by Muriel Spark
One of the women-clerks was adept at using a progressive instrument called an adding machine. It was a simple calculator with a keyboard and an immense handle, rather like the cash-registers that were already installed in most shops. Miss Ritchie, though the eldest by at least ten years, well over forty, was by far the most sexy. In fact, she was rather vulgar and told dirty jokes. For that alone, I fairly despised her, and was merely astonished at the abnegation of all femininity in the other three. If they conversed at all at the break for tea (often made by me) they talked about what they had eaten for lunch and how much they had paid for it. (A triumphant record, one day, was three courses for ninepence.) I was much more at home with the three junior assistants of the counting house, teenage girls whom Miss Ritchie bullied or cosseted according to her mood.
My starting pay was three pounds a month. Most young people on my level were paid by the week, but Small’s introduced this touch of arch refinement into their system, so that employees could refer to their ‘salary’ rather than their humble wages. After eight months, however, I was paid six pounds. This doubling of my pay didn’t happen at once, but bit by bit in my monthly envelope, so that when I took my pay into the office to show they had made a mistake in my favour, the pay-clerk merely said, ‘Thank Mr Small.’ I suppose the old gentlman felt I deserved it; certainly I tried to put some originality into his letters. Six pounds a month was enough for a girl to live on fairly well in Edinburgh in 1936, although it would have been difficult to manage on that pay in London. My mother was greatly impressed. I used to treat her to lipsticks and scent (Coty’s L’Aimant), besides contributing towards the household expenses. Apart from my pay there were advantages to be drawn from the shop itself, where employees were allowed a discount on any purchases they made. I made as many as I could afford, for I always cared for charming clothes.
Small’s was at that time one of the five best women’s shops in Edinburgh. The others were Darling’s, Jenners’ and Forsyths’ with Maules’ in the running. It was not till later, in the ’seventies, that Small’s swallowed Darling’s, and later in that decade, totally disappeared.
The shop assistants in these super-elegant establishments all wore long black dresses and walked with a special gliding movement, not unlike the model girls of today. On entering the store, the customer would be greeted by a tall man in morning coat and top hat. He would give a half-bow, a mere inclination: ‘Madam desires…?’ When Madam had expressed her desire for hosiery, or dresses (all dresses were known as ‘gowns’), the tall man, whose designation was ‘shop-walker’, would gracefully beckon one of the black-gowned sirens: ‘Miss Smith, will you attend to Madam?’ or ‘Miss Fraser, will you conduct Madam to the Outfitting Department?’ (‘Outfitting’ was a euphemism for corsetry, then much in demand. The whalebone variety was giving way to the two-way stretch elastic roll-on. Every woman felt she needed ‘support’, for some reason.) I was thoroughly intrigued by this perpetual ballet of refinement which started with the first step of a client over the threshold and ended up there in the Dickensian-style counting house where the sales and reckonings were duly entered in the books, and from where accounts were ‘rendered’.
My former schoolmate from Gillespie’s, Elizabeth Vance, has written to me about those days of the ’thirties when
one could stroll along Princes Street and meet numerous friends quite by chance…. And unlike today we knew who owned all the shops – all family businesses at one time – Maules’, Jenners’, Forsyths’ … I loved to be taken on a winter’s afternoon to Crawfords for ‘high tea’ – white tablecloths, waitresses in black and white lace-edged aprons, the welcoming lights on and a cheerful fire blazing. Occasionally I would go with my mother to Darling’s and if ‘Will Y.’ was there and greeted us as we entered the store we felt important and our day was made.
Will Y. Darling was not only the owner of Darling’s but unlike his rival, Gordon Small, he was his own shop-walker. He could be seen looming inside the entrance to his store, large-built, dressed in his morning coat with striped trousers, his top hat and white gloves, welcoming his customers. ‘Willie Darling’ was a well-known Edinburgh character, later Sir Will, Lord Provost of Edinburgh.
All the time I was at Small’s I never tired of soaking up the mixed atmosphere of luxury, real elegance and silliness. Passing through the glamorous departments on my way to Mr Small’s room, I would overhear some of the most affected and absurd scraps of conversation between the clients and the saleswomen that I have ever heard in my life. Airs of condescension on the part of the client and flattery on the side of the saleswomen were rife. I thought often that I would like to write an amusing book called The Department Store. I never did, but perhaps I still might. I am sure that my faculties of character-observation were somewhat sharpened by the experience of Small’s.
