‘I’d really have said it was your first job,’ he said when they reached the street. He smiled at her. ‘Something about you.’
She knew what he meant. She was often taken to be younger than she was, it had something to do with being small: five foot one she was, with thin, small arms that she particularly disliked. And of course there was her complexion, which was a schoolgirl complexion in the real sense, since schoolgirls rather than adults tended to be bothered with pimples. ‘Attack them from inside, Miss Hosford,’ her doctor had advised. ‘Avoid all sweets and chocolate, avoid cakes and biscuits with your coffee. Lots of lemon juice, fresh fruit, salads.’ She ate lots of fruit and salads anyway, just in case she’d get fat, which would have been the last straw. She naturally never ate sweet things.
‘Horrid being new,’ he said. ‘Like your first day at school.’
The street, fashionably situated just off Grosvenor Square, was busy with people impatient to be home: it was a cold night in November, not a night for loitering. Girls in suede boots or platform shoes had turned up the collars of their coats. Some carried bundles of letters which had been signed too late to catch the afternoon dispatch boys. In the harsh artificial light their faces were pale, sometimes garish with make-up: the light drew the worst out of girls who were pretty, and killed the subtleties of carefully chosen lipstick and make-up shades. God alone knew, Angela said to herself, what it did to her. She sighed, experiencing the familiar feeling of her inferiority complex getting the upper hand.
‘Hullo, Gordon,’ a man in a black overcoat said to Gordon Spelle. The man had been walking behind them for some time, while Angela had been listening to Gordon Spelle going on about the first day he’d spent at school. Miserable beyond measure he’d been.
‘God, it’s chilly,’ the man said, dropping into step with them and smiling at Angela.
‘Angela Hosford,’ Gordon Spelle said. ‘She’s come to work for Pam Ivygale.’
‘Oh, Pam, dear Pam!’ the man said. He laughed in much the same way as Gordon Spelle was given to laughing, or so it seemed to Angela. His black overcoat had a little rim of black fur on its collar. His hair was black also. His face in the distorting street-light had a purple tinge, and Angela guessed that in normal circumstances it was a reddish face.
‘Tommy Blyth,’ Gordon Spelle said.
They entered a public house at the corner of a street. It was warm there, and crowded, and quite attractively noisy. Fairy lights were draped on a Christmas tree just inside the door because Christmas was less than six weeks away. Men like Tommy Blyth, in overcoats with furred collars and with reddish faces, were standing by a coal fire with glasses in their hands. One of them had his right arm round the waist of C.S. & E.’s black-haired receptionist.
‘What’s your poison, Angela?’ Gordon Spelle asked, and she said she’d like some sherry.
‘Dry?’
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter – well, medium, actually.’
He didn’t approach the bar but led her into a far corner and sat her down at a table. It was less crowded there and rather dimly lit. He said he wouldn’t be a minute.
People were standing at the bar, animatedly talking. Some of the men had taken off their overcoats. All of them were wearing suits, most of them grey or blue but a few of a more extravagant shade, like Gordon Spelle’s. Occasionally a particular man, older and stouter than his companions, laughed raucously, swaying backwards on his heels. On a bar-stool to this man’s right, in a red wool dress with a chiffon scarf at her throat, sat Miss Ivygale. The red wool coat that had been hanging just inside the outer office door all day hung on the arm of the raucous man: Miss Ivygale, Angela deduced, was intent on staying a while, or at least as long as the man was agreeable to looking after her coat for her. ‘You’ll find it friendly at C.S. & E.,’ Miss Ivygale had said. ‘A generous firm.’ Miss Ivygale looked as though she’d sat on her bar-stool every night for the past twenty-three years, which was the length of time she’d been at C.S. & E.
‘Alec Hemp,’ Gordon Spelle said, indicating the man who had Miss Ivygale’s coat on his arm.
The name occurred on C.S. & E.’s stationery: A. R. Hemp. It was there with other names, all of them in discrete italics, strung out along the bottom of the writing paper that had C.S. & E. and the address at the top: S. P. Bakewell, T. P. Cooke, N. N. E. Govier, A. R. Hemp I. D. Jackson, A. F. Norris, P. Onniman, the directors of the C.S. & E. board.
‘That’s been going on for years,’ Gordon Spelle said. He handed her her sherry and placed on the table in front of him a glass of gin and Britvic orange juice. His droopy eye had closed, as if tired. His other, all on its own, looked a little beady.
