Bond Street Story (10 page)

A large hot hand descended on her knee. “Show you the sights,” Mr. Bulping said.

And still with his hand resting there as though the girls he took out naturally expected that kind of thing, he leant forward to speak to the chauffeur.

“Ivory Tower,” he said. “Make it snappy.”

And the very fact that it was the Ivory Tower at all was provoking. Because Marcia had never been to the Ivory Tower before. Out of the whole score of night clubs where the manager would have come forward smiling, bowing from the hips, delighted to see her there again, Mr. Bulping had chosen the one place where she knew no one. It was so humiliating that she could have cried.

But once they got there it was all right. The first person they met was a young peer who had taken her out once or twice himself. She felt her poise returning as she introduced him. But somehow Mr. Bulping didn't seem to be impressed. Hardly seemed to notice in fact. He was talking over his shoulder to the waiter. “Usual table, Charley,” he was saying. “And put a bottle in the bucket.”

Not that they sat at the table very much. Mr. Bulping was a keen dancer. And a remarkably energetic one. When he got on to the floor he liked to remain there. They were right up against the band the first time it stopped, and Mr. Bulping looked up indignantly. “Come along, Charley,” he said to the band leader. “What's the matter with you? Give us a number.”

But The worst thing about the dancing was Mr. Bulping's heat. He seemed to be in a raging fever, as though she had caught up
with him in the middle of a malaria bout. It was like dancing with a large hot-water bottle. The perspiration was fairly streaming off him by now. And he came of a school that holds its partners very closely. She suffered the sensation of being crushed to death in a tropic jungle. If the band had been armed with blow-pipes instead of saxophones it could not have been more terrifying. Marcia felt herself swaying.

“Tired, dear,” Mr. Bulping asked. “Why not go back to your place?”

Mr. Bulping looked larger than ever inside the tiny flat. And more possessive. It was like having the landlord to tea. He reminded her vaguely of her first father-in-law, the one who had bred short-horns. But what she hadn't been prepared for was Mr. Bulping's pipe. Without warning, without even having asked her permission, he suddenly brought it out, charred and sordid-looking, and was sitting there in her small boudoir chair, smoking as comfortably as if he had been in some bar-parlour in the Midlands. Not quite so comfortably perhaps. Because the chair was about two sizes too small for him. The arms creaked and bent outwards every time he crossed his legs.

And Marcia simply didn't know what to do with him. She had been prepared for, expecting, dreading, hoping for—she was tired, and her emotions were becoming a bit confused by now—something entirely uninhibited the moment the front door closed after them. If he had broken two or three of her ribs in a passionate hug on the doormat she would not have been surprised. Or asked her to sit on his knee. Or become sentimental, and started kissing her hand. Anything, in fact, but this.

“ ... mind you, there's no point in rushing it,” he was saying, as though she were a meeting of the Neptune Swimsuit board. “The law's got to take its time, and the case doesn't come up until next session. That's why I've got to be so careful. But after September it'll be different. I shall be a free man again. And it isn't as if I 'adn't got something to offer. I 'aven't been doing so badly lately ...”

From the hearthrug Marcia looked up at him. This was another of her poses, hands folded in her lap and her head turned three-quarters away from the camera to show the neck line.

“I don't know why you're telling me all this, Mr. Bulping,” she said quietly.

But that was where Mr. Bulping was so masterful and disarming. He didn't allow a girl even to have any nice feelings of her own. Extricating himself from the flimsy boudoir chair and putting
his pipe down on the polished satinwood table alongside the Dresden Shepherdess, he came over to her.

“Yes, you do,” he said. “You're not daft.”

And when she spread out her hands appealingly he caught hold of her wrists and pulled her up.

“Let's 'ave a kiss,” he said.

And then Marcia knew that all her premonitions had been correct. His arms were right round her. One second longer and it would be the spine as well as the ribs that would be giving way under the pressure of this sex-starved Napoleon from Wolverhampton.

 

Mr. Privett was back at Rammell's again. But the doctor had been quite right. Three full days in bed. And then two more pottering round the house, simply sitting about in chairs and reading the paper. It meant one full week away from Bond Street. And what was so hurtful was that Mr. Bloot totally ignored him. Seemed unaware that anything had even happened to his friend.

