Read Bond Street Story Online

Authors: Norman Collins

Bond Street Story (2 page)

BOOK: Bond Street Story
9.27Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

The man with the cravat had turned in with the rest of them. But clearly he was in a class apart. He didn't even say good morning to anybody. Merely inclined his head. And he didn't go through to the long rows of coat-hangers like the rest of them. In the corridor outside the staff cloakroom he had his own private locker. It might have been a safe deposit the way he opened it. First he hung up his black hat and umbrella. Next he removed his overcoat. Then he took off his jacket as well and stood for a moment in his shirt-sleeves. But not for long. There was some quick change magic going on by now. For a moment later when he emerged, he was more majestical than ever. It was a tail-coat that he now had on. He might have been the Colonel representing the regiment at a Royal funeral.

And still with the same placid mastodon-like tread, he advanced through the ribbons and the laces, past the veiling and the hat ornaments, into the gloves and the evening handbags, and out again into the little foyer that gave straight on to Bond Street. Once there, he squared his shoulders and rocked backwards and forwards once or twice on his feet like an athlete loosening up. Then clasping his hands behind his back, he remained motionless, apparently unbreathing.

It was still only five-to-nine, and Mr. Bloot, Rammell's senior floorwalker, had arrived on duty.

2

So also had a lot of other people. There was Mr. Eric Rammell, for instance. He was another regular nine-to-fiver. To the dot almost. But he got dropped by car at the Downe Street entrance, and went straight up by lift to his private office suite. The keynote of that suite was excellence. It was furnished (all by Rammell's, of course) in best Mayfair Chippendale and red Morocco. Only the other directors and one or two of the senior managers had ever been inside the room at all. That was because the ordinary day by day business of the shop was looked after by Mr. Preece, the general manager. Mr. Eric remained remote and invisible. Until 11.15 that is, when he made his regular quick tour of the main departments.

Then, particularly to new members of the staff, he came as a bit of a disappointment. It was Mr. Rammell's stature that was against him. Only five-foot-four. And with a bulge like a teapot. There was no getting away from it: he was tubby. And his colouring was bad. Too many shades of grey. Not enough pink or tan. Altogether, he looked as though he needed a good Nannie to take him in hand, keep him off sweet things, and see that he was in bed by seven-thirty every evening.

And that was not far wrong either. There was one drawer in the Chippendale bureau that was like a small chemist's shop. It was stocked solid with Alka-Seltzer, Milk of Magnesia, bismuth tablets, old-fashioned bi-carb., and charcoal biscuits. That was because Mr. Eric nursed a raging volcano inside him. The threat of a duodenal had been hanging over him for years. And it was worry, sheer rush and worry, that had done it. That was why he was always promising himself a long sea holiday. A cruise. Somewhere into the sunshine. With no business correspondence. No telephone. No directors' meetings. And above all, no Mrs. Rammell.

She was half his trouble, Mrs. Rammell. She spent her time feeding the volcano, shovelling in fresh coals just when the furnace seemed to be dying down a bit. That was because she was a born hostess. And a discoverer of talent. There was a young Indian dancer, Swami Lal, whom she had just found. He was due to give a dance recital in Mr. Rammell's own drawing-room. And so far as Mr. Rammell was concerned, even the threat of young Swami was pure anthracite.

Compared with Mr. Eric Rammell, Mr. Preece, the General
Manager—one floor down and lodged in a room as bare and bleak as an operating theatre—led a life of placid and uneventful harmony. Home to Carshalton every evening, and back again to the surgical ward by 8.45 next morning, Mr. Preece asked nothing more of life. He was a thin, patient-looking man with rather beautiful hands. He had a memory like a comptometer, and slight catarrh that lasted from May until September when his regular winter colds began. Acute anæmia seemed to be his trouble. If he had accidentally cut himself with his garden secateurs it didn't seem likely that he would bleed at all. Just a clean white incision like a carved veal. But that couldn't really be the case. Because the blood was there all right. And, once a year, when at the Annual General Meeting Mr. Eric referred to “the invaluable and selfless devotion shown by our General Manager, Mr. Preece,” up it came straight from the heart and Mr. Preece blushed a deep, schoolgirl red.

