The Love Department

by William Trevor

  Captain Poache surveyed the room and found it pleasant enough: there were flowers in vases, and pictures upon the walls, a green carpet, chairs and sofas quietly dressed. Beyond the room, through french windows, lay a garden that seemed in the increasing dusk to be a pleasant place too. Captain Poache could make out the shapes of arched rose trellises and hollyhocks aspiring, a long and narrow lawn, and a summerhouse on a roundabout. Captain Poache was happy there, sitting on a sofa beside his wife, watching the night creep into the Bolsovers’ garden and feeling warm in this pleasant room. He thought of saying he would like to stay there while the others dined, but he knew that such an utterance on his part would upset his wife and probably his hostess as well.

  Mrs Hoop watched Eve carry dishes of food into the dining-room. She would wash up when the dishes were returned to her, and then she would go her way, with extra money, and a meal inside her. ‘I’ll open a tin of Crosse and Blackwell’s,’ she said to Eve. ‘I don’t like the look of that stuff.’

  Beach and Edward sat musing in the Hand and Plough, worrying about Mrs Hoop because she had forgotten to say that she would not come that night.

  ‘Only a king,’ said Edward, ‘can move backwards or forwards. The ordinary piece must progress in the one direction only, ahead.’

  ‘It is the best direction,’ said Beach. ‘It’s what the country needs, son.’

  Edward, having decided to resign his post the following morning, had come to feel melancholy again. In his whole short life he had never known as beautiful a place as the love department. He thought now of the beautiful typists, with hair that was dark or blonde, reddish, chestnut, or subtle mouse. He considered their clothes: chic little waistcoats over their linen blouses, dresses starched and white, or dresses with miniature flowers on them, primula and primrose, forget-me-not and aubrietia. The hands of the girls were pale and slender as they tapped with their pointed fingers on the keys of the typewriters. Pale necks curved elegantly, and their knees, in delicate stockings, were smooth and gently rounded, shaped with skill. Some worked with their bare feet displayed, naked masterpieces for all to see, like the feet of Botticelli’s angels.

  And when Edward passed through Room 305 and opened the door marked 306 it was like entering heaven itself. As the clerks strode to their desks, he imagined, their minds must still be full of that skin as pure as sunshine, and bosoms prettily heaving. There must remain with the clerks the scent that sprang from those bodies: Apache’s Tear, Blue Grass, In Love, a modest Chanel, Heaven Inspired. All through the day, Edward imagined, as they read through the sordid letters, the clerks must draw strength from the perfumed beauty of the typists in their glory.

  Sitting with Beach in the Hand and Plough and regretting that in a fit of pique he had drunk a measure of whisky to the honour of Septimus Tuam, Edward believed that after he had resigned, and for ever until he died, he would not forget the three rooms of the love department. He would never forget the harshly beautiful crimson curtains nor the indications painted on the doors: Room 305, Room 306, Room 307. For the rest of his life there would be one minute of every day in which he would walk between the rows of typists and pass into the sumptuous mystery of the love department proper. He would walk from the desk at which he had so sorrowfully failed and approach the sanctum of Lady Dolores, whose passion was love within marriage. She would talk to him again, explaining the words that the clerks spoke. She would smile with her long teeth and shoot her hand into her hair at the nape of her neck, and tousle it about in a surprising way. She would address him in her fashion and fit cigarettes into her bejewelled holder with bejewelled fingers; she would eat chocolate cake and drink whisky; she would say that Odette Sweeney was a genuine person. Love Conquers All were the words that came into Edward’s mind, coming in a visual way. They came in the colours of the great embroidery, thundering out their message, as sweet as sugar candy.

  ‘She taught me to cry,’ said Edward in the Hand and Plough. ‘I could feel her crying inside me; I had to cry too. I hadn’t known it before.’

  ‘Women is like that,’ said Beach. ‘Women makes strong men weep.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that. Not that kind of relationship.’

  ‘I’d have a relationship with Emily Hoop. By the name of God, I would.’

  ‘Have some more beer,’ said Edward, miserably blowing his nose. ‘Mrs Hoop’ll be here in a moment.’

  The guests ate melon, and then tournedos and the sauce Béarnaise, and some of the twenty potatoes that Mrs Hoop had peeled, and asparagus, and petits pois. Mr Linderfoot complimented Eve on her food, saying that it was excellent, and beautifully cooked. He said he had had a slice of chicken for lunch that you could have soled your boots with.

