Four Fires

by Bryce Courtenay

‘Yes, I go to Sydney, za overnight train to get the Farmers’ order. No good.’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry, what about Grace Bros?’ Mr Stan shrugs, ‘So, so, not good not bad. They want cheap, I told them I don’t do rubbish, they want chozzerai they go to Sol Epstein in Sydney, he got plenty rubbish.’ He pauses, then looks up at Mike. ‘So tell me, my boy, Miss Harris, it went okey-dokey?’

  ‘The dinner, yes ...I don’t think she likes our summer range, Mr Stan.’

  Mr Stan looks sternly up at Mike. ‘Oh? So tell me, please?’

  ‘The navy and white, she . . . she thinks it’s a bit dull, the word she used was “uninspired”.’

  Mr Stan doesn’t say anything, he picks up a gold Parker 51 from the desk and, with the cap still on, uses it to tap the top of the desk, looking down again. ‘Yes, I know this, she calls on za telephone this morning.’ There is a long pause when he continues to tap slowly, deliberately as though the pen is somehow counting down, then he looks up at Mike. ‘So, tell me Michael, she’s put in an order, hundred fifty dresses, one day, two days the machinists, maximum, an insult!’

  ‘I tried to influence her, Mr Stan, but I think she’d already made up her mind. The dinner, it turned out a bit of a waste, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Waste? What you mean waste? Did you shtup her?’ Mike has picked up enough Yiddish to know what this means and he blushes violently. But before he can say anything Mr Stan barks, ‘You’re supposed to shtup her, Michael. What are you? You shtup her, then we get a big order!’

  ‘I ...I don’t know what you mean, Mr Stan. Miss Harris, I don’t think she’s like that.’

  ‘Miss Harris is a woman and a buyer!’ Mr Stan shouts,

  ‘You are a boy, a nice healthy boy, take my word, she’s like that! It is you! Are you a faygeleh?’

  Mike’s never heard the word, but it’s immediately clear what Mr Stan means, it’s more Tommy talk. ‘I resent that, Mr Stan,’ Mike protests.

  ‘Resent away, a fact is a fact! If it isn’t a fact, what’s to resent? Now tell me, a coincidence maybe? The three styles she orders, they are za ones you designed.’

  Mike looks surprised. Then says, ‘Mr Stan, I didn’t know that! I promise you I didn’t tell her I’d had anything to do with the range, I’ll swear it on the Bible!’

  ‘The Bible? Your Bible maybe! You think I am stupid? A shmuck, you think Stanislaw Zelinski is meshugge?’

  Mike knows both words well, they’re used all the time by the Jewish workers and mean ‘You think I’m a fool? You think I’m crazy?’

  ‘No, Mr Stan, but I didn’t tell her any of the styles were mine.’

  ‘Deduction! You know deduction? Let me show you deduction! When we are ordering the fabric for the summer range, you tell me you think navy and white is not right. You remember that?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘No, no, let me finish, then you talk. When we cut za patterns you come to me, “Mr Stan, these patterns are not right, they will not sell.” You remember that also? I say to you,

  “Mike, you know from nothing. These patterns they are from Paris, the latest no less, navy blue and white, that is the summer colour!”’ He looks at Mike. ‘I am right so far, yes?’

  ‘Yes, sir, but about the patterns. I pointed out to you the article in the American Vogue which said they’d bombed in New York and the American Midwest. Macys couldn’t sell the Paris look, the style or the navy and white summer colours!’

  ‘Who cares from New York? This is Melbourne, Australia, what do we want to know should happen in New York!’

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what you said then. You also said that Australians would do what they’re told. “They’re shmucks, Mike! Tell them here comes from Paris the latest and they will wear sacks with holes in it,”’ Mike says, using Mr Stan’s precise phrasing.

  Mr Stan ignores this last remark and, raising the pen into the air above his head, continues. ‘Deduction! Then you say to me, “Mr Stan, please let me design some of za range.”’ Mr Stan shrugs, lowering the pen and placing it on the desk. ‘What the hell, I am a nice man, I like to help. The boy he wants to design, be a little kind, what harm can come, two, three dresses in the samples. Buyers always they like to reject something, better not the Paris, better the regular genius.’

