Something Wholesale (12 page)

‘Besides, there’s something up this Autumn. Fashion’s on the change. I had a letter from Madam Havet in Paris. She says that things have been at a standstill for so long that something’s bound to happen in the Spring. She says that the hemline will “descendre par l’escalier”.’

He spoke of an ancient couturière, now almost blind, who occupied premises in the Place Vendôme. He had sent me to her a few weeks before with a letter of introduction. It said something
for the memories it invoked that when the directrice read it to Madam Havet who was sitting on a sort of throne she had not only admitted me to the showing of the collection without payment but at the end of it she had allowed me to choose one toile for nothing. ‘For the past and for the future.’ This is the only time I ever received something for nothing in France and I have never heard of it happening to anyone else.

‘I remember something similar after the first war,’ my father continued. ‘Everyone wanted gaberdine. We had thousands of yards of the stuff – then poof – we couldn’t give it away. We had to job it all at a couple of shillings a yard. Then the hemlines went up and we were in trouble again.

‘I see that you and your mother have put down some quite large orders for materials, especially with—Textiles. I think you should cut them down.’

‘I don’t think we can cut them down,’ I said. ‘You remember what that fellow Calverley-Smith was telling us. “If you don’t put them down now you won’t get them at all.” You were in the room at the time.’

‘I’ll go and see them,’ said my father, brightening at the thought of action. ‘I know old Brown.’

He was as good as his word. Not only did he go and see old Brown and succeed in reducing the orders but he managed to extract a promise from him that he would reserve for us the same amount of material that we had originally ordered.

It was a triumph. I asked him how he had managed it.

‘I’ve known old Brown for years,’ he said. ‘We used to row together. We were at Marlow in ’94. I think it was ’94. I was stroke. He rowed bow. I took him to the Café Royal and we had a jolly good yarn. I paid for the lunch and he stood me a very nice bottle of Burgundy.

‘I wish I could keep Miss Stallybrass in order,’ he said. ‘She’s
put down a shocking order with … But they’re a difficult lot. Of French extraction. Mingy. You have to get up early to deal with them. I’ve managed to cut it by half but that’s still not enough. She’s a chancer,’ he said.

‘How did you do it?’

‘I told them that they might not get their money.’

‘Is it true?’ The very thought gave me a cold feeling in the stomach.

‘It will be if we go on at this rate,’ my father said.

Gradually the collection evolved. The making of it was like every other from the humblest to the most grandiose. An air of insanity pervaded the building. Materials failed to arrive, came in lengths too short to make anything but a woollen comforter, got stuck in the Customs, or were such a miserable parody of what had been originally ordered that Kathie sent them back to the manufacturers. When they did arrive intact and without flaws we ourselves proceeded to maltreat them. Expensive stuffs were singed by the pleaters or else lost their colour in the process and were the subject of litigation. Embroideries were executed in shiny silk thread instead of being matt. Belts arrived in the wrong sizes or came back covered in glue, or were irretrievably lost. The matcher left a piece of precious French lace from Dognin on top of a bus when returning with it from a dye works in Ilford. The Workroom was decimated by an unseasonable outbreak of influenza.

To me, paradoxical as it may seem, the most peaceful place of all during this period of gestation was our own workroom. It was high up at the back of the house and it had a glass roof like a conservatory. Here the cold, northern light cast no shadow. It was very quiet and at night when the girls had gone home and the stands with the models on them were covered with dust sheets the place had a ghostly quality like an illustration by Leech in the
Ingoldsby Legends. Only the postcards on the cupboard doors with love from Flo at Worthing, and Lily at Skegness, and the pin-ups of Alan Ladd and Bing gave it an air of homeliness.

