They went out of the room and stood in the road. They stretched themselves in the open air. The sun was shining now on the fields. The woman came to the door to see them. They took their bicycles from the wall, looked up and down the road and then swung on. To the sea, the coast road and then perhaps a girl, some girl. But the others were shouting.
“Good-bye,” they called. “Good-bye.”
And Bert, the last, remembered then to wave good-bye too, and glanced up at the misleading notice. When they were all together, heads down to the wind, they turned again. “Good God,” they said. The woman and the child had come out into the middle of the road hand in hand and their arms were still raised and their hands were fluttering under the strong light of that high place. It was long time before they went back into the house.
And now for a pub, a real pub, the three men called to Harry. Sid was ahead on his slim pink tyres getting the first of the new wind, with the ring shining on his finger.
THE CHESTNUT TREE
The first firm I worked for was a leather merchants’ in the south of London. To look at, their place was like a pair of muddy Methodist chapels with a jail attached; there were bars to the windows and, inside, the office smelled of feet, ink and boots. The name of the firm was Greenhythe & Co. They had been established for 150 years.
I was fifteen when my father took me there. I had never been to London before and, in the train, after the ticket collector had passed, we walked down the corridor to an empty first-class carriage, pulled down the blinds and then knelt in prayer. Afterwards we read the 91st Psalm. I had diarrhœa that morning because I was afraid.
When we came to the office we were shown at once to Mr. Greenhythe’s room.
“I want this boy to begin at the bottom of the ladder,” my father said, speaking as a self-made man.
“Do you speak French, boy? Parlez-vous français?” said Mr. Greenhythe. I could not answer. He was a very old man with long white hair which was the colour of vaseline at the roots. He had a hump on one shoulder and the head of a lion.
He then said there was a French proverb which went: “G’est le premier pas qui coûte.”
After that my father and Mr. Greenhythe exchanged memories about the Wesleyan movement and the two men walked to the door. There was something noble, savage and prophet-like about Mr. Greenhythe. But as he walked nimbly and cautiously to the door, with his bearded head sunk forward, his long arms hanging loosely, his old, cracked blue eyes raised and his boots hissing on the ground like a boxer’s in the sawdust, I noticed he had the punched-in face of a fighter and wicked little teeth. Only people, he said, who had been recommended by the chapel and were known for their seriousness ever worked for the firm of Greenhythe & Co. And so it seemed. Ten clerks were bending over their ledgers as if over the Scriptures when I was led to the cashier’s desk.
My work began at eight in the morning. First of all I went down into the basement where the lavatory was to collect the pads used for copying the letters. The pads had been soaking all night. A smell of cigar smoke and scent came from water closet and the sound of a newspaper being unfolded. Then of singing. Out came Mr. Cook, a fat bald man of sixty with a pair of nostrils like pink bubbles, and as fresh and perfumed as a flower; he had indeed a carnation in his buttonhole for he grew these plants in his garden. “La da, di da, hijorico,” he sang and stood biting his finger-nails sulkily and scratching his womanish backside. Mr. Cook opened the office every morning at half-past seven. Later, when we went upstairs and while I was filling the ink wells, this old man would lift up his desk lid, peep over the top and shout “Ya! Ya! Ya!” and duck again. Then, once more, he sat biting the nails of his short dirty fingers.
At ten to nine the clerks began to arrive. When they had hung up their coats and hats they came to the fireplace and stood warming themselves. If there was no fire, they stood there all the same. Williams, the sandy, flat-footed one, with a sneering voice and misery in his skinny legs; Hodgkin, like a young actor, raising dark eyebrows as if he were looking at himself sideways in a mirror, and very stage-struck; Porter, the shipping clerk, with food stains on his waistcoat, the puffing father of a large family who was often making mistakes in an authoritative way, sending bills of lading to the wrong ports, delivery orders to the wrong wharves and who sat among the muddle of his papers like a hen having a dust bath; Turpin, the limp dandy in patent shoes, lined and sick-looking, always with a smile stamped dead on his face, and smelling of cachous; then Sawston. Cook did not join them. Popping his head above his desk lid he shouted out: “Ha ya! Ha ya!” And when they turned in condescension, some word like “Flambustigation”. Sawston used to turn to him and tell him, in dry, morose voice, to shut up. Cook put down his lid and laughed till the tears ran down his face.
