by A. L. Barker
“I’m not bothered about conditions of employment, I went into that before I came.”
“Then what?”
She opened her lips as if for an unprintable word. “Men.”
Bulow was uncertain what such a world of meaning added up to. “Men?”
“I can’t stand being messed about while I’m working. There’s a time and place for that.”
He tried to keep his face straight, to smile would be more damaging to himself than to her. “Has someone been bothering you?”
“Mildly.”
“Streetfield?”
“I can handle it; the point is, I don’t want to have to. It’s tiring.”
Yes, she would get tired, making up to herself every morning, putting on the lipstick and powder and a face of experience. “Streetfield’s married, so are most of the office staff. You won’t have much trouble apart from the odd bit of slap and tickle.”
She frowned at a chip in the lacquer of her finger nails. “What makes you think marriage is a chalk line and people change when they step over it?”
“I expect it to make some difference. Don’t you?”
“Whichever way people are, it makes them worse.”
As she went to the door something, her underwear or her thighs, made a whispering sound. She spoke with two voices and he thought that the whispering one was her own.
*
Bulow got out his books and checked the last entries. Half his mind worked up and down the columns, discounting his private hieroglyphs that translated into pre-delivery wastage, the sub-standard, the unacceptable, anything that would be charged for but need not be paid. The other half reverted to the Winegarden girl.
She was another sex manifesto. There were many of her sort here already, carrying it like a flag or being it as something to be, but not glossing it as she was. She was going to make trouble, every day the fresh old trouble, and in twenty years’ time the faculty would come out in her children. She was going to be bad for the hereafter.
Ten gross beans, five tins blown or dubious: mustn’t be dubious with food, five tins of beans could poison a lot of people. This wasn’t the only half-crown he saved Rainbirds; even if it were, half a crown a day would be thirty-nine pounds a year—just saved, apart from his work, apart from everything else.
She was like sugar icing over spring lamb, a professional would be wholesome by comparison because she would speak for herself. The Winegarden girl just made proper noises, the only true word she had spoken was ‘Men’, which was the heart of her matter.
Dollomore’s secretary rang through, full of blame, and said that Mr Dollomore had been waiting since half-past ten.
“I didn’t know he wanted to see me.”
“You know now.”
When Bulow got to the outer office he was told he would have to wait because someone had just gone in.
“If he complains about me being late I shall tell him why.”
“I couldn’t care less,” said Dollomore’s secretary. “I’m leaving anyway.”
Dollomore had an ambience of about forty feet. Sitting in the outer office Bulow couldn’t forget that Dollomore was through the wall. Even walking along the passage outside he always had a diffused impression of one of the non-technical mysteries of Rainbirds. No one understood why a man like Frick tolerated, let alone furthered, a man like Dollomore. His money didn’t justify him because although he had plenty, Frick had more. It was surmised that he had a legal hold; that he was an incumbent of the first subsidiary Frick had acquired; that Frick was taken in by him, lulled rather than blinded, dazed more than deceived. Anything was surmised except that Dollomore was a good manager and that his remote control kept Rainbirds functioning as Frick wanted. It was significant that people preferred the fanciful explanations. They knew the factory didn’t run itself but they wouldn’t admit that it could be done without apparent commitment or effort. They certainly wouldn’t admit that it was done well. Yet the firm met its orders, made a profit, had neither stoppages nor strikes and was ready for experiment as it was experimenting now with fibreglass.
The buzzer sounded on her desk and the girl nodded to Bulow. As he passed her he said, “What’s his mood?”
“The same as always.”
It was a state more than a mood, perhaps he was born into it because it was possible to see him as a huge, composed baby, fed, washed and settled in his chair. He was pear-shaped, of a physical plenty short of grossness. If he were eventually to go bald and the cutaneous veins on his nose were to break and suffuse he would look like the wreck of a sort of man he had never been—a lardy, beer-drinking commercial.
Bulow didn’t like his eyes; he was stopped by their curiously effulgent warmth that didn’t reach to where Dollomore was looking. As usual his desk was empty. How could he work, said people, when there was never anything on it?—no papers, books or samples, not even a full ashtray because he did not smoke.
The girl in the outer room was typing, briskly slamming back the carriage of her machine. Dollomore’s stillness was monumental by contrast.
Bulow’s own flavour was dispersing, neutralness was setting in and the longer he waited the less there was to wait for. He could have sat—he was sitting—without expectation for an unspecified time, anything from a minute to an hour. Being uncommitted was enough, having no contribution to make he couldn’t matter less, he was unrequired and that was freedom. A new non-being, he thought, and for an instant as his bones opened and his head floated off his shoulders he achieved just that.
“Bulow, you’re asleep.”
The voice came from his thoughts. He tried to dismiss it, but a finger was being put on him. He came to with the shrammed feeling of a broken doze. Dollomore had not moved but it was his finger bringing the blood back, and the liability.
“People dislike you, Bulow. Why?”
Bulow remembered Streetfield telling him that Dollomore had called him in once and asked him what he thought about life and waited, as he was waiting now, for an answer. Streetfield declared he had replied, “I don’t think about it, I live it up.” Whether he had or not, it was a fair answer to an unfair question and Bulow couldn’t think of anything as adequate.
