Kiss Kiss (10 page)

P.S. Just tell them that nice generous aunt of yours gave it
to you for Christmas.

      
Mrs Bixby’s mouth, at that moment stretched wide in a
silky smile, snapped back like a piece of elastic.
      
“The man must be mad!” she cried. “Aunt Maude doesn’t
have that sort of money. She couldn’t possibly give me this.”
      
But if Aunt Maude didn’t give it to her, then who did?
      
Oh God! In the excitement of finding the coat and trying
it on, she had completely overlooked this vital aspect.
      
In a couple of hours she would be in New York. Ten
minutes after that she would be home, and the husband would
be there to greet her; and even a man like Cyril, dwelling as
he did in a dark phlegmy world of root canals, bicuspids, and
caries, would start asking a few questions if his wife suddenly
waltzed in from a week-end wearing a six-thousand-dollar
mink coat.
      
You know what I think, she told herself. I think that god-damn
Colonel has done this on purpose just to torture me. He
knew perfectly well Aunt Maude didn’t have enough money
to buy this. He knew I wouldn’t be able to keep it.
      
But the thought of parting with it now was more than Mrs
Bixby could bear.
      
“I’ve
got
to have this coat!” she said aloud. “I’ve got to have
this coat! I’ve got to have this coat!”
      
Very well, my dear. You shall have the coat. But don’t
panic. Sit still and keep calm and start thinking. You’re a
clever girl, aren’t you? You’ve fooled him before. The man
never has been able to see much further than the end of his
own probe, you know that. So just sit absolutely still and
think
. There’s lots of time.
      
Two and a half hours later, Mrs Bixby stepped off the train
at Pennsylvania Station and walked quickly to the exit. She
was wearing her old red coat again now and carrying the
cardboard box in her arms. She signalled for a taxi.
      
“Driver,” she said, “would you know of a pawnbroker that’s
still open around here?”
      
The man behind the wheel raised his brows and looked
back at her, amused.
      
“Plenty along Sixth Avenue,” he answered.
      
“Stop at the first one you see, then, will you please?” She
got in and was driven away.
      
Soon the taxi pulled up outside a shop that had three brass
balls hanging over the entrance.
      
“Wait for me, please,” Mrs Bixby said to the driver, and she
got out of the taxi and entered the shop.
      
There was an enormous cat crouching on the counter eating
fishheads out of a white saucer. The animal looked up at Mrs
Bixby with bright yellow eyes, then looked away again and
went on eating. Mrs Bixby stood by the counter, as far away
from the cat as possible, waiting for someone to come, staring
at the watches, the shoe buckles, the enamel brooches, the old
binoculars, the broken spectacles, the false teeth. Why did
they always pawn their teeth, she wondered.
      
“Yes?” the proprietor said, emerging from a dark place in
the back of the shop.
      
“Oh, good evening,” Mrs Bixby said. She began to untie the
string around the box. The man went up to the cat and started
stroking it along the top of its back, and the cat went on
eating the fishheads.
      
“Isn’t it silly of me?” Mrs Bixby said. “I’ve gone and lost my
pocketbook, and this being Saturday, the banks are all closed
until Monday and I’ve simply got to have some money for the
week-end. This is quite a valuable coat, but I’m not asking
much. I only want to borrow enough on it to tide me over till
Monday. Then I’ll come back and redeem it.”
      
The man waited, and said nothing. But when she pulled out
the mink and allowed the beautiful thick fur to fall over the
counter, his eyebrows went up and he drew his hand away
from the cat and came over to look at it. He picked it up and
held it out in front of him.
      
“If only I had a watch on me or a ring,” Mrs Bixby said, “I’d
give you that instead. But the fact is I don’t have a thing with
me other than this coat.” She spread out her fingers for him to
see.
      
“It looks new,” the man said, fondling the soft fur.
      
“Oh yes, it is. But, as I said, I only want to borrow enough
to tide me over till Monday. How about fifty dollars?”
      
“I’ll loan you fifty dollars.”
      
“It’s worth a hundred times more than that, but I know
you’ll take good care of it until I return.”
      
The man went over to a drawer and fetched a ticket and
placed it on the counter. The ticket looked like one of those
labels you tie on to the handle of your suitcase, the same shape
and size exactly, and the same stiff brownish paper. But it was
perforated across the middle so that you could tear it in two,
and both halves were identical.
      
“Name?” he asked.
      
“Leave that out. And the address.”
      
She saw the man pause, and she saw the nib of the pen
hovering over the dotted line, waiting.
      
“You don’t
have
to put the name and address, do you?”
      
The man shrugged and shook his head and the pen-nib
moved on down to the next line.
      
“It’s just that I’d rather not,” Mrs Bixby said. “It’s purely
personal.”
      
“You’d better not lose this ticket, then.”
      
“I won’t lose it.”
      
“You realise that anyone who gets hold of it can come in
and claim the article?”
      
“Yes, I know that.”
      
“Simply on the number.”
      
“Yes, I know.”
      
“What do you want me to put for a description.”
      
“No description either, thank you. It’s not necessary. Just
put the amount I’m borrowing.”
      
The pen-nib hesitated again, hovering over the dotted line
beside the word
ARTICLE
.
      
“I think you ought to put a description. A description is
always a help if you want to sell the ticket. You never know,
you might want to sell it sometime.”
      
“I don’t want to sell it.”
      
“You might have to. Lots of people do.”
      
“Look,” Mrs Bixby said. “I’m not broke, if that’s what you
mean. I simply lost my purse. Don’t you understand?”
      
“You have it your own way then,” the man said. “It’s your
coat.”
      
At this point an unpleasant thought struck Mrs Bixby. “Tell
me something,” she said. “If I don’t have a description on my
ticket, how can I be sure you’ll give me back the coat and not
something else when I return?”
      
“It goes in the books.”
      
“But all I’ve got is a number. So actually you could hand
me any old thing you wanted, isn’t that so?”
      
“Do you want a description or don’t you?” the man asked.
      
“No,” she said. “I trust you.”
      
The man wrote “fifty dollars” opposite the word
VALUE
on both sections of the ticket, then he tore it in half
along the perforations and slid the lower portion across the counter. He
took a wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket and extracted
five ten-dollar bills. “The interest is three per cent a month,”
he said.
      
“Yes, all right. And thank you. You’ll take good care of it,
won’t you?”
      
The man nodded but said nothing.
      
“Shall I put it back in the box for you?”
      
“No,” the man said.
      
Mrs Bixby turned and went out of the shop on to the street
where the taxi was waiting. Ten minutes later, she was home.
      
“Darling,” she said as she bent over and kissed her husband.
“Did you miss me?”
      
Cyril Bixby laid down the evening paper and glanced at the
watch on his wrist. “It’s twelve and a half minutes past six,” he
said. “You’re a bit late, aren’t you?”
      
“I know. It’s those dreadful trains. Aunt Maude sent you her
love as usual. I’m dying for a drink, aren’t you?”
      
The husband folded his newspaper into a neat rectangle and
placed it on the arm of his chair. Then he stood up and crossed
over to the sideboard. His wife remained in the centre of the
room pulling off her gloves, watching him carefully, wondering
how long she ought to wait. He had his back to her now,
bending forward to measure the gin, putting his face right
up close to the measurer and peering into it as though it were
a patient’s mouth.
      
It was funny how small he always looked after the Colonel.
The Colonel was huge and bristly, and when you were near
to him he smelled faintly of horseradish. This one was small
and neat and bony and he didn’t really smell of anything at
all, except peppermint drops, which he sucked to keep his
breath nice for the patients.
      
“See what I’ve bought for measuring the vermouth,” he said,
holding up a calibrated glass beaker. “I can get it to the nearest
milligram with this.”
      
“Darling, how clever.”
      
