Bond Street Story (8 page)

It was the noise that brought Mrs. Privett out of the scullery.

“It's no good losing your temper like that,” she said as she came forward. “You'll only smash something.”

But she had spoken too late. The last jerk that Mr. Privett had given the bicycle dislodged the small potted palm that stood on the centre shelf of the hat-stand. It rolled along the floor, its leaves swishing.

Mrs. Privett did not move. She stood there surveying the mess, and drew the corners of her mouth down as she looked.

“I'm sorry ...” Mr. Privett began, and bent down to begin picking up the pieces.

But Mrs. Privett would have none of it.

“Don't you start trying to tidy up,” she said, “or we'll have everything else smashed. I'll attend to this.”

She pushed past while she was speaking, and held the front door open for him. Mr. Privett sidled carefully through, drawing the long awkward trailer after him. Then when he had got safely over the doorstep he paused and looked back.

“If Gus should turn up, tell him I've gone on, will you?” he asked.

But there was no answer. Mrs. Privett simply slammed the door in his face.

That was at 10.35.

And less than half an hour later—at 10.57 to be precise—Mr. Privett had returned. He was on foot. He was torn. He was dusty. He was bloodstained. Beside him he supported a buckled bicycle. And in the partially demolished trailer behind rode the wrecked remains of
Daisy II.

At the sight of her husband, so badly damaged and so woebegone, Mrs. Privett's anger vanished instantly. She became wife, nurse and mother. And Mr. Privett surrendered himself. Seated in the arm-chair in the kitchen and with his feet up on the fender he allowed her to bathe his poor bruised forehead, and tried manfully to tell her what had happened.

The facts were certainly terrifying enough. Death, it was clear, had been avoided by inches. Possibly by as little as one inch. As far as the end of Fewkes Road, everything had been quiet and normal. Admittedly, Mr. Privett may have been pedalling a shade too fast, because all the way from No. 23 he had been haunted by fears of lateness, of missing the first heats. The road, however, had been empty and deserted. But there is a world of difference
between the inner-suburban quietness of Fewkes Road and the arterial throb of the main thoroughfare that joins Camden Town to Highgate. The Kentish Town Road, though narrow, is important. The traffic in it is fast-flowing and imperious. Even on Sunday mornings there are motor cycles, cars, lorries, buses, trolley-buses, coaches. And it was a coach that had been Mr. Privett's undoing.

Enormous, stream-lined, decorated in white and chromium like an ice-cream parlour, it had borne down upon him from the King's Cross direction, bound importantly north for Bradford. Mr. Privett had seen it coming. He had observed the lighthouse-like headlamps, the bizarre savagery of the frontal design, the driver perched high in his glass cubicle. Mr. Privett had seen all that. And there had still been time, he reckoned, to cut across. Nippiness, in his view was what had been demanded of him. Nothing more ... Indeed, as he had explained to the policeman, was it likely that anyone in his senses would risk putting up a bicycle and trailer against something that looked as if it could successfully have rammed the
Queen Elizabeth
?

It was merely the near-side mudguard that had touched him. A mere nip. But it was enough. With a single flick it had ripped up the trailer, and sent Mr. Privett flying into the gutter, his bicycle on top of him.

The crowd that collected magically, as though by bush telegraph, had been visibly edified. It was agreed that it was a miracle that Mr. Privett had not been killed. But by the time the driver of the coach had come back and someone had found a policeman, the entire perspective of the episode had begun to alter. Mr. Privett was still in the principal role. But the role itself had changed disturbingly. He was no longer the object of misery and compassion, the tragic victim of circumstances. He had become someone who was sinister and malign, a saboteur of immense coaches. The policeman had stationed himself close beside Mr. Privett as if to forestall lynching ...

But Mrs. Privett could bear to hear no more. She told him not to exhaust himself further with conversation and helped him upstairs to the bedroom. Then, swift and masterful, she took off the nautical-type jacket. Stripped him right down. Popped him into bed. He was to stay there, she said, until she had fetched the doctor.

