“Dust,” said Mrs Truslove. “I never put my bag down on the counter. I can't have lost my glove there.”
Mrs Truslove went off in the fluster of her anxieties and crossed the road.
“Everyone sees it. What a fool I have been,” Mrs Truslove took her words down the ringing tiled path, through the limited odours of the fiercely flowering suburban gardens and across the road. “He has been unfaithful not to my body, but to my life. And what is my life? It is my money, left me by my husband, the security I married that man for. He has been unfaithful to my safety.”
Half-way across the road, cautiously looking at a distant car, blobbed with sunlight like a fly's wings, Mrs Truslove changed sides:
“No one knows it. No one realises it. Except him. I've told him. I've told him everything. She is jealous. How dare she say Mr Beluncle has ruined me.”
The blue tarred road became a river and she seemed to sink drowning into his arms, and they went down together in a brilliant suffocating dream of ruin. With all her heart she wished to be ruined by him.
“All my savings gone!”
It was like a conquest, a rape.
“I have never heard such wicked nonsense,” she said, this time aloud, as she stepped into the shade of the opposite pavement.
The Trusloves' iron gate closed, Mrs Vogg turned at her open window and watched her walk across. Later on in the day Mrs Vogg would have the pleasure of hearing from her son what the mistress of Mr Beluncle wanted.
The loud bell struck as she went into the empty shop; the morning sun was coming in over the window-screen and making a long band across the wall close to the ceiling. Vogg came in from the side door, and walked silently round the two counters and put the tips of his fingers on the counter where Mrs Truslove was waiting. He stood stiff as a sentry and looked, without speaking, not quite in her face, but a little over her shoulder.
“I have come to pay you my bill,” she said to Vogg. “I came yesterday and the day before, but you were closed.”
“I've got no one to look after the shop when I go out,” he said!
He took the bill and her money and wrote out the receipt slowly in pencil.
On the counter was a booklet. She read the headline as he wrote: Millions Now Living Will Never Die, she read. She could see her mother's large skull-like grin when Vogg had handed her this paper years ago. How different from the womanish, chattering old man, the elder “Hospital” Vogg (as people in the street used to call him), the son was. Her father had known him, as he had known all these shopkeepers, and Mrs Truslove used to go to the shop when she was a child. She remembered the boy had become a merchant seaman for a time and had left the sea when his father's illnesses had become worse.
“How is your mother?” Mrs Truslove asked.
“The same,” he said, in his deep voice.
“I often see her at the window,” said Mrs Truslove.
Vogg made a small smile. He had known her by sight for many years too. He remembered her as a stolid and large young girl who ignored him when he passed her in the street. In his teens he had often walked behind her, copying her step. Then he remembered her courtship, her marriage to Mr Truslove. They watched that from the window. The sight of Mr Truslove with his arm round her bottle waist and both of them tamely, amorously walking had made him jeer. Mr Truslove had died while Vogg was at sea, and he did not recognise the busy woman he found when he returned. Money leads to money. The death of her husband had made her thin, frivolous and rich.
The Bible had first made Vogg distinguish between the rich and the poor. Mrs Truslove was the human being who had seemed to him a sample of the rich. When he saw her go down the road now, her skirt, as it moved to her walk, seemed to him to scoff at the people in every garden she passed. When Beluncle went in and out of her house-and he was there two or three days a week-Vogg saw her become gay and beautiful; then, as time went on, tired-looking and strained but even better dressed. In the winter she wore a fur coat. Lady Roads (the Voggs quickly picked up the names of everyone's visitors in the street) used to call on the crippled sister and she wore a fur coat, too. Vogg saw a postman's daughter rising in the world and jealousy turned to hatred. He listened to the flat, literal and harmless reports of his mother, who, without knowing it, was feeding the jealousy of her son, and now-the dull grind of jealousy turning to the jnore gratifying sense of persecution-he was convinced that Mrs Truslove and her sister were as he said “spitting in their faces”. All the gates in the street had their different sounds and the Voggs could distinguish each of them. When the road was quiet the peculiar sound of the iron gate of the Trusloves, though it was not opposite their shop, would always bring Vogg to the window.
