Man Overboard (18 page)

She stopped wnirling and said casually, without looking at her father: “With evervone else getting married, I suppose you and Miss Kelly will be thinking of taking the plunge.”

“Would you mind?”

“Nope.” The blue jeans were stretched very tightly as she dug her hands deeper into the pockets.

“I don’t know if she’d marry me, though.”

He was watching her to see if she would clutch hopefully at this, but she said: “Of course she’d marry you. Anyone would. And you’re going to be rich, too.”

“Maybe. With Rose’s money and mine, we might have quite a decent place, and we’d find someone nice to stay with you when I was away. Rose wouldn’t be there all the time, but it would be grand when she was. We’d be a proper family.”

He was waiting for Amy to give some opinion about Rose, but the child gave him no clue to what was in her mind. He must be fair to her, but fair to Rose too. If he was going to marry her, Amy must not start out with antagonism.

“Rose is an awfully sweet person when you get to know her,” he said, watching Amy’s unrevealing face. “She has to put on an act for the public. That’s her job. Underneath, she’s very lovable, and not a bit grand.”

“Is she?” Amy began to look more hopeful.

“Yes, and quite honestly, darling, apart from how much I like her, it would be much better for me to have a wife. A man can’t give a daughter everything she should have. Nor can a housekeeper. That wouldn’t be the same for you as having a—a———”

He balked at the word Mother.

“I know, Daddy.” Amy came over to the bed and took his hands. “You needn’t bother to explain. You love Miss Kelly, don’t you?”

“I think so. It’s awfully hard to know sometimes. You’ll find that out when you’re older.”

“Oh, I know already. I’ve been in love thousands of times. It’s agony. Come on, let’s go and tell Grandma that you’re going to be married too. That will take some of the wind out of her sails. Could you have a double wedding?”

“With the Major in a silk hat and a socking great buttonhole stealing all the limelight? Not likely.”

They laughed together, holding hands and laughing into each other’s faces. Amy pulled him to his feet. He tried to ask her whether she was really happy, but she kept on laughing, and dragged him out of the room to where Geneva was spring cleaning the dining-room with her head tied up in a scarlet scarf and a hooting song competing with the cries of the carpet sweeper.

The next day, when Jimmy Peale had slipped round to the Back Office and Mitzi had gone out for coffee, Ben was in the office alone. He took the old, creased magazine photograph of Rose out of his wallet and propped it against the telephone on Jimmy’s desk. Because it was the first picture he ever had, when he was sure that he was in love with her, it held more enchantment for him than all the breath-taking photographs she had given him, scrawled over with intimate, extravagant messages. He saw himself laying it on the bar of some northern railway hotel and confiding to a stranger that he was going to marry Rose Kelly. The stranger, who had thought at first that Ben was just another commercial traveller, would look at him with new respect and call the barmaid over.

The door from the corridor opened, and a man came into the outer office. Through the open door between the two rooms, Ben caught a glimpse of him as he came in: a slack-cheeked, humourless face, an odd wisp of hair low down on the forehead from which the rest of the hair had receded, shoes like black coffins for the kind of springless feet which would tramp with equal unconcern on violets or mud.

Ben got up and went to the door. The man was standing in the middle of the room, looking about him as if he would not give you twopence for the lot.

“Can I help you, sir?” Ben put on his S.I.A. salesman’s smile.

“You’re not the chap I saw here before.” It was a belligerent voice, grudging, displeased, the kind of voice Ben had heard on the lower deck when a trouble-maker was aboard.

“Our Mr Peale?” Ben said smoothly. He could talk like this when there was no one in the office to hear him. “He has just stepped out for a moment. I am Commander Francis, managing the naval side of our organization.”

“Group-Captain this. Commander that,” the man complained. “Where’s all the Generals today?”

“Out to lunch,” Ben said. “Can I help you?”

“You can get me my insurance policy,” the man said. “That’s what you can do.”

It seemed a fair enough request, and Ben would have granted it, if he had known where the insurance policies of the S.I.A.’s investors were kept. He had no idea when Jimmy Peale or Mitzi would be back, so he rubbed the palms of his hands together and
promised that the policy would be mailed as soon as possible.

“It’s not good enough,” the man said, as if he had said that many times before about many things. “I want it now, right here in my hand.” He pounded a coarse fist into his palm. “I’m entitled, aren’t I?” He jutted forward his head, fixing Ben with what would have been a sea-lawyer’s eye if he had been a sailor instead of an airman. “No messing about. You’ve got my money, and you’ve promised me insurance. That means I’ve got a policy, and I’ve a right to possession of it.”

“Of course, of course.” Ben had learned long ago not to dispute rights with men like this, for they usually knew what their rights were better than he did. “Unfortunately all the documents are in our other office.”

“Go and get it then.” The man sat squarely down on a chair by the door and folded his arms. “I’ll wait.”

Ben scratched his head. Although Peale and Beckett had never said that they did not want him in the Back Office, they had never encouraged him to go there. The Back Office was the hub of the Association, where they spun their mysterious deals in foreign stocks and made their staggering financial computations, which had nothing to do with an investment salesman whose place, as Jake Beckett often reminded him enviously, was in the field.

“It will mean some delay,” he hedged. “Surely it will be more convenient for you if I———”

“If you don’t go and get it right away,” the man said in a matter-of-fact voice that was more threatening than his belligerent one, “I’ll fetch a policeman to you.”

“You might at that,” Ben said, trying to keep calm. “At least he could look after this office for me while I go round to the other one. As it is, you’ll have to wait until the receptionist gets back.”

“How long? I haven’t got all day.”

“That’s hard to say. She’s out on business.” Mitzi’s quarter-hour for coffee sometimes extended for two hours if she felt the urge to do some shopping.

The man stood up. “Lock the ruddy place up then, and I’ll wait downstairs. I’ve not come all this way for nothing.”

Ben searched in vain for an answer. Look at me, he invited the disappointed audience of his thoughts. Here I am, the handler of men, the naval officer who’s got a job because he knows how to
deal with the fads and foibles of Other Ranks. You’ve got to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” the man asked, taking a crushing step forward and peering at Ben’s rueful grin.

“Nothing.” Ben reached for his coat.

The Back Office was not a patch on the Front Office as far as outside appearances went. The entrance was through a narrow door in a street of narrow doors and dirty stone steps and lower front windows half painted over to conceal what went on inside.

What went on in the Back Office of the Services Investment Association was plain to Ben as soon as he stepped through the only door on the ground floor which was not locked, and which was labelled surprisingly: “Beckett Finance Company.” He had been to a similar office in Portsmouth on behalf of a panicky able-seaman. He knew a loan office when he saw one.

A small, yellow old man was on the other side of the counter behind the wire grille. He muttered a question at Ben through a damp yellow cigarette, but Ben waved a hand at him and went boldly through the door behind which he could hear the voices of Mr Beckett and Jimmy Peale.

Jake was at a scarred old roll-top desk, very different from his neat, expensive desk in the Front Office, which had a glide-away typewriter and a little softly-clicking locker for whisky. Jimmy was sitting on the window-sill, swinging one leg and looking out at the depressing street. He must have watched Ben come in at the front door, for they were not surprised to see him.

“What’s to do, Benjamin?” Jake asked calmly. “Did Mitzi send you?”

“She’s out somewhere. I locked the place up. There’s a man round there who wants his insurance policy. He threatened to call the police if I didn’t come and get it.”

“Too madly dramatic.” Jimmy laughed lazily. “What are you panting about, old boy? You look as if you’d run all the way. Sit down and take the weight off your feet.”

“No.” Ben stood with his back to the door of the small, drab room. “I’ve got to get this chap’s policy. He bullied me into it.”

Jake spread his hands on the desk and studied his polished nails. “That’s hardly the spirit for a senior member of the sales staff,” he said. “You’re not supposed to let the clients bully you.
You’re supposed to bully them—in a subtle way, of course. Perhaps you need a few more lessons to brush up your technique. Jimmy and Mitzi will be glad to———”

“Don’t fob me off,” Ben said. “What’s going on here, anyway? This place looks like a loan office. I thought you were investing the clients’ money. Are you making loans with it? Is that what it is?”

“Bright fellow,” Jake said. “Of course we are. Best investment there is. We pay out ten per cent interest to the investors, and we loan their money out at forty per cent. Watertight profit. You see, we’re not hiding anything from you, Benjamin. You could have come round here any time you wanted and investigated the financial side. You didn’t seem all that interested.”