Mrs. Preece, a soft, motherly woman with pale, dust-coloured hair, felt that her husband ought to be made a director. And, particularly towards Christmas, when he didn't get home till nine o'clock or ten o'clock at night, she made a point of saying so. But it would have made things much easier for both of them if only she could have held her tongue. Because the plain fact was that Mr. Preece was simply not director-grade—not for a house of Rammell's standing that is. Nor was Mrs. Preece right for a director's wife. Socially there was a chasm. When Mrs. Rammell did try the experiment of asking Mr. and Mrs. Preece to one of her recital evenings, Mrs. Preece nearly ruined everything by glancing anxiously at her watch all through the Scarlatti and then, with a lot of hissing apologetic whispers, left right in the middle of a Chopin étude because she was afraid they would miss the 11.43 from Victoria.

At this moment, Mr. Preece was addressing another senior member of staff, also tail-coated like Mr. Bloot. But a very different type of man. Practically a separate species. You could never mistake this one for anything but a floor-walker. But rather a seedy one. That was because his tails were just a shade too large for him. There were mysterious folds down the back as though when he had originally bought them he had intended to share them with someone else, and had been doing a double act single-handed ever since. But, in any case, he hadn't really got the figure for tails. He was not much taller than Mr. Eric. And without the girth. There was a slightness and triviality about him. A wispiness.

But he knew his stuff all right. He presided, two floors up, over the household china, bed linen, slumber kit, towels, motoring rugs, leather goods, radio and television. It was quite an empire for a man of his physique to have conquered, subdued and now be ruling over.

In the presence of Mr. Preece, his whole attitude was one of respect and attention. He was leaning forward, and that made his striped trousers go into a whole lot of extra folds and creases around the knees as though he had just been paddling.

“Ah, Privett, Mr. Bloot tells me you want to get your daughter into the firm,” Mr. Preece had just said in that precise, clipped voice of his.

Mr. Privett bent forward still farther.

“That's right, sir,” he replied. “Very kind of you to take the trouble.”

This was the moment that Mr. Privett had been waiting for, dreaming of, ever since his daughter's last year at school. But now that it had come, he found himself embarrassed, confused somehow. He felt that in some strange way he was actually letting her down, being insufficient. So he went on hurriedly.

“You'll find she's a good girl, sir,” he said. “Quite inexperienced, of course. But ... but a really good girl. She'll do us all credit.”

He was rather surprised with himself as he said the words. He was very proud of his daughter, but he had never discussed her with strangers in this way before.

“Well, we must get her to come and see us,” Mr. Preece replied in his smoothest, office-velvet kind of voice. “Then if we
can
do anything, we'll fix her up.”

“Thank you very much, sir.”

Mr. Privett straightened up as he said it. That was because it was practically impossible to draw in a deep breath of sheer relief while he was bending so far forward.

“Of course, she'll only be a learner at first,” Mr. Preece reminded him.

“Oh, naturally, sir. That's ... that's all she'd expect.”

But there was no time for any further conversation. Mr. Preece had already rung for his secretary. And he began dictating before the secretary had even got herself properly seated.

“Memo to Staff Supervisor. ‘Please arrange to see Miss—you'll get the full name from Mr. Privett—of—Mr. Privett'll give you the address—with a view to filling one of the forthcoming learner vacancies. Kindly let me know the result of the interview.' That's all, thank you.”

Mr. Preece gave a swift, colourless nod to the secretary and, another in Mr. Privett's direction. That indicated that he had done all that could be done. Indeed, he had already gone rather too far. There was a waiting-list the length of a Royal petition up in the Appointments Section. And in any case it was a strict rule that everyone must write in. There was a very strict protocol about application letters. And Rammell's believed in observing it. It all turned on the simple test of neat handwriting, orderly expression and a proper knowledge of punctuation—as judged by the Staff Supervisor. Only last week the younger daughter of a well-known Peer had failed on all three counts. Cheltenham and Somerville had been turned down flat by the Ilford Secretarial College.

That was why Mr. Privett was so pleased with himself. Thanks to him, his daughter had jumped the whole lot of them. But no child of his could really have been expected to
write.
After all, he had been with Rammell's for nearly thirty years.

Mr. Preece caught Mr. Privett's eye for a moment.

“What
is
your daughter's name by the way?”

