by A. L. Barker
“We’ll sit by the fire till you’re ready to serve up.”
Dollomore disunited their room, or perhaps he drew attention to the fact that it had no unity: with him in it there was just a rally of furniture. Bulow tried to remember that there was nothing wrong except Dollomore’s presence and that Dollomore had so much presence it was nearly a climate.
“I see you have a taste for the finer things of life, Bulow.”
“It’s empty.” He switched open the cocktail bar and the pink mirrors took opposing views of Dollomore’s waistcoat. “I’m sorry I can’t offer you anything.”
“You cherish it for itself alone?”
“You can’t furnish a room with bottles.”
“You might do worse.” Dollomore stooped with delicacy and disbelief to touch the sapele wood. “But you have your wife to consider—she is charming, certainly.”
Bulow thought, what right has he to excuse her taste? “My wife’s very young.”
“Women are older than men,” said Dollomore. He pulled out one of the pinstools and squatted on it, hands splayed on his knees with an air of matiness. “You’re lucky, Bulow.”
“Everything has had to be paid for.”
“How much did you pay for little Mrs Bulow?”
Poor taste, if it could not be improved, was best ignored. “About those estimates for the staff party—”
“All settled, surely?”
“With Plummer’s at four and six a head. It was the lowest quote and for that we shall get a lot of French names. It’s no use saying I hope they’ll be satisfied—they won’t, while they have to pay. My expectation is that half of them will opt out.”
“The drinks will be free.”
“They’ll blame me, that’s what I’m trying to say. That four and six will be my fault, what they get or don’t get for it will be my fault. That’s how they see it, as far as the nearest scapegoat.”
“How do you see it?”
“There was nothing wrong with what they had last year. Four hundred and ninety-seven would tell you there was plenty right. But the other three are the ones that talk.”
“To the one who listens. Rainbirds isn’t run on popularity polls. If I sack you, Bulow, it will be for my own reasons, not theirs.”
“Sack me?”
Dollomore soothingly patted his own knee. “So set your mind at rest.”
*
Esther’s table put Bulow in mind of an altar. It was pretty in a virginal way. He picked up one of the circlets of spring flowers she had placed by each plate. “What’s this? A wreath?”
“Charming, charming,” said Dollomore to neither of them. “Everything is charming.”
She was so ready to talk and so sure she would be talked to that when she had brought the dishes to the table she forgot to serve. She sat gazing at Dollomore, lips shining with all the questions she wanted to ask and the conclusions she meant him to come to. A word from him would have triggered them off, but he was watching Bulow carve the meat and she chose, out of politeness, the subject that interested her least.
“I hope Mrs Dollomore is quite well?”
“My wife? Or my mother?”
“Oh, your wife—both—I mean.”
“Overdone if anything, Bulow.”
“I hope you’ll like the beef. Arthur was very particular—”
Bulow gave her a warning look. The joint came from the firm’s cold room. This visit was staff relations, what better way for the director to get related with his staff than by eating their food?
“My wife is a very healthy woman. If the vegetables are frozen I shan’t take any.”
“I’m afraid frozen vegetables are out of our price range,” said Bulow. “We have to put up with fresh ones.”
“Is that Yorkshire pudding? Well and good.”
“But there’s no wine in the gravy.”
“Wine?” cried Esther. “Oh, if there was wine wouldn’t we just drink it!”
“More sensible,” agreed Dollomore.
He concentrated on his food and on getting it inside him as a refuelling operation rather than a social or human occasion. Esther tried to start a conversation. She asked questions, correct hostess questions at first, then personal, then leading. Dollomore nodded. She tried opinions, provocative, downright, and challenging. Dollomore raised his eyebrows. Finally she spoke at him, bouncing her remarks off Bulow.
