Business as Usual Read online

  But no one actually knows. Speculation has been running high, as he’s not one of our ‘steadies’. Mr Salt can’t remember ever having seen him before, though he’s sure he’s a ‘familiar face in Cambridge’.

  But where am I to send Daddy’s next book, when written?

  Hilary

  EVERYMAN’S STORES

  For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

  From  E Ward

  To Mr Grant

  October 21th, 1931

  SubjectJunior Assistant S (T) 801. Book Floor

  Memo

  I enclose Mr Salt’s report on Miss Fane’s work. She does not seem to be entirely justifying your confidence. I have spoken to her myself and pointed out that she must take her duties more seriously, and that it is impossible to over-estimate the importance of efficiency in detail. But I am not confident of having impressed her as I could wish. Miss Bryant actually found a drawing among her bills, which she very properly brought to me. Herewith.

  BT/MEW

  

  EVERYMAN’S STORES

  For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

  From  Salt

  To Miss Ward

  October 21th

  SubjectJunior Assistant S (T) 801. Book Floor

  Memo

  Miss Fane has worked in the Book Department for a week. Her daily takings average £20. Manner with customers good. Shows great promise as a saleswoman, but Miss Bryant (Cash Desk) complains that her arithmetic is very poor. Six of her bills have been returned to her this week. Four required correction and two were illegible.

  She needs constant supervision in this respect, and I have seen her counting on her fingers, which does not tend to inspire confidence in customers. Otherwise she has been satisfactory.

  BT/MEW

  EVERYMAN’S STORES

  For use in inter-departmental correspondence only

  From  G Grant

  To Miss Ward

  October 21th, 1931

  SubjectJunior Assistant S (T) 801. Book Floor

  Memo

  Try her in the library. Believe they add less there.

  SN/MGG

  23 Burford Street

  October 23rd

  My Dear,

  They’ve moved me again. Into the Library this time, which means direct proximity to Miss Sparling and seems one of the less likely successes. Psychically our auras can’t match or something. In effect, we like each other less and less.

  I’m sorry to leave the ‘Shop’, too. When one wasn’t being harried by bills and parcels and sales summaries it was an amusing place, and Mr Salt and I had begun to appreciate each other. I listened for half an hour yesterday to his views on Let’s Join the Nudists. (Select non­fiction, 21/-, with eighteen photogravures, a signed photograph of the author, clad, and various bowery glimpses of him unclad, as the title had led one to hope.) Mr Salt holds rather progressive views, but I can’t help feeling that he’s one of the people who are better undenuded. Business doesn’t develop the right muscles. As he says, ‘it’s the sitting that’s the trouble’. And after beagles50 and the Cam, Paddington Recreation Ground hasn’t much to offer a man.

  I’ve listened to quite a lot of his reminiscent talk, one way and another, so when my transfer came he was good enough to tell me that I should be missed in the department, where, if he might say so, I had already made my mark. (Which is such a grand way of saying that I’d taken £112:5:6 in a week. I’d like to know, incidentally, how that compares with the takings of the child in the Inexpensive Gowns who gave me my first glimpse of sales technique in action.)

  Well, I was sent to the Library yesterday, after a series of epic interviews with Miss Ward. I’m afraid she’s disappointed in me. We don’t see eye to eye over essentials. She thinks that Detail is Duty: Duty Detail … Also that one cannot be efficient and draw faces in Sales books. It wastes paper and encourages levity in others.

  As for Miss Sparling, she can hardly bear to explain things to me. She spent an hour elaborating the details of her system, all of which I forgot because she couldn’t or wouldn’t mention any underlying principle. Things, she told me, had always been done in a certain way, and therefore must always continue to be done just so. She may have had her reasons, but she refuses to part with them for my benefit. And I’m sure that’s suspicious.

  

  For instance, she told me that the folder for Mrs Jackson’s library list must be marked R/R and Miss Graham’s R/R – O ps/3. I said why? And she told me that there was a very good reason. When I said that I didn’t doubt it but that I’d like to know, for my own edification what it was, she said that no department could be run without co-operation and that I was showing quite the wrong spirit.