Then the outer door swung and in came Drake, the cashier and head of the office. All the clerks moved guiltily to their desks. Except Sawston. He glanced up at the clock. If it wanted two minutes or one minute of nine, he stayed where he was and watched Drake, a tall man with a gloomy voice like a chapel organ and grizzled hair and gold-rimmed glasses, come glowering towards him, clearing his throat.
“Good morning, Mr. Drake,” said Mr. Sawston with loud effrontery. Drake looked at the clock; Sawston’s small black eyes in his baldish, bullet head dared Mr. Drake to have the courage to tell him to go to his desk. Mr. Drake blew his nose and did not dare. “Um. Um. Umph.” Mr. Drake made a characteristic sigh on three notes, a noise famous in the office, and at once perfectly imitated by Mr. Cook, who again lifted his desk lid, ducked his head and spluttered with laughter. Nine o’clock struck and slowly Mr. Sawston walked to his desk, carefully cleaned his pens, wiped his ruler, sharpened his pencils, put a pile of invoices tidily on his blotter and began writing in his small girlish hand. Moodily Mr. Drake gazed at the back of Mr. Sawston’s cheap grey suit and shook his head.
In Greenhythe’s office the hours were long. At seven in the evening when I left, Williams and Sawston were still at their books under the green shades of the lights, Porter the shipping clerk was sunk in his muddle; the partners, Mr. Greenhythe’s sons, had gone, but a bell which snapped outside his office and a weak bad light shining through the glass door, showed that Mr. Greenhythe was still working. On Saturdays we left early—four o’clock. Only Mr. Cook enjoyed this régime. Leaving the office at eleven o’clock in the morning to take documents or large cheques to the City, he would waggle his rump as he went out, saying “Ya! Ya! dears!” and would spend the next few hours in the West End, sometimes at theatres for an act or two, somtimes in pubs and occasionally with girls. He came back, short-tempered, rosy and smelling of cigars.
One Monday when I had been four or five months in the firm, a woman came to the office counter. She was a tall, soft woman who wore a big floating hat with flowers in it and a blue serge coat and skirt. She had the bust of a draper’s model. “I have an appointment with Mr. Greenhythe,” she said in a delicate, aloof and dreamy voice, looking down at me as if I were a fly on the counter. She was touching her nose affectingly with a handkerchief and I thought she was a royalty with a cold.
“What name, please?”
“Miss Browne,” she said. “Browne with an ‘e’.”
After an hour she came out of Mr. Greenhythe’s room with Mr. Drake as well and they led her to the street door. They were talking about Mr. Greenhythe’s Bible class. A week later she came again and then two days running. In his harmonium voice, Mr. Drake murmured to Mr. Porter that the firm were thinking of employing “a lady book-keeper.”
The word “lady” fell like a boulder upon us. There were typists upstairs who arrived late and who never spoke to us; in the General Office there were no women at all.
“A leedy book-keepah!” called Mr. Cook from his desk. “Ya ha!”
“Who’s getting the sack?” said Williams.
“Who’s getting the bird?” said Hodgkin and hummed an air from La Bohème.
“There are two,” said Turpin, the
tired sick young man who always knew everything. “She said she could not work in an office unless she were chaperoned by her sister.”
“One for you, one for Mr. Turpin,” sneered Williams.
“Let us pray,” called Mr. Cook, hiding behind his desklid.
Mr. Drake was coming in. The clerks moved to their desks. The lines on Mr. Turpin’s face became deep seams. He was a martyr to the seduction of women. Women set him off, like a machine, against his will. They confided in him at once; just as Mr. Drake confided to him the worries of a cashier, Mr. Porter the muddles of his shipping, Mr. Williams his troubles with his stomach, Mr. Greenhythe the number of well-known preachers he had heard. The bold sick eyes of Mr. Turpin, the sympathy of his manners, even his large ears which stuck out like comical microphones from his long head, the smile which was the tired smile of a man with a headache, brought men and women to him helplessly. He was a clever man from the flat, sing-song Midlands, but he had the long stupid face of an animal that is mindless and sad.