Mr. Privett felt better already. The anguish, the sense of shame, the pain even, had all ebbed out of him. In their place flowed in warmth, love, security. He felt at peace with the world.

Then suddenly he remembered something. He jerked himself up in bed.

“Do you think somebody ought to go along and tell Gus?” he asked. “If he's up there waiting, he'll be wondering what's happened to me.”

 

Monday, of course, was entirely out of the question. Mrs. Privett had to ring up Rammell's and explain. Nor was it easy. The last thing that she wanted was to get caught up in a long rigmarole about toy boats. A
cycling accident
was how she described it.

The doctor was dubious about the rest of the week as well. No man of Mr. Privett's age, he said, can run slap into a motor-coach and expect to feel the same afterwards. It was a wonder, he added, that no bones had been broken.

But even if Mr. Privett's skeleton was still intact, the rest of him soon began to show the effects of that header into the gutter. What revealed itself at first merely as a mild brownish discoloration developed rapidly into a whole pattern of bruises shot through with vivid colours like a sunset. They became magnificent. Sensational. Gratifying.

Whenever Mrs. Privett slipped out of the room for a moment, Mr. Privett would slide back the bedclothes and, going over to the long mirror in the wardrobe, would stand with his pyjama jacket held open admiring himself.

The accident brought out everything that was best in Irene. The sight of Mr. Privett lying there, pathetically small among the pillows, made her want to cry. She felt sorry that she had ever been beastly to her father.

And that was just as well. Because it was on that same Monday that Rammell's wrote to Irene. The letter was there on the doormat, along with a postcard from the M.R.Y.O.A.—the Model Racing Yacht Owners' Association—reminding Mr. Privett that next week's rally was at the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens.

Naturally, Mrs. Privett recognized the Rammell letter the instant she saw it. It was the embossed “R” on the back of the envelope that gave it away. And even before she had turned it over she was certain that it would be for Irene.

But it wasn't to Irene that she took it. Not immediately, that is. First she showed it to Mr. Privett.

“There!” she said triumphantly. “It's come.”

Mr. Privett, however, was only half awake.

“Give it to me,” he said. “Let's have it.”

And then, having inspected it carefully, he looked up at her.

“That's it,” he said. “It's from Rammell's all right.”

The back of Mr. Privett's hand bore a large criss-cross of sticking plaster. And, at the sight of it, Mrs. Privett's heart leapt. She realized suddenly that Mr. Privett's accident was a blessing. Downright providential. It could not have been timed more perfectly. Because up to that moment she hadn't quite known how Irene was going to take the letter. As it was, everything would be simple.

“ ... and with your father in that state,” she told her, “we can't do anything to upset him. He knows it's come because he's seen it. Just you open it. I want to know what it says.”

But Irene was only half-awake, too. She was still flushed with sleep. And a bit sulky.

“Oh, you open it, Mum,” she said. “I can't be bothered.”

Using one of Irene's own nail files, Mrs. Privett ripped it open. And having read it through once, she read it over again just to make sure that she hadn't missed anything.

It told Irene to present herself at the staff entrance in Hurst Place at three o'clock next Friday. There was even a little map at the top right-hand corner of the notepaper with an arrow pointing to the staff entrance so that she couldn't go wrong.

In addition to the appointment letter itself, Irene was asked to bring along her school-leaving certificate and a copy of the same certificate made out in her own handwriting for the Rammell files. The bit about the files was, however, only a half truth. It was the handwriting rather than the copy that Rammell's wanted. Rammell's had been caught out before by young ladies who couldn't for the life of them make out a bill that anyone in the counting house was able to decipher.

Mrs. Privett suddenly stiffened. Friday at three the letter said. That in itself was a challenge. It gave Mrs. Privett precisely three and a half days in which to get things ready. And it would be touch and go. She had just remembered that Irene hadn't got anything that was suitable for a staff interview.

