The Love Department

by William Trevor

  ‘There’s a thing I’ve been meaning to say,’ said Lake. ‘Just a little point that I’m sure you’ll understand.’ He drew back his lips. He said that since he was now about to step into James Bolsover’s position it would be difficult, unseemly even, for their association to continue. He would arrange, he said, for Miss Brown to be moved to another part of the building, to do work for another man. He mentioned Mr Linderfoot twice. He would feel proud, he said, if he were in Miss Brown’s shoes, knowing that an influential person like Mr Linderfoot was displaying an interest. ‘You see what I’m driving at,’ said Lake, smiling widely now, and expecting of Miss Brown a sharp and wise nodding of the head. Instead, the girl hit him on his shoulder with a clenched fist. She struck him again, with the first object that came to hand, which happened to be a glass tumbler. She pushed him from the chair on which he was sitting, and his head struck the floor with an impact that caused him to lose consciousness and caused his teeth to leap from his mouth.

  Miss Brown wept. She stood above the man, staring down at him, and comprehending everything. It had taken him forty-five seconds to betray her utterly. He had stated with a smile that they must go their separate ways, implying that there had never been love between them. Soundlessly, the tears flowed from Miss Brown’s eyes as she stood in her gloomy bed-sitting-room and considered her ruined world. She had planned marriage with the man, she had seen them as a pair who might go far. She had often seen a scene in which there were children, the fruit of their congress, children who could also go far when the time was ripe for the journey, children who would heap credit on the credit already acquired.

  Miss Brown in her emotion did not at that time care if she had killed Lake. She would say he had attacked her. She would say that he had terrified the life out of her, coming at her with a leer, without his teeth. She knelt beside the body and heard his breathing. She said to herself that she did not know what she was doing, that in a minute she would discover herself rushing to a cupboard and returning with a bread-knife to stick between Lake’s ribs or to put to more grisly use. She saw the teeth on the floor where they had fallen from his jaws and she trod upon them, grinding them beneath the heel of a shoe. Violence flowed in her body: she lifted her small, neatly shod foot and drove it with power into the soft rump of the man who had used her ill.

  Miss Brown filled a basin with cold water and poured it over her erstwhile lover. He groaned and began to move. Miss Brown, seeing the return to consciousness, quit the room.

  Minutes later, utterly amazed, Lake sat up and shivered. He raised a hand to his head and felt a lump rising there, and wondered immediately how he would disguise it when he went before the board-men in the morning. He straightened his tie and looked about for his teeth. ‘My God!’ he cried, seeing the broken pieces of pink plastic all around him, and single familiar fangs buried in the carpet. ‘My God alive!’ cried Lake, thinking again of the board-meeting: he saw himself standing before the important men, his gums empty of teeth, a swelling the size of a billiard ball prominent on his head. The image caused Lake to moan with horror and distress: it caused him to pick the pieces swiftly from the floor and to run from the room and down the stairs.

  ‘Quickly,’ said Lake to a taxi-driver. ‘This is top priority.’ He gave the address of his dentist, thankful at least that the man was a local practitioner.

  Miss Brown walked about Putney, thinking that it was going to rain and trying to prevent her hands from shaking. The face of Lake dangled before her, smiling at her with its gums exposed. She passed the house where Septimus Tuam lived: she passed the Hand and Plough. A man spoke to her, but she made no reply, not hearing the man and seeing him only as a shadow. She did not yet say to herself, ‘This is the risk you run with love,’ although later, and in a calmer moment, she said it repeatedly, adding that those who love most passionately have naturally most to lose.

  Miss Brown climbed Putney Hill and walked on Putney Heath, and walked on until she came to Wimbledon Common. She passed the house of Mrs FitzArthur but did not know whose house it was, having never heard of Mrs FitzArthur. She did not walk as far as Crannoc Avenue, but turned instead and retraced her steps back to her bed-sitting-room. She would find there signs of the man who had been cruel to her: a plate from which he had eaten fish lay in a green washing-up basin, a fork that had been in his mouth lay with it, and a cup that retained the remains of coffee he had relished. She thought she might keep that plate and the fork just as they were, unwashed for ever, and the coffee-cup with them. She thought she would cover them with a light varnish to hold the debris of food in place: the fat on the prongs of the fork, tiny flakes of fish on the plate, sugar stained brown in the coffee-cup. She saw herself dipping a brush into a jar of varnish and recognized an absurdity in the action. So when she eventually arrived at her bed-sitting-room she went immediately to the green washing-up basin and took from it the objects that had been on her mind. She broke the plate with a violent gesture, striking it with a meat-hammer; she struck the cup a single blow and saw it shatter into many pieces. She wept again in the quiet room, sitting on the chair he had sat on, holding his fork in her right hand, wondering what to do with it. She rose after a minute, and threw it out of the window.

