Bond Street Story

by Norman Collins

  Take to-night, for instance. She was modelling for charity in the Park-Mayfair from nine until ten-fifteen. Mr. Bulping, on the other hand, wanted supper at ten sharp. When she told him about the fashion show he didn’t even ask where it was. Just told her to be round at Quog’s at 10.30, and rang off.

  Had he flicked her across the face with one of his own swim-suits, she could not have been more offended. Because if he had really loved her—loved, that is, in the way she loved him—he would have come along simply to watch her as she paraded. She especially wanted him there, too. All on account of one particular wrap. It was an electric-blue mink. With simply enormous sleeves. The price was three thousand guineas. But Marcia who knew about mink had to admit that it really was worth every penny of it.

  Without Mr. Bulping there, however, it remained horribly impersonal. Merely another expensive wrap that she was displaying for other people. It was heartbreaking to reflect that sometime there would be someone somewhere else sufficiently devoted to want to make a gift of it ...

  And there was another cause altogether for her low spirits. For some reason or other she couldn’t help remembering Tony. Mr. Rammell had brought him into the dress salon the other day and introduced him. He had seemed so young, she thought. And so delightfully shy. He had actually stammered when he spoke to her. She wasn’t in love with him. Or anything like that. It was Mr. Bulping she loved. But all the same, his image would keep coming back into her mind. If she closed her eyes for a single moment, he was there. And always the same image, too. Rather tired and dishevelled-looking, with a single lock of untidy hair falling over his forehead as he bent forward.

  That was why it was so maddening to find that Mr. Bulping was depressed and out of sorts, too. Apparently he had been having a quite peculiarly exasperating kind of day and he was intent on telling Marcia all about it.

  “ ... then when I got back to the office I found that the bloody fools had been waiting all the time round at the factory ...”

  “You poor darling,” Marcia told him. “You must be absolutely all in.”

  Mr. Bulping gave her a long sideways glance.

  “I was when I came down here,” he said. “Not now. That’s why I rang you. I felt I needed a bit of fun.”

  A bit of fun! She gave a little inward shudder at the words. If only for once Mr. Bulping would consider her feelings. It was his awful enthusiasm that she found so off-putting. And to-night it was more crudely apparent than ever. Locked in his bear-hug embrace while dancing she had to listen to the kind of endearments that are so much better left unsaid.

  “So I said to myself ‘Me for a night out,’ and here I am ... I’m not saying you’re the first, but I am saying I never felt quite this way before ... Talk about calf-love. Give me the middle-aged variety.”

  And it was the same when Marcia let him take her home afterwards. Only by then he had drunk just a little too much and was sentimental in a slow, maudlin way that reminded her of her first husband.

  “Unattainable, that’s what you are,” he kept saying. “Unattainable.”

  Marcia drew her wrap more closely round her, and gave him her Madonna smile. She was still hoping that he would decide to go.

  “You really can’t say that, can you?” she asked, without looking up at him as she said it.

  But finesse and Mr. Bulping had never been on other than the most distant of terms.

  “It’s what I do say,” he repeated. “Unattainable. The eternal feminine. Cherchez la femme. Mysterious, that’s what you are. Mysterious. It’s what I like about you.”

  It was getting on for one o’clock by now. She still hoped that he would notice how late it was. But he gave no sign of it. Quite the contrary, in fact. He had just undone his waistcoat.

  “Would you care for another drink?” she asked.

  Mr. Bulping shook his head.

  “Not while I’m here,” he said. “Not so long as I can just sit back and watch you.” He paused. “If there’s anything you ever want, anything in the world, just tell me. It’s yours. That’s the sort of man I am. You tell me what you want and I’ll get it for you.”

  He got up as he was speaking and moved over to the little Japanese side-table where the drinks were set out. While he was pouring himself another whisky and soda, Marcia decided right out to ask him for the electric-mink. It would have seemed altogether too horrid to ask if he hadn’t actually offered. As it was, it would have been equally horrid to refuse.

  “There is something ...” she began.

  But already Mr. Bulping had interrupted her.

