Of course that made Bobbie feel better at once. And she could see, too, that Mr Singh’s humorous attitude towards office life was bound to be most reassuring when she was seated in front of him, or Mrs O’Brien, taking dictation.
Except, as she subsequently discovered in the days that followed, there was no dictation; and certainly not on a daily basis. The wholly wholesome Holy Bible Company was London based, but essentially non-active.
The staff, once again consisting of three, including Bobbie, dutifully arrived every morning, hung up their overcoats, sat down in their various offices – large, spacious and beautifully furnished – and then waited to see whether any persons who, having received a Holy Bible (sold to them by one of a huge army of salesmen making their slow way around the country), might have found it wanting and, spurning the truths inherent in the sacred volume, sent it back.
It had to be said in praise of the continuing popularity of the Holy Book that very few people did seem to find it lacking. Or as Mr Singh once remarked, a little wryly, to Bobbie, ‘I don’t think they all get very, very far with it, Miss Murray. Certain it is, they do not manage to read it all at one sitting.’
The quiet tenor of their office lives meant that Mr Singh, Mrs O’Brien and Bobbie all became great friends. Such friends that very soon Bobbie found that she positively looked forward to coming to the office in the morning, and started to dread the day when Mrs Yates might recover from her appendicitis.
Part of the joy of the life at the Holy Bible Company was that at coffee, lunch, or teatime they all talked together so amicably. In the mornings, over chicory coffee and small finger-shaped biscuits, they talked about their families, their children, their pets – if any – and Mr Singh and Mrs O’Brien sometimes brought in snaps to show Bobbie. At lunchtime they brought out their newspapers and ate in steady silence before once again resuming the only slightly accelerated pace of office life. At teatime, once the newspapers had been duly digested over lunch, their conversations centred around such things as fashion, and the King and Queen.
Once or twice, but only during office hours, they might actually talk about a Holy Bible that had been returned by some unhappy recipient who had usually found it to long and the payments are to much (sic). But this was more than usually unusual.
On receiving such a momentous communication, Mr Singh would immediately summon Bobbie to his office and, having cleared his throat, and placed his long fingertips against each other, began dictation.
‘Are you ready, Miss Murray?’ he would ask her quite excitedly, before clearing his throat again. ‘Are you quite sure you are ready, Miss Murray?’ Again the throat would be cleared. ‘Good, then we may begin. Please, tell me at once if it is too fast, if my dictation is too fast, won’t you? One must always, my father told me, speak very, very slowly to secretaries and waiters.’
And so he would begin his dictation, carefully enunciating each word with clarity and precision, while watching Bobbie’s shorthand notebook with paternal concern.
Dear Mr Pope, We, at the Holy Bible Company, are most regretful at receiving the return of your Holy Bible. The Holy Bible as you know is a most beautiful testament. We are distressed that you find it too long. We will therefore ask our representative to call upon you personally and demonstrate the abridged edition with illustrations. The payments can be monthly on this edition too. However, since you are having difficulties, allowances can be made. Please fill in the form enclosed. We would recommend the ‘penny a week’ scheme. It is most efficacious, and will not strain the family income while bringing enlightenment for many years to come.
We sign ourselves with God,
The Holy Bible Company
Both Bobbie and Mr Singh found this letter immensely satisfactory, and part of the satisfaction for each of them was that Mr Singh always dictated the letter as if he had just thought of it, and Bobbie took it down, in by now quite perfect shorthand, as if she had never taken it down before. And when Bobbie brought the letter back to Mr Singh, carefully placed in a leather folder, and held the pen for him to sign On behalf of the Holy Bible Company, J. Singh, they would, for a few seconds, stare in mutual admiration at this new epistle, before Mr Singh remarked with quiet satisfaction, ‘Your spelling is quite perfect, Miss Murray. You must have had a very good education.’
Dill had something a little different to say. She said Bobbie was very lucky to have found work so quickly and so near, no bus fares, nothing, she said, marvelling at the luck of it all.
Bobbie could only agree. It seemed to her that at last her life had taken an upward turn, the first since the end of that idyllic summer with Julian and the Major. Nowadays she made sure to live only from day to day, and never for tomorrow or yesterday. It was difficult sometimes – particularly if she saw a painting of the sea, or the blue sky of an early summer evening brought back voices from another time – and yet it had to be done. She had to forget.