Vogg wrote the receipt and gave it to Mrs Truslove, who said kindly, “Your mother ought to go out in this lovely weather,” as she was leaving the shop.
“She can't move,'” said Vogg, and he hoped he conveyed the injustice ofthat, when every day Miss Dykes was wheeled out in her chair.
Vogg went to the door when Mrs Truslove had gone and watched her from the doorstep. The tea-brown stains under her eyes had seemed to him disturbingly sinful, her metallic, finished and scrupulous voice was brisk with the vice of the world. He went to the door for air.
Vogg returned to the small room at the back of the shop, opened his Bible and read:
And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.
For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the Kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the Merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Gome out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
The woman drunk with the blood of the saints, the one upon whose head was a name written Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abomination of the Earth, filled the imagination of Vogg. She was Mrs Truslove; she was Lady Roads; she was Mrs Parkinson; but underneath the emotion that the words created in him, was another and frightening notion that came, as he knew, closest to his own secret thoughts: the woman was his mother. He shut the book with fear. When he could master himself, he went up the stairs to the sitting-room to speak to his mother, looking at her simple face and chatting with her until the sickening passion went away.
XV
In the morning Mr Beluncle and his son caught the 8.10 train from Boystone to London. East Boystone station was a quarter of an hour's walk away, through the speckled greenery of pleasant suburban streets and up the side of a chestnut-shaded park. To enjoy the morning shade in the summer and to listen to birds singing in the gardens as he walked was Mr Beluncle's delight and he often spoke of it; but he had rarely experienced it. He found himself, as a rule, running to the station in seven minutes and said he could do it in six. His habit of early rising was the cause of the rush for it gave him his favourite delusion of timelessness.
And then, just before he left, Mrs Beluncle was apt to remind him that he had not given her the housekeeping money and George Beluncle, spaciously rejected at all other times, would make his final demand:
“When are you going to see about my job?”
Mr Beluncle's departure was then likely to be delayed by a moral explosion which left George gazing with sadness after him and saying, “If only he would let me drive him in the car. I would do anything.” And Mrs Beluncle rushed to an upstairs window to watch anxiously that her husband did not get run over in his rage.
Mr Beluncle and his son Henry would do a short scamper to the corner of the road, a length of only thirty yards, in which Mr Beluncle was in a running battle of words with his son. In the main road he would march for twenty yards or so and then, with a sergeant shout of “Now!” he wouldtrot again and only pull up when Mr Stei
n, the Swiss, came out of his garden gate ahead. Mr Stein was in the handbag trade and once or twice made humorous remarks in such good English that Mr Beluncle did what he could to avoid him. Mr Beluncle thought that one managing director ought not to see another run.
“Mr Stein,” said Henry, as they trotted. It was his duty to warn his father.
They pulled up and walked at once.
“I want to talk to you, my boy, very seriously,” said Mr Beluncle, dropping into a walk. “I don't want to go on at you. I don't want you to think I'm lecturing you….”
“Mr Stein is running,” said Henry.
“What's the damn' fool running for,” said Mr Beluncle. But glancing at his watch, he saw that Mr Stein was right. “Another thing,” said Mr Beluncle, beginning to trot again. “This wouldn't happen if only you'd get up in the morning. If your mother wouldn't come out with damn' silly questions at the last minute.”
Mr Stein had turned the corner where the park began and the Beluncles, left without an omen, trotted erratically out of step and in honest bewilderment.
“I don't want,” said Mr Beluncle breathlessly, “don't want-run on your toes like you were taught at school-I'm not lecturing you, I'm-warning-you. I don't need to say anything-I'm sure you know, you're bound to know …”
Mr Beluncle slowed down to a walk and got his breath.
