Something Wholesale (19 page)

Even my mother was excited by the prospect. ‘He has a great admiration for your father,’ she said. ‘He is one of his oldest friends.’

On the appointed day my father and I presented ourselves at Mr Eyre’s Club. ‘Piggie’ seemed smaller than I remembered. He was dressed in a suit of antique cut (it would have been surprising if it had been otherwise) and he wore woollen mittens, but his face was the same craggy, pug-nosed affair that I had always admired and that earned him his nickname.

‘LET’S GO TO TABLE,’ he said in a thunderous voice that made several members turn in their tracks like London Taxis. ‘OTHERWISE THERE’LL BE NO VITTLES. THERE AIN’T MUCH IN ANY EVENT.’

Despite his fears the lack of vittles was less apparent in the Reform than it was in the places where I was accustomed to take my lunch. There was game soup and game pie and turbot and crab and lobster and oyster and cold pheasant and roast duck and apple sauce and roast Surrey chicken and bread sauce and trifle and boiled jam roll and Stilton cheese.

Because Piggie was very deaf my father had provided me with a small block of paper and a new pencil so that I could write down any questions which I might wish to put to him in the course of the luncheon.

He himself was similarly equipped.

We ate game soup and turbot and roast chicken and jam roll and Stilton and we drank sherry and claret and port. It was a noisy affair, not because we were made hilarious by what we were drinking, but because of the difficulties of communication. Fortunately, so far as I was concerned, there was little need to say anything. Piggie and my father were far away in a deep communion over matters that had happened in another century, long before I was born, before my mother was born. It was not surprising that they more or less ignored my existence. Piggie had been born in 1848, my father in 1874, in such a hierarchy I was a non-starter.

‘Fellers don’t train like they used,’ said Piggie, helping himself to a large slice of Stilton. ‘When I was reading the Law I lived with old Vyse in Putney – that was in ’69. We were training for the Grand. We used to get up at five-thirty, walk down to the boathouse at the Feathers and go out in a heavy tub hard at it up to the Bridge and back down to the West London Railway Bridge. If it was low water we used to bathe in the river. Then breakfast, usually a chop and some stale bread. After work we used to go out again in the dark and rowed it hard down to Chelsea; then another dip in the river; then a steak and some strong ale. Then we’d do six miles on the road to harden up our legs, hard at it. We had boxing, too, three nights a week. I used to sit up three nights a week reading law until two or three in the morning. I don’t recommend that. Pass the port.’

My father was expanding too. At first he had made use of the scribbling pad, now, under the influence of good wine, he abandoned it.

‘As soon as the shop was closed (as a young man he had been apprenticed at a shop in the Brompton Road) I used to hare off to Whitechapel. There was a feller there called Mendoza at the Six Bells.’

‘WHAT YE SAY?’ screamed Piggie.

‘MENDOZA, THE SIX BELLS.’

‘Yes, yes. No need to shout.’

‘Paid a shilling to one of the pugs for a good pummel.’

‘WHAT?’

‘PUMMEL. Then I had a good rub down, followed it up with a pint of stock ale and a hot pie in Petticoat Lane and heeled and toed it back to the shop.’

‘CAN’T HEAR A WORD,’ said Piggie.

It took more than this to put my father off. He had told me this story on innumerable occasions.

‘One morning I walked into the department, I was in piece goods, with a terrific black eye. A real shiner. The Department Manager came up to me as soon as he arrived and said, “You must decide either to give up fisticuffs or the Drapery Trade.” As I’d been apprenticed as soon as I left school I had to give up boxing. I took up wrestling.’

‘Can’t hear a word,’ said Piggie. ‘Help yourself to port.’

‘Top-hole port,’ my father wrote on his pad.

‘Should be,’ wrote Piggie, ‘Cockburn ’96. Glad you like it.’

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘No need to write. Forgot you ain’t deaf. Affliction of old age.’

Three o’clock struck, four o’clock. The two old men went on and on. After the initial difficulties they seemed to settle down to a sort of rhythm in which one suddenly ceased to speak as if conscious that he ought to give the other a go. Occasionally, under the benign influence of Cockburn ’96, both would doze off for a moment or two.

