How Dear Is Life (2 page)

The room, or office, was empty of people. He saw three desks with frosted glass screens in front of them, one on the left side, two on the right. There was a mahogany counter between the two right-hand desks, which were set at an angle to the small square room. In front, a staircase led up through a gap in the ceiling. The walls were bare except for a large rolled-down calendar, with particulars of the Directors, Branches, Capital, and Establishment of the Moon Fire Office, above a low table in the corner. An electric light with a green shade burned over this table, revealing, plastered on the wall under the calendar, many pictures of boxers, cut out of newspapers and magazines.

While he was standing there, an extremely small boy, with an alert face, and hair plastered down with water, pushed open the door, let it close of itself behind him, and, passing Phillip with a grin, sat down at the table.

He was about to ask the boy where everybody was, when rapid footfalls came up from an open door beyond the two right-hand desks, and the athletic man who had entered before him reappeared.

“Good morning,” he said genially, as he laid his newspaper beside the single desk on the left. “You’re Maddison, aren’t you?” He smiled and held out his hand. “I’m Downham.”

Phillip shook the hand, receiving a keen grip which was just not painful. “I’ll give Edgar the post, then I’ll show you the basement where we keep our coats.”

He went to the front door, opened the letter box with a key, and laid a heap of letters on the low table. Then crossing to the door he had just come through, he pointed downwards into a basement, and switching on the light, said, “You lead on.” Phillip descended in front of him.

“Here we are. The lavatory’s over there.”

Downham pointed to a table on which a screwed iron frame stood, painted black with florid gold lettering on its cross beam. “That’s the letter book. It will be your job to press copies of the letters each afternoon. Your predecessor, Smithy, did it for the last three years. Now he’s gone to our Shanghai branch, where he’ll live on the fat of the land, and get all the shooting and sailing he wants. We used to go down to the Thames estuary together, duck shooting Ever done any?”

“Oh yes,” said Phillip, nervous lest he be thought insufficient. “With my cousin, this last winter.”

“Really? Where?” asked Downham, interested.

He thought rapidly of what cousin Bertie had told him.

“Oh, down in the Blackwater estuary, by Goldhanger Creek.”

“Then you must know the Heybridge Basin! Did you use a punt, or pattens?”

“No, oh no, I don’t think I did,” stammered Phillip, beginning to feel hot. What were pattens? Or was it patterns? Copies? Bertie had never mentioned them. They must be decoys. “No, we did not use decoys,” he said, feeling himself flush.

Downham looked at him. “But pattens aren’t decoys! They’re the wooden frames you strap on your boots, to prevent sinking into the mud. Do you know ‘The Sailor’ at Heybridge?”

“Not by name,” said Phillip, feeling he was floundering. He stared at the concrete floor.

“‘The Sailor’ is a pub!” retorted Downham, with a laugh. “What did you think of the Basin?”

All Phillip could think of were the wash-basins in the lavatory of the Voyagers’ Club. He was saved from a reply by someone
clumping down the stairs rapidly. An older man, with a brown lean face, and smoking a pipe, looked keenly at him. Then he smiled, held out his hand, and said, “You must be Maddison!”

Before Phillip could take the hand it was withdrawn as the newcomer began to cough violently. He bent double, shouting “Hell and the Devil!” in intervals of coughing. He stood up, breathed in, took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose with a loud trumpet note. “Blast this damned March wind!” A smell of camphorated oil spread in the basement.

He adjusted his face to a smile again, and said winsomely, “My name is Hollis.” Once more he held out his hand, but pulled it back as he shut his eyes, wavered, and then plunged to an enormous sneeze.

“Do forgive me,” he lamented, as he wiped his eyes. “I hope I haven’t got this damned ’flu that’s going about. Well, young feller, how are you?” Free at last, he shot out his hand.

“Very well, thank you, sir,” said Phillip, shaking it.

“Don’t you go sir’ing me, young feller! I’m Mr. Hollis to you, and Hollis to Downham here. You can sir Mr. Howlett, the branch manager, if you like, as indeed you should. After all, you are only a damned junior!”

Mr. Hollis smiled in the friendliest way at Phillip. Then his expression changed.

“Well, there’s work to be done. Someone in this Branch has to do it. Downham will show you your post-book.”

Phillip knew he was dismissed, and in some elation went sedately up the stairs. He was in time to see the remembered figure of Mr. Howlett entering the door, while the boy in the corner stood up.

