Dance and Skylark (10 page)

“You'll sell those
Punches”
he said, “when the American visitors arrive. Bit of old England: just the sort of thing the Americans love.” (Shades of the
New Yorker!
thought Stephen.) “But it's always pleasant to do a deal with you, my boy. No haggling, no hums and hahs; and both of us go away happy. You'll be particularly pleased, I think, if I tell you something.”

“What?” said Stephen.

The Vicar patted his pocket.

“This is
just
sufficient, with what I've saved up, to pay for that anemometer I told you about; and, bless your heart, I'm going to send off for it this afternoon!”

Beaming, the Vicar went out.

“Dinner's ready,” called Faith again.

Stephen went up. Faith looked homely in an apron (she must have brought it with her) and the ham smelled very good.

“Faith,” he said. “What the devil's strangles in horses?”

“Abscesses in the neck,” she replied promptly. “Difficult to distinguish from glanders.”

It seemed there were certain advantages, apart from ham and eggs, in having a farmer's daughter for your secretary!

“Is it catching?” he said.

“Very.”

“Sir Almeric thinks one of the riding-school horses has got it.”

“Most unlikely,” said Faith. “It attacks young horses generally; all the riding-school hacks look about a hundred and one. But we'd better ring up the riding school and ask them to get the vet.”

It was strange, thought Stephen, that he should have once thought her half-witted, for although her typing and shorthand were as bad as ever, and she had a slap-dash way of doing things which resulted in some terrible muddles, she possessed a kind of rough-and-ready country common sense which made up for everything. More and more he found
himself asking, and taking, her advice. It was she who had settled the row about the programme sellers' uniforms, which had been specially designed by Robin and rejected by the lady in charge of the programme sellers, who had threatened mass resignations on account of them. “What you don't understand,” Faith had explained patiently to Stephen, “is that Robin designs dresses for pretty girls with good figures. Since half the programme sellers either bulge in the wrong places or are as scraggy as old ewes they know they'd look silly in them.”

“But that wasn't the reason they gave at all.”

Faith had looked at him with amused pity.

“Do you really imagine they admit it even to themselves?”

He began to rely on her in all sorts of ways. (Relying on Faith! he thought—it wasn't a bad motto for his Festival.) Unusual properties were always being asked for by the stage manager. He wanted a set of hames and traces, and Faith, who knew all about harness, obtained them next day. He wanted a Very Light pistol and Faith rang up a Group Captain at the nearest aerodrome whom she charmed so completely that he risked court-martial and lent her two. But she wasn't always charming, by any means; in her abrupt countrified way she could be devastatingly rude, and since Stephen was by nature unqualified to assert himself, Faith's rough manners sometimes came in very useful. She had been so rude to Councillor Noakes, whose perpetual pawing she resented, that he no longer hung about the office all day; and that, at any rate, was a blessing.

Eating his ham and eggs, Stephen tried to sort out the
events of the morning. “Knitting wool and silver paint,” he said, “and we must have a new block made for the printers.”

“Have done,” said Faith with her mouth full.

“And the Cricket Club wants to hire a pro for W. G. Grace. The Captain thinks
he
ought to have the honour but the team say he's not good enough.”

“Quite right. Had an average of eight last season.”

“And we want a donkey. Mr. Gurney says the Holy Hermit's got to be led on to the field by Odo and Dodo, riding on a donkey.”

“What, Odo and Dodo?”

“No, the Hermit.”

“Well, that's lucky,” said Faith. “If they were as drunk as they were at the rehearsal last night they'd fall off.” “But can you get a donkey?”

“Of course. Old Mother Perks at the bottom of our lane has one in her orchard. It's older than I am so it ought to be quiet.”

“Good girl. What a life it is!”

She put down her fork and examined him for a moment with her pitying and curious stare.

“Does it ever occur to you,” she said, “that if we're going to play to empty stands all this hurly-burly hasn't got much point?”

