But he had left it too late to get in counter-offers. He had already given notice. And if he left the stuff there, he would have to go on paying rent.
In the end, the little man tilted back his bowler and agreed on forty-two-ten if the china and glass were thrown in as well. And as a kind of makeweight he offered to deliver the bits and pieces to Artillery Mansions free of charge next time he was sending over in that direction.
Not that Mr. Bloot was entirely downcast. For with the quixotic generosity which was so peculiarly a part of her nature, Hetty had relented over the budgies. They could come with him, she agreed. There were terms, of course. She still wouldn’t have them actually in the flat. But they could go in the little, cupboardlike room beyond the kitchen, the one that had been a coal cellar before the gas fires had been fitted.
It had brought a tear into Mr. Bloot’s eye when she told him. He saw immediately how foolish—unfaithful almost—he had been to allow himself to worry when he was dealing with anyone as kind and loving as Hetty.
But he couldn’t simply shove the birds in there on the floor along with the empty bottles and the carpet-sweeper. He would have to put up some strong hooks for the cages. And make sure that the shelving was safe, because, even though the budgies were mere pigmies, their food weighed a terrible lot. The last thing he wanted was for them to see their lunch, tea and dinner go crashing to the floor while they, caged and helpless, were powerless even to raise the alarm.
Besides, he knew from experience how difficult it was to sweep up millet seed. He didn’t want Hetty to have any cause for complaint. Least of all about mice.
2
Originally, it had been Mr. Privett’s idea that the staff should give Mr. Bloot a wedding-present. But it caught on so fast that it was soon everybody’s idea. There was a house rule that Mr. Preece had to give his permission before the collection box could actually go round. But naturally in a case like this Mr. Preece raised no objection. He even said that he thought that some of the directors might like to give a little something themselves. And it was the same everywhere. There wasn’t a soul in the store who did not know Mr. Bloot. He was practically part of the fixtures. The only odd thing was that he should be getting married. In its way it was as astonishing as if one of the caryatids on the Bond Street frontage had suddenly announced that she was going to have a baby.
Odd or not, the money certainly flowed in. When Mr. Chilvers in Accounts came to empty the boxes and add in the directors’ personal donations, the total stood at twenty-eight-ten already. And that wasn’t counting the fifty pounds—minus P.A.Y.E. of course—that the Board voted.
Because of the Board’s generosity towards him, Mr. Bloot was naturally in a very bland and complacent frame of mind. He had known about the collection, of course. But he hadn’t known how much. And, when he heard, he gave a great sigh. A sigh of sheer happiness. Life, after all, had not always been kind to him. He had known what it was to walk down long avenues of steadily darkening depression. And now, suddenly, everything was radiant again.
“Ah suppose Ah cahn’t be such a bad sorter chap affter all,” he confided in Mr. Privett. “Or they’d neverer done it, would they?”
“Well, that’s how much it is,” Mr. Privett told him. “So you’d better make up your mind, and tell me what you’d like.”
For a moment Mr. Bloot’s face clouded over. All decisions presented difficulties. It was the making-up-his-mind part that he found so trying. And obviously this decision was a vital one. No one had ever before suggested giving him a great enormous present like this.
“Ah’ll have to think,” he said cautiously. “That’s what Ah’ll have to do. Ah’ll have to think.”
“There isn’t much time,” Mr. Privett warned him. “Only another week.”
But Mr. Bloot was in no mood to be rushed.
“Ah know. Ah know,” was all he said.
He took out his watch while he was speaking and glanced down at it. The watch, which was rather thick and slightly lemon-coloured round the rim, showed 10.32. Whereas the restaurant clock plainly showed 11.16. Mr. Bloot shook the watch for a moment and began playing with the winding key. But there was nothing wrong with the winder: he knew that. It was simply that the watch itself was old. Old. And overworked. And exhausted. He began shaking it again.
Then his face cleared.
“Woterbouter watch?” he asked eagerly. “Er watchun chain. Something good. Er reel gole watch.”
Mr. Privett hesitated.
