The Fancy (17 page)

Mr. Gurley’s little window went up with a crash as if he were trying to shatter his glass office. “Condor!” he bellowed. He had had beer for lunch, too, but it was all very well for him. He could sit back with his feet on the desk if he liked and still leave his mark on Production by raising his voice.

Dinah didn’t feel like getting down to work. She was suddenly so bored with her slipper gears that she wanted to scream and hurl them from her, following them up with the gearcase. Bill was working on nights all this month, their flat had a leak in the side wall which the landlord refused to mend, and Dinah’s mother’s only theme, in letters and conversation, was that her pension was inadequate to the increased cost of living.

“Look here, Dinah,” said Edward. “Even if you feel as lousy as you look, there is a War on.”

“Oh shut up, Ed. This is a bum engine anyway. Is it a write-off?”

“Yes. Right off the map,” said Edward, but she didn’t laugh. “Get cracking, for Heaven’s sake,” he said. Perhaps he would not have used his Air Force expressions if he had realised that he had picked them up from Don Derris. It was mean of him, he knew, but Thursdays had been a lot less irritating since Don went abroad.

“Only our fun,” said Dinah, yawning. “We had to give poor little
Kitty some sort of show. By the way, thanks for turning the card over. Bob would have the bad smell in the Redundant Stores aafdied of shock.”

“Come to that,” said Edward, sitting down on Reenie’s vacant stool and squinting along her control shaft, “I was a bit shocked myself. I mean, a joke’s a joke, and I’m no prude as you know, but this seemed a bit nearer the knuckle for someone like Kitty. Why, she’s hardly grown up.”

“The Indians do it at twelve,” said Dinah, “but honestly, I never thought about it. We always stick up something like that. I suppose it is a bit crude. Still, I bet he’s been let in for something a lot cruder at his aerodrome or wherever he is.”

“No,” said Edward. “I don’t think men do get teased like that—not about the girls they marry, I mean.”

“Oh, women are awful, Ted. When you come back from your honeymoon, they stare at you, to see if you look any different. You’ll see, they’ll do it with Kitty.”

“Nothing sacred, eh?”

“Not a thing. The questions you’re asked—it’s indecent. But most women don’t seem to mind. In fact, they’ll tell you without waiting to be asked. I think they get more kick out of talking about it than out of the actual thing.”

Edward was amazed. “You mean they discuss their husbands?”

“Of course. Try and stop ‘em,” said Dinah. “And their boy friends too. My poor Ted, haven’t you learned by now that women have no shame? Why, I bet your own wife—No,” she said on second thoughts, having met Connie once when she was visiting her aunt in the ground floor flat, “perhaps not her. But one girl on this bench, for instance. I won’t tell you who it is, but between you and me, she’s having her first fling and my God, have I had all the details! I might be having an affair with the man myself, the amount I know about him, and it just couldn’t be more boring.”

“Who is it? Do tell me.”

Dinah laughed. “Oh no, you don’t get that out of me, manure-hound. Anyway, I thought men were so lovely and pure and didn’t care to discuss that sort of thing. Get up, anyway, here comes Reenie. She’s been down to the First Aid to get her leg disinfected, because I told her she’d get hydrophobia.”

That evening, Edward and Dick Bennett had a date at the Marquis of Granby with a Mr. E. Dexter Bell, “Uanmee”, The Rise, Collis Park. At present, he was no more to them than that, but from the sound of the letters with which he had answered their advertisement and subsequent correspondence, he looked like the future nucleus, if not the entire enzyme of the Collis Park Domestic Rabbit Club.

The other replies held mostly more obstacles than enthusiasm. Some people only wrote to say that they could not join, and at great
length, why. One woman even wasted a stamt she lived at High Barnet, so how could she join a club at Collis Park, although no one had asked her to. Edward’s little notice in the glass case outside the Lipmanns’ shop had so far produced two answers ; one from a schoolboy, and one from a woman who said that as life member of the Anti-Vivisection Society, the R.S.P.C.A., and the National Society of Vegetarians, she must protest against the wanton slaughter of God’s innocent beasts of the field and had they tried vegetable hotpot as advertised by the Ministry of Food, and also Carrot Flan, which did, indeed, taste just like bananas?

