The Love Department Page 4

  Septimus Tuam had learned to live with this pattern, with the flaw in his make-up which seemed to dictate that failure must always precede success, that success must of necessity rise out of the other. He couldn’t understand all that, although he had occasionally given the fact some thought. He had never likened himself to a phoenix, or to any bird: he would have thought that quite ridiculous.

  ‘They don’t quite match,’ a pretty woman was saying in the button department. ‘Have you others?’

  The assistant brought out further boxes of buttons, shaking her head, as though not sanguine about the outcome of the search.

  ‘It’s a devilish business,’ said Septimus Tuam in a general way. ‘An old uncle of mine, Lord Marchingpass, actually, has asked me to try for some extra-large leather ones. You know, I don’t believe they make them any more.’

  The pretty woman shook her head.

  ‘Look,’ said Septimus Tuam. ‘Aren’t those a match?’ He stretched out to hand her the buttons that had caught his eye, but in fact they turned out to have too reddish a tinge about them.

  ‘What a pity!’ said Septimus Tuam.

  The assistant then imparted the information that a great supply of buttons was expected any day now. ‘I’ll ring you,’ she said to the woman, ‘when they come.’

  ‘Now, there’s good service,’ said Septimus Tuam.

  ‘Just your name and number, madam,’ requested the assistant.

  The woman gave her name and telephone number, which were memorized accurately by Septimus Tuam. ‘It’s very kind of you,’ she said to the assistant and felt at that moment a prick on the calf of her leg. She glanced down, and noticed that the thin young man’s umbrella had laddered her stocking.

  ‘Marriage is difficult enough without the likes of Septimus Tuam,’ said Lady Dolores. ‘He’s been a thorn in the flesh for seven years.’

  ‘Seven years is a long time.’

  ‘Only innocence can match the black heart of Septimus Tuam. I knew that, Mr Blakeston-Smith; I said it often. What good was a drunk?’ Lady Dolores, who had been intending to say more, paused. She closed her eyes and again tried to understand what the women meant when they wrote that their lover was beautiful, since they might as easily have imbued him with a more usual characteristic. They might have said that he was handsome or had strong arms, or was more agile of mind than their husbands were. Lady Dolores saw the beautiful creature standing still, but he was no longer the victim of assault in Kilmaurice Avenue: she saw now a greater vision, one inspired, she believed, by this youth in his innocence; she saw the defeat of Septimus Tuam, and she saw the part that was already there for her to play. Edward Blakeston-Smith, under her command and her influence, would do what was required of him, while she in the end would achieve her heart’s desire.

  Lady Dolores was aware of a human voice speaking nearby, and noticed that the young man who had been sent to her was inclining his head and moving his lips.

  ‘How can I help you?’ Edward was saying. ‘Is it to check some facts?’

  Lady Dolores asked Edward to repeat that, and when he had done so she issued her instructions. She said she wished him to find out all possible details about the man called Septimus Tuam; she wished him to track the man down, to watch him, and to spy upon him. She ordered Edward to read the letters from the women in Wimbledon, to digest them fully and then to return them to her. She handed him the scrap of paper with the address of the house in Putney on it. ‘Note as well,’ she said, ‘the address of a Mrs FitzArthur who has written to us nonsensically. Mrs FitzArthur is the current interest. Keep an eye on her house and see what there is to be seen.’ Lady Dolores reached behind her and brought forward a loose-leaf note-book, containing two hundred blank sheets. ‘Fill this up,’ she said. ‘Mark it with his name. Make this your dossier. D’you get me?’

  Lady Dolores walked to a cupboard and took from it a chocolate cake on a plate and a bottle of Scotch whisky. She cut a slice of cake and poured herself a small measure of the intoxicant. ‘D’you get me?’ repeated Lady Dolores, uncertain about whether or not the youth had replied.

  ‘I understand everything.’

  ‘Well, then?’

  ‘Thank you, Lady Dolores.’

  ‘Love falls like snow-flakes, Mr Blakeston-Smith; remember that. Look into people’s eyes.’

  Edward rose and moved towards the door. He felt tired. He would have quite liked to be playing a game of draughts with Brother Toby. He considered that thought, and then he banished it. Lady Dolores Bourhardie was a famous woman and he had just become her right-hand man: could he ask for more than that? He was about to become a person of the world.

