Bond Street Story

by Norman Collins

  But he knew his stuff all right. He presided, two floors up, over the household china, bed linen, slumber kit, towels, motoring rugs, leather goods, radio and television. It was quite an empire for a man of his physique to have conquered, subdued and now be ruling over.

  In the presence of Mr. Preece, his whole attitude was one of respect and attention. He was leaning forward, and that made his striped trousers go into a whole lot of extra folds and creases around the knees as though he had just been paddling.

  “Ah, Privett, Mr. Bloot tells me you want to get your daughter into the firm,” Mr. Preece had just said in that precise, clipped voice of his.

  Mr. Privett bent forward still farther.

  “That’s right, sir,” he replied. “Very kind of you to take the trouble.”

  This was the moment that Mr. Privett had been waiting for, dreaming of, ever since his daughter’s last year at school. But now that it had come, he found himself embarrassed, confused somehow. He felt that in some strange way he was actually letting her down, being insufficient. So he went on hurriedly.

  “You’ll find she’s a good girl, sir,” he said. “Quite inexperienced, of course. But ... but a really good girl. She’ll do us all credit.”

  He was rather surprised with himself as he said the words. He was very proud of his daughter, but he had never discussed her with strangers in this way before.

  “Well, we must get her to come and see us,” Mr. Preece replied in his smoothest, office-velvet kind of voice. “Then if we can do anything, we’ll fix her up.”

  “Thank you very much, sir.”

  Mr. Privett straightened up as he said it. That was because it was practically impossible to draw in a deep breath of sheer relief while he was bending so far forward.

  “Of course, she’ll only be a learner at first,” Mr. Preece reminded him.

  “Oh, naturally, sir. That’s ... that’s all she’d expect.”

  But there was no time for any further conversation. Mr. Preece had already rung for his secretary. And he began dictating before the secretary had even got herself properly seated.

  “Memo to Staff Supervisor. ‘Please arrange to see Miss—you’ll get the full name from Mr. Privett—of—Mr. Privett’ll give you the address—with a view to filling one of the forthcoming learner vacancies. Kindly let me know the result of the interview.’ That’s all, thank you.”

  Mr. Preece gave a swift, colourless nod to the secretary and, another in Mr. Privett’s direction. That indicated that he had done all that could be done. Indeed, he had already gone rather too far. There was a waiting-list the length of a Royal petition up in the Appointments Section. And in any case it was a strict rule that everyone must write in. There was a very strict protocol about application letters. And Rammell’s believed in observing it. It all turned on the simple test of neat handwriting, orderly expression and a proper knowledge of punctuation—as judged by the Staff Supervisor. Only last week the younger daughter of a well-known Peer had failed on all three counts. Cheltenham and Somerville had been turned down flat by the Ilford Secretarial College.

  That was why Mr. Privett was so pleased with himself. Thanks to him, his daughter had jumped the whole lot of them. But no child of his could really have been expected to write. After all, he had been with Rammell’s for nearly thirty years.

  Mr. Preece caught Mr. Privett’s eye for a moment.

  “What is your daughter’s name by the way?”

  “Ireen, sir. Ireen Privett,” he added idiotically. And because he could not think of anything else to say he repeated himself. “You ... you’ll find she’s a good girl, sir,” he said. “A really good girl.”

  3

  Mr. Privett was still so pleased when he got back to his own floor that for once he almost seemed to fill his tails. He looked a larger man altogether. And he was thinking of nothing but Irene. How excited she would be. How pleased. And how he would buy her some little starting-off gift—a new handbag, or something. Because he was thinking only of Irene, he even misdirected an important-looking lady who had asked for fitted picnic cases, and had to go chasing after her as though she were a shop lifter.