  After that she told me to take charge of one of the subsidiary desks, and showed me grimly where the folders were kept. From what Miss Ward said I gathered that I wasn’t to be given a desk, but to spend my time learning the library system. It isn’t entirely satisfactory and Mr Grant wants a report. But I expect Miss Sparling thought it would humble me to be given charge of Fiction C. It might, possibly, keep me out of mischief and prying. She gave me to understand that Fiction C was an extremely unimportant section, so that I would be likely to do less damage by making mistakes there than anywhere else.

  

  The best people don’t have Fiction C subscriptions, because they only cost 10/- a year and provide the copies that other people have spilt tea over or dropped in the bath. The titled or indolent send menials to Miss Rivington for Fiction A or to Miss Landry for A Select. All the A subscribers come under the Rational Reading scheme, but the Fiction C pariahs appear unobtrusively in person and carry their books away in leathercraft satchels51 or string bags.

  I shall have to do my researches during the lunch hour, as I don’t know whether Miss Sparling’s underlings are well disposed. I think that they look on me (with reason) as a snake in the grass.

  So much for me. How are you? I hear from the Family that all the pipes have burst at University Close, after a fortnight’s trial by frost. Father has retired in dudgeon to a hotel to finish his book, but Mother is standing siege to set an example to the maids. What about Mrs MacQueen’s pipes? Has she managed to nurse them through the convalescent stage, or are you angrily shaving in kettlefuls of hot water from your sitting-room fire? I pray that the frost doesn’t migrate to London, or my basement will be uninhabitable. So far it’s merely rained, which is hard on the one-pair-of-shoes girl, but not chilling to the bones.

  Now, bed. I embark on semi-criminal investigations to-morrow. And if the truth must be told I’m feeling my position.

  You may not get a letter till next week, because I’m going to the Bellamys’ for the week-end, and you know dear Margaret and George think that if you’re inactive for an instant you can’t be having a good time. Not quite the week­end for a tired business girl. But who cares? Shall I give them your love?

  Anyway, mine herewith,

  Hilary

  Train

  Sunday evening

  October 25th

  My Dearest Family,

  I’m writing this on the way back from the Bellamys. Margaret sent you her love. She and George hope to see you on their way north in the spring. They’re going to motor through the Highlands and then tramp. As Margaret says, if she can’t go to Nice she’ll go to Cape Wrath instead. Better to be braced in Scotland than drenched on the English Riviera.

  It was a very grand week-end. Perfectly glorious, I suppose, except for some of the usual moments. But if a two-figure income person goes to stay with four-figure friends, she may as well be philosophic and expect them.

  I’d got the four figures rather on my mind, of course, in spite of theories, so I started preparations on Wednesday evening. I revived my better evening dress with half a bottle of benzine52, and then took the other half to the evening shoes that had suffered from my last partner’s feet. Only, I put them too near the g
as fire afterwards, and while I was opening the door to let the petrol out, one shoe quietly went up in smoke. (Keep calm: there was no conflagration, and I didn’t burn a finger-tip. But I was left with one shoe and a smoking puddle of ash.) That rather settled the economies. I took it as an omen and went shopping in the lunch hour. (When Staff Discount is allowed.) I bought a pair of evening shoes and stockings and a pair of pyjamas fit for the Bellamy corridors with the tail-end of my birthday money eked out with some of my deposit account. But I thought my bedroom slippers would just have to do, as a penance, though a mouse had rather eaten the fur in places.

  When I arrived at Bath, the shining Bellamy car was there to meet me, and the chauffeur beside the ticket collector, touching his cap enquiringly to anyone who looked qualified to be a guest in the Bellamy household. I had an uneasy feeling that he was going to let me pass unchallenged, so I gave him my suit-case and swept out without waiting to see if he were surprised. But from that moment the question of tips (which usually only spoils the last afternoon in the houses of one’s grander friends) worried me to distraction. Ought one in the circumstances, to tip the chauffeur by the piece as it were, instead of as a final gesture? I wished I’d asked you in my last letter as I’d meant to. I began to have wild ideas of stopping the car in the village and sending you a pre-paid wire. But then I remembered that the answer would probably come by telephone and be brought to me vocally by some menial in a very public place.