  ‘We’re having a fearful time,’ said Mr Clinger to Eve, ‘with door-handles. They’ve put on metal things. From Sweden I think they must come.’

  ‘Arthur’s most concerned about the door-handles,’ said Mrs Clinger. ‘I suppose your husband is too.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose he is.’

  ‘Another thing is WC pans,’ said Mr Clinger.

  ‘Arthur!’

  ‘They’ve taken out the pedestal type.’

  ‘Arthur,’ said Mrs Clinger, her face the colour of a sunset. ‘We’re eating food.’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ demanded Mr Clinger.

  ‘No, no. I don’t mean that.’

  ‘What then?’ said Mr Clinger cruelly.

  ‘The sauce is far too salty,’ said Eve. ‘I can’t think how I did that. I’m sorry,’ she added in a louder voice, ‘about this sauce.’

  ‘I was saying about the pans,’ said Mr Clinger. ‘We were discussing the new look at the office.’

  ‘It’s hardly the subject,’ said Mrs Clinger, bending her head over her plate, saying to herself that he always spoiled everything.

  Farther down the table Mrs Poache heard Mr Clinger talking about the shape of lavatory pans and observed Mrs Clinger’s discomfiture. She stared at Mrs Clinger, thinking how incredible it was that after a lifetime in the Royal Navy her husband should end up with a colleague who talked about lavatories at the dinner table, a man who kept an incontinent monkey as a pet.

  ‘You have very attractive hair,’ said Mr Linderfoot to Mrs Clinger. ‘Did you know that?’

  But Mrs Clinger did not immediately reply. She was experiencing a sour and unpleasant taste in her mouth and she could feel with her tongue something that was of the wrong consistency. Mrs Clinger didn’t know what to do: she knew that if she attempted to extract whatever it was that was there her husband would note and remark upon the action. ‘What have you got there?’ he would demand. ‘What’s that, Diana?’ Mrs Clinger identified the taste as that of tobacco; a matt of paper caught in her teeth. ‘Look at that,’ he would say. ‘Look at what Diana’s got hold of.’ Mrs Clinger swallowed everything, sipping from her wine-glass. ‘It’s kind of you to say so,’ she whispered to Mr Linderfoot.

  Captain Poache ate his food and found it a little on the salty side. He drank some wine and found it much to his liking. He saw his wife listening to a conversation that was going on and noticed that she would have something to say about it all afterwards. She would keep him awake half the night with suggestions for his return to the ocean wave. He sought about in his mind for something to say that might improve matters, that might allow all present to develop a subject of conversation in a communal way.

  ‘How about central heating?’ said Captain Poache. ‘Do you have it in the house, Mrs Bolsover?’

  While Captain Poache was asking that question, Mrs Hoop, on the point of scouring a saucepan, remembered the waiting Beach. ‘Lord above!’ she cried, and rushed off into the sitting-room to telephone the Hand and Plough.

  ‘May I speak to Mr Beach, Harold?’ said Mrs Hoop, and then she noticed that an animal, a kind of ape, as she afterwards described it, was sitting up in a corner of the room, looking at her.

  ‘Who wants me?’ said Beach in the Hand and Plough.

/>   ‘The police,’ remarked a bar-room wit as the old man made his way behind the counter to the telephone.

  ‘Holy hell!’ said Beach. ‘Has Emily Hoop got into a bus accident? Hullo,’ he said into the telephone. ‘Is that a constable?’

  ‘It’s me,’ said Mrs Hoop, watching the animal in the corner, wondering about it, and feeling nervous.

  The monkey wandered from its position, quite slowly, and approached Mrs Hoop in a manner that alarmed her. It was breathing hard, wheezing through its nose and open mouth.

  ‘Where are you, Emily?’ demanded the voice of Beach in Mrs Hoop’s ear.

  The Clingers’ monkey leapt swiftly from the ground into Mrs Hoop’s arms, gripping her affectionately, biting her clothes.

  ‘I’m being savaged by an ape,’ cried Mrs Hoop.

  ‘God bless you, where?’ said Beach. ‘You’re never up a tree?’

  ‘Who said I was up a tree? I’m here in the Bolsovers’ sitting-room, attacked by an ape.’

  ‘I’m coming on,’ cried Beach, thinking that Mrs Hoop was alone, baby-sitting for the Bolsovers. ‘I’ll hire a taxi-car.’

  The receiver slipped from Mrs Hoop’s hand. She attempted to remove her clothing from the monkey’s mouth, but the monkey, as had been its way from birth, held grimly on.

