I Shall Not Want (57 page)

“He'll be dead inside a year if he isn't careful,” Mr. Hackbridge volunteered with a kind of sagacious cheerfulness.

Mr. Hackbridge was a man who set great store on taking care; his whole life was one of mufflers and throat-pastilles and judicious night-caps.

“But the
business”
Mr. Lyman's thinner voice put in. “Think of what's happening to the business.”

And as they both had a plan—it was Mr. Lyman's plan—and as they needed support for it, they went and lobbied Mr. Skewin. He was dim and adaptable as usual. He expressed himself entirely captured by the whole idea, and even went so far as to say that he thought that John Marco would appreciate it to know that they were thinking about him.

So the three of them went up to John Marco's office on the following evening. It was just as they had expected. In answer to the bark from within that greeted Mr. Hack-bridge's somewhat timid knock on the door, they filed in and found John Marco working there—the sheets of figures stretched out around him, and the decanter standing in the middle with the half empty glass beside it. The rest of the room was in darkness and the lamp in front of him spread a bright pool of light over the papers like sunshine. When he looked up and the rays caught his face, sharpening every feature and etching in the shadows under his eyes more deeply, they saw how grey and lined he was. He was like a general in the thick of a campaign, poring over maps that seemed set against him.

“We were wondering if we might see you for a moment?” Mr. Lyman began.

John Marco started: he moved abruptly with the jerki-ness of a man whose nerves are unprotected.

“What is it?” he asked. “Has anything gone wrong?”

“No, no,” Mr. Lyman assured him. “It isn't that. It's simply something that we wanted to discuss with you.”

“Now?” John Marco asked.

The figures on the desk were staring up at him accusingly; they seemed to have a hundred small eyes which were regarding him.

“We thought it might be the best time,” Mr. Lyman went on. It was noticeable, now that they were actually in John Marco's presence, that the others did not appear to be at all eager to say anything. “No interruptions you know,” Mr. Lyman added.

John Marco had half risen from his chair and had then sat down again. He passed his hand across his eyes and told Mr. Lyman to continue.

The room was silent, quite silent, as Mr. Lyman started to speak.

“We've been rather anxious about you for some time, sir,” he began in a modest, diffident kind of manner. “We know the great strain the business imposes on you and we can't help feeling worried about your health.”

“You've been worried about my health,” John Marco repeated. The corners of his mouth were drawn down and the vein in his forehead was standing out, throbbing. “You interrupted me to tell me that?”

“We did, sir,” Mr. Lyman explained, “because we thought we'd found the solution.”

He was being very careful, very tactful; a great deal depended on the right inflexion and intonation of every word he was uttering.

“And might I ask what it is?” John Marco demanded. He was drumming his fingers impatiently on the desk as he spoke to them. “Might I ask why I should be bothered in this way?”

“What we had thought,” Mr. Lyman continued, feeling his way daintily step by step, like a cat, as he went along, “was that perhaps you might care to take a holiday. We know how little rest you give yourself and we thought that if we suggested it you might consider the idea.”

John Marco started.

“Whose idea was this?” he demanded. His voice was coarse and rough as he said it; he was almost shouting.

He was breathing heavily by now.

Mr. Lyman rather shame-facedly took the lead again.

“We often feel the strain ourselves, sir,” he said tactfully. “We often get a bit under the weather. And with everything that you have to think about, it's too much without a holiday.”

“That's right, sir,” Mr. Hackbridge put in, as though to show that his word in conference counted for something. “We often get tired ourselves, sir. Very tired.”

John Marco did not reply immediately. The blood was hammering inside his head and his heart was pounding. They wanted to get rid of him for a time—that much was obvious. They had been plotting, and he would have to destroy their designs. But he would have to be careful: exceedingly careful. He had been drinking—a lot to drink in fact: the whiskey had disappeared from the decanter faster even than usual—and he could not afford to make any mistake just now. He got up and walked slowly over to the mantelpiece and set his shoulders against it.

