Marnie (7 page)

‘Go’n do it yourself.’

‘I’ll give you half a dollar to see you do it.’

‘Shut up.’

‘I’ll give you these stockings as well. I’ll dare you. Are you scared to try?’

‘Be a dope,’ I said. ‘What’s the
good
of it? It doesn’t help
us
, so I’m not doing it. See?’

We snarled at each other and walked on. Round the corner there was no one in sight, so we got on the wall and looked over the car park.

June said: ‘Well there, look at that there shoulder bag in the back of that car. I’ll dare you to pinch that, and that’s something we
both
want!’

This leather shoulder bag was lying on the back seat.

I said: ‘Go on, the flaming car’s locked, and I’m not going to break it open, even for you, you pimply tramp.’

We walked home mauling each other, but when she left me it was still only five and still quite light and I reckoned if I walked back to the car park again it would be going dusk by the time I
got there. I didn’t like being dared, and I thought, if I get the bag I’ll show it to her tomorrow.

I walked back and loitered past the car park, and the car hadn’t gone. I walked past twice because I wanted to see where the attendant was. He was at the other end and busy. The third time
I climbed over the wall. When I was arguing with June I’d seen that one of the triangular front windows for ventilating didn’t look as if it was quite closed, and sure enough when I
sidled up and touched it with a finger it moved on its swivel. If you’ve a small hand it’s easy then to put your fingers in and flick open the catch of the door. Then you stop to squint
round the car park at all the silent cars. Then you open the door and lean over to the back seat and grab the shoulder bag.

I hid the thing under my coat and slithered back over the wall. Then I began to run.

It was the first thing I’d stolen since four years ago when Mam had beaten the fear of God into me, and I was in a panic for a time. It wasn’t till I got near home that I really
began to feel good. Then I showed the first bit of sense. I remembered that when I was caught before it was because the girl I’d done it with had turned yellow and gave us both away. If June
saw the bag I was never really safe any more. I went into a dark alley and looked what was in the bag. There was two pounds eleven and sevenpence and a book of stamps and a cheque book and a
handkerchief and a compact.

I took out the money and the stamps and left the rest in and I walked as far as the harbour near the Barbican and dropped the shoulder bag in the sea.

So I went to the Rose Show on that Saturday afternoon. I didn’t care whether I saw the flowers or not, but I thought he might ask if I’d been, and it’s not
easy to pretend if you haven’t an idea what a thing looks like.

When I got there I really did get rather a lift out of seeing those masses of banked roses, and I realized my miserable rambler wasn’t much of a specimen to judge by.

There were a lot of people about – people of the type I’d only really seen since I came to London. Although I’d like to have put a bomb under them, you had to admit they
carried their money well. I stood by and listened to one woman ordering six dozen Peace and four dozen Dusky Maiden and three dozen Opera, and I tried to think what the size of her rose garden was,
because she only wanted these as ‘replacements’. I heard two men talking of a lunch they had had in New York yesterday. Someone was complaining that her villa in Antibes grew better
roses than her house in Surrey and she wanted to know why. It was a far cry from this to the local Labour Exchange with its scruffy staff and its dead-duck unemployables. I wondered if these people
knew that they lived on the same planet.

Well, maybe someday I should have my villa at Antibes, wherever that was.

‘Ah, so you came, Mrs Taylor. I hope you’re enjoying it.’

Mark Rutland. You never knew your luck, did you.

‘Yes. I’m awfully glad I did come. I’ve never
seen
such flowers!’

‘They get slightly better every year. I sometimes wonder how successful a thing has to get before it becomes vulgar. Have you seen the new Gold Medal Rose?’

We walked across the hall together. I thought, well, is he really another one? I didn’t want to end up having a fight with this partner too.

He was better dressed today – usually at the works he wore an old suit – but his hair looked as if it had been combed with his fingers, and he hadn’t a trace of colour in his
face. Yet he wasn’t bad looking.

I didn’t want either him or his cousin, I only wanted to be able to rob them in peace.

Just as I was trying to think up an excuse for leaving him he said: ‘I have to be back in Berkhamsted for six o’clock, but I think there’s just time for a cup of tea. Would you
like to join me?’

I was caught not thinking and said: ‘Where?’ He smiled. ‘Just round the corner. There’s a teashop that makes rather good toasted muffins.’

