Paint Gold and Blood

by Michael Gilbert

  When the coffee arrived he explained the financial arrangements. “You choose one volume,” he said, “and pay for that. The normal cover price is five pounds, but if you’re buying a set you get it for four pounds fifty. You sign a form agreeing to order the other nine volumes, but that obligation can be cancelled at any time within thirty days. It gives you an opportunity to look through the volume you’ve got and make your mind up about the others.”

  “That sounds fair. I think I’d like the G – H volume. I’ve always been interested in hawks.”

  “An excellent choice,” said Peter, sliding the contract form onto the table. This was the bit that always made him feel like a confidence trickster.

  “I told you I hadn’t got any money in the house. Would a cheque do?”

  “Of course.”

  Some minutes later, as he was walking away down the pavement, Peter was doing some mental arithmetic. The Sales Manager of the Omnium Encyclopaedia Company had told him that some of their representatives made well over ten thousand pounds a year. His commission was fifteen per cent of the sales that he made. A set cost forty-five pounds – fifteen per cent of that was six pounds seventy-five. To make ten thousand he would have to sell – couldn’t do it in his head – it must be about one thousand five hundred sets a year. He had a long way to go. Perhaps his technique would improve as he went along.

  By three o’clock that afternoon, he had reached the end house in Priory Crescent South. It was rather larger than the others, had more garden and a wider frontage. The door was opened by an elderly man with a shock of grey hair and a pair of half-moon glasses. He peered over them at Peter, said, “Are you a government snooper, a public opinion pollster, or a salesman?”

  “A salesman, I hope.”

  The man looked at the bag and said, “I suppose it’s books. An encyclopaedia?”

  “The New Omnium.”

  “Never heard of it. But come in. I’m interested in encyclopaedias. I’ve already got a few.”

  He led the way into a room at the back of the house. The windows were wide open and the afternoon sun streaming in lit up the backs of the books which packed the shelves. Peter spotted the eleventh and last English edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the twelve-volume ‘Everyman’ version, the Dictionary of National Biography with all its decennial supplements and the Grand Dictionnaire Universel of Pierre Larousse. Other shelves seemed to be full of works on mathematics and physics, many of them by foreign authors. He noticed Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics and Laplace’s Essai sur les Probabilités.

  Whilst he was making this rapid survey of the shelves the old gentleman had picked up the volume P – R and was studying it. From where he sat Peter could not see the entry he was reading. Judging by the twitching of his lips it seemed to be causing him some amusement. After a minute he got up, walked across to one of the shelves, selected a book, returned with it to the table and continued his reading.

  From time to time he broke off to make a note in minute handwriting on the pad beside him. Finally he said, “You were not, I take it, personally involved in the compilation of this interesting work?”

  “No, indeed,” said Peter. “I’m just a salesman.”

  “But you must have formed some opinion of the object you were offering for sale. I mean, if it was a vacuum cleaner you would have ascertained that it cleaned carpets.”

  “I suppose I should. Yes.”

  “That it extracted dirt, rather than spewing it forth.” The old man closed the volume. He said, “In a sense, that is what this volume is doing. Spewing forth rubbish. I have been reading the article on quantum physics. It appears to have been copied almost verbatim from the article in the Oxford Textbook of Physics, with a few arbitrary alterations and additions, inserted no doubt to avoid a charge of plagiarism. Unfortunately these additions obscure rather than clarify the body of the article into which they have been inserted as arbitrarily as a cook sprinkles currants into a plum duff. There is a reference to the Schrödinger theory which the compiler seems to confuse with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, without bothering to explain either of them.”

  The old man closed the book and steered it gently across the table towards Peter.

  “If the other articles in your encyclopaedia are on the same lines, you are peddling what are not even second-class, but barely third-class goods. I must leave it to your conscience whether you can continue to do so. Good evening.”

  Peter was still blushing when he walked away down the pavement. It was true that the one article he had read, on French architecture, which was something he did know a little about, had seemed to him to be short and full of platitudes, but it had not occurred to him that the whole compilation might be a confidence trick. He quickened his pace. If he was going to do what he had in mind there was no time to lose.

  When Mrs. Carstairs opened the door, he could see that she was worried. She said, “Oh, it’s you is it? I ought to tell you that I ‘phoned my husband at work and he wasn’t very pleased.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Peter. “Here’s your cheque. Tear it up and it can go into the wastepaper basket with your contract.” He had got this out of his bag and was tearing it up as he spoke.

  “But—”

  “Please forget this morning. Believe me, if I’d realised then what a rotten encyclopaedia it was I wouldn’t have tried to sell it to you. Anyway, thank you for the coffee.”

  As he walked off down the path, Mrs. Carstairs stood quite still, looking after him until he had turned the corner.

  “What did you say to the encyclopaedia people?” said Lisa.

  “Nothing much. I just gave them back all the samples and papers and said I’d decided the job wasn’t for me. They said something about I’d agreed to give a month’s notice, so I said they could keep the six pounds seventy-five they owed me, for the one sale I had made, in lieu of notice and took myself off.”

