“Geneva, that’s wonderful! Has somebody died?”
“It’s the Major.”
“Good God—the poor old chap. Why didn’t you tell me? What happened—a stroke?”
Geneva shook her head, watching his face cautiously. “He wants me to marry him. Oh, Ben———” She reached her skinny, freckled arm across the table to him. “Please, please don’t laugh. I know it’s funny, and everyone will think so.”
“I don’t,” Ben said. “I think it’s a damn good idea. I can’t think why I didn’t think of it myself.”
“Do you really?” Geneva’s face lit up. “Oh, I am relieved. I was afraid you’d be horrified at the idea of me throwing in my lot with such a shocking old character. But he was sober when he suggested it, honestly.”
“I believe it. He could never have such a good idea when he was drunk.” Ben went round the table to kiss Geneva on top of the hairpins. She did not like to be kissed before she had done her face. “The more I think of it, the better I like it.”
“You swear it?” Geneva twisted her neck to stare up at him to see if he was serious. “I shouldn’t thing of it really, I suppose. Poor William must be whirling in his grave. He never could stand Hubert. He is an old rogue, I know, but I’m fond of him in an exasperated way. And I get lonely, you know, at times. I’ve got friends, and I’ve got my darling Amy, but it isn’t the same as having a man, even a man like the Major. I’ve had you, but now that you’re going to be in high finance, with everything you touch turning to gold, you’ll want to go away and get a place of your own, and you’ll want Amy with you. That’s what brought this whole thing up, as a matter of fact. I was telling the old buffer how I’d feel without you, and he takes a deep breath and blows out his cheeks and says: ‘Why not let me move in?’ ‘As a lodger?’ I said. ‘No, madam,’ he replies, as gallant as you please. ‘As your husband’.”
Ben went away to take a bath. While he was soaking in the old-fashioned boarded tub, he thought about himself and Amy and where they would live. They would rent somewhere at first, and later, if things went well, they could think of buying. Amy would have to stay with Geneva for a while until Ben got into his stride, but he could not leave her in the flat after the shocking old character moved in.
And Rose? Now he would have to decide about her, and she would have to stop being cosy and make up her mind about him. “Let’s talk about getting married when you come back,” she had said. But this time he would pin her down to talk about it in earnest
When he came home that evening, he went into Amy’s bedroom, where she was standing up doing homework, with the exercise-book spread out among the china animals and photographs on her dressing-table.
“You can’t work like that,” Ben said. “What’s wrong with the dining-room?”
“Geneva keeps talking to me. She’s so excited. And she wants to sing.”
“You know why?”
Amy nodded, drawing a line neatly under something she had written. She was wearing blue jeans and a cotton shirt. Her legs looked very long and her waist and back looked frail, with the shoulder-blades sticking out under her plaits.
“What do you think of the news?” Ben asked, sitting down on the bed.
Amy turned round to see from his face what she ought to think of it. He smiled at her, so she said: “I think it’s smashing. She told me I could be a bridesmaid. And she told me another thing. She said that you and I were going away to live in a place of our own. Is that true. Daddy?”
“I may be able to swing it pretty soon. You and I should be together, although Grandma would love to keep you, of course.” He wanted Amy to think that she was a valued possession, wanted by everybody. He was not going to have her feeling like a dependent child for whom suitable arrangements must be made so that the grown-ups could do what they wanted.
“I’d rather come with you.” Amy sat on the bed and ran her hand over his hair. “Perhaps we could still have the flat over the garage, and Grandma could come there when she wanted a rest from the Major. He’s better in small doses. When she first told me about him—ages before she told you, by the way, but she made me promise not to let on—I was terrified that I might have to go to Southampton. I’m sorry. It’s your mother and father, I know, but you do understand. Oh, Daddy!” She jumped off the bed and whirled round excitedly with her hands in her pockets, kicking out at the furniture. “Where shall we live? Could we have a garden? Will I go to a different school? That would suit me down to the ground. I’m going to be in terrible straits with the geometry exams. Miss Harbutt says I’ll never pass, but it would be a sell for her if I could leave before she had the chance of being right.”