That was why it felt so good, so reassuring, to be seated beside him again. Mr. Bloot was sympathetic but mysterious. Said he'd been busy and he hadn't heard. There, during the eleven o'clock break, Mr. Privett had to tell him everything. And Mr. Bloot, hot and flushed from the strong Indian tea that he was drinking, ran his handkerchief across his forehead and listened.

But, even though he was sympathetic, he seemed somehow to be disapproving as well. For when Mr. Privett had finished Mr. Bloot only frowned and shook his head.

“Yurss, I know,” he said. “But it's bad just the same. Doesn't do to get mixed up with the police. Not men in our position. Cahn't afford it. Bahnd to leak aht in the long run.”

As soon as he had finished speaking, he shook his head again. He had assumed the air of immense authority of a man who has studied the effects of even quite casual encounters with authority, and has been shocked and chastened by what he has seen. Mr. Privett felt a small cold rivulet of fear running down his spine.

“But there hasn't been a summons or anything like that,” he explained hurriedly. “They only took down a few particulars. It isn't as if anybody had been killed. I probably shan't never hear from them again. Never.”

Mr. Bloot thrust out his nether lip.

“Yur'll 'ear all right,” he said. “Yur mark my words. Yur'll 'ear.”

Then came that ominous head shake once more, and Mr. Privett glanced up nervously at the clock. It now showed 11.15. That meant that it was time for both Mr. Bloot and Mr. Privett to be getting back to their particular floors. Mr. Privett got stiffly to his feet.

But Mr. Bloot stopped him.

“Wot yur need,” he said, prodding into Mr. Privett's side with his forefinger to emphasize the significance of the remark, “is er solicitor. That's what yur need. Er solicitor. Someone to represent
yur. Yur didn't ought to have come back down into the shop at all. What yur ought to do is to walk straight out of here now, and find a solicitor before it's too late.” Mr. Bloot paused. He was breathing heavily again. “But yur better make some inquiries first,” he went on. “A divorce lawyer wouldn't help yur. Or a police court man. What yur need is er naccident specialist. The others'd be worse tha no one.”

Another small, icy drop ran down Mr. Privett's spine. It seemed that whichever way he turned he was faced by dangers. So, both to bring the conversation to an end and to keep up his own spirits, he tried to pooh-pooh the whole affair.

“I don't want no solicitor,” he said. “It's making too much of it.”

But Mr. Bloot would allow none of that.

“Wot about your counter-claim?” he demanded.

“My what?”

Mr. Bloot pursed his lips. He was really at the top of his form by now. Immense. Knowledgeable. Majestic.

“Yur want a new boat, don't yur?” he asked. “Oo d'yur think's going to pay for that? Yur or the motor-coach company? And how much d'yer think yur'd get out of the motor-coach company if yur write to them yurself? Nothing. They probably wouldn't even answer. But if it's ur solicitor. He'd take 'em in Court if they didn't. And there's damages, too.” Mr. Bloot's eyes were misty and unfocused for a moment at the thought of the huge, almost unassessable damages that were Mr. Privett's simply for the asking. “Properly 'andled this ought to be worth 'undreds to yur. Literally 'undreds. But only if your solicitor gets in first.”

Mr. Privett was silent for a moment.

“You're quite right,” he said at last. “I see that now. I'd better do something about it.”

He was ashamed, bitterly ashamed, to think how he had misjudged Mr. Bloot. At first, he had seemed merely off-hand. Disinterested. Even callous. Some of the time he had not appeared to be listening at all, just sitting there concentrating on his tea. But that had only been Mr. Bloot's way. Because all the while he had been really worrying about his friend, working out wonderful schemes for him. Mr. Privett saw now that he owed a duty to his family. It was Mr. Bloot who had opened his eyes for him.

Mr. Privett however, was only half right. In point of fact, Mr. Bloot had not been listening all the time. For the greater
part of it, indeed, he had been thinking of someone else. It was his own love-affair that was absorbing him. It now obliterated everything. It had become obsessional.

