Bond Street Story (25 page)

“First of all, sir,” he said. “I suggest we run through the ranges. Then I can take you through the sizes afterwards.”

But even that did not satisfy Tony.

“Now Mr. Rawle,” he said. “No ‘sir' when addressing me, please. Remember you're the principal. I'm only the assistant.”

It was while Tony was being shown the sports shirts that he made his one blunder. He ran his hand over the patterns. Then he turned to Mr. Rawle.

“Bit grim, aren't they?” he said.

Mr. Rawle stiffened.

“I beg pardon, sir?” he asked.

“Grim,” Tony repeated. “Do they expect you to be able to sell these?”

Mr. Rawle avoided Tony's eye and stared down the empty corridor ahead of him.

“I do sell them, sir.”

“Good for you,” Tony answered. “They must take a bit of selling. Look at that one.”

Mr. Rawle turned his head for a moment.

“That, sir, is one of our most exclusive patterns ...” He paused. “Forgive me a moment, sir.”

Already he was moving slowly, almost furtively away. His face had assumed a new expression. At once polite and predatory. Tony started to fold up the sports shirt. Then he turned and watched. On the other side of the counter, the day's first customer was approaching. He seemed quite a reasonable sort of person, Tony thought. A bit hot and rushed-looking, perhaps, and carrying an over-large suitcase. But still civilized. And from the way he was bending down he seemed to be looking at price tickets. It was obvious that he was avoiding Mr. Rawle's eye, while Mr. Rawle was trying to catch his.

As he drew level, Mr. Rawle addressed him.

“Can I show you something, sir?”

The stranger paused.

“No thanks. I was just looking.”

Mr. Rawle drew back to make it plain that Rammell's was the last shop in London where anything so vulgar as ordinary salesmanship was ever practised. He took out a drawer of soft evening shirts and began studying them as though purely for his own relaxation.

The man with the suitcase hesitated.

“Er ... how much are those evening shirts?” he asked.

“Evening shirts, sir?”

There was just the right note of surprise in his voice as he asked the question. He tilted the box forward as he spoke.

“This is one of our regular shirts, sir. Special uncreasable front. Fifty-five and nine.”

The man had put his bag down by now. He began examining the shirt.

“You haven't anything cheaper, have you?” he asked.

Again Mr. Rawle seemed surprised.

“Oh, yes, sir.”

He brought out another drawer.

“This is a very popular shirt, sir. Forty-two and sixpence.”

“Anything between the two?”

Already Mr. Rawle was bringing out a third drawer.

“Two-ten, sir,” he said. “Only just come in. The cuffs are nylonized.”

He had spread all three shirts out in a kind of fan on the counter. Now he was standing back again so as not to rush his man. He had the air rather of a collector showing his prized pieces to a cherished friend.

The customer glanced for a moment at his watch and then stared down at the shirts again.

“Which do you recommend?” he asked.

Mr. Rawle seemed almost embarrassed.

“Well, of course, this is the shirt, sir,” he explained. “The others are very good value. But this is the shirt.”

The customer glanced down at his watch for the second time.

“I'll take one of those,” he said.

Mr. Rawle came round to the customer's side of the counter to measure his arm-length.

“Are you all right for bow ties, sir?” he asked, confidentially as though he knew that the question was verging on the indiscreet.

The customer nodded. And Mr. Rawle ignored the nod.

As he was wrapping up the shirt he deftly thrust out a third arm from somewhere behind his back and placed a long Cellophane packet behind the shirt.

“These are the pattern that are being worn,” he said almost diffidently. “You notice the new thin outline ...”

A few moments later, Mr. Rawle had returned to Tony's end of the counter. He had sold a shirt and an evening tie.

“How d'you know he wanted dress shirts?” Tony asked.

“The suitcase, sir,” Mr. Rawle told him. “And the time of day. Quite a lot of gentlemen drop in on the way to the office when they have to dress and go out somewhere. They frequently forget something. You'll come to recognize the type, sir.”

“And how did you know he'd buy a tie?”

Mr. Rawle lowered his voice a little.

“He wasn't quite sure of himself, sir. If he had been, he wouldn't have asked my advice.”

Mr. Rawle broke off, and slid a box of sports shirts along the counter.

“Suppose we go through these, sir,” he went on. “And allow me to show you. It's the collars that require attention. Points always nicely down. And mind the pins. Never forget the pins, sir. And never drag one shirt across another. Lift them, sir. Lift them. Like this.”

It was shortly after ten when the first of the Press arrived. The news of Tony Rammell's staff appointment had only just broken. But it was obviously a good story, RAMMELL JUNIOR SERVES BEHIND COUNTER would be bound to catch the eye of every woman reader. Already in the glass panelled row of offices over on the Hurst Place side a whole company of rather smart young women with note-books concealed in the handbags and large sagging men with camera cases over their shoulders were now
assembling. Mr. Thorpe of Publicity was trying to keep them all at bay while Mr. Robson of Public Relations got through on the phone to Mr. Preece.

“The Press? Here? Why?” Mr. Preece kept repeating. “And photographers? I'll speak to Mr. Rammell about it. Tell Thorpe to keep them where they are. We don't want them wandering all round the store, until we know who authorized it.”

Mr. Rammell was not at all pleased at being interrupted. He was dissolving a new kind of charcoal-and-bismuth tablet in his mouth. And he did not want to talk to anyone. Just suck.

“The Pless?” he said, indistinctly because the tablet was an unusually large one. “No, of coulse not. Shlend them away.” He paused. “Shtlay where you are. I'll ling you back.”

Mr. Rammell poured himself a sip of water from the vacuum jug beside him. He had somehow managed to swallow the charcoal tablet. His speech was suddenly clear again. But his whole mouth now tasted dismally of late autumn.

“Get me Sir Harry,” he said.

When at last Sir Harry came through he seemed even at that hour in the morning to be in remarkably high spirits.

“What's that?” he asked. “Havin' your photograph taken, you say?”

“It's
Tony
they've come to see,” Mr. Rammell told him. He spoke very slowly. Slowly and distinctly. As though he were speaking to a child. He had explained it to Sir Harry at least twice already.

And gradually, very gradually it seemed, Sir Harry was getting round to the real nature of the problem.

“Well, why did you ask 'em if you didn't want 'em?”

“Nobody asked them,” Mr. Rammell replied. “That's the whole point.”

Sir Harry gave a little chuckle.

“Somebody must of. Stands to reason. Perhaps it was his mother.”

“I thought,” Mr. Rammell continued, still in the same quiet patient tone, “that perhaps you ...”

But Sir Harry interrupted him.

“Leave me right out,” he said. “Too old. Don't photograph so good.”

As Sir Harry replaced the receiver, he shook his head sadly. Lack of decision. That's what his son's trouble was. Sheer lack of it. Couldn't make up his mind about anything. Sending for a lot of Press photographers, and then telling them to go away
again. Finally trying to drag his own father out of bed just to make up a group ...

Sir Harry was only thankful enough that he was still active enough to be able to step in when needed. Like this morning, for instance. If he hadn't intervened goodness knows what sort of muddle they would have been getting themselves into round in Bond Street.

It was while Mr. Robson was holding the main body of the Press at bay that a small free-lance photographer slipped past him. He was a thin, shabby-looking young man with rather long hair, who came and went as he chose. Going straight through to Shirtings he got exactly what he wanted. And he was out of the shop again before anyone could stop him. Before anyone had really noticed him. Anyone with the exception of Tony, that is. And he was incredulous. Simply incredulous.

Because he was really responsible. It had all happened the other night at a party. He had found himself talking to a rather distinguished-looking young man. One of Derek's better friends. The young man with a pale waistcoat and a jacket with folded-back cuffs. “To do with publicity” was how he described himself. And as soon as he heard that Tony was really going to work his way through Rammell's he stopped being languid. Instead, he became tremendously interested. He even brought out an apparently nibless fountain pen—the pen was so streamlined that it might have been made for writing in space-ships—and made a note of Tony's name on the back of an invitation card.

Moreover, the air of languidness must have been merely a veil. A deception. The young man was nothing if not thorough. When the picture appeared in all the evening papers, there was nothing missing. “ ... whose mother is, of course, the well-known hostess and musical patron,” the caption rambled on. “Sir Harry, 82, the original Chairman, is in excellent health and is a familiar figure on the racecourse.”

Tony, who was going out that night, entirely forgot to look. Mr. Rammell made a point of looking. And was appalled. Sir Harry was delighted. Simply delighted. Mrs. Rammell wept.

And next day there was a real first-class row up in Management Suite. With last night's evening papers spread out on the desk in front of him, Mr. Rammell banged his fist down on the offending pictures and threatened to make a clean sweep of the Press,
Publicity, Public Relations. The whole lot. Every damn' one in the department. Start again. Get rid of dead wood. Find people who knew their jobs. Clear out the duds.

Mr. Preece sat beside him, silent and dismayed. He knew what Mr. Rammell must be thinking. Because he was already thinking it himself. There was no getting round it. He was one of the duds. He had shown himself to be that worst of all things, a General Manager who couldn't manage. After the others had gone, Mr. Rammell would be bound to keep him back. Put it to him point blank. Resignation or dismissal ... Like most professionally calm men, Mr. Preece had his private moments of panic.

Mr. Rammell meanwhile was still threatening and banging. He was, indeed, so much caught up in the sheer enjoyment of being beastly that he refused to take a telephone call from Sir Harry. Flatly refused. In front of the staff, too. But there was more to it than mere annoyance at the interruption. The one thing that Mr. Rammell feared was Sir Harry's voice crackling out of the receiver full of congratulations over the Press coverage.

Meanwhile, two floors below, Tony knew nothing of the row. He was busy behind the Shirtings counter. Busy and dutiful. It was the latter quality that dumbfounded Mr. Rawle. He had been prepared for anything. Idleness. Frivolity. Inattention. Condescension. Rudeness, even. But not what he was getting. It was like having the industrious apprentice always at his elbow. He was so much impressed, indeed, that he mentioned it more than once to Mrs. Rawle. “It's hereditary,” he said. “That's what it is, hereditary. If there's shirtings in the blood it's bound to come out.”

Mr. Rawle, however, was only partially correct. Because Tony was not being dutiful. He was only being bloody-minded. He had worked the whole thing out to his own satisfaction. Revenge and masochism were nicely mingled.

The first that Mr. Rammell had known of it was this morning. The car had turned into Bond Street at the usual point. But at the Downe Street entrance Tony had said good-bye.

“I go in round the back,” he had said. “Staff entrance. Got to clock in.”

“No need to do that,” Mr. Rammell had begun.

But that was as far as he got. Because by then Tony had already waved good-bye, and turned the corner.

Not that the arrangement was altogether without its compensations.

It meant that a Rammell was seeing the staff side of things for
the first time in more than a quarter of a century. And already it was beginning to occur to Tony that perhaps the store wasn't quite so well run as it seemed to be from the directors' floor.

Take the time-machines, for instance. There were four of them just inside the front door. Everyone, with the exception of the buyers and a few people like Marcia who led irregular hours anyway, had to get the exact minute of their arrival stamped on to the small buff card. It wasn't the sheer impersonal tyranny of the machines that irritated Tony. It was the simple fact that they were in the wrong place. Around 8.50 a.m. there were two or three hundred people all arriving in Hurst Place at the same time. And on wet mornings the rear end of the queue had to stand outside getting steadily wetter. And later.

“I'll mention it to Preece. Get him to do something about it,” Tony promised himself.

In point of fact, he forgot. Simply forgot all about it. The remarkable thing was, however, that he should even have thought of remembering. And, in any case, by then he was already busy on something else. By the end of his second day he was re-organizing the whole method of replacements. That, he had decided, was in one hell of a mess. Positively bloody awful, in fact. Because if any line—Tony had learnt by now to refer to everything as a “line”—started selling at all briskly, the head of the department sent one of the Juniors along to the stock room with a requisition slip. The stock room was in the basement at the Downe Street end. And on some mornings Tony had counted as many as twelve Juniors all standing about, waiting for their fresh supplies.