The question was, Mrs Truslove said, what Mr Beluncle wanted to do.
“And what I want to do,” said Mrs Truslove.
“I shall see her to the station,” Beluncle whispered to his wife.
“Oh, Phil, do,” said Ethel earnestly. She was pulled by opposite feelings that Mrs Truslove ought to be kept in the house for ever and that she ought to be sent as far away as possible.
“Phil, she's flirting with her money. It's woman-like,” she said.
Another morning, with soap on one side of his face and holding his razor, he said:
“She wants to come back: that's the trouble. They can't live on what he's left.”
“Back!” said Mrs Beluncle. “Don't you. You can't take on a woman twice.”
Mr Beluncle reached London Bridge and crossed the river.
“Ethel was right,” he said and, in the fancy that by crossing water, even the commercial Thames, he had cast off the scent and Mrs Truslove could see him and wail after him no more, he took a taxi and wondered how he could disguise this expense in his accounts.
XVIII
The general office of Bulux was next to the windowless waiting-room. In the general office sat Miss Vanner, a heavy and scheming girl, sleepy and self-protectively quarrelsome. Even her heavy breasts seemed to be quarrelling inside her jersey, as resentfully she typed. She had large and beautiful dark blue eyes and dark blushes quickly flowered on her cheeks in some continual, unpeaceful, private struggle.
“Haven't you anything better to do than stare?” she said to Henry many times during the day.
“Henry,” said Mr Andrews, the carrot-haired invoice clerk, a man who sat itching on a high stool. He steered a tormented course through his accounts with one hand gripped in his trouser pocket like a cyclist holding to one handlebar.
“Henry,” said Mr Andrews, “they are for one pair of eyes alone: the Lancelot of Ladbroke Grove. …”
“There is no necessity to be disgusting,” said Miss Vanner, with sullen pleasure.
” 'Eyes', did I say?” said Mr Andrews, never defeated in the rearguard actions of embittered lechery. “Hands.”
“Oh, you married men!” said Miss Vanner, waking up into indignation. “The only gentleman in this office is Mr Chilly. He has manners and a clean mind. A girl doesn't often see manners.”
Miss Vanner felt safer and stronger when she called herself a “girl”.
“There are fairies at the bottom of my garden,” said Mr Andrews.
But here Mr Cook, the delivery clerk, intervened. A married man with five daughters, with little spots from his wife's cooking on his waistcoat, Mr Cook simmered away on his stool like some puffing kettle, content to wait. Mr Cook worshipped the married state and Miss Vanner (who was engaged to be married) was a semi-sacred object to him. He was sorry for the lewd, unhappy and hen-pecked Andrews who always tried to bring disgrace on the married condition; and, quickly to redress a balance, Mr Cook would talk to Miss Vanner about the pleasure of family holidays by the sea, the sad bulletin of a daughter's health, the amusement to be got out of a bossy wife and would invite Miss Vanner to his house at Ilford, where she could see his modest work of art: five daughters and their mother, all sitting round a table and making fun of him. The ends of Mr Cook's grey moustache nearly met under his lips. He was the ringed bull, domesticated, and with grey hairs on his chest. Mr Chilly might have manners, but for virtue, Mr Cook conveyed, give him the good old-fashioned steam roller of steady paternity. It was Mr Cook's sadness that Mr Beluncle did not appear to appreciate him.
“Damn' fool,” Mr Beluncle used to shout when he came back from a visit to the general office to enquire why Mr Cook had let the van go without the Nottingham order or had lost a sale catalogue. For Mr Cook lived in a mild pomp of incompetence.
Mr Chilly came into the room and sat at the long desk close to the door. Miss Vanner lowered her beautiful eyes and, taking a contralto's long breath, gave a loud exhibition of perfect typing, very fast. To Mr Chilly she was sending a blameless message in code; if she had to speak she did so in an artificial voice. To a question like “What did Mr Beluncle say?” she replied, “I am not the recipient of his confidence.” But it was Miss Vanner's unhappiness that she was able to speak in this well-staged manner to Henry, to Mr Andrews or to Mr Cook; but not to Mr Chilly, the only man who would appreciate it.