  “I know,” he said. “And by God you shall have it. If any woman ever earned it, you have.”

  Marcia paused, trying hard to bring out her smile again.

  “Have I?” she asked. “Have I really?”

  “You bet you have,” he told her. “It’s what I came down to talk about.” He paused for a moment and stared down at his shoes. “What do you do with yourself when I’m not around?” he asked.

  Marcia dropped her eyes again.

  “I manage.”

  This was evidently the moment for which Mr. Bulping had been waiting. He got up and came over to her.

  “You sit on my knee,” he said. “Then we can discuss it properly.”

  It wasn’t easy because all the chairs in Marcia’s flat were so small. But Mr. Bulping seemed determined on it. There were sinister creakings in the framework as he settled himself.

  “Now put your head on my shoulder,” he said. “And don’t upset the glass. It’s just by your left elbow.” He breathed deeply, seemingly content by this re-arrangement. Then he resumed. “Well, you needn’t manage any longer.”

  “Needn’t I?” Marcia asked, scarcely above a whisper.

  Sitting on people’s knees is always difficult. And for a tall girl it is practically impossible. Certainly uncomfortable. But in a way it was restful, too. She could have dropped off to sleep, all folded up as she was, if only she hadn’t been so anxious to know what he was leading up to.

  “I’ve found it at last,” Mr. Bulping went on. “Just for the two of us. And that’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

  Somewhere in the crook of his shoulder Marcia, still as much bewildered as ever, tried to nod her head. But it wasn’t easy. The edge of Mr. Bulping’s collar kept cutting into her every time she moved.

  “It’s nothing much to look at,” Mr. Bulping told her. “Georgian. Nothing fancy. But it’s all been done up. And there’s a nice bit of land. Keep your own horse if you want to.”

  “My own horse?”

  The words came out faint and incredulous.

  “That’s what I said,” Mr. Bulping told her. “And it’s only twenty-five minutes. Good road all the way.”

  “Where to?”

  Marcia was sitting up by now.

  “Wolverhampton, of course. Where d’you think? Timbuctoo?”

  “Me live outside Wolverhampton?” Marcia asked.

  Mr. Bulping took a sip from the whisky glass beside him.

  “That’s the idea,” he said. “Then I could see you every day. None of this once a fortnight stuff. Be more natural about it.”

  “Do you ... do you mean after we’re married?” Marcia asked.

  Mr. Bulping put his glass down again.

  “That’s the whole trouble,” he said. “It’s Mrs. B. Won’t divorce me.” He felt Marcia stiffen as he said it. And he went on hurriedly. “Now don’t get mad at me,” he told her. “It’s not my fault. There’s nothing more that I can do. I’ve done everything the solicitors said. There’s enough evidence to divorce an army. It’s simply that she won’t have it. Religious. And spiteful. God how that woman hates me ...”

  Marcia got up.

  “Hadn’t you better go?” she asked coldly.

  “Hadn’t you better think it over?” Mr. Bulping replied.

  Book Two

  Love and the Shopwalker

  Chapter Fifteen

  1

  Well, th
ere we are.

  Mr. Privett had got his way. Irene was safely launched on a career behind the counter. And whenever he popped down from the third floor to take a look at her he felt in a warm, sunsettish fashion that his life’s work was very nearly done. That was because there is nothing that consoles a parent so much as to know that whatever turn Fate may take his offspring is safe and provided for. A wife’s different. There is always the insurance to take care of her. And Mr. Privett was well insured—nine hundred pounds and benefits.

  All the same, he was a very worried man. Nothing physical. His leg was completely better by now. Not even a scar to show for that miraculous escape from death. It was simply that it was now obvious that in choosing Mr. Hamster he had made the wrong choice. In short, the man had shown himself to be a dud. A real bad egg among solicitors. Practically strike-offable if all the facts were known. Already there was a rift between Mr. Privett and Mr. Hamster. That was because Mr. Hamster wanted to sue the insurance company. And Mr. Privett didn’t.

