Bond Street Story (43 page)

She went up and kissed him.

“Don't worry,” she said. “It'll be all right. I know it will.”

His arms went round her so tightly that he left her breathless.

“It's got to be,” he said.

They were still embracing when the door of the sitting-room opened. Mrs. Privett came out into the hall.

“That you, Ireen?” she asked.

Irene broke away hurriedly.

“We're back, Mum.”

There came a gulp from close beside her.

“Good evening, Mrs. Privett.”

“Good evening, Ted.”

Irene went up and took Mrs. Privett by the arm.

“Come along, Mum,” she said. “Ted's got something he wants to say to Dad.”

“Then tell him to go in,” Mrs. Privett said. “Dad's only got Gus with him.”

“ ... well, why didn't you say so before?” Mr. Privett was asking. “Then he'd have left us sooner. He's not the kind to stay if he isn't wanted.”

He felt rather resentful as he said it. Up to that moment he'd always liked Ted. Even looked forward to seeing him. But this was rather overstepping it. He'd practically ordered Mr. Bloot out of the room just now.

“I had to see you alone,” Ted explained. “It's private.”

Mr. Privett stood in front of the fireplace regarding him. He'd never noticed before what an extraordinarily jumpy kind of young man Ted was. He was fiddling with a button with one hand. And tugging at the lapel of his coat with the other. And his feet weren't still either. He was shifting around all the time like a boxer.

“Well, what is it?” Mr. Privett asked.

There was a pause. Ted swallowed hard again.

“Irene and me want to get married.”

“You want what?”

Mr. Privett had heard perfectly. But he had to play for time. He had guessed for some time how things were going. Known that sooner or later it might come to this. But he had always put the thought clean out of his mind. Never once really faced up to it.

“To get married,” he heard Ted say again.

There could be no further avoiding it. He couldn't pretend that he hadn't heard this time either. He would have to say something.

“Ireen's only eighteen remember,” he said reproachfully.

More fiddling. More swallowing. So far as Mr. Privett was concerned this was another habit of Ted's that he had never noticed before. The boy gave a distinct, audible gulp every time he attempted to say anything.

“I know,” Ted answered. “That's why we ... we'd like to be engaged first.”

Mr. Privett considered for a moment. There seemed to be a possible let out here.

“I see,” he said. “You want to get engaged.”

Ted gave another gulp.

“That's right, sir” he replied. “Get engaged.”

He was glad that he'd remembered to say “sir.” It was one of those things that were expected at such moments. But it hadn't really helped. Instead it seemed rather to have embarrassed Mr. Privett. To Ted's surprise Mr. Privett seemed to be nervous too. Rattled. He kept pulling at his watch chain. Moving from one foot to the other.

“How long have you known each other?” he asked at last.

“Nearly six months, sir. You remember. At the last staff dance.”

“The staff dance,” Mr. Privett repeated dully. “Oh, yes. The staff dance. I suppose it must be about six months.”

“Yes, sir. Nearly.”

He paused.

“Does Ireen know you're asking me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, she does.”

“Yes, sir.”

It wasn't getting any easier for either of them. Indeed, for Mr. Privett it was getting appreciably harder every moment. He couldn't go on asking questions for ever. Eventually he would have to say something. Be decisive. In the meantime, he wasn't going to be rushed by this nervous young man opposite.

“And does she want it?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Privett paused.

“Well ...” he began.

But he got no further. The door opened. And Irene stood there. She was wearing the excited, eyes-shining expression that he remembered from the time when she had been quite a little girl. She looked younger than ever this evening. So young that it didn't seem possible that this tall, gulping, tie-pulling young man was seriously thinking of getting married to her.

“What did you tell him, Dad?” she asked.

Mr. Privett began pulling at his watch chain again.

“We hadn't quite got there yet,” he admitted. “I was just ... just asking him things.”

Then Mr. Privett looked up. Over Irene's shoulder he could see Mrs. Privett. And beyond Mrs. Privett glowed the pink, moonlike face of Mr. Bloot.

