Marnie (3 page)

For a while after reading the paper I sat on the bed wondering if I should go through with it or if this was a warning that this time I was going to be caught.

In the end I got over that nonsense. Really, once you start thinking, you’re done. But I thought I wouldn’t try this sort of job again. It was riskier than most.

I left on Sunday at twelve and took my suitcase with me. I took it to London Road Station and put it in the left-luggage office as usual. I had lunch in a cafeteria and was at the Roxy by ten to
four.

The doors opened at four and the first film began at four-fifteen. I went with Mr King into his office and got twenty pounds in silver and five pounds in copper. He was in a good humour and said
we’d had the best week’s takings since 1956.

‘Let me carry those for you,’ he said as I picked up the bags.

‘No, really, thanks. I can manage.’ I smiled at him and straightened my spectacles. ‘Thank you, Mr King.’

He followed me out. A small shabby-looking lot of people were waiting at the door of the cinema. It was two minutes to four.

I said: ‘Er – have I time to get a glass of water? I want to take an aspirin.’

‘Yes, of course. Hold them a minute, Martin.’ This to the commissionaire. ‘Nothing wrong, I hope?’ he said when I got back.

‘No, not really, thanks very much.’ I smiled bravely. ‘Go ahead. I’m fine now.’

By seven the cheaper seats were full, and there was a queue outside for the two and eightpennies. A trickle of people were still coming in and paying four and six so as not to
wait. In five minutes the secondary film would be over, sixty or seventy people would come out and a ten-minute break for ice-creams would give the queue outside time to get in and be settled
before
Santa Clara
came on for the last time.

I never remember being nervous when it comes to the point. My hands are always steady, my pulse beats like one of those musical things they have for keeping time.

As the last of the stragglers leaving the theatre went out and Martin moved to let in the first of the queue I called quietly to Mr King.

‘What’s the matter?’ he said when he saw the look on my face.

‘I’m – frightfully sorry. I feel awful! I think I’m going to be sick!’

‘Oh, dear! Can you . . . Can I help you to—’

‘No . . . I – I must see this queue through.’

‘Can you?’ he said. ‘No, I see you can’t.’

‘No . . . I’m afraid I can’t. Can you hold up the queue for a few minutes?’

‘No, I’ll take your place. Really. I’ll call an usherette.’

I grabbed up my handbag and stumbled out of the box. ‘I think if I lie down for about five minutes . . . You can manage?’

‘Of course.’ He climbed into the box as the first members of the queue came up to the window.

I stumbled off down the right-hand tunnel away from the manager’s office. You passed the man who tears your tickets, went down the corridor, and just this side of the doors into the cinema
proper, was the Ladies.

But instead of turning in at the Ladies I went through into the cinema. A girl flashed a light at me and then saw who I was.

‘Where’s Gladys?’ I whispered.

‘On the other door.’

As I went along the back of the cinema a big American face was telling the audience why the film he was appearing in at this cinema for seven days beginning next Sunday week was a unique event
in motion picture history.

There was no Gladys at the other door because she was down flashing her light looking for vacant seats, so my excuse wasn’t needed. I went out of the door and up the other tunnel until I
was almost in the foyer again. Then I turned in at the manager’s office.

The light was already on. I shut the door but didn’t catch it. Then I pulled a chair forward and kicked off my shoes.

The filing cabinet, top drawer. The key wasn’t in the back . . . I went all down the other five drawers. Nothing . . . The cabinet was high and I pulled a stool over and stood on it. The
top drawer was full of publicity pamphlets, copies of
The Kine Weekly
etc. At the back was a pair of Mr King’s gloves. The key was in one thumb.

Almost two minutes gone. At the safe I slid back the key guard; the key clicked nicely; but it was a real effort to pull the big door open.

There was nothing but papers in the three top compartments, but in the drawer beside the bags of change were piles of stacked notes. Not only today’s takings but Saturday’s as
well.

You can get a lot of money in a medium-sized handbag if it’s empty to begin with. I shut the safe, locked it and put the key back. Then I slid my shoes on and went to the door. I could
hear the movement of people and the click and rattle of the change machine.