Dollomore sighed. “Not being liked is a negative condition, but situated as I am it’s the most I can hope for. Situated as you are, why should you be positively disliked?”
“Am I?” There were one or two people he didn’t get on with and he could name them as they had probably named him, but they were known to be bloody-minded.
“Or is that the reason—the penalty of office? You can’t please everyone, can you, Bulow, and you can’t please yourself.”
He suddenly saw how the wind was blowing. This was Dollomore’s method, little trumped-up charges first to discomfit and dismay, and then he would speak the relevant words, wrapped in language but reducible to two: “You’re fired.”
Like a drowning man he pictured every event that had gone for or against him since he got the job. He remembered them saying that they would give him a trial. So the trial was over and he had not made whatever crazy unrealistic grade they had set.
What was he to do? If they sent him back to the bench he couldn’t make the money he was getting now, he wasn’t a good bench worker. “Who’s been talking against me?” He couldn’t keep the shake out of his voice. “I’d like to know what I’m accused of.” He was all but out of a job, he had to talk himself back into it. Nor would it be any use saying he had done his best, he had to make them believe he had something in reserve. “There’s an element in every works, men—and women—who are never satisfied. Are you taking their word without hearing mine?”
Dollomore sat back as if he were listening to a pleasant old tune.
“Where did I fail? Who says I failed? I hear a lot about rights, well, haven’t I any?” Be respectful, be dignified, he warned himself, don’t look down until they put you down officially. “It seems to me I have a right of reply,” he said lamely.
> “In that case you’ll be talking to yourself, no one has said anything about failure. That’s entirely your own conception.”
Now what’s he going to do? thought Bulow. Get me to fire myself?
“Your name wasn’t mentioned.”
“But there have been complaints?”
“Do you expect them?”
“Some people wouldn’t be satisfied if you gave them the Lord Mayor’s banquet. If you paid them forty pounds a week they’d complain about having to come here to collect it. They never wanted to be born and they can’t forgive their mothers—”
“Would you say Mrs Worcester is one of those?”
Bulow hesitated, seeing a red light somewhere. “She’s a difficult woman but a good cook.”
“Faute de mieux,” said Dollomore. “However, I’m not asking for a character report, I’m asking you to think about the works party. If you can turn from the particular to the general I want you to consider how you will cater for five hundred with a kitchen staff of six.”
The works party—so that was it. It was like the reverse of a mirage, he had seen desert where green fields were. Relief made him light-headed.
“If it’s anything like last time only about thirty per cent. will be on solids, say fifty to allow for those who take a bag of sausage rolls and cakes home for the kids, those who start a sandwich and forget where they put it, and those who stub their cigarettes in the trifle. We’ll do what we did before, bake the cakes and cases during the week and work overtime on the confections the night before. The problem will be storing the beer safely.”
“It has been suggested—‘inferred’ rather—that we should give the job to a catering firm.”
“Put it out? We’ve always done our own catering.” Dollomore seemed to be waiting for him to get there. “This is criticism, isn’t it, of my management?”
“Not by me.”
“Then who?”
Dollomore opened his hands with a glutinous sound like a kiss. “It’s an impression I have. I also have the impression that you are the right man in the right job, but I was not at the last works party and I don’t eat canteen meals. Do you?”
“I take my dinner in the canteen every day and I can tell you the standard’s good, it’s consistent, and the portions are generous. If I’m told it doesn’t compare with home cooking because there’s no individuality I say get your wife to serve two hundred and fifty dinners in an hour and a half and see what happens to individuality.”
“Tell me about home cooking,” said Dollomore. “It’s so long since I had any. Is your wife a good cook?”
“Very good.”
“Tell me about her. Is she pretty?”
What was he after now, bedtime stories? “Yes.”
“How old is she?”
“Twenty.”
“How delightful.” Through the warm irrelevant haze, his eyes focussed on Bulow. “And how old are you?”
“Thirty-eight.”
The gusty sound could have been laughter or a sigh. “I suggest you invite estimates for a buffet supper for five hundred, excluding drinks. We’ll discuss with someone suitable from the works and someone from the office and get an average of what people are willing to pay. The directors will provide the drinks as usual.”
“It’ll cost twice as much as if we did it ourselves.”
“I want to know the general feeling and I want you to know it. We should meet one evening outside the factory. Can you suggest a suitable place?”
“There’s the Salt Box.”
“It’s too far away. Where do you live?”
“On the Keymer road.”
“We might foregather at your house.”
“At my house?”
“Would it be inconvenient?”
“No—well—no.”
“Let me know when you have the estimates,” said Dollomore.
*
The more Bulow tried to think of a reason the more convinced he was that Dollomore had none, except what killed the cat. Why me, he asked himself, what have I done to make him curious? If it was just one of his whims they boded discomfort, discomfiture or actual short commons for someone.
Whose idea was it to bring in a caterer? One man, one idea: he would only have to take it to Dollomore to be the voice of the people. Bulow could guess who—the ‘someone suitable’ from the shop, a man like a short straw under everyone’s shirt, to be invited to talk Bulow down in his own home.