‘1877. We licked the Guards Eight in the Grand. They weren’t fit by half though there were some splendid athletes among ’em.’

‘Hippo Smith. He was a cock-up-sporty sort of chap.’

‘WHO?’

‘HIPPO SMITH!’

‘AH, yes.’

‘We walked together to Brighton (it was my father talking now) in ’91.

‘We started from Westminster Bridge just before midnight. It rained the first twenty miles. After thirty the sole came off old Hippo’s boots. Fortunately he was able to buy a pair from a postman. We only stopped twice; for the boots and a hot rum and milk. On the way back in the train we got such cramp that we couldn’t get out of the compartment at Victoria. It was the
old South Coast Railway then. But we had a good rub down and soon we were as right as rain.’

‘Last year I rowed in the Grand was ’82,’ said Piggie. ‘I was getting on a bit then, besides I’d had an illness.’

When we emerged from the Club darkness had fallen. There had been no mention of the mysterious letter with its hints about the future. In fact there had been no mention of the future at all – or the present for that matter.

‘That was a jolly good blow-out,’ said my father. ‘I enjoy a talk with old Piggie.’

The firm staggered on into the Fifties. Its affairs became more and more involved; its existence more and more an anachronism; the authorities more persistent in their demands for arrears of tax.

It was unfortunate for firms like ours, if any similar can be imagined, that the excess profits tax was calculated on the basis of the amount of trading that had been done in 1939, a poor year in which Lane and Newby had been on the verge of collapse anyway: anything over and above that figure was liable to tax. Companies formed after 1939 were of course not liable to this assessment. It was also possible for a company to go into voluntary liquidation and re-form itself under a different name. In this way its liability for tax became purely conjectural. It was an anomaly that only the Inland Revenue could have devised.

In spite of the disadvantages under which we laboured all would have been well if only my father had set aside sufficient money each year from his business to pay the tax when the time came but he was lulled into a false sense of security by the lack of urgency displayed by the Inland Revenue. They were in no hurry. I think, too, that he thought that by procrastinating death might remove him from the scene and with him his liabilities.
Sinister-looking envelopes marked ‘On His Majesty’s Service’ continued to arrive but remained unopened.

The blow finally fell in 1953, when my father received a registered letter ordering him to present himself at the Office of the Inspector of Taxes.

My mother was as alarmed as I was. The only person who seemed in no way put out was my father.

‘I suppose I’ll have to go and see the fellow,’ he said. ‘I expect his bark’s worse than his bite.’

‘You must go with your father,’ my mother said. ‘Then at least someone will know what is going on.’

At the appointed hour we arrived at the office of the Inspector. As soon as I saw him my heart sank. It was perfectly obvious that whatever was going to happen would be by the book.

My father began to chat easily about the state of the country but he was cut short.

‘Mr Newby, Lane and Newby Limited,’ said the official, adjusting his pince-nez and sifting through a great heap of documents. ‘Excess Profits tax in respect of the years …’ He reeled them off, there seemed an awful lot of them. ‘We don’t seem to have got very far with you Mr Newby. The sum owing is a considerable one. You realise that no doubt. Some seventeen thousand pounds. To be precise seventeen thousand nine hundred and forty-seven pounds, sixteen shillings and fourpence. I am to inform you that unless this sum is paid within seven days we shall take legal action to recover it.’

I was shattered by what he said. I had imagined a large sum of money being involved but nothing like seventeen thousand pounds payable in one lump. There was a period of silence during which I thought of Wanda and the children, that was broken only by the sound of a clock ticking on the wall behind us. It was a sad, hateful room. Apart from the clock its only decoration, which
now had a particularly significant quality, was a calendar, askew on one wall.

‘You realise, sir,’ said my father, ‘that if you insist on being paid all that in a week we shall be in serious difficulties.’

‘That Mr Newby, is of no consequence to the Inland Revenue. If your company goes bankrupt as a result of not paying its taxes then I must point out that it will be no loss to the National Economy. We can only hope that its place will be taken by a more efficient organisation.’

‘That is all, Mr Newby,’ he went on. ‘May I again remind you of the precise sum. Seventeen thousand nine hundred and forty-seven pounds, sixteen shillings and fourpence. Good day to you.’

The interview was at an end. He did not bother to open the door. The next moment we were in the street.

We took a bus back to Great Marlborough Street. We didn’t speak. Each was busy with his own thoughts.

‘You know,’ said my father as we stood outside the door. ‘I’m afraid we shall have to consult our creditors. I’m sorry for your mother’s sake. And it’ll mean selling my double-sculler.’

‘What about the skiff?’

‘You know,’ my father said, ‘if I sold it some waterman would buy it and hire it out by the hour. I wouldn’t want that to happen. I’m going to try and keep it for you.’

Somehow the tax was paid. How it was done I shall never know, there was no Mr Eyre to save us, and we consulted our creditors who somewhat reluctantly allowed us to carry on.

Troubles of this kind never come singly. Our lease at Great Marlborough Street came to an end and the cost of renewal was so great that we were forced to move to smaller premises, little more than two rooms. It was a great blow to my father.

We moved house in bitter weather. Most of the furniture had
to be sold or stored; the accumulation of more than fifty years was swept away in a single morning. Perhaps worst of all for my father was the loss of all his newspapers for which there was no room in Henrietta Place. His store of port, too, was much diminished and he was down to the last six and a half bottles.

My father and I stood in the hall at Great Marlborough Street and drank the last half-bottle out of tumblers. All the glasses had been wrapped in newspapers and carted away. There was no carpet on the floor, the house was an empty echoing shell. The street door was propped open as the removal men had left it and a howling draught blew through the house. Brandon was waiting outside to lock it for the last time. My father was wearing a battered tweed overcoat, a woollen comforter and mittens. He looked very old and his eyes were watering with the cold.

Nevertheless he smiled bravely.

‘Jolly good wine, old thing,’ he said. ‘Fonseca, ’27. We shan’t see anything like this again for a bit.’

He drained his glass, put it down on an upturned box and put on his hat.

‘No good crying over spilled milk,’ he said.

Together we went out into Great Marlborough Street.

Only a skeleton staff stayed with the firm when it moved to Henrietta Place. Some of the older members had already retired, others alarmed by what was happening had gone elsewhere. I remained for a time and then left to become manager of the wholesale department of a couture house in Grosvenor Street. My father managed to save his skiff from the wreckage. In the summer of 1954 when he was over eighty he suggested that we should take it up to Henley. Bray to Henley is about seventeen miles by water. We did it in six hours against the stream. It would have been hard work for a man twenty years younger. My mother steered, Wanda
sat next to her and our two children trailed their hands in the water and were told to ‘sit her up’ by my father. It was like old times.

It was the Friday before the Regatta, and as we toiled up past Remenham Barrier, a school crew in training came down towards us, beating it out.

‘Look how they get their hands away,’ said my father. ‘They’re a good lot of chaps.’

Further up by Phyllis Court, opposite the enclosures, an elderly and extremely irascible friend of my father’s giving his wife an airing in a similar and even more magnificent equipage, raised a hand in salute. Two small boys, each with a scull, were making heavy weather in a dinghy under the eye of a stern-looking parent who wore a pink Leander cap. At the landing stages a sculler was just setting out. He got a nod from my father and shyly raised a great fist in return. My father didn’t say anything more, but when we reached the boathouse above Henley Bridge and the boatman helped him out, I knew that he was satisfied that he had brought his boat to a place where it would be appreciated at last.

He died in the winter of 1956. When I visited him for the last time in the early hours of the morning he was being given a blood transfusion. For a number of years we had shared the same wine merchant in St James’s Street. It was an arrangement that worked all right except when Berry’s sent him my bills by mistake.

He looked at the bottle suspended above the bed, then he looked at me. ‘Wish it was a bottle of old Berry’s burgundy instead of some other feller’s blood,’ he said. ‘They know a thing or two about wine.’