But Mr. E. Dexter Bell was far higher game. He had answer in the Redundant Stores.paed the advertisement with a long typewritten letter, efficiently set out and scattered with symbols like (I) (a), cf, sup., viz :—On the last page, he gave a list of his stock, in columns with full pedigrees. On the first page, he gave a list, also in columns, of notable members of the Fancy with whom ho was acquainted. “Only the other day,” he said, in conclusion, “I was talking to Mr. “Bucky” Buckingham, the well-known Havana man and popular judge (cf. above) and bemoaning the fact that no Collis Parkian had yet had the enterprise to start a club in this district. I myself, would, of course, have done so long ere now if business affairs had not made so great a claim upon my time. However, now that you, Mr. Bennett, and you, Mr. Ledward, have undertaken the initial groundwork, I shall be only too happy to place my knowledge, experience and
enthusiasm
at your disposal. I am, sirs, with heartiest good wishes,

Your fellow fancier,

E. Dexter Bell.”

Edward would soon be able to be President of the Club because here was its obvious secretary. He sounded like a gift from Heaven. From his stock list, he was evidently in as large a way as an amateur may be without being a professional.

They were to meet tonight and discuss what Mr. Bell called “The Campaign”, as if it were Congressional electioneering.

He didn’t sound a bit like the sort of man who would live in a house called “Uanmee”, and at first sight of him in the private bar of the “Marquis”, he didn’t look it either. If it was his wife’s idea, that made her the Mee and him the U, and he looked more like the Mee.

He was sitting at a round corner table with a glass of whisky, conveying the impression that since he was reading the
Evening Standard
, the
Star
and the
News
might have saved themselves the trouble of going to press.

Even if he had not been wearing a small yellow carnation and a tie of “equi-distant blue diagonal lines
on
a black ground” as promised in his last letter, numbered : “C.P.R. Club, No. 5. re. appt.”, it could have been no one else. “There he is,” said Edward at once, as he and
Dick Bennett pushed aside the curtain and came blinking into the light, but Dick would not commit himself until he had considered and rejected two trousered women in turbans drinking port, a strawberry-nosed old man in a bowler hat and a Canadian soldier trying to put some life into a plain girl in a mackintosh, who were the only other occupants of the private bar.

Mr. E. Dexter Bell uncrossed his legs as Edward and Dick approached, half rose, with a hand on each knee and sat down again, folding up his paper.

“Messrs. Bennett and Ledward?” he said. “My name is Bell.” They all shook hands and Mr. Bell invited them hospitably to sit down. He was a well-fed, well-dressed man, with thick tortoiseshell spectacles with side-pieces like shoe horns, and a wide mouth that opened and shut flatly, like a toad catching flies. A loop of key chain hung out of his trouser pocket, and another little chain, such as Americans wear, lay across his tie.

“What are you gentlemen going to drink?” he asked.

“No, allow me.” Edward got up again. “What was yours—whisky?”

“That’s all right,” said Mr. Bell. “Sit down, there’s a good chap. Harry!” he raised his voice, and Harry came round the partition from the Saloon Bar with more a,” she said. “ blyhlacrity than he had ever given Edward when he stood at the bar with only the width of it between them.

“Double whisky, Harry,” said Mr. Bell, and glanced enquiringly at the other two.

“The same for me,” said Edward, and Dick said, after a pause : “I’ll take whisky,” as if it were something new he had thought up. “Only safe drink these days,” said E. Dexter Bell. “I know for a fact that all the gin is doctored, and as for the beer — ye gods! Interesting thing, I met a chap the other day, Who’s by way of being an analytical chemist. He’s been working on some Government tests at the various breweries and he assured me that the average maximum percentage of alcohol content was lower by—let’s see, was it five point five, or five point ought five?—forget my own name next—than two years ago.” He stared at Dick Bennett through his great spectacles and Dick nodded his head slowly, impressed.

When Harry appeared behind the bar with the drinks, Edward was getting up to fetch them, but Mr. Bell restrained him and Harry lifted a flap and came through with the tray. “There you are, Mr. Bell,” he said, wiping the table, “three doubles and a large soda. How’s business?”

“Don’t speak of it, Harry, I’m a ruined man.”

“Aren’t we all?” said Harry, going gloomily away with the tray on which was the money with which Mr. Bell, shocked at the idea, had forestalled Edward’s hand as it went to his pocket. Dick Bennett had previously allocated a certain amount out of petty cash to pay for these
drinks, so this upset his calculations. They would have to have a second round to put them straight.