“Don’t you think that perhaps it ought to be something for both of you?” he asked cautiously. “Cutlery, for instance.”
Mr. Bloot looked astonished.
“Wot would ’etty want with cutlery?” he asked. “She’s gotter ’ole canteen of it.”
“I was only suggesting cutlery,” Mr. Privett explained. “Perhaps ...”
But Mr. Bloot shook his head.
“It’s no use,” he said. “She’s got everything. Everything er woman could want.”
Mr. Privett was silent for a moment.
“Why not ask her?” he inquired. “There may be just some little thing. Something she’s never actually got round to.”
The smile had gone entirely from Mr. Bloot’s face by now. But so had the anxious look.
“Ah see watcher mean,” he said. “Something personal perhaps. Joolery, for instance.”
And by next morning Mr. Bloot had the answer all ready. For again Hetty had shown the warm side of her nature. It was not anything for herself that she had chosen. It was something for both of them. She had decided on a television set.
“Only do be careful,” she had warned him. “Don’t let them give you one without doors. They look terrible. And make sure it’s walnut, not mahogany. I can’t bear the dark kind.”
Mr. Bloot would have liked Hetty herself to come along and choose it. But with the shop on her hands, there was no chance of that. And, finally, he went down himself to Rammell’s Radio Salon. It was lunch-time. And he had Mr. Privett with him. But because he hadn’t given any warning, Mr. Gore, the real electronics chief, was out. Mr. Asplett, his second in command, was there. Programmes rather than engineering was Mr. Asplett’s forte. And naturally with Mr. Bloot for audience he showed off everything he knew. He went reeling through lists of celebrities and famous artists of whom Mr. Bloot had never heard. And he described sporting events—ice hockey, table tennis, badminton, swimming galas and the rest—that Mr. Bloot had never thought of attending. The TV had them all, Mr. Asplett assured him, as well as guessing games and classical plays and weather reports and visits to big engineering works and Church Services and political discussions and variety programmes from Forces’ canteens.
Mr. Bloot listened in amazement. And he suddenly realized how right his clever Hetty had been to ask for television instead of joolery. Without television, a man was only half-alive, it seemed.
In the end, it was a light walnut table model, so highly polished that the case might have been made of satin, that he selected. It had white Bakelite knobs with a narrow gold ring round them that he felt sure that Hetty would appreciate. But what really decided him was the picture in the glass front. Instead of being empty and staring like the rest of them there was a view of a cathedral or something pasted into the frame. It was almost as though the thing had somehow started working before the man had even connected it and switched it on.
Mr. Bloot was excited all day thinking about the television set. And, even though Hetty had begged to be left alone so that she could do what she referred to mysteriously as getting herself ready, he went across that same evening to tell her all about it.
“It’s worlnut just like you said,” he began breathlessly. “And it gets table tennis and visits to engineering works and swimming galas and weather reports and everything. It’s mahrvellous. That’s what it is. Mahrvellous. Mr. Asplett says so. He looks in every night. Every single night.”
“What’s it called?” Hetty asked.
Mr. Bloo
t looked up in astonishment.
“Television,” he told her.
“No, silly. The make.”
Mr. Bloot paused.
“Ah don’t rightly remember,” he had to confess.
“Has it got a guarantee?” Hetty demanded
“Oh, yurss,” he replied. “It’s gotter guarantee. If anything goes wrong ...”
“It will,” Hetty interrupted him.
The remark seemed to Mr. Bloot to be querulous and in bad taste. But it only showed how much on edge she must be.
“If anythink goes wrong,” he repeated, “we’ll ’avver nother one ’ere the same day. Ah give you mah word.”
“Oh, it’s not that,” Hetty answered. “It’s just that I couldn’t bear to think of you being diddled.”
Mr. Bloot was aghast. He saw the golden gates that were ajar already about to close on him again. Visits to big engineering works had sounded very interesting.
“Give me the pictures every time,” Hetty went on. “I like to go out to enjoy myself.”
Mr. Bloot’s voice began to tremble.
