by A. L. Barker
“Do you live in digs?”
“No, in Ilett with my parents, but if I was in digs I’d have told you.”
“You’ve made your point.” He heard himself say out of the blue, “Do you know anyone called Elmo?”
“Elmo?”
He hadn’t noticed before that it sounded like a table-game.
“No. Should I?”
“He lives in Ilett.”
“So do fifty-thousand other people.”
*
Bulow was sure that the decision to farm out the works party was the thin edge of a wedge. He did his job as well as he was able and that could be well enough by any standards, and Dollomore could put him out as he had put him in, overnight. Dollomore didn’t need a demonstrable reason, he was not above making one. He might be making one now.
When people realised they had to pay for what they’d always had free they wouldn’t blame Dollomore, they’d blame Bulow. Whether they had eaten the food last year or ignored it, they would swear it hadn’t been good enough to eat or ignore. They would ask why should they subsidise a failure, what was needed was a professional and it stood to reason if he couldn’t manage a bunfight how could he manage a canteen? Bulow could work their minds and wag their tongues for them. Nor need he wonder where he had gone wrong because he knew he hadn’t. The catering last year—his for the first time—was better than it had ever been: no hitches, plenty of food. In previous years there was nothing left by ten o’clock. He gave them wholesome stuff artfully served, silver bells and Jacobean plastic, everything tricked out of its normal shape—they couldn’t say it was not festive. Wouldn’t they remember? Wouldn’t they say why can’t we do like last year, what was wrong with last year? They were for tradition, weren’t they? Whether it was a tensile test or the time of teabreak they never wanted anything changed.
He knew what he was up against, he could name the few who had raised the wind and the rest would blow along with them. Apartheid, he thought, was logic: it took only a brown overall to cut him off.
He sent Dollomore the caterers’ estimates and they came back with a scrawled instruction to accept the lowest. No meeting, no discussion, just the managing director authorising everyone else to pay. Dollomore had whims and small wheels sometimes got set in motion—and were left to run down.
It was a relief. There would be no chance to state his case, but on the other hand there would be no point in stating it before the people Dollomore would convene.
He had Esther to break it to, she still thought Dollomore was coming to fill her day, she thought it would be more than full, a Day of Decision after which all blessings were bound to flow. Bulow waited for her to bring up the subject.
She was setting the table for supper when she said, “Sitting here, facing the cocktail bar, you could be anywhere.”
“That an advantage?”
“Well, we don’t know what he likes or what he’s used to, but we can be sure it’s not like anything we’re used to.”
“If you mean Dollomore, you needn’t worry. He’s not coming.”
She stood stricken as if he had said tomorrow wouldn’t dawn. “Not coming?”
“There’s no need now for a meeting, everything’s settled.”
“It wasn’t to be a meeting, it was a visit.”
“Dollomore’s all talk.”
“That sort of man isn’t all talk.”
“He’s not so special.”
“He’s the managing director, isn’t that special?”
“In so far as he gets special money.”
“I was thinking about the money, I was thinking what he could do for you, I was going to make him pleased with us—”
Bulow was sorry for her, but the castles in Spain had been up for days and he was tired of seeing their cardboard backs. “It was a nice idea, but it wouldn’t have worked.”
“You mean I couldn’t have worked it?”
“I mean it couldn’t be done, not with him, not with home-made apple pie.”
“I see,” she said quietly, but with a rise in her voice. “Yes, I see what you mean.”
“You would if you knew him, but you’ll just have to take my word for it.”
“I’ll have to take your word because I won’t get the chance to know him—”
“You won’t miss much.”
“Because I’m not nice enough.”
He said sharply, “Esther, don’t be a fool—”
“There are worse things to be, aren’t there?” Colour like a burn ran under her skin. “Worse than having a fool for a wife is having a wife you’re ashamed of.”
“Now listen—”
“Can I help what I am? I try, I do try, but it’s what he did—what Joe Munn made me do—there’s no changing that.”
“Esther, you’re crazy if you think—”
“Crazy?” Her face sharpened with tears. “Don’t you understand, I can never be like other people?”
“Who wants you like other people?” Bulow heard his own voice going up. “This has nothing to do with you or Joe Munn or even with business. It’s got no rhyme or reason, it’s Dollomore all over, the kind of thing he does. You and I are part of his empire, we’re just Rainbird country—”
“I didn’t think you’d hold it against me.”
“For God’s sake,” he said with bitter deliberation, “what have I got to hold against you?”
She put her face down into her hands and he was left looking at an adumbration of her weakness, the sharp wing bones poking up on her back. She was wrong, she was even crazy, but there was a neediness about her shoulder bones that he couldn’t bear. He thought he was looking at her childhood, the lean formative years that had not formed her at all in some cold essential, some common ordinary sense. “Joe Munn’s a thing of the past. He can’t reach out now unless you make him.”
To tide her over the loss of Dollomore’s visit he took her to the cinema. It was an occasion for them to go out and Esther rose to it. She put on earrings and lipstick and a dress of some irridiscent stuff that made her body look like a knife.
Bulow said, “Is that new?”
