Business as Usual Page 15
SN/MGG
I have been given to understand that Time and Experience arc expected to modify your sense of humour, but cannot see that such modification would serve any useful purpose.
M G G
EVERYMAN’S STORES
For use in inter-departmental correspondence only
From Fane
To Mr Grant
February 4th, 1932
Subject
Library: Book Floor
Memo (Unofficial)
With reference to our conversation yesterday, I have spent several hours in investigations connected with the Library, and believe your theory of a passive boycott to be well founded.
The new system is now in working order, but the difficulty is that no one wants to work it.
Miss Sparling can’t be induced to offer an opinion, except that she has always done her best. Miss Hopper says it’s always the way, she’s often thought herself that things could be improved, but when you came to alter them you see that there’s a very good reason for leaving them the way they were. Miss Landry, of whom I had hopes, has obviously been terrorised into hostility towards reforms which look like meaning more work.
If I’m to cope with this situation I must have more authority. Miss Sparling, round whom the hostility centres, must see that I can, if necessary, import as many clerks as I need, and that, therefore, she ceases to be indispensable. As a friend of mine says, there’s nothing like an unimpeded view of the gutter for bringing people round.
H F
EVERYMAN’S STORES
For use in inter-departmental correspondence only
From G Grant
To Miss Ward
February 5th, 1932
Subject
Reorganisation of the Library
Memo
Miss Fane has my authority – to be exercised with your knowledge and consent – personally to choose and to appoint as many new Library clerks as she may find necessary. She may also give orders to the firm’s carpenters and other workmen for the installation of new desks, shelves and placards which may be required for the reorganisation of the Library which she has undertaken.
She will, I know, be grateful for any advice which may appear to you necessary, but I should prefer the matter to be undertaken by her alone, provided that she does not allow zeal to outrun discretion.
M G GRANT
SN/MGG
2A Christchurch Street
Chelsea
February 10th
My Dear Aunt Bertha,
To think that I never suspected why you were asking me all those questions over lunch last Sunday – apart, I mean, from housewifely fellow-feeling about the size and number of my windows and the shape of my rooms!
Until to-night! Even then, when I came home and found that one of our own blue vans had emptied itself up those uncertainly railed stairs, I just thought that somebody connected with Post and Despatch would probably get the sack for leaving a lordly order at the wrong house. But the labels were quite explicit about my name and address. And every bale had a pleasant green tag which said No Bill – This is a Present.
I dragged them all inside my sitting-room and chewed at sacking and string with a pair of nail-scissors, and stamped about on brown paper in quite tremendous excitement.
Of course gratitude is a poor, orphanish sort of word to express my sensations when I’d unpacked that carpet, the two arm-chairs, the four cushions and two pairs of curtains! A few yards of material or some old loose-covers shaken out of their moth-balls in the box-room would have been riches. But those lovely new things must have been specially chosen for me. Life with a bed and a table and two kitchen chairs and some packing-cases is rather empty, even if one paints the packing-cases different colours and stains the floor. I’ve been calculating how long it would be before I could buy a basket chair and whether I should have to get some sort of a carpet at once or go about in bedroom slippers.
Because my landlord came up last night to point out that there was a clause in my lease which laid down that tenants must provide suitable floor-covering, and that walnut stain was not. I thought that hard, as I’d used up three evenings and two pairs of stockings over that floor staining, and stuffed my knees with splinters by crawling furiously from point to point so that the stain would dry evenly. But your magnificent carpet covers everything, particularly the place where I kicked over a pot of vermilion paint intended for a packing case.
My walls were dry too, which was fortunate, as I don’t think I could have resisted the temptation to try your curtains against them. I thought that distemper alone would be dull, so I distempered them first, a dull yellow, and then varnished experimentally over the top of it, thinking of the inside of a buttercup. The result is really rather like it and pleasing, but the varnishing was dreadfully difficult. I kept getting stuck when I did the corners and fly-papered myself to the wall behind. But just think of those flame-coloured curtains of yours against it! And the carpet to match! And the grand arm-chairs with their cushions! I rushed wildly out and bought all the daffodils that a surprised old man was pushing home on his barrow. Later they shall stand in copper jugs: just at present they’re in jam jars.
Will you come to tea on Sunday to see it all? The flat’s quite easy to find. Turn left from the King’s Road towards the river. Christchurch Street is on the far side of Tite Street and you can take the car all the way down. My house is the second on the left from the far end, and there’s a potted bay tree in the front garden. Also a grocer’s opposite with one of these You Can Telephone From Here signs. Such a comfort: from my flat you can’t.
Christchurch Street goes on to the river, and that’s another advantage, as I walk along the Embankment for miles most evenings after work while I’m waiting for some of the distemper to dry. (But I shan’t get painter’s colic. The windows are open all the time.)
Ring the bell three times: I’ll come down and let you in. With love – and thanks.
Hilary
DAILY REPORT
February 11th, 1932
Health of Staff
In Charge H Fane (Sister Smith’s half-day. Miss Ward at Staff Meeting.)
