Breathing hard with excitement, Georgie tried the rectangle, first with his fingers, then with the blade of his knife. A short period of fumbling, before he found the trick, and he was able to lift it right out, revealing a narrow cavity, like a tiny cupboard.
Delicately Georgie inserted his fingers. At first they encountered nothing. Then, at the bottom of the space, he felt something at once stiff and yielding, and drew out a small packet wrapped in what appeared to be perished wash-leather.
The packet was tied at the neck, to make a little bag. The string had fared worse than the wash-leather, which had merely gone stiff and hard. The string broke, its crumbling fragments shaped to the neck they had held fast. Tenderly, carefully, Georgie worked a finger down the bottle-like neck of the leather and opened it out. A moment later, he was looking at a little hoard of bright, gold guineas.
There were only eight of them. For some reason they were not at all tarnished; the wrapping had given its quality to preserve theirs. All were of George Ill’s reign, though the dates differed widely.
For a long time Georgie sat, contemplating his find, and wondering whose the guineas had been, and why the owner had gone to such pains to hide so little. Maybe it wasn’t little to him, or her. Him, probably: this wasn’t a woman’s hiding place. Maybe he was just such another poor devil as the man who had now uncovered his treasure: kept short, his pocket money doled out to him, not able to call his soul his own. Maybe, too, he had planned to add to his little hoard.
And, by the same token, where should he, Georgie, keep what he had found? Not till some time later did he realize that the idea of telling Grace about his find had never entered his head. That was a proof how far away she had driven him. After a very brief time for reflection, he saw the obvious answer to his problem. The very same place. Where better?
So, sending many messages of sympathy and affection backwards across the years to his fellow conspirator, Georgie replaced the guineas in their wrapping, put them back in the slot, fitted the little panel into position, and, after compounding a thinnish but strong adhesive the same colour as the plaster, stuck each fragment back in its place, finishing up with the original long stalactite-shaped piece. He did it lovingly, and made an artist’s job of it. By the time he had finished, hardly a trace of his handiwork could be seen.
He was confident that Grace would not notice anything, but that did not save him from little inward leaps of panic whenever she went near the place. Once, when she was dusting the mantelpiece, and worked down that side, he fancied that she stopped and peered.
She had stopped. She was fiddling with something. Oh well. If she found it…
He cleared his throat.
“Anything wrong, dear?”
“A splinter off this old mantelpiece. Caught in the duster.” She straightened up. “Shabby old thing. Must get it done up sometime.”
So that danger was past.
The hiding place had remained in Georgie’s mind during the weeks that followed, and now his discovery of Grace’s bank deposit brought it to the top. If she was doing this, robbing him—he faced it; there was no other word. He was being robbed by his own wife—if she was doing this, then it was up to him to store up what he could on his own account. But how? What chances had he?
He had one chance, one saleable asset about which Grace knew nothing: his four chests of tea. Tea, especially of the higher grades, was very short at this time. There was a black market in it, as Georgie had shameful reason to know. The shame was not on his own account. A traveller—no, perhaps it would be better not to risk slandering an honourable profession, but to call him a travelling speculator in certain commodities—had come to Grace with proposals concerning the possible margin between the allocation given to the shop for its customers, and a larger allocation which could be secured by making certain claims and statements. Georgie was never quite clear as to the exact details of the arrangement, but he could at once see its nature.
Grace and he had had their biggest row to date when he found that she contemplated an agreement with the persuasive gentleman. She had a guilty conscience about it, or the remains of one, so that Georgie’s shocked amazement made her furious. She hissed and spat at him. Her face—how, he wondered, could he ever have thought it attractive?—her face was convulsed with bitter, lean dislike.
“It’s no good, Grace,” he told her. “I won’t have it.”
“You won’t have it! I like that! You! Who’s made this business, I’d like to know, and turned it from a little dead and alive shack into a going concern? Answer me that.”
“You’ve done wonders, dear, I know. But—this isn’t honest.”
She screamed at him then; she raged and threw things about.
“I won’t have it,” he went on repeating, like a mechanical doll. “It’s no use, I won’t have it.”
“You’ve no choice,” she told him at last. “It’s done.”
Well, Georgie reflected sadly, he had come a long way from there. Here he was now, plotting to do another deal with the same gentleman. Still, there was a difference. This deal was defrauding nobody. Nobody would have less tea because of it. The four chests were doing no one any good, stacked away there under the stairs. A few wealthy people would be the better of them. And Mr Bernstein. And Georgie.
It took a lot of planning. At one stage Georgie almost gave up, so unlikely seemed the concatenation of circumstances needed to bring off the deal. Grace had to be away, and Mr Bernstein available.
Luckily, Grace was often away now, and for longer periods. Georgie suspected that she was greatly enlarging her range of operations. A chance remark in the street, and another from one of the older customers, could only mean that she was acquiring an interest in house property. The turnover of the shop had risen to four or five times what it was in Georgie’s day, and it was more than possible that she had already enough capital to allow of modest purchases. There were, too, mysterious visitors after hours, customers for the most part, who came in secretly at the back, and, after a low-toned interview with Grace, as secretly departed.