And indeed it had occurred to him. He was only too well aware that the turmoil in his office was, in a sense, a sort of bombinating in a vacuum. You had only to look at the seating-plans in Virginia's booking office to discover that the public at large regarded the Festival with supreme
indifference. There was a thin speckling of crosses in the half-crown section, mostly representing charabanc parties, and here and there a few of the more expensive seats had been sold; but Stephen suspected that the purchasers of these were devoted or dutiful friends and relations of the performers. Virginia, knitting away uninterrupted, had finished her twin-set in record time and started on another one; her total takings amounted to less than a hundred and fifty pounds.

Encouraged by this, the anti-Festival faction had become more vociferous. The opposition was by no means confined to Miss Foulkes' supporters and the workers in the balloon factory; letters began to appear in the
Intelligencer
signed “Ratepayer” and “Pro Bono Publico” asking who was going to foot the bill if the Festival lost two or three thousand pounds. Mr. Runcorn, meeting Stephen one morning in the street, declared in his most sepulchral tone: “I have my finger on the pulse of the town, Mr. Tasker; I do not like the feel of it at all.” Councillor Noakes haunted the booking office anxiously, peering short-sightedly at the seating-plans over Virginia's shoulder and sighing deeply while he gave her small consoling pats upon various parts of her anatomy. In fact the only remaining optimists were the Mayor, who held fast to his belief that there would be a last-minute influx of Foreign Visitors, and the Vicar, who insisted that when the anticyclone arrived the bookings would be immediately trebled.

“Buzz-buzz-buzz,” said Faith, “like blowflies in a bottle. We make ourselves so busy we forget that nobody's taking any notice of us.”

“We've spent more than we ought to on advertising already.”

“Just ordinary advertising. Posters and things. That's no good. We must do something
different
. Have some cheese?”

“No, thanks, I'm full.”

Faith helped herself to a lump of Double Gloucester.

“Something different,” she munched.

“Yes, but what?”

“Bloons.”

“What?”

Faith finished her cheese in her own time and said:

“Balloons. Kill two birds with one stone. Win over the opposition by supporting a local industry and advertise the Festival all over the place.”

“I don't quite get it,” said Stephen.

“You print on the balloons a neat little caption about the Pageant. You fill them with hydrogen. You ask for volunteers to let them go. (That's more publicity because people love letting off balloons.) And they sail away wherever the wind listeth. I thought of it in the bath,” said Faith.

“Wouldn't most of them come down in open country where they'd never be seen?”

“Yes. You'd want a lot of balloons.”

“How many?”

“Twenty thousand,” said Faith coolly. “At least. And perhaps you'd have to offer rewards and prizes to start people looking for them. But I worked it out in the bath and I thought that if five per cent were picked up, we'd
have set a thousand people talking. There's a lot of publicity in that.”

It sounded to Stephen a crazy idea. In any case, he protested, the factory couldn't make them in time. There were only three weeks to go before the Festival; and to do any good the balloons would have to be dispatched within ten days.

“They can make them in ten days,” said Faith.

“What? You've talked to John Handiman already?”

“Have fixed,” said Faith. “One hundred and fifty gross at twelve-and-six a gross. Delivery to-morrow week. That just gives us time to persuade old Runcorn to write a leader about it, asking for volunteers to let them go from the top of the hill.”

Faith helped herself to another piece of cheese.

“I do hope it blows like hell,” she said.

Adeflated pig lay upon John Handiman's desk; it was a sample of the latest batch, which Miss Foulkes had put there. Beneath it were two letters which had arrived by the morning post. John removed the pig and read them for the third time.

The first was from the Bank. It ran:

“Dear Mr. Handiman: I am disappointed to find that the promised payment into your company's account has
not materialised. You will realise of course that it is impossible for me to allow any further increase in the overdraft, which stands at £571 3s. 6d. and that provision must therefore be made for your Wages Cheque on Friday. I can only suggest that you take the necessary steps to ensure that the cheque due to you from your Agent is received by that date. …”

The second was from the company's Agent in London. Certain currency difficulties, it said, had cropped up in connection with the Argentine payment. No doubt all would be well in the end, but the money had not yet arrived and no settlement could be expected for at least a week. “Meanwhile,” the Agent added, “we enclose a translation of the explanation we have received from the Argentine importer.”