“You read a lot of books,” he said, “novels, poetry-French books, I believe. You don't want me to tell you anything, you know it,” Mr Beluncle burst out. “I don't want to waste my time telling you what you know which,” said Mr Beluncle, dropping suddenly from breathless irritation into deep-lunged reasonableness of the man-to-man kind, “which, of course, you do.”
They turned the corner.
“He's running,” said Henry.
“There's nothing I like to see less than a man running for a train. It shows his character. You know what I'm talking about?”
“Yes,” said Henry.
“About women,” said Mr Beluncle, with hatred. “Girls. You're at the age-we had better run-when you see girls, meet girls-when girls speak to you. Perhaps you may speak to a girl yourself. That's when you've got to be chary-we can walk a bit-I mean you might speak to a girl, I don't say you do, I don't say you have, at least I hope you don't-that's all right, but the next thing is that a girl might start calling you 'her boy'; you hear them. 'My boy,' they say. What is the expression, you know it better than me? Boy friend?”
“Yes,” said Henry.
“Stein's running, why didn't you tell me?” said Beluncle, starting to run once more. “They see no harm in it,” said Mr Beluncle pleasantly. “ 'He's my boy'-you hear them.
“It's their nature,” said Mr Beluncle indignantly.
“You might call it their business,” Mr Beluncle said bitterly. “To get hold of a boy.
“It's what,” he said, with a tragic growl, “they're on earth for, to mortal sense. We know enough to rise above that. What I'm getting at is this. A customer of mine, I won't mention no names-sent his son up to his Glasgow office, decent young man, your age and, of course, there's a girl in the office like Miss Vanner in ours. I suppose this girl looks at him and says here's a nice young man, doing well, got a good position, nephew of the manager-I don't say she did but this is how their minds work, it's their nature-and they get talking and …”
They came to the end of the park where the road rises to the station at East Boystone and from which the up-line signals could be seen.
“It's down, dad,” said Henry.
“Damn,” said Mr Beluncle, pulling out his watch again, looking for Mr Stein, who was finally out of sight, in the blessedness of passing the ticket collector. “It can't be.”
The race began once more, Mr Beluncle's rage rising against the rise in the road; he had not enough breath tp spare.
“The long and short of it,” said Mr Beluncle, “was that that girl had a baby and it cost his father four hundred pounds to get out of it. I just want to tell you I haven't got four hundred pounds.”
The last ten yards were done in silence. Father and son ran down the long tunnel to the platform steps just as the 8.IO train was rumbling above them and the ticket collector was shutting the gates. Seeing Mr Beluncle he maliciously turned his back, but seeing his son behind him, he relented. The two rushed through.
“Get a seat,” shouted Mr Beluncle, going to his first-class carriage. His son went to the third-class.
The Bulux (Beauty and Luxury) factory, originally Beluncle & Truslove, was the size of a drill-hall or a chapel, with a hearth-stoned doorstep and a brass plate. It was no cleaner than any of the other buildings in the yellow street that ran close to the bowling railway arches ofthat low-lying part of London, an area of hops, hide warehouses, breweries and solid Victorian public-houses that sent out a sour smell of beer and matrons at the street corners-it was no cleaner than any other building, but to Henry Beluncle it seemed so. Or to any other member of the Beluncle family when they went there. To him the brick seemed to have been scrubbed down that morning lest a speck of soot should flake down upon his father's white fingers. Mr Beluncle had set up a kind of home from home in this building. His gramophone was in one of the office cupboards, his Worcester china, his substantial cases of silver, his riding boots; they were part of a cache which Mr Beluncle did not speak of at his home; just as at his West End showroom there was another cache: two radiograms, two or three fine French clocks in enamel or marble, more silver and china, a huge silver loving cup-for loving, as a general spiritual idea, appealed to Mr Beluncle-in fact, a few hundred pounds' worth of private treasure whose existence was unknown, or so he supposed, to Mrs Truslove. There was more down at a bank in Bournemouth, and two more burial mounds in Godalming and Colchester, the knowledge of which Mr Beluncle hid from everyone. If the worst came to the worst he could go and squat ruminatively on his hoards.