“Doesn’t Mr Dollomore remind you of someone? Someone quite funny—out of keeping, I mean. I’ll think who in a minute. I don’t suppose you’ve noticed it, working together all the time I don’t suppose you have time, you’re always so wrapped up in your work and I’m sure Mr Dollomore doesn’t have time to notice you. That’s why I think it’s important to talk outside the factory. Otherwise you take people for granted. Don’t you think so, Mr Dollomore? Don’t you agree it’s important to get away and talk?”
Bulow watched it dawn on her that she was having a failure. Her every effort was another sell for them both, he knew he would look round when it was all over and find them that much poorer.
He pushed his plate aside. Esther was eating nothing, but she kept her plate in position, held her knife and fork as if at any moment the dinner party proper would begin.
“Arthur didn’t think we should ask you. But I said you weren’t God—”
“Can you be sure?” said Dollomore. He finished his meal without further reference to either of them. He picked up the paper napkin beside his plate, opened it with the same air of delicacy and disbelief and let it drift to the floor. “Your husband claimed you were a good cook. He was right.”
They watched him pad his handkerchief and kiss it with puckered lips. There was an evening to be gone through. He had been fed, now he had to be amused. With stories, cards, cross-talk, a game of ludo? Games weren’t his style, they were too public, too arbitrary, especially cards. Perhaps if they sat quiet he would go to sleep. His eyes were half closed already.
But when Esther began to gather up the dishes he stopped her. “Little Mrs Bulow, I should like you to talk to me.”
“I tried,” said Esther.
“It’s discourteous to good food to talk during a meal. Which is why my wife doesn’t include me in her dinner parties.”
“I’d sooner talk than eat.”
“You’re young. Bulow neither talks nor eats.”
“He listens.”
Dollomore sighed through his nose. “I really don’t know what more he wants, do you?”
So he had brought it with him, the almightiness was in this room in person and here were two sparrows that could be dashed down any time.
“But someone wants more. Perhaps it’s not Bulow, perhaps it’s you?”
“I dare say it is,” said Esther. “I haven’t got absolutely everything I want. You wouldn’t know what to want, would you, you’ve forgotten all that.”
Dollomore said, twinkling, “Try not to get absolutely everything.”
“Why?”
“Because happiness is in the hope of having.”
Bulow couldn’t take any more, he stood up. “I think I’ll shift these dishes.”
“There’s a bottle of brandy in the car,” said Dollomore. “Fetch it, will you, Bulow?”
“Brandy?” Esther’s eyes widened. “Don’t you feel well?”
“Perfectly, but I shall feel better for a digestive.”
Bulow took the dishes to the kitchen and ran hot water over them. So happiness was in the hope of having—digest that, coming from the poor rich man, the only legitimate despiser of riches.
Dollomore’s car was a marine shape stranded in the road. Bulow got in and felt for the interior light switch. He could not locate it, so he sat behind the wheel listening to the fingering of rain on the roof. Five minutes less, it would be, to listen to the tycoon. From out here Dollomore in there looked comic, like a big dog with his backside sticking out of a small kennel. His element was this outsize car smelling of leather. Bulow sniffed it up: the sme
ll of money, plenty of money, lifted him out of himself, the pressures of Arthur Bulow fell away and he was free in thick sweet fortified rich man’s air.
The brandy wasn’t under the dash. He pushed aside gloves, papers and a small bottle that rattled. Peering in the semi-dark he saw that it was full of silver balls and carried a chemist’s label: even Dollomore’s pills were silver plated.
The brandy was in the pocket of the driver’s door. He’ll go, hoped Bulow, as soon as this is finished; there’s only half a bottle and nothing else to keep him. He’s bored, thank heaven.
He went back into the house and as he shut the front door he heard Esther say, “There’s a lot of quality in Arthur, but quality doesn’t advertise itself and people don’t realise how much more there is to him—” He missed Dollomore’s reply. It made her laugh, whatever it was.
*
Debbie Winegarden had done well. She had become Dollomore’s personal secretary with an office to herself. She could smoke when she pleased—Bulow’s privacy was safe now from her.