And so spring cantered into a new summer and still Mrs Yates seemed not to have recovered from her appendicitis. Indeed, she had been away so long that her name was hardly ever mentioned, except by Mrs O’Brien who was knitting her colleague a blue cardigan in a very fine angora wool which shed hairs with monotonous regularity on the knitter’s skirt.
‘You know, Miss Murray, you are far too pretty to be always in an office,’ Mrs O’Brien announced one day, looking up briefly from her knitting, which by now was assuming almost alarming proportions.
The three of them were seated in the tearoom, a large panelled area hung about with yet more illustrations from the Bible. As was the custom, and in keeping with their different status, they always sat at separate tables, but talked across the room at each other while enjoying buns filled with shredded coconut, and sardine sandwiches, and other delicacies sent in from a local café.
Bobbie had never thought of herself as pretty, far from it. It was something to do with having been so ill as a child, everyone fearing to be near her, not realizing just how much she needed them not to look repulsed by her. As a consequence of this, it was difficult for her not to look astonished at Mrs O’Brien’s sudden observation, coming as it did after the deep peace and content that always followed their tea and biscuits.
‘Don’t you think that Miss Murray is too pretty to be always in an office, Mr Singh?’ Mrs O’Brien asked, half accusingly.
‘Of course she is too pretty to work always in an office, Mrs O’Brien. I have been saying that to you, Mrs O’Brien, for many, many weeks now. Miss Murray is wasted at the Holy Bible Company with us. She should be a fashion model, or a famous woman, not taking dictation and eating coconut buns with you and me. My wife said the same when she saw the office photographs that you took of us all at Easter, Mrs O’Brien. A beautiful girl like that should be a fashion model or a famous woman. That is what my wife said. What a waste. She said that too.’
Bobbie was blushing now, and at the same time feeling both helpless and a little suspicious. ‘Do you want me to leave, then? I mean, does this mean that you think that I am not suitable?’
From their separate tables Mrs O’Brien and Mr Singh stared across at Bobbie, managing to look both horrified and hurt.
‘Why, not at all!’ Mrs O’Brien protested. ‘Not at all. No, it is not that, Miss Murray. It is something quite other.’ She turned to Mr Singh. ‘Shall I?’
He nodded, gravely, solemnly, and the tips of his long fingers met as they always did when he dictated a letter. It was that serious.
‘Tell her, Mrs O’Brien. Please, tell her.’
‘Miss Murray, Mr Singh and I were wondering if you would pose as a student of the Bible, for our advertisements on the undergrounds and the bus shelters and so on? That is what we were really wondering. Mrs Singh came up with the idea when she saw my snap of you at the office Easter luncheon. That is what we’re on about, Miss Murray, our advertisement. Rather an embarrassing way of putting it, I know, but there. We mean well, really we do. But seeing as you have no family who might objec
t to this on religious or any other grounds, it seems to us that you’d be an excellent choice. In fact, it seems to us that you are ideal. You have this, if we may say so, innocent look. You look as if you might really read a Bible, not like famous actresses or fashion models who would look like Jezebel or Delilah, more suitable for inclusion in the abridged version with illustrations than believable as having read the Holy Book.’
‘Or worse,’ Mr Singh added darkly, staring fiercely at the plain white tablecloth in front of his cup of tea as if an army of Jezebels and Delilahs was marching across it towards his plate.
‘I should be quite happy to pose for you,’ Bobbie agreed slowly, ‘just so long as it does not mean giving up my work here.’
‘Your work here is too important to us. We would not dream of asking that. Happily, Mrs Yates is still enjoying a long recuperation, for which the Holy Bible Company is more than happy to pay if it enables her to recover in every way, allowing her whole body to return to complete and commonplace fitness, and you, Miss Murray, to stay in your wholehearted occupation of your desk.’
