Seafair already regretted the grandiose impulse that had led him to engage a foreign representative, and, lest he should vent his annoyance on his new employee, saw him as seldom as he could manage. When he was compelled to take notice of him, he forced himself to be polite. He did not usually waste courtesy on the firm’s travellers, considering them, whatever their age, as irresponsible young men to be bullied, cursed and paternally protected in time of need. His Mr Manning, however, he refused to treat as a permanent part of the firm, and fitted him into the same mental pigeonhole as Hanson & Crane’s solicitor and auditor—outside experts who received his money but were not subject to his sovereignty.
Three days before his overseas representative was to start, Seafair summoned him to his office and enquired what route he proposed to take. The question surprised Toby, for he knew that Seafair had already stormed over his route in several furious discussions with Whitehead, and that at last Albert had tacitly and tactfully made up his managing director’s mind for him by presenting for signature a dozen letters addressed to existing agents and customers advising them that the firm’s Mr Manning was on the way. Seafair, snarling and thankful, had signed them.
“I suggest starting out through Scandinavia and the Baltic countries, sir,” Toby answered, falling into the part that was apparently expected of him, “and then down through Poland and Austria to the Balkans.”
“Very good, Mr Manning! Very good! You are sure that Norway and Sweden ought to be visited?”
“Most important of all, I should say. They are solvent countries and on the sterling bloc.”
“I quite agree,” said Seafair, nodding his blunt little white head approvingly. “Sit down a minute! A cigarette?”
Toby lit cigarettes for his managing director and himself, and took a chair.
“I quite agree, Mr Manning,” Seafair repeated. “Sweden especially ought to be our best market. It needs visiting by an experienced man. You are quite sure you can handle it?”
“I think so,” Toby answered cheerfully. “They’re nice people, the Swedes.”
“I’m very glad to hear you say so. Very glad!” declared Seafair, as if his representative’s approval had set a seal of excellence upon the Swedes. “It has always been my impression. Always.”
“You know Sweden, sir?”
“No. But I was thinking—or rather Mrs Seafair was thinking—that we might spend our summer holiday in Stockholm.”
Toby nodded gravely. It was obvious that Mr Seafair meant to have his fare to Stockholm and back paid for by Hanson & Crane.
“You would enjoy it,” he said. “I don’t suppose you would care to spend a busman’s holiday visiting customers, but if you did, I am sure you would be more effective than I.”
“I dare say I should,” replied Seafair, much pleased, “though that is not to depreciate you. Experience counts for a lot in the toy trade. And if the Board ask me to do so, I shall try to make it convenient to visit Norway also.”
“In that case I suggest I go straight to Helsingfors and start from there,” said Toby.
“That is what I hoped you would say, Mr Manning. And then you will have the added pleasure of Mr Bendrihem as a travelling companion.”
“Mr Bendrihem? Is he going to Helsingfors?”
“He tells me he has had the offer of a Finnish agency for newsprint. Just the thing for him if the paper is up to the standard of our English dailies! He’s quite right to go and look into it.”
“Is there anything you want me to do for him?” asked Toby, puzzled by the complex workings of Mr Seafair’s mind.
“Nothing! Nothing at all!” said Mr Seafair hastily. “I thought it would be nice for you.”
Toby decided that the real reason for his being sent out in Bendrihem’s company was that Seafair wished an eye to be kept on him and a report made on him; in fact that the reluctant old gentleman wanted to put off as long as possible the day when he would have an expensive traveller completely uncontrolled in Europe. Whether Seafair had thought of his Scandinavian holiday in order to have an excuse for sending him with Bendrihem, or whether he was sending him with Bendrihem to have an excuse for going to Norway and Sweden himself, Toby did not know. Nor did Seafair. When compelled by Whitehead to take some definite decision, he had been conscious of instinctive discontent. The alteration of Toby’s route, which he had equally instinctively devised, satisfied and soothed him.