Georgie recalled a disquieting occasion when one poor woman left sobbing loudly.
“Mister Bagshawe wouldn’t never have d——”
“Sssh!” came Grace’s peremptory hiss, and a door shut sharply.
The more Georgie thought about the visits, the less he liked them. True to his nature, he tried to stop thinking about them.
Then, after nearly three weeks of indecision and anguish, he got his chance. Grace went off for almost the whole day, ostensibly to see a relative whom he was sure she had invented, since otherwise she would most certainly have produced her in the earliest days of their acquaintance, when she needed all the references she could get in order to establish herself. Her real object, he suspected, was to try to purchase cheaply some tenement properties less than a mile away.
The coincidence seemed too good to be true, for Bernstein’s representative was due that day. Georgie was in a fever of anxiety. Grace had a cold in her nose. At the last moment she seemed in doubt whether to go.
Georgie dared not press her. Fidgeting about, trying to control himself, in a panic lest the traveller come too soon and wreck his plan, he fell victim to an extraordinary movement of his mind. Suddenly, in all his tension and anxiety, he felt a movement of sympathy for Grace. He understood her hesitation. She was afraid. These transactions and speculations she was launching out into, she must face all alone. She had no one to confide in, no one to advise her. The magnitude of the risks she was running, an ill-informed young woman pitting her instinct against the skill of others, the sheer cold fighting courage of it commanded for a minute or two his wondering admiration.
Then he saw her courage for what it was, the predatory instinct of stoat or weasel; and the opening in his heart closed up again.
In the end, Grace set out. Having gone upstairs declaring that she would not risk giving her cold to her distinguished relative, she came down dressed for the stree
t, looking sulky and pink at the nose. It was typical of the contempt with which she now treated her husband that she did not even trouble to explain this change of mind, but merely charged him to do this, that, and the other in the shop during her absence.
“Yes, dear. Yes, dear. Yes, dear.”
She gave a final sniff, went out, then suddenly put her head back round the door.
“And no more credit to Mrs Poulton. No matter what excuse she trumps up. See?”
That was at eleven-twenty in the morning. Georgie worked behind the counter in a rigid trance, his hope getting colder and colder. He was in despair when, at a quarter to four, the smart young Jewish traveller looked in.
“Hello. Missis away?”
They were always surprised if Grace was not there. Some would hardly do business with Georgie. They did not seem sure it would be all right if they dealt with him. As if he had no authority. Well, it was true; he had not.
The usual business was soon done. Then, licking his dry lips, Georgie plunged.
“Want any tea?” he said, and winked.
The young man’s eyes narrowed to slits. Then he opened them very wide.
“How much?”
“Lots. Like this.”
Georgie handed over the sample he had extracted days before. The young man examined; sniffed; then bit on a leaf. Georgie saw the suppressed start of surprise, the instant cool dissimulation.
“Give you six bob a pound.”
“For this?”
“Well—stretch a point, seeing you’re an old customer. Seven.”
“Twelve shillings is my price.”
At once Georgie saw he had made a mistake. Instead of the outcry and the hand waggings against which he was bracing himself, his demand was met with a quick glance of calculation.
“Wait a few minutes, mister. And for Christ’s sake keep your mouth shut.”
“Be quick. I’m expecting my wife back at any minute.”
That wasn’t wise, he told himself, after the young man had gone. Now he’ll blackmail me, and beat me down. But the young man was back in less than ten minutes.
“It’s a deal, mister. I had to ring the boss.”
I could have got more, Georgie thought, as he took the young man to the cupboard under the stairs. Grace would have got fifteen shillings or a pound. Never mind.
When he saw the extent of the cache, the young man’s eyes showed their whites all round. The importers’ label, the description of the tea, everything attested a wonderful find. Georgie gave him chisel and hammer, and left him to open the cases, while he kept watch for Grace. It was agonizing. The small boy with the adenoids came in presently, and Georgie bribed him to stand outside the door, where he could command a view of two hundred yards of street, and run in and report if he saw her coming. Then he popped back and fixed up a tale for the young man to tell Grace, to account for this vigil: and the young man worked in such a way as to be ready to cover up all traces inside half a minute, should Grace be sighted.
Presently he joined Georgie in the shop. They had to wait till a fussy and loquacious customer had gone.
“I can’t fetch it away in the chests,” the young man said. “People’d notice. I’ll bring a cab with half a dozen kitbags and a suitcase or two. If the missis is back, I haven’t been in yet, see? I’m late on me round, so I’ve had to take a cab.”
Georgie nodded, wondering at the ease with which he had slipped into this shoddy unknown conspiratorial world.
The young man was back in a quarter of an hour, with his cab. Together, packet by packet, they bundled the tea into kitbags and suitcases, working at nervous speed, the sweat running down their faces. Twice in the course of their labours Georgie went out, to make sure that Adenoids was still at his post.
The one really dangerous part of the operation was the carrying of the tea to the cab.
“Leave it to me, if she turns up,” the young man told Georgie. “I’ll fix her.”
But Georgie’s luck was in. Grace did not turn up. The last suitcase was stowed away, and the young man and Georgie went back to the shop for their reckoning.