‘Sorry?’
‘Pam Ivygale and Alec Hemp.’
‘Oh.’
‘It’s why she never married anyone else.’
‘I see.’
Miss Ivygale’s brisk manner in the office and her efficient probing when she’d interviewed Angela had given the impression that she lived entirely for her work. There was no hint of a private life about Miss Ivygale, and certainly no hint of any love affair beyond a love affair with C.S. & E.
‘Alec,’ Gordon Spelle said, ‘has a wife and four children in Brighton.’
‘I see.’
‘Office romance.’ His droopy eye opened and gazed bleakly at her, contrasting oddly with the busyness of the other eye. He said it was disgraceful that all this should be so, that a woman should be messed up the way Mr Hemp for twenty-three years had messed up Miss Ivygale. Everyone knew, he said, that Alec Hemp had no intention of divorcing his wife: he was stringing Miss Ivygale along. ‘Mind you, though,’ he added, ‘she’s tricky.’
‘She seems very nice –’
‘Oh, Pam’s all right. Now, tell me all about yourself.’
Angela lived in a flat with two other girls, a ground-floor flat in what had once been a private house in Putney. She’d lived there for three years, and before that she’d lived in a similar flat in another part of Putney, and before that in a hostel. Every six or seven weeks she went home for the weekend, to her parents in Exeter, Number 4 Carhampton Road. When she’d qualified as a shorthand typist at the City Commercial College in Exeter the College had found her a position in the offices of a firm that manufactured laminates. Three years later, after some months’ discussion and argument with her parents, she’d moved to London, to the offices of a firm that imported and marketed German wine. From there, she’d moved to the firm called C.S. & E.
‘You can hear it in your voice,’ Gordon Spelle said. ‘Exeter and all that.’
She laughed. ‘I thought I’d lost it.’
‘It’s nice, a touch of the West Countries.’
The laminates firm had been a dull one, or at least a dull one for a girl to work in. But her parents hadn’t understood that. Her parents, whom she liked and respected very much, had been frightened by the idea of her going to London, where there was loose living, so other parents had told them, and drinking and drugs, and girls spending every penny they had on clothes and rarely eating a decent meal. The German-wine firm had turned out to be a dull place for a girl to work in too, or so at least it seemed after a few years. Often, though, while finding it dull, Angela had felt that it suited her. With her poor complexion and her bulging contact lenses and her small, thin arms, it was a place to crouch away in. Besides herself, two elderly women were employed in the office, and there was Mr Franklin and Mr Snyder, elderly also. Economy was practised in the office, the windows seemed always to be dusty, electric lightbulbs were of a low wattage. On the mornings when a new pimple cruelly erupted on her neck or one of her cheeks, Angela had hurried from bus to tube and was glad when she reached the dingy office of the wine firm and lost herself in its shadows. Then a girl in the flat introduced her to Pure Magic, so good at disguising imperfections of the skin. But although it did not, as in an advertisement, change Angela’s life and could do nothing at all for her thin arms, it did enough to draw her from the di
nginess of the wine firm. A girl in the flat heard of the vacancy with Miss Ivygale at C.S. & E. and, not feeling like a change herself, persuaded Angela to apply for it. The shared opinion of the girls in the flat was that Angela needed drawing out. They liked her and were sorry for her: no joke at all, they often said to one another, to have an inferiority complex like Angela’s. The inferiority complex caused nerviness in her, one of them diagnosed, and the nerviness caused her bad complexion. In actual fact, her figure and her arms were perfectly all right, and her hair was really pretty the way it curled. Now that she’d at last stopped wearing spectacles she looked quite presentable, even if her eyes did tend to bulge a little.
‘Oh, you’ll like it at C.S. & E.,’ Gordon Spelle said. ‘It’s really friendly, you know. Sincerely so.’
He insisted on buying her another drink and while he was at the bar she wondered when, or if, she was going to meet the people he’d mentioned, the other employees of C.S. & E. Miss Ivygale had narrowed her eyes in her direction and then had looked away, as if she couldn’t quite place her. The black-haired receptionist had naturally not remembered her face when she’d come into the bar with the two men. The only person Gordon Spelle had so far introduced her to was the man called Tommy Blyth, who had joined the group around the fire and was holding the hand of a girl.