“I like your spirit, Mr Manning,” announced Seafair, delighted that his employee had made the interview easy. “We shall get on very well. At the same time I want you to understand that this job is only temporary,” he added, feeling that his enthusiasm might be too favourably interpreted. “It depends on you what you make of it. And if you ask me, I don’t think you or any other man could make much.”
“I understand that, sir,” answered Toby. “It’s a gamble on both sides.”
Seafair wove his head back and forth. He liked this odd bird and felt so much at ease with him that he no longer cared whether he were rude to him or not.
“But it has to be taken! I’m an old man, young fellow, or I’d see you in hell before I spent the firm’s money just to give you a good time on the continent.”
“It’s a pity you can’t come along too, sir,” said Toby, smiling broadly. “We could have a good time—off the expense account, of course!”
“I should hope so! Now listen to me! I want you to be comfortable. I don’t want you to stint yourself. But don’t send me any bills from Grand Hotels with champagne and a bedroom for two on them—see? Decent second-class hotels. Reasonable restaurants. Not too much entertaining of customers. You’re selling toys, not armaments. Understand?”
“Perfectly, sir!” replied Toby.
He had no doubt that Hanson & Crane would be delighted with his expense accounts. The hotels and restaurants that he preferred were seldom dear, and would be luxury enough after the cleanly horrors of his boarding house.
“Very well, Mr Manning,” said Seafair, getting up. “Then all I have to do is to wish you luck. Remember that if you make a mistake we’ll back you up. But for God’s sake don’t make any! Good-bye, my boy!”
Contented with his employers and himself, and too exhilarated by the sensation of liberty to question the ultimate truth of his reasons for feeling it, Toby sailed from London to Gothenburg on the 5th of July 1933. Bendrihem, who sailed with him, had the impression of a man dominated by ruthless energy and disciplined only by an inner joy. The fallen angel was very much up and about again.
The 6th of July was a long day for Albert Whitehead. With relief he turned to the routine jobs that the education of Manning had prevented him from completing. He forbade his clerks and typists to approach him, and after ten hours in the office caught up with the factory memos and his personal files and card indexes. At seven he left the office to the charwomen and walked slowly to London Bridge station. The dismal streets of south London, lined with staring warehouse windows and dotted with the mighty dung of dray horses, oppressed him. He was disappointed that he had not the glow of virtue he expected from a day of meticulous work efficiently and exactly performed. He wanted a drink, but it did not seriously occur to him to have one. He allowed himself only a beer at lunch, having formed his habits in loyalty to the ever-increasing needs of wife and son. Drinking with Toby Manning at the Duke of Wellington had not somehow counted; his conscience had no more to say against it than against, for example, a Sunday in the country; it was admittedly an extravagance, but permissible. Though it was not on his direct route to the station, he passed the Duke of Wellington and felt his disappointment turn to depression. Not until he was in the train and his mind sunk in the effortless reading of an evening paper did he feel the normal peace of Albert Whitehead.
Edith had prepared a high tea which did credit to her west-country upbringing. A steamed haddock, well moistened with butter, was ready to
take the edge off a husband’s appetite and a basin of strong Ceylon tea to comfort his soul. The grocer had supplied a ham, a cheese, butter and a plum cake. Of Mrs Whitehead’s own making there were a sponge cake, a dish of apple pasties, and two-pound pots of marrow, plum and raspberry jam. It was a rich table. The total value would have horrified a housewife accustomed to plan her meals to be eaten at a sitting. But in fact it was economical, since the foods, except bread and the haddock, were intended to return again and again to the table until consumed.
Albert did justice by his food, while Edith recounted the miracles of Thomas Whitehead’s day, and watched with an artist’s pride her husband’s capacity for apple pasties. Young Thomas was fractious. He had insisted on staying up until his father returned, and Edith had yielded, knowing that the father’s pleasure would be as great as the son’s; but it was long after his usual bed-time, and he could only be bribed into fairly decent social behaviour by a promise that if he were good he might have all his celluloid ducks in his bath as well as the usual battered submarine. Miniature waterfowl were prohibited except on special occasions, since they inspired Thomas to an unendurable frenzy of noise and splashing.