“Then ... then why did you ask me to buy it for you?”
Hetty got up and came over to him.
“Because we’d look such fools not having one,” she said. “It doesn’t follow you’ve got to use it. Besides, I shall have you, shan’t I? There won’t be time for anything once we’ve got each other.”
And before Mr. Bloot could uncross his legs she had sat herself upon his lap.
“Aaah!” he exclaimed in a gasp in which pain and delight were mingled. “That’s more lahk it. That’s more mah girlie.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
1
The Staff Ball was really on them at last. And there is nothing like a Staff Ball for upsetting the normal smoothness of life. By six-thirty that evening some four hundred and fifty homes in all parts of London were seriously affected. There was a tense, keyed-up, D-day sort of atmosphere in every one of them.
Not that Rammell’s could be blamed for that. Most marriages proceed smoothly from one week’s end to another until they are put to the supreme test of husband and wife going out together. It is the common bedroom, the shared dressing-room, that is at the root of the trouble. By the time they are ready to set out for the evening, most wives have the feeling that they have been responsible for dressing two entirely different people.
For a start, things weren’t going any too well inside the Rammell household. Tempers were badly frayed already, in fact. That was because Mrs. Rammell had a headache and didn’t want to go to the dance at all. It had been like that last year, Mr. Rammell reminded her. And, in the end, in sheer exasperation he mixed her up one of his own magic draughts—two aspirins in a half a tumbler of warm liver salts—and told her brutally to drink it. As he did so, he let slip the remark that for once she knew how he felt when she had one of her blasted musical evenings. That was why the Rammells weren’t even speaking to each other when they set out.
And it didn’t help to raise their spirits that Tony was with them. He had made a mix-up with the dates. And right up until he had left the office he had imagined that he was going to spend the evening at Covent Garden. In consequence, he was silent and sulky.
Nor, for that matter, were Mr. Preece’s arrangements any smoother. Going out anywhere was always an ordeal for the Preeces. That was because Mrs. Preece disliked setting out alone. Mr. Preece, therefore, always had to make the effort of slipping down to Carshalton by an early train, and then returning to town by a slightly later one.
He had made the effort today. And now he was sorry. Sorry that he hadn’t simply gone along to the Staff Dance alone and told Mrs. Preece about it afterwards. It was his daughter, Julia, who had ruined things. A large, athletic girl, with a fondness for horses, she had been promised the dance for a special treat. But Mrs. Preece had insisted that first she must do something about her hair. She seemed to have more hair than most girls. And there was an untameable healthiness about it which Mrs. Preece did not quite approve. What might have been all right with the wind rushing through it on the Downs would clearly have been unthinkable on the dance floor. Mrs. Preece and daughter had therefore spent nearly two hours at Isobel’s Beauty Parlour in the High Street while the assistant snicked away and thinned it out and finally waved and set it.
Mrs. Preece had been really quite delighted with the result. But she had been reckoning without Julia’s highly developed open-air talents. It had rained that same afternoon. And Julia had gone out without a hat. There was now nothing left but dense dark fuzz. Miss Preece looked like a princess from one of the Solomon Islands. She carried with her a strong hint of hibiscus and roasted missionary.
In consequence, Mr. Preece who hadn’t been late for anything in years, kept walking up and down the hall. He went from the front door to the wall-bracket barometer and back again, click-clicking with his tongue as he went, and reminding his wife that they had missed the 8.2 already, and the way things were going looked like missing the 8.17 as well. But Mr. Preece was not thinking of himself. He was thinking of Mr. Rammell. “Can’t turn up after Mr. Rammell,” he was saying. “Look very bad.”
And at that moment Mr. Rammell was thinking of Mr. Preece. Thinking of Mr. Preece and talking to Mrs. Rammell. “Wear whatever you like,” he had just said to her. “Nobody’ll notice. Only hurry. There’s Preece coming right up from Woking or somewhere. Look all wrong if the Preeces get there first.”