In the teashop, which was quite a discreet sort of place, with pink curtains and alcoves – not a bit like the A.B.C. or Lyons – he began to ask me about the firm and whether I liked
my job and whether I thought the reorganization of the cash department was going to be OK. I thought, well, it’s a change, and he’s not interested in me after all, thank God.

He said: ‘We’re a family firm, as no doubt you’ve heard too often; but the trouble with these firms is that they get into a rut. When sons inherit and don’t come up the
hard way it’s very much a toss-up whether they have a talent for the job. My father wasn’t temperamentally suited for business. Flowers were his hobby and his life. Nor do I think that
some of the present . . .’ He stopped, and a quick smile went across his face. ‘But that’s another story.’

‘You’ve only been in the firm quite a short time?’

‘Yes, until my father died I was in the Navy. I had a brother, six years older, who was going in the business, but he was killed in the war.’

‘I’m told you’ve made big changes in the firm.’

‘Who told you that? But never mind; it’s true. Some of the departments hadn’t been touched since about 1920. I ran the firm into a handsome loss last year. Considering the
state of business generally I think that was rather ingenious.’

‘I enjoyed the dance last month,’ I said. ‘Do you always go?’

‘No, it was my first time. The first year I joined, my wife had just been taken ill. Last year she’d just died.’

So Terry Holbrook was being bitchy.

‘You must find this a big change from the Navy, Mr Rutland.’

‘I find it’s equally possible to be at sea in either.’

Personally I doubted that, though I didn’t say so. He looked very much like someone who knew what he wanted and generally got it.

‘Why do they dislike each other?’ Dawn said. ‘Well what else could you expect, really? Family jealousy, and him coming into the firm like that, when they were
all set to go along at the old jog-trot, drawing their fat salaries. Sam Ward practically ran it. Mark and Terry are
opposites
, if you see what I mean. And opposites in a family are worst of
all. Their women were opposites too.’

‘Did you know them both?’

‘Well not exactly know them. Mrs Terry was an actress – still is, of course – she played fast and loose with some TV producer, so Terry divorced her. Blonde, she is; tall and
wuh-huh. Sort of 38–25–38.
Handsome
of course, but going places. I don’t think our Terry ever quite caught up.’

‘And Mrs Rutland?’

‘Mrs Mark Rutland? I always thought she was a bit queer. Brainy type. Not pretty.
Attractive
, but made nothing of herself. Used to dig up old stones – arche – what do
you call it. They say she was writing a book when she died.’

I combed my hair and turned it under at the ends with my fingers. ‘Does Mark ever do like Terry?’

‘What d’you mean, do like him?’

‘Take the staff out – make passes at them.’

Dawn laughed. ‘Not Mark. Not as far as I know. Why, has there been a pull on your line?’

I noticed as the weeks went by that nobody checked the weekly takings on the retail side against the size of the cheque drawn for the wages each Thursday. Of course, it all had
to balance up in the books; but if the wages to be paid were £1,200, and the weekly retail takings were £300 no one except the cashier had the responsibility of taking 3 from 12. If she
took 3 from 12 and made the answer 11, so that the cheque to be drawn was £1,100, no one would know until at least the following Monday.

Late in June Mark Rutland sprained his ankle playing squash, so nothing was seen of him at the works for two weeks. Terry Holbrook had hardly spoken to me since the night of the dance, but
he’d looked at me quite a bit when he thought I wasn’t noticing. He made me more uncomfortable than any man I remember.

One day I had to go in to him, and he was standing by the window thumbing over a copy of the
Tatler
. After I’d done what I came to do he said: ‘And how is my
donna
intacta
?’

I said: ‘I’m sorry I don’t know what that means.’

‘Can’t you guess, my dear?’

‘I can guess.’

‘Well, I’m sure you’re on the right track.’

‘I didn’t have that sort of education.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s exactly what I suspected.’

He’d turned my meaning round. ‘I can’t stop you thinking what you like. I’m sorry it bothers you.’ I turned to go.

He put his hand on me. I don’t know why but he always managed to find the place where your sleeve ended and your arm began. ‘Must we fight?’

‘No . . . I don’t want to.’

‘I mean to say, dear, most women don’t consider it an
insult
to be thought madly attractive. Why do you?’