  It was nearly eleven by now. And at eleven o’clock precisely he always slipped up to the Staff Canteen for a cup of coffee. That meant that he would be able to tell his news to Mr. Bloot. Mr. Privett and Mr. Bloot were old friends. Natural inseparables. As would have been expected, Mr. Bloot took the lead in everything. It was a sort of knight and squire relationship that existed between them. Deference and devotion were mingled in equal proportions. And with every year that passed, Mr. Privett’s admiration for the larger man grew more complete and unquestioning. Nowadays, simply to be in Mr. Bloot’s company gave Mr. Privett a delicious feeling of the fullness of life. Of being in the very centre of things. That was why eleven o’clock was so important. He and Mr. Bloot usually managed to fit in a few minutes together at eleven o’clock.

  When Mr. Privett arrived, Mr. Bloot was already there, seated at his usual table. He had his cup in his hand, and he was leaning forward so that no drops should get on to his cravat. Unlike Mr. Privett, he was a tea drinker. And he took tea drinking seriously. Just to look at him with his eyebrows going up as his chin went down, you could see that he brought an impressive ardour and intensity to the whole process.

  Mr. Privett was so excited that he went straight over to Mr. Bloot instead of taking his place in the service line.

  “Mr. Preece spoke to me about Ireen,” he blurted out a little breathlessly.

  “Yurss?”

  Mr. Bloot’s face was very pink, flushed by the heat of the tea. But he was still remarkably handsome. Quite noticeably imposing, in fact. Mr. Privett felt proud at having such a man for his friend.

  “They’re going to see her.”

  “Aaah!”

  Mr. Bloot finished his tea and put his cup down. He was naturally a heavy breather. And at that moment he seemed to be doing nothing else but breathe. But that was not so. Really he was thinking. And thinking was always rather a slow business with Mr. Bloot.

  “Ah’ll drop a word mahself in the raht quarter,” he remarked at last.

  His voice was muffled-up and padded. It seemed to come from deep inside him like a ventriloquist’s.

  “Yurss,” he repeated slowly. “That’s what Ah’ll do. Ah’ll drop a word mahself.”

  Having spoken, he licked his lips as though he relished the idea. But that moistening of the lips didn’t really mean anything. It was only a habit that he had got into. Like breathing.

  There was a pause.

  “Mum’s going to be ever so pleased about this,” Mr. Privett said suddenly.

  Mr. Bloot turned graciously towards his friend.

  “How is Ahleen?” he inquired.

  “Eileen’s fine,” Mr. Privett replied. “She’s ... she’s been asking for you.”

  Mr. Bloot made no comment. Merely pursed up his lips. And Mr. Privett did not press the point. Both men knew that Mrs. Privett did not like Mr. Bloot. And in a way Mrs. Privett’s dislike was an additional bond between them. It served to put the seal of secrecy upon their friendship.

  But even if the tactless lie had upset Mr. Bloot, Mr. Privett was saved from any further embarrassment. Elevenses were now over. And he had missed his morning coffee altogether. He rose obediently and followed Mr. Bloot who was marching slowly and majestically back towards the main shop.

  Then Mr. Bloot spoke again.

  “Areen’s er lucky girl,” he said, “coming into Rammell’s. Ah wonder if she reahlahises.”

  Chapter Two

  1

  Irene Privett herself was lying stretched out full length on the bed. Her chin was resting on her hands. And her feet were spread out across the pillow. Her two shoes had gone slithering across the floor when she kicked them off. One was lying half-way over to the fireplace. The other almost underneath the chest of drawers.

  It was her dress that had saved her right shoe from disappearing compl
etely. Taken off hurriedly and simply slung into a chair, the dress had gradually straightened itself out and collapsed limply on to the strip of Axminster. Not that Irene had yet noticed. Or would notice, even when she came to pick it up again. Most of her things seemed to be on the floor when she wanted them.

  That was because she was only seventeen. Still living in the full turmoil of adolescence. Life opened out in front of her down a long corridor of chaos and confusion. With Mrs. Privett following silently behind, picking up, smoothing out, putting away. Any drawer that Irene ever went to looked as though someone had been burgling it. And even when the drawers were shut up again, the ends of all sorts of things, stockings, slips, corners of handkerchiefs remained sticking out like book-markers.

