The Love Department

by William Trevor

  Mrs FitzArthur had been in a state ever since that moment: she had not known whether she was coming or going, and although her husband had recently held out an olive branch she felt she could not grasp it. Why can’t she grasp it, thought Septimus Tuam, for heaven’s sake?

  Septimus Tuam, still on the mahogany chair in the hall, heard Mrs FitzArthur in her kitchen giving an order to her cleaning woman. He could hear only a word or two of this instruction, but he deduced that it had to do with Mrs FitzArthur’s gas stove, for words came through which suggested to him that the merits of various oven-cleansers were being debated. He was idly thinking of that, of the cleaning woman down on her knees scrubbing at the oven, when the telephone rang by his elbow. He picked it up and spoke into the mouthpiece.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said Septimus Tuam, in a way that suggested that Mrs FitzArthur kept a shop. ‘What can we do for you today?’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Mrs FitzArthur’s husband from the other end of London. ‘It seems I have the wrong number.’

  ‘This is definitely the Blanche FitzArthur residence,’ said Septimus Tuam.

  ‘FitzArthur residence? Does Mrs FitzArthur live there? I am telephoning Mrs FitzArthur; who are you, by God?’

  ‘Not Mrs FitzArthur,’ said Septimus Tuam, and sniffed and clicked his fingers, and called out to Mrs FitzArthur, who came at once.

  ‘Who is that man there?’ demanded Mrs FitzArthur’s husband, feeling intensely jealous and upset. ‘I ring you up with forgiveness in my heart; you said you were going on the straight and narrow. Whatever’s a man doing there?’

  ‘He just picked up the telephone since he was passing through the hall. He thought to help, poor man.’

  ‘I know. I know. But who is this poor man?’

  ‘He is a Mr Spratt, come to repair the oven of the gas cooker. The wretched thing is all clogged up; I can cook nothing these days.’

  ‘A Mr Spratt? I thought it was Septimus Tuam.’

  ‘Mr Spratt is an employee in a gas shop. It is awkward saying this because the man is standing here. Do you want something in particular?’

  ‘I am giving you a date so that you may come to me with a contrite heart. It is in me to let bygones be bygones.’

  ‘Oh, God!’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You’ve taken me unawares. Date, did you say?’

  ‘I am not an unfair man. I have thought and I have come up with a conclusion. Divorce proceedings may now be cancelled if you can offer me assurances that your heart is contrite. Is it empty of the blackguardly hound?’

  ‘All is over between Septimus Tuam and myself,’ said Mrs FitzArthur in a low voice.

  ‘Maybe,’ returned her husband. ‘But do you come to me on your bended knees, spitting on the scoundrel’s face? That is necessary before we can be secure again. Do not forget you are my seventh wife.’

  ‘I cannot spit upon the scoundrel’s face,’ cried Mrs FitzArthur. ‘Oh, I am on the straight and narrow, I grant you that, but the other takes time.’

  ‘Tomorrow is the destined day.’

  ‘Tomorrow, Harry? What’s on tomorrow?’

  ‘Tomorrow I come in person for my final answer. I am to hear from your lips, madam, whether or no the scoundrel is naught in your heart. He’s run off from you, I dare say; they all do that.’

  Septimus Tuam watched Mrs FitzArthur receive this news, knowing why she had told her husband that the telephone had been answered by a Mr Spratt from a gas shop. The suspicious Mr FitzArthur had put a private detective on them and had caused a bit of bother, but now, since the private detective had been called off, it only remained for Mrs FitzArthur to fall in with her husband’s wishes. A reconciliation had first been mooted a month ago, and Mrs FitzArthur, on the advice of Septimus Tuam, had assured her husband that the lover had passed out of her life. In the future, Septimus Tuam promised, they would take more care.

  ‘But I haven’t it in my heart,’ Mrs FitzArthur had cried, ‘to abase myself and to spit upon our love affair.’ She would have liked to hear Septimus Tuam say in reply: ‘Let’s go out and get married; let that be the end of it.’ But she knew that she could hardly hope for that. ‘Come, then, tomorrow,’ she cried into the telephone. ‘Come here to our house, boy, and let’s just see. It makes my blood run cold.’