  “So you’ve worked for a fortnight for nothing at all.”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Peter sadly.

  “What you want is a drink.”

  “I can think of something I’d rather have first.”

  “O.K.,” said Lisa agreeably.

  Half an hour later they were having the drink as well.

  They were in a two-room flat at the top of a gaunt Victorian pile in Shepherd’s Bush. His uncle, who had died a year after Peter left Chelborough, had made him his residuary legatee. This had sounded exciting when the solicitors had told him. It had added up in cash to just over three thousand pounds. He had used much of this in a payment of illegal key-money to secure his tiny pad. His engagement to Lisa had been announced to her mother on the day that he had moved in.

  When she had got her breath back, Mrs. Shilling had said, “I can’t prevent you going to bed with that beautiful young man, but if you think I’m going to agree to your marrying him, think again. Of course, you can marry without my consent. You’re both of age. But I don’t suppose he’ll want to marry against my wishes or to live on your money.”

  “Not only,” said Lisa coldly, “has he refused to touch a penny of my money, but he has also made it clear that he won’t marry me until he’s got a good enough job to keep both of us.”

  “Very proper,” said Mrs. Shilling. “I imagine you’re going to have to wait quite a long time.”

  The second part of this comment was made to herself, not to her daughter. It looked like being an accurate prediction. It was not an easy time for a young man without professional or technical qualifications to get a job. Peter’s first idea, that he could live on government bounty whilst looking round for an opening, had been scotched by a new regulation which imposed a compulsory period of a year between leaving school and applying for social security. This was, no doubt, designed to effect a cosmetic improvement in the unemployment figures. Just exactly what a school leaver without parental support was supposed to live on in this period was not clear. If a few of them died of starv
ation this would, of course, further diminish the numbers of the unemployed.

  It was Lisa who had suggested a solution. Peter still had some of his father’s money left. With this he had paid the fees at International House and had got the PSA Preparatory Certificate, which entitled him to instruct foreigners in English. A number of his pupils, as he slowly built up his class, had turned out to be anti-Khomeni exiles.

  The older ones were serious-minded men who seemed to know, in their heart of hearts, that they were never going to get back to Iran and that a grasp of English represented their only hope of employment. The younger ones were more active. They spent their spare time parading the streets with placards and leaflets describing the horrors of totalitarian Iran. So many men and women tortured and maimed; so many killed.

  Peter used to dispute with one of the most intelligent, a thin boy called Mohammed Jemal. “You are wasting your time,” he said. “The Ayatollah Khomeni will pay no attention to your posturing and shouting.” To which Jemal had replied, “You do not understand. We have friends and relations who are suffering. We are the lucky ones, who have escaped. What we are doing now may seem trivial, but wait. A time will come.” There was a flint-like look in his eyes that killed argument.

  Having discovered, by trial and error, that he was a competent instructor it had occurred to him next to apply to a well-known firm of scholastic agents for a job. He knew that it was no good trying for a post in a school. The state schools required a Teaching Diploma and the better private schools were looking for men with university degrees. But there were other possibilities.

  “There’s Nigel,” said the young man who interviewed him. “He’s had to leave his preparatory school because he simply can’t cope. I don’t mean that he’s an imbecile. Far from it. He’s dyslexic, but that was a handicap the school was prepared to cope with. The trouble is that his brain seems to move so much more slowly than the average child’s. He wants very careful handling. It’s a good family. House in Kensington. Father in the City. Mother what you might call a society figure. It’s a resident job and the pay’s good.”

  Peter wondered what it was about Nigel that had left such an attractive job available to a late-comer like himself. Was he, perhaps, one of those children who indulged in tantrums and spat at his instructor? In fact Nigel had turned out to be a docile child, who took to Peter at once. In a month he had made quite remarkable progress and his father was delighted.

  At the end of the month Nigel’s mother returned from an extended visit to the South of France. On the first afternoon that she was back she despatched Nigel on a walk with one of the maids and commanding Peter’s presence in the drawing-room made it clear to him that certain additional duties, or delights, were in store for him. When Peter had declined her invitation she had immediately complained to her husband that he had tried to rape her. Her husband, who had a clear idea of his wife’s proclivities, had told Peter that he must pack up and go. He did so apologetically and pressed on him a cheque for his next month’s salary.

  When he told Lisa about this she said, “You were too soft with him. You should have stuck him up for three months’ salary. A solatium for your wounded feelings.”

  “It wasn’t my feelings that were wounded,” said Peter. “It was his. Poor chap. I really felt sorry for him. Fancy being married to a bitch who could try to seduce the hired help on the first afternoon back from a trip where she had been having it off with God knows who on the Riviera.”

  “You can’t afford to be high-minded. That’s reserved for people with six-figure incomes. What are you going to try next?”

  The encyclopaedia had come next.

  On his return that evening, sitting together on the edge of Peter’s bed, they had knocked back the better part of a bottle of Spanish wine before Lisa said, “It does look as if it’s going to be quite a long time before we can go to my mother and say, ‘Here is the latest young capitalist. Let the banns be read’.”