  ‘Septimus Tuam is an enemy of love,’ said Lady Dolores, mingling whisky and cake on her tongue. She bent her head over the large piece of paper that was covered with figures, which earlier she had been absorbed in.

  ‘We’ll put him behind bars,’ cried Edward, with a fresh flush in his cheeks, pink spreading to his ears. ‘That Septimus Tuam.’

  Lady Dolores laughed gently. The picture became clearer in her mind, but this did not seem to be the moment to talk about it; and as she thought that, she knew that there would never be a moment. What would happen would happen, with neither argument nor discussion. She waved her hand towards the door and said nothing further.

  Edward passed through the room where the clerks sat and then through the one in which the young women worked with typewriters. He saw a lift at the end of a corridor. He entered it and found himself within the minute on the ground floor.

  Edward walked out into London, on to streets that were thronged with people. Love was on his mind, since he had been hearing about it, and as he passed through the people he wondered how love affected them. They were people in love, he supposed, since love fell like snow-flakes. Or they were people made bitter by love, or people aware of love but indifferent to it. Lady Dolores would have added that there were those who were afraid of it, too, who lowered their eyes and kept them low, moving them over objects on the ground; and those who worshipped it and then were at a loss.

  He walked among people who had heard of Lady Dolores Bourhardie, who had read her word and even taken her advice. Some there were who claimed that their flesh was made to creep at the sight of her, others who saw eccentric beauty in her face, and others who thought of her as something of a joke. But all over England the marriages were cracking, as always they had cracked. Love came and went and left a trail, people wept, while Lady Dolores looked on with an expert’s eye and often felt sick at heart. She spoke of the enemies of love and said she saw them everywhere, offering shoddy goods.

  Edward walked on, jostled by the crowd, until he arrived at an ABC, where he had a cup of tea.

  4

  The Bolsovers lived in Wimbledon, and on the evening of the day on which Edward entered the employment of Lady Dolores they were not at home. Their children, sleeping in an upstairs room of 11 Crannoc Avenue, had both of them thrown off their bed-clothes, for the night was warm and sleep had not come easily. In the Bolsovers’ sitting-room, sipping her favourite liqueur, sat Mrs Hoop, the Bolsovers’ charwoman, baby-sitting with the television on.

  The Bolsovers themselves, with purple-coloured menus in their hands, faced one another in a restaurant that was itself a purple-coloured place. Waiters hovered not far away.

  ‘Well?’ said James.

  His wife said nothing. Once upon a time, a year or so before marrying this man, she had been voted the prettiest girl in the district in which she had grown up. Now, at thirty-seven, four years younger than her husband, she retained much of her beauty. She walked gracefully, and she was slim; her hair was dark and gathered with care into a knotted arrangement at the back of her head; her eyes were brown and had been called, in a complimentary way, extraordinary.

  ‘I’m going to have turtle soup,’ said James, ‘and probably hazel hen.’ He looked over the rest of the menu and saw on it bruciate briachi, which he translated as burnt chestnuts. He
remembered, one Christmas when he was a child, his father entering the house with a bag of burnt chestnuts, offering them instead of a Christmas wreath, saying that Christmas wreaths that year weren’t worth the cost, saying as well that he had been delayed. James saw quite vividly the image of his father holding the bag in the air and heard his mother’s voice remarking sternly that burnt chestnuts were unsuitable for children at seven o’clock in the evening. James gave a small laugh. He said:

  ‘I was thinking of the day my father came into the house with a couple of dozen burnt chestnuts in a paper bag instead of a Christmas wreath. He stood, poor man, considerably confused, while my mother scolded him most roundly.’ James paused, doubting that he had succeeded in soliciting much of his wife’s attention. He added: ‘I was put in mind of chestnuts by seeing bruciate briachi on the menu here.’

  A waiter displayed the label on a bottle of wine, and James nodded his head. He said to his wife:

  ‘This is a good place.’

  Eve looked about her and said that the place seemed good.

  ‘The food is good,’ said James. ‘Food is cooked here in a rare way. Their hazel hen, you know, is excellent. You should have had the hazel hen, my dear.’

  ‘I have never had hazel hen. To tell the truth, I’ve never even heard of it.’