  Mr Stan picks the pen up again and points it at Mike’s chest. ‘So you think I am stupid.’ His eyes light up suddenly and he throws down the pen and grabs his head in both hands. ‘Feh! I am stupid! You did shtup her! Then afterwards, when all is lovey-dovey, you ask she should buy anyway your designs!’ He pauses to catch his breath, ‘You know what is a designer in Australia? A designer is a glorified cutter! A nobody!’ He bangs his fist down onto the desk, ‘Now I see, now I see.’ Then he looks up at Mike. ‘What you done, it shouldn’t happen to a dog! You put on za kibosh. I gave you a chance, you have betrayed me. I pay the entertainment, you shtup the buyer, you win, I lose. Go, see the cashier! You are sacked!’

  Mike is both furious and close to tears, he’s trembling but doesn’t know if it’s from fear or anger. He takes a deep breath and tries to speak calmly. ‘Please, Mr Stan, you’ve got it all wrong!’

  Mr Stan half-rises in his chair and points to Mike, ‘No, you got it all wrong! Go!’ he roars.

  And then Mike loses it and blows his top. ‘Mr Stan, your bloody summer range is crook, so are my three designs! I’m not proud of them, you kept bloody fiddling with them, adding a flounce, taking away the high collar, fucking them up! Maybe you shouldn’t have sent me to try to sell the range. I’m not a salesman, you’re the salesman, you and Mr Green! I did my best! You wouldn’t have sent me if you weren’t desperate! If you didn’t know the summer range is a heap of shit! Please, Mr Stan, listen to me, I have a proposition!’ It all comes out half-shouted and fast, one sentence bumping into the next.

  ‘Proposition? My God! You have a proposition? Let me tell you something, young man, I have a proposition! Get out my office, out za factory, out my life!’

  Mike turns and walks to the doorway. He suddenly realises that the factory is silent, all the workers have stopped, everyone has been listening. Mr Stan’s office is right next to the factory floor so he can see what’s going on. Now Mike has the presence of mind to stop and face Mr Stan. ‘Mr Stan, I want you to remember I said I had a proposition, I still have. Take my designs for the winter collection.’

  This piece of blatant and mistimed arrogance is the final straw, Mr Stan goes bright red and Mike thinks he’s going to have a heart attack. ‘Get out! I call za police! Get out! Get out!’

  And so now Mike is out of a job, which he doesn’t really mind because he can sell more than he and Sophie can make of his own designs and he doesn’t need Mr Stan’s fifteen pounds a week. What worries him is his standing in the rag trade. Flinders Lane is a close-knit community and much of the business is done on a handshake. Mr Stan is not only popular but also has an impeccable reputation. In the early days he’d sometimes fall behind, but in the end he always paid what he owed. A quiet word in a supplier’s ear from Mr Stan and Mike is in real trouble.

  Mike returns to Station Street and the Carlton terrace feeling pretty glum. He tells Sophie and Morrie what’s happened. They already know half the story because Sophie was terribly excited about Mike going to dinner with Sally Harris and she’d fussed around him, ironing his white shirt with the starched collar, pressing and brushing his sports jacket several times over and tugging on his tie to get the knot right. She even wanted to polish his shoes but Mike wouldn’t let her and did them himself.

  When he returned early the next morning looking somewhat dishevelled and with a terrible hangover, Sarah soon pried the story out of him and she and Sophie both laughed, giving him a glass of Andrews Liver Salts, and sent him off to work holding his head. Sarah and Sophie retired to the kitchen and made a cup of tea and, without saying anything to each other, raised their cups, Mike wasn’t wha
t Tommy’d said he was. Mike had slept with his first woman and, it seemed, had come out of the experience with flying colours and a French-champagne headache.

  Over the next few days Mike would tell them the story of the Florentino’s dinner, without placing too much emphasis on the later visit to Sally Harris’s flat, which by common consent becomes a subject of some delicacy not to be mentioned other than as a sly glance or a lift of the eyebrows across the kitchen table. Mike ruefully confessed how neatly Sally Harris had trapped him when he’d gone on about navy and white and she’d asked him, knowing of course because she’d already seen it, what the Collection summer colours were. They’d all laughed uproariously at this except Morrie.

  Morrie, listening, clasped his head in his hands. ‘A designer yes, definitely. A salesman?’ He shrugs and spreads his hands, ‘What can I say, mate, couldn’t sell snow to Eskimo.’ Morrie likes to call everyone ‘mate’ now he’s an Australian. Only he still pronounces it ‘mite’.