As the morning and afternoon breaks came round he found himself still pushing his cigarettes out of sight. It took a week for the expectation, or the habit, to die, and it had no sooner died than he went back to his office one afternoon to find her there, with Streetfield.
Streetfield said furiously, “What do you want?”
“This happens to be my office.”
“Go to hell.” Streetfield turned back to the girl. “What do you call what you are? Ambitious?”
“No, particular. I never gave you a monopoly, you know.”
“Saving yourself for the highest bidder? But if you were smart you’d know there’s always something to pay.” He took her by the shoulders, lapping his thumbs into her neck. “You don’t know half. Men like him can’t use honest sex, they’re past it, they have to have tricks—if I told you, you’d be sick on the spot.”
“Tell me. I’ve a strong stomach.”
“If it’s all the same to you,” said Bulow, “I’ve got work to do.”
“Listen—” Streetfield’s face darkened, he paddled at the air round her, “I can get you things—nylons, dozens—and what about a hair dryer? A pocket transistor, travel stuff, handbags—name what you want and I’ll get it from any factory in the West Road.”
“You won’t believe this,” she said, “but when I like people I like them for nothing.”
It would take a woman or a beating to equate men like Streetfield with their true selves—Bulow was tickled to hear him make principle of his necessity.
“If you’ve no common decency yourself, what about your family? How do you think they feel?”
“Pleased that I take home more money on Friday nights.”
“Money buys you!” He looked round with a crusading spite for something to smash, threw the door wide to the wall and tramped out.
The girl said to Bulow, “Have you any fatherly advice?”
“I think you’re worth more than a transistor and a hair dryer.” She was perfect now of her kind, ripe for special pleasure, fresh in a pre-packaged way, but he wondered how long she would hold her price.
“That man’s got a dirty mind. As Mr Dollomore’s personal secretary I get a pound a week more—four and eightpence goes on income tax, the rest on cigarettes. I smoke all the time, which I couldn’t do in the pool, so I’m no better off.” She began stirring over the papers on his desk with her finger.
“The ‘personal’ does it,” said Bulow. “‘Personal’ secretary—people take that literally.”
“I don’t mix sex with business, you know that.”
“Have you told Dollomore?”
“I will when the occasion arises.” She had not found anything. Sighing, she licked her fingers and pinched up a curl on her neck. “By the way, he wants to see you.”
“What about?”
“He didn’t say.”
Alarm dried his mouth. This was the moment, come like any other moment, and the last thing she thought to mention.
“What’s on his pad?”
“He doesn’t use a pad.”
“What’s he been doing? Who’s he seen?”
“You’re so nervous. I could make a guess what it’s about if you like.”
He wouldn’t be able to stand it coming from her. He said, unbuttoning his overcoat, “I’ll go and find out.”
“You can’t. He’s not there.”
“Where is he?”
“Gone out to tea, I shouldn’t wonder. You’re on his social register, aren’t you?”
So she knew about the supper party, and if she knew, the whole factory would know that Bulow was trying to keep his job with his wife’s cooking. “That’s none of your business.”
It was not her way to show involvement. Conversation was mostly lip service and to see her fasten on and single-mindedly consider him was unnerving. “So if there’s any business of yours that I know and you don’t, you want me to go on minding it for you?”
“All right, make that guess.”
She sat in the armchair, crossed her legs and rubbed the palm of her hand with a teasing, sensuous motion over one nylon kneecap. “I can’t promise it’s the right one. Cigarette?” He silently proffered the packet. He had a feeling that something had caught up with him and his thumb slipped uselessly on the wheel of his lighter. “I’ve got you worried, haven’t I?” she said, taking it from him. “She shouldn’t mean all that much to you.”
“She?”
Debbie Winegarden studied him analytically for a moment before she lit her cigarette. “Mrs Worcester. She’s leaving.”