The “explanation,” if it was one, was wrapped up in Latin courtesies. It spoke of pesos and Exchange controls as if they were the language of love; and the very literal translation finished with a flourish: “Your servants who kiss your hand.”

So this, thought John, was the end: not with a bang but a whimper. On an impulse he blew up the pig and stood it on his desk. Its long falsetto squeal was dying away when Miss Foulkes came in, and she regarded it with disapproval as the wrinkles began to appear on its back and with a final faint squeak it toppled over as if it had been pole-axed. She didn't think that balloons in the shape of pigs were very funny. Then she noticed the bowl of scarlet peonies on the filing-cabinet and began to blush.

“The messenger-boy brought them and I put them in
water,” said John, trying not to look at her. “There was no message.”

“Thank you. By the way,” she said briefly, “the shop stewards have called a meeting. It's just starting now.”

The “shop stewards” were Jim and Joe. They were in fact the only Trade Unionists in the factory, and their title was an honorary one, bestowed upon them by Miss Foulkes.

“A meeting? Oh, yes. I suppose I ought to go and give them a sort of farewell talk or something. On the lines of ‘It was a good show while it lasted'?”

“This is a private meeting,” said Miss Foulkes, “for the workers.”

“Oh! All right. Enid,” he said, “I'm sorry about it all.”

“So am I.”

“I should have liked to do that job for the Festival. I wonder if we could carry on just long enough—”

“Wait and see,” snapped Miss Foulkes.

In the small yard at the back of the factory, a desolate place full of empty latex-containers, some of which had rolled down into the mud at the river's edge and stuck there, with bits of old bicycles, motor tyres and a half-submerged punt, Jim was making a speech. It was a long, confused and rambling speech, which would surely have puzzled any student of industrial relations, and it was delivered in the voice of a raven with tonsillitis. The B. capitalists, Jim said, had made another B. muck-up. A proper military muck-up it was, like Dunkirk. The Argentinos were partly to blame for it too. Run away without paying. He never did hold with that Peron.
Anyhow, the long and the short of it was there was no money in the B. kitty. Pretty kettle of fish. Just the sort of thing that happened under B. capitalism. Always would happen until the whole shooting-match was in the hands of the workers. Then they'd show 'em.

Not that he had anything against Mr. Handiman. They ought to have seen him at Walcheren. Shot through the stomach and half drownded, and asking about Jim and Joe.

No money in the kitty. And along came this contract for a hundred and fifty gross of balloons for the Festival. What the hell the Festival wanted balloons for Jim couldn't say. He didn't hold with the B. Festival. Since there was no B. copper listening he didn't mind admitting he'd had a hand in sticking up them posters. Him and some others he wouldn't name.

That Inspector Heyhoe was a Fascist Beast, he was, proper.

Now the B. puzzle was, what happened next? Did they go on the dole or did they work out that contract on half-pay, overtime chucked in, and have the other half when and if there was something in the kitty again? Union Rules? To hell with Union Rules. Who was talking about Union Rules anyway? He and Joe were the only loyal Trade Unionists there, and if they couldn't say to hell with the Union who could?

“We wants to do fings proper and we wants to do fings Democratic,” croaked Jim, “so we'll put it in the form of a resolution and settle it by a show of hands. The proposition is—but I'll ask our secretary to read it out. Go on, oe.”

It was a very complicated resolution, and it took the
shape, for some obscure ideological reason, of an ultimatum to the Management. Because Joe had forgotten the last part of the sentence, it ended “or else—”

“Or else what?” put in Mrs. Greening.

“Or else it's a lock-out, see,” said Jim. “Not a strike, but a B. lock-out. Some of you scabs that ain't in the Union don't know the difference. If he don't accept it, then it's simply another B. lock-out. Now put it to the meeting, Joe.”