‘It’s the C.S. & E. pub,’ Gordon Spelle said when he returned with the drinks. ‘There isn’t a soul here who isn’t on the strength.’ He smiled at her, his bad eye twitching. ‘I like you, you know.’ She smiled back at him, not knowing how to reply. He picked up her left hand and briefly squeezed it.
‘Don’t trust that man, Angela,’ Miss Ivygale said, passing their table on her way to the Ladies. She stroked the back of Gordon Spelle’s neck. ‘Terrible man,’ she said.
Angela was pleased that Miss Ivygale had recognized her and had spoken to her. It occurred to her that her immediate employer was probably shortsighted and had seen no more than the outline of a familiar face when she’d peered across the bar at her.
‘Come on, have a drink with us,’ Miss Ivygale insisted on her way back from the Ladies.
‘Oh, it’s all right, Pam,’ Gordon Spelle said quickly, but Miss Ivygale stood there, waiting for them to get up and accompany her. ‘You watch your step, my boy,’ she said to Gordon Spelle as they all three made their way together. Gordon Spelle told her she was drunk.
‘This is my secretary, Alec,’ Miss Ivygale said at the bar. ‘Replacing Sue. Angela Hosford.’
Mr Hemp shook Angela’s hand. He had folded Miss Ivygale’s red coat and placed it on a bar-stool. He asked Angela what she was drinking and while she was murmuring that she wouldn’t have another one Gordon Spelle said a medium sherry and a gin and Britvic orange for himself. Gordon Spelle was looking cross, Angela noticed. His bad eye closed again. He was glaring at Miss Ivygale with the other one.
‘Cheers, Angela,’ Mr Hemp said. ‘Welcome to C.S. & E.’
‘Thank you, Mr Hemp.’
People were leaving the bar, waving or calling out goodnight to the group she was with. A man paused to say something to Mr Hemp and then stayed to have another drink. By the fire the receptionist and another girl listened while Tommy Blyth told them about car radios, advising which kind to buy if they ever had to.
‘I brought her in here to have a simple drink,’ Gordon Spelle was protesting to Miss Ivygale, unsuccessfully attempting to keep his voice low. ‘So’s the poor girl could meet a few people.’
Miss Ivygale looked at Angela and Angela smiled at her uneasily, embarrassed because they were talking about her. Miss Ivygale didn’t smile back, and it couldn’t have been that Miss Ivygale didn’t see her properly this time because the distance between them was less than a yard.
‘You watch your little step, my boy,’ Miss Ivygale warned again, and this time Gordon Spelle leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. ‘All right, my love?’ he said.
Miss Ivygale ordered Mr Hemp another Bell’s whisky and one for herself, reminding the barman that the measures they were drinking were double measures. ‘What’re you on, Dil?’ she asked the man who was talking to Mr Hemp. ‘No, no, must go,’ he said.
‘Bell’s I think he’s on,’ the barman said, pouring a third large whisky.
‘And a gin and Britvic for Gordon,’ Miss Ivygale said. ‘And a medium sherry.’
‘Oh, really,’ murmured Angela.
‘Nonsense,’ Miss Ivygale said.
In the lavatory Gordon Spelle swore as he urinated. Typical of bloody Pam Ivygale to go nosing in like that. He wouldn’t have brought the girl to the Arms at all if he’d thought Ivygale would be soaked to the gills, hurling abuse about like bloody snowballs. God alone knew what kind of a type the girl thought he was now. Girls like that had a way of thinking you a sexual maniac if you so much as took their arm to cross a street. There’d been one he’d known before who’d come from the same kind of area, Plymouth or Bristol or somewhere. Bigger girl actually, five foot ten she must have been, fattish. ‘Touch of the West Countries’, he’d said when she’d opened her mouth, the first time he’d used the expression. Tamar Dymond she’d been called, messy bloody creature.
Gordon Spelle combed his hair and then decided that his tie needed to be reknotted. He removed his pepper-coloured jacket and his waistcoat and took the tie off, cocking up the collar of his striped blue shirt in order to make the operation easier. His wife, Ruth, would probably be reading a story to the younger of their two children, since she generally did so at about seven o’clock. As he reknotted his tie, he imagined his wife sitting by the child’s bed reading a Topsy and Tim book.
‘Oh, say you’re going to Luton,’ Miss Ivygale said. ‘Tell her it’s all just cropped up in the last fifteen minutes.’