“Maht Ah be the first ...” he began.

Mr. Privett had just come back from the bathroom. Mrs. Privett was already in bed. She was sitting up rubbing some cream into her hands.

“Whatever were you two talking about all that time?” she demanded.

“I was asking him things,” Mr. Privett told her. “About him. And Ireen. About both of them.”

“What sort of things?”

“About how long they'd known each other.”

“And what else?”

“Whether Ireen wanted it.”

Mrs. Privett put the cream jar down with a thump.

“Of course, she wants it. Otherwise he wouldn't have been asking you.”

“I had to make sure,” Mr. Privett replied. “It's very important.”

“I know it's important. That's what I've been saying to you. What are his prospects?”

“You mean how much he earns?”

Mrs. Privett nodded.

“There wasn't time to ask,” he told her. “I was only just getting round to it.”

“Well, he gets eight-ten at the moment,” Mrs. Privett continued. “And it'll be twelve if he gets the Counting House job. But that isn't certain. So they'll have to wait. About three years, I told her. Till she's twenty-one. And, of course, there's the commission. That's another thirty pounds.”

“How d'you know about that?” Mr. Privett demanded.

“I asked Ireen.”

“When?”

“While he was in there talking to you.”

Mr. Privett went over to the window and pulled the Venetian blind half-way up.

“It all came so sudden,” he said. “I wasn't really prepared. I like him all right myself. But I didn't know how you'd take it if ...”

But Mrs. Privett interrupted him.

“Do you think I'd have let him go on coming here if I hadn't thought he was suitable?” she asked. “It's been standing out a mile. She could have done better. But she hasn't. That's all there is to it.”

“Ted's a nice boy,” Mr. Privett said slowly.

“Well, I haven't said he wasn't, have I? All I said was our Ireen could have done better.”

Mr. Privett went back across the room to put the light out. Instead of feeling pleased about Irene's engagement, he felt miserable. Utterly miserable. Miserable about everything. About
how inadequate he'd been. And about how little Ted earned. And about how it might have been young Tony Rammell himself if only Mrs. Privett herself hadn't stopped it. And about the way Mrs. Privett kept on reminding him that Irene could have done better. She was exhibiting a kind of heartlessness that left him speechless and aghast.

When he reached the switch, however, Mrs. Privett stopped him.

“Don't put the light out,” she said. “I'm just going through to Ireen. I never kissed her good night properly.”

 

The chair in which Mr. Rammell was sitting was quite the wrong shape. Modern. Undeniably modern. And undeniably wrong.

Built of thin struts of some dark, sinister-looking wood, the seat was so close to the ground that Mr. Rammell could hardly see over his knees. The arms, too, were low. So low that Mr. Rammell wondered what to do with his own arms. Even the striped, zebra-ish cushions were hostile. Stuffed with a kind of rubber-sponge material they fought back again when pressed against.

The table alongside matched the chair. Same wood. Same height. The entire suite might have been made by pygmies for other pygmies. And the table itself was of an extraordinary near-oval shape that was scarcely a shape at all. Mr. Rammell had an uneasy feeling that it was still forming.

But the drink that stood on it was reassuringly normal. He had seen to that himself. The amount of soda was just exactly right. And even with the silly furniture, and the pictures that might have come out of the same factory as the chair and table, Mr. Rammell had to admit that he somehow felt relaxed. Relaxed. Rested. And refreshed.

It had been the same on the last two occasions when he had visited the flat. Each time a strange guilty sensation of complete freedom had come over him. Of holiday, almost. He had kept telling himself that it was an error of judgment on his part to have set foot in the place at all. It was that damn' rain that had been responsible. But for the rain he would never have had Marcia in the car with him. And if they hadn't shared a car he would certainly never have gone to her flat. Not even had considered it. But it hadn't proved all loss. Not by any means. It is always a ticklish business discussing intimate family affairs against an office background. And he was glad to have avoided it.