“Leaving?” Bulow could hardly have been more staggered if she had said that Frick was selling out. Mrs Worcester was already a fixture in the kitchen when he came to Rainbirds and no one remembered a time without her. “Are you sure?”
“I heard it all. She came up this morning and gave a week’s notice. She was in such a state she left the door open—”
“A week’s notice? She can’t do that, she can’t play foreign tricks on us.”
“She didn’t care who heard, poor old cake, and in the circumstances Dollomore had to let her go. If it was me, all the notice they’d get would be the time it takes to walk out of here.”
So that was where the wind of change blew from, an unexpected quarter, yet he might have expected that too. She was spiteful and thorough, no chance to score off him was too mean to take and she had the kitchen staff under her thumb. It was feasible that he would lose the job not because he couldn’t do it but because a foreigner wouldn’t let him.
“Circumstances? It’s her or me and she thinks I’m the expendable one. Oh, I know the circumstances!”
“You’re like a cat on hot bricks.” Debbie Winegarden stretched voluptuously, suddenly smitten with herself. “Why don’t you let life flow over you?”
“I’ve tried to get her to co-operate, I’ve been friendly, reasonable, tactful—I’ve been so tactful she didn’t know what I was getting at. I had to tell her. ‘Waste, waste of anything is a sin. Waste of food is a crime. There are people trying to live on a handful of rice, people are starving all over the world. They starved in your country, you know that better than I do.’ What do you think she said? ‘I have no country.’ ‘You’re making good use of this one,’ I said. She can’t take a telling and as it’s my job to tell her, I’m the nigger in the woodpile. She’ll cut off her nose to spite my face. A week’s notice after fifteen years’ service—I can see the circumstances in that!” He got up and walked about, wanting some conclusive gesture which would demolish the whole thing.
“You know, it’s not a chip you’ve got on your shoulder, it’s a chopper and it’ll chop you down one day.”
“It might be better if she did go, she’s a bad influence, she’s a foreigner, she should stay with her own sort.”
“She’s going back to Poland.”
He stood still. “Poland?”
“To die.”
“To what?”
Debbie twisted the burning cigarette in her finger tips. “The bloody doctors have told her she’s got a month to live.”
“A month? Why, she’s strong as a horse!”
“What did they have to tell her for?” Debbie said bitterly, “So she could make whoopee?”
“You mean to say you believe it?”
“Of course I believe it. So does Dollomore, he’s paying her passage and she’s leaving at the end of the week.”
“More fool him. He should have saved the firm’s money.” He laughed through his nose. “She’s going because it suits her to go, but not because she expects to snuff. If he’d asked me I’d have told him she’s clear as mud and twice as slippery.”
“You think she’d tell lies about a thing like that?”
“She’s got that sort of mind and it’s paid off, hasn’t it? She gets away with a week’s notice, money to take her to Poland where she’s no more idea of going than I have, a month’s pay, and a hero’s farewell.”
“You’d have put your fingers in the wounds, wouldn’t you?”
“She’s laughing at the lot of you in Polish or Yiddish or wherever she comes from. And she’s going to a nice job with a manufacturing chemists where the liver salts are free.”
Debbie Winegarden couldn’t change her expression, it had been fixed on with a bold and heavy hand, but she said “You make me sick,” and by grinding out the half-smoked cigarette under her heel managed to express fairly lively disgust.
“She’s shown her true self to me often enough. We had to work together, remember. She’s foreign, but not so foreign that I can’t see she’s lacking where it matters most. Plain common honesty,” said Bulow, “she’s got none.”
“And you know, don’t you, you always know if anyone’s honest?”
“I get a pretty good idea.”
“When it’s someone close to you? Do you get a prettier idea then?” She seemed angry about something, there was a hardness to her lips and her eyelids had lost their practised droop.
“What do you mean?”
“Is it so easy to be sure about someone you think you know all about? Your wife, for instance?”
“What’s my wife got to do with it?”