I spent some of my money on gramophone records and books. The records appealed to my father, for we had a radiogram now which we called the grammy. My father’s favourite recordings were those of the Italian tenor, Enrico Caruso, who had died in 1921. My mother preferred popular English numbers with a romantic turn which we heard on the late-night radio broadcast by the dance-bands of London hotels. We were all hooked on Charlie Kunz, a dance-music pianist with an original sense of rhythm and beat. He played a number called ‘Lazybones’. I don’t know who played ‘Begin the Beguine’ and ‘Blue Moon’ on the radio; these numbers were played at the dances I went to, once or twice a week. Jazz was moving into swing in the mid-and late ’thirties. There was always someone, mainly a boyfriend, to take me to a film. (I never went alone.) Greta Garbo, then young and prospering, in Anna Karenina and Camille, and The 39 Steps directed by the flourishing Hitchcock, were among those new productions, now oldies, that entered my generation’s imagination.
Penguin paperback reprints had started to come out in 1935. They were the first pocket-books in England. The standard price of hardback books was between seven and eight shillings. The first batch of Penguins were sixpence, later ninepence. The public response in those hard-up days of unemployment and low wages was extremely good. I acquired most of the Penguins as soon as they came out. The first was Ariel by the French author André Maurois, a good translation of his romance built on the life of Shelley. It is most unreliable as a biography of Shelley, but it has a lot of charm and it was then that I became interested in the lives of nineteenth-century writers, the Shelleys in particular. Sixteen years later I wrote my critical-biography, Mary Shelley.
A Farewell to Arms, the next on the Penguin list, introduced me to Ernest Hemingway. My favourite of all in that year of Penguin’s launching, 1935, was Eric Linklater’s Poet’s Pub. It was nearest to the world that I felt I was growing up into. In tone, there was a throw-away quality of liberty and humour, so far absent in the modern fiction I was used to; at the same time it was a serious book. Besides, Linklater was a Scot, and I felt a kinship. I still find Poet’s Pub enjoyable. Agatha Christie was represented in the first batch of Penguin reprints (The Mysterious Affair at Styles) and so was Dorothy Sayers (The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club). One immense favourite of the day, Gone to Earth by Mary Webb, however, left me quite unaffected and dry-eyed. It was partly in county dialect which I have always abhorred in fiction, even in that of Thomas Hardy. Mary Webb’s themes were rustic. Her great popularity was mainly due to the fact that Stanley Baldwin, the pipe-puffing former Prime Minister of Britain, had publicly praised her work.
To reach Small’s from my home was a fifteen-to twenty-minute tram-ride. I always returned home for lunch although it was a rush; my mother was now recovered from her previous refusal to be left alone in the house but she got anxious if she didn’t set eyes on us all half-way through the day. This meant that I spent well over an hour a day travelling on the tram-car. I spent the time reading the newspaper, mainly The Scotsman. Recently, a friend sent me some copies of The Scotsman of the late ’thirties from which I can see more precisely than memory could describe, what I read.
Very often an article, a reported event or a photograph are perfectly familiar to me. The years 1936 and 1937 come flooding back; I am there on my rattling tram-car, reading about the Spanish Civil War, the latest news to come through on 7 September 1936, the burning of Irun, a town on the French border, by Franco’s Insurgents. There is a picture that comes back clearly to me: King Edward VIII (preparations for whose coronation were at their height), sitting with President Kemal Ataturk in an open carriage on a state visit to Turkey – ‘King Edward acknowledging the cheers of the crowds …’ runs the headline. But there are no crowds in the picture, only a few police scattered anxiously on the road. This anomaly I observed at the time; it has been latent in my mind all these years.
The coronation did not come off, and the King’s abdication was soon in the air. I heard the King’s speech of abdication on the wireless with one of my men-friends, Sydney Oswald Spark, or S.O.S. as we called him, at his club. The next year I became engaged to him.
Among my friends it was a question whether we were pro-Teddy or pro-abdication. My feelings were that it didn’t matter one way or another. I didn’t see, and still fail to see, what effect it would have on the nation if Wallis Simpson should become his consort. I thought the whole affair amusing and very entertaining and I loved to note the pomposity of the official comments of the time. But since the royal family had no legislative powers I felt, really, that we had the same life, the same opportunities, food and clothes, available to us, whoever sat on the throne.
