“Yes, sir?” he asked.
“Very good girl,” Mr. Rammell told him. “Excellent reports. Does you credit, Privett.”
“I’m so glad you think so, sir.”
“Time for a transfer, you know,” Mr. Rammell went on. “Can’t have a girl in Haberdashery all her life. I’ll speak to Mr. Preece about it.”
“I’m sure she’s very contented where she is, sir,” Mr. Privett began.
But already Mr. Rammell was speaking again.
“Oh, and there is just one other thing. She and Mr. Tony have been seeing rather a lot of each other just lately. Not a good thing. Starts people gossiping. I just thought I’d mention it to you.”
Mr. Privett swallowed for a moment.
“I ... I understand, sir.”
“Thank you very much, Privett, I felt sure you would. Good morning.”
So that was that. Mr. Rammell felt like congratulating himself. If there was one thing which he really knew it was how to handle staff. Friendly, without being familiar. Firm, but not a trace of harshness. Brief rather than curt.
And the idea of a transfer was sheer genius. If they put the girl up in Gowns, or better still, Teen-age or Children’s, that would mean that she was as much separated from Shirtings as if she were working in another store.
2
Indeed, everything would probably have been all right if only Mrs. Rammell could have left things alone. But it was too much to ask of her. Ever since Mrs. Privett’s visit, she had lain awake at night listening to the heavy sound of Mr. Rammell’s breathing, and thinking of that dreadful, scheming girl lying in wait for Tony as soon as he reached Bond Street. And by day the thought was never from her.
In the result, she did the one fatal thing. She conspired to get Tony alone with her. She appealed to him.
“ ... don’t you see that it would be throwing your life away?” she pleaded. “She may be pretty. She may be amusing. She may be anything you like now. But think of how it will be in a few years’ time. Think of her, too. Cut off from anything. No friends. Not really belonging. Out of her depth socially ...”
Mrs. Rammell broke off.
“Tony, dear, put that magazine down while I’m talking to you. It’s rude.” Here Mrs. Rammell screwed her two hands together until the knuckles showed white against the skin. “Can’t you realize? It’s your whole future I’m talking about. It’s everything that matters. It’s ...”
It was at this point that Mr. Rammell came in. The day, like most days, had been long. And, like most days, tiring. At the sound of voices in the room he had nearly drawn back. But it was too late now. Mrs. Rammell had seen him. She was beckoning to him. Begging him to come in.
Tony looked up to see why Mrs. Rammell had broken off so abruptly. And at the sight of his father, he gave a little smile almost of sympathy.
“Oh, God,” he asked. “Are you in this, too?”
The discussion, though long, was inconclusive. Tempers were lost. Recovered. Lost again. And this time it was Mr. Rammell who blundered.
“I’ve a very good mind to get rid of the girl altogether,” he said. “Just give her back her card and see the last of her.”
“I call that bloody unfair,” Tony replied. “And I tell you this now. If she goes, I go too.”
“No.”
It was Mrs. Rammell who had spoken. The word had simply been forced out of her. Because this was too dreadful. It showed how far things had really gone. Her Tony was being loyal to someone else.
Mr. Rammell took out his cigar cutter and began fiddling with it.
“I haven’t said I will,” he pointed out. “I’m only reminding you.”
And then, because it wasn’t a conversation that he had wanted to start in the first place, he suddenly felt his own temper rising.
“And let me remind you of something else,” he added. “It’s gone quite far enough. Her father knows. The staff know. And ... and your aunt knows. If you want to have the whole of London talking about you, I don’t.”
Tony got up slowly and put the magazine that he had been reading under his arm. Then he walked over and kissed Mrs. Rammell on the forehead.
“Don’t let Father keep you up too late,” he said quietly.
Chapter Twenty-three
1
Mr. Bloot had always assumed that it would be a white wedding. St. Asaph’s, the large red-brick block of Victorian medievalism at the end of Artillery Row was the nearest church to the bride’s home. And, in his mind’s eye, he had frequently pictured the whole scene. The organ pealing. Mr. Bloot himself wearing his best tails and the practically new pair of striped cashmere that he had bought specially for the Rammell anniversary celebrations. And, above all, Hetty smiling and effulgent, with a wreath of orange-blossom in her hair and a long expensive-looking train supported by tiny local bridesmaids.