  ‘Emily Hoop’s attacked by an ape,’ cried Beach in the Hand and Plough. ‘Lend me a stick,’ he demanded in a shout, addressing himself to Harold behind the bar. ‘I’m going up there in a taxi-car.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, Mr Beach,’ said Edward. ‘Has the ape got out of a zoo?’

  ‘The ape’s eating her,’ said Beach. ‘He’s savaging Mrs Hoop.’

  In the Bolsovers’ dining-room Mr Linderfoot was saying across the table:

  ‘Small-bore gas is no damn good. That whole system is discredited.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Mr Clinger.

  ‘Listen to me,’ said Mr Linderfoot. ‘I have temperature thermometers in every room. I gauge everything.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘I have put in the best central heating I could lay my hands on. Oil-fired central heating.’

  ‘You get the fumes.’

  ‘You do not get the fumes, old friend.’

  ‘The smell of oil would drive you crackers. I’ve seen it on the go.’

  ‘There’s not a single fume in the house. If the central heating was giving off a smell the wife would be the first to have a thing to say. So put that in your pipe –’

  ‘I investigated the whole market. I investigated the whole market, Mrs Bolsover, and I can assure you there is no more efficient way of heating a house than by small-bore gas central heating.’

  Mrs Clinger, in an agony of embarrassment because her husband was about to lose his temper at a dinner party, felt like crying. She tried to think of something to say, but no subject whatsoever came to her.

  ‘It was discredited ten years ago,’ said Mr Linderfoot to James. ‘Don’t ever have the stuff in the house, old friend.’

  ‘It was not discredited,’ said Mr Clinger. ‘Small-bore gas central heating is the thing today.’ Mr Clinger glared angrily across the table and thought that Linderfoot was looking smug.

  ‘I remember reading about it at the time,’ said Mr Linderfoot to the Bolsovers. ‘Everyone was laughing at the whole thing.’

  ‘It wasn’t even invented ten years ago,’ shouted Mr Clinger, standing up. ‘That’s a ridiculous thing to say.’

  ‘Sit down, man,’ said Linderfoot. ‘Keep your hair on.’

  ‘Arthur,’ said Mrs Clinger, rubbing her right knee with her hand in a nervous way.

  ‘Well,’ said Eve, laughing, ‘we haven’t got central heating.’

  ‘That’s just it, old friend,’ said Mr Linderfoot. ‘Make sure when you do not to go for the gas job.’

  ‘We have some other system,’ said Eve quickly. ‘Storage heating.’

  ‘A total waste that is,’ said Mr Clinger. ‘Whatever inspired you, Bolsover?’

  In the Bolsovers’ sitting-room Mrs Hoop released a scream, and dropped to the ground in a state of hysterical terror.

  13

  ‘I don’t know where they live,’ said Beach to the taxi-man. ‘The name is Bolsover. They’re out Wimbledon way. Hurry on, now.’

  The taxi-man explained that he couldn’t drive to a house without more specific instructions.

  ‘Go to a telephone-box,’ suggested Edward, ‘and we can look up the name in the book.’

  ‘Drive to the house, can’t you?’ shouted Beach, hitting the floor of the taxi with a sweeping-brush which he had been handed in the Hand and Plough when he had called so agitatedly for a stick. ‘What’s this about a book?’

  Edward repeated that they could look up the whereabouts of the Bolsovers’ house in the telephone directory and thus save further argument.

  ‘It’s a scandalous thing,’ said Beach, thinking of Mrs Hoop held at bay by an animal. ‘I never heard the like.’

  ‘If Mrs Hoop stands still and does not anger the creature, all will be well. It’s when you try to edge away that they turn nasty.’

  ‘Move the car faster,’ cried Beach, poking the taxi-driver’s back with the end of his brush.

  ‘Leave off that,’ said the taxi-driver in an annoyed way, ‘or there’ll be trouble.’

  When Mrs Hoop had dropped to the floor the monkey had dropped with her, but in the fall it had seized some of Mrs Hoop’s skirt in its teeth and had caused a portion of it to tear away. It was this scene that the Bolsovers and their guests beheld when they entered the room in a body, having heard the cry of anguish: Mrs Hoop prone on the floor, the telephone receiver dangling, and the monkey with part of a tweed skirt in its mouth.

  Mr Clinger stalked forward and gripped his pet by the scruff of its neck, Mrs Hoop rose to her feet and looked down at the gap in her skirt, Eve asked her if she was all right, and James replaced the telephone receiver.