“Ireen, sir. Ireen Privett,” he added idiotically. And because he could not think of anything else to say he repeated himself. “You ... you'll find she's a good girl, sir,” he said. “A really good girl.”

3

Mr. Privett was still so pleased when he got back to his own floor that for once he almost seemed to fill his tails. He looked a larger man altogether. And he was thinking of nothing but Irene. How excited she would be. How pleased. And how he would buy her some little starting-off gift—a new handbag, or something. Because he was thinking only of Irene, he even misdirected an important-looking lady who had asked for fitted picnic cases, and had to go chasing after her as though she were a shop lifter.

It was nearly eleven by now. And at eleven o'clock precisely he always slipped up to the Staff Canteen for a cup of coffee. That meant that he would be able to tell his news to Mr. Bloot. Mr. Privett and Mr. Bloot were old friends. Natural inseparables. As would have been expected, Mr. Bloot took the lead in everything. It was a sort of knight and squire relationship that existed between them. Deference and devotion were mingled in equal proportions. And with every year that passed, Mr. Privett's admiration for the larger man grew more complete and unquestioning. Nowadays, simply to be in Mr. Bloot's company gave Mr.
Privett a delicious feeling of the fullness of life. Of being in the very centre of things. That was why eleven o'clock was so important. He and Mr. Bloot usually managed to fit in a few minutes together at eleven o'clock.

When Mr. Privett arrived, Mr. Bloot was already there, seated at his usual table. He had his cup in his hand, and he was leaning forward so that no drops should get on to his cravat. Unlike Mr. Privett, he was a tea drinker. And he took tea drinking seriously. Just to look at him with his eyebrows going up as his chin went down, you could see that he brought an impressive ardour and intensity to the whole process.

Mr. Privett was so excited that he went straight over to Mr. Bloot instead of taking his place in the service line.

“Mr. Preece spoke to me about Ireen,” he blurted out a little breathlessly.

“Yurss?”

Mr. Bloot's face was very pink, flushed by the heat of the tea. But he was still remarkably handsome. Quite noticeably imposing, in fact. Mr. Privett felt proud at having such a man for his friend.

“They're going to see her.”

“Aaah!”

Mr. Bloot finished his tea and put his cup down. He was naturally a heavy breather. And at that moment he seemed to be doing nothing else but breathe. But that was not so. Really he was thinking. And thinking was always rather a slow business with Mr. Bloot.

“Ah'll drop a word mahself in the raht quarter,” he remarked at last.

His voice was muffled-up and padded. It seemed to come from deep inside him like a ventriloquist's.

“Yurss,” he repeated slowly. “That's what Ah'll do. Ah'll drop a word mahself.”

Having spoken, he licked his lips as though he relished the idea. But that moistening of the lips didn't really mean anything. It was only a habit that he had got into. Like breathing.

There was a pause.

“Mum's going to be ever so pleased about this,” Mr. Privett said suddenly.

Mr. Bloot turned graciously towards his friend.

“How is Ahleen?” he inquired.

“Eileen's fine,” Mr. Privett replied. “She's ... she's been asking for you.”

Mr. Bloot made no comment. Merely pursed up his lips. And Mr. Privett did not press the point. Both men knew that Mrs.
Privett did not like Mr. Bloot. And in a way Mrs. Privett's dislike was an additional bond between them. It served to put the seal of secrecy upon their friendship.

But even if the tactless lie had upset Mr. Bloot, Mr. Privett was saved from any further embarrassment. Elevenses were now over. And he had missed his morning coffee altogether. He rose obediently and followed Mr. Bloot who was marching slowly and majestically back towards the main shop.

Then Mr. Bloot spoke again.

“Areen's er lucky girl,” he said, “coming into Rammell's. Ah wonder if she reahlahises.”

 

Chapter Two
1

Irene Privett herself was lying stretched out full length on the bed. Her chin was resting on her hands. And her feet were spread out across the pillow. Her two shoes had gone slithering across the floor when she kicked them off. One was lying half-way over to the fireplace. The other almost underneath the chest of drawers.

BOOK: Bond Street Story
9.27Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Shakespeare's Counselor by Charlaine Harris
Between Two Fires by Mark Noce
Beyond the Cliffs of Kerry by Hughes, Amanda
Lost! by Bindi Irwin
John Norman by Time Slave
Ribblestrop by Andy Mulligan
Amy & Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson