I Shall Not Want (42 page)

It was strange standing there in the darkness and seeing it all happen in front of him. But he had thought about it so long that it seemed that the day, when it came, would be only the pale shadow of the event; it had already been a reality inside his brain for years. . . .

From nowhere, the image of a boy dressed like an orphan, his hand gripped in the clasp of a woman who did not speak to him, slid into his mind and remained there for a moment. The image startled him. Less than a month ago he had sworn to find that boy and deliver him; and already he had forgotten. But why shouldn't he forget? It was the shop that he had been sent on earth to look after; not Hesther's son.

With a little shrug of his shoulders, as though he were angry almost at the boy for having distracted him, he turned and went up the central gangway to see if the display cases were in position.

ii

John Marco left the engagement of the extra staff to Mr. Hackbridge. And Mr. Hackbridge, still as morbidly afraid as ever of making a mistake under his new master, worked from eight in the morning until nearly ten o'clock at night, interviewing, taking up references, appointing. He was a director now, and not merely a shop-walker. John Marco had insisted on appointing him to the board along with his other appointment, Mr. Skewin: there were five directors in all on the board and John Marco wanted men that he could rely on. He had similarly elevated little Mr. Lyman who was a wizard with the cash. And having listened to the stammered, overwhelmed words of gratitude of the three of them he was careful to
treat them even more curtly, more disdainfully, than before: there was to be no nonsense about equality.

Mr. Hackbridge, faced with the unthinkable task of engaging an army of fifty-four assistants, sweated. There was always the terror, the ever-present haunting terror that he might appoint a mischief-maker or a thief. But there was one side of it all that Mr. Hackbridge enjoyed enormously. His old spirit of authority, pent up so long in fear and trepidation, re-asserted itself; and in the temporary office with the words “Staff Manager” on the door he bullied the young ladies unmercifully. They came in their dozens, polite and timid and respectable, drawn from the ends of London by a single advertisement, like moths to a beacon. And once he had got them there, he put them through their paces, making them take their hats off and stand up facing the light where he could see them; criticising their accents—his own on these occasions was full and fruity and over-bearing; taking hold of their hands in his to see if they were properly cared for.

He was in the middle of one such interview when John Marco himself came in and interrupted him. The girl—she did not appear to be more than about eighteen or nineteen—was standing there with her hat in her hand where Mr. Hackbridge had placed her.

“And why do you imagine you should be able to sell lingerie,” Mr. Hackbridge was asking sarcastically, “if you haven't got any experience? You're just wasting my time coming here, upon my word you are.”

Then he saw John Marco and rose respectfully to his feet.

“What's the matter?” John Marco asked.

He glanced at the girl as he spoke. She was small and dark and her hair was combed up on either side of a pale oval face.

“She'll be good-looking later on,” John Marco thought to himself, “when she's come out a bit.”

At the moment, however, she looked as if she might be going to cry.

“She's got no experience, sir,” Mr. Hackbridge said,
flicking her letter of application contemptuously with the back of his hand. “Our advertisement said ...”

But John Marco had turned towards the girl.

“What's your name?” he asked.

“Eve Harlow, sir.”

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“Do you want to learn?”

“Oh yes, sir.”

He turned to Mr. Hackbridge.

“Give her a chance,” he said. “Fifteen shillings a week. They've all got to learn sometime.”

“As you say, sir,” said Mr. Hackbridge sadly.

John Marco caught the girl's eye. She smiled at him, and he smiled back at her for a moment. It seemed something to him to have a friend, even a friend at only fifteen bob a week, among that regiment of strangers.