He was going to see about that. True, his home was being paid for with money that came from Dollomore, but once it had come it was his, and everything it bought, and he had a right to draw the line. He let Esther think he had already drawn it.
“No one with commonsense, let alone courtesy, would suggest it. ‘Suggest’, did I say? He announces it as if this is a far-flung bit of his empire. Would it be inconvenient? he says, with his tongue in his cheek—”
“He’s coming here? Mr Dollomore?”
“Hospitality has to be offered, even by an employee to his employer—not picked up with his clock card. While I pay the rent this is a private place and admission is by invitation only.”
“Will he come to supper? Will he bring his wife? When will he come?”
“He won’t. I’m not asking him.”
“But you said he was!”
“He said he was.”
“If he said so, he will. He’s that sort of man.”
“How do you know what sort of man he is?”
“He got you your job—”
“I got my own job!”
“You said he spoke for you, you said no one else would have—”
Bulow was sorry, as he always was, for the kind of candour that could say a thing like that without seeing the damage in it. To be so unaware was a perilous state and a foolhardiness, there was only himself to keep her from the consequences. “Do you want him to come?”
“It’s not like you to be so short-sighted! A man like that, an important man, a director, doesn’t have to wait to be asked. He’s doing us an honour. Does he go to anyone else’s home?”
“He wouldn’t have the gall to invite himself.”
“He wants to see what your background’s like, he’s planning something. Promotion—it must be promotion.”
“I had it.”
“Haven’t you any ambition?”
“No.”
“Well,” she said, “I have, for both of us.”
It was turning into one of her games. He was too disheartened to play, in his hat and coat he sat at the kitchen table pushing the sugar sifter to and fro.
“I want you looked up to. There’s nothing to stop it, is there? There’s no reason why they shouldn’t think the world of you too?” This sort of thing he didn’t forget, pockets of it remained to dip into when he got a bad taste of himself. “You’re every bit as good as he is, he’s only human—”
“That makes it worse.”
“Perhaps you’re ashamed of your home? Or of me.”
He sent the sifter spinning across the table. It fell, and sugar spilled in a fan on the floor. She did not cry, but there was a fugitive glitter in her face. “I see how important it is to make a good impression and I would have tried. I expect that’s what you’re afraid of.”
“If you want him to come, he can come. I just don’t know what you expect to gain.”
But she had gained already. Happiness was like a meal to her, like food taken by the hungry, it warmed and covered the rabbit fineness of her bones. She said, promising, heartfelt, blessing him for the chance, “You won’t be disappointed, I won’t let you down—” The boot would be on the other foot, but she wouldn’t listen. Who else would be so glad of so little? Wasn’t it prudent, as well as kind, to let her cherish it as long as she could? “Wait until I show you—”
“I know what you can do, I’m not worrying.” He was going to touch her neck, he often felt he had to cup his hand round it because it was more like a stalk than a neck.
But
she turned to the door. “It’s what I’ve done. Come and see.”
He often did that too, she was often doing something, prettying up rooms, putting frills on curtains, embroidering cushions, staining bits of board. Or he had to stand and look at an empty corner while she told him what she would do with it when they had money to spare: ‘when’. She was always so sure it was only a matter of time.
Outside the room which she had learned to call the ‘lounge’ and he still called the ‘front’, she told him to shut his eyes. It was unnecessary, because he seldom saw what she had brought him to see until she pointed it out. He let her lead him into the room and being without sight sharpened his other senses so that he was instantly aware of a difference. He smelt a new fruity smell and felt the altered shape of the air.
“Now look.”
He couldn’t make out what it was, except that it was fantastic and overpowering. It took the whole of one wall and couldn’t have any possible use for them. They might, he thought, trying to placate the movement of his stomach, stand plants on top and Christmas cards, and keep a camp bed inside. “What is it?”
“Don’t you know?” She was glad he didn’t, she went and stood beside it, she and the thing shone at him together. “Can’t you even guess?”
“Where did you get it?”
“I bought it.”
“What with?”
She stroked it, her fingers loving and lingering, “Isn’t it beautiful?” The front was white buttoned plastic, like the wall of a padded cell. “Now you’ll see.”
She touched one of the buttons and a panel slid away with a tinkling of unidentifiable music. Rosy lights came on, and amber mirrors, it was the colour of whisky and pink mouth-wash. There were batteries of glasses, sunken ashtrays and what looked like a chromium plated coffee-pot without a handle. Under the shelves were four pin-stools cushioned in scarlet, green, blue and yellow plastic.
Esther pulled one out and sat on it. “Now do you see what it is?”
He sat down too, in the armchair. “I see.”
She picked up the glasses, displaying them one by one. “This is for spirits, gin and rum, and this is the whisky-glass—it’s shaped like a thistle. And this is for long drinks and this for liqueur. And these are swizzle sticks. Swizzle,” she said, taken with the word, and crooking her little finger she stirred an empty glass till it rang. “I’ve always wanted a cocktail bar.”