A Traveller's Life (19 page)

For months and years afterwards letters continued to arrive at the London offices of Secker & Warburg, either for onward transmission to the Lama or concerning him. With the exception of those who had actually been in Tibet or Central Asia, the majority of writers were not interested in whether Hoskins was a Lama or the Lama was Hoskins. They wanted to believe in this strange traveller who had come to the West from what had been for most of them an unknown world. Some of these letters were expressed on a high level of fantasy. One of them, sent by a M. Morkeh who
lived on the Côte d'Ivoire in French West Africa and addressed to Fred Warburg, apparently under the impression that Fred and the Lama were one and the same, read as follows:

Dear Sir,

Many thanks to God the Almighty that He has given you to me. I know your place is the light, and my sufferings in seeking for the spiritual light will soon be ended. Now, I have spent a lot of money in so many societies to open my Third Eye of the Soul Eye, but I am still in darkness. For many people are using false teachings for the purpose of their simple living. Therefore, I wish to put an end to every society, and have great correspondences with you till the end. [‘Oh, no, he's not,' Fred said, firmly, when I read this to him.] I believe that by walking with you for some time, my Soul's Eye will be opened. Immediately you receive this my humble letter, try to send me your list or a catalogue, if you have some books to borrow, state to me. Try to send me one strong prayer book of help. Awaiting you for helpful, favourable and immediate reply by the return airmail.

As with other such letters, if any such can be imagined, there was very little that could be done as neither Fred, nor apparently the Lama's agent, had any idea of where, by this time, the Lama had gone.

I joined the John Lewis Partnership at the invitation of the Chairman in the autumn of 1959. The Partnership was, and still is, a highly successful and efficient business organization, the members of which, known as Partners, own, among other ventures, a chain of department stores. Originally, when I first talked with him, his idea was that I might be employed in some part of the organization in which my literary capabilities could be used, perhaps in a section dealing with public relations or internal propaganda, which played an important part in making the Partners credible to themselves and in generally reinforcing the Partnership's mystique; but he later came to the conclusion that initially I ought to be employed in the commercial side.

That autumn I became a shop assistant in the China and Glass Department at Peter Jones in Sloane Square, the most sophisticated of the Partnership's stores, just in time to take part in the Christmas rush. Apart from working in Piece Goods, or Carpets, which also required a considerable degree of physical fitness, China and Glass was one of the tougher assignments, from the point of view of an assistant, that one could have at Peter Jones. What were on show in the department – which was bang opposite the main
entrance on the ground floor – in the way of tea sets and dinner services were mostly prototypes, the majority of the stock being kept in the basement. This meant that every time anyone made a sale of a tea set, for instance, it was necessary to go below and assemble one in the stockroom from its constituent parts. By the time the store shut in the evening, particularly during the weeks before Christmas when it kept open late, after innumerable descents and ascents to and from the stockroom, one was on one's knees.

On my first day in China and Glass I made two spectacular sales which seemed to augur well for my future success in this field. The first, ten minutes after the store had opened on Monday morning (by which time I had not even mastered the technique of making out a bill), was to a beautiful Canadian widow, dressed in funeral black which, if anything, added to her charms. It was for an enormous dinner service hand-painted with reproductions of Thornton's illustrations for his
Temple of Flora
, which cost what was at that time a small fortune, and for which she actually wanted to pay in advance.

This dinner service, the produce of an illustrious firm in the Potteries, was only made to special order, and in those happy, far-off days in which demand outstripped supply, took anything up to a year to complete. In this particular instance it took so long that, by the time the dinner service had been despatched to Peter Jones from the factory, the beautiful widow had herself died and it had to be delivered to her executors.

My second sale was of an extremely expensive, and I would have thought highly undesirable, piece of statuary executed in Lalique glass. I made it to a lady from St John's Wood with rather alarmingly tinted hair, which made her look as if she had a tortoise perched on her head. These two sales, which had an electrifying effect on the department's weekly sales statistics in what were the
pre-Christmas doldrums, were regarded with some awe by everyone concerned, not least myself. Unfortunately they proved to be nothing more than beginner's luck, and for the rest of my time in the department I hardly ever sold anything that retailed for more than £20 ($56).