When his son had been scooped, kicking, out of his bath, wiped and put to bed, Albert came downstairs, turned on the wireless and sulked. Edith was disappointed. She liked to be entertained, while washing up, by an account of Seafair’s idiosyncrasies, of the daily office routine, of the new orders from abroad related by Albert through the open door of the kitchen. His daily chronicle of events was humorously vivid. Mrs Whitehead had an accurate picture of the business and personalities of Hanson & Crane.
“Have you had a hard day, Bert?” she asked, fishing the last spoon out of the soapy water.
“No.”
“You told me you would have a lot to clear up after Mr Manning left.”
“I did. But it wasn’t hard, Edie. It just kept me late—that’s all.”
Mrs Whitehead devoted herself in silence to the drying of her cups and silver. She was a plump, easy-going farmer’s daughter, placid as the well-watered Somerset valley from which she came, instinctively wise as one of her father’s sheepdogs. She knew well that when her man had one of his fits he was best left alone until he chose to return to the world of women. Therefore she neither clattered her crockery nor showed disapproval with her comely back nor in any way expressed resentment at the temporary absence of her husband’s soul on its personal business. She stacked the dishes, pulled Albert’s ear with casual affection and took up her library book.
It was by no means the type of book most demanded by Croydon housewives. Mrs Whitehead, having found her romance and being consciously and healthily content to enjoy it, was impatient with the second-hand retailing of love in fiction. What she liked was a blood-and-thunder novel in which the hero was hotly pursued through outlandish spots by convincing enemies thirsting for his blood. Detective stories bored her, since she took no pleasure in the conviction of the murderer. She would have preferred him to escape.
Edith Whitehead curled herself up on the window seat. The roses of the suburban front garden, dimly seen in the deep blue of the northern twilight, were behind her. A pink and frilly lampshade justified itself by adding warmth of colour to her brown hair and creamy complexion. Albert’s heart warmed to his wife. He repented that he had made no attempt to allow her to share his mood.
“I wonder how Mr Manning will get on,” he said.
Mrs Whitehead looked up from her book and closed it. The hero was hiding from giant ants in the jungles of the planet Venus, but she preferred, at any rate with her own husband, the realities of conversation.
“He’ll be all right,” she answered.
“But he doesn’t know anything about the trade yet,” Albert objected. “He’s bound to get into some trouble.”
“Don’t you believe it, my dear. He’s got a head on him.”
“Yes, but Seafair only gave him two weeks to learn the job.”
“You’ll have taught him what’s what anyway. You can always make things easy to understand.”
“That’s what he said,” Albert answered. “But I don’t see why.”
“Tell you what, my dear,” announced Mrs Whitehead with bold intuition. “You miss him. And that’s that.”
“Miss him?” asked Albert, startled. “Well, I think I do, Edie. He made me feel so important somehow.”
“It’s time somebody did! I hope he made old Seafair think you important too!”
“He’d do anything he could, Edie.”
“And so would plenty of others too!” said Edith jealously. “You think too much of him, Bert.”
“Well, he’s a gentleman …” began Albert, searching for expression of what distinguished Toby Manning from the rest of his acquaintances.
“No more a gentleman than you, my dear!” declared Mrs Whitehead, and added inconsistently: “Gentleman indeed! He’s nothing of the sort! And he’d be the first to say so!”
“You’re right. He doesn’t quite belong anywhere,” Albert replied. “By George, Edie, he must be lonely!”
“Whatever makes you think that?”
“I don’t know. But I know what I should feel like if I hadn’t got you and the kid. Nobody understands anything, Edie. Look at them round here! They’re all scrambling from one day to another. They want more money or a better job or a bigger car—just because they must have something to live for. Manning doesn’t seem to give a damn for any of those things. He lives for something else. And so do I!”