She stopped wnirling and said casually, without looking at her father: “With evervone else getting married, I suppose you and Miss Kelly will be thinking of taking the plunge.”
“Would you mind?”
“Nope.” The blue jeans were stretched very tightly as she dug her hands deeper into the pockets.
“I don’t know if she’d marry me, though.”
He was watching her to see if she would clutch hopefully at this, but she said: “Of course she’d marry you. Anyone would. And you’re going to be rich, too.”
“Maybe. With Rose’s money and mine, we might have quite a decent place, and we’d find someone nice to stay with you when I was away. Rose wouldn’t be there all the time, but it would be grand when she was. We’d be a proper family.”
He was waiting for Amy to give some opinion about Rose, but the child gave him no clue to what was in her mind. He must be fair to her, but fair to Rose too. If he was going to marry her, Amy must not start out with antagonism.
“Rose is an awfully sweet person when you get to know her,” he said, watching Amy’s unrevealing face. “She has to put on an act for the public. That’s her job. Underneath, she’s very lovable, and not a bit grand.”
“Is she?” Amy began to look more hopeful.
“Yes, and quite honestly, darling, apart from how much I like her, it would be much better for me to have a wife. A man can’t give a daughter everything she should have. Nor can a housekeeper. That wouldn’t be the same for you as having a—a———”
He balked at the word Mother.
“I know, Daddy.” Amy came over to the bed and took his hands. “You needn’t bother to explain. You love Miss Kelly, don’t you?”
“I think so. It’s awfully hard to know sometimes. You’ll find that out when you’re older.”
“Oh, I know already. I’ve been in love thousands of times. It’s agony. Come on, let’s go and tell Grandma that you’re going to be married too. That will take some of the wind out of her sails. Could you have a double wedding?”
“With the Major in a silk hat and a socking great buttonhole stealing all the limelight? Not likely.”
They laughed together, holding hands and laughing into each other’s faces. Amy pulled him to his feet. He tried to ask her whether she was really happy, but she kept on laughing, and dragged him out of the room to where Geneva was spring cleaning the dining-room with her head tied up in a scarlet scarf and a hooting song competing with the cries of the carpet sweeper.
The next day, when Jimmy Peale had slipped round to the Back Office and Mitzi had gone out for coffee, Ben was in the office alone. He took the old, creased magazine photograph of Rose out of his wallet and propped it against the telephone on Jimmy’s desk. Because it was the first picture he ever had, when he was sure that he was in love with her, it held more enchantment for him than all the breath-taking photographs she had given him, scrawled over with intimate, extravagant messages. He saw himself laying it on the bar of some northern railway hotel and confiding to a stranger that he was going to marry Rose Kelly. The stranger, who had thought at first that Ben was just another commercial traveller, would look at him with new respect and call the barmaid over.
The door from the corridor opened, and a man came into the outer office. Through the open door between the two rooms,
Ben caught a glimpse of him as he came in: a slack-cheeked, humourless face, an odd wisp of hair low down on the forehead from which the rest of the hair had receded, shoes like black coffins for the kind of springless feet which would tramp with equal unconcern on violets or mud.
Ben got up and went to the door. The man was standing in the middle of the room, looking about him as if he would not give you twopence for the lot.
“Can I help you, sir?” Ben put on his S.I.A. salesman’s smile.
“You’re not the chap I saw here before.” It was a belligerent voice, grudging, displeased, the kind of voice Ben had heard on the lower deck when a trouble-maker was aboard.
“Our Mr Peale?” Ben said smoothly. He could talk like this when there was no one in the office to hear him. “He has just stepped out for a moment. I am Commander Francis, managing the naval side of our organization.”
“Group-Captain this. Commander that,” the man complained. “Where’s all the Generals today?”