The Day of the opening was cold but sunny. John Marco looked out of his window and reflected that it was perfect shopping weather. But somehow, now that the day had come round, the first excitement had already gone from it. He was tired, desperately tired. All that he wanted was to settle down to being a shopkeeper again, to put this vast piece of machinery into motion and begin earning money once more. He wished now that he had let the doors be opened at nine o'clock that morning to catch every penny that was going. But, instead of that, the whole place was to be locked up like a prison until half-past-three when the Mayor was coming. He was bringing the Lady Mayoress with him; and the wives of the other Aldermen were coming as well. They were nearly all the wives of tradesmen and the big dais in the central hall would contain the cream of the retail aristocracy of Bayswater.

The hall itself was to be filled by specially invited guests drawn from the old customers of Morgan and Roberts. He had sent out five hundred invitations, and one hundred-and-twenty of the best-connected ladies in the neighbourhood had accepted. For a moment after the invitations had gone he had questioned whether anyone would come. But the two words
“AFTERNOON TEA”
at the bottom of the card had proved sufficient. Even without the promise of a mannequin parade they would have been there for their free hot drink and refreshments—he remembered from his old Tabernacle days that there was something about
gratis
beverages and uncharged-for sandwiches that drew people from their homes like the call of the
muezzin.

He dressed carefully, wearing for the first time a new black silk cravat that he had bought. It was a handsome
piece of silk, the sort of thing that a Rajah might put round himself. And into it he thrust a single-pearl tie-pin. His frock coat was new too. He had bought it specially from a tailor in Jeremyn Street instead of from the man in Westbourne Terrace who had always made his clothes. The fit was exemplary. When he had put on his patent leather boots with the suède tops, and stuffed a silk handkerchief into his pocket he stood for a while in front of the cheval glass admiring himself. His hair, which was now grey at the temples, gave an air of authority to him; he might have been an ambassador at the court of St. James, instead of only a draper.

The morning's post was ready for him when he went through for breakfast; it was standing there propped up against the coffee pot. And amid the little huddle of envelopes there was one missive—a postcard—that at once caught his eye. The message on it was printed: in jagged angular letters it ran right across the card. “BEHOLD THESE ARE THE UNGODLY WHO PROSPER IN THE WORLD,” it ran. “THEY INCREASE IN RICHES.” There was no address and no signature—though no signature of course was needed. He turned it over and looked at the postmark. But the Postmaster-General might have been in league with the sender. There was only a black, half-obliterated smudge.

John Marco stared at it for a moment and then tearing it into tiny fragments threw it into the open grate behind him. But the room did not seem quite the same afterwards. It was as though Hesther herself had been there. He felt himself being watched again. For the rest of the day he would feel that her eyes were on him.

It was four o'clock. The Mayor had blundered through his carefully typewritten speech using the words as if they were great mouthfuls of suet, and the hired mannequin had paraded past the assembled ladies with her hips swaying from side to side in the cultivated manner of her profession. As John Marco looked at her he reflected that
it was strange that women who habitually walked like governesses should prefer to select their dresses from someone who glided about like a
houri.
But there was a convention in such things; and as the girl made her last exit with one hand on her waist and the other held stiffly up into the air at a right angle from the elbow as if she were picking a spray of something, everyone who was present felt that Bayswater owed something to John Marco for having brought this breath of the
rue de la Paix
blowing into it.

Then the Mayor, accompanied by the Lady Mayoress, cut the white ribbon that Mr. Hackbridge had fastened across the principal doorway; and John Marco Ltd. was open. The crowd was there all right. The windows, full of special and unrepeatable bargains, had attracted them. It had been John Marco's idea that they should lead off with a sale; and every article in the shop was marked down to half-price as though values had crashed overnight. The uninvited, the ordinary rank and file of the district, had been waiting since two o'clock ready to pounce as soon as the doors had opened. But it was actually two women who had been rather annoyed at having to wait for all this formality who came in first. They sauntered self-consciously into the building where all the assistants were standing ready and between them bought a pair of gloves and a fancy handkerchief. Just as they were taking-out their purses, John Marco bore down on them.

“There will be no charge, madam,” he said, “for the first purchase made in the new store.”