  A pause, the work of Mr FitzArthur, registered along the wire. His wife felt sick in her stomach and sighed massively, and saw Septimus Tuam sitting a yard away from her, with his tongue lolling out of his mouth, examining the palms of his hands.

  ‘I see no reason for your blood to run cold,’ said the voice of Mr FitzArthur, ‘unless you have been having me on.’

  ‘Dear, I said that by mistake. I meant to say some other thing. Come tomorrow whatever you do. At eleven a.m.’

  ‘Eleven a.m.,’ agreed the man who had married seven times. ‘All right, Blanche.’

  ‘I feel an omen,’ said Septimus Tuam, who didn’t feel anything at all. ‘Let Mr FitzArthur back into the house. Make up and be friends. Now is the time: I feel that thing.’ He spoke from the mahogany chair, from the same position in which he had watched Mrs FitzArthur get into a state over her husband. He had sat there listening, endeavouring to think about nothing. He had relaxed as he had taught himself to relax, a gaunt young man with a face like the edge of a chisel and a mind that in some ways matched it.

  ‘Oh God!’ cried Mrs FitzArthur, looking down at the telephone receiver.

  Septimus Tuam rose up from his lethargy then and whispered to her what she must do. ‘Have him here,’ he said, ‘at eleven in the morning. Give him food and drink after his journey, and claim that Messrs Guilt and Shame have taken hold of you. Say you have loved him always, good fellow that he is. Say you do not understand the vileness that led you towards the vagabond scoundrel who led you a dance, who loved you and left you. Bury your head on his breast, Mrs Fitz; announce you are his for ever. Cry mightily that you spit upon the vileness that carried you astray, that you spit upon the heart and diseased mind, upon the face and body of the evil Septimus Tuam. Tell him all that and he’ll move back in with his suitcases and hand you a chequeful of housekeeping money. “Sit yourself down,” say, “and I’ll cook you a strudel.” After which, why not suggest that he takes you out on the river?’

  Mrs FitzArthur placed a hand on her brow and seemed again distraught. ‘How can I think,’ she cried, ‘in the midst of all this? He must give me more time. He must let me go out to New York and be on my own for a while. Harry can be selfish.’

  Mrs FitzArthur added that she was in too serious a state by now to go out and buy a rain hat, at which Septimus Tuam expostulated mildly, reminding her that he had come all the way to Wimbledon in order that they might go together to Ely’s to see what rain hats Ely’s were offering. ‘And all that happens,’ he complained, ‘is that I’m obliged to borrow from you the taxi charge home again. I am a needy case today.’

  Mrs FitzArthur, continuing to be vague and distracted, handed Septimus Tuam ten shillings of her money. ‘Harry comes here tomorrow,’ she said. ‘What can I do but pluck up my courage and say New York to him?’ Septimus Tuam nodded, stepping from the house, since it seemed the best thing he could do. He crossed a busy road and walked on to Wimbledon Common, thinking to himself that if Mrs FitzArthur was going to be in New York he’d better do something about it.

  ‘I don’t follow you, Lady Dolores.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t understand in what way the man is a scourge and a disease.’

  Lady Dolores reached behind her and grasped a cardboard folder containing several dozen letters. She handed the folder to Edward and indicated that he should read its contents. When he had finished she said:

  ‘The women are of all ages. They are as old as seventy and as young as twenty-two. They have, in common, their riches.’

  ‘He’s after money,’ said Edward.

  Again silence developed. In the love department proper one of the clerks wro
te idly on the back of an envelope: Spine limp. Dead. Another inscribed elsewhere: His dog prowls.

  ‘They all say he is beautiful,’ said Lady Dolores. ‘That is the pattern that ties up the case against Septimus Tuam – for many do not mention him by name. They say, with no exception, that he is beautiful where others might say a lover is a bundle of charms or a fellow of excitements. They speak of him as beautiful, as though referring to an object.’