  At the moment Irene was wearing simply the foundations of dress, the pale pink brassière and pants which she had bought for herself and of which Mrs. Privett had disapproved. She had a good figure. Still only schoolgirlish, of course. Nothing mature or magnificent. But supple and healthy-looking. Against the whiteness of her skin, her hair seemed darker than ever. And it was her hair that was the trouble. A thick lock of it kept falling forward, slanting across the book that she was reading. But that again was Irene’s fault. Until a couple of years ago she had worn her hair in two long plaits. It had always been sleek and neat and tidy. Mrs. Privett had warned her what would happen if she allowed it to be slashed about by a hairdresser. But Irene had been determined. She detested long hair she had said. It was ghastly. And now every time she bent forward to read she had to pay the penalty.

  The book open on the bed was paper-covered. It was an acting-edition. One of Mr. Samuel French’s. Indeed, when you came to look at the room carefully you could see that the whole place was practically a sub-stockroom of Samuel French’s. The wall-bracket bookshelf with the fretwork ends was packed full of the small grey-blue booklets. And even at the back of the dressing-table, amid to-day’s harvest of hair brushes and screwed-up handkerchiefs and empty chocolate papers, there were more of the same little volumes. These were wedged in loosely between a pair of elephant book-ends, the rumps of the animals leaning purposefully against Gordon Daviot and Dodie Smith, James Bridie and J. B. Priestley.

  The play that Irene was reading at the moment was one of Christopher Fry’s. For the whole of the last month she had been going round in a stupefied daze of Fry. She had the taste of his words in her mouth when she woke in the morning. And she kept going back to him for further doses between regular mealtimes. She was at that moment cut off entirely from the rest of life. Suspended somewhere in a coma of medievalism and Mars bar. Even with her mouth full of the sweet chocolaty stuff, she was uttering Mr. Fry’s words aloud. They came out as a continuous sticky mumble.

  From down below, she heard the front door shut. That meant that her father had come home. She glanced for a moment at her wrist watch. It showed 6.20. And as she looked at it she remembered dimly, as a kind of shadow from the unreal world, that she had promised her mother to do something. Lay the table. Or light the gas. Or turn it out. Or put the kettle on.

  The outlines of the shadow were far from clear. A mere blurred impression in her mind. But, in any case, it was probably too late by now. Whatever it was, Mrs. Privett would have seen to it herself.

  It was, indeed, only because her mother was dressmaking that Irene had been asked to attend to things at all. When Irene listened, however, there was complete silence in the room beneath her. That in itself showed that everything was all right. If Mrs. Privett had still been working, there would have been the low, intermittent whining of the treadle machine, grinding away like a distant lawn mower. Consoled by the silence, Irene went on reading.

  But not for long. It was Mrs. Privett’s voice that called her.

  “Ireen.”

  Irene looked up. The voice somehow did not belong. There was no one in the whole of Mr. Fry’s hag-ridden household who was called by that name.

  Mrs. Privett called again.

  “Ireen. Your dad wants you.”

  Irene swung her legs off the bed.

  “Coming, Mum.”

  It took Irene some time to get dressed. For no particular reason she did not like anything that she had been wearing. And she couldn’t find what she wanted to wear instead. Then her hair needed doing. And at the sight of a nail file lying on the dressing-table, she began idly going round her nails, pushing down the quick with the blunt end of the file. It wasn’t that she was deliberately keeping her father waiting. Merely that she was distracted. She had been interrupted while she was busy. And her mind was still knee-deep in Mr. Fry’s world of words and witches.

  “Ireen, can you hear me? Your dad’s got something to tell you.”

  Mrs. Privett’s voice had risen by a semi-tone. It now had a sharp, rasplike edge to it. It probed.

  Irene still did not hurry. She went across slowly and opened the door like a sleep walker.

  “What’s the matter, Mum?” she asked with the purely mechanical part of her mind. “I heard you.”

  It struck Irene as soon as she got down to the kitchen that her father was looking unusually pleased about something. He seemed pinker than usual. And it struck Mr. Privett that Irene was looking unusually pretty. She was just the kind of daughter for whom any father would want to do little things.