I went out without looking back towards the foyer and turned into the cinema again. This time Gladys was back.

‘Full house?’ I asked before she could speak.

‘There’s about two dozen four-and-sixes and some singles, that’s all. You off duty now?’

‘No, I’m coming back in a minute.’ I went on down the side aisle.

‘It’s pretty tough leading the life I lead,’ said the man on the screen, and he seemed to look at me.

‘I don’t like it but I can take it,’ said the girl, ‘if I’m with you.’

That stuff was as real as nothing. I got to the end of the cinema and let myself out by the exit door.

It was the year after all this that I wrote for the job at John Rutland & Co. at Barnet.

I don’t know; maybe there’s such a thing as fate, as luck. If you walk under a ladder or spill the salt or cut your nails on a Friday. Well, I had no feelings before I wrote. I might
just as well have picked out some other advertisement or opened another paper.

I’d been working in London since January at a firm called Kendalls who were Insurance Brokers but I’d soon found that the only thing I’d get there was a reference, so I’d
worked on just for that and kept my eyes open to see what else was about.

The letter that came back was headed
John Rutland & Co. Ltd., Printers of Quality, established 1869
and it said: ‘Dear Madam, Thank you for your letter replying to our
advertisement for an assistant cashier. Would you kindly call to see us next Tuesday morning the 10th inst. at eleven o’clock. S. Ward (Manager).’

When I got there it was quite a big place, and after waiting in an outer office while another girl was interviewed I was shown into a small room with two men sitting behind a desk, and they
asked me the usual things.

I said my name was Mary Taylor, and I’d been with Kendalls since January. I hadn’t been employed before that. I’d married at twenty and had lived in Cardiff with my husband
until he was killed in a motor accident in November last. Since then, although he’d left me a little money, I’d started to work for my living. After leaving school I had done shorthand
and typing and also taken courses in bookkeeping and accountancy. I was a shorthand typist at Kendalls but was looking for a job with more prospects.

I had a good look at the two men. The manager, Mr Ward, was in his fifties, a sour dried-up man with gold-rimmed spectacles and a big wart on his cheek. He looked the sort who had worked his way
up in forty years and God help anyone who tried to do it in thirty-nine. The other man was young, dark, with very thick hair that looked as if it needed a brush, and face so pale he might have been
ill.

‘Are you a Cardiff girl, Mrs Taylor?’ the manager asked.

‘No. I come from the East Coast. But my husband worked in Cardiff as a draughtsman.’

‘Where did you go to school?’

‘In Norwich, the High School there.’

‘Are your parents there now?’ this young man said. He was twisting a pencil.

‘No, sir. They emigrated to Australia after I was married.’

Mr Ward shifted in his seat and put his tongue between his teeth and his cheek. ‘Can you give us some other references apart from this one from Kendalls?’

‘Well . . . no, not really. Of course, there’s my bank in Cardiff. Lloyds Bank, Monmouth Street. I’ve been banking there since I went to live there.’

‘Do you live in London now?’

‘Yes. I have furnished rooms in Swiss Cottage.’

The young man said: ‘I take it you haven’t any family of your own – I mean children?’

I looked at him and turned on a smile. ‘No, sir.’

Mr Ward grunted and began to ask me whether I understood PAYE and insurances and whether I’d ever worked an Anson adding machine. I said I had, which was a lie, but I knew I could get any
machine taped quickly enough. I noticed that once he called the young man Mr Rutland, so I guessed he was one of the directors or something. I’d thought so from the minute I saw him, a
younger son or something learning the business by starting at the top. I’d seen them before. But this one looked all right.

‘Well, thank you, Mrs Taylor,’ Mr Ward said about five minutes later, and something about the way he said it, even though he said it as if it hurt, told me I was in. I mean, it was
as if he’d had a hidden sign from the young man.

Later when I went there I looked through the back files and saw they had written to the bank in Cardiff. The bank had said: ‘We have known Mrs Mary Taylor only for three years since she
first began to bank with us, but her account with us has always been in a satisfactory condition. Our personal contacts have been few, but we have been favourably impressed by her dealings and her
personality.’

