Complete Short Stories (VMC) (88 page)

‘What about you, Tall Boy?’ Buster asked.

Jasper smiled and shrugged. ‘Well, I just had a quiet time,’ he said.

The birthday-card had not arrived that morning. At first, he had been disappointed, for the lack of it made his birthday seem not to have happened, but now he had begun to look forward to finding it there when he got home from work. He kept fingering the knot of his tie, and opening the collar of his overalls more.

‘Hey, Tall Boy, what the devil you got there?’ Dusty came over, stared at Jasper’s tie, then appeared to be blinded by it, reeling away theatrically, saying ‘Strewth!’, his hands over his eyes.

Some of the others joined in in a wonderful, warm sort of abuse – just how they talked to one another, and which made Jasper so happy, grinning, putting up his fists at them, dancing up and down on his toes like a boxer.

‘No, come off it, mate,’ Dusty said, recovering a little. ‘You can’t wear that.’

‘It’s hand-painted,’ said Jasper. ‘I got it for my birthday.’

‘So it’s his birthday,’ Dusty said, turning to the others. He advanced slowly, menacingly towards Jasper, stuck out his finger and prodded his tie. ‘You know what that means, don’t you?’

To prolong the delight of being in the middle of it all, Jasper pretended that he did not.

‘It means,’ said Dusty slowly, knocking his fist against Jasper’s chest. ‘It means, Tall Boy, you got to buy the cakes for tea.’

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ said Buster. ‘You buy the cakes.’

‘I know, I know,’ said Jasper in his sing-song voice. He threw back his
head and gave his high bubbling laugh, and jingled coins in both his pockets.

The weather had brightened and, as Jasper walked home from work, groups of women were sitting out on the steps of houses, waiting for their husbands to come home, shouting warnings to their children playing on the pavements.

Traffic at this hour was heavy and the streets were crowded, as London was emptying out its workers – thousands of arteries drawing them away, farther and farther from the heart of the city, out to the edges of the countryside.

At home, his birthday-card was waiting for him, and there was a miracle there, too; something he hardly dared to pick up – one of the rare letters from home, come on the right day. He sat down on the edge of the bed and opened it. Mam could never write much. It was a great labour and impatience to her to put pen to paper, and here was only a line or two to say the money had arrived safely and all were well. She did not mention his birthday. When she was writing, it must have been far ahead, and out of mind.

The letter was folded round a photograph. Who had taken it, he could not imagine; but there were the three little girls, his sisters, sitting on the steps of the wooden house – Opal, Crystal and Sapphyra. They were grinning straight at him, and Sapphyra’s middle top teeth were missing. She looked quite different, he thought for a moment; then decided no, she was the same – the lovely same. He stared at the photograph for a long time, then got up with a jerk, and put it on the shelf by his bed, propped against the alarm clock, and his birthday-card beside it.

He went to the window and pushed down the sash and leant out, his elbows resting on the frame. The noise of children playing came up. He had a peaceful feeling, listening to the street sounds, looking at a golden, dying light on the rooftops across the road.

He stayed there until the gold went out of the light, and he felt suddenly hungry. Then he shut the window, unhooked the frying-pan and took an opener to a tin of beans. He smiled as he edged the opener round the rim. ‘They liked the cakes,’ he kept on thinking. The cakes he’d bought for tea.

He squatted by the gas-ring, turning the beans about in the pan, humming to himself. He was glad he’d bought the tie – otherwise they’d never have known, and he could never have treated them. The tie had been a good idea. He might give it another airing, this nice, dry evening – stroll among the crowds outside the Odeon and the bowling alley.

He ate the beans out of the pan, spooning them up contentedly as he
sat on the bed, staring at Opal and Crystal and Sapphyra, who grinned cheekily back at him, sitting in a neat row, their bare feet stuck out in front of them, out of focus, and sharp black shadows falling on their white dresses.

The sunlight came through dusty windows into Miss Smythe’s Gown Department on the first floor of the building. Across the glass were red and white notices announcing the clearance sale. It was an early summer’s early evening, and the London rush hour at its worst. Rush hours were now over for Miss Smythe, and she listened to the hum of this one, feeling strange not to be stepping along the crowded pavement towards the Underground.