Not that his wedding to poor Emily had been in the least like that. On that occasion he had worn his blue serge with four buttons. And Emily herself had looked thoroughly sensible, but still appealing, in a plain white shirt waist and her going-away costume. But then Emily was not Hetty. And Mr. Bloot simply could not imagine Hetty bringing herself down to his own simple level.
That was why he was so astonished when she refused even to consider a church wedding at all.
“Us? In church?” she asked. “You can if you like. I’ll wait outside, thank you. What’s the point of advertising it?”
“I ... I just thought you’d rather,” Mr. Bloot explained weakly.
He was surprised as he said it to find how strongly he felt about church weddings. He had, in fact, not been inside a church since Emily’s death. And then only to the cemetery chapel. Nevertheless he had not even considered the possibility of any other place in which to get married. Marriage at a Registrar’s Office savoured too much of film stars. And run-away society couples. And divorcées. And fly-by-nights generally.
“Then if you don’t want a church wedding,” he asked, “what do you want?” and his heart chilled as he put the question.
“Why a Registry Office, of course. Same as normal people,” Hetty told him. “It’s just as legal.”
Mr. Bloot shook his head.
“But it’s not the same thing,” he said.
“Of course, it isn’t.” Hetty answered. “It’s less fuss. Go along at nine o’clock, I say, and get it over quickly.”
Mr. Bloot drew in his lips. They were trembling.
“Ah can’t make you out,” he said at last. “Really, Ah can’t. Anybody’d think you were ashamed of marrying me.”
“Not ashamed, dear,” Hetty replied. “Just doing it the easy way.”
And when he asked her what she meant by that she did not answer. Instead she opened her arms and pursed up her lips at him.
“Oh, stop worrying,” she said. “You make me tired. Come and kiss me. You haven’t given me a single decent kiss all the evening.”
The kiss, though long and rather moist, was unecstatic. Mr. Bloot had too much on his mind to give himself over freely to his own rapture.
“You’re not going back on it, are you?” he asked, almost as soon as they had separated. “You still mean next month?”
“Of course I do, silly,” Hetty replied.
She was speaking now in the low throaty voice that always made Mr. Bloot feel utterly yearning and entirely helpless.
“It’s just that I don’t want you to fuss yourself. Don’t get so worked up about me. I’m not worth it.”
“Oh, yes you are,” he told her. “Yur’re everything in the world to me. Yur’re mah ahdeal.” He paused. “Shall Ah put up the banns?”
“Yes, if they have ’em in Registry Offices,” Hetty replied. “They probably need a fortnight’s notice or something. Better make it a Thursday. That’s early-closing.”
“Early-closing?” His heart missed a whole beat. “But ... but we are to ’ave er nunneymoon, aren’t we?”
“If my boy wants one.”
Hetty by now w
as stroking his cheek with the back of her hand. “Does he want one? With me? Is that what he wants?”
Mr. Bloot nodded helplessly.
“Ah do,” he said. “Yur can’t know how ah feel or yur wouldn’t even ask. It’s all Ah want.”
He paused again, and seemed to be working things out in his mind.
“And there’s one other little matter we ought to talk abaht,” he added. “If Ah move into your flat which of mah little bits and pieces would you lahk me to bring round?”
As it turned out, the matter of Mr. Bloot’s bits and pieces had to be decided even before he went along to put up the banns. That was because he was so excited about getting remarried that he had to tell somebody. And like most naturally reticent men he made a mess of it. Instead of waiting for a proper opportunity, he told his landlady when he happened merely to meet her accidentally on the stairs.
“Ah’ve got a piece of news for you,” he said, adding in the vein of jauntiness that so often conceals deep emotion, “Ah’m goin’ through the ’oop again.”
“Going through the ’oop?”