It isn’t hard really to get a job these days. Very often you can build a background as you go along if you look far enough ahead. Some firms of course will ask for all sorts of references,
and then you have to gracefully back out; but at least fifty per cent will be satisfied quite easily, and a few will even take you on sight, if you look respectable and honest.

Opening a bank account under a wrong name is a real pain in the neck. I’d managed this one as an experiment when I was working in Cardiff three years ago, in the name of Mary Taylor, but
it had meant getting known under that name first, and I’d thought I wouldn’t bother with another. PO Savings Accounts are easier, and they don’t ask for any proof of who you are.
I’d simply used this bank account to put money in from time to time, and once or twice I’d spoken to the bank manager about little things, and so I’d built up this background
there. I hadn’t used it as a reference before, because you can only do that sort of thing once, and they hadn’t asked for it at Kendalls; but I gave it them here because I got the
impression that this job might be worth sacrificing a background for.

The other minor problem is insurance cards, but that’s not really too difficult to get around. I know a place in Plymouth where you can buy them; then all you do is fill in your name and a
nice new National Insurance Number, and buy the stamps up to the date you want and stick them on and cancel them. Insurance cards run for twelve months, and of course nowadays they’re
‘staggered’ so that they don’t all have to be in at the same time. The important thing in starting a new job is to start with a nearly new insurance card – it saves you
stamps and it gives you perhaps ten months before the card has to be surrendered. The important thing is never to stay in a job until the card has to be surrendered.

I find it all interesting. I like tinkering with figures, and lots of people are such fools with them. I’ve seen one or two clever boys in my life, and some of them were really clever, but
once they’ve got the money they haven’t a notion. They’re like children playing in the sand: it just runs through their fingers. You’ve seen films like
Grisbi
and
Rififi
. Honestly it’s just like that.

I started at Rutland’s the following Monday week. Nearly as soon as I got there I had an interview with Mr Christopher Holbrook, the managing director. He was a fattish man of about sixty,
with big-business spectacles and a smile that he switched on and off like an electric fire.

‘We’re a
family
firm, Mrs Taylor, and I’m pleased to welcome you into it. I am a grandson of the founder and my cousin, Mr Newton-Smith, is another grandson. My son, Mr
Terence Holbrook, is a director, as is Mr Mark Rutland whom you have already met. We have a staff now of ninety-seven and I don’t hesitate to say that we do not work merely as individuals but
as a
unit
, a family, everyone being concerned for the good of all.’

He switched on the smile, which started slowly and warmed up nicely; then just when it began to get really good it switched off and you were left with his face going cold like a two-watt
element, and his eyes watching you to see the result.

‘We are
expanding
, Mrs Taylor, and this year, as an experiment, we have opened a retail department which you will see if you look to your right through the window just across the
street. This all means the engagement of new
staff
. For the moment, for a week or two, we want you to go over to the retail side, but ultimately we hope to have you here in the main building
assisting Miss Clabon whom you have already met.’

He picked up the house telephone. ‘Has Mr Terence come yet? . . . No? Well, ask him to come in, will you, as soon as he arrives.’

I said, ‘You want me as cashier on the retail side, sir?’

‘Temporarily, yes. But if our present plans go forward we shall bring in an assistant for you who will take over when you are transferred here. Miss Clabon is engaged to be married, and
she may leave us within a year or two. Have you been in printing before?’

‘No, sir.’

‘I think you will find it interesting. We are high-class jobbing printers, as the saying is. We do all kinds of work from expensive illustrated catalogues to publicity posters for British
Railways, from menu cards for City dinners to textbooks for schools. Rutland playing cards and diaries, Rutland writing papers, are, I don’t hesitate to say, known all over England. I think
you will find, Mrs Taylor, that ours is an
enterprising
firm and one that it will be rewarding to work for.’

He paused there, waiting for somebody to say ‘hear, hear’, so I said, ‘Thank you, sir.’