  Now, after Mike’s been sacked, they listen tremulously to the rest of the story. Mike has a good ear and he tells it pretty well exactly how it occurred. There was silence around the kitchen table when he’d finished.

  Morrie turns to Sophie and says, ‘This is not right, we go see Mr Stan tomorrow. Explain to him.’ Sophie nods in agreement.

  Then Sarah says, ‘No, wait on. Mr Stan is not entirely in the wrong, Mike has to share the blame.’ Mike is indignant. ‘Why?’

  Sarah sighs. ‘Talk about not taking the spoon out of the sink! For a start, you were there to try to sell Miss Harris the Collection range.’

  ‘I didn’t ask for the job, I was given it. I’ve never pretended to be a salesman!’ Mike protests.

  ‘No, but you’re not stupid either. And you accepted the task. You happily went to dinner in a posh restaurant, drank French champagne, all of which, I remind you, Mr Stan was paying for. Then you got tipsy and carried away with your own self-importance, telling Miss Harris all your theories and you forgot about why you were there in the first place. Next thing you’ve condemned the Collection summer range out of hand.’

  ‘Hey, wait a cotton-pickin’ minute!’ Mike yells in protest. ‘Sally, Miss Harris, had already said she didn’t like the Collection range. She’d already decided to only give us a small order. She said it was uninspired.’

  ‘Uninspired? That’s not how I heard you tell it,’ Sarah says. ‘What you said was that she had serious doubts, that the range was uninspired.’

  ‘Well? That’s the same thing!’ Mike turns to Sophie,

  ‘Isn’t it, Soph?’

  ‘Listen to Sarah,’ Morrie says quietly.

  ‘No, it’s not the same thing, Mike! Serious doubts suggests that she wants to have those doubts eliminated. If I recall correctly she said, “Mike, I’m not at all sure, the summer range frankly is uninspired,” or something close to that. She wanted you to tell her why she might be wrong.’

  ‘But I couldn’t do that, the colours and the style hadn’t gone over in America, it had bombed! It was obvious the fashion wasn’t going to work here as well.’

  ‘Oh, who says? You? But you don’t know that will happen here, do you? Mr Stan is right, America isn’t Australia and Michael Maloney is not an internationally recognised arbiter of fashion trends.’

  ‘Whose side are you on anyway?’ Mike bursts out.

  ‘Nobody’s,’ Sarah says. ‘But if Morrie and Sarah are going to see Mr Stan to explain, to clear the decks, then they have to know the whole story so they can be fair. Otherwise Mr Stan is going to make them look like fools.’

  ‘But Mr Stan doesn’t know about the conversation with Miss Harris, I told him that I hadn’t tried to sell my ideas to her and that’s true. For Christ’s sake, I was only talking, just telling her how I felt about design coming from Australians. I didn’t know she was going to make me an offer. I didn’t know she knew about the Sarah Maloney label. I was just, just . . .’

  ‘Putting yourself first and the Collection range last,’ Sarah interrupts.

  ‘Look, I haven’t done anything wrong! I didn’t say a single bad word about Mr Stan or Style & Trend or about the Collection summer range!’

  ‘No, not in so many words, but you didn’t leave Miss Harris in any doubt about what your personal feelings were about the Paris choice of style and colour, did you?’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t being disloyal. I love Mr Stan. He gave me my first break in the business, I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him, would I?’

  ‘No, Mike, I don’t think you would. But you’ve let your ego get the better of you and Mr Stan has every reason to be disappointed in you.’

  Mike looks at each of them in turn, his expression pleading. ‘But Sarah, Morrie, Sophie, don’t you see! I’m right, he’s wrong! Things are changing, look at Norma Tullo and that girl not long out of RMIT, Prue Acton, who’s wowing the buyers. They’re both doing what I’m doing, ignoring Paris and European design and designing for young Australian women! Prue Acton’s hand-painted bikinis are sensational and the Catholic Mothers’ Association has come out against them, which has to be good. She’s using dog collars as belts and making hats in nylon, in hot pinks and oranges that she’s spraypainting.’ ‘Mike, that’s not what we’re talking about, or whether you’re right or wrong about the trends. We’re talking about you and Mr Stan!’ Sarah looks at Mike, ‘It’s about doing the right thing.’ She tilts her head to one side and smiles at her brother. ‘It’s the Maloney way, you know that.’

