I Shall Not Want (25 page)

Hesther started when she saw him. She had not heard him as he came in, and she was evidently unprepared for him. There was something guilty about her. She seemed ashamed to be seen at her own dressing-table. And then he saw how the dressing-table had been arranged. The brushes and the scent-spray and the pin-cushion had been moved to one side and the two tall candles had been lighted. The top of the dressing-table was now covered with a collection of baby-clothes. They lay there, in fleecy, tidy piles; she was gloating over them.

And already she was endeavouring to hide them, to cover them up again before he should see them. She was like a school-girl who has been disturbed playing with her dolls.

She stood there awkwardly in front of him.

“Did you get what you wanted?” she asked.

“I
shall
get it,” he answered. “At the price I offered.”

She turned away from him as he spoke and went on gathering up the secret hoard. He could see her face in the mirror: she was crying. After a moment he went over and put his arm round her.

“Don't cry,” he said. “I'll repay you a thousandfold. We'll be rich.”

But she avoided his touch and sank down on her stool in front of the dressing-table.

“Doesn't the child mean anything to you?” she asked. “Doesn't it mean anything to you at all?”

Three weeks later in the lawyer's office in Marylebone the business of Morgan and Roberts became John Marco's. The final stages seemed absurdly simple. Miss Foxell—she was still wearing black like a widow and kept pressing a handkerchief to her eyes—signed in one place, John Marco signed in another, the witnesses wrote their names, a banker's draft was passed over—and four plate glass shop windows, three waxen dummies, the fruits of Mr. Morgan's lifetime, the crammed stock-rooms, the debts, and the professional lives of twenty lady assistants and three men all magically changed hands.

At the actual moment of completion the most anxious man in London was probably Mr. Hackbridge. For no reason that he could discern, Miss Foxell had suddenly dropped him. She no longer sent for him in the evenings and she ignored his very existence. It was John Marco she asked for; and John Marco himself would say nothing. Mr. Hackbridge was afraid even to go out of the shop for a moment, and sat instead poring over piles of accounts that he could not master.

And by now the whole business was more inexplicable than ever. John Marco had sent a note round to the shop—a casual note as though he owned the place—to say that he would be absent this morning; and Miss Foxell had telephoned very curtly to ask for a pair of brass vases from the Millinery Department, which she said Mr. Morgan had promised her. Mr. Hackbridge put two and two together and did not like the total. He saw himself at fifty-four thrown suddenly onto the street with no assets but his frock coat and his striped trousers and with no living being to give him a testimonial. He sweated.

As soon as John Marco got back from the lawyer's he went straight to the Old Gentleman's room—it still seemed difficult to think of it by any other name. It was eleven o'clock, but Mr. Hackbridge was not there. At the last moment he had decided that he could stand the strain no longer without something to buck him up, and at this very minute he was gnawing his nails and drinking something short. John Marco sat himself down at the desk and began going through the papers.

They were a jumbled untidy collection; apparently Mr. Hackbridge simply emptied his pockets when he got there. Among the invoices and statements to the firm was a coal bill made out to Mr. Hackbridge, a final demand for the water-rate at twenty-seven Elzevir Road, Hammersmith, and a piece of paper with a list of football results on the back. There were also two empty bottles of pick-me-up tablets, a whisky-flask drained dry and a number of dirty pipe cleaners that had obviously been straightened out and put away for future use. John Marco was still rummaging about in all this rubbish when Mr. Hackbridge came in.

He stood in the doorway staring. His face was flushed with the high, hectic colour of dyspepsia and his hair was brushed up the wrong way like the feathers of a bird that has been caught with its back to the wind.

“What's happening here?” he began. “Who gave you permission . . . ”

But John Marco interrupted him.

“Mr. Hackbridge,” he said without rising from the Old Gentleman's chair, “Mr. Morgan put his business into your hands before he died, didn't he?”

“Yes, he did; and not into yours,” Mr. Hackbridge replied breathing heavily.

“And you've been spending your time hanging about public houses ever since.”