Things were bad, too, in Sloane Square where Marcia lived. She was tired already. She had been on her feet all day showing off what was left of the Rammell Autumn Collection. The one thing that she wanted was to be left alone. In any case, she hated these staff dances more than anything else in the whole world. Unless you were careful, you found yourself becoming familiar with all the wrong people. Awful young men from Hardware or Provisions cut in during the Excuse-me dances, and moved off jubilantly, leaving a wake of violet haircream and cheap shaving soap behind them.
Of course, if Mr. Bulping had been available there would have been no problem. Any girl can relax if she has arrived in a Bentley. But Mr. Bulping was not available. Very much the reverse, in fact. It was his son’s twenty-first birthday. And he had explained—rather callously, Marcia thought—that he had to be present for appearance’s sake.
That was why Marcia had accepted Mr. Preece’s invitation to sit at his table. It would scarcely be exciting. But it would at least be respectable. And remembering the company, Marcia decided on her beige dress. The beige dress. And her moonstones. It promised to be a pretty pale colourless kind of evening. And Marcia decided to fit in perfectly.
She had just finished dressing when the telephone rang. It was Mr. Bulping. He sounded large. Male. And uninhibited.
“How’s my little girlie?” he asked.
“I ... I thought you were in Wolverhampton,” she told him.
“Not me when my little girlie’s in London,” he answered.
“But ... but what about your son?” Marcia said.
She could have bitten out her tongue as soon as she said it. The last thing on earth she wanted was to remind Mr. Bulping of his first marriage. It was the sort of unfeeling remark that she had always been very careful to avoid.
Mr. Bulping, however, did not seem to be put out.
“Didn’t need me,” he told her. “Takes his mother’s side in all this. That’s why I’m here. Let’s make a night of it. Coming round straightaway.”
And before Marcia could explain, Mr. Bulping had rung off.
There was, however, one person who was thoroughly looking forward to the whole evening. That was Hetty. She didn’t mind what dance it was so long as the floor was all right and the band leader really knew his stuff. There was, indeed, in Hetty a quality of enthusiasm, a sheer appetite for enjoyment, that Mr. Bloot found vaguely disquieting. He had never known anyone get so much pleasure out of life. And he kept telling himself that he must not disappoint her. Nevertheless, the prospect sometim
es scared him. Because the more he saw of it the more he realized that being engaged to Hetty looked like being a very expensive business.
The ring alone had nearly ruined him. Eighteen pounds ten it had cost. The one disappointing thing was that the diamond solitaire still looked small on Hetty’s hand. That was because she had a large hand. And because she couldn’t bring herself to discard the other rings that she always wore. These were enormous. Not necessarily valuable. Just enormous. The new engagement ring could do no more than peep coyly through the great panes of amethyst, garnet, topaz and sheer ordinary coloured glass.
And it wasn’t the ring alone that made him uneasy. This evening itself was going to set him back quite a bit. The tickets alone were twelve-and-six each. And that would be only the beginning of things. Because somehow or other he couldn’t see Hetty keeping up her magnificent high spirits for the whole evening on the tall jugs full of orangeade and lemon that the management provided. Before he was through there would be Graves or Sauterne as well. Not to mention gins and tonic and probably whiskies and Baby Pollies, too.
Not that there was anything that he could do about it. He had invited her. And it was up to him to make a go of it. Vital, in fact. For yesterday evening, all because of one thoughtless remark, he had very nearly lost her.
It was over at her flat that it had all happened. She had been showing him her new evening-dress. Quite a striking looking model in orange-coloured satin, with a big feather flower on one hip. And Mr. Bloot knew at once that she would look magnificent in it. Even a little too magnificent. Opulent. Also a shade on the undemure side. Even though she hadn’t actually got it on he could guess how much bosom would be left showing. And he very diffidently suggested that she should wear a little lace hankie or something, in front.
That was what had upset her. She had simply flung the dress down and told him that, so far as she was concerned, he needn’t bother his head about her any longer because her mind was quite made up, thank you. To prove it, she had wrenched off the diamond solitaire that he had given her.
Bond Street Story Page 25