The government was a different matter. I didn’t yet have a vote. It was clear that all political parties in Britain were against Fascism and dictatorships. In 1936 Sir Oswald Mosley, head of the British Fascists, led an anti-Jewish march in one of London’s Jewish quarters, Whitechapel. It failed. He had a certain following of a fringe-mob including many thugs, but his movement took no roots at all. Mussolini was a figure of music-hall fun. The menace of Hitler was taken more seriously. At this stage he was considered by a large number of people to be someone who could be reasoned with, who could be ‘approached’. But the more intelligent members of society had already perceived the truth. Some refugees from Hitler’s persecutions had already settled in Britain with their families, most of them medical doctors and specialists. Hitler’s speech on the Nazi Party’s tenth anniversary was reported in The Scotsman. ‘Only posterity’, said he, ‘would appreciate the full extent of the Nazi achievements.’
I had no specific religion but at the same time I had a strong religious feeling. There were times when, listening to lovely music on the radio, looking at a fine picture in the Scottish National Gallery, reading or writing a poem, I was aware of a definite ‘something beyond myself’. This sensation especially took hold of me when I was writing; I was convinced that sometimes I had access to knowledge that I couldn’t possibly have gained through normal channels – knowledge of things I hadn’t heard of, seen, been taught. I know that such phenomena can possibly be explained rationally in a variety of ways. When I was young, though, the confidence that arose from my sense of receiving ‘given’ knowledge and ideas constituted my religion. But I never associated this religious mental activity with psychic powers, all claims for which I considered to be entirely phoney. My religious education at school had been Presbyterian for which, with its predominant accent on the lovely Bible, I have always been grateful. Some Jewish observances on my father’s side of the family came my way, rather less so than in my brother’s education. I always thought with happiness of one Passover night at my Aunt Esther’s. Esther, my father’s eldest sister, was married to a Turkish Jew, Uncle Isador. This touch of the exotic Orient in my family had been a source of pride to me as a schoolgirl. Uncle Isador pointed out to me on that Passover occasion that the sweet herbs symbolized the joyful interludes of the Jewish passage over the Red Sea, and the bitter herbs symbolized the difficulties. I was inspired by the whole symbolic performance of the ritual feast.
By 1937 some of my friends were getting engaged and married. I longed to leave Edinburgh and see the world. Perhaps that is why I got engaged to Sydney Oswald Spark. I had a diamond ring. S.O.S. was to leave shortly for Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) for an initial three-year job as a teacher. He was thirteen years my senior. I thought him interesting, as I generally found ‘older men’. My parents were not at all keen on the idea of my going so far away at the age of nineteen. They knew very little about S.O. Spark, he had not been working recently in Edinburgh and had few friends there. I had met him at a dance. My father was particularly uneasy. I don’t know exactly why I married this man rather than any of the younger boyfriends who took me to dances. I will probably never know. It was a disastrous choice. Unbeknown to us, the poor man had mental problems, not obvious at the time. A friend of mine with whom I discussed this lately has suggested that perhaps he had a hypnotic effect on people. This, strangely enough, was my mother’s theory in later years when she had observed his dealings with someone else, and found them inexplicable.
Anyway, I was attracted to a man who brought me bunches of flowers when I had flu. (From my experience of life I believe my personal motto should be ‘Beware of men bearing flowers.’) I also liked the proposition that I wouldn’t have any housework to do ‘out there’ in Africa, that I would be free to pursue my writing. And, of course, the call of adventure in a strange continent was very strong. My husband-to-be put it to me that he was lonely; I felt sorry for him. S.O. Spark left for Africa before me. After a few months he sent me a one-way ticket to Southern Rhodesia. We were to be married there.
Frances Niven and I had a farewell tea with Miss Christina Kay. Frances, too, was soon to get married. I felt that Miss Kay was looking at me sometimes with a strange sadness. I felt she wished I were not going. I never saw her again. My parents, Philip and an uncle, Joe Shapiro, came to Southampton to see me off on the boat. My father found a friend, a fellow-engineer, on board as a passenger. He was a man of about forty. ‘Look after my daughter,’ said my father. (That was a laugh; he made every attempt to follow me around making passes, the whole of the two-week voyage.) All passengers’ visitors were ordered ashore. It was 13 August 1937, when, alone for the first time in my life, I sailed on the Windsor Castle to Cape Town, the first lap on my journey.