This quietness persisted during the day. Here there was no worker’s playtime. No radio on the go as there was at Mr Grunbaum’s and Mrs Ribble’s. The girls worked in silence or else talked in undertones and it seemed to me, watching them, that with their quiet withdrawn expressions they resembled, old and young, the twelfth-century sculptures of Antelami which I had seen once in the Baptistery at Parma. The concentration which they gave to their work gave to them too a kind of beauty which they would not have had if they had been typists or shop assistants. Perhaps it was because this was what they wanted to do. Certainly they could have earned more in a factory. Yet when it was five-thirty and time to go they rushed and bustled down the scrubbed wooden staircase and in the street became ordinary girls once more at whom the van boys whistled or else forbidding matrons in velour coats with shopping bags making for the bus.

The Outworkers were my greatest preoccupation. They took their sample lengths and vanished into thin air. They were in no hurry. They had plenty of work on hand, for they were still making ‘specials’ for long-suffering customers from the previous season. Most of them were not on the telephone and they ignored postcards. It was only by making arduous journeys to Clapham, Peckham Rye and into the marsh lands of Kent and Essex that I managed to assemble the fruits of their labours.

In spite of the new sketches with which they had been provided and many hours of painstaking briefing, all the models which the outworkers produced were, with minute variations, exactly the same as those they had made for the last thirty years with the same amount of beading and drawn-thread work and this was regarded by everyone except myself as being highly satisfactory.

And there was Mrs Ribble. Within three days of being issued with the materials she was back with the new samples. She arrived with a huge, tent-like bundle constructed from old bed sheets in which they were concealed. She had made six full-length dinner dresses with sleeves in sizes that ranged from 44 to 48. Basically they were all the same. The only variation was in the way in which the skirts were pleated and in the designs of the sequin embroideries. There was no question of fitting as they were already finished; in any event we had no one on the premises whom they would have fitted.

To my unaccustomed eye they were all equally frightful.

‘Lovely, aren’t they dear?’ said Mrs Ribble breathing heavily on me. She had been eating garlic. ‘This is what you want. Nice supple line. Nice drapery. Perhaps your little girl will put them on.’

My assistant in the Gown Department was a girl called Yvonne. Yvonne put them on. The effect was overpowering. In Mrs Ribble’s size 44 which was cut with an unnecessary amplitude she looked infinitely lost and forlorn, like a parcel done up in yards and yards of crêpe-paper that had lost its string.

‘Lovely,’ said Mrs Ribble. ‘Look at the bugle beading. Just right for a Do.’

‘Mrs Ribble,’ I said. ‘Why on earth did you make them all in such large sizes?’

‘Why did I make ’em in such large sizes? That’s a damn silly question. So you can mark ’em off, of course. Show ’em in the hand. Mark ’em off quick soon as you’ve got an order and I’ll make a replacement. Robins’ is already repeating.’

‘Do you mean that these dresses are already on sale?’

‘Not these dresses, Mr Newby, other dresses. You don’t think I’d sell your dresses to Robins’ do you? If you think that Mr Newby all I can say is I’m very very sorry. I make all my dresses different. These are exclusive to Lane and Newby.’

‘But I can’t mark this one off. It’s got marks all over the skirt. It looks like gravy.’

‘Gravy,’ said Mrs Ribble. For the first time she sounded really affronted. ‘I can’t see any gravy. All my girls are very dainty with their work. I never allow food in the workroom.’

‘And this one’s got oil on it.’

‘Where’s it got oil on it? Show me the oil on it.’ She made a great business of examining the garment, holding it so close to her eyes that it would have been impossible for her to see anything at all. ‘Why those are just little marks. I can get those out in a moment.’

‘Well, get ’em out!’

‘I didn’t bring these dresses for you to pick holes in them you know,’ said Mrs Ribble.

Two hours later they were back. So far as I could see nothing whatever had been done to them. After unsuccessfully disputing Mrs Ribble’s bill I abandoned the struggle. There was no time left to do anything else.

‘Now that you have your own department I think you should go North with Wilkins,’ said my father. ‘He’s going on The Journey. I’ll speak to him about it. He makes all the arrangements.’

I was filled with foreboding. The Spring Collection was almost ready. By now I knew enough about myself to realise that so far as Lane and Newby’s was concerned I was what would be described in current jargon as ‘accident prone’. Anything I touched, however innocuous it seemed, became a travesty of its original nature. It was as if I carried with me the seeds of spectacular disaster which, unknowingly, I sowed broadcast and which shot up as monstrous growths to confront me. I felt like a witch doctor whose mumbo-jumbo worked.

The Journey took place twice a year. It was the visit to Sheffield on a grand scale. It lasted ten days to a fortnight. The timing of it was all-important. If it was made a week too early the Buyers had not received their buying allowance and if it was a week too late then they had spent it all. Anyone who made The Journey spoke of it with awe. Now that the Manager of the Gown Department was no more, the only survivors still in the business were my parents and Mr Wilkins.

Listening to them as they reminisced about it, unconscious of
the impression they were making, it seemed to me that the physical qualities needed were similar to those demanded of a competitor in the Modern Pentathlon, that gruelling Olympic event in which the participants ride horseback over a course littered with obstacles, fire pistols on an open range, fence, swim 300 metres in four minutes and run a cross-country – all in the space of five days.

It was not only physically exacting. The Journey also made considerable demands on the intellect. Exceptional adroitness was needed in answering leading questions. While it was impossible to give a truthful answer to most of them, it was equally disastrous to be detected in an actual falsehood as this would give an impression of moral instability.

There was a precise ritual connected with The Journey, in which future generations of savants may find as much significance as did the author of
The Golden Bough
in the slaying of the Priests at Nemi. It always began in the North with a visit to Glasgow and Edinburgh. The order in which they were visited was of no importance; it was impossible to do good business in both places. If the orders were large in Edinburgh then the Buyers in Glasgow were informed by some sort of bush-telegraph; the age-old animosity that exists between the inhabitants asserted itself and the orders were scaled down proportionately. If Glasgow was visited first then the same supernatural law operated, but in reverse. On one occasion my parents, in an endeavour to break this seemingly immutable sequence of events, changed their destination from Edinburgh to Glasgow at the last moment. They got no orders in either city. This happened before the war. It was now no longer possible to change one’s destination at the last moment; accommodation was ‘in short supply’ and had to be booked months in advance.

Using Glasgow and Edinburgh as bases, daylight raids could be made into the hinterland: to Dundee, Stirling, Perth and into
the Lowlands; to Ayr, Peebles and Berwick-on-Tweed. Travelling ‘light’, with only a few of the best models, it was possible to reach Aberdeen, but the further the traveller got from his base the more the human spirit failed. Mr Wilkins claimed that on one occasion he had reached Inverness, but no one at Lane and Newby’s really believed him. If he did get there all he managed to do was to ‘introduce himself’ as he put it. My mother always maintained that he did it by telephone.

South of the Border the journey took in Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool and the great industrial heart of England, at which, wreathed in the smoke and flames of a thousand blast furnaces, Miss Trumpet, of Throttle and Fumble of Sheffield, stood guard like some ravening Fury at the mouth of Hell.

This was The Journey. It petered out undramatically in the Midlands with a visit to Nottingham. Nothing else was worth doing, at least on this scale. Wales, as my father said with a degree of historic truth, was ‘another problem’. The Eastern Counties seemed purged of the thought of luxury by the winds that droned over them from the Ural mountains. The South Coast was so close to London that the Buyers went there anyway. In the West business was virtually non-existent, the further one travelled towards the setting sun the softer the air grew until in Devon and Somerset it was like trying to force one’s way through cotton wool. Decisions that were matters of a moment in the North, in Bath and Torquay were drawn out intolerably. Beyond the River Tamar, in Cornwall, commerce petered out completely; cream teas and the decoration of wooden objects with red-hot pokerwork entirely absorbed the inhabitants. ‘No money in it,’ said Mr Wilkins. He was quite right. The Journey was extremely expensive and the margin between success and financial failure was a hair’s-breadth.