  ‘What happened?’ said Mr Linderfoot, and added, ‘Tell us in your own words.’

  ‘That woman needs brandy,’ said Captain Poache and, finding some, pressed it upon her.

  ‘I’m that ashamed,’ were the first words that Mrs Hoop employed. She placed her hands over the damaged part of her clothes, hiding the sight of an under-garment.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Captain Poache.

  ‘Yes, sit down,’ said Mr Linderfoot, thinking that Mrs Hoop wasn’t a bad-looking woman in her way. ‘And try and tell us in your own words. I’m taking notes for an invalid.’

  ‘Here,’ said Mr Clinger, handing Mrs Hoop the area of her skirt that the monkey had removed. ‘It should stitch in O.K.’

  ‘It’s ruined beyond measure, mister,’ said Mrs Hoop.

  ‘You’ll have to pay, Arthur,’ said Mrs Clinger.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Mr Clinger.

  Mrs Hoop, sitting in an arm-chair in the centre of the room, said she’d like her coat. ‘A red one,’ she said, ‘hanging on the back of the kitchen door.’

  The brandy coursed through Mrs Hoop’s body, warming her, inspiring in her a touch of arrogance. She had hoped to see Eve Bolsover leave the room to fetch her red coat, but Eve Bolsover was tidying up some of the mess that the incident had caused. A woman with blue hair, the wife of the man who held the ape, she rather thought, slipped from the room instead, and returned with her old red coat. Mrs Hoop rose and put it on and then sat down again. James Bolsover, in his quiet, kind way, asked her if she was hurt at all, if she’d like them to call in medical aid.

  ‘Shaken,’ said Mrs Hoop, and heard Mrs Bolsover say that she’d make some coffee, and then saw her remove herself from the room. She was glad to see her go. She said, ‘She needn’t make up coffee for me. I never touch the stuff.’ She held out her glass, saying the brandy had pulled her together.

  ‘Who’s this woman?’ Mrs Poache asked Mrs Clinger.

  ‘The char,’ whispered Mrs Clinger. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘How completely
extraordinary!’ said Mrs Poache, watching her husband filling Mrs Hoop’s glass with brandy and reminding herself to speak to him about that in the car. He seemed to have taken leave of his senses, thought Mrs Poache, giving a charwoman glasses of brandy in somebody else’s house. ‘Where’s the lavatory?’ she said to Mrs Clinger, but Mrs Clinger replied that she really didn’t know, and Mrs Poache thought that Mrs Clinger, as well as everything else, was a bit of a broken reed.

  ‘Where’s the lavatory?’ said Mrs Poache to Eve in the kitchen.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ cried Eve. ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Poache.’ She led the way, apologizing for everything.

  ‘I never like an upstairs one,’ said Mrs Poache on the way upstairs. ‘They’re uneconomical.’

  Eve smiled, questioning that.

  ‘Your stair-carpet gets worn out,’ said Mrs Poache. ‘It gets twice the usage.’

  At that moment the monkey began to chatter hysterically, filling the house with the worried sound. ‘Excuse me,’ said Eve and rushed away, imagining that some new calamity had developed. But in fact the excitement was only the result of Mr Linderfoot’s having abruptly and without warning clapped his hands together.

  ‘Down, sir,’ said Mr Clinger.

  ‘Listen a minute,’ said Mr Linderfoot. ‘Could we have a second or two of hush?’

  Eve, standing by the door of her sitting-room, forgetting about the coffee she had been making and Mrs Poache en route to the lavatory, watched Mr Linderfoot place his face close to Mrs Hoop’s and say:

  ‘Now then, ma’am, tell us in your own words.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know what to say,’ protested Mrs Hoop, drinking from her glass. ‘What can I say to you, mister?’

  ‘Well, there’s been an accident,’ said Mr Linderfoot. ‘It’s unusual at a dinner party, this kind of thing.’

  Mrs Hoop saw Eve standing by the sitting-room door and wondered what she thought she was doing there, since she had clearly stated that she was leaving the room to make coffee. She thought of pretending, just for the fun of it, that she was mistress of the house and that Mrs Bolsover was the woman who daily came to clean it and to wash up dishes after others had used them. It was on the tip of Mrs Hoop’s tongue to ask Eve Bolsover if she had run out of Ajax, but she decided in the end that she’d prefer to ignore the woman. ‘I didn’t demean my mouth,’ Mrs Hoop heard herself saying in her report of the incident, ‘asking her any question at all.’