When Henry had taken the glove from his brother, the business of giving it to his father or to Mrs Truslove had seemed very simple to him. Now he was in the office, walking with the morning's letters to put on their desk, he understood the thing was impossible. The whole peculiar value of the glove lay in the secret it held; to hand it to either of them would be like the blasphemy of dishonouring them.
“Take your hand out of your pocket, my boy,” said Beluncle kindly, when he came in. He was holding the glove, wringing it in his anxious hand, and he nearly pulled it out in his confusion.
“What have you got in your pocket?” said his father. “You'll knock it out of shape and you can't afford a new suit….”
But before Mr Beluncle had finished there was a lucky interruption; an umbrella fell down in the passage, the door was opened, and a high undue voice exclaimed:
“My lords, ladies and gentlemen, pray silence.” Mr Chilly came in. Or rather it seemed that a pair of astonishing pointed shoes had done so, bearing with them the summary figure of Mr Chilly, who only lightly inhabited them. Mr Chilly was a very tall man met by the cold and enquiring glances of seated people, older and earlier at work, than himself. “I'm sorry,” he said in a whisper, taking his greeting back with modesty, “I disturb.
“I'm late,” said Mr Chilly, asking for sympathy and getting none: “I know I'm late.”
“It is general knowledge,” said Mr Beluncle, scoring a point with his smile.
Mr Chilly was a good-looking man with long legs and a slight frame bending very easily as if on a hinge, under a double-breasted waistcoat. He was a man who had been ruined by his innumerable advantages. The fact of being a gentleman had been one liability, though he could be said to be vain of all his liabilities. He watched his restless hands, surprised they had remembered to come with him. He had the air of a man trying to remember to make gestures suggesting strength and efficiency, and looked to see that his clothes hung right first.
“I was late because I brought you a present,” said Mr Chilly.
“A present. I hoped it would be an order,” said Mr Beluncle.
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“An order!” exclaimed Mr Chilly, seeing already how wrong he had been.
“I didn't think of that…. Oh dear, sir.
“It's a hydrangea, sir,” said Mr Chilly.
The attraction of Mr Chilly for Mr Beluncle was that of one extravagant man for another.
Mr Chilly went outside and came back with the plant. With a bow which annoyed the two partners, who could not bear his manners, he put the plant between them on their desk. As he did so he smiled at Mrs Truslove.
“For you,” he said to her. “For both of you,” he said to both of them. “No, that is not right,” said Mr Chilly, standing back to consider them in relation to the plant. “You cannot see each other.”
They could not and Mr Chilly leaned across and lifted the pot away.
“Not on the desk,” said Mrs Truslove.
“On the window-sill?” said Mr Chilly.
“It will interfere with the telephone,” said Mr Beluncle.
“Not on the filing cabinet,” said Mrs Truslove.
“Oh dear,” said Mr Chilly.
“Try the mantelpiece,” said Mrs Truslove.
“There's no room there,” said Mr Beluncle, getting up.
“Problem!” Mr Chilly halted. “On the floor. I love flowers spread on the ground.”
Now he was on his feet, Mr Beluncle became interested.
“It will be kicked there,' said Mrs Truslove.
“Oh, not my flowers kicked,” said Mr Chilly, kneeling down to pick up the pot.
“There's a stand in the warehouse,” said Mr Beluncle.
“It is sold,” said Mrs Truslove. “Mr Beluncle, have you rung Abbotts?”
And she put a glare behind the question.
“Time is getting on,” she said. “Put it on your desk, Mr Chilly.”
“Oh, but it's for you, not me” said Mr Chilly. “Don't let me cause a situation. Don't let there be a thing-it is for you. A little colour.”
Mr Beluncle got up and put the pot on the window-sill.
Mr. Beluncle: A Novel (Modern Library Classics) Page 15