“Out to lunch,” Ben said. “Can I help you?”
“You can get me my insurance policy,” the man said. “That’s what you can do.”
It seemed a fair enough request, and Ben would have granted it, if he had known where the insurance policies of the S.I.A.’s investors were kept. He had no idea when Jimmy Peale or Mitzi would be back, so he rubbed the palms of his hands together and promised that the policy would be mailed as soon as possible.
“It’s not good enough,” the man said, as if he had said that many times before about many things. “I want it now, right here in my hand.” He pounded a coarse fist into his palm. “I’m entitled, aren’t I?” He jutted forward his head, fixing Ben with what would have been a sea-lawyer’s eye if he had been a sailor instead of an airman. “No messing about. You’ve got my money, and you’ve promised me insurance. That means I’ve got a policy, and I’ve a right to possession of it.”
“Of course, of course.” Ben had learned long ago not to dispute rights with men like this, for they usually knew what their rights were better than he did. “Unfortunately all the documents are in our other office.”
“Go and get it then.” The man sat squarely down on a chair by the door and folded his arms. “I’ll wait.”
Ben scratched his head. Although Peale and Beckett had never said that they did not want him in the Back Office, they had never encouraged him to go there. The Back Office was the hub of the Association, where they spun their mysterious deals in foreign stocks and made their staggering financial computations, which had nothing to do with an investment salesman whose place, as Jake Beckett often reminded him enviously, was in the field.
“It will mean some delay,” he hedged. “Surely it will be more convenient for you if I———”
“If you don’t go and get it right away,” the man said in a matter-of-fact voice that was more threatening than his belligerent one, “I’ll fetch a policeman to you.”
“You might at that,” Ben said, trying to keep calm. “At least he could look after this office for me while I go round to the other one. As it is, you’ll have to wait until the receptionist gets back.”
“How long? I haven’t got all day.”
“That’s hard to say. She’s out on business.” Mitzi’s quarter-hour for coffee sometimes extended for two hours if she felt the urge to do some shopping.
The man stood up. “Lock the ruddy place up then, and I’ll wait downstairs. I’ve not come all this way for nothing.”
Ben searched in vain for an answer. Look at me, he invited the disappointed audience of his thoughts. Here I am, the handler of men, the naval officer who’s got a job because he knows how to deal with the fads and foibles of Other Ranks. You’ve got to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” the man asked, taking a crushing step forward and peering at Ben’s rueful grin.
“Nothing.” Ben reached for his coat.
The Back Office was not a patch on the Front Office as far as outside appearances went. The entrance was through a narrow door in a street of narrow doors and dirty stone steps and lower front windows half painted over to conceal what went on inside.
What went on in the Back Office of the Services Investment Association was plain to Ben as soon as he stepped through the only door on the ground floor which was not locked, and which was labelled surprisingly: “Beckett Finance Company.” He had been to a similar office in Portsmouth on behalf of a panicky able-seaman. He knew a loan office when he saw one.
A small, yellow old man was on the other side of the counter behind the wire grille. He muttered a question at Ben through a damp yellow cigarette, but Ben waved a hand at him and went boldly through the door behind which he could hear the voices of Mr Beckett and Jimmy Peale.
Jake was at a scarred old roll-top desk, very different from his neat, expensive desk in the Front Office, which had a glide-away typewriter and a little softly-clicking locker for whisky. Jimmy was sitting on the window-sill, swinging one leg and looking out at the depressing street. He must have watched Ben come in at the front door, for they were not surprised to see him.
“What’s to do, Benjamin?” Jake asked calmly. “Did Mitzi send you?”
“She’s out somewhere. I locked the place up. There’s a man round there who wants his insurance policy. He threatened to call the police if I didn’t come and get it.”
“Too madly dramatic.” Jimmy laughed lazily. “What are you panting about, old boy? You look as if you’d run all the way. Sit down and take the weight off your feet.”
“No.” Ben stood with his back to the door of the small, drab room. “I’ve got to get this chap’s policy. He bullied me into it.”