  ‘It’s a cheap dish and yet a delicacy. They’re charging about ten times too much for it.’

  On to the television screen in the Bolsovers’ house there appeared at that moment the still face of Lady Dolores: the long, bared teeth, flowing hair, eyes deep and cute, nostrils taut. Mrs Hoop smiled at all this, and a voice spoke to her, advocating immediate purchase of the magazine for which Lady Dolores wrote her page. ‘Love within marriage,’ continued the voice, not the voice of Lady Dolores, but that of a once-famous actor down on his luck. ‘Happy,’ said the voice.

  ‘Bruciate briachi,’ said Eve, and then nodded, and did not smile.

  ‘My father is dying now,’ murmured James.

  ‘I know,’ said his wife.

  On this day and at this precise moment ten years ago, the Bolsovers had been sitting together in the restaurant-car of a French train, ordering a different kind of dinner and sharing a certain excitement. Eve was thinking of that. She was thinking of that and of all that had taken place before it: a service in a church, the Church of St Anselm, not far from Wimbledon, and the wedding reception that had been held outside and in sunshine, on the lawns of a hotel that overlooked the Thames. In the great heat of an August afternoon a bearded photographer had captured for ever the scene of celebration: he had worked fast and hard, beneath the beady eye of Eve’s mother, who with peremptoriness had called for photographs of the newly allied couple against banked blooms of delphinium and lupin. The photographer had hoped for champagne, but had not, in fact, been offered any.

  ‘My father is dying slowly,’ said James. ‘He says he’s in a hurry, but doesn’t seem to be.’ That morning he had had a letter from Gloucestershire, from the nurse who was seeing his father through his passing. It is quite absurd, she had written, to think, that at this time of my life I should be sent out to weed flower-beds in the rain.

  Eve raised a forkful of food to her lips, thinking that his father’s son was dying too. She did not say anything. She did not speak of that day on the hotel lawns, because she knew it could elicit no response.

  ‘There’s too much purple,’ she said after a silence had developed. ‘They’ve overdone things.’

  ‘What?’

  Eve did not reply. Silence formed again before she said, since she could think of nothing else to say:

  ‘In ten years’ time I shall be close on fifty.’

  ‘You said something different the first time.’

  Eve looked at all the purple and wondered why the papal shade had been so ubiquitously employed. Her eyes moved from the menus on the tables to purple walls and purple velvet on chairs and lamp-shades. Through a sea of the single colour the waiters walked discreetly, whispering in their professional way.

  The diners, men and women of several generations, lifted food to their mouths and talked quite loudly, laughing or smiling to fill the gaps in conversation. Eve watched the people, thinking about their marriages, for marriage was on her mind. She saw a woman who might be fifty, her hair defiantly blonde, her head held up at an angle as though the position suited it particularly. Her companion was a man who did not speak at all. He ate his food while the woman talked into the air, eating little herself. Eve wondered what the woman thought as she spoke and gushed her smile across the table. Was the man her husband? They had the appearance of a married pair. Was he unused to speaking? Did he prefer to eat with a book propped up in front of him, or a newspaper? And had the woman become so accustomed to this circumstance that she failed now to notice it? Or perhaps the man was dumb.

  There had been a time in the Bolsovers’ marriage when Eve would have drawn her husband’s attention to this couple. They would have wondered together about them, staring too much, as once they had been apt to do. Eve perceived the woman’s talk fail to gain a response and she wondered if one day soon she’d be doing something like that herself, while James appeared to strangers to be possibly a mute. She wondered about the wedding of that silent man and his wife, what the man had said then, and whether or not they either of them cared to look back to it.

  ‘You said something else,’ James repeated. ‘You didn’t say the first time you’d be close on fifty.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ said James.

  Old Mrs Harrap in sky-blue clothes, a woman who had once been her father’s nanny, had wept that day on the hotel lawns, having drunk too much champagne. She had snatched a metal hoop from a flower-bed and brandished it at a waiter because, she said, the man had spoken rudely.

  ‘When he goes,’ said James, ‘there’ll be that awful old house, and the garden gone to pieces. What on earth am I to do with it all?’

  ‘Why not sell it all?’ said Eve. ‘As other people have sold property in the past.’