I now had to decide which dresses to take with me. It was a difficult problem. My father had been at considerable pains to
brief me on the tastes of the Buyers whom I would encounter. They seemed to range from a degree of terrifying sophistication to one of extreme barbarism. I felt like the Swiss Family Robinson who, having landed on an alien shore with the materials for spending a night in the open, returned day after day to the wreck for objects which they might conceivably need in the future. In the end I took everything – even the hideous productions of Mrs Ribble, which I felt should have been consigned to an incinerator.

In the last hours before our departure I found myself divorced from all responsibility. I was being prepared for the sacrifice. Set apart, as if in a dream, I watched the listing of the dresses (at cost price for insurance purposes) and the packing of them as Yvonne laid them one by one in three cabin trunks, swathed in reams of tissue paper. The space that was left was filled with order books, patterns and collapsible cardboard boxes which it was intended that I should use when calling on recalcitrant customers or potential ones who refused to visit the hotel. To me it seemed impossible that the results of so much toil and tribulation could be compressed into such a small space.

In his own department Mr Wilkins was busy with the coats and suits. Before the war the heavy clothes had travelled in things called ‘coffins’, vast, black oblong boxes like sarcophagae, in which they hung uncreased. They were so heavy that no post-war porter would handle them. They now stood mouldering in serried ranks in the cellars, giving them something of the air of a crypt.

I drew my ‘expenses’ from Miss Gatling, but the pleasure of handling numbers of five-pound notes was swiftly dissipated. She was at considerable pains to point out that the whole venture was wildly profligate and that in her opinion my inclusion in it was a complete waste of money. It was difficult not to agree with her.

These pleasantries were reserved for me; confronted with the
stare of Mr Wilkins, as bland as that of a confidence trickster on board the
Mauretania
, she was strangely silent.

The reason for this was that in the course of the last fortnight a chink had shown itself in Miss Gatling’s seemingly impenetrable plate of proof, and Mr Wilkins knew of it. I knew of it too. It had become apparent when my father decided that the letter headings on the firm’s stationery were in need of modernisation.

‘I think we must change our style,’ he said. ‘We can’t go on talking about Mantles and Costumiers. There was a very decent young fellow here the other day, a representative from a printing firm. He showed me a lot of headings. Some of them were very agreeable. I don’t want to give our customers the impression that we’re stick-in-the-mud. I said I’d look into it. He was very keen on rowing. Belongs to Twickenham.’

With his usual enthusiasm my father looked into it. What he found was not very pleasing. In the cellars, secreted in the coffins which they entirely filled were box upon box of stationery of all kinds: writing paper, invoices, statements, memorandum books, credit notes and all the other paraphernalia of business communication. At the most conservative estimate there was sufficient to last Lane and Newby for five years. The whole lot was stamped in the old way with ‘Mantle Manufacturers and Wholesale Costumiers’ and a telephone number that was already extinct. This was the work of one of Miss Gatling’s minions who in the midst of some acute paper shortage had been prevailed upon to place this gargantuan order on the grounds that printing was cheaper in quantity. While the knowledge of this mistake filled Mr Wilkins and Miss Stallybrass with glee the only result, so far as I was concerned, was to plunge me into even greater melancholy. If this was the rate at which the modernisation of the firm was to proceed then it seemed unlikely that any of us would live to witness its conclusion.

Just before we left I had a final meeting with my father in his office.

‘Wilkins has written to the Scottish customers,’ he said. ‘And he’s got the tickets. You must have a good night’s sleep, otherwise you’ll be good-for-nothing tomorrow morning. I told him to book sleepers well in advance. Most of them are reserved for The Ministries. (He pronounced the words as though they were anathema.) Most of the time they never use ’em. Have a decent meal at night when you’re finished. You can get a steak in the Grill Room at the North British – or you used to be able to before the War. I remember they used to have quite a decent Burgundy. It cost six shillings a bottle. Probably double that now. If you run short of money old Will Y. Darling will let you have some.’ (He spoke of a lifelong friend of his, a Member of Parliament, an exceptional man who had successfully combined the drapery business with bookselling.)