‘I don’t.’

He looked at me sidelong but rather seriously, as if he’d been considering it.

‘I’m a persistent fellow. Water weareth away stone.’

‘Not in one lifetime.’

Looking back, I suppose that sort of answer wasn’t smart, but I felt I had to say something because he was seeing too much, seeing too deeply into what I was, and I wanted to cover up.

He let me go then. He said: ‘Life’s awfully short, Mary, and seven-eighths of it is spent in work and sleep. You should try to enjoy the other twelve per cent. Give out, let your
hair down,
spread
yourself, dear. Give some man a run. It’s all right while it lasts, but it doesn’t last long, nothing lasts. One should try to make hay, even at Rutland’s
. . . Do I bore you? That’s a great mistake. I can’t believe you were born to be an accountant. It’s contrary to nature.’

That same week the holiday season was beginning, and in a small firm like Rutland’s people had to double for each other at times. Mr Christopher Holbrook’s
secretary was one of the first to go and Mr Ward told me to do her work in the mornings. The first morning, I went into his office before he came, opened his post and put it out on his desk ready
for him to read. About half an hour after he came he rang the bell and I went in with a pencil and pad.

‘Oh, Mrs Taylor, did you open these letters?’

‘Yes, Mr Holbrook.’

‘Did you not notice that two of them were marked “Personal”?’

‘I believe I did see it on one envelope.’

He looked through me. There was no electric fire on this morning. ‘It was on two envelopes.’ I saw he had fished them out of the waste paper basket. ‘It’s not customary
in this firm, Mrs Taylor, for a secretary to open such letters – nor is it in any firm I know.’

‘I’m very sorry. I hardly thought anything of it.’

‘Well, remember it in future, will you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

I went out, duly torn apart. I tried to recollect what the letters had said. The first, if I remembered rightly, was from a firm of stockbrokers in the city. It said they had purchased on Mr
Christopher Holbrook’s behalf the two hundred and fifty shares held by Mrs E. E. Thomas in John Rutland & Co. Ltd. They said they had been successful in obtaining them for only three
shillings above the latest market quotation. And they remained his faithfully.

The second was from a firm called Jackson & Johnson Solicitors & Commissioners for Oaths, and it was a personal letter from one of the partners telling Mr Holbrook that they had been
making further inquiries following Mr Terence Holbrook’s visit of last Monday and indications were that the Glastonbury Investment Trust was interested. ‘However,’ the letter went
on, ‘it is perfectly clear that with so few of your shares in public hands, you cannot be coerced into taking any steps that would be out of accord with the wishes of your present board. Let
me know what your feelings are, either as a board or, if you differ from the rest, as an individual. In the latter event I am sure that a private meeting with Mr Malcolm Leicester can be
arranged.’

One letter seemed to tie in with the other. If he hadn’t made a fuss about me opening them I should have forgotten them.

The whole of June was hot, but the third week was hottest of all. On this Thursday afternoon Mr Ward sent for me and said: ‘Can you drive a car, Mrs Taylor?’

‘No.’ I could, but I had no licence in that name.

‘A pity that isn’t among your many virtues. I hoped you could have helped us.’

‘What is it?’

He unhitched his spectacles and looked at them as if he didn’t like them. ‘It’s this printing job for the Livery Company. It’s promised for Wednesday next and I’m
not certain as to the layout. In the ordinary way I should change it as I thought fit, but it is one that Mr Rutland has taken on personally, and of course it involves the dinner they’re
giving to the Queen Mother, so we have to have it right. I’ve been speaking to Mr Rutland about it.’

‘Do you mean he wants to see it?’

‘Yes. And of course, as you may have observed, he’s still laid up.’

‘I could take a taxi,’ I said.

He looked at me down his long thin sarcastic nose, and you could see him working out what it would cost. ‘Yes, I suppose you could. He’s at his house at Little Gaddesden. If Thornton
was not away I’d send him . . .’

I thought it would be cooler out, but it wasn’t. The day had been clouding up and the atmosphere was as heavy as one of Lucy Nye’s yeast cakes. The clouds were over London and looked
as if someone had exploded the H-bomb. It took the taxi the best part of forty-five minutes, and the house was on the edge of a golf course, not big but smart-looking with tall chimneys and long
windows and lots of grass all round to give it prestige.