  Edward would have preferred to have been given a place with the other clerks, reading letters and noting their contents, passing on the special ones to Lady Dolores Bourhardie. Now, it seemed, he was to get mixed up with some man called Septimus Tuam, whom Lady Dolores declared he had been put on earth to deal with.

  ‘Is there no chance of a desk job?’ Edward asked meekly.

  ‘You are no damn good at the desk,’ Lady Dolores snapped. ‘You’ve completely disgraced yourself.’

  ‘But the other –’

  ‘You’re perfect for the harder work; it requires the use of a fine brain. You have been sent to me to undertake this work, so’s I can make a man of you.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ said Edward. He was aware of a sudden flash of pride, hearing her say so confidently that he was perfect for work that required a fine brain.

  ‘I’ll warn you of this,’ said Lady Dolores. ‘Women have gone to their graves.’

  ‘He hasn’t killed them?’ cried Edward, horrified.

  ‘Three women of Wimbledon took to their coffins. Buried by love, Mr Blakeston-Smith.’

  Edward shook his head in wonderment.

  ‘Average age fifty-one and a half years,’ said Lady Dolores. ‘The three of them succumbed to a decline. D’you get me?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘You’re sweet, Mr Blakeston-Smith,’ cried Lady Dolores, jumping to her feet, pushing the hassock from beneath her desk and standing on it to clap her plump hands. The rings rattled together, sparkling in the artificial light that always burned in the room.

  ‘Listen,’ said Lady Dolores in an excited and urgent way. ‘Listen to me, Mr Blakeston-Smith, my little baby. Are you listening?’

  Edward said he was listening, and Lady Dolores told him at length about the suburb of Wimbledon. ‘Close your eyes,’ said Lady Dolores, ‘so that you can imagine better.’ She said that men from the business world had come to settle in Wimbledon, men from city board-rooms, who did good work by day and returned exhausted to spacious homes. They were men who were under pressure in middle age, because they sought to accumulate wealth – a process, so Lady Dolores advised, that brought pressures with it. She told Edward of the work the men performed, sitting about in offices in London, coming to decisions and being sharp about it. Lady Dolores went into considerable detail; she conjured up pictures of interiors of houses and of the men’s wives; she spoke of the growing-up of children, of their accents and ambitions. ‘SW19,’ said Lady Dolores, ‘is a suburban area like many another. It’s a respectable, decent place.’

  His umbrella dangled from his arm as Septimus Tuam walked and eyed the women; young mothers with children, nursery-maids and au pair girls, the middle-aged and the elderly, all strolling or moving briskly, Septimus Tuam wondered about them. He had read fantastic yarns of girls from Switzerland whose fathers, manufacturers of confectionery and the like, possessed great wealth. Girls from Switzerland, though, young things of seventeen and eighteen, would be looking for marriage more than anything else: the older age-groups interested Septimus Tuam more.

  He passed the Bluebird Café and saw through the window a tall blonde-haired lady buying coffee beans from an assistant. She was about thirty, he decided, with a smart air about her, as though she knew her way about and had a use for money. As he watched, the woman paid for her coffee beans and then, instead of leaving the place as he had expected, she went farther in and sat down at a table. He at once entered the Bluebird Café, and although there were other tables that were empty he sat down at the one occupied by the blonde-haired lady, retaining his umbrella.

  ‘Well, now,’ said Septimus Tuam to a hovering waitress, ‘I’ll have a coffee, bless you.’

  With blood-red fingernails the blonde-haired lady placed three lumps of sugar in her cup and stirred the liquid until she was satisfied that all was dissolved. She drank some and glanced at her watch.

  ‘I thought it would rain,’ said Septimus Tuam. ‘It is most unsettled, the weather we’re getting.’

  The woman nodded, without either speaking or smiling. She took a diary from her handbag and began a perusal of its general information.

  ‘Extraordinary, the things they tell you,’ said Septimus Tuam, his profile inclined towards her. ‘Lighting-up time and all the information about the law terms. Oh bless you, Agnes,’ he added, speaking to the waitress who had placed his coffee in front of him, whose name, in fact, was not Agnes at all.