  James Bolsover was on a train: he had felt in no mood for driving. He had heard that the eight men had called a meeting for the following morning at which he was not to be present, to which Lake was to be called. The end seemed nigh, as the end had come in another way too. He would telephone Eve and say that he was instituting divorce proceedings, requesting her to remain in their house with their children until something else could be arranged.

  An elderly woman sitting opposite read a copy of Argosy. She placed it on the seat beside her after a while. She smiled at James in a companionable way, and said:

  ‘The stories they write nowadays.’

  James smiled back. He was thinking about his children. He recalled the man with the R.A.F. moustache who had been going to show him the ropes, and the flat he had visualized his family living in, down in the SW17 area. He shuddered when he thought of all that now.

  ‘How does one find a housekeeper, or someone like that?’ said James to the elderly woman.

  ‘A housekeeper?’

  ‘I have two small children. My wife’s in the process of leaving me.’

  ‘I’m sorry indeed. We live in an age of change.’

  ‘I was wondering about a housekeeper, someone who could see to their clothes and make a meal. I suppose it’s the usual thing.’

  ‘I suppose you put an advertisement in,’ said the woman, ‘asking for a friendly person.’

  ‘I couldn’t pay much,’ explained James. ‘I may not be well off.’

  ‘No, well, I daresay all that’s worked out. There’s probably a kind of scale. You know.’

  The train moved at sixty miles an hour through the dark countryside. The lights of villages and small towns appeared for a minute or two and then were gone. It was raining.

  ‘Our fine autumn’s gone, I see,’ the woman said, rubbing the window with the palm of her hand.

  ‘You wouldn’t be interested?’ said James. ‘Or know anyone?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I meant the housekeeper. Someone to keep house for the three of us.’

  The elderly woman laughed. ‘My dear man,’ she said, ‘you’re paying me a nice compliment, but take a closer look: I’m much too old to keep much of a house for anyone.’

  James said he was sorry, but the woman assured him that she had been cheered by his assumption. ‘I’m afraid I know of no one,’ she said, and James thought then of the nurse who had attended his father at his death. He wondered if a nurse would become a housekeeper, and rather doubted it.

  ‘At this hour of the night?’ said the dentist to Lake. ‘No chance at all.’

  ‘I must have teeth,’ cried Lake. ‘I have an important occasion at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I cannot help you, sir. I can repair n
othing. You need a new set of dentures: an impression must be taken and the dentures constructed. It all takes time.’

  ‘Repair what I have here,’ said Lake, holding out the pieces in the handkerchief.

  ‘I could not repair that. It takes a dental mechanic. You will appreciate, sir, that there is no dental mechanic on these premises at this hour of the night. Come in the daytime, please. Good night, Mr Lake.’

  ‘No,’ cried Lake, placing a foot across the threshold.

  ‘There is no point in arguing,’ returned the dentist, ‘or becoming excited. You need a new set, in any case. No dental mechanic, however great his skill, could render a satisfactory repair. Your teeth are smashed beyond repair.’

  ‘But surely you have other teeth? Surely you have a set about the place that would do for the time being?’

  ‘A set about the place? What do you mean by that?’

  ‘A dentist has teeth,’ cried Lake. ‘A dentist’s job is to do with teeth, taking them out and putting them back. Haven’t you a set that’s been repaired by the mechanic and is awaiting collection?’

  The dentist stared at Lake in some horror. ‘I must ask you to go,’ he said quietly.

  ‘You’re my dentist, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am the dentist of others also. I cannot do what you’re suggesting.’

  ‘I would let you have them back. At eleven tomorrow morning.’