I thought of my encounter with Sir Harold and the trouble that had caused. I promised myself that I would not invoke his aid or anyone else’s. This time I was wrong. Sir William Darling was an altogether different sort of man to Sir Harold.

‘I wish I was coming with you,’ he said, ‘but I’ve got this trouble you know.’ In his voice I detected a note of sadness. I thought of Mr Wilkins. ‘I wish you were,’ I said. And I really meant it.

The Night Scot left King’s Cross at ten fifteen. Mr Wilkins was so afraid that we should miss it that we arrived at the station long before the train came in. I had never seen him rattled before. Perhaps long years of travelling with my father had reduced him to this state. Going anywhere with my father by train was an even more nerve-shattering experience than walking with him in the street. Even when the train was actually in motion there was no way of knowing whether he was on it or not. On the boat train from Victoria he might appear just as it drew into Dover Marine,
remarking as he did so that he had had an interesting ‘chat’ with the Guard – on the other hand he might not. He was not one of those people who always manage to catch trains by the skin of their teeth, often he missed them altogether. The only way to deal with my father when travelling with him was to provide oneself with a complete set of tickets and documents and set off independently.

We made the journey from Great Marlborough Street to King’s Cross in three taxi cabs; Mr Wilkins having noted down the number of the taxi which was to proceed unescorted in the little book he kept for his expenses. To me, accustomed to Mediterranean taxis, it seemed an inadequate precaution. With such a load, valued at, if not worth, several thousand pounds, Alexandrian or Neapolitan taxi-men would have proceeded immediately to an outer suburb where our throats would have been cut and the loot divided. But Mr Wilkins knew what he was doing. Here in London the drivers were extremely reluctant to make the journey at all. Two of them owned vehicles that were on the point of collapse; the other man’s was brand new and he was afraid of scratching it. Their fears were justified. By the time we got to the station all three were damaged.

We were seen off the premises by Brandon, the Porter. He had stayed on late in order to lock up afterwards and set the burglar alarms. He was a little old man with a walrus moustache and an extremely independent mind, who had the interests of the business at heart. When not engaged in wrapping parcels and taking them to the post office in Wardour Street on a trolley he spent his time shoring-up the rapidly decaying fabric of the building. To this end he usually carried with him a long ladder.

‘That’s nice. I like that,’ he used to say to no one in particular, stopping to admire one of Miss Stallybrass’s productions just as she was showing it to a customer ‘in the hand’. ‘Nice bit of stuff!’
and, picking up his ladder which he had put down in order to examine the garment more closely, went on his way humming something in a minor key that sounded like the Funeral March. Customers who were treated in this way were so taken aback that invariably they bought the model he had admired and, according to Miss Stallybrass, equally invariably sold it. As a result Brandon had the same kind of position in the hierarchy at Lane and Newby’s as a chimney sweep at a fashionable wedding and if he failed to find anything worth stopping for whilst on passage through the showrooms it was regarded as a bad omen.

On this particular night he was a wild figure as he stood at the door of Number Fifty-Four dressed in a military greatcoat and a tweed motoring cap of my father’s that was several sizes too large for him. In one hand he carried a truncheon at ‘the ready’ which my father had insisted on issuing to him in case he was ‘set upon’, in the other a candle lantern; around his neck on a cord he wore a police whistle. In spite of all this equipment he looked as though a gust of wind might blow him to smithereens.

‘Well, if you’re all right, I’ll get locked up,’ he said as soon as the six wicker baskets and the three cabin trunks had been squeezed aboard the three taxis, and without waiting for a reply slammed the front door in our faces with such violence that the ram’s head knocker knocked itself – upon which Brandon’s voice could be heard from inside asking, ‘Who’s there?’