  ‘Bring me some Hennessy brandy,’ James called out to a passing waiter, who bowed in a neat manner. He turned then to Eve, and said in a low voice: ‘What are you turning snooty for? I made a civil observation.’

  ‘You asked me a question and I replied. I should have thought it polite rather than anything else.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘I can’t help it if I’m straightforward. Don’t blame me for that.’

  ‘This is our wedding anniversary.’

  ‘Here comes your brandy.’

  The waiter placed a glass of brandy by James’s right hand, but James frowned and said:

  ‘I had meant you to bring a bottle, and two glasses. We may sit here for an hour or two, my wife and I. Drinking wine and brandy, sip for sip.’

  The waiter said he was sorry and went away to fetch what was required of him.

  ‘I think he made that mistake on purpose,’ said James. ‘There’s impudence in those eyes. What were we saying?’

  ‘Very little if you care to analyse it –’

  ‘Listen,’ said James, leaning towards her. ‘Let me put to you the simple facts.’

  Eve looked at her husband, wondering what prevented him from remembering that he had put to her the simple facts before. The simple facts were the story of his adult life, how he had started at the beginning and for twenty years had clambered from success to success. ‘One ends up on the board,’ he had said to her, explaining the ways of the business world, and Eve had nodded, assuming that he would end up where he wished to end up. ‘He’ll do well,’ people who knew about such matters said. ‘Keep an eye on him.’ And those who had kept an eye on him saw the efforts of James Bolsover rewarded as he made his way. He moved his family from one house to a better house, as modest riches came to him. The Bolsovers’ children grew and thrived, and eventually went to school, to be taught by Miss Fairy and Miss Crouch. ‘I am dying,’ said Jame
s Bolsover’s father, six months ago, and that had been another landmark. He had lain since in a house in Gloucestershire, beside a market garden which once he had run but which had long since become too much for him. He had claimed to see his dead wife on a marble ledge, waiting for him and urging him to hurry up.

  While his father was nodding his head over all that, James had reached a fresh peak and couldn’t believe what he found there. He returned one day to his house in Crannoc Avenue and said that he was now on the board. ‘You have ended up,’ said Eve in a joking way, and had often thought since of those words, for it seemed that, long before his time, her husband had in fact come to an end. In the months that followed he told her bit by bit, regularly repeating himself, about the eight who sat around the board. ‘Eight fat men with glasses,’ he said, ‘whom I had imagined to be men of power and cunning, sit yawning and grumping over the red baize of that table. They’re fifteen years my senior, and they’re fair in this: they see I’ve done a stint and so reward me. I may now relax in my early twilight and talk with them of how I heat my house, and exchange news of meals eaten in restaurants, and tell them stories they haven’t heard before. They do no work, yet imagine otherwise. They talk of painting all the building a light shade of blue, or of new appliances for the washrooms. Mr Clinger, maybe, speaks of his pet. Dogs are unclean, says Mr Clinger; he disapproves of dogs. “We’ll rear an intelligent young monkey,” says he to his wife, “whether you like it or not.” She didn’t like it, poor woman, but now, by all accounts, has grown devoted. There’s many a story we hear about that monkey when we’re not hearing some detail of the office buildings. It passes the time on a sleepy afternoon while the underlings do the work. It’s my reward to say the underlings are worthless. Well, some of them are.’

  Eve could not easily imagine what it was like in the place where James worked: she had never been there, she had never met his colleagues. She thought of a ten-storeyed building and of many corridors, some winding and twisting, a few of them straight and very long, with similar doors opening opposite one another. She saw a few people, as in a dream, secretaries and men with spectacles, hurrying along, carrying papers. Her own world was vastly different: the world of mothers and Mrs Hoop, lunch and tea, chatting to Sybil Thornton, and talking to people in shops. Morning and afternoon, the mothers settled into their motor-cars in a rush, to convey their children to school or else to fetch them home. Eve settled into her red Mini Minor – Eve who had dreamed of marriage all her girlhood; born out of her time, she sometimes thought. ‘Bring the children to tea,’ a mother strange to her would say. ‘Bring them on Friday, and we can have a chat.’ And on Friday another mother and another mother’s children would become known to her, and later on, if it was considered a suitable thing, the mother, without her children but with her husband instead, might sit down to dinner in the Bolsovers’ house, or stand around drinking sherry or cocktails.