  The Bellamys’ house is five miles out of the village, on top of a hill, with a long avenue of noisy beech trees leading up to it. The outside is just ordinary country house-like and not particularly period or imposing. It’s all in the plumbing: every bed its own bath in appropriately coloured tiles. Mine’s green, with a sunk, jade-coloured pool and every conceivable cosmetic grouped round on glass shelves, and pale green, enormous bath towels warming on racks.

  I wanted to stay safely in my room: Margaret and George were out. I thought I might unpack quickly and without any publicity that way. But Margaret’s maid wouldn’t have it: she shepherded me down to the music-room, and assured me that Madam would not be five minutes. The house­party was playing in a golf tournament. It’s a lovely room, of course; cream panelled, with old rose silks for cushions and curtains and a perilously53 parquet floor with Polar bear rugs. I find that sort of persistent beauty much more chastening than Aunt Bertha’s cheerful opulence. Anyway, I sat there, gradually deflating and turning over Society papers54 to complete the process, and ultimately then a young man in hairy tweeds whistled his way in. He looked rather disappointed at seeing me, I thought. But he said:

  ‘Hallo. Did you win?’

  I was disappointed too, because I hadn’t thought it was going to be one of those week­ends. It’s so much more fun when you can get Margaret alone. I said, ‘No,’ and didn’t explain till he asked if my partner had let me down. He said: ‘No? Really? Then you’re not the Smithers girl?’

  I said, ‘No,’ and he said, ‘No?’ and just then Margaret and George came in. I think Margaret was really pleased to see me, but there were dozens of other tweeded, tramping people, all babbling about drives and bunkers and short putts. So it was difficult to be sure. I watched them all to hear who was called Smithers, hoping it might be the fair one with a coat and skirt rather like mine. But she turned out to be the plainish, spectacled creature who was there because the Female Celebrity never Moved without her secretary. Which rather crushed me. And in the middle of tea, the parlourmaid came in and spoke to Margaret. Margaret said: ‘Hilary, darling – your keys. For Bates.’ Everybody seemed to have stopped talking just then, and I daren’t tell them that, having no valuables, I never locked my luggage. (In case they asked the reason.) So I handed over the muddle of half a dozen keys that all unlocked something irrelevant, and were tied together with very chewed string. They were borne off on a salver.

  When I went up to change, my possessions were spread out and looking worse than usual. Bates had put out my new stockings with the 5/11 ticket face upwards: the mouse-bitten bed­room slippers were warming in front of the fire: all the oddments of pencil-sharpeners, bits of india rubber, pencils, hair-ribbon and farthings which always collect at the bottom of my case had been ranged neatly on the dressing-table among Margaret’s shagreen brushes and mirrors and crystal bottles, and my two-shilling jar of cold cream. My very sponge-bag was marooned among flagons of bath-salts and vases of cologne and bowls of powder. By the time I’d bathed, though, I felt better, and after sherry I was quite pleased with myself. Dinner was lovely: odd, interesting things divinely cooked and served. The coffee I’d once spilt on my frock didn’t really show, and if the first young man had thought I was like the spectacled Smithers the one sitting next to me seemed to find me amusing. So things were about even on Smithers.

  I was rather haunted by the spectre of bridge towards the end, though. It took Daddy five years to teach me auction, as you know, and Basil couldn’t teach me contract at all. Quite apart from the financial problem raised by their probable stakes.

