Stories (11 page)

Even that he found attractive. What was so charming about her was her directness, the simplicity of her responses. She knew nothing of the secret sycophancy of the office that made the typists speak to Mr. Jones in one voice and Miss Ives in another. She treated everyone as if she had known them always. She was as confiding as a child, read her letters out loud, jumped with joy when parcels came from home, and wept when someone suggested gently that there were better ways of doing her work.

For she was catastrophically inefficient. She was supposed to learn filing; but in actual fact she made the tea, slipped over
to the teashop across the road ten times a day for cream cakes, and gave people advice about their colds or how to make their dresses.

The other typists, who were, after all, her natural enemies, were taken by surprise and treated her with the tenderest indulgence. It was because it occurred to no one that she could last out the first month. But Miss Ives made out her second paycheck, which was very generous, with a grim face, and snubbed her until she cried.

It was Miss Ives, who was afraid of nothing, who at last walked into Mr. Jones’s office and said that the child was impossible and must leave at once. As it was, the files would take months to get straight. No one could find anything.

She came back to her desk looking grimmer than ever, her lips twitching.

She said angrily, “I’ve kept myself for twenty-seven years this March. I’ve never had anything. How many women have the qualifications I have? I should have had a pretty face.” And then she burst into tears. It was mild hysterics. Mr. Brooke was the first to fuss around with water and handkerchiefs. No one had ever seen Miss Ives cry.

And what about? All Mr. Jones had said was that Marnie was the daughter of an old school friend and he had promised to look after her. If she was no good at filing, then she must be given odd jobs.

“Is this an office or a charitable institution?” demanded Miss Ives. Tve never seen anything like this, never.” And then she turned to Mr. Brooke, who was leaning ineffectually over her, and said, “There are other people who should go too. I suppose he was a friend of your father? Getting drunk and making a pig of yourself. Pictures of girls in your desk, and putting grease on your hair in the washrooms …”

Mr. Brooke went white, tried to find words, looked helplessly round for support to Miss Jenkins and Richards. They did not meet his eyes. He felt as if they were dealing him invisible blows on the face; but after a few moments Miss Ives put away her handkerchief, picked up her pen with a gesture of endurance, and went back to her ledger. No one looked at Mr. Brooke.

He made himself forget it. She was hysterical, he said. Women would say anything. He knew from what men had told
him that there were times you should take no notice of them. An old maid, too, he said spitefully, wishing he could say it aloud, forgetting that she, too, had made of her weakness a strength, and that she could not be hurt long by him, any more than he could by her.

But that was not the only case of hysteria. It seemed extraordinary that for years these people had worked together, making the same jokes, asking after each other’s health, borrowing each other’s things, and then everything went wrong from one day to the next.

For instance, one of the typists wept with rage all of one morning because Mr. Jones sent back a letter to be retyped. Such a thing had never been known. Such was his manner, as a rule, that a reprimand was almost as warming as praise.

As for Marnie herself, she was like a small child who does not know why it had been slapped. She wandered about the office miserably, sniffing a little, until by chance Mr. Jones saw her and asked what was wrong. She began to cry, and he took her into his room. The door was shut for over an hour while clients waited. When she came out, subdued but cheerful, the typists cold-shouldered her. Then she rushed in to Miss Ives and asked if she could move her desk into the main office, because the other girls were “nasty” to her. Very naturally Miss Ives was unsympathetic, and she cried again, with her head among the papers on Mr. Brooke’s desk. It happened to be the nearest.

It was lunch hour. Everyone left but Marnie and Mr. Brooke. The repugnance she felt for this elderly man with the greasy faded hair, the creased white hands, the intimate unpleasant eyes melted in the violence of her misery. She allowed him to stroke her hair. She cried on his shoulder as she had cried on Mr. Jones’s shoulder that morning.

“No one likes me,” she sobbed.

“Of course everyone likes you.”

“Only Mr. Jones likes me.”

“But Mr. Jones is the boss …” stammered Mr. Brooke, appalled at her incredible ingenuousness. His heart ached for her. He caressed the damp bundle huddled over his desk gently, paternally, wanting only to console her. “If you could just remember this is an office, Marnie.”