Mr Singh’s brilliant smile seemed to light up the tearoom, and then they all returned to work, Bobbie to sit patiently behind her large Edwardian typewriter waiting for, indeed sometimes longing for, a letter to type, and Mrs O’Brien to knit. It was so peaceful at the Holy Bible Company that of an afternoon, shortly after tea, Bobbie often mused to herself, as she practised very slow, comfortable typing, that she might have actually found a sort of paradise.
For a few seconds she pondered on the whole idea of posing with a Bible for a photo, but then, thinking that no-one would really notice, no-one like Beatrice would ever be on an underground, or waiting for a bus, never likely to see some obscure advertisement for a Bible, she relaxed.
Besides, it did not mean that she would have to give up her job. That was all that really mattered to her. Staying as she was, as happy as she had been these last weeks and months. Nothing to interrupt the quiet tenor of her days, strolling back from the office to Dill’s lodging house in Ebury Street at night; and then in the morning, after a shallow bath of warm water in Dill’s proudly smart bathroom with its new wallpaper in purple and yellow, strolling back to the King’s Road and the Holy Bible Company. Everything seemed to be pretty perfect in Bobbie’s life at that moment.
She said as much to Dill that night, but Dill only looked at her, and for the first time Bobbie saw a worried expression coming into her landlady’s eyes.
‘Look, dear, I don’t know much, but when my life is too quiet I worry, really I do. If the basement’s flooded and one of me parrots is sick, or a canary hasn’t sung that morning, then I feel fine. It’s when the fire’s lit and the tea’s on, and I’m saying to myself “This is good, Dill, this is the life”, that’s when I get the collywobbles, and start looking behind me. It’s the quiet times. I think that’s why we were all so happy in the war.’ Dill paused to wag her finger at one of her canaries as if to warn it to keep quiet during the rest of her speech. ‘Yes. If you ask me, because there were no quiet times, because the bombs were dropping and we was always digging our loved ones out of somewhere, or something, or someone, it kept us fighting on. Now – well, now, it goes quiet, and we all start worrying, really we do. That’s the trouble with peace, it’s too … peaceful, if you like.’
Bobbie only half listened to what her landlady was saying, only half heard her words. She was feeling so hungry that she suddenly knew that Dill’s six o’clock tea of chips and bacon, and a cup of tea, was not going to be quite enough. She just knew that as soon as she had finished it she would spring out of the door and down to Sloane Square where she would buy herself a proper dinner at the Royal Court Hotel, or some place like that. She would stare up at the new photographs outside the theatre, and find herself wondering if she would ever be able to spare enough of her ‘rainy day’ money to go to a performance there, in the theatre that had, she knew from Dill, been the first to show plays by many famous men, George Bernard Shaw included.
She dressed up in a new skirt that she had bought with a colossal amount of coupons, put the coat that Beatrice had given her over her cotton blouse and cardigan, and having slipped into some incredibly expensive stockings, only recently purchased, along with some shoes with a wedge heel, with some of her wages and another vast outlay of coupons, she started to walk, sedately and enjoyably, towards Sloane Square once more.
Long before she reached the Royal Court, Bobbie realized that she had been all but stalking the Bohemian figure in front of her. She thought he must be an older man, for his tread was heavy and his gait slightly lopsided, as if he had been wounded in one of his legs, or some such. But his costume – no-one would call what he was wearing ‘clothes’ in the conventional sense – was what had really taken Bobbie’s interest. She always did like people who dressed differently, and it seemed that this man, whatever his age, was decidedly individual, for he was wearing a jungle hat, a belted safari jacket, knickerbockers to the knee, long socks up to the knickerbockers and leather shoes with tasselled fronts such as are worn by golfers.
He was walking slowly, as happy people do, really strolling more than walking, and on the busy pavement at first Bobbie too was forced to walk slowly behind him, all the way up to Sloane Square and the more crowded region of that particular part of town, deciding eventually that rather than strolling he was walking with great contentment, taking in everything, while over his shoulder, slung easily, and quite obviously filled with books or notebooks – at any rate with things that he must like or enjoy – was a large old-fashioned fishing bag.
Following him now, Bobbie stopped when he stopped, leaving some few paces between them and pretending to look down at something in her bag, and then as he began to walk, fell in behind him again, pacing her steps, for no reason she could really think of, to his. This sequence took place some half a dozen times, until their progress had turned into a polite kind of Grandmother’s Footsteps. Once the man lit a cigarette, but continued on without turning, now smoking in the same leisurely way that he was walking.