Sick List 2-6 pm. Total 21
Particulars
2.15 Miss Watts required sal volatile.
2.30 Miss Player of the Soft Furnishings asked if she might go home. (Sick.)
2.45 Miss Brown of Silk Lingerie asked for brandy. (Received sal volatile.)
3.0 (onwards.) Administered soda mint to eighteen applicants, most of whom mentioned brandy.
4.0 Four victims able and anxious to go home. Three still lying down. Three back at work.
5.0 Final round of soda mint. All now asking to go home.
Investigation proved:
(1) All victims had lunched in canteen.
(2) All had eaten rabbit pie.
Treatment
I have spoken to cook. She says:
(a) That there was nothing in that pie but the best fresh rabbit and pastry, and a few assorted veg to make it tasty.
(b) It had been cooked in the self-regulating ovens on the premises and to the recipe within a minute.
(c) She was a hard-working woman with a family of five that never ailed anything and a husband what was most particular.
(d) No cooking in the world is proof against gobbling, and if girls would eat their dinner in five minutes because they wanted to go to these rehearsals they’re all talking about morning noon and night the best food would turn on them.
Remarks
(1) Only three of the victims performing in staff play, The Girl Aboard the Lugger. Which would seem to disallow (d) at least in part.
(2) As there is no pie left and the dishes have been washed, it is impossible to diagnose; but it is probable from evidence obtained that the kitchen maid forgot to put holes in the pastry. This, I understand, has been known to cause severe illness.
(3) Have ventured to put this hypothesis before cook. Not well received.
EVERYMAN’S STORES
For use in inter-departmental correspondence only
From M E Ward
To Miss Fane
February 12th, 1932
Subject
Yesterday’s Daily Report
Memo
Cook seriously offended. Leave her to me in future. Good cooks scarce.
M E WARD
BT/MEW
2A Christchurch Street
February 23rd
Dearest Family,
D’you remember my writing some time before Christmas about an odd-looking man with a bull terrier who came into the shop and asked for Daddy’s book? He reappeared to-day, and stood about demanding to see me till Mr Salt rushed up to my office and brought me away from the young women with degrees whom I was interviewing for posts in the Library.
At first I thought there was going to be trouble. He had that boiling-over expression which means Customer-in-state-of-acute-complaint-and-seeking-victim. And he opened on me at once. He understood my father’s new book was out. Yes, it was. Well then? Hadn’t he given explicit instructions that it was to be sent to him? So I had to admit that he hadn’t given his name and I didn’t know it. There was an explosive, contemptuous sort of sound; then he laughed. And gave it to me.
My dears, it was Rutherford Worsthorne; by his own account (later gogglingly confirmed by Mr Salt) one of the rather leading diggers up of antiquity. I said I’d heard a lot about him from Daddy – which was true, but I couldn’t remember any of it – promised to make a note – assured him that all future books by Professor Fane should be sent to him on publication. (For pity’s sake write another soon!) I did hope that he would accept our … (all the apologetic patter). But he wasn’t impressed. He just said, ‘Ah, yes. Well, I hadn’t come merely to register a protest. Look here, Miss Fane, is there anywhere we can talk?’ I said yes but he went right on where he was. ‘The thing is – well, are you devoted to commerce?’ I murmured and wondered, and he explained: ‘I’m going to Greece this spring with a small party. Want a secretary. Not a chit. Must be a competent creature …’
All this, my dears, in the very public middle of Everyman’s Book Floor, with every ear in the room straining. I eventually managed to lead him away to my office, sent an applicant to wait outside (on that chair I sat on last September) and listened to his ideas.
Greece in the Spring! It sounded marvellous. I don’t know why the glamour of that country should have survived a semi-classical education, but it has. Geographically, I believe, it’s just a series of bare hills covered with Hellenic travellers and temples with Cook’s men behind every column. But my picture of it is full of almond blossom and budding olives, and sheets of asphodel and all Persephone’s other flowers climbing up Mount Parnassus.
It might fit in so beautifully too. If Daddy felt like taking his holiday in September this year I could perhaps join you for it when we came home. Oh, this is the maddest talk for a girl who isn’t going to be married in the autumn, and who’s got a really good and responsible job which might Last her a Lifetime with care (and, therefore, doesn’t bear thinking about). You see, I want to get out of London rather badly. Mary Meldon likes my flat and wants somewhere to live. She might take it on while we were away, and she and I might share it, perhaps, when I came back. For Mr Worsthorne wants a permanent secretary to dig up Greece and cruise about the islands and record results in the spring and summer, and also to come and work with him in London in the autumn.
Of course there are lots of pros and cons. There’d not be so much money, for one thing. Nor a Career. But it’d be a human existence, with lots of travelling and visible holidays and blessedly variable hours. Nine-to-six still sits on my soul like a tombstone every now and then.
Anyway, he doesn’t want a decision just at once. His own plans aren’t really settled, and I’m to think it over. Meanwhile, he’s asked me to a lecture on Something Hellenic and taking me out to dinner first. A kindly thought, but I shall feel uncomfortably On Appro. And very doubtful of sustaining the family reputation on dinner-table topics.