In a corner of the department some of the juniors had begun to blow up balloons. The last customers had gone, and several of the office staff came in with trays of glasses. With remarkable deftness as soon as the shop was closed – for the last time – they had draped and decorated Miss Smythe’s display counter, and they set the trays down on this.

The great store, built in the 1860s, was due for demolition. As business had slowly failed, like a tide on its way out, the value of the site had gone on growing. The building had lately seemed to be demolishing itself, or at least not hindering its happening. Its green dome still stood with acid clarity against the summer sky; but the stone walls had not been washed for many years and were black with grime and dashed by pigeons’ droppings.

The red and white SALE notices added to the look of dereliction. In the past, sales had been discreetly managed, really not more than a passing round of the word. The clientele – the ex-clientele – was miserable about the notices. Going by in Bentleys and taxis, they glanced away, hurt, as if catching an old friend out in some vulgarity.

Miss Smythe trod softly across the carpeted way to the ladies’ cloakroom – the customers’ cloakroom. Here she took off her rings – her mother’s engagement ring and her father’s signet – and carefully washed her hands. She went over and over with the lather, as if she were about to perform an operation. Then she took a long time drying her hands, easing back cuticles, from habit, and looking thoughtfully about her.

She passed a hand over grey, tightly permed hair, and studied herself in the full-length glass. She knew that a presentation was to be made, and she wished to look her best. It was rumoured that Mr Wakelin himself was to give a little speech.

Her figure was more imposing by being top-heavy. Although her hips
were quite trim and her legs slender – she prided herself on her legs – her bosom was full, and there was a softness about her sloping shoulders. Her hands were plump, too, and white. She also prided herself on her hands.

Back in the salon things were livening up, and assistants from other departments crowding in. She saw her friend, Miss Fortescue, from Hats. (Millinery was not a word one used: clients who did were subtly put right.) Miss Fortescue, a younger woman than Miss Smythe, now had to find another position. It would not be easy for her, in her forties. However, she had a gentleman friend and could marry tomorrow if she cared to, as she had often told her juniors.

Miss Smythe did not discuss her private life with her assistants. Some mornings she had arrived with a bunch of flowers, and let the girls conjecture. There was really nothing to conjecture. She had lived alone since her parents died and knew that she always would, being now too fastidious, she thought, for marriage.

She was glad that it was time for her to retire. She could not have brought herself to work elsewhere, or to lower her standards. She had grown old along with her customers. Some she had known as young women, brought by their mothers to the salon for the first time. In those days she had been an assistant, handing pins and running errands. In these last years, or perhaps it was since the war, young women had not come with their mothers. Miss Smythe always enquired after them, but never met them.

‘Well, you’ll be glad to see the back of it all,’ Miss Fortescue said to her. ‘These last few weeks!’

‘It has had its sordid side,’ Miss Smythe agreed. ‘But, no, I shan’t be glad to see the back of it.’

Some of the last marked-down, soiled, leftover garments lay crumpled on countertops, as if at a jumble sale, and, really, Miss Fortescue complained, some of the goods she had been expected to dispose of had come from a bygone age. ‘We now know what “old hat” means,’ she had told her assistants, spinning round on her hand a confection of satin and osprey feathers. She
was
too familiar with the girls, and they led her on with a kind of sycophantic raillery, even daring.

The evening sun slanted across the room at its last angle, showing up shabbiness. Where fixtures and showcases had already been removed the surrounding walls had dirty, yellowing paint, and there were cobwebs clinging to nails. For days the cleaners – those who remained – had done nothing but shift stock. In this showroom the trodden carpet, once so deep, so rich, had been left, and the dusty chandelier with its grubby drops of glass, its rosettes and flutings. Someone, giggling, climbed on to a stool and tied a bunch of balloons to it.

One of Miss Smythe’s own girls came to her with a tray of drinks and she put out her plump white hand and selected a glass of sherry. She also accepted from someone else two prawns on a little biscuit. Soon there would be crumbs and cigarette ash all over her carpet; but it was gritty already, with days of people traipsing through. She remembered it when it was new, replacing the faded moss-green one of her early days, and how proud she was of it, for it was her own, she alone had been responsible for it. Now she watched ash being flicked on it – regardless, as she told herself.