“Ah, Maddison,” said Mr. Howlett, in his soft voice. “Welcome to Wine Vaults Lane!” He held out a soft hand, which did not have the decisive clasp of Downham or the firm grip of Mr. Hollis. He looked most kindly at Phillip.

“I expect Downham, when he comes upstairs, will show you what to do in a moment,” he said as, puffing his pipe, he walked slowly and quietly up the stairs. They were covered with lead, Phillip noticed through the banister rails when the door above had closed.

The extremely small boy in the corner was still standing up. He grinned at Phillip, and said, “I’m Edgar.”

“Hullo, Edgar,” said Phillip, wondering if he should shake hands. He decided he might, as none of the others were there. “You work here, too, Edgar?”

“I’m the Messenger,” said Edgar, with another grin. On his table was a pile of slit envelopes. His work apparently done, Edgar opened a magazine, arranged a pair of scissors and a bottle of Gloy beside him, and began to cut out a picture of Bombardier Billy Wells.

“Oh, you take messages, do you, in your spare time?” asked Phillip.

“Well, sort of, but not exackly, sir,” said Edgar. The ‘sir’ pleased Phillip. “I folds up the renewal notices, see, and sticks up the envelopes and puts on the stamps. And I answers the telephone from Head Office.”

“You’re a pretty important person here, I can see. Do you box, too?”

“Yes,” said Edgar, shyly. “Down our club nights. Do you like boxing?”

“Rather! Though I’m a rabbit. I see you’ve got Jack Johnson, Bombardier Billy Wells, Pat O’Keefe, Jimmy Wilde, Gunner Moir, Gunboat Smith, Carpentier—I have a cousin called Hubert Cakebread, who used to be one of the best boxers at Dulwich College. He is going to teach me one day.”

“I bet you’re really hot stuff,” said Edgar, admiringly; and Phillip thought it best to leave it at that. Shades of Peter Wallace, and the cowardly self of his young days! Oh, and his wildfowling fib.
Be
sure
your
sin
will
find
you
out
.
He felt himself going hot.

Thus Phillip began City life.

*

First impressions of a happy family remained. Neither Mr. Hollis, Mr. Howlett, nor Downham showed any other sides to their characters. The work was easy, though without real interest to Phillip. He did it much as he had worked at school, lacking ambition to get on. His first job after arrival was to enter into the Post Book particulars—date, name, address, subject—of the letters passed to him by Mr. Hollis, after that gentleman, a pair of pince-nez glasses perpetuating a red mark on the bridge of his nose, had taken them out of the envelopes slit by Edgar.

Remittances of renewal and other premiums were not entered in the Post Book, but in the counterfoils of the Receipt Book, at
the time of filling in and signing the receipts and addressing the envelopes. Mr. Hollis kept the cheques and postal orders in his desk; while the addressed envelopes passed from Phillip, in due course, to Edgar in the corner, who placed them in a pile ready for stamping in the afternoon, together with the rest of the outward post. After this, Phillip had to enter up the details in the Stamp Book; finally Edgar took the piles in a wicker tray to the pillar-box on the corner. Phillip was responsible for Edgar’s Stamp Book.

As the fourteen days of grace for renewal premiums came to an end, there were second notices to be made out, to remind the careless or forgetful that their policies had lapsed. For each notice Phillip made a tick in the record book; later a second tick denoted that the third notice had been sent off. When this final demand for premium had been ignored for a further fortnight, he was instructed by Mr. Hollis to write
lapsed
against the name in the ledger. There were variations in the manner of recording a dead policy.

Someone from Billericay wrote to say that he was not continuing. “Ah, one of the marks of a gentleman, Maddison!” said Mr. Hollis, “is that he takes trouble beyond the ordinary. Write WNR against his name—Will Not Renew.”

Phillip’s other work was making-out policies from proposal forms given him by Downham. This was fairly simple. Most of the policies were for Household Goods in Slated or Tiled Houses, Brick or Stone built. The rate was 2
s
.
per
£
100 per annum, while the buildings themselves were 1
s
.
6
d
.
Many of the two-shilling policies were for properties in East London, and were brought in by agents, of which there seemed to be a great number. When they came in, they were seen by Downham, who took their money, often in florins, this being the minimum premium. For each florin received, Downham from the mahogany cups inside one of his drawers took four pennies, the commission due.