  The taxi-driver whom Lake had employed called out from his cab that the meter was ticking over.

  ‘What about it?’ said Lake to the dentist.

  ‘I cannot possibly allow you to take away the teeth of another patient,’ said the dentist. ‘The teeth wouldn’t fit you, for a start. Untold harm might be done. The idea is ludicrous.’

  ‘Look, I’ll make them fit,’ said Lake. ‘Give me dental adhesive. A strong adhesive, a bit of padding –’

  The dentist brought the door forward with force and drove the edge of it over Lake’s toes. Lake cried out in pain and withdrew his foot. He returned to the waiting taxi-cab, muttering and sweating. It was just beginning to rain.

  ‘Perhaps it’ll be O.K.,’ said Edward in the Hand and Plough. ‘Perhaps they’ll stick together. Perhaps Mr Bolsover’ll forgive her.’

  ‘Why should he forgive the woman?’ demanded Mrs Hoop, angry to hear the thought expressed. ‘Be your age, Edward.’

  ‘I fancy you, Emily,’ said Beach. ‘I was in a dream last night with you.’

  ‘Sign the paper,’ snapped Mrs Hoop. ‘You’re a right pair, the two of you.’

  Harold shouted that it was closing time, and the three companions left the public-house soon afterwards. They walked together along the pavement, Edward wheeling his bicycle, Beach attempting to take the arm of Mrs Hoop. Rain spattered their faces. ‘The good weather’s gone,’ said Edward. ‘God damn the rain!’ said Mrs Hoop, tying a scarf over her hair.

  ‘Do you know a dentist?’ said a bald-headed man to them, leaning out of a taxi-cab.

  ‘Take no notice,’ said Mrs Hoop, walking on.

  ‘I need a dentist urgently,’ said Lake.

  ‘Dentist?’ said Beach. ‘We could lead you to a doctor, sir. We called in upon a doctor the other evening when Emily Hoop here was savaged by an ape.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ said Mrs Hoop, walking back again.

  ‘I need a set of teeth,’ said Lake in a low voice. ‘My dentures have become smashed and it happens that I have an important engagement at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. I’m scouring everywhere for a sensible dentist.’

  ‘False teeth?’ said Mrs Hoop.

  ‘Look here,’ said Lake, lowering his voice still further. ‘You don’t know anyone who’d loan me a set of teeth until eleven o’clock tomorrow? It’s a matter of the utmost urgency.’

  ‘Will you lend the man your teeth?’ said Mrs Hoop to Beach. ‘He’s distressed in himself.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Beach.

  ‘We’d have to make a charge, sir,’ said Mrs Hoop to Lake.

  ‘Naturally,’ said Lake, emerging from the taxi-cab. ‘Of course you’d have to.’

  ‘Would five shillings be all right?’ said Mrs Hoop. ‘Just something to make up for the discomfort of the old man during the night and morning.’

  ‘Isn’t it lucky I met you?’ said Lake.

  Mrs Hoop allowed the three men to enter her house. She boiled some water with which to make tea. She arranged biscuits on a plate. ‘I’ll stay on after the other two johnnies have gone,’ said Beach to himself in a mumble, and winked at Mrs Hoop whenever he could catch her eye.

  ‘We’ll take a cup of tea,’ said Mrs Hoop, ‘and then we’ll get down to business.’ She would arrange for the teeth to be returned personally to her when the man had finished with them, and she would hold the teeth until old Beach signed a will without making a mess of it. She was becoming tired of it, night after night in the Hand and Plough, begging and persuading, promising and cajoling. Beach was a wily bird, she had decided: a little touch of pressure of another kind would do no harm at all.

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ said Mrs Hoop, handing round cups of tea. ‘This here is old Beach, and the younger man is Mr Edward Blakeston-Smith. I myself am a Mrs Hoop.’

  ‘Mr Lake,’ said Lake. ‘It’s very good of you.’

  ‘Had an accident, have you?’ said Mrs Hoop. ‘A biscuit?’

  ‘An extraordinary occurrence,’ said Lake. ‘Look at the lump on my head, Mrs Hoop.’

  Mrs Hoop looked at the lump on Lake’s head and gave it as her opinion that the lump was a bad one.

