Short Stories 1927-1956 (31 page)

Hunger, it has been said, sharpens the senses, but it is apt also to have an edgy effect upon the nerves. If, then, Philip’s breakfast had been less
exacting
, or his lunch had made up for it, he might have spent the next few hours of this pleasant May morning as a young man should – in the open air. Or he might have visited the British Museum, the National Gallery and
Westminster
Abbey. He might never, at any rate, in one brief morning of his mortal existence have all but died again and again of terror, abandon, shame, rapture and incredulity. He might never – but all in good time.

He was at a loose end, and it is then that habits are apt to prevail. And of all his habits, Philip’s favourite was that of ordering ‘goods’ on behalf of his uncle. The Colonel in his fantastic handwriting would post him two weekly lists – one consisting of the ‘wanted’, the other of complaints about the previous week’s ‘supplied’. Armed with these, Philip would set out for the building he was now actually in. The first list, though not a thing of
beauty, was a joy as long as it lasted. The second, for he had always flatly refused to repeat his uncle’s sulphurous comments to any underling, he
reserved
for his old enemy, the secretary of the establishment, Sir Leopold Bull. And though in these weekly interviews Sir Leopold might boil with rage and chagrin, he never boiled over. For the name of Pim was a name of power in the secretary’s office. The name of Pim was that of a heavy
shareholder;
and what the Colonel wanted he invariably in the long run got. A chest, say, of Ceylon tea, ‘rich, fruity, bright infusion’; a shooting-stick (extra heavy Brugglesdon tube pattern); a double quart-size tantalus, with two double spring sterling silver Brahmin locks; a hundredweight of sago; a thousand black cheroots; a stymie, perhaps, or a click – something of that sort.

These ‘order days’ had been the balm of Philip’s late existence. His eyes fixed on his ledger and his fancy on, say, ‘Saddlery’, or ‘Sports’, he looked forward to his Wednesdays – thirsted for them. Indeed, his chief regret at the bank, apart from little difficulties with his 9’s and 3’s, had been that his uncle’s stores were closed on Saturday afternoons. And on Sundays. His hobby had, therefore, frequently given him indigestion, since he could
indulge
it only between 1 and 2 p.m. It was a pity, of course, that Colonel Pim was a man of wants so few, and these of so narrow a range. Possibly the suns of India had burned the rest out of him. But for Philip, any kind of vicarious purchase had been better than none. And now these delights, too, were for ever over. His fountain had run dry. Sir Leopold had
triumphed
.

At this moment he found himself straying into an aisled medley of empties in hide. There is nothing like leather; here there was nothing
but
leather, and all of it made up into articles ranging in size from trunks that would contain the remains of a Daniel Lambert to card-cases that would hold practically nothing at all. And all of a sudden Philip fancied he would like to buy a cigarette-case. He would have preferred one of enamel or gold or ivory or tortoise-shell or lizard or shagreen; or even of silver or suede. But preferences are expensive. And as he sauntered on, his dreamy eye ranging the counters in search merely of a cigarette-case he could
buy
, his glance alighted on a ‘gent’s dressing-case’.

It was of pigskin, and, unlike the central figure in Rembrandt’s
Lesson
in
Anatomy
,
it so lay that the whole of its interior was in full view, thus
revealing
a modest row of silver-topped bottles, similar receptacles for soap, tooth-brushes, pomade, and hair-restorer; a shoe-horn, a boot-hook, an ivory paper-knife, and hair-brushes, ‘all complete’. Philip mused on the
object fo
r a moment or two, perplexed by a peculiar effervescence that was going on in his vitals. He then approached the counter and asked its price.

‘The price, sir?’ echoed the assistant, squinnying at the tiny oblong of
pasteboard attached by a thread to the ring of the handle; ‘the price of that article is seventeen, seventeen, six.’

He was a tubby little man with boot-button eyes, and his snort, Philip thought, was a trifle unctuous.

‘Ah,’ he said, putting a bold face on the matter, ‘it looks a sound vulgar workaday bag. A trifle blatant perhaps. Have you anything – less ordinary?’

‘Something more expensive, sir? Why, yes, indeed. This is only a stock line – the “Archdeacon” or “Country Solicitor” model. We have prices to suit all purses. Now if you were thinking of something which you might call resshersy, sir’ – and Philip now was – ‘there’s a dressing-case under the window over there was specially made to the order of Haitch Haitch the Maharaja of Jolhopolloluli. Unfortunately, sir, the gentleman deceased
suddenly
a week or two ago; climate, I understand. His funeral obliquies were in the newspaper, you may remember. The consequence being, his ladies not, as you might say, concurring, the dressing-case in a manner of
speaking
is on our hands – and at a considerable reduction. Only six hundred and seventy-five guineas, sir; or rupees to match.’

‘May I look at it?’ said Philip. ‘Colonel Crompton Pim.’

‘By all means, sir,’ cried the little man as if until that moment he had failed to notice that Philip was a long-lost son; ‘Colonel Crompton Pim; of course. Here is the article, sir, a very handsome case, and quite unique, one of the finest, in fact, I have ever had the privilege of handling since I was transferred to this Department – from the Sports, sir.’

He pressed a tiny knob, the hinges yawned, and Philip’s mouth began to water. It was in sober sooth a handsome dressing-case, and the shaft of
sunlight
that slanted in on it from the dusky window seemed pleased to be exploring it. It was a dressing-case of tooled red Levant morocco, with gold locks and clasps and a lining of vermilion watered silk, gilded with a chaste design of lotus flowers, peacocks, and houris, the ‘fittings’ being of gold and tortoise-shell, and studded with so many minute brilliants and emeralds that its contents even in that rather dingy sunbeam, appeared to be
delicately
on fire.

Philip’s light blue eyes under their silken lashes continued to dwell on its charms in so spell-bound a silence that for a moment the assistant thought the young man was about to swoon.

‘Thank you very much,’ said Philip at last, turning away with infinite
reluctance
and with a movement as graceful as that of a faun, or of a
première
danseuse
about to rest; ‘I will keep it in mind. You are sure the management can afford the reduction?’

Having made this rather airy comment, it seemed to Philip impolite, if not impossible, to ask the price of a ‘job line’ of mock goatskin
cigarette-cases
that were piled up in dreary disorder on a tray near at hand. So he
passed out into the next Department, which happened to be that devoted to goods described as ‘fancy’, though, so far as he could see, not very aptly.

Still he glanced around him as he hurried on, his heart bleeding for the unfortunates, old and helpless, or young and defenceless, doomed some day to welcome these exacerbating barbarous jocosities as gifts. But at sight of an obscure, puffy, maroon object demonstratively labelled ‘Pochette: Art Nouveau’, his very skin contracted, and he was all but about to inquire of a large veiled old lady with an ebony walking-stick who was manfully
pushing
her way through this
mélange
,
possibly in search of a
prie-dieu
,
how such dreadful phenomena were ‘begot, how nourished’, and was himself preparing to join in the chorus, when a little beyond it his glance alighted on a minute writing-case, so frailly finished, so useless, so delicious to look at, handle, and smell, that even Titania herself might have paused to admire it. Philip eyed it with unconcealed gusto. His features had melted into the smile that so often used to visit them when as a little boy he had confided in his Uncle Charles that he preferred éclairs to doughnuts. Its price, he thought, was ridiculously moderate: only
£
67 10s.

‘It’s the décor, sir – Parisian, of course – that makes it a trifle costly,’ the assistant was explaining. ‘But it’s practical as well as sheek and would add distinction to
any
young lady’s boudoir, bedchamber, or lap. The ink, as you see, sir, cannot possibly leak from the bottle, if the case, that is, is held the right way up – so. The pencil, the “
Sans
Merci
”,
as you observe, is of solid gold; and the pen, though we cannot guarantee the nib, is set with life-size turquoises. The flaps will hold at least six sheets of small-size notepaper, and envelopes to – or not to – match. And
here
is a little something, a sort of calendar, sir, in fine enamel, sir, telling the day of the week of any day of the month in any year in any century from one
A.D
. to nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine. It could then be
renewed
.’

‘M’m, very ingenious,’ Philip murmured, ‘and even Leap Year, I see. Is it unique, and so on?’

‘No doubt of it, sir. As a matter of fact, a lady from Philadelphia – the United States of America, sir – ordered fifty facsillimies, platinum mounts, of this very article – only yesterday afternoon; they get married a good deal over there, sir; wedding presents.’

