by R. N. Morris
It was only when he was out of sight of Blackley that Arbuthnot paused to take his bearings. He had come out of the Grand Dome into the Frills and Fripperies department, in the eastern wing of the store. Or was it the western?
Arbuthnot caught the attention of Mr Dresden, an old commissionaire who had been with the store since the beginning. Indeed, his presence was so permanent that it seemed probable his spectre would walk the floors of Blackley’s for all eternity. ‘I say, Mr Dresden, sir. Is this the right side for the Abingdon Road exit?’
‘You’re on the wrong shide here, shonny,’ said Mr Dresden, his dentures whistling sibilantly. ‘You want the other shide of the Grand Dome.’
The commissionaire moved on, giving Arbuthnot no opportunity to explain that he could not possibly go back into the Grand Dome and risk being seen by Mr Blackley.
Arbuthnot hurried on through Boots, Shoes and Waterproof Articles into Locks, Clocks and Mechanical Contrivances.
The arrangement of departments in Blackley’s might have appeared curious at times, or even random. But there was always some subtle logic behind the juxtapositions.
To take Arbuthnot’s journey so far as an example: the Costumes Salon in the Grand Dome naturally led on to Frills and Fripperies. Mr Blackley’s instinctive understanding of the female psyche told him that any woman who had indulged her passion for the Fashionable would before long seek to redress the balance by striving towards the Practical – without, however, going too far in that direction. Hence his placement of Boots, Shoes and Waterproof Articles nearby, a department in which the Fashionable and the Practical were harmoniously combined.
Waterproof Articles keep out the rain; Locks keep out unwanted intruders. Thus, one form of protection leads to another. Put so crudely, the connection may seem contrived. But in fact it revealed a sophisticated grasp of psychology. If the relationship between one department and the next was not consciously perceived, so much the better. The subconscious association was always felt. An almost dreamlike state of existence was conjured up. And as the Viennese doctors will tell you, the wellspring of dreams is wish-fulfilment.
And so the visitor to Blackley’s found herself not in a shop, but in a dream and, more precisely, in the kind of dream where every desire is capable of satisfaction. She only had to reach out and . . . purchase.
For a moment, Arbuthnot, too, felt like a figure in a dream, though in his case it was a nightmare. Surrounded by a perplexing assortment of locks, he suddenly found himself incapable of movement. It was as if the idea of imprisonment in the department was so strong that he himself was fixed in place. His sense of the urgency of his mission did not diminish. On the contrary, he felt it all the more intensely. And the more intensely he felt it, the more powerfully was he immobilized.
‘What do you want?’ The voice was charged with antagonism and suspicion, which was not unusual among Arbuthnot’s colleagues. In fact, it was Spiggott, one of the sales assistants for this department, who made the enquiry.
‘I want to get out of here.’
‘Then go. I am not detaining you.’
‘Yes, I shall. Just as soon as I . . .’
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Disgust rather than concern showed on Spiggott’s face.
‘I can’t . . . move my feet!’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you can. I saw you run out of the Costumes Salon a minute ago.’ Spiggott looked past Arbuthnot back into the Grand Dome where the fashion show was still in progress.
‘This is terrible,’ protested Arbuthnot. ‘Believe me when I say that I am trying with all my strength to move my feet.’
‘Well, you can’t stay here. You’ll get us both into trouble.’
‘You don’t understand! I don’t want to stay here! Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to leave! I have been charged with an urgent commission by Mr Blackley himself! I must not delay!’
At that moment, quite unexpectedly, a customer made his presence felt. It was impossible to say if he had been there all the time, unobserved by the two young men, or if he had just stepped into the department of Locks, Clocks and Mechanical Contrivances. The former seemed improbable because he was a man of considerable bulk, dressed in a voluminous Inverness cape – a veritable mountain of tweed. And yet, he must have been there for some time, for he demonstrated a complete understanding of Arbuthnot’s predicament.
The man, who was wearing a monocle, stared fixedly into Arbuthnot’s eyes, raised his right hand and moved it in front of Arbuthnot’s face in a mysterious manner. At the same time he murmured something softly to Arbuthnot.
To his amazement, Arbuthnot felt himself instantly released. He was aware that the stranger had spoken to him, but had no memory of what he had said. And now he was gone, as suddenly and inexplicably as he had arrived.
‘How strange,’ said Spiggott. But then he began to berate Arbuthnot. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, he would have bought something. You’d better go before you scare away any more of my customers.’ But there was no conviction in his complaint.
Even so, Arbuthnot needed no further encouragement to be on his way. He put his head down and ran through the shrieks and howls of the Menagerie into the stockroom at the back of the store. From here, he could exit to the street via the delivery entrance.
A warehouseman in a brown coat was sweeping the floor, stirring the scents of cardboard and boxwood into the air. He stopped to light a cigarette, watching Arbuthnot’s progress with a dark, envious glare. But what was there to envy about Arbuthnot? Only his urgent sense of purpose, perhaps.
The Locked Door
Arbuthnot shot out on to the street like a pea expelled from a peashooter.
The air had a resentful edge to it, as if to say he had no business being at liberty. But he was not at liberty. He had no time to appreciate the strange, unearned licence of being out of the store during trading hours. He must put his head down and hurry.
But he was only human. To expect him not to lift his head and take in his surroundings, not to breathe deeply of that air, however sharp, however chill, not to be diverted by the passing of a pretty face, or the gleam and growl of a polished motor car, was to expect too much.
Naturally he did not allow such distractions to waylay him from his course, but he did allow a certain jauntiness to enter his step. He did not go so far as to attempt a whistle. Somehow he could not quite shake himself free of the impression that Mr Blackley was watching him. Or if not Mr Blackley himself, then his spies. Arbuthnot imagined that Mr Blackley must have any number of spies. He glanced nervously at the shops on the opposite terrace, then up at the windows of the apartments above them. No sign of anyone lurking, but still, you could never be too careful.
Whistling during working hours was forbidden under Mr Blackley’s rules. For a young man of ambition such as Arbuthnot, it was not just the sixpence fine that had to be borne in mind; more serious was the black mark against his name. These things were noted down, he knew. If he hoped to progress, it was important to keep a clean sheet.
The turning into Caper Street – the street of his destination – was opposite a public house. For a moment, Arbuthnot was tempted to stop off there, for a quick dose of Dutch courage. But then the absurdity and horror of what he had just contemplated struck home. He had rigorously been on his guard against whistling in the street, and yet had come this close to casually wandering into a public house for a furtive snifter. It was not that Arbuthnot was a toper, far from it. The example of his father had been enough to immunize him against that particular vice.
He and his six siblings had grown up with the old man’s drunken rages. Booze made him a fighter, but he was too much of a coward to take on any of his cronies at the Dog and Whistle. He’d stagger home and pick a fight with Ma, pulling her from the bed by her hair. She always took her beatings stoically, silently. It was Pa’s snarling curses that would draw them from their beds, not any sound from Ma. They cowered behind the washing that Ma took in, taking t
heir lead from her, keeping mum, mute witnesses to the violence. Was that where the expression came from?
Then came the day when young Arbuthnot could keep mum no longer. He rushed out from behind a hanging sheet and threw himself at his father. The state Pa was in, together with the element of surprise, worked in Arbuthnot’s favour. It was shockingly easy to overpower the old man. And in that moment, the moment of his father’s befuddled toppling, young Arbuthnot grasped the full extent of the degradation and shame that alcohol wrought. A grown man knocked off his feet by a scrawny twelve-year-old kid.
His father never hit Ma again. At least not in front of the children.
And so Arbuthnot had never felt the allure of the public house. Not until this day. To have felt the pull now frightened him. So he was a chip off the old block, after all? Was his father’s weakness at last asserting itself in him?
The north side of Caper Street was a row of three-storey Georgian houses. The ground storey was neatly rendered in cream-coloured stucco, with rather grand arched windows in the piano nobile above, and plainer windows on the top floor. The row presented a unified facade of primness and propriety. And yet Arbuthnot felt the thrill of transgression as he approached number seven, the house where the mannequins lodged. Under normal circumstances the mannequin house, as it was known, was barred to male employees – to all except M. Hugo and Mr Blackley, that is. This had naturally led to much speculation as to what went on behind its door. Some even referred to it as ‘Blackley’s harem’, with M. Hugo in the role of eunuch, no doubt. Now, here was Arbuthnot, about to cross the threshold and discover the secrets of this forbidden precinct.
The door was opened by a woman who was evidently the housekeeper. She was dressed in a black skirt and high-necked white blouse. Her tightly bundled black hair was streaked with white. Arbuthnot guessed she was aged somewhere in her forties but had kept herself well. Her figure was stocky: muscular rather than corpulent. Her arms and upper body appeared fashioned by hard work and hefting. Her complexion was clean and fresh, as if she had been recently polished; but as Arbuthnot peered into her face, he noticed a lattice of fine lines, a palimpsest of woe beneath the untroubled surface.
There was the smell of cleaning fluids about her. She regarded Arbuthnot with a calm curiosity that was perhaps a little too controlled and calculated. For some reason, she reminded him of the Mother Superior of a particularly austere order of nuns.
Arbuthnot was reassured by the thought that she did not appear to be a woman who would stand for any nonsense. Whatever rumours about the mannequin house he might have heard were suddenly and conclusively dispelled. ‘Miss Mortimer? My name is Arbuthnot. Mr Blackley sent me.’
The housekeeper began to brush invisible grains of dust from the sleeve of her blouse. Arbuthnot suppressed a smile. She was almost like a bird preening itself. Suddenly her eyes narrowed as if she was angry that he’d seen her moment of weakness. Her expression became suspicious. ‘Mr Blackley, you say?’ Her voice was loud, almost a shout.
Arbuthnot thought she was probably a little deaf and raised his own voice to answer her: ‘Yes.’
‘Mr Blackley usually comes himself. He doesn’t like the men to know where the mannequins live.’
‘He couldn’t come.’ He spoke slowly, making allowance for her presumed deafness. ‘He’s with an important customer. Obviously he felt that he could trust me, otherwise he would not have chosen me for the errand.’
Miss Mortimer looked Arbuthnot up and down before glancing past him down the short street. ‘You’d better come in.’
As the door was closed behind him, Arbuthnot breathed in deeply as if he expected to detect strange, intoxicating scents in the air. Instead there was just the homely smell of wood polish.
The hall itself was narrow. A bold, floral wallpaper, which bore the influence of William Morris, gave the impression of entering a kind of bower, faintly medieval and altogether fantastical. A rich carpet of Turkish design ran over the floorboards.
A mirror was placed just inside the door, presumably for the girls to check their appearance as they left for work each morning. Beyond that on the wall hung a couple of framed prints showing a variety of Parisian scenes rendered in what Arbuthnot presumed to be a modern style. A third picture was propped up against the seat back of a chair which partially obstructed the hallway. A bent nail projected from the wall ready to receive it. A hammer lay on the chair seat.
Miss Mortimer pushed the seat out of the way, causing the picture to fall over on to its face. There was a sharp crack as the glass hit the hammer head. When Miss Mortimer righted the picture, a jagged line of fissure ran across one corner. ‘Now look what you’ve made me do! Mr Blackley will be furious. I was to hang these up today. I shall have to get the glass replaced now.’
‘I’m sorry but I hardly think . . .’
‘What’s this all about?’ demanded Miss Mortimer. Her voice was still loud and abrupt.
More than a little deaf, thought Arbuthnot. ‘He’s sent me to find out what’s happened to Miss Amélie. She didn’t appear for Lady Ascot’s costume showing.’
‘I’m sure I don’t know where she is.’ Miss Mortimer frowned as she considered the broken picture glass. She propped the damaged picture against the back of the chair again and turned her frown on Arbuthnot.
‘Perhaps she’s unwell. Did you see her at breakfast this morning? Did she not leave with the other mannequins?’
‘I cannot be expected to keep tabs on them all.’
‘Mr Blackley has asked me to see if Miss Amélie is in her room. He wishes me to convey his solicitude to her.’
‘I do not believe she is there,’ pronounced Miss Mortimer with an air of finality.
‘He was very precise in his instructions. I was to knock on her door and deliver a message to her.’
‘You may give me the message,’ said Miss Mortimer. ‘I will see that she gets it.’
‘It is a verbal message,’ said Arbuthnot.
‘Then you may tell it to me.’
Arbuthnot was firm. ‘It is for Miss Amélie’s ears only.’
Something like a smile twitched on Miss Mortimer’s pinched lips. ‘She’s not in her room, I tell you.’
‘At any rate, I must try her door.’ Arbuthnot drew himself up self-righteously. ‘That is what Mr Blackley instructed me to do.’
With an impatient nod of her head, Miss Mortimer turned to lead him into the house. ‘Be careful,’ she snapped over her shoulder. ‘I don’t want you doing any more damage.’
As he progressed deeper into the bower-like hallway, the sense that he was penetrating a forbidden interior increased. And yet there was nothing so extraordinary about his surroundings. Looking in on the drawing room through a half-open door, Arbuthnot saw that it was furnished in the manner of a respectable middle-class home, more Basingstoke than Baghdad. A pair of enormous Chinese-looking vases was the only hint of the Orient that he could detect. And there was something familiar, as well as homely, about the comfortable furnishings. Of course, he realized – everything had come from Blackley’s.
He had to admit that the place did not exhibit the decadent luxuriousness that he had been imagining. However, it certainly provided a different level of comfort to the Spartan unisex dormitories where the rest of the live-in employees were obliged to sleep. He wondered if the mannequins were also forced to vacate their rooms every Sunday, eating solitary meals in cheap restaurants to pass the time. Somehow he doubted it.
Miss Mortimer stopped at a door on the first floor. Before Arbuthnot could prevent her she knocked and called out: ‘Amélie? Are you there?’
‘Mr Blackley specifically directed that I should knock on her door,’ protested Arbuthnot.
The housekeeper gave a disdainful snort. Even so, she stood aside. Like all of Blackley’s employees, it seemed she had learnt the importance of obeying the letter as well as the spirit of his law.
Arbuthnot rapped briskly. ‘Miss Amélie?’ He pressed his ear t
o the door. And pulled it away instantly as a piercing scream sounded from within.
‘What the devil?’ Arbuthnot’s eyes widened with horror. He tried the handle and pushed his shoulder into the door. It didn’t budge.
He turned to Miss Mortimer. ‘Do you have a key?’ The housekeeper appeared to be in a state of shock. No doubt it was the effect of the scream, thought Arbuthnot. He had never heard anything like it, except perhaps in his dreams. To describe it as inhuman would not have been an exaggeration. ‘I say, Miss Mortimer,’ he prompted.
She looked at him as if she had no idea who he was or how he came to be there. ‘Did you hear that?’ Her voice was a terrified whisper.
‘Yes.’
‘What was it?’
‘We must open the door to find out. I assume you have keys to all the rooms?’
From beneath her apron, Miss Mortimer produced an enormous bunch of keys on a long chain. She selected one and inserted it into the lock, or at least tried to. After a series of frustrated attempts, she stood up straight and turned to Arbuthnot. The door remained closed. ‘There appears to be something blocking it.’
Arbuthnot put his eye to the keyhole. ‘There’s another key in the lock. On the other side.’
‘The silly girl has locked herself into the room.’
Arbuthnot knocked on the door again. The fearful screaming had stopped, but he could hear movement from within. ‘Miss Amélie, are you all right? I have a message for you from Mr Blackley. If you will only open the door.’
‘Amélie! Open this door right now!’ Miss Mortimer seemed to be restored to her former self. And yet there was something quivering and uncertain beneath her composure.
‘Perhaps she cannot,’ suggested Arbuthnot. ‘She may be incapacitated in some way.’
The horrible screaming started again.
‘My God, what is the matter with her?’