It had not been an instantaneous flare-up, a sudden and compulsive affair of passion. Mr. Bloot had known the lady for some time. And, at least in the early stages, there had been nothing particularly romantic or tempestuous about their friendship. Simply a slow middle-aged ripening. A late Septemberish, even Octoberish affair. What had begun as no more than an exchange of retail courtesies across a shop counter had gradually softened into something gentler, with Mr. Bloot lingering helplessly at the counter after the transaction was over. The good-byes had, indeed lately become almost meaninglessly protracted. For whole minutes on end the two of them would just stand there, not even speaking, merely looking at each other.

There may, of course, have been hidden fires on her side before even the first spark began to show. Certainly the lady had been kind to him. It was something to have been able to drop into the little tobacconist's at any time during those terrible war years, and come out with ten perfectly good Players, when the rest of London was smoking unheard-of makes that might still have been all right in Cairo or Stamboul but smelt distinctly out of place in Tufnell Park.

It may, of course, have been Mr. Bloot's good looks that had done it. His good looks and the natural distinction of his manner. He was easily the most imposing customer to patronize the tiny shop. Because no matter what allowances you were ready to make for its central position—next door to the Underground and exactly opposite the bus stop—the shop was undeniably an extremely small one. Even pokey. Only half a shop, in fact. It had been scooped out of a frontage that still accommodated the collection office of a laundry. And the name H. FLORENCE over one side of the entrance had necessarily been lettered in the most slender and attenuated of scripts in order to get the full word in.

But what made the shop seem smaller still was the size of H. Florence herself. A large woman against any background, she seemed positively effulgent within the confines of this minute cubicle. Instead merely of occupying the shop, she seemed rather to be wearing it.

Mr. Bloot would have found it impossible to say what it was about Hetty Florence that had first overwhelmed him. Possibly the voice, that was still warm and caressing even when sending casuals and other wartime shop crawlers away from the shop
totally unserved. Or the perfume that she used—a thick musky scent that conjured up visions of palm trees and bright moonlight after scorching sun. Or her hair—jet black and worn long, wound round the top of her head in a braid as thick as a ship's hawser. Or the white roundness of her bosom which showed up so provocatively beneath the open lacework jumpers that she always wore. Or the startling redness of her nails.

It may, of course, have been simply that the natural charms of Hetty Florence were all accentuated by contrast. Because poor Emmie had been quite the other type—small, thinnish, practically Chinese she was so flat-chested, and with hair that was mole-coloured and rather thin.

Whatever it was about Hetty Florence, the effect was overwhelming. Mr. Bloot now spent whole evenings thinking about her, dreamed shameless scarlet dreams that startled him, woke up only to start thinking about her afresh. Even the simple fact of separation was now agony. That was why he had come to the helpless, but still daring, decision to see her to-night even though it was only Tuesday, and he had six of Monday's packet still left.

As it happened, he could not have chosen a worse night. The store had never been busier. And he seemed to be the nerve-centre, the information-desk, of the whole place. “Outsize ladies' gowns, Mod'm, second floor”; “Plastic picnic-ware, third floor through Household and Kitchen Utensils, Mod'm”; “Groceries, Mod'm, next shop through the archway”; “Grand pianos, end lift please, Mod'm, third floor turn right” ... his diction remained perfect. But his mind was reeling. And all the time he was thinking: “Am I going to be too late to catch her? If she's gone, what'll I do? how can I wait till Wednesday?”

When five-thirty came, he didn't stop to say good night to anybody. Simply marched to his locker, changed out of his tails and snatched up his hat and umbrella. By the time he had reached the street, he was walking level with everyone else. And that, for Mr. Bloot, was hurrying. In his own mind, he was practically running.

If he was to see Hetty at all he had got to be there in Tufnell Park by six sharp. He realized now that he ought to have asked Mr. Preece if he could have left a little early. Say a mere five minutes. Or ten, to be on the safe side. But he hadn't felt able to screw up the courage. How could he have gone along and said: “Please may I leave at five-twenty this evening? I am a widower, aged fifty-seven, sixteen stone two, and helplessly in love. Somewhere
in N. 19 there is a magnet that draws me irresistibly, a flame that compels me to it. I am steel. I am a moth. I must go ...”