Mr. Hackbridge took a step forward and twitched up his sleeves at the elbows: for a moment it looked as if he were going to eject John Marco from his chair by force.

“What the Hell's that got to do with you?” he shouted.

“Only this,” John Marco answered, still without raising his voice, “that now I've bought the business I shan't be requiring your services.”

“You won't be requiring ...”

Mr. Hackbridge clutched suddenly at the lapels of his coat.

“That's what I said,” John Marco replied.

“But you can't mean it . . . you don't understand . . . do you realise that I've been here for eighteen years?”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Hackbridge,” John Marco replied, “but it's my business now and I've decided that I can get along without you.”

“Give me another chance,” Mr. Hackbridge pleaded. “You won't regret it.”

John Marco shook his head.

“You had your chance when the Old Gentleman died,” he said.

“But I'll never get another job; not at my age.”

“That's no affair of mine.”

“But what about Mrs. Hackbridge? I can't let her starve.”

“She's your wife, not mine,” John Marco answered.

There was a pause—a long pause—and then he looked towards Mr. Hackbridge. Now that the blow had fallen Mr. Hackbridge was crying. He had sat down and was weeping. Weeping, quite openly. Large, sticky tears were running down his cheeks and onto his fine moustache. The tyrant of the front shop, the monster who walked through the departments after closing time, shouting at the assistants, was there no longer. It was this shabby, half-sick shop-walker who remained.

Mr. Hackbridge began groping in his pocket and pulled out his handkerchief: he buried his face in it. John Marco turned his back on him and walked over to the window.

What he saw held him there: he forgot all about Mr. Hackbridge. It was bright sunlight on the other side of the street, and in the sunlight two people were standing. The
young man, in a raincoat and a black bowler, was pointing at something in a shop-window, and the girl beside him, who had her hand on his arm, was nodding. The shop was a furnisher's; and it was a drawing-room suite that they were looking at. The suite was very handsome, very elegant, and in the latest Bays water style. For a moment, the couple hesitated and then, still arm in arm, they went into the shop together.

John Marco stood looking after them. It was Mary Kent and her fiancé that he had seen. And his heart had stopped for a moment at the sight. But it was not jealousy that he was suffering: it was loneliness. That was happiness, real happiness, that he had been watching; and he was shut out from it. The young man had seemed so proud and confident as he stood there, and Mary had leant on his arm so trustfully. It was love that he had seen down there, and it made the good-will and the book-debts and the well-filled stock-room of this business that he had schemed and prayed for, seem suddenly empty and unimportant. It no longer appeared the kind of thing that a man might spend his whole life fretting over.

He turned and started to walk back to his desk.

And then he realised that Mr. Hackbridge was still there. His face had gone blotchy from crying and the colour had drained away from it. The corners of his mouth were working as if he were preparing to say something.

But John Marco anticipated him.

“You can stay,” he said wearily. “It doesn't matter. You can stay.”

Mr. Hackbridge let out a little cry and coming forward tried to shake John Marco by the hand with his cold, damp one.

ii

The change of proprietorship was discernible from the start. Even the windows looked different. The oldest of the dummies, the dowager one—was removed and a new one bought. She was a simpering little cocotte, the new one,
with slanting eyes and a wealth of bright, gold hair, that Mr. Hackbridge had to dress with a pocket comb when the blinds were down. From her pedestal in the centre she delicately accosted people, and John Marco would allow only the smartest hats and the latest kind of veil to be shown on her. When fully dressed, she was the sort of thing that the Old Gentleman would never have allowed anywhere near him; and in her various stages of undress when they were arranging her, she looked positively disgraceful.

There was actually
less
in the windows nowadays. The stocking display, for instance, which hitherto had consisted of great dangling masses of them like jungle vegetation, was completely done away with. And in its place was left one pair of thin silk stockings on a couple of shapely
papier mâché
legs. People who wanted ordinary wool or cashmere had to come in and ask for them.