  But mercifully the Female Celebrity wanted to play paper games. I saw the unfortunate Smithers wince, and Margaret told me afterwards that the Celebrity made a point of outdoing everyone in vulgarity on those occasions. Last night she certainly succeeded. Smithers kept her head down over her own paper and got gradually purple about the ears, but she managed to win first Prize all the same. I thought that tactless, but apparently it was quite according to plan. She got a powder compact and the Female Celebrity carried off the Booby Prize; gold pencil and lipstick combined; three guineas at Everyman’s, and probably five in Bond Street. I didn’t think it of Margaret, but I suppose that if you have Celebrities to stay you can’t stick at changing round the prizes where necessary.

  Then we danced; a merciful change. People danced with me quite reasonably often and the floor was perfect. We went to bed just before two o’clock. (My sheets and blankets were the loveliest shade of new leaf green. Such fun.)

  Breakfast appeared this morning about ten, with orange juice for the liver and complexion in a little glass jug. I thought I’d have it always, too. But on second thoughts it makes such a difference if other people can be hired to take out the pips and do the squeezing.

  I came down about eleven, and Margaret said that she’d seen nothing of me at all and would I come with her in the car to inquire about a friend’s new baby. It seemed that mere telephoning would be heartless, so we toured the hot houses, collected fruit and flowers, and drove about eighty miles, there and back, before lunch. I think that was the nicest bit of the week-end, for Margaret is such a darling, when she can be prised away from her great possessions.

  After lunch some of us played tennis. Margaret lent me a racket and one of her dresses, which she insisted on my taking away afterwards. So I knew that I looked all right. Margaret’s clothes are so lovely: she always makes me feel like a cow in a coat. But I played quite well. Not the grandest green rubber court in the world, of course, could help it being rather sad and autumnal. We had to keep moving all the time and wear gloves on our left hands. Yellow leaves flapped in the wire netting.

  I’d only just got warm and begun to wish that I could go on staying when we had to go in to tea. We played again afterwards, but that set was spoiled because the tipping problem came down on me again like an extinguisher. Who, and how much, and when …? They beat us rather easily: 6-2.

  Then after all, Margaret drove me to the station herself. So I just didn’t tip that chauffeur. I don’t suppose I shall be asked again, anyway.

  On the whole, a lovely week-end. But the trouble about that sort of thing is that one should either do it so often that it gets to be a habit or not do it at all. I meant to tell you all about it, because I’ve been so rushed lately that my letters have been rather short and dull. But on re-reading I can think of lots of amusing things that I didn’t tell you about. Only I must write gratefully to Margaret before I forget.

  Keep having Basil to meals, won�
�t you, even if he and Daddy do go polysyllabic in company. I don’t believe that Mrs MacQueen feeds him properly. And he’d never notice.

  With much love

  Hilary

  23 Burford Street

  October 29th

  Basil!

  What did I tell you! I knew there was going to be trouble from my first day in the Library. And when the Minor Prophet gave me another complaint to investigate to-day I felt it was due. The details of the complaint aren’t particularly significant, but actually a Rational Reader wrote from Northumberland (Mail Service, Provincial Branch) to protest. His first letter, written months ago, explained his requirements: a biography, a play and a first-class novel every month. His letter hadn’t been acknowledged, and he continued to receive a succession of rubbishy novels – and battered copies at that.

  Fiction C, obviously, poor man. Mr Grant passed the complaint to me, because Fiction C was my section. Would I kindly take the matter up? I could use his name as my authority for any investigations it might be necessary to make. I took the matter up with my knees knocking.

  Have you ever tried to fix responsibility on anyone, Basil? It’s about as easy as holding an unwilling frog in wet hands. I combed the Library, the Clerical Department, and the very Store Room to find that first missing, unacknowledged letter of September 30th. It took me two hours. In fact, it was more or less a case of:

  Pig won’t get over the Stile,55

  And I

  Shan’t get home to-night.

  But finding it was worse. I went back to the Library, where Miss Sparling, of course, had never seen the thing in her life. But I thought she looked rather hot and flummoxed, and she’d certainly just shut her Unwritten Letter Box when I arrived. Also, there was a blue letter scrunched up in the waste-paper basket.