CHAPTER FOUR
It was in Africa that I learned to cope with life. It was there that I learned to keep in mind – in the front of my mind – the essentials of our human destiny, our responsibilities, and to put in a peripheral place the personal sorrows, frights and horrors that came my way. I knew my troubles to be temporary if I decided so. There was an element of primitive truth and wisdom, in that existence in a great tropical zone of the earth, that gave me strength.
The boat trip from Southampton to Cape Town took fourteen vividly memorable days. I was a third-class passenger, as were most of the young people on the boat. The older ones were part of family groups. There were students or brides-to-be like myself. There were a few valets or lady’s maids (whose employers were up in first class). It was an all-white cast of characters.
The younger set had intense fun for two days and nights, dancing to the band and eating quantities of elaborate food at the long tables in the dining-room. I was already dodging the amorous engineer. Then we entered the dreaded Bay of Biscay. In those days few ships had stabilizers to balance them in rough seas; we had none. I knew that the Bay was a terror to cross, and it lived up to its reputation. I rocked and rolled in my bunk, hardly caring whether I lived or died. I staggered up on deck out of curiosity and desire for air. The decks were deserted except for a few sailor hands, who, themselves, looked pretty green in the face. The golden boys and girls of the first nights out were nowhere to be seen. Where had all the flowers gone? I arrived at a bathroom and fetched up everything I had eaten for the whole of my life. In the cabin, my two room-mates were lying feebly supine, having taken some seasickness remedy prescribed by the ship’s doctor. The bottle was on the chest of drawers and, urged by my two sufferi
ng, weak companions, I poured out a substantial swig of the near-lethal draught. I suppose I swallowed it, for I woke up thickly a day later, when we were clear of the Bay of Biscay and life on the Windor Castle had begun to resume its cheerful noise.
Most of the memorable experiences of my life I have celebrated, or used for a background in a short story or novel. It strikes me only now to wonder why I have never written about life on board a passenger ship. Perhaps one day I will do so, it’s a good idea. I can think of no better setting for a story or a novel than that fourteen-day trip between Southampton and Cape Town, with our mixed and bohemian crowd. Numerous privileged young first-and second-class passengers used to slink down daily to join us in third where the action was.
I remembered, years later, that doctor’s overloaded brew during a crossing of the Atlantic in the early ’sixties on the Queen Mary. I was with my editor, Alan Maclean. We both felt queasy. It was a very rough crossing. (But nothing like the one on the Bay of Biscay so many years before or even a nasty heave-around I experienced on a wartime troop-ship zigzagging from the Cape to Liverpool via the Azores.) This crossing on the Queen Mary, comparatively mild as it was, sent us to the ship’s nurse. She arrived in our cabins with one of those old-fashioned non-disposable syringes loaded with something strong. We were both laid out for three days, the best part of the trip. When we finally saw each other again, about the last day out, we concluded without hesitation that these maxi-doses were handed out to anyone who complained, to keep them quiet, as is reputedly the case in prison. Al and I decided that never again would we complain at sea.
But back to 1937 and the lively boat of the Union Castle Line. I had heard of shipboard romances and I didn’t see why I shouldn’t have a mild flirtation, especially as I was to settle down in marriage so soon. And I had a very good reason to find a young man who was fun to dance with and play deck games with; it helped to throw off the attentions of that snooping engineer (he was rather sullen all the voyage). But my boyfriend was a good-looking very fair South African student of twenty travelling home with his parents. He took me more seriously than I intended, and even his parents took the most unusual step of asking me if I was quite sure I wanted to proceed to Rhodesia. I sat with them, all three, and showed them my hand with my diamond engagement ring. It was really rather touching that they wanted me so much to stop off at Cape Town and marry their son. Did they sense that I was making a mistake in my proposed marriage? I often wondered later on. Certainly I encouraged the young man more than I had meant. Anyhow, we had a lot of fun on that voyage. We sat out on deck under the Milky Way, we danced to the band, we listened to the many concerts given by the two fellow-passengers who happened to be professional musicians – he a cellist, she a singer – and who had discovered each other quite by chance, stretched in our deck chairs in the sun until it got too hot for our tender skins.