  Peter said, “It’s the fault of our bloody silly Victorian relic which pretends to be an educational system. I remember Stewart saying to me – it was when we were coming back from that visit to Southwark – is anything you are being taught at school going to fit you for survival in the battle of life? And try as I would, I really couldn’t think of anything.”

  “What sort of things do you think you should have been taught?”

  “Well, for a start, we might have been allowed to take the PSA foreign language certificate. It would have been more use than any ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels and would have saved me from having to sit around for three months, to say nothing of spending a further chunk of my non-existent capital on their fees.”

  “As long as you’re not suggesting that you should have been taught to pick locks and steal cars.”

  “No. I don’t see much future in that. But we might perhaps have been taught shorthand and typing. Girls seem to pick it up and they get jobs easily enough. You’ve had – how many – three since you left school? Your present one sounds the best of the lot.”

  “It’s interesting,” agreed Lisa. “And well paid. Actually I don’t have to do much typing, but I sometimes think—”

  She was interrupted by the electric buzzer which had sounded three times. This was an indication that there was something in the post for the top flat. When Peter came back he was carrying three letters. One was a circular, marked Urgent. (Do you want the chance of winning fifty thousand pounds?) The second was a local election broadsheet. Both went into the wastepaper basket unopened. The third looked more interesting. Peter did not often get private communications.

  ‘Dear Peter,

  If you are not overwhelmed with employers queuing eagerly for your services, perhaps you would be prepared to consider a little idea I had in mind. If so, come round to the above address any time in the early evening. We work late in this atelier.’

  The address was Starfax Ltd., 4 Bolingbroke Mews, Wilton Place, Knightsbridge. Peter did not need to look at the signature. He had recognised the spidery handwriting as soon as he opened the envelope.

  A single note from a flute, or perhaps from a clarinet, had interrupted the rhythm of the tympani and the strings to announce the start of a new movement.

  Lisa said, “Of course you must go. But don’t let Stewart talk you into anything stupid.”

  2

  Six cottages stood shoulder to shoulder along one side of Bolingbroke Mews, fronting a row of what had once been stables and were now garages. Peter observed that five of the cottages were asserting their identity defiantly, by different coloured plaster frontages, by elaborate chromium fittings on the windows and fanciful knockers on the doors, by tubs of flowers beside the steps and bronze lanterns on the door posts.

  Number Four was adorned only by the plate on the door which said ‘Starfax Ltd. Registered Office. Knock and Enter’. When Peter had done this he found himself in a small front room which already contained two people. One of them, a young man with carefully styled hair and a cheerful face was scribbling busily. The other, who seemed to be about the same age, had his back to the room and was studying what looked like a street directory.

  The scribbler got up and said, “If there was another chair, I’d ask you to sit down. Have you come to see the boss?”

  “Mr. Ives did ask me to look in one evening.”

  “Then I guess you must be his old school chum, Peter. Right? I’m Ron. That chap with his back to us pretending to work is my brother, Len.”

  When the second man swung his chair round, Peter recognised him. He said, “Oh, we’ve met before.”

  “That’s right,” said Len. “Last time we met I was teaching the boss how to steal cars. We’ve progressed since then. Now we’re strictly legitimate.”

  “Roughly legitimate,” said Ron.

  At this moment the clatter of a typewriter, which was being bashed in the next room, knocked off and Stewart appeared. Peter had kept in touch with him in a desultory way since they had left Chelbor
ough, but they had not seen each other for nearly a year.

  Stewart had cultivated an aggressive moustache and this combined with an obviously expensive suit to give him an air of maturity. Peter wondered whether he had grown up inside as well as outside. He seemed genuinely pleased to see him. He said, “Getting to know the staff? They’ve introduced themselves? Excellent. Come into my sanctum sanctorum.”

  The inner room was larger than the outer one, but not much. There were two desks facing each other and a long table along the wall which held a row of wire baskets, seemingly full of incoming and outgoing mail.

  Peter said, “Was that you performing on that typewriter?”

  “It was. It took me a month to learn and it was bloody hard work. You’ll have to do the same.”

  “Hold your horses,” said Peter. “Do I take it you’re offering me a job?”

  “Of course. I always promised myself that as soon as Starfax really got going I’d cut you in on it. Do you like our premises?”

  “It’s a beautiful little house. It must be worth a packet. How did you get hold of it? Is it all yours?”

  “It belonged to my great-aunt, who gave it to my aunt, who gave it to me. The ground floor is our office and I live above it. Customers are impressed by the address and even more impressed if they drop in to see one, as sometimes happens.”

  “And what is Starfax doing exactly?”

  “At the moment, believe it or not, it’s earning me quite a lot of money. Quite sufficient for me to add to my team of part-time assistants and employ a whole time deputy. That’s the job I’m offering you.”

  “For old times’ sake, or because you really want one?”

  “Because I want one. But if you’ve already latched onto an interesting and remunerative post – personal assistant to a millionaire, or something of that sort—”