Jake spread his hands on the desk and studied his polished nails. “That’s hardly the spirit for a senior member of the sales staff,” he said. “You’re not supposed to let the clients bully you. You’re supposed to bully them—in a subtle way, of course. Perhaps you need a few more lessons to brush up your technique. Jimmy and Mitzi will be glad to———”
“Don’t fob me off,” Ben said. “What’s going on here, anyway? This place looks like a loan office. I thought you were investing the clients’ money. Are you making loans with it? Is that what it is?”
“Bright fellow,” Jake said. “Of course we are. Best investment there is. We pay out ten per cent interest to the investors, and we loan their money out at forty per cent. Watertight profit. You see, we’re not hiding anything from you, Benjamin. You could have come round here any time you wanted and investigated the financial side. You didn’t seem all that interested.”
“Well, I’m interested now,” Ben said. “Something smells.”
“The garbage from the hospital, probably.” Jimmy wrinkled his nose towards the window. “Their kitchen entrance is just round the corner.”
“Don’t fool with me, James.” Ben looked away from Jimmy’s absurd, friendly face, which could always make him laugh and feel indulgent. “I’m in a fighting mood. What about this man’s insurance policy? Have you got it, or is the insurance a fake too, along with the foreign investments?”
“Now you’re going too far, Benjamin,” Jake said sadly. “Of course our client is insured.”
“Give me his policy then.”
“He doesn’t need it.”
“That’s his affair. Listen, Jake. Has he got a policy, or hasn’t he?”
Jake looked him in the eye. “Of course he hasn’t,” he said calmly. “I’m surprised at you, Benjamin, falling for your own line of sales talk. I thought you knew everything about the business.”
“Nobody told me.”
“O.K. I’ll tell you now. If you want to work with us, you’d better come out of the clouds and face a few economic facts. How do you think we could afford to insure all our clients at the premiums the big companies charge? We let them think that we do, because it keeps them happy, and if some damn fool sailor falls off the dock and his old woman puts in her five-hundred-pound claim on his life, we’ll pay it, of course. No one
is going to get cheated.”
“I won’t do it,” Ben said. “I won’t go round telling lies to these wretched people. I’d begetting their money under false pretences.”
“Grow up,” Jake said. “You’re acting in a rum way for a man who came galloping into our office two weeks ago panting for adventure. Why don’t you go home and pack your bag and go off to Rosyth like a sensible chap and get on with your side of the business, and leave the rest of it to Jimmy and me? We’re not crooks, you know,” he added softly, showing his even teeth.
“You’re damn close to it. I haven’t signed any contract with you yet. I think I’d like to get out.”
Here went his job, his only job. How could he go home and look Geneva and Amy and Rose in the face and tell them he had chucked it? But how could he look them in the face if he went through with it, knowing what he knew? He scratched his head. His scalp was beginning to itch, as it always did when the brain beneath was in turmoil.
“Take it easy.” Jimmy Peale dropped down from the window-sill, brushed off his trousers, and leaned on the top of the desk, studying Ben with sleepy, half-closed eyes. “We like you, Ben. You’re a damn good chap, and we’ve had a lot of laughs together, which is more than one can say for most of the people one has to do business with in this grim world. But don’t go getting any half-cocked ideas about our morals, or you’ll end by making a fool of yourself. Jake and I are as pure as the driven. Leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone. Come into the office tomorrow and I’ll give you your expense money, and for God’s sake don’t let’s mess about any more. There’s work to be done.”
“Not by me. Find another N.O. There’s hundreds of us about needing to turn an honest penny. But I want to be sure mine is honest. I’m scared, if you like. Scared of this loan office, scared of that pugnacious chap sitting in the hall round the corner waiting for his insurance policy. I’m not going back there.” Where was he going? Back to the Paddington Library, back to the polite letters of rejection, the futile, demoralizing interviews.
Man Overboard Page 14