“It would interest me, by God!” exclaimed Toby. “What’s the trade?”
“Toys. Hanson & Crane Ltd.”
“Is there enough in toys to pay the expenses of a tour and a decent salary?”
“I doubt it. That’s why I tell you that the job can’t last long. But Seafair—he’s the managing director—is probably right to spend some money now. The toy trade is all German, you know, and the Jewish boycott should have some effect. It’s a good time to make new connections.”
“But is the boycott really serious?” asked Toby sceptically.
“It could be. It depends on the non-German manufacturers rather than my people. I needn’t tell you that Jewish solidarity is a myth.”
“You needn’t,” said Toby. “They help one another, of course. But all the Jews I’ve ever met were hopeless individualists. By and large, they are less capable of coöperation than any other community.”
“That’s too strong. I won’t admit that,” answered Bendrihem firmly. “But since each of us is playing his own hand and fighting for wretched little triumphs of money or position, there isn’t as much energy left for coöperation as there should be. The boycott means this: at equal prices the Jews will buy from non-German manufacturers; at dearer prices they will not. I myself import printing machinery from Germany. I can’t get it anywhere else. What am I, for example, to do?”
“I don’t know. What are you going to do?”
“Give up my agency. I can afford to allow myself that protest. But suppose I couldn’t. I should argue that my personal boycott of German goods wouldn’t affect German trade at all; my principals would merely find another agent and sell as much as before. So, boycott or no boycott, I should continue trading with the enemy.”
“It’s a farce then?”
“No, no! You misunderstand me. I say that when and where other manufacturers can give as good an article as the Germans at the same price, Jewish agents and buyers will give them the preference. The power of the boycott depends on the manufacturers not on us. I don’t think you’ll get many orders for Hanson & Crane, but if you can tell them what opportunities are open, you’ll have earned your money.”
“This is awfully good of you,” said Toby gratefully.
“No. You must thank the coincidence—that we happened to meet and I knew of the job. After all, it’s the way most posts are filled. I’ll call on Seafair to-morrow morning. You get a letter of application to him in the afternoon.”
“This is a fairy tale!” laughed Toby. “Let’s have another pitcher of wine. Tell me, why didn’t you pick one of your own people for this job?”
“Why should I?”
“I don’t know.”
“No, I want an answer,” insisted Bendrihem. “Would you go out of your way to find a Gentile if a Jew would do?”
“No. But I might look for an Englishman in preference to a German or Frenchman or Spaniard.”
“It’s not a parallel. But as a matter of fact I don’t think you would. You’re very international.”
“Thank you,” said Toby. “I hope so. It’s the first virtue of aristocracy.”
“What is?”
“Internationalism.”
“But why of an aristocrat? And what is an aristocrat?”
“A man who thinks for himself,” Toby replied, “and is humane. I’ll use the word gentleman if you like, though I hate it. I mean that it’s practically impossible to be a gentleman and a nationalist.”
“I see,” said Bendrihem thoughtfully. “Yes. Aristocrat is the better word. I’ve known a good many men—especially Englishmen—who were rabid nationalists but very gentle in their daily life.”
Having pawned his watch, Toby strolled back to Hanson & Crane’s factory along the dank and grimy arches of the Southern Railway. He had no illusions that this wave of luck would carry him anywhere that he really wanted to go, but looked forward to leaving England. He had felt smothered by his own country. The cause, he knew, was partly disappointment; but there remained a residue of discontent that could not be accounted for by his failure to find employment.
There was a quality lacking in his England: it was close to the quality he had so loved during three years that he had spent in the north of Spain. Muy brutos y muy nobles, those Basques and Riojanos! They had a spirit of noble barbarity. There were so many men among them who refused to act by, and indeed were ignorant of the standards of the mass, who lived according to the dictates of their own good taste. The English were neither barbarous nor noble. They seemed to be going the way of the United States, to be aiming at a civilisation in which thought should be communal rather than individual. The human being with standards of his own was vanishing. True, he had met two of them in a week—Bendrihem and Whitehead. He was surprised that he should place Whitehead in this category on so short an acquaintance, but the richness and simplicity of the man’s character were unmistakeable.
He invited the export clerk to beer and a steak at a pub in the Borough High Street. He would have liked to celebrate his new job with a better meal, but kept the expenses low, suspecting that their common lunch might become a daily habit and that Whitehead would wish to return as good hospitality as he received. Their conversation began with sport, hovered over foreign trade and settled on foreign affairs in general. Whitehead was well informed. He read little but the penny press, yet was able to appreciate their facts while rejecting their opinions.
“You’re a lucky chap,” said Albert. “I wish I had half a chance to get abroad. But I suppose you’ll be sorry to leave England?”
He pictured to himself Manning’s club, his theatre parties, his week-ends in the country—a cheerful round of highly civilised social life which Toby had actually enjoyed some eight years earlier, but not since.
“No. I thought I wanted to live here. But I find I don’t—at any rate, not yet. And I’ve had six months in London. It’s enough.”
“A holiday?”