They had reached the top of Sloane Square when he started to turn, and Bobbie stopped a few yards behind him, leaving him a few seconds to get ahead. But he continued to turn, until she found herself face to face with the man she had, in essence, been tailing.
‘Never stalk a man who has lived by his wits in the jungle, old bean, do you hear? It’s a sixth sense one develops, d’you see? Being stalked is a feeling, you don’t have to see or hear anything, but you know you have someone behind you––’ The man stopped talking abruptly, and his eyes filled with emotion. ‘Oh, but my dear, you dear, dear old bean! Dear, dear, you dear old bean!’
Bobbie stared up at the face under the hat. If she had not recognized the face she would have recognized the voice at once, but as it was she recognized both at one and the same time, and her heart sank and rose simultaneously, because staring at her from under the jungle hat, the wearer of the fantastic costume, was that dear person from the past, from the summer idyll, from Baileys Court – the Major.
‘I thought I might meet you again,’ Bobbie told him excitedly as, having shaken each other’s hands almost to pieces, they headed together for the Royal Court pub. ‘In a way that was why I made for Ebury Street when I came to London, because I so hoped that I might find you and Mrs Saxby. I remembered her mentioning that she had a flat in Ebury Street, all that time ago, when we were first in the Sheds, but I had no idea of the number.’
‘Well, you did very well, dear old bean, really you did. Because we are here, and you have found us, although not living in a flat any more. Myself and the second Mrs Saxby have bought the whole house. What number are you?’
Bobbie told him, and the Major gave a deep sigh of satisfaction.
‘So near to us, and on the opposite side of the road. You must cross over. What will you have?’
‘Oh, you know – a dry sherry, if that is all right. How is your pug, how is Boy?’
&
nbsp; ‘Such a tyrant. Such a tyrant. You remember what a tyrant he was, I expect? And a notice box! Such a notice box. Imagine you remembering Boy, imagine you remembering him.’
‘Of course. Who could not remember him?’
‘In that case then you will remember that he was always such a snob? Still is, I’m afraid. And of course the second Mrs Saxby insists on letting him have his own way, not once or twice a day, but all day. She even puts on the wireless for him. Now, drink up and I’ll take you back to Saxby Hall, as we call the old place. We take in paying guests, in fact, if only to pay for Boy’s extravagant taste in foodstuffs, but we wouldn’t poach you from your place, of course we wouldn’t. On the other hand if you’ve a mind to come and lodge, we wouldn’t stop you, of course. As a matter of fact, it would be quite like old times, wouldn’t it? If you came to lodge with us, with the second Mrs Saxby and me?’
‘Oh, but I couldn’t leave Dill.’ Bobbie looked at the Major, suddenly shocked.
‘Fair enough, old bean, then don’t leave Dill, whoever she is – and she must be a dear bean to elicit such affection – but at least come in and have a drink with myself and the second Mrs Saxby. Oh, but you must. I can’t tell you, the excitement is going to be tremendous.’
But although Bobbie felt she could not leave Dill, it seemed that Dill could not wait for Bobbie to leave her.
‘You got old friends across from here? Well, in’t that splendid? Then I do beg you, Miss Murray, I do advise, you must go opposite, really you must. If they are on the other side of the road they are bound to be more your sort, and you won’t get woken by the canaries and that.’
‘I’d rather not go and lodge with them, actually, Dill. Really, I’m quite happy here with you. In fact, I prefer it, you know, really I do.’
‘Course you do, dear, but remember I may not always be here. As a matter of fact, I have been meaning to tell you – I was going to get round to it – I have only been hanging on here, if the truth be known, until the lease falls in, which it does soon, and then I’m off to Torquay.’ She smiled happily, as if Torquay was a dear old friend. ‘I always did plan on Torquay for retirement. And the birds, you know – they’ll be happier for the sea air. Sometimes I think one more winter of this London smog and they’ll pass out, like what the poor creatures used to down the mines before the war and that.’
The Blue Note Page 27