  For a start, he couldn’t bear to think of the costs. Mr. Hamster was such a prolific letter writer. Every time Mr. Privett saw an envelope with blue rather smudgy lettering that was the best that Mr. Hamster’s typewriter could manage, his heart missed a beat. Because so far he hadn’t paid Mr. Hamster anything.

  And in the meantime, he was left spiritually stranded. He was like a watch without a mainspring. At first glance outwardly normal. But nothing going on inside. Mondays to noon on Saturdays were all right. Sundays simply terrible. He still went along to the Highgate Ponds as regularly as before. But without a model yacht to sail it seemed rather silly and pointless. He just stood around, getting in other people’s way and criticizing. Already he could feel himself becoming unpopular.

  Even so, Mr. Privett’s state was not so bad as Mr. Rammell’s. Mr. Rammell was really up against it. He was contemplating the wreck of his whole marriage. There didn’t seem to be even one point of contact where he and Mrs. Rammell ever really came together. They existed in the same house. But there was a gap the width of the Atlantic between the two of them. They were merely two strangers, with a roughly parallel life history.

  It wasn’t even as though Tony had done anything to bring them both together. On the contrary, it was chiefly about Tony that they quarrelled. Not that you must start getting the wrong ideas about the Rammells. There weren’t rows. Scenes. Flare-ups. Scarcely even bickerings. Just a steady withdrawal from each other. A sort of emotional recession. Except where Tony was concerned. “Why?” Mrs. Rammell had demanded, her voice rising higher and higher. “Why drive the child into Bond Street when all that he wanted to do was interior decoration?” Mr. Rammell could still feel the palms of his hands growing sticky as he remembered everything he had gone through before he could get Tony safely behind that desk in the room next door to his.

  Mrs. Rammell was pretty miserable, too. For a start, there were her headaches. And that mysterious pain in her spine that no specialist could diagnose. And her sinus. But she knew deep inside herself that really it was none of them. It was all because of Tony. She knew him. Knew more about him than his father could ever hope to know. And she could see that he was being wasted. Thrown away. Sacrificed. Not that this surprised her. She had seen so much of her marriage squandered and trampled on already.

  In the end, there had been only two consolations left to her. Tony. And her music. If Tony was to be snatched away as well, surely Mr. Rammell could see that she must do more for music. Much more. Make it so that musicians and artists everywhere could feel that it was as much their home as hers and Mr. Rammell’s.

  But there were still some perfectly happy people left in the Rammell collection. Take Marcia, for instance. She was now living in that lulled, contented state that comes of having made an irrevocable decision. She had decided to dedicate herself to Mr. Bulping. Simply wait patiently for his divorce to come through.

  It was wonderful knowing that, apart from delays on the purely legal side, her future was secure. God knew that he, poor darling, was doing all he could do to get things moving. And surely that awful wife of his couldn’t go on for ever being so downright wicked as to stand in their way now that their love was so apparent, so undeniable.

  Marcia could make herself weep just by thinking how wonderful Mr. Bulping had been during all this awful period of strain. Always devoted. Always considerate. Always generous. Dotingly generous, in fact. He never really seemed to think of money. There was a magnificent casualness about him whenever the topic cropped up. And that was just how Marcia liked a man to be. Big. Impetuous, even, in a reckless, schoolboyish sort of way that Marcia found irresistible. What, for instance, could she do but accept when he turned up late one evening entirely unannounced—she didn’t even know that he was in town—with a pair of pearl and platinum ear-rings? And after the pearls had come an evening beauty box from Paris. It was an enchanting little toy that turned itself practically into a small dressing-table when it was opened fully out. And after her dressing-table beauty box came a pair of long gloves studded right up to the armpits with rhinestones. The long gloves were particularly exciting. And reassuring. They showed that, as well as being generous, Mr. Bulping had some really astonishing flashes of good taste.