  Mrs. Privett looked across at her husband, and gave a little nod.

  “Well, Dad,” she said. “You tell her. It’s your news.”

  Mr. Privett straightened himself. He wished that Mr. Bloot could have been there. Mr. Bloot would have made the announcement sound so much better. There would have been real dignity and grandeur about it. Coming from him, it would really have sounded like something.

  “It’s all fixed,” he said smiling. “They’re going to write to you. They said so this morning.”

  “Who did?”

  Mr. Privett opened his eyes wider in astonishment.

  “Why Rammell’s, of course.”

  “What about?”

  “About you.”

  The smile had almost left Mr. Privett’s face by now. He had been looking forward all day to this moment when he got home. And somehow it wasn’t turning out as he had expected.

  “What do Rammell’s want to write to me for?”

  Irene had taken a step away from him as she put the question. She was leaning up against the wall by now, her shoulder pushing the hanging calendar crooked. Her head was to one side, and she was frowning. Mr. Privett remembered that she always used to frown like that when she was a little girl. It made him love her still more.

  “They want you to go and see them,” he said, chasing up a smile again. “There may be a vacancy coming along. Nothing definite, of course. But this is your opportunity.”

  Irene drew herself up sharply. She was standing quite clear of the wall by now.

  “I don’t want any Rammell vacancy, thank you,” she said. “They can keep it.”

  There was silence. Then Mrs. Privett spoke.

  “That’s no way to speak to your father. And what’s wrong with Rammell’s I should like to know?”

  They were the first words that Mrs. Privett had uttered. And having uttered them, she stood there facing Irene with her mouth drawn in at the corners. The resemblance between mother and daughter was at that moment unusually striking.

  “Don’t be silly, Mum,” Irene answered. “Nothing’s wrong with it. You know I don’t mean that. It’s simply that I don’t want to go there. I’ve told you so all along.”

  “And why not, pray? Isn’t it good enough for you?”

  Mrs. Privett had been a learner herself in Rammell’s when she had first met Mr. Privett. And Rammell’s in consequence was a good deal more than a source of living to her. It was life itself. The polished avenues of the counters were sylvan groves where she and Mr. Privett had discreetly done their courting. The whole of that end of Bond Street still glittered in a mist of girlish and romantic memories. And she wasn’t going to have her daughter s
poiling any of it.

  That was why it was so painful, so unthinkably wounding, when Irene answered back. It showed that suddenly the invisible cord between parent and child had snapped completely.

  “No, it isn’t if you want to know,” was Irene’s reply. “It may be good enough for you. It isn’t good enough for me. I’m not going to be a shopgirl. I’ve told you so before, and that’s flat. I’m going to be ...”

  Irene checked herself. Her lips came together again just the way Mrs. Privett’s had done. She had already said all that she intended to say. Had said too much, in fact.

  But Mrs. Privett was merciless. She was exactly the same height as Irene and now she was clearly sparring for an opening.

  “Going to be what?” she said bitterly. “An actress, I suppose!”

  Irene braced herself. It seemed somehow that this no longer concerned herself alone. The quarrel had ceased to be a mere family row. The smell of persecution was in the air. With martyrdom just round the corner. There in a back kitchen in Kentish Town Irene Privett, aged seventeen, was going to the stake for her convictions. She wished that Mr. Christopher Fry could have been there to see her.

  “Well, what if I am?” she demanded. “Is there anything so very terrible in that?”

  It was Irene’s first open declaration of her intentions. Up to now there had been nothing more serious than school theatricals and the Samuel French acting-editions. But this was the real thing. It was a contest between adults.

  Seventeen, however, is a bad age for challenges. Or for being adult. The glands at that age don’t always work properly. And the nervous system is notoriously unreliable. The mind, noble and sublime, promises one thing—and the body, feeble and treacherous, does something quite different. At that very moment, Irene conscious of being freer and older and more self-possessed than she had ever been before behaved like a small child. She burst into tears. And because she couldn’t stand there like that in front of her parents, she turned her back on them and slammed out of the room banging the door shut after her with the noise of a gun going off.