“There, dear! There!” said Edith, sitting down on the arm of his chair and drawing his head to her broad firm breast. “You’re tired.”
“I’m not tired,” declared Albert indignantly, moving away from her. “And it’s not that I don’t love you and the boy and our life together. You know I do! It’s all I’ve got. But there’s more than that to life, and Manning knows what it is. ’Struth, I wish I had his education!”
“I’m glad you haven’t,” said Mrs Whitehead.
“Well, I don’t know what I’d do with it, and that’s a fact. I might get to thinking I was somebody, which wouldn’t do at all.”
Albert shivered and pulled nervously at his stiff wrist.
“He’s a lonely man all right, Edie. He doesn’t mind what they do to him. It’s when you mind what they do to you that you’re not lonely.”
“It’s that hand of yours worrying you again,” said Edith. “I always know when you begin to talk about ‘they.’”
“But I’ll tell you one thing,” answered Albert, with a sudden note of discovery in his voice. “I’m not afraid of them any longer. If I want to be different to other people, I will. Manning is.”
“Well, you never were like other people anyway, darling,” Edith protested. “And if you mean that you’re more sure of yourself since running about with your Mr Manning, well, I hope it’s so!”
“That is a bit what I mean,” admitted Albert, smiling. “A chap ought to be able to do what he likes within reason—so long as he doesn’t get uppish. Here, Edie! What do you let me talk about myself so much for?”
“Does you good, Bert! You were like a bear when you came in from the office and now you’re yourself again. Why don’t you hop round to the pub and have a quick one before closing? It would do you good.”
“Let’s both go,” suggested Albert, greatly daring.
“But Tommy might wake up.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll slip out and bring one back for you too. What’ll you have?”
Edith giggled. This was rare excitement.
“I’ll have a gin and tonic,” she said. “Oh, Bert! Won’t it be fun when the boy grows up a bit and we can go out again!”
IV
BENDRIHEM AND OTTERY
On the voyage to Gothenburg Simon Bendrihem was thankful for the gusto wit
h which Toby entered into the pleasures of the table and of conversation. When alone among his fellow passengers he was depressed. Northern Europe, except England, was very foreign to him; he was more at ease in the south, where his physical type was less conspicuous. Bendrihem was not self-conscious, but away from home or a Mediterranean country he missed the lightness of heart that sprang from complete immersion in the waves of the surrounding population. To this slight and indefinite uneasiness was added a sense of futility that he could not throw off.
His working life had known its most satisfying fulfilment through his machines; among them he had found the joy of the craftsman. It was hard to give up the delight of standing on the platform of a great rotary press, mounted by himself and his mechanics, the cylinders roaring into life beneath him while his ear analysed the compound thunder into the separate noises of camshafts and cogs and inking rollers, and his eye watched the endless ribbon of paper racing at even strain through fifty yards of stereos and cutters so delicately that it never stretched nor broke. He had no faith in the agency that he was about to investigate. He meant to take it if it offered ten years of constructive work, but peddling paper from one newspaper office to another, even when sales might be reckoned in hundreds of tons a day, was no consolation to a mechanical engineer. He might indeed quadruple his capital, yet the pocketing of commissions would not compensate him when his bag contained mere samples instead of his overalls, spanners and gauges. The business of selling his presses had been incidental to the joy of handling them; they were so excellent, at any rate when he himself had the teaching of the machine minder, that they sold themselves.
Bendrihem had no one to consider but himself, his mother and his office. For his mother he had created a trust fund which would keep her in her present comfort whatever happened to him. He considered his house as hers. She was to him the matriarch, the absolute ruler of his home. She was also a precious and fragile possession whom he jealously guarded, with the last surviving instinct of his oriental childhood, from the rough and ready contacts of his life.
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