The two lady book-keepers arrived. Miss Browne the elder, whom we had seen, was like a swan and thought so herself. Her fair hair, she conveyed to you, was her glory. She was curving and sedate. With the sleepy smile of one lying on a feather bed in Paradise, with tiny grey eyes behind the pince-nez which sat on her nose, with the swell of long low breasts balanced by the swell of her dawdling rump, she moved swanlike to her desk. But not like a swan in the water; like a swan on land. She waddled. Her feet were planted obliquely. One would have said that they were webbed.
Behind her came the cygnet and chaperone, her sister and protector. When I saw her I felt I had been struck in the heart by a stone. Mr. Drake frowned and drummed his fingers, Mr. Cook began biting his thumb-nail and leered in fury, Mr. Porter became homely and paternal, Williams gave a scheming look at her legs, the stage-struck Hodgkin took a comb out of his pocket and ran it through his waved hair. Turpin and Sawston, who were on opposite sides of the same high, tilted desk, looked at each other fixedly. They looked as though they were trying to hypnotize each other. Taking small hard steps, her red lips pettishly drooping, her head in a cap of short black curls, her small breasts, her hips, her waist, set off by her silk dress, the sister of Miss Browne walked as if at any moment, if she shrugged her shoulders again, she could make her clothes fall off her. Her dress had some small design of red and white daisies. She looked at us tenderly and without innocence. She was as hard as a bird. When she spoke her voice was like a high cross voice in a garden.
Turpin put one leg down from his stool at once. He was about to introduce himself to the women; to walk between them with his hand just touching their waists. In such times his limpness went; he was decided. The dull buzz of his voice was the sound of the machine which had started inside him. But this time he sat back on his stool. Sawston was looking at him. Sawston’s face was bloodless, as set and chalky as a clown’s. The thick black brows were rigid and seemed to have been painted on, his eyes had a light so peremptory in them that one might have been looking into a pair of pistol barrels. Turpin was arrested by Sawston’s eyes.
“O.K., laddie,” Turpin said. A slight smile came to Sawston’s face and he went on staring with indulgence at Turpin whom he had silently conquered. Sawston’s eyes appeared to be printing off thousands of words which Turpin read as rapidly as they were printed. Sawston folded his arms and his fists were clenched. His coat sleeves were short and his wrists were spidery with black hair. The smile became fainter, more ironically acid and delighted.
At the end of the morning Sawston, who had worked very little—and ordinarily he worked hard—but had sat staring defiantly at his own life, got down from his stool and walked back to the desk by the fireplace where Mr. Drake ruled. Drake was tall. Sawston was a short man, wide for his size, and he wore collars so low that they did not show above his jacket. This gave the impression that he was a collarless workman or was perhaps wearing a boxer’s sweater. He was one of those men who have to shave twice a day and whose beard leaves a dark indigo stain like ink on a blotter. He was a curt man, blunt and independent.
“I think, Mr. Drake,” he said, “I think the younger Miss Browne had better work with me.”
It was a demand, an order. Drake’s jaws chewed, he blew into his moustache and was flustered. He tried to glower. He looked sideways up at the bars of the window, he made his harmonium noises. In the office he had the kind of authority which is despised but obeyed. But with Sawston Mr. Drake could do nothing. He looked down resentfully at Sawston as if Sawston were a bear who had put him up a tree.
“Obviously,” continued Sawston, “the girl hasn’t got a brain in her head. I’ll teach her.”
Sawston had a cocky habit of clicking his tongue in his mouth when he was amused by his own self-possession. Having said this he walked back to his desk.
After lunch Sawston called across two rows of desks in a clear voice which was much louder than the tone which was thought suitable in this office:
“Miss Browne. Will you come over here, please.”
She pouted and, affecting lack of interest, walked over to him. The black curls shook on her head, the small breasts pushed like nuts against her blouse. Her eyes were hot-blue with freckles on the pale skin under them and her clockwork voice said, “Yes, what do you want?”