“Yes. But not the pleasantest kind. I’ve spent it looking for a job.”
“Shouldn’t have thought you’d have much difficulty in finding one,” said Whitehead courteously.
“Not so easy as all that!” Toby answered.
There was no point in giving away his past misery. And what Whitehead had said was true—he wouldn’t have had much difficulty if his life had followed a more conventional course. As it was, he had envied the clerks, with their fluid labour market, their friends scattered through other offices, their tea-shop lunches, their little versatilities—invoicing, shipping, bookkeeping, correspondence—that commanded safe little prices. A loose unorganised body that of the clerks, yet closed as a jealous trades union. It was as difficult to descend into it from responsible ranks as to rise into it from manual labour. Toby sympathised with those thousands of unemployed who flocked to London when the collapse of international trade destroyed their means of livelihood. He met them in the waiting room wherever a job was open, the ship’s officers, the foreign managers and accountants, the foreign salesmen, all those who had been so respectfully thanked at board meetings, our loyal servants abroad, our Paris house, our Buenos Aires branch. Back they had come with their small savings—for they were men who lived well—sure that until trade revived London would give them wages, ready at first to take half their usual salary, ready later to take a quarter of it and join the ranks of the clerks. But an employer when faced by a Manning or a smart first officer or a well-groomed man of fifty who had successfully run an office of two hundred impatient Italians was at once suspicious; they must, he thought, have something badly wrong with them if they were ready to live on what he was able to pay; he did not understand that the reaction of nine out of ten employers was as his own, and that the tenth was handing out his minor posts to known men, charitably and loyally disregarding merit. So, since the homing exiles had no unemployment pay, they starved, or barely ate by joini
ng the ranks of the failures and bankrupts who sold refrigerators and water softeners from door to door.
“Where do you suppose Seafair will send me first?” asked Toby.
“I believe he’s got Central Europe in his head.”
“Do you approve?”
“Yes. But it’s not quite fair to you. You can’t send us enough orders to pay for your trip. What we really expect is for you to find us some reliable agents and tell us how to collect blocked debts.”
“Well, I’ll follow your instructions.”
“Mine?” exclaimed Albert, genuinely startled. “I shan’t give you any.”
“I’m working under you.”
“Are you? Well, I suppose you are in a way. But I don’t know much about export management. I haven’t been at it long, and I’m not sure if they’ll appoint me permanently.”
“They will if that’s what you want.”
“I hope so. I’m afraid I’m too easy-going. But I want the job all right for the sake of the boy. A wonderful boy! You must see him.”
“I’d love to,” said Toby.
“We’ll fix a day. He can talk a bit already. The doctor said he’d never seen such a remarkable boy before. Till we got him I didn’t worry much about money. My missus is a good sport, you know. She never minds what happens so long as there’s a cheque every Friday. Of course she sometimes tells me I ought to ask for more, but I don’t pay any attention. I suppose most women are like that?”
“I think so. They never feel their husbands and lovers are being paid enough. They say it’s the women who suffer from strikes, but it’s always the women who start them.”
“You’ve a queer way of putting things,” said Albert. “That boy of mine has got to have a good education. He’s going to be worth it. I say, what was I talking about?”
“You were saying you were too easy-going.”
“Oh yes! Well, most businessmen would say so. But I don’t see any point in driving my office. If they know what I want, they seem to do it for me. And if they don’t know what I want, I’ve only got myself to blame, haven’t I?”
“Yes,” Toby answered. “It’s a damned sensible way of looking at it. But what about the people who are helplessly and naturally inefficient?”
“I’ve only had one in the office so far. I got him transferred to the home side to see if they could make a salesman of him. I believe he’s doing very well.”
Toby roared with laughter. Though he had been a salesman himself, and not a bad one, he was delighted by any remark, especially if it were unconscious as Whitehead’s, which revealed the characterless nature of their job.
“What’s so funny?” asked Albert.
“That you agree with me about salesmen! They don’t need brains, method, efficiency or any mental discipline. They only need to be simpático.”
“What does that mean?”
“Friendly. The best salesman, old boy, would be a well-mannered dog that could talk. He’s only got to wag his tail at the right moment, eat politely whatever is offered to him, jump up and down when it’s expected of him, and refrain from lifting his leg where he shouldn’t!”
“Did you tell Seafair that?” asked Albert, a little shocked.
“God forbid!”
“He says that salesmen are born not made.”
“He’s quite right. They only need to be born. Other men have to be born and made. Have another beer?”
“No, thanks awfully,” said Albert. “It makes me too sleepy in the afternoon.”
He would have enjoyed another beer, but he felt that Manning’s wit was beginning to run away with his discretion, and that if it ran any faster his first afternoon in the office might not be a success. This kindly thought did Toby an injustice. If conventionality were required of him, he could be as conventional as his well-mannered dog.