And taking out his gold pencil he initialed the counter book himself. . . .

By five o'clock the store was full. There were eager, acquisitive women in every department, and Mr. Hack-bridge, who had been awarded the honorary title of Shop Manager, was walking up and down among them like a general on field day. He had got himself up very handsomely for the occasion, and his trousers had the immaculate side crease of King Edward's. His two-inch moustaches
were waxed until the ends were like needles, and in his button-hole was a gardenia in a metal holder.

Half-way up the big curved staircase John Marco had found a new pulpit from which he could look down on this bright world of his own invention. With his hand on the polished rail in front of him he stood alone, speaking to no one. In the gangway below him he could see the broad brims and sweeping feathers of the ladies' hats. Their figures of course were square and fore-shortened like an opera singer's seen from the gallery; and the strains of music were there to complete the illusion. Upstairs in the Old English tea-room where the waitresses wore Puritan aprons and the china on the tables was of cheap willow-pattern, an orchestra of three was fiddling madly away above the clatter of the tea-cups. And down below, the scene of carnival was completed: there were balloons. Two girls stood at the door holding great bunches of them, all printed staringly with his name. Every child who came in was given one. And as they carried them round, held high above their heads for protection, they bobbed up and down in the midst of the crowd like huge soap bubbles.

John Marco did not want to move away from his position. The lights had come on by now and the chandeliers in the ceiling glittered like tiaras, catching the edges of the mirrors, the bright metal balustrades that ran round the galleries, the polished surfaces beneath. The whole place danced and dazzled.
“All these were of costly stones, according to the measure of hewed stones”
he began saying to himself.
“And the foundation was of costly stones, even great stones, stones of ten cubits and stones of eight cubits.”
Perhaps, for all his wisdom, Solomon himself had felt just a little like this when he had first looked upon his rising Temple.

But John Marco was dissatisfied: he wanted to be in all the departments at once so that he could watch every purchase being made, be present at every penny that his assistants were taking. There was so much going on around him of which he could never know: that was the trouble.
And, for a moment, as he stood there he wondered if he would ever really be able to control this gigantic machine that he had started. The doubt was short-lived, however; this machine had been designed so carefully that it would run itself; if the people came in to feed it, it would run for ever. But the windows! Had Mr. Hackbridge remembered the coloured lights which he had said were to be put on as soon as it grew dusk? Frowning a little he went down the broad staircase and through the busy gangway to inspect the windows.

After the noise and clamour of the shop, it seemed strangely quiet and placid outside on the pavement. The windows, of course, lit up the street. The coloured lights were diving in and out like fishes, and a battery of half-watt lamps was throwing up its glare into people's faces. For a few minutes John Marco walked up and down the frontage pausing one by one in front of the displays, admiring them. Then, just as he was about to go inside again he saw Mary and the child standing there.

It was the toy window, a kind of pre-Christmas bazaar of dolls and stuffed animals and rocking horses that they were looking at; and the child was pointing at something. He could see the faces of both of them as brightly lit as if a photographer had trained his flood lights on them. And at the sight of Mary a sudden weakness, something that had no place in this world of business, ran through him.

For a moment he stood helpless, in the doorway. Then a new feeling of excitement came over him; he went up and stood beside her. This was the nearest that he had been to her since the last night when he had visited Mr. Petter in the little flat in Harrow Street. It was the opportunity for which he had been waiting.

“Mary,” he said.

At the sound of his voice, she started. She drew back a little. But he came closer.

“Mary,” he said. “It's been so long. ...”

She turned on him and he found himself looking into those deep eyes again. But they were angry now; there was no tenderness anywhere within them. Without speaking to him she began to move away.

“Don't . . . don't look at me like that, Mary,” he began.

But already she was two paces away from him. She was clasping the child by the hand, leading it. Forgetting everything, forgetting even the way in which the other people at the window had turned and were staring at him, he began to follow.