In the ordinary way, of course, he would simply have got Marcia to come round to Eaton Square. But that would have involved Mrs. Rammell. And keeping Mrs. Rammell out of it had always been his chief thought.

It was interesting, too, from his standpoint to see how a girl like Marcia really did live. On the whole, it was pretty much what he had expected. White paintwork. A trace of perfume and cigarette smoke in the air. Copies of
Vogue
and
Harper's Bazaar
left
lying around. Drinks on a side table. And photographs of Marcia herself, heaven knows how many of them, stuck up everywhere. Dimly he wondered how she could afford it all. And then he remembered the Outside Activities clause in the Staff Agreement. That he reckoned must be bringing her in quite a packet. Probably doubling up, in fact. And perks on the side, of course. That goddamn-awful chair and table, for instance. Given to her by one of the agencies probably.

He glanced at his watch. If he had been at home at this moment, for instance, he would have been changing into a black tie ready to be dragged off to dinner with the Burnetts.

Avoiding the Burnetts was always its own reward. But there was another reason altogether why he was glad that he was not going. That was because he and Mrs. Rammell were not yet properly on speaking terms. They were out of the vulgar, recriminatory phase. Out of the silence phase, too. They were now in the third stage of the cycle, the ghastly politeness phase. Mr. Rammell held doors open for her. She thanked him. He passed her things. She thanked him. He asked if she had had a tiring day. She thanked him. He inquired after her neuritis, her slipped disc, her sinus. She said, “Better, thank you.” As conversation goes, however, even a Trappist couldn't have pretended that it added up to very much.

But it wasn't simply to avoid the Burnetts that he had come. There was still some tidying up to be done on his own account. And he was not a man who liked leaving things half done.

“So we can take it that you've put New York right out of your mind, can we?” he asked.

Marcia was seated just opposite. Perched half on, half off, the zebra-striped divan that had evidently come out of the same herd as the cushions. She was listening intently.

“Oh, definitely,” she said at last.

Mr. Rammell took another sip from his glass. Then he went on being business-like.

“You saw Mr. Preece, didn't you?” he asked. “The new arrangement quite satisfactory?”

Mr. Rammell was getting to understand Marcia by now. That was why he wasn't concerned when at first she made no reply at all. He knew that if he waited long enough it would eventually come.

“Yes, thank you,” she said after an unusually long pause. “Thank you.”

It had been specially difficult having to answer two questions at once. But, really, there had been more to it than that. It was
blissy of course having a new contract. Just when she had begun to wonder whether the old one would ever be renewed at all. And Rammell's had been more than generous. Absolute sweeties, in fact. There was no denying that. But there were still all those horrid old debts of hers. The ones that she knew that Mr. Bulping would have taken care of if only she'd remembered to ask him in time. And God knows that no one could accuse her of being mercenary. She had never once even mentioned money to Tony. Theirs had remained a boy and girl friendship right the way through.

The memory of it brought a tightness to her throat. She would simply never have believed that he could be so callous. There had been that one completely dreamy, swoony evening when he had come to the flat to say good-bye. He had even remembered to bring a bottle of champagne with him. And there had been that last telephone-call actually from the airport itself. But, after that, nothing. Silence. Simply silence. Not even a post-card of the Manhattan sky-line. She could see now how foolish she had been ever to squander so much love on him. He would never know, could not possibly imagine, how much she had really been prepared to give. It was as though they had been separated throughout by one of Rammell's own thick plate-glass windows.

And there was, she had to admit, something of the same strange remote quality in Mr. Rammell. As though he were an emotion short somewhere. Born without the complete set of feelings. He had behaved marvellously. Quite marvellously. She would have been the first to admit that. Wouldn't any father have been worried about a boy who was so obviously just drifting until Marcia had rescued him? And now that it was all over, now that she had explained everything, she could tell how relieved he was. How pathetically grateful. Like a dog that had just escaped punishment. But he was so cold. So terribly cold. Even now, after everything that had happened, if she were to go up to him and put her arms around him, explain that she knew everything that was in his mind, he would only misinterpret it.