She had looked forward to the time when they were less so, but when that time had come it seemed that marriage itself was not enough. She wondered now if she should take on some other work.

  Beside her, Mrs Clinger said, ‘You have a suit of armour in your hall. Most beautifully polished.’

  Eve wondered if these wives loved their husbands now; and what the history of love had been in the marriages. She wondered if Mrs Linderfoot in Purley had woken one morning and seen that there was no love left, and had climbed on to a sofa and stayed there. She wondered if the Clingers ever spoke of love, or how Mrs Poache and the Captain viewed their wedding day. She looked across the room and saw her husband, his head bent to catch what Mrs Poache was saying. He was still a handsome man; the decay was elsewhere.

  ‘I mean,’ said Mrs Poache, ‘supposing the Captain and I had walked into the house with a young giraffe. What then?’

  James nodded. Mrs Poache reminded him that Captain Poache had once been in command of a vessel and had been all over the world. James nodded again, pouring Mrs Poache more sherry. Of the eight men, Captain Poache was the one he preferred. In the board-room the Captain slept a lot, and often stumbled when he walked about.

  ‘He’s lost all his nice naval manners,’ said Mrs Poache sadly, and her eyes were drawn again to the corner that contained the monkey. She shook her head. ‘I can’t understand the mentality of it,’ she said, ‘people rearing the like of that.’

  In the kitchen Mrs Hoop washed and dried an egg-beater. She was thinking that it was typical of the sullen character of Eve Bolsover that she should take exception to a few biscuits being given to her children. The children were hungry, they had stated so quite clearly: what harm in the world could two wafer biscuits do them? She worked out in her mind that two wafer biscuits at one and three the half-pound would probably cost a penny halfpenny. ‘There’s meanness for you,’ said Mrs Hoop in a sudden temper. What business was it of the woman’s if she gave them food or not? Why shouldn’t she give them a bite of food if the children came and asked politely?

  Mrs Hoop breathed heavily. She hung up the egg-beater, thought for a moment longer, and then opened the tin that contained the wafer biscuits. ‘Two each,’ she said in the children’s bedroom, shaking them awake. ‘Two little pink fe
llas from Mrs Hoop. Who’s good to you?’ The children stuffed the biscuits into their mouths, and Mrs Hoop kissed them and told them not to tell their mother. She returned to the kitchen and ate a spoonful of Eve’s Béarnaise sauce. ‘Not enough salt,’ said Mrs Hoop, and added a quantity.

  ‘I was saying to your husband,’ said Mrs Poache in a low voice, ‘that I cannot understand the mentality of people keeping a thing like that.’

  ‘What’s that?’ demanded Mr Clinger. ‘What are you saying, Mrs Poache?’

  Mrs Poache replied that she had been saying nothing at all, and Eve passed from the room to see about the meal.

  ‘What sort of food,’ said Mrs Poache to James, ‘do you imagine an animal like that would eat?’

  James said he didn’t know, but Mr Clinger, overhearing the question, said that the monkey ate solids like any other kind of animal, and an additional amount of nuts. There was no need at all, he added, for the tartan jacket that it was wearing now: the tartan jacket, said Mr Clinger, was simply and solely a screwy idea of his wife’s. Monkeys, he claimed, didn’t feel the cold.

  Mr Linderfoot heard the remark about monkeys not feeling the cold and found it amusing, since, as he afterwards explained, monkeys came from the tropics. Mr Linderfoot laughed with spirit, bellowing out a noise that Eve and Mrs Hoop could hear in the kitchen.

  ‘Whatever’s that?’ said Mrs Hoop, giving so violent a leap that a cigarette was dislodged from her lips. ‘Lord!’ murmured Mrs Hoop, looking around for a fork with which to retrieve it from a saucepan of asparagus.

  ‘What is it?’ said Eve.

  ‘Lost me fag,’ explained Mrs Hoop, ‘with the shock of that damn noise.’

  ‘I do wish you wouldn’t smoke when there’s food around,’ said Eve. ‘The ash gets everywhere.’ And Mrs Hoop, angered by these words, replaced the fork and left the cigarette where it was.

  In the sitting-room the talk continued. James listened and spoke a little himself, offering cocktails and sherry, whisky with soda, passing cigarettes and olives. In time, Mrs Linderfoot on her couch would remember what her husband reported of the scene, and would attempt to visualize it. She would hear of the Clingers’ monkey, and of Mrs Poache taking exception to it. She would imagine her husband’s voice, louder than the other voices.