‘Quite, thank you, no,’ said Philip, firmly but pleasantly. ‘They say there is safety in numbers, but there seems to be precious little else. Have you
anything
less reproducible?’

‘Reproducible, sir? Why, naturally, sir. You see this is only a counter article. While catering for the many, sir, we are bound to keep an eye upon the few. For that very reason, the management prefer to have the costlier specimens under cover.’

‘Again, thank you,’ said Philip hurriedly. ‘What evils are done in thy name, O Philadelphia! I may return later.’

He emerged from the Fancy Goods Department, feeling at the same moment crestfallen and curiously elated. His mind, in fact, at this moment resembled a volcano the instant before its gloom is fated to burst into a blazing eruption. Though very hazily, he even recognized the danger he was in. So in hope to compose himself he sat down for a minute or two on a Madeira wicker chair intended perhaps by the management for this very purpose, and found himself gazing at a large black Chinese cat in the glossiest of glazed earthenware, and as life-like as Oriental artifice could make it. It was seated in a corner under a high potted palm, and it wore a grin upon its features that may have come from Cheshire, but which showed no symptom whatever of vanishing away. At sight of it – for Philip was not only partial to cats but knew the virtues of the black variety – a secret fibre seemed to have snapped in his head. ‘Good luck!’ the creature smirked at him. And Philip smirked back. A flame of anguished defiance and desire had leapt up in his body. He would show his uncle what was what. He would learn him to cut nephews off with shillings. He would dare and do and die!

He rose, refreshed and renewed. It was as if he had tossed off a bumper of ‘Veuve Clicquot’ of 1066. He must himself have come over with the Conqueror. A shopwalker lurking near was interrupted in the middle of an enormous gape by the spectacle of this Apollonian young figure now
entering
his department – Pianofortes and American Organs. There was
something
in the leopard-like look of him, something so princely and predatory in his tread, that this Mr Jackson would have been almost ready to confess that he was moved. Frenchily dark and Frenchily sleek, he bowed himself almost double.

‘Yes, sir?’ he remarked out loud.

‘I want, I think, a pianoforte,’ said Philip. ‘A Grand.’

‘Thank you, sir; this way, please. Grand pianofortes, Mr Smithers.’

‘I want a Grand piano,’ repeated Philip to Mr Smithers, an assistant with a slight cast in his left eye and an ample gingerish moustache. But in spite of these little handicaps Philip liked him much better than Mr Jackson. A far-away glimpse of Mrs Smithers and of all the little Smitherses seated round their Sunday leg of mutton at Hackney or at Brondesbury had flashed into his mind.

‘Grands, sir,’ cried Mr Smithers, moving his moustache up and down with a curious rotatory constriction of the lips; ‘this way, please.’

The young man was conducted along serried ranks of Grands. They stood on their three legs, their jaws tight shut, as mute as troops on parade. Philip paced on and on, feeling very much like the late Duke of Cambridge
reviewing a regiment of his Guards. He paused at length in front of a ‘Style 8; 7ft 9in, square-legged, black-wood, mahogany-trimmed Bismarck’.

‘It
looks
spacious,’ he smiled amiably. ‘But the finish! And why
overhung?’

‘Overstrung, sir?’ said Mr Smithers. ‘That’s merely a manner of
speaking,
sir, relating solely to its inside. But this, of course, is not what we
specificate
as a
grand
Grand. For tone and timber and resonance and pedal work and solidity and
wear
–
there isn’t a better on the market. I mean on the rest of the market. And if you were having in mind an everlasting
instrument
for the nursery or for a practice room
–
and we supply the new padded partitioning
–
this would be precisely the instrument, sir, you were having in mind. The young are sometimes a little hard on pianofortes, sir. They mean well, but they are but children after all; and —’

‘Now let – me – think,’ Philip interposed. ‘To be quite candid, I wasn’t having anything of that sort in mind. My sentiments are England for the English; and Bismarck, you know, though in girth and so on a remarkable man, was in other respects, a little – well, miscellaneous. It is said that he mixed his champagne with stout – or was it cocoa? On the other hand, I have no wish to be insular, and I
may
order one of these constructions later – for a lady: the niece, as a matter of fact, of a governess of my uncle Colonel Crompton Pim’s when he was young – as young at least, as it was possible for him to be – who is, I believe, thinking of taking – of taking in – pupils. But we will see to that later. Have you anything that I could really look at?’