“I don’t want to work in an office. I want to go home. I want my mother. I want Mr. Jones to send me home. He says I can’t. He says he will look after me….”

When they heard steps on the stairs Mr. Brooke guiltily slipped back to his corner; and Marnie stood up, sullen and defiant, to face Miss Ives, who ignored her. Marnie dragged her feet across the floor to the typists’ room.

“I suppose you have been encouraging her,” said Miss Ives. “She needs a good spanking. I’ll give it to her myself soon.”

“She’s homesick,” he said.

“What about her stepfather in there?” snapped Miss Ives, jerking her head at Mr. Jones’s door.

“He’s sorry for her,” said Mr. Brooke, defending his own new feeling of protectiveness for the girl.

“Some people have no eyes in their heads,” she said unpleasantly. “Taking her to the pictures. Taking her to dinner every night. I suppose that is being sorry for her, too?”

“Yes, it is,” said Mr. Brooke hotly. But he was sick with dismay and anger. He wanted to hit Miss Ives, wanted to run into Mr. Jones’s room and hit him, wanted to do something desperate. But he sat himself down at his desk and began adding figures. He was behindhand as usual. “Slow but sure, that’s what I am,” he said to himself, as always, when he saw how the work piled up and he never was level with it. But that afternoon Miss Ives returned him three sheets of calculations and said, “Try to be more accurate, Mr. Brooke, if you please.”

At four, when Mr. Jones came through the front office on his way home, Marnie was waiting to catch his eyes. He stopped, smiling; then realised the entire staff were watching, and went on, reddening.

Marnie’s lips quivered again.

“More rain coming,” said Miss Ives acidly.

“Can I take you to your bus stop?” asked Mr. Brooke, defying Miss Ives. There was laughter from the open door of the typists’ room. Mr. Brooke had heard that kind of laugh too often, after he had left a room, to care about it now. Marnie tossed her head at Miss Ives. “I should be pleased,” she said daintily.

They walked down the stairs, she racing in front, he trying to keep up. She seemed to dance down the street; the sun was shining; it dazzled in her bright hair. Mr. Brooke was panting, smiling, trying to find breath to talk. He knew that above their
heads Miss Ives and the others were leaning over the sill and watching them with scornful disgusted faces. He did not care; but when he saw Mr. Jones come out of a shop, as if he had been waiting for Marnie, he stopped guiltily and said: “Goodnight, sir.”

Mr. Jones nodded, not looking at him. To Marnie he said, smiling gently, “Feeling happier? Don’t worry, you won’t be in an office for long. Some lucky man will marry you soon.” It was the sort of thing he said to his typists. But not as he said it now.

Marnie laughed, ran up to him, kissed his cheek.

“Well!” said Mr. Jones, looking fatuously pleased. He glared over Mamie’s head at Mr. Brooke, who hurried off down the street as if he had been given an order, without looking around. Soon he heard Marnie pattering up behind him.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said reproachfully.

Her face was happy, guileless. “He’s like my dad,” she said.

At the bus stop Mr. Brooke suddenly could not bear to see her go. He caught her arm and said, “Come to my place and see my dog Twister. You would like him.”

She said, “You know, I didn’t like you at first. I do now.”

“My dog can fetch the newspaper in the morning,” he said. “He never tears it.”

“I like dogs,” she said confidingly, as if it were the most surprising news in the world.

When they reached his room he was so proud, so flustered, that he could only look at her and smile. He unlocked it with shaking hands and dropped the key when he saw the landlady peeping through her window. Marnie picked it up and went before him into his room as if taking possession of it.

“What a nice room,” she said. “But it’s too small. If you moved your bed …”

She darted over to the divan he slept on and pushed it across a corner. Then she patted cushions, moved a chair, and turned to him. “That’s much better,” she said. “I’m good at this sort of thing. I’m a home girl. That’s what my mum says. She didn’t want me to come to an office. Dad and Mr. Jones fixed it up.”

“Your mother is quite right,” said Mr. Brooke devotedly.

It was then she paused to look about her, and it was then her face changed and Mr. Brooke slowly went cold. He saw the room with her eyes, and saw himself, too, as she would see him henceforward.

It was a small room, with patterned wallpaper, all roses and ribbons. The canary hung in the window, the dog’s basket was under the bed. There was nothing else of Mr. Brooke in the room that had been inhabited by so many people before him. Except the pictures, which covered most of the wallpaper.