“Well, I’m interested now,” Ben said. “Something smells.”

“The garbage from the hospital, probably.” Jimmy wrinkled his nose towards the window. “Their kitchen entrance is just round the corner.”

“Don’t fool with me, James.” Ben looked away from Jimmy’s absurd, friendly face, which could always make him laugh and feel indulgent. “I’m in a fighting mood. What about this man’s insurance policy? Have you got it, or is the insurance a fake too, along with the foreign investments?”

“Now you’re going too far, Benjamin,” Jake said sadly. “Of course our client is insured.”

“Give me his policy then.”

“He doesn’t need it.”

“That’s his affair. Listen, Jake. Has he got a policy, or hasn’t he?”

Jake looked him in the eye. “Of course he hasn’t,” he said calmly. “I’m surprised at you, Benjamin, falling for your own line of sales talk. I thought you knew everything about the business.”

“Nobody told me.”

“O.K. I’ll tell you now. If you want to work with us, you’d better come out of the clouds and face a few economic facts. How do you think we could afford to insure all our clients at the premiums the big companies charge? We let them think that we do, because it keeps them happy, and if some damn fool sailor falls off the dock and his old woman puts in her five-hundred-pound claim on his life, we’ll pay it, of course. No one is going to get cheated.”

“I won’t do it,” Ben said. “I won’t go round telling lies to these
wretched people. I’d begetting their money under false pretences.”

“Grow up,” Jake said. “You’re acting in a rum way for a man who came galloping into our office two weeks ago panting for adventure. Why don’t you go home and pack your bag and go off to Rosyth like a sensible chap and get on with your side of the business, and leave the rest of it to Jimmy and me? We’re not crooks, you know,” he added softly, showing his even teeth.

“You’re damn close to it. I haven’t signed any contract with you yet. I think I’d like to get out.”

Here went his job, his only job. How could he go home and look Geneva and Amy and Rose in the face and tell them he had chucked it? But how could he look them in the face if he went through with it, knowing what he knew? He scratched his head. His scalp was beginning to itch, as it always did when the brain beneath was in turmoil.

“Take it easy.” Jimmy Peale dropped down from the window-sill, brushed off his trousers, and leaned on the top of the desk, studying Ben with sleepy, half-closed eyes. “We like you, Ben. You’re a damn good chap, and we’ve had a lot of laughs together, which is more than one can say for most of the people one has to do business with in this grim world. But don’t go getting any half-cocked ideas about our morals, or you’ll end by making a fool of yourself. Jake and I are as pure as the driven. Leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone. Come into the office tomorrow and I’ll give you your expense money, and for God’s sake don’t let’s mess about any more. There’s work to be done.”

“Not by me. Find another N.O. There’s hundreds of us about needing to turn an honest penny. But I want to be sure mine is honest. I’m scared, if you like. Scared of this loan office, scared of that pugnacious chap sitting in the hall round the corner waiting for his insurance policy. I’m not going back there.” Where was he going? Back to the Paddington Library, back to the polite letters of rejection, the futile, demoralizing interviews.

“You mean that?” Jake’s eyes were dark and shrewd.

“I mean it. Here’s the office key.” He flung it on the desk. Damn. He had pulled out the key to Geneva’s flat. His effect spoiled, they watched him in silence while he fished in his pocket for the key to the Front Office.

“You’re making a big mistake,” Jake said. “You’ll regret it. However,” he raised his head, his features lighting up with a
sharp commercial clarity, “to show you there’s no hard feelings, should you ever think in the future of investing some of your gratuity with us, we———”

“I’d rather sew it in my corsets,” Ben said, and suddenly the atmosphere of nervous distrust cleared, and they all looked at each other unguardedly and laughed. His decision made, jobless, disenchanted, Ben felt oddly carefree. Because he was free of Peale and Beckett and their dangerous game, he felt better disposed towards them than at any time since he came into the Back Office and saw the counter and the wire grille.

He shook hands with them both. He still liked them. He could not help it. “Say good-bye to Mitzi for me,” he said, as if he were parting with congenial hotel acquaintances after a holiday.