“Call over these invoices,” he said. She shrugged her rounded shoulders and held a pencil in her teeth. Sawston put his hand out and took the pencil out of her mouth. She was astonished. Sitting behind them the elder Miss Browne saw this incident and awoke from her dream. She gazed at Sawston’s shiny back with dislike.
We were afraid of Sawston, all of us. Without authority he suggested independent power. He was small, but our fear was physical. His walk, for example—he walked, not as some swaggerers did, who thought the place belonged to them, but as if he owned the precise yard of floor he happened to stand on. That was a vaster claim. His desk was his, not the firm’s. His pens were his. He sharpened his pencils. He made no mistakes in his books—well, once a year he might make a mistake and no one cared to mention it to him. He would admit it. This was inhuman and alarming; there was no one else in the building who did not make a scene about their mistakes and try to argue them on to someone else. A peculiar physical thing about him was the smallness of his wrists and his hands. Then of what were we afraid? His indifference. He was a man, Mr. Turpin said admiringly, who would ruin himself. And Mr. Turpin understood ruin.
Sometimes the two sisters sat together, sometimes the elder Miss Browne sat beside Mr. Drake, calling over the big ledgers. High on their stools these two looked like a King and Queen. Mr. Drake was respectful to her. She had a romantic queenly air, sighed majestically or made little regal yawns behind her hands, sometimes stretching her arms to the back of her head and looking at us from a great, pale pillow of voluptuousness through her rimless glasses. No one, not even Mr. Turpin, responded to the voluptuousness of the elder Miss Browne. She dropped her pens, but only Mr. Drake grovelled on the floor for them. She watched him grovelling, thanked him with languor, spoke in the exhausted voice of a great hostess. Her favourite subject was, Woman.
When the sisters sat together was the time to attempt a flirtation with the younger one. The swan prevented it. She had a weary musical sarcasm:
“Have you nothing else to occupy yourself with, Mr. Williams?”
One day she said:
“Heestings is a beautiful spot. One can have any kind of holiday there—quiet, noisy or musical.”
“Quiet with her about,” said Williams, digging his pen in the younger one’s ribs. The younger one astonished us, as pretty women do, by making a horrible face, squaring her mouth as if she were going to be sick and nodding at her sister. Delight! The two sisters detested each other. The great actress was jealous; the chaperone was venomous. Left alone together they bickered in refined voices.
“But you did, Hester, you said so yourself.”
“I didn’t.”
&nbs
p; “You did. You said he said …”
“I said nothing of the sort.”
We rolled our eyes. Lovely! Lady book-keepers! The young one saw me listening and turned and smiled intimately at me. I went scarlet and when she spoke to me I could not answer. The elder sister looked over the young one’s black curls at me and said remotely: “He’s only a child.” She pronounced it “charld”.
Turpin and I sat opposite Sawston and when the young one was with him we heard him reading the invoices and she copying or checking; but between the dates and the figures, a low conversation was interpolated. Sitting side by side they did not look at each other but looked across at Turpin and me, or at their books. But all the time, like the dry mutter of a telegraph, their talk went on.
Lady book-keepers! What happiness it was to see them arrive in the morning. The elder one holding her hair at the back and tilting her flowery hat forward, came in with her coat flying and swayed as if drunk to the cloakroom, murmuring loudly to the young one who came pattering trimly, crossly, shrugging her shoulders and snapping out words, behind.
“Ha ya,” called Mr. Cook. “Late again.”
“And hot,” said Mr. Williams. Covering his mouth with his hand he added to the remark.
“Sisters, sisters,” called Mr. Cook when they came to their desk. “Do not quarrel.” The young one ignored him and went to Sawston and started intense whispering.
“The big cow,” said Sawston aloud one morning.
“What do you want?” he snapped at me seeing I was listening. She smiled at me. She reached across to the library book I had on the desk and said:
“What are you reading?”
It was poetry, the poetical works of Sir Walter Scott. I was reading The Lay of the Last Minstrel.”
“Pooh,” she said. “Dry.”
Sawston looked quizzically at me.
“The boy’s brain will bust,” he said.
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