“New! I don’t know how long I’ve had it.”
“I haven’t seen it before.”
“You mean you haven’t noticed it before.”
He was noticing now that the general effect was of obliteration, he couldn’t see her for what she wore. He wondered if she intended it and stopped himself because that too was treachery.
After the cinema show he stood in the foyer and sorted over his loose silver in his palm. “We may as well be hung for a sheep.”
“Hung?”
“I can stretch to a small beer. We’ll go to the Saltbox.”
She closed his fingers over the money. “We’ve spent enough for one evening, let’s go home.”
“No, this is our night out, we’re going to finish it properly.” It struck him that he should have sounded jocular, it was only a visit to the pictures and half a pint of beer. “I daresay we’re enjoying it more than people who go out every week.” He waited for her to second it.
She said, “I enjoy anywhere with you,” and it should have satisfied him, but first he had to think that he might have saved his money and pleased her just the same.
The Saltbox coruscated with lights and bubble glass and the chrome of parked cars. Bulow’s spirits lifted when they got inside. It was near closing time, clamorous, cheerful, with thick hot light and a rich smell of beer and tobacco-smoke. He sniffed pleasurably; this was something he hadn’t known since pre-courting days.
Esther didn’t want to stand at the bar, she found a seat in a corner and Bulow went to get the drinks. He was easing through the crowd—they all had their elbows out now—when someone caught him by the slack of his overcoat.
Streetfield was sitting with two men and a woman at a table covered with empty glasses and full ashtrays. “I want to talk to you.” He hooked out a chair with his foot. “Sit down.”
“Sorry, I c
an’t. I’m with my wife—”
“Sit down!”
So, Bulow thought, he had heard about the party, they had heard all over the works and were smarting because they had to pay. “We can’t talk now, not here—”
“Don’t mind them, they’re not with me.” Streetfield turned to the other people at the table. “You’re not with me, are you?”
The woman said, “Oh, you’re always on your own, George.”
“Sit down when I tell you!” Streetfield pulled Bulow to the table by his coat tails and he sat down hurriedly because people were looking.
“I didn’t have any say, you know, it’s entirely a management ruling.” He lowered his voice. “As long as ever there’s been a works party we’ve done our own catering. We’ve got the staff and equipment, we know the stuff will be good, it’ll be nice and the cost will be nominal. I asked him to tell me why he was changing, give me one reason, I said—and he couldn’t.”
The men and the woman were openly listening, Bulow leaned across the glasses, trying to keep it to himself and Streetfield. “I’m no more to blame than the rest of you; less, in fact, because I did my utmost to provide a good spread last year. We worked like blacks in the kitchen and there was no shortage, there were no complaints.” He bent forward into Streetfield’s stare. “I know who started this, you’ve had trouble with them yourself. What it boils down to isn’t Socialism, Communism or Unionism, it’s grudge. They’re jealous of any Tom, Dick or Harry who gets a pound a week more for taking a can back—”
“Jealous?”
“The less they’ve got to say the oftener they can say it. No need to name names, is there? You know who I mean.”
“Do you know who I mean?”
“I should do. I remember the trouble over the skin valve—”
“I’m talking about the girl.”
“What girl?”
“He says what girl!” Streetfield appealed to the others. “What skin valve, Casanova!” He gripped the table as if he would pick it up, glasses, ashtrays, other people’s elbows and all. “What’s going on with you and Debbie Winegarden?”
Shocked, Bulow looked at his hands. They were long and handy as an ape’s. “You fornicating flea,” said Streetfield loudly. Faces turned towards them, bloated and wet because Bulow’s eyes had filled with water—defence mechanism that was, not tears. He felt dizzy, he did not believe it was happening. “Two and three times a day in that office of yours.”
He tried to get up, but Streetfield had the hem of his coat in his fist. Bulow said, “Pull yourself together!”
“If I do,” said Streetfield levelly, “it will be in order to take you apart.” Sweat sprang out on his forehead: he, too, watered under stress.
The woman got up from the table. “I’m going, I’ve had enough of him for one evening. Come on, you two.” The men obediently drained their glasses, said “Goodnight, all”, and followed her.
Streetfield ignored them. He pulled Bulow so close that Bulow thought they must look like fighting cocks beak to beak. “Tell me what happens when you shut that door.”
“You’re crazy. You’re crazy if you think that I—that we—in the office, for God’s sake!”
“Or out of it?”
“Or out of it.” Bulow dried his cheeks with his hand. “I’ve got other things to think about.”
“What does she come for? What does she shut herself in there with you for?”
“She talks.”
“Women like that don’t talk, they don’t need to. Not for twenty minutes on end. That’s time, nice time, for something else.”
“She walks right in and takes a cigarette. One of mine. She gets through fifteen a week, helps herself as if they were a free issue. So work it out,” said Bulow, “where’s the time for anything else?”