“You were saying, Mr. Hackbridge, I believe,” he replied, his voice deliberately kept level and under control, “that you find your work very tiring. I'm not surprised. It's usual to get a little tired if you work. But I can do nothing for you. If you find it's too much for you, you have your remedy, you know: you can resign.” He turned slowly away from Mr. Hackbridge and addressed Mr. Lyman again. “And so can you, Mr. Lyman. If you wish to resign I shan't hinder you; there's only one person in this firm whom I regard as indispensable.” He paused long enough for it to become apparent whom he meant, and then approached his desk again. “If that is all, gentlemen, I will say good-night. I have work to do.”

He had taken up the ruler that lay on his desk and sat there gripping it after they had gone, staring across the width of the room in front of him. His hands were clasped so tightly round the ruler that the bones of the knuckles showed; the ruler itself was bent into a steep arc like a bow.

“I'll show them that they can't treat me like this,” he said, speaking aloud to the empty room: this speaking aloud had now become a habit. “I'll show them their mistake. I'll make them sorry.”

There was a report so loud and near that it made him jump, and the heavy ruler that he had been holding broke in two in his face. He threw the pieces into the basket beside him and reached out for the decanter again.

But his hand was trembling so much that the whiskey went spilling everywhere.

ii

“You're very quiet to-night, my dear,” Louise said to him.

John Marco looked up at her as though her words had surprised him, as though he had not known that she was there. He shook his head.

“It's nothing,” he answered. “Nothing at all.”

The corners of his mouth twisted downwards again as he said it. Those three men whom he had raised up from street level to be directors of a great firm had been conspiring together to get rid of him; and he called it nothing. But it would be nothing, after he had done with them; they could have no picture as yet of the trouble they had brought down upon themselves, no hint at all of what was coming.

Louise had got up and crossed over to him. She sat herself down on the arm of his chair.

“Don't go and make yourself ill,” she said.

“I'm not ill,” he answered.

But did he look ill? he wondered. Could other people really see in his face what state his mind was inside him?

“Remember, you're not so young as you were,” she went on; she was stroking the side of his face with her hand as she said it.

He shook her hand clear of him, however, and got up and moved away from her. His feet seemed to drag a little across the carpet as he walked.

“So you don't find me so young as you did,” he said bitterly. “Is that what you came over to tell me?”

But Louise only laughed at him.

“You're young enough for me,” she answered. “That's what I came over to say.”

She was smiling and holding out her hand towards him again. From where he was standing he noticed how perfect she looked, how beautiful, and elegant. With that beauty and elegance belonging to him, it seemed foolish to quarrel with it. The lines in his face softened.

“Come over here,” he said.

He put his arms round her and, as he breathed in the perfume that she was using, all his senses seemed to come alive again. Her body was soft and warm, and he could feel her hair against his cheek.

“You're worth everything,” he said.

She closed her eyes for a moment.

“I'm so happy, my dear.” She gave a little tremor as she spoke. “I almost thought you'd given up loving me in this kind of way.”

“You did?”

“I often lie awake for you,” she answered, “but you're always working.”

“Not always,” he said, putting his face down to hers again. “Not to-night.”

The night was still early when he left her. He drew the coverlet up round her shoulders so that she should not stir and closed the door behind him softly. Then he went down to his study and put on the lights. It was strange sitting down at his desk when the rest of London was sleeping. But he had work to do. He took out a piece of paper and began covering it with figures—the same grim accusing figures that had been surrounding him at the shop: he knew them by heart by now and knew what was wrong with them. He knew also how to put them right. He heard three o'clock strike from St. Mary's clock and then four; and still he went on working. Towards five o'clock his hand had grown heavy on the paper and his eyes began to close. Finally, he folded his arms on the desk and rested his head on it. He slept.

Scarcely more than two hours afterwards he woke again, woke suddenly and sat up. His back was rigid and his shoulders ached. Inside his head the pulses were drumming and as he straightened himself a cloud of blackness passed for a moment in front of his eyes. But once he was on his feet again he was wide-awake; wideawake and ready for the day that was in front of him. At eight-thirty his carriage drew up in front of the shop and he went inside.

It was in this flushed, sleepless state, with his eyes still hot and burning inside his head, that he started his campaign of terror and economy. It was ruthless and unrelenting. There was not a department or an employee which escaped. By the time the campaign was over and the victims, both those who had been dismissed and those
who remained, had recovered themselves, John Marco's name was one of the unprettiest and least esteemed in the cut-throat annals of retail shopkeeping.