Because her showroom had been chosen for the party, Miss Smythe was regarded as their hostess by the older members of the staff. They came to greet her as soon as they entered – old Mr Messenger from Accounts, the restaurant manageress, and Miss Chivers from Hairdressing.

She received them graciously, standing beneath the decorated chandelier; but was not too much taken up with them to ignore one of her own girls who, drinking her third gin-and-French, was laughing noisily. She gave her one of her little glances and, for the first time, the girl looked at her defiantly, as if to imply that the old reign was over; habit won, however, and she fell silent.

‘My dear Miss Smythe,’ said Mr Wakelin, coming in almost unnoticed, taking her hand. He was an unknown figure to most of those present, who were ruled by his underlings and hardly wondered if there were anyone in higher authority.

Miss Smythe received him with her usual poise. She had served royalty in her time, and knew how to behave – with calm deference, but her own kind of dignity.

Ineffectually Mr Wakelin tapped with a gold pencil on the side of his glass; then someone helpfully – but without taste, Miss Smythe thought – banged on a tray. ‘Uncalled for,’ was always one of her sternest terms of condemnation.

‘This poignant party,’ Mr Wakelin began, standing beside her. She moved back a little, discreetly. ‘For it is farewell for all of us,’ he went on, ‘for some after many, many years.’

Miss Smythe looked down at the carpet, saw a match-stick, but forbore to pick it up.

With great authority, Mr Wakelin handed his glass to someone standing nearby; unhurriedly took out his bifocal spectacles, polished them, put them on, took from his pocket a piece of paper. He glanced at this and touched the knot of his Old Etonian tie. No one moved. ‘Ah! the
savoir faire
!’ Miss Smythe thought admiringly.

‘Our dear old friend, Mr Messenger, from Accounts,’ Mr Wakelin said. He smiled across at him and made a little joke about his resistance to the computer being installed, and a ruffle of laughter came from his staff, and
then clapping as he came forward to accept an envelope and a gold watch, handed first to Mr Wakelin by his secretary. Besides their envelopes Miss Fortescue received a tooled leather writing case, the restaurant manageress a fountain pen. It was obvious that Mr Wakelin’s secretary had known how to grade the presents.

‘And to all of you – some of you for too short a time our friends – I say thank you for your loyalty and support, and not least in these last difficult weeks; and may God go with you in all your days, and bring you into your desired haven.’

A deeply religious man, Miss Smythe had always heard, and his beautiful, unhurried voice and the last cadence brought tears into her eyes. All the same, she was a little shocked, a little embarrassed, thinking he had finished speaking. Someone even began to clap. However, raising his hand and turning towards her he went on: ‘I have left mention of Miss Smythe until the very end.’ For a moment she had been afraid that his secretary had at last been found wanting, but there she was at his side, with the last parcel and envelope.

Because of her momentary confusion, Mr Wakelin’s words came as a shock to Miss Smythe, sweeping away her emotion, making her feel apprehensive.

‘How long Miss Smythe has been with us is her own secret,’ Mr Wakelin said. ‘I will only say that she is our oldest friend, and one who has never faltered, never failed us. Never spared herself, or lowered the standards which so many young people under her have learnt to accept and live by. This is no mean thing to look back upon, at the end of a successful career, and I hope that she will do so with pleasure and satisfaction in many years of happy retirement.

‘Much of the good that has been done in this … well, I almost said
hallowed
building … can be traced to her influence. And nothing that was wrong
can
be. The building will go, alas! as you all know; but that spirit will be scattered more broadly because of it. So out of disaster comes good; out of sorrow, inspiration. Miss Smythe, this present which I give you on behalf of the company and your colleagues cannot be in any measure what you deserve, but simply a token of our respect and, may I say, our love? Under this roof, where you have served so long, I should like to think that the last words said were yours.’

Miss Smythe stepped forward and took the little gift-wrapped, oblong box. She stood under the chandelier again, holding her present in both hands before her, and thanked them all, after half-turning to Mr Wakelin to thank him personally.