From China and Glass I was sent to the Do-It-Yourself Department, at that time a comparative innovation, in Jones Brothers, a cheerful, less classy Partnership store in the Holloway Road, where I sold tintacks, nails, hinges, glue and so on. From it I returned to Peter Jones, where I became an assistant in Women's Coats – I was debarred from working in the Dress Department as I would not have been allowed in the fitting rooms. I found that I had a considerable aptitude for this work, which was not really surprising since I had spent so much of my life selling coats to store buyers. Some of the coats I sold were extremely expensive models from French and Italian couture houses that had been bought for copying purposes; they were then put on sale and knocked down to the customers for what, although they did not appreciate the fact, was a fraction of what they originally cost. There were regulations in the Partnership regarding the marking-down of what was known as age-rated stock; these regulations were so strictly enforced that when the Partnership first began to offer antique silver to its customers at what was already a highly competitive price and it failed to sell within the time limit allowed, it too became age-rated and was marked down, at which moment it was snapped up by dealers in the King's Road for profitable re-sale.

From the Coat Department I went to the Intelligence Department, housed in what was then the new John Lewis store in Oxford Street, where I was put to work on Fashion. One of the main tasks of the Intelligence Department, which was widely feared by the Partnership's central buyers (as I was to fear it when
I, too, became a buyer), was to evaluate the stocks held in its own stores and in those of its competitors. It also kept a continuous check on the prices its competitors charged, in support of the Partnership's rather boastful-sounding claim, which was perfectly genuine although few of its customers believed it, that it was ‘Never Knowingly Undersold'. In fact any Partner who successfully identified an undersale on a competitor's premises was rewarded, and some of the younger and fitter assistants in Oxford Street at that time used to supplement their wages by doing this during their lunch-hour.

As a member of Intelligence I spent hours going through the rails of our own stores, which were strung out between Southampton and Liverpool, and those of rival stores and fashion shops. While doing so I would record the entire order of battle of some particular department such as, for example, wedding dresses, noting what materials they were made of, how many were in stock of each, and in what sizes, and whenever possible I would identify the manufacturer. You could often do this by simply asking an assistant.

While I was working for Intelligence I was offered what everyone said was one of the best buyerships in the Partnership, that of women's stockings. I was aghast when I discovered that in order to learn enough about stockings to be able to fill this post I would have to spend some months behind the counter at Peter Jones and at one of the provincial stores, selling stockings to the customers. It was not so much the idea of buying stockings that I minded, although without legs in them it was difficult to imagine anything more boring than these deflated by-products of lumps of coal. It was simply that I had never seen a man selling stockings in a department store and I did not fancy being a pioneer in this field.

I subsequently received a letter from the Director of Trading
(Department Stores), the gist of which was that in the course of our reviewing together at some length the advantages and disadvantages of my becoming the Central Buyer of the Stocking Department, I had made it clear that while perfectly willing to do whatever the Partnership asked I had at present a distaste for Stockings as a commodity. He, on the other hand thought the suggested appointment was the right thing for the Partnership and myself and that none of the management thought it likely that I would be required to hold this particular Buyership for a long term of years. All buying was interesting, and over much of the buying field the mechanics of the operation were as interesting as the merchandise purchased, and if I really looked this problem in the face, I would accept the Buyership …

I did what he suggested – looked women's stockings in the face – and accepted the Buyership. I was constrained to do so by a remark that the Director of Trading let fall in the course of our conversation, in reply to my question as to what would happen if I did not accept. ‘Shall we say,' he said, ‘that your future use to the Partnership might be somewhat limited.'

On the following Monday morning, having had a manicure in order to avoid ruining the merchandise, I reported for duty in the Stocking Department at Peter Jones. There, confronted by my first customer, I thought I was going to faint. No words would come out in reply to her request for a pair of sixty gauge, fifteen denier, seamless supersheers in misty beige, I think it was. I slunk away and telephoned the Director of Personnel and told him that I could not be the Stocking Buyer. If necessary I would resign from the Partnership. He thought I was queer, as everyone else did, but he told me to go back to the Intelligence Department and continue my work there, instead, while my future, if any, with the Partnership was considered.