Mr Hemp shook his head. He pointed out that rather often recently he’d telephoned his wife at seven o’clock to say that what had cropped up in the last fifteen minutes was the fact that unexpectedly he had to go to Luton. Mr Hemp had moved away from the man called Dil, closer to Miss Ivygale. They were speaking privately, Mr Hemp in a lower voice than Miss Ivygale. The man called Dil was talking to another man.
Standing by herself and not being spoken to by anyone, Angela was feeling happy. It didn’t matter that no one was speaking to her, or paying her any other kind of attention. She felt warm and friendly, quite happy to be on her own while Gordon Spelle was in the Gents and Mr Hemp and Miss Ivygale talked to each other privately. She liked him, she thought as she stood there: she liked his old-fashioned manners and the way he’d whistled ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’, and his sympathy over her being new. She smiled at him when he returned from the Gents. It was all much nicer than the German-wine firm, or the laminates firm.
‘Hullo,’ he said in a whisper, staring at her.
‘It was nice of you to bring me here,’ she said, whispering also.
‘Nice for me, too,’ said Gordon Spelle.
Mr Hemp went away to telephone his wife. The telephone was behind Angela, in a little booth against the wall. The booth was shaped like a sedan chair, except that it didn’t have any shafts to carry it by. Angela had noticed it when she’d been sitting down with Gordon Spelle. She hadn’t known then that it contained a telephone and had wondered at the presence of a sedan chair in a bar. But several times since then people had entered it and each time a light had come on, revealing a telephone and a pile of directories.
‘Because they only told me ten minutes ago,’ Mr Hemp was saying. ‘Because the bloody fools couldn’t make their minds up, if you can call them minds.’
Gordon Spelle squeezed her hand and Angela squeezed back because it seemed a friendly thing to do. She felt sorry for him because he had only one good eye. It was the single defect in his handsome face. It gave him a tired look, and suggested suffering.
‘I wish you’d see it my way,’ Mr Hemp was saying crossly in the sedan chair. ‘God damn it, I don’t want to go to the bloody place.’
‘I really must
go,’ Angela murmured, but Gordon Spelle continued to hold her hand. She didn’t want to go. ‘I really must,’ she said again.
In the Terrazza, where the waiters wore striped blue-and-white jerseys and looked like sailors at a regatta, Mr Hemp and Miss Ivygale were well known. So was Gordon Spelle. The striped waiters greeted them affectionately, and a man in a dark suit addressed all three of them by name. He bowed at Angela. ‘How d’you do?’ he said, handing her a menu.
‘Petto di pollo sorpresa,’ Gordon Spelle recommended. ‘Chicken with garlic in it.’
‘Garlic? Oh –’
‘He always has it,’ Miss Ivygale said, pointing with the menu at Gordon Spelle. ‘You’ll be all right, dear.’
‘What’re you having, darling?’ Mr Hemp asked Miss Ivygale. In the taxi on the way to the Terrazza he had sat with his arm around her and once, as though they were in private, he’d kissed her on the mouth, making quite a lot of noise about it. Angela had been embarrassed and so, she imagined, had Gordon Spelle.
‘Gamberone al spiedo,’ Miss Ivygale ordered.
‘Cheers,’ Mr Hemp said, lifting a glass of white wine into the air.
‘I think I’m a bit drunk,’ Angela said to Gordon Spelle and he wagged his head approvingly. Mr Hemp said he was a bit drunk himself, and Miss Ivygale said she was drunk, and Gordon Spelle pointed out that you only live once.
‘Welcome to C.S. & E.,’ Mr Hemp said, lifting his glass again.
The next morning, in the flat in Putney, Angela told her flatmates about the delicious food at the Terrazza and how she couldn’t really remember much else. There’d certainly been a conversation at the restaurant table, and in a taxi afterwards she remembered Gordon Spelle humming and then Gordon Spelle had kissed her. She seemed to remember him saying that he’d always wanted to be a dance-band leader, although she wasn’t sure if she’d got that right. There were other memories of Gordon Spelle in the taxi, which she didn’t relate to her flatmates. There’d been, abruptly, his cold hand on the flesh of one of her thighs, and her surprise that the hand could have got there without her noticing. At another point there’d been his cold hand on the flesh of her stomach. ‘Look, you’re not married or anything?’ she remembered herself saying in sudden alarm. She remembered the noise of Gordon Spelle’s breathing and his tongue penetrating her ear. ‘Married?’ he’d said at some other point, and had laughed.
The Collected Stories Page 60