They walked back to the factory. There was time to inspect and be inspected before the rhythm of the afternoon’s work began, and Albert introduced the new arrival to his colleagues. On the whole Toby liked them. He was aware of an undercurrent of jealousy, but sympathised with its cause. These men were proud of their firm and certain that it was a privilege for any newcomer to be admitted into it. They were content with their employment; their loyalty to Hanson & Crane was beyond doubt. It might, he thought, have served a nobler purpose than commerce—and then cursed himself for a lack of understanding. His own loyalty to Hanson & Crane would, after all, be precise and quixotic for as long as they chose to employ him. They were all in the same boat. They dignified and decorated commerce with the splendid virtues of honour and loyalty, because for the average man there was no other way of earning a living. Whitehead and some of the others knew as well as he did that the making of money was not the object of life but simply a game they were playing. He spotted those who didn’t know it by an attitude which he had learned to recognise in the United States. Their forced jokes and sullen eyes asserted the statement: I am as good as you. Toby was not disposed to deny it. He wondered, while trying to put them at their ease, why it was that a good state education should make a man feel inferior, whereas a man who couldn’t even read tended to adopt as his own the prouder attitude: You are as good as I.
They passed through the office and the packing sheds into the factory. There Toby no longer questioned the human values of his colleagues. To clip clockwork motors into toy locomotives for eight hours a day could not be a joy to anyone, but he suspected that it did less damage to man’s spirit than promoting companies or compelling a customer to buy something he could well do without. Moreover, the factory included a high proportion of craftsmen, for the finer models of trains and armies were finished and coloured by hand. Pay was good and so was the tradition. There were several family clans of grandfather, father and son.
The factory hands were full of curiosity about the new foreign representative and the journeys he would make. They could afford the luxury of liking him at first sight, since he would never be in direct contact with them. Toby appreciated their interest. He was fascinated by the endless belts carrying their cargoes of miniature machinery from one pair of skilled hands to another, and exhilarated by the powerful metallic rhythm of Bendrihem’s tin-printing machines that fed the ovens with gaily decorated sheets of plate. His natural geniality blossomed. It was pleasant to think that these were the men who would gain overtime pay should he land an order of importance. To feel that it depended on him whether a machine hand could enjoy two glasses of bitter or one before going home to his wife compelled him to think more kindly of the salesman.
The next fortnight was a period of concentrated work. Toby spent his days in office and factory, filling a notebook with considerably more pains than he had ever taken at school. Having extracted an advance of salary from Seafair, he paid off his boarding house and took a room in a Bermondsey pub close to Hanson & Crane. He detested early rising. By getting out of bed at 7.30 he was able to enter the gates of Hanson & Crane a little after eight.
The Duke of Wellington was none too clean and surrounded by gaunt streets of factories; but it gave him a sense of freedom. The Earl’s Court boarding house had imprisoned him in respectability, which he had resented far more bitterly than poverty. If he merely sent the waitress out for beer, his fellow guests had been shocked at his extravagance and alarmed at the suggestion of hilarity. The pub symbolised for him his return to the true world where gentility was despised and gentleness respected. It gave him, too, a ridiculous but pleasant illusion of living in the country. The meals were the same cold joint, cheese and stewed fruit. The bedrooms had texts and chamber pots. There were no other permanent guests; occasionally a foreman or commercial traveller, missing the last train home from London Bridge after late work and subsequent celebrations, would stay the night.
Albert Whitehead was his constant companion. Toby occupied a chair in the export clerk’s office and worried him with
questions whenever he was sufficiently unoccupied to answer them. Far from resenting this incubus, Albert educated it with patience and good humour, fed to it files and corrected its notes. Toby was present at most of Whitehead’s contacts with his equals and subordinates. They trusted him and never showed ill temper before him, as if he had been a man whom rank or a vow of poverty had placed beyond temptation to envy. Toby was puzzled to account for this general respect. Some of the staff were more capable than Whitehead; many were more cultured and spoke English with a better accent; most had a more worldly manner. None had his quiet courtesy. Apparently the attitude was catching.
Outside the office Toby remained a lonely student of toys. He and Albert lunched together, still talking shop, and generally dropped into the Duke of Wellington for gin and bitters at the end of the day. Once he went back to Croydon with the export clerk, ate one of Edith Whitehead’s generous high teas and was invited by young Thomas Whitehead to be present at the nightly ceremony of the bath. Once the pair dined with him at Pepe’s and were thrilled by the unaccustomed atmosphere of wine and Latinity. Most of his evenings he spent studying the catalogues of Hanson & Crane and toiling—for he was no arithmetician—to calculate the cost of metals, manufacture and overhead on hypothetical toys designed by himself to the specifications of imaginary markets. He commonly reproached himself that he was not master of any trade. Partly by fate, partly by his own will he had changed too often the scene and nature of his occupation. That as a rolling stone he had gathered no money caused him inconvenience but no shame whatever—he was too well aware of the gathering of spiritual moss—yet he did suffer from a sense of unfulfilment in the presence of professionals, whether stock brokers, plumbers, doctors or engineers. Therefore he worked at toys as fanatically as a budding saint upon the salvation of his soul.
The Third Hour Page 10