Do tell me that you don’t think this as crazy as it sounds. Castle-jerry-building cheers one up in the middle of an unenterprising existence. Not that mine is without its upheavals. Lots of odd things keep happening, including Words with the canteen cook yesterday and Everyman’s Dramatic Society’s performance to-morrow night. I’m not letting this vagary ‘Unsettle’ me. It’s just a pleasant thing to have about one’s mind.
With lots of love,
Hilary
2A Christchurch Street
Chelsea
March 6th, 1932
Dear Mr Grant,
I expect that the officials of the E Orch Soc72 (in which is incorporated the E A Op Soc and the E D C) are writing on behalf of their organisations to sympathise with you over your accident in general and on missing last night’s performance of The Girl Aboard the Lugger in particular. I was very sorry to hear about the accident. Rumour variously has it that you have sustained:
(a) A fractured skull
(b) Two broken arms
(c) Hopelessly crushed ribs – with splinters penetrating adjacent vital organs
(d) Compound fracture of the thigh
(e) Water on the knees and the loss of most toes, besides being burnt out of recognition.
Sister Smith says you’ve sprained an ankle. In either case I should have thought you were to be congratulated on producing such an impressive alibi. I had none to hand when Mr Salt presented me with a ticket, at the same time admitting that he was taking a small part in the performance himself. Which meant, I found, that he was the hero, and playing opposite Miss Morley of the Perfumes and Bath Salts. But as she went down with flu just before the Dress Rehearsal, Miss Landry of A. Select, Book Floor, is having the chance of her life.

‘tentatively conducted them’
As for the play itself, I doubt if an all star cast could have made much out of such an elderly comedy. And I’m sure that no dispassionate outsider could have sat through it as rendered by the E Orch Soc and Co. Fortunately none of us were dispassionate. The small hall, chartered for the occasion, was packed with friends and relations, so that the applause was more or less continuous. Everybody was encored: everybody had bouquets at the end (flowers for the ladies and lovely bottles of Bass tied up with ribbons for the gentlemen).
But three hours of musical comedy came first. The orchestra crawled into their pit at 7.40 for a 7.30 start: Mr Hibbert took up his place in front and tentatively conducted them through the National Anthem.

The orchestra enjoyed the overture very much, but after a while the curtain went up on an appropriate coastal scene; an insecure cliff with an agitated dark-blue back-cloth wagging behind a yellow beach. The chorus were on – ten pirates with sea-boots, sabres and knives in their teeth, and ten dithering village maidens who seemed to try the producer’s patience a good deal. The curtain went up in time to give us a marvellous view of his last words to them, but the well-trained audience clapped at sight, the producer charged back into the wings and the chorus plunged into their first song and dance. There was a certain lack of unanimity, but at the end all the pirates threw the girls piratically over their shoulders and staggered off. Which brought down the house. Then came the spotlight and Mr Salt, completely at his ease, though he rather upset the other actors by introducing a series of entirely irrelevant jokes, learnt up since the Dress Rehearsal and sprung on an unsuspecting cast. All the young women giggled and there was a sort of prolonged growling from the O P corner.73
At one point I had hopes that the producer would emerge and fall upon Mr Salt. Some of his curses coincided with a pianissimo bit for the orchestra, and Mr Hibbert was so startled that he dropped his baton. After that one half of the orchestra ran away with the other, and kept the lead to the end of that number, in spite of everything Mr Hibbert, wild and weaponless, could do.
Miss Landry,
of course, dried up at the first unrehearsed item. But she got her own back during the spot-lit love duet, which hardly left a dry parental eye in the house. Mr Salt’s thin tenor hadn’t a chance against her soprano, particularly as she managed (I hope by accident) to get a thumb on his windpipe during an embrace, and eventually tripped him up with his own sword.

But the event of the evening was the Pirates’ Hornpipe in the last act, even though make-up and performers had begun to wilt a bit by then. The Pirates’ costumes had been rather odd from the beginning, of course. I don’t know how one hires clothes for a chorus, but does one procure them by the dozen and then go round counting them out with, ‘Out-size, stock-size, medium large? ...’

The result looked like it. But the sea-boots were all tremendous, so that the dancers looked apprehensive. Some people’s corns made it dangerous for them to keep their feet on the ground and other people’s boots would have dropped off if they’d lifted them, so that there was no particular unanimity there either, except between the hero and heroine who appeared forgivingly on board the lugger and kissed throughout.
After that the audience kept the curtain seesawing up and down for about ten minutes while sections of the cast appeared or fled in embarrassment or dragged others on or were caught alone by accident in the centre of the stage, according to disposition. I saw the flowers and bottles delivered, then crept out, with my ears buzzing and walked home along the Embankment.
Anyone reported to have concussion or a fractured skull was quite definitely better in bed. But, talking of concussion, what about those library reports? Shall I take them to somebody else? Or wait? Or post them to you? Things are going rather well now. Having done all she can to wreck the new system, Miss Sparling has convinced herself that it originally emanated from her and that she is being defrauded of all credit. As this belief seems to please her, perhaps it’s all for the best.
One’s not to know, of course, when she may become homicidal again. I hope you’re a quick mender.