When Mr Chilly said:
“Miss Vanner, would you add to your very many services by typing this with your fair hand?” Miss Vanner was unable to say more than “Oh” or “What?” and could never look him in the eye.
“He is the only man who has had the courtesy to escort me to the bus,” she snapped. “A girl notices,” she added.
When “a girl” was alone in an office “full of men” (she conveyed) she expected her unique dangers and discomforts to be appreciated. They were, after all, her attractions. Miss Vanner left every evening with a beautiful flash of reproach at the workmen and the office staff. She was sighing for the sexy anonymity of a large office. And she arrived every morning with the sullenness of one beginning a great defensive battle in an exposed position against Henry Beluncle's entranced adolescent stare, against Mr Andrews's reminiscence of the stark facts of married life, even against the modest example of Mr Cook's powerful domesticity; against, above all, her stupefied, headlong, helpless attraction to the manners of Mr Chilly. Before all, except him, she fell back on the solid ground of her engagement to be married. Never was a girl so engaged, Mr Andrews said. Before Mr Chilly her engagement receded, until it was a dulled mark on the horizon of her memory.
But Mr Chilly had eyes for one person alone: Mr Beluncle. Sitting near the door, on his stool, with one long foot on the floor, tapping it, ready to spring, to the summons, Mr Chilly lived in the exclamatory state of one who has no clear idea of what he is supposed to be doing. To get customers, of course, was his duty; not to approach customers the firm already had; on the other hand, not to neglect them. On these points Mr Beluncle was touchy. To find out about the business, to learn, was Mr Chilly's task; on the other hand, not to pry, not to find out too much. To assume and yet not to assume; to lay the golden egg but to keep out of the way until he laid another. The only certain duty of Mr Chilly was gratitude. He must show a meaningless alacrity in what Mr Beluncle called “his unique opportunity”: a unique opportunity to lay one more golden egg. For six months he had found this mystery took up all his time. Another duty was to strengthen his character. The surest way of doing that was to think continually of Mr Beluncle. Mr Chilly was one of society's natural voids and the danger was that he would be filled-it had happened in his past life-with what was undesirable. He hoped that past would not return. Mr Beluncle, the firm of Bulux, filled him; but there was the prick of a fear-which sometimes made him jump down from his stool and fly out to the factory or to Mr Beluncle's room in a panic-that resolution might, at any moment, start to leak again, that his character would collapse and that the void would once more appear.
Panic struck Mr Chilly especially on those days when Mr Behmcle left the factory for the West End: left alone, Mr Chilly felt a large rise of self-confidence, a desire to go out and give orders, to make huge changes in the firm, as a kind of gift of gratitude to Mr Beluncle. This emotion was followed by terror, the leaking feeling. Someone must fill him quickly lest he collapse and vanish, leaving a ghostly warmth on the seat of his stool.
Lunch-time came. When Mr Beluncle was there Mr Chilly took lunch with him and Mrs Truslove in their office. But when he was not, the struggle broke out in Mr Chilly.
“I think I shall toddle,” he said, his keen eye misting a little.
The question was-when the toddling moment came-how much longer had Mr Chilly to prove himself? How much longer was needed before he was certain that he would not slip back?
Today, before lunch-time came, Mr Chilly hurried through the factory, head in air, his yellow hair lifting in two slices at the back, as he flew through into the yard where th
e vans waited. Gazing over the empty yard with the look of an injured angel whose master spirit has dodged him, Mr Chilly re-entered the factory and, very fast, flew back. The men at their benches rolled their eyes. After a quarter of an hour, Mr Chilly sailed through again, his eyes blinking very fast as if a fury of thought were propelling him. No Mr Beluncle. Mr Chilly was caught in a whirl of poetic importance: it had, after all, been suggested to him that one day he might become a director of the business.
“I shall be on the Board. I shall be on the Board,” Mr Chilly's heart was singing. He was anxious merely to show himself to everyone, to expose himself to some imaginary Press camera; but especially to Mr Beluncle, to remind him, not by words, but by the simple, unaffected sight of himself, of their conversation.
He was met by Mrs Truslove, to whom he bowed.
“Mr Beluncle has gone to the West End,” she said in a voice that suggested Golders Green cemetery. The rapid blinking of Mr Chilly's eyes stopped and the ecstasy went out of his face.