Back with Intelligence, which was entirely staffed by women
Partners at that time, I was given a gigantic task, one which unless they were transvestites they could scarcely carry out themselves. I was ordered to evaluate the stocks of men's suits, odd jackets, blazers, trousers, and raincoats in six of the Partnership's stores and in those of their rivals, testing them for value, sizing (I was a stock size 4 long) and fit. This meant, in addition to trying on raincoats, jackets and blazers in our own and rival establishments, that I was undressing more or less completely anything up to forty or fifty times a day. Before setting out I was given money in case some super-salesman got me into a position when I had to buy one of his suits, but I never did. By the time this lengthy investigation drew to a close I had lost most of the fly-buttons on two of my own suits.

The last city in which I carried out my investigations was Southampton and, while returning to London on an evening train, I was approached by a small man who introduced himself to me as the Assistant General Inspector of the John Lewis Partnership, an appellation which made him sound like something out of Kafka rather than someone who had worked for a German stores group until Hitler appeared on the scene.

‘I know what you are doing,' this individual said, the only one in the Partnership I had so far identified as having his shirts made by Turnbull & Asser and getting his hats from Lock. ‘And now I want to ask you what, in your opinion, is the best medium-weight woollen suit retailing for less than fifteen pounds [$42] that you have discovered in the course of your evaluations?'

‘I think,' I said, since my time in the Intelligence Department had made me almost as didactic as he was, ‘that the best suit of this kind is marketed by C & A, in their store in Oxford Street. It is made in Holland in two shades, blue mixture and grey mixture. It is made in all normal sizes in short, regular, long, portly and regular portly. Even the foreparts of the legs of the
trousers are lined, which is very rare in ready-to-wear clothing in this country, although it is commonplace in Italy. This suit is the best within the limits you set. I have no doubt of this. I can tell you more about it if you would like me to.'

‘Good,' he said. ‘I, too, am of the same opinion.'

Although I suspected that what he said was bullshit, I could not help but admire his nerve. Perhaps as a result of this confrontation and the huge report I wrote which embalmed the results of my findings on men's clothes, or perhaps as a result of various other confrontations, I was offered the Central Buyership of MG (otherwise Model Gowns), which in the Partnership at that time meant all dresses retailing at ten guineas and upwards, for twelve of their stores.

The position of MG Buyer was, according to the testimony of one or two of the previous incumbents to whom I had been able to speak who no longer worked for the Partnership, about as safe as working in a factory producing nitro-glycerine. However, before taking it up I worked for six months as assistant to Lionel Wharrad, the Managing Director of Peter Jones, a marvellously dynamic Welshman who had risen from the ranks and was adored by his staff. He was often at loggerheads with the Central Administration of the Partnership. My job was to provide him with facts and statistics that he could use to prove to them that so far as fashion was concerned at Peter Jones, Central Buying was less efficient than buying carried out by buyers who bought for Peter Jones alone, buyers who were, in fact, also department managers. This period, helping him to do battle with the Central Administration, was the only one I really enjoyed in the years I worked for the Partnership.

As the MG Buyer I bought day dresses, dresses with jackets, long and short evening dresses, what used to be called ‘cocktail dresses', wedding dresses – the buying of which for hours on end
filled me with the same sort of horror of spectral whiteness to which Melville devoted some space in
Moby Dick
– and bridesmaids' dresses, the most unbuyable and unwearable of all dresses.

I never realized how popular I could be until I became Central Buyer of dresses retailing at ten guineas (about $28) and upwards, and sat with my new-found friends, the manufacturers, in their showrooms in the wholesale jungles east and west of Great Portland Street, or in the equally ghastly regions of what had once been Mayfair, watching the model girls come prancing on like racehorses that had been given a shot of steroid in garments that Louie, or Harry or Charlie or Sidney told me were going to be ‘very big'.

Talking to them I used to feel as if I had taken one of those courses by post – ‘You, too, can be the life and soul of the party' – and that I was witty, gay, even astute (well, perhaps not astute) and even, on occasions, funny. ‘Now this is going to be very big, Mr Newby, very very big' – this as some dreary old number zoomed past. ‘Come back, Patsy, and let Mr Newby have another look at it … Very funny, Mr Newby. He's got a wonderful sense of humour, Mr Newby has, hasn't he, Joyce? Can I get you some sandwiches, Mr Newby? Some smoked salmon sandwiches for Mr Newby! And what about a noggin, Mr Newby? A glass of champagne for Mr Newby! I expect you'd like to get the order down now, Mr Newby, so I'll leave you with Joyce.'