There was the plain blue dress that she had worn for the Eleanor Atkinson school-leaving party. But that was too simple. Too plainly cut. It would make Rammell's underrate Irene. Regard her as no more than some sort of infant apprentice. Then there was her flowered one with the short sleeves. But that was completely wrong. It would give the Staff Supervisor the impression that Irene wasn't really serious. Only a sort of socialite play-girl from Kentish Town. Of course, there was always Irene's brown. But Irene, heaven knows why, had never really liked it.
And in any case it was old. That settled it. Because the one thing for which Mrs. Privett would never have forgiven herself would have been to send Irene along looking as if she actually
needed
the job.

There was clearly nothing for it, therefore, but to run up something. Nothing was ever made, or sewn, or stitched together in the Privett household. It was always run up. And Mrs. Privett was taking no chances. She went herself to the newsagents. In the result, copies of
Woman, Woman's Own
and little paper envelopes stamped with the names of Butterick, Simplicity and McCall were mingled with sheets of magenta-coloured note-paper bearing Irene's own idea of what a dress ought to look like. It was getting on for evening before a compromise was reached.

Then, first thing on the Tuesday, Mrs. Privett dashed out to Daniels' in the Kentish Town Road to buy the material. One way or another, she bought quite a lot of stuff at Daniels'. She was a valued customer. But she was never able to admit to Mr. Privett that she so much as went near the place. That was because, at the first whisper of anything like a dress length, Mr. Privett would have told her to leave it all to him. Then, with the air of someone engaged on counter-espionage, he would have given her a trade card with somebody else's name—that of Rammell's wholesale buyer—on the front, and the name of some wholesaler or other pencilled across the back. And eventually she would find herself at a counter in a side lane somewhere off St. Paul's Churchyard, hemmed in by people buying great cascades of damask and velvet and gold brocade which would make her three and a half yards of cheap cretonne sound silly anyway. It was to avoid all this fuss that Mrs. Privett made a point of never telling her husband when she was buying anything. What she lost by way of trade discount, she made up in peace of mind.

The dress that Mrs. Privett finally made for Irene was from an American pattern called Miss Manhattan. Mrs. Privett was secretly very pleased with it. It had a certain discreet flair. Irene, however, disliked every single thing about it. In her view it was all too young-looking. It was distinctly teen-age. But it was late on Thursday by now. There wasn't time to do anything about it. And in any case mother and daughter were scarcely speaking to each other. Mrs. Privett had said twice already that next time Irene found herself in need of a new dress she had better try running one up for herself. And Irene had replied that every other girl she knew got hers ready-made.

That was the last straw. It was one of Mrs. Privett's proudest
boasts that up to now nothing ready-made except winter overcoats had ever come into her house.

Irene was a bit disappointed with the back view of Rammell's. Something seemed to have gone wrong somewhere. It was as though the firm had overspent itself badly on the Bond Street frontage. Been forced to cut down on everything, even essentials, by the time it got round to Hurst Place. Compared with all the burnished copper and the embossed “R's” of the main doorway, the staff entrance itself was no better than a gap in the brickwork. There wasn't even a porch to it. Just a metal shutter that came down sealing everything off at night.

And inside things weren't much better. At the top of a little flight of concrete steps stood the clocking-in machines. It was like an Underground platform but without the advertisements. Then, again, the colour scheme was all wrong. The dark green dado with the thick black line along the top of it had an unpleasant police station sort of look. It might have led straight through to the cells instead of merely to the evening bags and the cosmetics.

Irene suddenly felt sorry for her father to think that he had been coming in and out of such a doorway all his life. Whenever she had been to Rammell's before, she had gone in by the Bond Street entrance and straight up in the lift. And there had been her father dressed up in his tail-coat as if he were receiving guests at a wedding. That was what she had imagined it was like everywhere inside Rammell's—all mirrors and satinwood panelling and thick Wilton pile.

There was a notice marked “Inquiries” just in front of her. Below it was a sheet of plain glass that suggested the front of an aquarium. And as Irene went over to it, the glass front silently slid back. She almost expected a cascade of cold water and pond-weed to come splashing down over her new stockings. But that must have been simply the effect of so much dark green paint and the subdued lighting.