After talking about anything and everything except rabbits for ten minutes, E. Dexter Bell said : “But we didn’t come here for idle gossip, however pleasant it may be. To work, gentlemen! I want to hear all your progress and plans for this Club. Spare me nothing, however circumstantial. I’m a business man myself and I appreciate business details. I may say I’m interested, extremely interested in your little project, so go ahead, Edwards, and spare me nothing. Tell me exactly how you’re going about it,” he said and then proceeded to tell Edward and Dick, almost without pause, how he would go about it if he were they.

In all the conversation, Edward was hampered by a ridiculous impulse to call him sir, particularly when he was talking about his rabbits, which made Edward’s own collection seem about as impressive as a schoolboy’s hutchful. Mr. Bell had spoken often in his letters of his champion stud Flemish, one Dexter Royalist. Edward had marked him down as a likely husband for the best of Queenie’s grandchildren, who already at seven months was showing promise of the size after which Edward was striving. But even if his master agreed, Champion Royalist would never look at so humble a bride. Why should he, when groomed and pampered lovelies from harems all over England came in patent travelling boxes to his bridal couch?

“You know,” Edward said to Dick, when Mr. Bell had left them to see a man about the proverbial dog, ha-ha, “I almost wish we hadn’t got mixed up with this man. He’s right out of our class. If we let him have his way, he’ll try and make the thing too big ; he’ll take it out of the reach of the little breeder and the novice, who are the people we really want to get at.”

Dick was drawing patterns with a ring of spilt liquid on the table. “On principle, old man,” he said, “I’ve no doubt you’reI believe youan along right, but the way I looked at it, he’s just the man We want to get us going. You can’t run a Club without capital. You heard him offer to put up the money for our first show, if we needed
it
? He’s a real sportsman.”

“All the same,” said Edward, “I can’t quite say why, but I don’t like him, you know.”

“
Don’t
you?” said Dick, whose accent always broadened into a trace of Yorkshire when he was surprised. Mr. Bell came back. He had flat, important feet and fat thighs that stretched the trousers of his chalk-stripe blue suit. He walked with his hands in his pockets, his legs rather wide apart and had a trick of loosening his shoulders inside his coat as if he were feeling the power of them. Dick Bennett got up to fetch the drinks that they had ordered in his absence, and came back to the table, the glasses looking small and breakable in his huge fists.

“Oh, not for me,” said Mr. Bell smiling. “I’ve had my ration. Never take two before dinner. Doesn’t do the old system any good, you know.”

Dick Bennett looked up worried from the account book in which he was entering the price of the drinks.

“Oh come on,” said Edward, “since it’s here.”

“Positively not, Edwards, thanks very much all the same. I must be getting along in any case. I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed meeting you and hearing your plans. We’d better make a date for next week, so that you can keep me
au fait
with progress.” He had told them that he used often to go to Paris on business ; staring into space and shaking his head sadly, he had added : “Ma pauvre Paree, What have they done to you?”

Edward finished his drink, offered the third unwanted one to Dick and when he shook his head, drank it himself and stood up. He had told Connie that he would be late, but there was no sense in being too late. He was taking Dick back to supper with him.

“Which way do you go?” asked Mr. Bell, shrugging himself into a greenish-brown teddy-bear coat with a belt.

“Church Avenue,” said Edward, taking his mackintosh off the peg. “Along Arthur Road and down the hill.”

“I’ll walk along with you. It’s on my way,” said E. Dexter Bell, settling his hat at a good angle. Outside the door, he switched on a torch like a lighthouse.

“I say,” said Edward, “that’s a bit bright, isn’t it? You’ll have the Wardens after you if you go about with a light like that.”

“Not me,” said Mr. Bell, making the light suddenly dim. “You see, I keep my hand over it when there’s anybody about, and get the full benefit of it in the quiet streets, where you need it. I don’t want to break my neck.”

“Yes, but a light like that could be seen from the sky,” said Edward, as they turned into a side street and Mr. Bell uncovered the beam. “You’re spoiling the whole blackout.” Three double whiskies had made him feel truculent.

“Oh, they’re a lot less particular about the blackout than they were,” said Mr. Bell lightly. “Anyway, there’s not a Hun within miles tonight.”