And there were Special Weeks and Offers and Opportunities. On one Monday, Millinery Week would start and there would be hats even in the Fancy Goods. On the following Monday there would be scarcely a hat to been seen and the shop would be devoted to blouses and shirt waists. Then in remorseless succession would occur Dress Week, Glove Week and Spring Outfitting—the labels continually being pasted onto the windows and scraped off again.

Like all revolutions, of course, the new régime produced its reactionaries. The two oldest assistants got together and complained: it was, they said, the changing about that upset them. To have graduated in Gloves and then be transferred at twenty-four hours' notice to Hosiery was something that tended to unhinge the mind. But John Marco over-ruled them, brutally and callously talked them down. And, for the simple reason that they could not afford to throw up their jobs, they allowed themselves to be persuaded; they emerged from his room, these two respectable maiden-ladies, ready to steel themselves for whatever madness the following Monday morning might bring forth.
And then quite suddenly the middle-aged Miss Junip who was in charge of the corsets resigned. It was undoubtedly a loss to the firm; Miss Junip had grown up in the business and knew the busts of half Bayswater by heart. But John Marco did not hesitate. It was all over in a moment. At three-thirty one Friday afternoon Miss Junip, very red in the face and with a shaking voice, said that Mr. Morgan would never have allowed her to be put upon in that way—there was now an under-vest and combination exhibition in what had hitherto been exclusively the corset salon—and that she was going to keep house for a brother in Bexhill. And at nine o'clock on the following Monday morning Miss Junip was only a memory and in her place was a dark, handsome assistant, a Madame Simone, with beautiful hands and shining, brilliantined hair. It was a startling demonstration of speed and ruthlessness; and it had its effect. There were no more complaints.

As for Mr. Hackbridge, he now worked in a frenzy of nervous energy. When shop-walking he moved with the ceaseless everlasting tread of a soldier on sentry-go and there were no more of the dartings-out for refreshers. He was even in terror lest, while actually patrolling, he should not
appear
to be doing anything. In consequence whenever John Marco saw him, he was unnecessarily re-arranging a price ticket, or opening the door for an unimportant customer, or picking up a bill which someone else had dropped. Under the strain of it all and without the constant inflow of refreshment, he was beginning to lose weight; his waistcoat sagged on him. And whenever he did pause for a moment to pass a handkerchief across his forehead he would look up only to see John Marco gazing down on him from the little landing half-way up the staircase.

It was from this landing that John Marco saw Hesther upon her first official visit. Her arrival was unexpected: she had said nothing about coming when he had left the house that morning. It was simply that the door opened and she was there. For a moment as he saw her his old feeling of uneasiness, of fear almost, returned: he gripped
the balustrade and stood staring at her. The last time she had visited the shop was when she had come to deliver her ultimatum; and her entry then had been just as sudden, as startling.

But she looked strangely different now. Before, she had been pale and tense. Now she was confident and at her ease. She stood there, gazing round her with a half-smile upon her face.

Mr. Hackbridge himself did not recognise her; he selected instead another customer, an old lady in a heavy fur, for his special attention and for a moment he turned his back on Hesther. Then, when he found that she was still waiting, he came forward a second time, bowing and smiling, and asked what he could do for her. As soon as he learned the truth, Mr. Hackbridge snatched up a chair, like an acrobat arranging a stage, swept it through the air and placed it at Hesther's feet. Then he clapped his hands together.

“Tell Mr. Marco that Mrs. Marco has arrived,” he said.

As he spoke he kept pulling down the waxed ends of his moustache and letting them fly up again: it was an old trick of his when he was being professionally fascinating.

But Hesther would have none of him.

“Thank you,” she said. “But if you would show me the way I would rather go up myself.”

“Certainly, certainly,” he replied; and, removing the chair with a flourish, he led her down the aisle as though she were a bride and he conducting her to the altar. At the foot of the stairs John Marco was standing ready for them. Mr. Hackbridge withdrew backwards as from Royalty.

John Marco looked at Hesther questioningly. Inside the shop, she did not belong at all; the shop was his world.