“Hm!” Downham would ejaculate, as the door closed behind Mr. L. Dicks, or Mr. S. Levi, or Mr. N. Moses, or Mr. J. Morris. “Phew! Fiss-an’-sipps! Do they ever eat anything else in Whitechapel?”

Certainly the cash, which Phillip had to take every afternoon at half-past three to the Westminster Bank on the other side of the Lane, and pay in with postal orders and cheques, seemed to
be saturated with the smell of frying grease. But that was nothing to the whiff he got from Mr. L. Dicks, a saturnine individual with faded yellow teeth and a faded yellow straw-yard with a black band round it greenish with age and London air, one afternoon while he wrote a receipt for him, as he stood by his desk. The whiff was a concentration of stable ammonia, sweat on linen so long unwashed that it smelt
black
: a whiff coming in rings of invisible smoke every time Mr. L. Dicks moved, his dark clothes seemingly saturated in the vapours of the East End.

Of all the little agents from the East End the most industrious, as he was the most polite, was Mr. J. Konigswinter. This spare, aloof person would come into the office, almost without visible motion, like a partial animation of frost and bone, and wait quietly until someone spoke to him. Mr. Konigswinter always wore a collar and tie, whether his overcoat was buttoned to the neck or not. Mr. J. Konigswinter, grey-haired, grey-faced, grey-celluloid-collar’d, always raised his straw-yard to Mr. Hollis, and gave a bleak, wintry smile as he did so. He spoke in a very soft voice, he appeared and disappeared soundlessly, leaving without trace after another lift of the straw hat.

No one spoke of Mr. Konigswinter when he had gone. He left behind no whiff, no echo of personality. Mr. Konigswinter had hundreds of
£
100 Domestic Goods policies (‘
in
the
event
of
loss
by
fire
no
one
item
is
to
be
deemed
of
greater
value
than
£5
’)
under his agency.

Not all the agents were seedy, smelly, small, or bleak of face. Some were very splendid people, he thought. One morning a smiling young man with dark hair and dark-brown eyes came in, to be greeted very affably by Mr. Hollis. The young man, obviously rich and high in the social scale by his clothes, was dressed in a brown bowler hat, brown jacket and fawn trousers, with yellow gloves. He carried a clouded cane with a large gold top on it. He talked very politely to Mr. Hollis, smiling a lot. Mr. Hollis was also very polite and smiling; for, as he explained to Phillip when the visitor had gone, that was young Roy Cohen, a broker with an office in Piccadilly, whose father bought up all the old uniforms of the City of London Police Force, as well as many military uniforms. Roy Cohen, declared Mr. Hollis, had come out of his way to the Branch to see him, when he might easily have gone to the Charing Cross Branch, for all
that complacent old owl upstairs cared about new business. Mr. Hollis waved a proposal form.

“Six thousand pounds of stock and utensils in trade in a warehouse in Aldgate! It will be a fairly high rate, but young Roy Cohen told me he only places his insurances with tariff companies. Edgar, get me on to the Guarantee Department of Head Office!”

The Guarantee Department, Phillip had already learned, was where the ‘risks were spread’, or re-insured with other companies.

“Yessir!” said Edgar, springing up. Edgar had been snipping with scissors a photograph of Zena Dare, to add to his new spring series of actresses, which was replacing his winter interest in boxers. Edgar went to the private line to Head Office. The handle of the dynamo whirred.

“I hope his Yiddisher Pappy isn’t on the Black List,” laughed Downham. Phillip thought of the Black Line at his second school, and with head held down, went on with a short-period policy of Merchandise at Bellamy’s Wharf.

“Guarantee Department on the line, sir.”

“Thank you, Edgar,” said Mr. Hollis, springing off his stool, and saying as he hurried behind Phillip: “Good God no! Old Moses Cohen’s as honest as the day! He doesn’t need fire to purify spurious figures in his ledgers. Good morning, is that Guarantee? Get me Mr. Ironside, will you, please. Wine Vaults Lane speaking. Hullo, is that you, Ironside? I want to spread a risk, six thousand on contents of Moses Cohen’s clothing factory in Aldgate. Right. My thanks to you!” He hung the receiver on the brass bracket.

“Yes, young Roy Cohen should bring us some useful business,” he said, smiling at Phillip as he passed his desk again. The smile encouraged Phillip to say,