Marnie moved forward slowly, with a queer hunching of her shoulders, as if a draught blew on them, and Mr. Brooke went after her, unconsciously holding out his hands behind her back in appeal.

“I must buy some pictures,” he said, trying to sound casual.

There were film stars, bathing beauties, half-nude women all over his walls, dozens of them.

He knew, instinctively, that he should ask for her pity, as she had asked for his. He said: “I can’t afford to buy pictures.”

But when she turned towards him at last, he knew his expression must be wrong, for she searched his face, and looked as if she had trodden on something unpleasant.

“I had forgotten about them,” he cried, truthfully and desperately. Then: “I’m not like that, Marnie, not really.”

Her hand swung out and stung his cheek. “You dirty old man,” she said. “You dirty, dirty old man.”

She ran out of his room, and as she went the landlady came in.

“Baby-snatching?” she said. “You can’t have women here, I told you.”

“She’s my daughter,” said Mr. Brooke.

The door slammed. He sat on his bed and looked at the walls, and felt, for just a few moments, old and mean and small. Then he recovered himself and said aloud: “Well, and what do you expect, making me live alone?” He was addressing not only Marnie and the landlady but all the women he had seen in the street, or on the screen, or eating at the next table.

“You wouldn’t have stayed, anyway,” he muttered at last. He began tearing the pictures off the walls. Then he slowly put them back again. He even cut out a new one from a paper called ?arisian Fancies, which he had sent for because of an advertisement, and hung it immediately over his bed. “That will give you something to think about,” he said to the landlady, whom he could hear stomping about in the next room. Then he went out and got very drunk indeed.

Next morning the landlady saw the picture while he was in
his bath, and told him he must go or she would fetch the police. “Indecent exposure, that’s what it is,” she said.

“Do you think I care?” said Mr. Brooke.

He was still a little drunk when he reached the office. He walked in aggressively, and at once Miss Ives sniffed and stared at him. She got up immediately and went into Mr. Jones’s room. Mr. Jones came out with her and said: “If you do this again, Brooke, you must go. There’s a limit to everything.”

Through the open door, Mr. Brooke could see Marnie swinging herself round and round in Mr. Jones’s big chair, eating sweets.

Towards the middle of the morning Miss Jenkins started to cry and said, “Either she goes or I do.”

“Don’t worry,” said Miss Ives. She nodded her head up and down significantly. “It won’t last. Something will happen, one way or the other. Things can’t go on like this.” Miss Jenkins went home, saying she had a headache. Richards went into Mr. Jones’s office for something and came out, too angry to speak. The typewriters were silent next door. No one did any work except Miss Ives. It seemed everyone was waiting.

At lunchtime they all left early. Mr. Brooke stayed in the office. His head ached, his limbs were stiff, and he couldn’t face the two flights of stairs. He ate sandwiches and then went to sleep with his head on his desk. When he woke he was still alone. He could not think clearly and wondered for a moment where he was. Then he saw flies gathering over the crumbs on his papers and got up stiffly to fetch a duster. The door into the typists’ room was closed. He opened it a few inches and peered cautiously through. He thought for a moment he was still asleep, for there were Marnie and Mr. Jones. His face was buried in her hair, and he was saying, “Please, Marnie, please, please, please …” as if he were drunk.

Mr. Brooke stared, his eyes focussing with difficulty. Then Marnie gave a little scream and Mr. Jones jumped up. “Spying!” he said angrily.

Mr. Brooke had lost his breath. His mouth fell open; his hands spread out helplessly. Finally, he said to Marnie, “Why didn’t you slap his face?”

She ran across the room shouting, “You dirty old man, you dirty old man!”

“He’s older than I am.”

“You shut up, Brooke,” said Mr. Jones.

“He has grownup children. He has grandchildren, Marnie.”

Mr. Jones lifted his fist; but at that moment Marnie said triumphantly, “I’m going to marry him. I’m going to get married. So there!” Mr. Jones dropped his arm; and his angry red face became slowly complacent, grateful, adoring.

Mr. Brooke saw that she had said that for the first time; that if he had not entered perhaps she would never have said it.