“That’s two hundred and fifty-eight quid I owe you, mister. Take a cheque?”
He knew the answer to that one, even before Georgie shook his head.
“Only got eighty on me, mister. Have to trust me for the rest. Here,” as Georgie hesitated. “Hold on to these.”
He pulled off a ring, and took from his breast pocket a gold cigarette case.
“Sentimental value, see?” He pointed to a monogram. “Wouldn’t part with it for twice as much. Give us a tinkle, when the coast’s clear, and I’ll redeem these and hand over the balance.”
Georgie let him go with misgiving, feeling sure that he had been done brown and made a fool of. Still, he had eighty pounds in notes. There was no question of putting them away in the mantelpiece now. He went out, rewarded Adenoids and dismissed him, and, for the time being, hid his money and securities where the tea had so long lain.
When Grace came in half an hour afterwards, he was able to greet her with composure. She was almost amiable, hugging to herself some inner satisfaction. He even had a bit of fun, enquiring about her relative, and was delighted to see her look blank for an instant. She pulled herself together quickly, and replied at some length: but he saw in the mirror a glance of resentment at him for having disturbed the agreeable current of her thoughts and obliged her to recall her cover story.
Three days later, Georgie was able to nip out to the nearest call box and ring the number he had been given. Within half an hour the young man was round to claim his ring and cigarette case, and hand over the balance of the money.
This honest discharge of a shady transaction filled Georgie with warmth and gratitude. He beamed on the young man, and offered him refreshment. The young man excused himself, on the plea of being very busy. His manner seemed cooler all of a sudden. An impulse of loneliness drove Georgie to stay on good terms with someone from whom a year ago he would have shrunk in dismay.
“I expect you’d still be interested, if any more came my way?”
“You got any contacts?”
“Maybe.”
“Any more stowed away?” the young man asked, glancing sharply at him.
Georgie looked back and said no word. The young man became interested in his fingernails, which he held up and inspected. This was a game in which Georgie did not even know the rules, and he paid the penalty for having started it.
“It would be just too bad,” the young man said to his fingernails, “if anyone else heard about it.”
“Heard about what?”
“There was a chap had some stuff to sell, same as you, not far from here, and he thought he’d box clever, see, and play off two or three buyers against the rest. Thought he’d get higher prices. Only he was a bit too clever, see. Now he’s inside.”
“I don’t see what that’s got to do with——”
“Be too bad, wouldn’t it, if anyone got to know?”
“How could they? You and I are the only two.”
“Just so long as it stays like that.” The young man adjusted his hat, in Georgie’s mirror, tilting it so as to show a terrace of glossy curls above his ear, before adding, in a more friendly tone, “Take my advice, mister. Keep it in the family. Ta-ta.”
Humiliating. Horrible. Still, Georgie had the money, and it was soon safely stored in the mantelpiece, beneath the original little hoard of guineas.
The satisfaction which his secret gave to Georgie was intense and cumulative. From a serf it turned him into a man of independence. True, he was outwardly a slave to Grace. He worked as hard as ever in the shop, he went uncomplainingly on errands, he was as meek and submissive as even Grace could ask. And Grace, for reasons she could never have explained, began to treat him better. The shop and its attendant enterprises were flourishing, and her property deals were proving highly successful. She was extracting no less than twelve pounds a week in rents from the two tenemen
t houses, and the opening of a new factory had put all house room at a premium. Her other side-line, the one which Georgie tried not to know about, was prospering too. The number of surreptitious callers after hours was growing. Now and then there were raised voices, and sounds of expostulation and pleading penetrated through the closed door, but Georgie stopped his ears. He could not bear to think of it, and, anyway, it was no business of his.
Almost every mark of the original Grace had disappeared. In place of the quiet, awkward, poorly dressed girl who had come into the shop for two penn’orth of resin, was a coarse, self-confident young woman with a loud voice, who was still thin and flat-chested but no longer dowdy. Despite her meanness Grace spent quite a bit of money on herself. She was without taste, but she bought expensive clothes and had her hair dyed a richer colour.
She ate well. Her only physical troubles were a tendency to spots and an inability to sleep. Both these troubles were probably signs of suppressed anxiety over the business; it was hard to see what other worry she could have, since she appeared to think of no one but herself.
Finally she went to a doctor, who gave her a blood mixture for the one complaint and sleeping tablets for the other. Considering the ills most people have to put up with, she had little cause to grumble. Prosperity, power, a thriving business, a docile husband, increased standing in the neighbourhood; the ledger was heavy on the credit side, especially for a girl who not so long since was a poor struggling music teacher. Violin and all to do with it were forgotten as if they had never existed. The only music Grace cared about now was the clink of silver in the till and the rustle of notes.
All these changes combined, if not to mellow her, at least to make her less waspish, more tolerant of her husband. She would toss him two or three half-crowns on a Saturday night, for tobacco and spending money. Maybe she had the sense to realize that in Georgie she had a most valuable unpaid assistant. Maybe some business friend had pointed this out to her. Georgie pocketed his half-crowns with every sign of gratitude. They were no insult to a man with a secret, a man whose independence lay within range of his hand.
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