“Oh!” he exclaimed pettishly.
The life of Mr Chilly suddenly became a desert. Mrs Truslove went back to her room and Mr Chilly was about to follow her, for he must have some human being to lean on, but peremptorily her telephone rang and he turned emptily away. He went to the general office and looked there for help. But Henry had gone, Mr Andrews had gone and Miss Vanner was closing her typewriter.
“I think I shall toddle,” said Mr Chilly to no one in particular. And then, before he knew what he was saying, he said to Miss Vanner:
“Fair lady, would you care to have luncheon with me?”
The blushes of Miss Vanner were heavy and plum-coloured.
“You don't want to,” she said sulkily.
“But I asked you,” said Mr Chilly. “I would be charmed if you are free.”
“I don't mind,” said Miss Vanner. “I'm always,” said Miss Vanner, searching vainly for a word, “elastic,” she said.
Mr Chilly's heart sank as he waited for Miss Vanner in the doorway of the building and sank lower as he took her to a bus. She sat beside him, pushing her shoulders and breasts and legs this way and that as if two parts of herself, the engaged and the disengaged, were shoving sullenly against each other.
“This is a mistake,” said Mr Chilly to himself as they went through the carpeted bar of a restaurant a mile from the office, where many managers, directors and salesmen of the neighbourhood gathered. Mr Chilly felt he had a notice on his back saying “Unfaithful to Mr Beluncle”. In the restaurant the first person he saw was a large man shouting with some drinking friends: the Devil, the Satan of their trade, the ruthless overbearing swindler and competitor.
“Cummings,” said Miss Vanner, with importance.
“Good God!” said Chilly, with fear. “Has he seen me?”
“Cummings is nothing,” said Miss Vanner largely, taking power from the nervousness of Mr Chilly.
“He doesn't own the restaurant” she said.
Mr Chilly was surprised by this information. He looked over the top of the menu, gazing at Cummings, fascinated by him, endeavouring even to attract his attention against his own will.
“Grab salad, lobster,” murmured Mr Chilly mechanically,. disregarding Miss Vanner, still staring at Gummings.
“I can't. It repeats,” said Miss Vanner.
“Disagrees, I mean,” Miss Vanner corrected herself, very angry with herself for the vulgarity. “I am aware that I have had it.
“I'll have whatever you have,” she said.
Mr Chilly looked at her warily.
“This is a terrible mistake,” Mr Chilly said to himself; he considered Miss Vanner carefully through the meal, and the less flattering his conclusions were, the more polite and charming he became. A full stomach and Mr Chilly's politeness put Miss Vanner more at her ease. She began to talk freely and then recklessly about the firm. After every sentence she scowled: she knew this was a most tactless way in which to talk to Mr Chilly.
“Mrs Truslove's the cuckoo in the nest, you can see that plain as a pikestaff,” said Miss Vanner. “His wife can't stand her. The boy's terrified of him.
“I'm sorry for that boy. I'm sorry for Mr Beluncle,” said Miss Vanner. (Miss Vanner's sorrow was a way of punishing them.)
You could see what was happening: Mr Beluncle spent so much time keeping the peace with his wife and keeping Mrs Truslove quiet about the money, his mind was taken off the business. It was going to pieces. The last time they had the accountants in, they warned him. And the bank manager. They ought never to have quarrelled with Gummings years ago.
“That,” said the young Miss Vanner in a slow, hammering moral tone, raising and lowering her chin with each word, “that is where things went wrong.”
Mr Chilly listened. The information of Miss Vanner did not make its impression on him in a direct fashion; it made him silently apologise to her for his conclusions of half an hour earlier and revise them in her favour. She was a very beautiful and attractive girl; and her scandalous talk gave her a restful and seductive squalor. In his pre-Beluncle days, Mr Chilly had had a tendency to sink into squalor; the sensations were returning. Their familiarity pleased him.
“It was a personal quarrel,” said Miss Vanner, “of course.”
“But you were not there then,” said Mr Chilly, not doubting Miss Vanner, but allowing her miraculous powers of travelling up and down time wherever she wanted to be. His remark was admiration.