  ‘Yes,’ said the blonde-haired lady, acknowledging the remarks about diary contents.

  ‘I myself have a brewers’ diary, given me by a certain Lord Marchingpass of whom you may possibly have heard. A little known fact about the life of Lord Marchingpass is that he sits on the boards of several brewery firms. Hence I have at my fingertips such information as the maximum pressure that may be applied to beer without gas being absorbed. Also, of course, the usual stuff about how to treat bleeding and wounds.’

  Septimus Tuam drew from his pocket a diary he had found on the floor of a tube train. ‘What would I do if you fainted?’ he said, and read from his diary: ‘Lay patient down and raise lower limbs. Loosen tight clothing. Turn head to one side, and ensure fresh air. I think that’s odd, you know, in a diary for brewers. Unless the fumes cause it. Unless fainting is an occupational hazard in the work, men falling unconscious as they approach the vats. I wonder now.’

  ‘I know nothing of such matters,’ said the woman at the table.

  ‘Nor I. I know nothing of brewing beer, or fainting, or anything like that at all. It is simply that the generous Lord Marchingpass, a kind of uncle really, kindly presented me with this diary. Well, there you are.’

  The woman rose, and bowed slightly as a form of leave-taking. But Septimus Tuam rose too, and when the waitress came along with her pad and pencil, said:

  ‘Put them both together, Agnes, like a good girl.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ protested the woman.

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I couldn’t allow that.’

  Septimus Tuam, who had certain stances that were modelled on those of Spanish dancers, took up one of these now. He nodded in a firm manner to the waitress, who scribbled a bill and handed it to him. ‘Bless you,’ he said, and pressed into her palm a penny.

  ‘Actually,’ he went on, having paid the bill and accompanying the blonde-haired woman from the cash-desk, ‘beer is a beverage I never touch. I am a Vouvray man myself.’

  ‘I really must insist upon your taking this money. One and threepence, I think my share was: I cannot have you paying for my coffee.’

  ‘Ha, ha,’ said Septimus Tuam without smiling, swinging his umbrella. The woman felt a prick on the calf of her leg and looked down and saw that the rough tip of the young man’s umbrella had pierced her stocking and caused an instant ladder. Septimus Tuam looked down too. He said, aghast:

  ‘My dear lady, what a thing to happen! Now, look here –’

  ‘Please take this money at once. I have a great deal to do.’

  ‘No, no. We cannot have that. I have accidentally ruined your stocking in a public place. Look, dear lady, have you time? Come straight across to Ely’s with me and I’ll replace the damaged article. It’s only fair.’

  ‘It was an accident, it doesn’t matter. I shall put this money in the charity box.’

  The woman placed one and threepence in a box that asked for alms. She said:

  ‘Good-bye.’

  ‘My dear, we cannot say good-bye like this. I have utterly ruined your beautiful stocking. I do insist, I r
eally do, that you step across the road to Ely’s and see what they have for sale. I’m well known in the store.’ Septimus Tuam had taken the liberty of seizing the woman’s elbow, while she, feeling herself propelled from the café and on to the street, was thinking that a hatchet-faced young man whom she had never seen before had paid for her coffee and was now about to buy her stockings.

  ‘I must ask you to release me,’ she said. ‘Let go my elbow: I do not intend to go with you to Ely’s.’

  ‘Oh, come now.’

  ‘Please. You are greatly embarrassing me.’

  ‘Nonsense, my dear. My name is Septimus Tuam. And may I be so bold –’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said the woman to two men on the street. ‘I am being annoyed.’

  The men turned on Septimus Tuam and spoke roughly, while the woman, glancing haughtily at him, strode away. He felt humbled and depressed and then felt angry. He crept away with the sound of the men’s voices echoing in his ears, hating momentarily the whole of womankind, and reflecting that his failure had cost him two and sevenpence. He knew that in order to retain his nerve he must succeed at once. He went to Ely’s and found a lavatory where he rested for an hour, weeping a little and meditating. Then, considerably refreshed, he washed himself, checked that the tip of his umbrella was correctly adjusted, and set off for a round of the store’s departments.