  ‘That’s another thing,’ said Lake. ‘That lump will be black and blue tomorrow, and I have to go in to a board-meeting. That’s why I was concerned about the other matter: tomorrow is my big day.’

  ‘We’ll see you right,’ said Mrs Hoop.

  ‘I’ll tell you a thing about myself,’ said Lake. ‘When I was a child of six my father remarked to a friend of his that he thought we had a future Prime Minister in the family.’

  ‘Well, I never,’ said Mrs Hoop.

  ‘But when the time came, Mrs Hoop, I decided to enter the business world. My mind is made up about it: I am going to the top, I’m well qualified for that.’

  ‘I worked on the Underground myself,’ said Mrs Hoop. ‘I seen the world go by, Mr Lake.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lake. ‘Indeed. In my own case, I set out early to learn the tricks of the trade.’

  ‘Tricks?’ said Mrs Hoop. ‘I could tell you a thing or two, as I’ve told these gentlemen here. “Got a fag, love?” they’d say to me as I passed. They’d follow me in cars, Mr Lake, two and three of them at a time.’

  ‘That sort of thing’s terrible,’ said Lake. ‘Really atrocious.’ He paused. ‘Tomorrow I hope to take over the work of a man called Bolsover, who is quite unsuited. I am to address the board at the invitation of Mr Linderfoot. You will understand now why I’m creating a fuss about the dentures and the lump on my head. I am not by nature a fussy person: I’m the most unfussy person you could care to imagine. In two years’ time I’ll be unstoppable, Mrs Hoop.’

  ‘Bolsover and Linderfoot,’ said Mrs Hoop. ‘It’s a small world.’

  ‘We know the Bolsovers,’ said Edward. ‘Mrs Bolsover in particular.’

  ‘Mrs Hoop got caught up with the ape,’ said Beach. ‘The lad and I fetched out a doctor.’

  ‘How’s Linderfoot?’ said Mrs Hoop. ‘There’s a filthy man for you.’

  ‘How come you know Mr Linderfoot and the Bolsovers?’ said Lake, surprised; and Mrs Hoop told him. ‘Well, I’ll be jiggered,’ said Lake.

  ‘The Bolsover marriage has come to a halt,’ said Mrs Hoop, ‘owing to the woman being a whore. There’s a Septimus Tuam who works in a shop messing it up with Mrs Bolsover, leaving the man with the kids. All Wimbledon is talking.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ said Lake, and shook his head. ‘Well, perhaps I should be off.’ He glanced towards Beach’s mouth. He rose and smiled toothlessly at the
three of them.

  ‘Stay awhile,’ said Mrs Hoop, and Lake sat down again.

  Thus it was that Edward witnessed these two people, the enemies of the Bolsovers, meeting in the small world. They sat and talked while Beach slept and snorted. Mrs Hoop explained how she had spoken to James Bolsover, saying that his wife was running around; Lake explained how he had cleverly planned the overthrow of James Bolsover, employing the usual and accepted business methods. Mrs Hoop made arrangements for the returning of Beach’s property. ‘Best hand them on to me,’ she said, ‘and I’ll pass them to him in the evening.’ She would put them in an empty tin box and strike her bargain in the Hand and Plough. ‘I always got on with Bolsover,’ said Mrs Hoop to Lake. ‘He was unsuited to his work,’ said Lake. ‘There’s no doubt about that.’

  Edward, listening to this conversation, said to himself that Mrs Hoop and Lake were villains. Mrs Bolsover had shown him kindness whenever he had met her. She had calmed the atmosphere that day in Mrs FitzArthur’s house when he had tried to warn Septimus Tuam and Septimus Tuam had turned nasty. She was a beautiful woman, the only beautiful person he had come across in London. He had been taken in drink and had accidentally said that Mrs Bolsover was meeting Septimus Tuam, and now Mrs Hoop had caused a havoc by passing on the information to Mrs Bolsover’s husband. Mrs Hoop knew quite well that that was the last thing that should be done in such circumstances. Edward looked from one face to the other and saw that Mrs Hoop and Lake were twin souls. They were getting on like a house on fire, discussing the destruction of other people, exuding evil.

  ‘You are crooks,’ cried Edward, jumping to his feet. ‘You’re a disgrace to the human race.’