  Yes, it was wonderful for Marcia having Mr. Bulping so wholeheartedly enthusiastic about her. And she didn’t intend to let anything go wrong this time. Her two previous marriages had taught her that it wasn’t safe to leave things entirely in the hands of the husband. In consequence, she was working really hard trying to be a sharer, a helpmeet. She was sinking her personality in his. Blending her exquisiteness to his robustness. She was still reading Country Life and The Field and had just started on Horse and Hound as well ... Even her appearance was perceptibly changing. The last thing that she had ordered on her Rammell account was a rough, practically sandpaper tweed with a divided skirt. She was having trouble to find a pair of shoes heavy enough to go with it.

  There was nothing very sensational that had happened to Irene so far. She was still having trouble with the carbon sheet in the cash book. Had established a new record, in fact, for three missing counterfoils all in one morning. But she was gradually getting things sorted out. She could carry a sale right through now without having to ask Miss Kent to help her. And, to her own surprise, she had found that she could add up shillings and pence correctly.

  What pleased Mr. Privett so much was that she was entering into the social life of the place. She had joined the Sports Club (subscription, ten shillings) and the Dramatic Society (subscription, five bob). The Sports Club was somewhere right out in the Wembley direction, and Mr. Privett had never even been to it himself. But the Dramatic Society used the Rudolf Steiner Hall in Baker Street. Mr. Privett had seen two performances there—The Pirates of Penzance and Dear Octopus. And he had enjoyed them enormously. He liked the idea of Irene appearing alongside the cream of Rammell’s acting talent, Mr. Brittle from the Counting House, Mr. Thompson-Strong from Sports, Mrs. Alford from Post and Export and the pretty Miss Peggy Winters from Cosmetics.

  Mrs. Privett, on the other hand, was afraid that Irene might be overdoing it. Taxing her strength too far. But there was no real danger of that. Irene still disliked Rammell’s intensely. She certainly didn’t intend killing herself for Mr. Preece. In the autumn she was planning to go to the Polytechnic evening Drama School as well.

  Tony Rammell, too, still felt himself to be an outsider. He intended chucking his job altogether as soon as he could find something that he could really get his teeth into. He was spending all his spare time learning Russian. The one thing that he really wanted was a visa. Then he would be able to see the Bolskoya Theatre for himself. But Mr. Rammell had declined to help him. Even forbidden him to write to the Foreign Office on the firm’s note-paper. It was Sir Harry who was more sympathetic. He could understand the boy’s restlessness. His eagerness for travel and adventure. As soon as Tony mentioned it, the old man cottoned on at once. He suggested that t
he two of them should go somewhere. Monte Carlo. Cannes. Nice. Anywhere in reason that Tony cared to suggest.

  There was, however, more to it than his love for young Tony. There was photography. Sir Harry had just bought himself a Leica f.1.4, complete with a bag of tricks that a Press photographer would envy and never use. He wasn’t very good with it yet. There were some knobs that he hadn’t properly got round to. And sometimes he took three or four snaps all on the same piece of film. But what did it matter? Sir Harry was happy. He had made a lot of new friends, too, at Wallace Heaton’s where he bought the camera. And he rather liked the red-haired girl at the chemist’s where he took his strange multiple pictures to be developed. The last one showed Mrs. Rammell with Major Cuzzens’s head in her lap and a spectral pianist, whom he couldn’t even remember, brooding like a cloud over the pair of them. But Sir Harry didn’t care. Wherever he went, his camera went with him. And Wednesdays now had a brand new thrill for him. That was because it was on Wednesday that The Amateur Photographer came out. The last issue had contained a whole article on Mediterranean lighting.

  And that about accounts for everyone. Except Mr. Bloot. He was in a terrible state. He was being driven half crazy because he didn’t yet know whether Hetty Florence really intended to marry him. Or whether she was just toying with his affections. That was why he couldn’t sleep at nights. Why for the first time in twenty-seven years he had forgotten to change the budgerigars’ water. He’d had eleven different budgerigars altogether. But the shame of forgetting to attend to Champion Billy continued to haunt him. It showed that under the strain he was beginning to break up. What’s more, he was losing weight. He could now put a half-pound packet of bird seed into the waist-band of his trousers and still do up the top button. It was terrible.

  Chapter Sixteen