  Mike makes one final protest. ‘But I have! I have done the right thing. I offered my designs to Mr Stan. Sally Harris offered me a chance to get my designs into their shops, to finance a winter collection. I could have just said thank you very much and resigned from Style & Trend and next thing they know I’m in bed with Country Stores!’

  ‘I think you are already in bed with Country Stores,’ Morrie chuckles in a clumsy attempt to calm the atmosphere.

  But the joke is ignored by Mike, though Sarah smiles in recognition. She sighs, ‘You don’t offer your designs shouting at him from the door, it was arrogant. No wonder he went berserko-kaperko! The shammes, the boy he employed to drown rats and clean the dunny and who has barely completed his training as a cutter, now offers him the exclusive use of his designs for his winter collection. Don’t you think that’s just a little bit cheeky?’

  ‘How else could I have done it? I didn’t mean to shout at him like that. I didn’t know he was going to sack me, did I? I thought I could tell him about the Country Stores’offer and then say, why not him and me do the winter range?’

  ‘Mike, even now you’re not being completely honest, are you?’ ‘What now?’

  ‘Well, the offer from Sally Harris means you’d get your collection into fifteen shops, of which only two are in the city, one here in Melbourne, the other in Brisbane. If Mr Stan accepted your winter range, you’d be selling to the retail trade all over Australia. It would be by far the better deal for a young designer wanting to earn himself a reputation in a hurry.’ Sarah, as usual, has read Mike’s mind and Mike is too stunned to reply. She’s done it to us all our lives and it can be bloody annoying if you’re on the receiving end.

  Sarah then says, ‘We may still be able to get him to look at your designs, Mike. If Morrie and Sophie see him and explain the whole thing and then you go in and apologise to Mr Stan.’ ‘Apologise?’

  ‘C’mon, Mike, you have to, then maybe he’ll be receptive, or at least hear you out.’

  Morrie calls Mr Stan from the corner telephone booth; they’ve applied for a phone, but the waiting list is still six months long and even then the PMG won’t guarantee it. Mr Stan agrees to see him and Sophie. Morrie misses out on the morning lectures to go and reports back lunchtime that Mr Stan has agreed to see Mike, but that he hasn’t done so with a lot of good grace and during their conversation has never once referred to Mike by name but instead
has called him ‘the regular genius’, which in Yiddish is a disparaging way of referring to someone.

  ‘Mike you have to tell Mr Stan everything, I mean about the conversation at Florentino’s with Miss Harris. Don’t leave anything out, don’t try to make excuses for yourself, come clean, okay?’

  ‘Sarah, you don’t know Mr Stan, he’ll slaughterate me.’

  ‘That’s okay, he’s already sacked you, the worst that can happen is that he can say no to using your designs for his winter collection. You’ve still got Miss Harris up your sleeve and anyway, having been straight with him, Mr Stan won’t be able to badmouth you to the suppliers.’

  Mike agrees to do his best. ‘But I’m not eating humble pie.’

  Sophie kisses him, ‘Sometimes this pie, it can be healthy to eat, to make you strong, Mikey darlink.’ Sophie loves Mike and he knows she’s always on his side.

  Mike tells Mr Stan everything, the whole Florentinodinner conversation with Sally Harris. Mr Stan hears him out and turns him down flat.

  Nor does he offer him his job back, not that Mike would have accepted it unless his designs were involved and Mr Stan has never taken him seriously as a designer. As Mr Stan had earlier said to him, designers are regarded in the local rag trade as glorified cutters. A designer is only a somebody if he lives in Paris, Milan or London. In Australia, the major credit for the Gown of the Year always goes to the owner, never to the designer, who will get about the same mention in Australian Fashion News as the model, machinist and the person who did the beadwork or the hand-finishing. So Mike’s proposition that he design a range of Australian-inspired fashions doesn’t exactly make Mr Stan jump up and down. In fact, to tell you the truth, he is less than polite about the concept.

  ‘So let me see, the regular genius makes some designs. Colours the Australian land, wattle flowers, the budgies . . .’

  ‘Rosellas,’ Mike corrects.

  ‘Leafs from the gum tree! Let me tell you something for nothing, Mr Regular Genius. We got such a wattle tree in za garden, every year you should clean up the mess! If you ask people what does a parrot, they tell you it shits the bottom the cage. And leafs? The gum leafs, you got a cold you rub za oil on your chest. From the landscape you want to know what you got? You got brown, you got bulldust, you got ashes! From this you want I should make dresses!’