“No,” said Miss Vanner. And then she was at last able to speak the kind of sentence she wished she could always speak. “No,” she said, “I was informed by a reliable source.”
And she sat up like a queen.
“Cummings was trying to get friendly” said Miss Vanner. “I don't say they ever did actually get friendly, but he used to go out with her. Mr Beluncle would not agree to it-what business was it of his if they were going out? You've only got one life.
“Haven't you?” said Miss Vanner to stir Mr Chilly, who had picked up the menu again and was looking over the top of it towards Mr Cummings. He was still trumpeting at a distant table.
“You say interesting things,” said Mr Chilly, coming down from his agitation.
“Handsome,” said Mr Chilly, hearing his own voice with astonishment. He had been thinking, really, what a handsome woman Mrs Truslove was.
“I always thought you were in love with Henry,” said Mr Chilly, with a high laugh.
“Pooh,” said Miss Vanner, “that kid. I mean child. I'm going to be married. What put Henry into your head?”
“It's a great pity,” said Mr Chilly, “that you should be married.”
(“This is frightful,' Mr Chilly said, “I must stop saying things like this.”)
“Why is it a pity? My boy and I have been friendly for years. We've been going out since we were sixteen,” said Miss Vanner. “He wants the bird sometimes,” she sighed.
“I will give it him one of these days,” said Mr Chilly, and knocked his glass over with a great gesture, but catching it before it fell. “Taking a beautiful girl like you.”
“He's so jealous,” said Miss Vanner. “When you're engaged that doesn't give you the right to be jealous. A girl is often attracted. Some are friendly with several, not that I agree with that. I thought you were attracted to Mrs Truslove. Everyone says so in the office.”
“I should say Mrs Truslove is attractive to many men,” said Mr Chilly coldly.
“It's funny about her hair-have you ever noticed it? The way she does it? It's been like that ever since I was there,” said Miss Vanner. “It doesn't suit her, not at her age. She must be getting on. I was surprised when you asked me out this morning. Had you been thinking about it or did you just think you would? I didn't think I interested you. Or was it just curiosity?”
“You've got lovely hands,” said Mr Chilly, kicking himself the moment he said this because he had not, in fact, looked at Miss Vanner's hands. He had often admired Mrs Truslove's.
“It's funny yo
u should mention them because /like them and so does my fiancé,” said Miss Vanner. “I didn't know you asked me out because you were attracted. I'd never thought of you wanting to be friendly. When the cat's away the mice will play-Mr Beluncle's gone to the showroom, hasn't he?”
“I'm sorry to bring this lunch to a close,” said Mr Chilly, suddenly brought to his senses by the name of Mr Beluncle, “but I must fly.”
A toddle ended in a dash. He dashed for his bill, he dashed with Miss Vanner to the bus. So far ahead of her was his mind dashing that he hardly spoke to her; and when, accidentally, he looked at her his eye was cold, wondering who she was. He stepped into the warm building with the sense of one returning to the womb and did not even nod to Miss Vanner as they parted.
XIX
In the middle of the afternoon an unnerving thing happened to Mr Chilly. He sold two tables.
“Oh,'how I wish Mr Beluncle were here!” said Mr Chilly to Henry. “Where is the order book? Look, I've forgotten the carbon paper, lend me your pen. I can't remember-is this the address of the shop? Or is this the office.”
Mr Chilly flew to the foreman two or three times to be certain of the stock numbers.
“Put 'Terms-Cash',” said Henry.
“Oh-is that right?” said Mr Chilly. “I've never done this before. Shall I ring up Mr Beluncle? Oh, I do hope it's all right.”
“If we've got the tables,” said Henry.
“How d'you mean? I saw them,” said Mr Chilly.
“He means,” said the foreman, “unless they're sold.”
“Good God,” said Mr Chilly. “I never thought of that.”
“Mr Beluncle may have sold them,” said the foreman. The art of increasing the natural doubts of Mr Chilly was well advanced in the firm. “Are they going by rail?”
“He didn't say,” said Mr Chilly.
“Oh,” said the foreman.
“Why d'you say Oh' like that?” said Mr Chilly.
Mr. Beluncle: A Novel (Modern Library Classics) Page 18