Mrs. Gurney regarded him cautiously. She had been conscious for some time that a change had been coming over Mr. Bloot. For close on twenty years, an ideal lodger, either married or single, he seemed suddenly to have developed flighty tendencies that had hitherto lain unsuspected. Drink, she decided, might prove to be at the bottom of it.
“Yurss,” Mr. Bloot went on. “Gettin’ married. Next month.”
“Have I met her?” Mrs. Gurney asked.
It occurred to her as she put the question that with the exception of Mr. and Mrs. Privett—and Irene Privett as quite a little girl—she had never met any of Mr. Bloot’s friends at all.
Mr. Bloot shook his head.
“Nevah,” he said. “That is because the lady ’as nevah been here.”
“Then when’s she coming?” Mrs. Gurney asked.
There was caution in the voice. Almost alarm. What would she be like? Would she be the right sort? Would she be difficult over things like stairs? Would she be trustworthy about locking up and about electric lights? Having Mr. Bloot under her roof was one thing. But a newcomer. A woman. And a totally unknown woman at that. The natural hostility of the sex began bridling.
And Mr. Bloot’s reply left Mrs. Gurney aghast and speechless.
“She’s not coming,” he told her. “Ah’m goin’ there. To ’er place.”
“Is she a widow?”
Mr. Bloot nodded.
“Yurss,” he said. “Very comfortably provided. Very comfortably, indeed. Wouldn’t like it ’ere at all I’m afraid. Er mansion flat. That’s what she’s got. Er mansion flat ...”
“Wouldn’t like it here?” Mrs. Gurney repeated. “You mean we’re not good enough?”
It was then that the simple honesty of Mr. Bloot’s mind betrayed him. He had no diplomatic reserves whatever. It was the truth, the plain flat-footed truth, that broke from him.
“That’s abaht it,” he said. “That’s the way it is.”
“Well, I like that!”
This time Mrs. Gurney’s voice—and until this moment it had never occurred to Mr. Bloot that Mrs. Gurney even had a voice—sounded strangled and choking. Mr. Bloot regarded her with astonishment.
“Ah didn’t mean that,” he said. “It’s all raht for you and me. Very nahce in fact. Very snug. It’s just that it wouldn’t be raht for her.”
But he got no farther. For Mrs. Gurney, aged fifty-five, herself contentedly married and therefore in no sense jealous and unnaturally possessive of her lone lodger, had burst into tears.
At one moment she was standing on the stairs beside him; and, at the next, she had shot across the landing and gone into her and Mr. Gurney’s bedroom, slamming the door after her.
Mr. Bloot stood where he was for a moment. Then slowly he resumed his climb to the second floor.
“Ah can’t understand it,” he kept telling himself. “No feelings. Didn’t even wish me luck.”
Chapter Twenty-four
1
It had been a brave decision on Mrs. Privett’s part to go to Mrs. Rammell’s in the first place. But no matter what the consequences, she knew that she had done the right thing.
And when Mr. Privett came back and broke the news that Mr. Rammell had spoken to him about Irene, she was more than ever convinced. Convinced and gratified. Because it showed that Mrs. Rammell had kept her word. She had respected Mrs. Privett’s secret.
For Mr. Privett, however, there remained all the bitterness of disappointment. Secretly, he had felt from the outset that Tony and Irene would make a lovely pair. He had boasted of it openly to Mr. Bloot. But he did not feel disposed to challenge Mr. Rammell. After all, Irene was still young. It wasn’t as though Tony were her only chance.
And, in any case, things were happening. It was too late now to start protesting. Irene herself announced the news. Innocently, as though she hadn’t guessed the full significance, she told her parents that very night at supper.
“I’m getting a transfer,” she said. “Right out of Haberdashery. Into Children’s. Sounds awful.”
Mr. Privett caught his wife’s eye as Irene said it. It proved that the wheels were turning. Showed that Mr. Rammell was tackling the problem the quiet, sensible way.
And then Irene said something that made both Mr. and Mrs. Privett suddenly sit forward.
“If I don’t like it,” she said, “I shan’t stay.”
“Not stay?” Mrs. Privett repeated.