I really must try to make him change the way he dresses,
she told herself. His suits are just too ridiculous for words.
There had been a time when she thought they were wonderful,
those Edwardian jackets with high lapels and six buttons down
the front, but now they merely seemed absurd. So did the
narrow stovepipe trousers. You had to have a special sort of
face to wear things like that, and Cyril just didn’t have it.
His was a long bony countenance with a narrow nose and a
slightly prognathous jaw, and when you saw it coming up
out of the top of one of those tightly fitting old-fashioned
suits it looked like a caricature of Sam Weller. He probably
thought it looked like Beau Brummel. It was a fact that in the
office he invariably greeted female patients with his white
coat unbuttoned so that they would catch a glimpse of the
trappings underneath; and in some obscure way this was
obviously meant to convey the impression that he was a bit
of a dog. But Mrs Bixby knew better. The plumage was a
bluff. It meant nothing. It reminded her of an ageing peacock
strutting on the lawn with only half its feathers left. Or one
of those fatuous self-fertilising flowers—like the dandelion. A
dandelion never has to get fertilised for the setting of its seed,
and all those brilliant yellow petals are just a waste of time, a
boast, a masquerade. What’s the word the biologists use?
Sub-sexual. A dandelion is subsexual. So, for that matter, are
the summer broods of water fleas. It sounds a bit like
Lewis Carroll, she thought—water fleas and dandelions and
dentists.
      
“Thank you, darling,” she said, taking the martini and seating
herself on the sofa with her handbag on her lap. “And what
did you do last night?”
      
“I stayed on in the office and cast a few inlays. I also got my
accounts up to date.”
      
“Now really, Cyril, I think it’s high time you let other
people do your donkey work for you. You’re much too
important for that sort of thing. Why don’t you give the inlays
to the mechanic?”
      
“I prefer to do them myself. I’m extremely proud of my
inlays.”
      
“I know you are, darling, and I think they’re absolutely
wonderful. They’re the best inlays in the whole world. But I
don’t want you to burn yourself out. And why doesn’t that
Pulteney woman do the accounts? That’s part of her job, isn’t
it?”
      
“She does do them. But I have to price everything up first.
She doesn’t know who’s rich and who isn’t.”
      
“This Martini is perfect,” Mrs Bixby said, setting down her
glass on the side table. “Quite perfect.” She opened her bag and
took out a handkerchief as if to blow her nose. “Oh look!” she
cried, seeing the ticket. “I forgot to show you this! I found it
just now on the seat of my taxi. It’s got a number on it, and
I thought it might be a lottery ticket or something, so I kept
it.”
      
She handed the small piece of stiff brown paper to her
husband, who took it in his fingers and began examining it
minutely from all angles, as though it were a suspect tooth.
      
“You know what this is?” he said slowly.
      
“No dear, I don’t.”
      
“It’s a pawn ticket.”
      
“A what?”
      
“A ticket from a pawnbroker. Here’s the name and address
of the shop—somewhere on Sixth Avenue.”
      
“Oh dear, I
am
disappointed. I was hoping it might be a
ticket for the Irish Sweep.”
      
“There’s no reason to be disappointed,” Cyril Bixby said.
“As a matter of fact this could be rather amusing.”
      
“Why could it be amusing, darling?”
      
He began explaining to her exactly how a pawn ticket
worked, with particular reference to the fact that anyone
possessing the ticket was entitled to claim the article. She
listened patiently until he had finished his lecture.
      
“You think it’s worth claiming?” she asked.
      
“I think it’s worth finding out what it is. You see this figure
of fifty dollars that’s written here? You know what that
means?”
      
“No, dear, what does it mean?”
      
“It means that the item in question is almost certain to be
something quite valuable.”
      
“You mean it’ll be worth fifty dollars?”
      
“More like five hundred.”
      
“Five hundred!”
      
“Don’t you understand?” he said. “A pawnbroker never gives
you more than about a tenth of the real value.”
      
“Good gracious! I never knew that.”
      
“There’s a lot of things you don’t know, my dear. Now you
listen to me. Seeing that there’s no name and address of the
owner . . .”
      
“But surely there’s something to say who it belongs to?”
      
“Not a thing. People often do that. They don’t want anyone
to know they’ve been to a pawnbroker. They’re ashamed of it.”
      
“Then you think we can keep it?”
      
“Of course we can keep it. This is now
our
ticket.”
      
“You mean
my
ticket,” Mrs Bixby said firmly. “I found it.”
      
“My dear girl, what
does
it matter? The important thing is
that we are now in a position to go and redeem it any time
we like for only fifty dollars. How about that?”
      
“Oh, what fun!” she cried. “I think it’s terribly exciting,
especially when we don’t even know what it is. It could be