It began with a conference. John Marco called the three plotters, the men who had betrayed him, into his office. He began speaking before the last of them had had time to sit down, and spoke rapidly in the manner of a man whose mind is ready set like a gun.

“We employ too many people,” he said abruptly. “We must get rid of half of them.”

“Half!” Mr. Hackbridge exclaimed in astonishment. “Half!”

“That's what I said,” John Marco replied. “Half. And I shall leave it to you, Mr. Hackbridge, to arrange for the dismissals. It had better be the older ones who. go: we don't have to pay the young ones so much.”

“But do you think we can carry on the business with half the staff? “Mr. Skewin asked in the slow, half apologetic way of his. “Don't you think it may be too much for them?”

“Then if it's too much they must go too,” John Marco answered. “You must find people, Mr. Hackbridge, who are prepared to work a little harder.”

“Quite so,” said Mr. Lyman approvingly. “They're certainly very well paid.”

“I was coming to that,” John Marco interrupted. “They won't be so well paid in future. I want you to inform the staff, Mr. Hackbridge, that all salaries are being reduced. The larger salaries are being reduced most. I've got the scale here.”

He passed over a sheet of paper covered with his handwriting as he said it.

“It'll be very discouraging,” said Mr. Hackbridge bravely. “It'll make it all the more difficult to get the best out of them.”

“I've told you before,” John Marco answered, “that if they're not satisfactory they must be replaced.”

“I quite approve,” volunteered Mr. Lyman.

His voice as he said it seemed thinner and more knife-like than ever.

John Marco turned to him. He eyed him steadily for a moment and then addressed him very slowly.

“I'm glad you do, Mr. Lyman,” he said. “Because this affects all of us. I'm proposing that directors' salaries should be cut by half.”

There was silence after he had spoken and then Mr. Lyman replied for them all.

“I hardly think that the Board would agree to that,” he said.

John Marco smiled; it was a cold, unhumorous smile that drew in the corners of his mouth and left the eyes steady and unchanged.

“The Board will have no alternative,” he replied. “At the next General Meeting I myself will propose it. I do not imagine that any director who opposes it will be re-elected.”

There was silence again.

“Are you proposing to halve your own salary, might I ask?” Mr. Lyman enquired.

He was leaning forward in his seat as he said it, his eyes, behind their thick glasses, thrusting forward at his chairman.

The smile returned for a moment to John Marco's face.

He paused and defiantly poured himself out a drink under their very noses.

“I am,” he said.

“And in the eyes of the shareholders,” he went on, “it would be better for your future if you were to make your sacrifice ungrudgingly as Mr. Hackbridge and Mr. Skewin are doing. I had hoped you would second my proposal. Otherwise we may find ourselves without you.” He paused again and sat back in his chair. “That is all, gentlemen,” he said.

He did not add that all the previous night while these others who were now around him had been sleeping, he had been awake—very much awake in fact. He had
been calculating carefully and exactly how many times his halved salary would come back to him as commission out of the profits which these murderous economies would bring.

But dismissing people—simply writing them off the firm's books as not wanted—is not so easy as it appears on paper. There are always some difficult ones who will not accept the pink slip in the weekly pay envelope, awkward natures, apparently bent on making trouble. The worst of these, some twenty or so, demanded interviews with John Marco; and he refused them. It was Mr. Hackbridge who had to see them all. And during the week of the cutting-down, he returned every night to his home in Hammersmith, with his soul loaded down with tears and petitions and confidences and recriminations and ugly scenes. He was not a young man any longer: he was fifty-nine. And the strain of it all had told on him. “He's wearing me down, and when I'm no good any more, he'll get rid of me,” he kept on saying to himself. “I don't trust him.” And on the Wednesday night when he woke with palpitations after a particularly unpleasant encounter with a man of his own age who protested that there was nothing for him but the workhouse, he lay there with the bed-clothes pulled up to his chin, and his heart fluttering about inside him like a dying bird, and cried out so loudly that Mrs. Hackbridge woke too and sat up with her hair all tangled and her cotton nightgown sliding untidily off one shoulder.