Streetfield burst out laughing. He had a messroom guffaw and people near by smiled in sympathy. “I wondered what she saw in a stumblebum like you. So she just drops in for a sly smoke, all found, and a comfortable chair to have it in. How about extending the invitiaton? The other girls have to smoke their own in the lavatory. Supply them with forty a day and you might even get popular—”
They both looked up. Esther stood by the table, touching along the collar of her coat as if she were cold. “Did you forget me, Arthur?”
Streetfield got to his feet. “My apologies, Mrs Bulow—it is Mrs Bulow?—I waylaid him to clear up a bit of business.”
“Oh, business,” said Esther. She drew thankfully into Bulow’s side. “It wasn’t nice by myself, there’s a man over there—”
“I bet there is,” said Streetfield, looking at her with approval. “Let me make amends by buying you a drink. What’s it to be? A gin and tonic—you’re quite a tonic yourself—cherry brandy, vodka?”
“We haven’t time,” said Bulow, “we’ve got a bus to catch. Thanks all the same.”
“Wrap up, Arthur,” Streetfield winked at Esther. “There are plenty of buses.”
“Not for us, it’s the last one. Goodnight.” Bulow turned her bodily and steered her before him through the crowd. She went obediently towards the door, but when he guided her into a small private bar off the saloon, she protested.
“Where are we going?”
“To have that drink I promised us, in peace.”
“Who was that man?”
“Streetfield, the works manager.” He tapped on the bar, calling for service. “Not your type.”
“He seemed quite nice, quite gentlemanly.”
“Gentlemanly he is not.” Betty of the orange hair came through from the other bar, powdered to the eyebrows, with the same sheltered slope of chest and the same silk violets laid on it, Bulow felt oddly touched. Sight of her took him back into his weightless past, a time when there had been enough. “Well,” he said, “do you know me from Adam?” There had been enough because in those days he didn’t know what he wanted.
“It’s you or your ghost,” said Betty and a sprinkle of emotion appeared on the upper reaches of her bosom.
‘I’m still in the flesh and so are you, I see.”
“We thought you were dead. We’d have sent a wreath if we’d known the address.”
“Not dead—married.”
Betty sighed. “When they get married, men like to make a clean break, be re-born for their wives.”
“It was lack of opportunity in my case. There’s been the house to fix up and the garden. This is my wife. Esther, come and meet Betty.”
He had seen her glance past him to Esther: now she seemed to take her up with a calm, casual look. “Hallo, dear.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Esther.
“Let’s have a pint of old and a ginger shandy, Betty, please, before the whistle goes.”
Watching her draw the beer with the ladylike motions he remembered, Bulow was happy. For a moment the evening out had its right temperature, quality and savour, for a moment there was more than one thing after another, there was more than adequacy, there was modest perfection.
“You’ll miss the cherry, dear,” said Betty to Esther, and Esther smiled faintly as she took her shandy.
“Cherry?” said Bulow.
“She likes a cherry on a stick with gin and Italian.”
“She’s not having gin and Italian.”
“That’s what I mean, dear.” Betty twittered two fingers at them as farewell and went back to the saloon side.
“One of us is confused.” Bulow drank some of his beer. It was months since he had tasted beer, but his palate was unsurprised and found it like the tail end of several pints. “She seems to think she knows all about you.”
“And you.”
“Well, that’s feasible, I used to come here regularly once upon a time.”
Esther put down the shandy with a surreptitious grimace. “Is she a prostitute?”
“Where did you get that idea?”
“Her hair, it’s dyed.”
*
Bulow always put time to the wor
st that happened on the chance that it would be of a duration he could outlive. When the Winegarden girl had gone he looked at the clock outside in the loading bay and saw that it was half-past three.
The last thing she had said was, “Incidentally, I found out about your friend Elmo. He’s a money-lender,” and what had been a clear-cut case—himself and Esther and the others—began to rub at the edges.
For a long minute of shock he stood off while everything went on past with the privileged ease of a merry-go-round. Then the word came home to roost, the key word. Say ‘moneylender’ and discrepancies were met, uncertainties resolved: of all the things she might have done this was foreseeable and he had not foreseen it. Wanting money, she would beg or borrow because she would not steal, and if there was no rich friend she would go to a professional. She’d sign anything and take the money from the tree without wondering who planted it, or how a man could make a business out of lending money, or how she could pay it back or what would happen if she didn’t.
He was cold as stone. The cocktail bar had cost fifty pounds if a penny, and interest at twenty, thirty, fifty per cent. wouldn’t stop her. ‘But I can’t do sums’, she’d say, as if she had said, ‘but I can’t fly’. If he asked the same question as before—where did you get the money?—she would have to give the same answer as before, if she lied it would be the same lie.
He told the girl on the switchboard that he was going out. He couldn’t think where to, for her benefit, and when she asked him he hung up. He took the keys of the car allotted him for the firm’s business and drove into Ilett. In a telephone booth he consulted the local directory: there were two Elmos in Ilett, a printer and bookbinder, and B. Mossman Elmo with an address in Markethall Street.
It was not an impressive address. Markethall Street, when it had been native, had been solid. It was mushroom now, scheduled for demolition under a road-widening scheme so that a shop carrying cheap china one day would be full of television sets the next and the week after would be a dusty shell.