“Why should I?” Irene asked. “It’s not fair about that transfer. I never asked for it.”
It was there that Mr. Privett intervened. As he was speaking he wished that Mr. Rammell could have been present to hear him.
“That’s not the point,” he said. “There’s more than you to be considered. You couldn’t run a store if everybody chose for themselves. They’re only doing what they think best.”
“Well, I don’t see it,” Irene replied.
She got up as she said it and went over to the door. Then she paused for a moment.
“And Tony doesn’t either,” she added as she went out.
“No,” Mrs. Privett said firmly. “You leave me to handle this. I’m going to have a word with that young lady.”
2
That was at about seven-fifteen. At seven-thirty Mr. Privett took his raincoat and umbrella and said that he was going over to see how Mr. Bloot was getting along. He would be back again shortly after ten he said. But by then it was too late.
“That you, Ireen?” he heard his wife’s voice call out as the front door closed on him.
“It’s only me, Mother,” he answered.
But, as he said it, it struck him that Mrs. Privett sounded unusually strained and anxious about something. Alarmed, even.
And a moment later, Mrs. Privett came out to meet him. Then he could tell at once that there was something wrong.
“Why, what’s the matter?” he began. “Is ...”
But he got no further. Mrs. Privett interrupted him.
“She’s gone,” Mrs. Privett told him. “Our Ireen’s gone.”
Because it was so unexpected he found some difficulty in understanding. The words simply did not make any sense to him.
“Gone where?” he asked.
“Gone away,” Mrs. Privett replied. “Packed a suitcase and gone.”
“I don’t believe it,” he answered. “I just don’t believe it. She’d never do a thing like that.”
“Well, she’s done it, I tell you.”
But Mrs. Privett could get no further. Quiet, controlled, unemotional as she normally was, she broke down and sobbed on Mr. Privett’s shoulder.
With his free arm Mr. Privett managed to get rid of his umbrella in the hall-stand. But there was nothing that he could do about his raincoat. All wet and steamy as he was he led his wife back into the living-room.
“You tell me what’s happened,” he said. “You tell me all about it.”
&n
bsp; It seemed that it had occurred almost immediately after Mr. Privett had left. That fatal reference to Tony was what had started it. Mrs. Privett had warned Irene. Spoken to her frankly as any mother should. And, thereafter, so far as Mr. Privett could judge, the fault had been all Irene’s. She shouldn’t have been so rude. Shouldn’t have told Mrs. Privett to mind her own business. Because that was what had made Mrs. Privett tell her that it was everybody’s business by now.
Bit by bit it had all come out. Mrs. Privett’s misgivings. Her fears. Her patience. Her anxiety when she saw how things were developing. Her visit to Mrs. Rammell.
And it was the last that had done it.
“You never,” Irene had said. “Not about us. You wouldn’t have dared.”
“I did dare,” Mrs. Privett had assured her. “And let me tell you another thing. That’s why you’re being sent up to Children’s. So as to separate the two of you.”
That, it seemed, was what had decided Irene. According to Mrs. Privett she had jumped to her feet, knocking over a teacup that was on the arm of her chair beside her, and and said something—Mrs. Privett couldn’t remember exactly what—about not stopping there any longer. Then, some ten minutes later, when Mrs. Privett went upstairs to look for her, she had gone. And she had taken her attaché-case with her. The brown leather one that she had always used for school. She had packed pyjamas. Bedroom slippers. Tooth brush. Everything.
The whole lot. And then disappeared.
“You’ve got to find her. Now. Before it’s too late,” Mrs. Privett wound up. “She can’t stop out. Not all night. Not at her age.”
“But ... but how do we know where she’s gone?” Mr. Privett asked idiotically.
“We don’t,” Mrs. Privett told him. “But the police’ll find her. That’s where you’ve got to go. To the police station. I’d have gone myself only I was afraid that she might come back and find nobody here.”
At the thought of such a return to a house left silent and empty Mrs. Privett began crying again. Mr. Privett stood there, regarding her.
“The police?” he repeated doubtfully. “How’ll they find her?”
Bond Street Story Page 22
