The Love Department Page 8

  Mr FitzArthur was going for a walk. He was trying to clear his mind of the confusion placed there by his wife, and he was thinking that he felt far from sanguine about this latest move of hers, and wondered if he should simply go back on his word and start divorce proceedings immediately. Although he loved her, he felt she might well be bamboozling him again. For all he knew, the young blackguard was waiting for her in New York, or had run away from her to New York. Perhaps, thought Mr FitzArthur, she was following him over there in a final effort to persuade him to make a go of it with her. And if all that failed, back she would come to accept the second best.

  ‘Have you threepence?’ said Mr FitzArthur abruptly to a woman with two full shopping bags. ‘I have an urgent call to make.’

  Edward drew an excited breath. He was too far away to hear what it was that Septimus Tuam was saying to the woman, but here, at least, in the broad light of day, was the lover at work.

  ‘A threepenny piece,’ snapped Mr FitzArthur, ‘or a sixpence.’

  The woman placed her shopping bags on the ground and searched in a purse, and Edward saw money change hands. He saw the man stride quickly away, down a leafy road, and he heard the woman call after him.

  ‘What is it, madam?’ demanded Edward, arriving at the woman’s side. ‘What did that man do to you?’

  The woman said that the man had asked her for a threepenny piece or a sixpence, that she had given him one of both expecting to be handed coppers, but had received nothing at all. ‘I didn’t know the man was begging,’ said the woman. ‘Well-dressed like that.’

  Edward gave the woman a shilling. He said he was employed to watch the man. ‘What else did he say to you?’ asked Edward. ‘Did he make a suggestion at all?’ But the woman shook her head, and Edward, fearful of losing sight of his quarry, jumped on to his landlady’s bicycle and rode off in pursuit.

  ‘All I am asking,’ said Mr FitzArthur, ‘is whether the blackguard is in New York. I want it on your word of honour, madam, that this Septimus Tuam is not featuring in your plans.’

  Mrs FitzArthur, who happened to be in a state of undress, said that the whole idea of her going to New York was to be on her own, adding with a pout that she thought she had made that plain. ‘What would be the point,’ she argued, ‘of meeting up with Septimus Tuam in New York if I take the trouble of going all that way to be alone?’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Mr FitzArthur, and opened the door of the telephone-booth to speak sharply to a young man who had been leaning against it, trying to overhear his conversation. ‘Go away,’ he cried at Edward. ‘This is a private chat,’

  ‘Have sense, Harry, do,’ said Mrs FitzArthur.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I give you my sworn word. Send your detective with me if you wish.’

  Mr FitzArthur said that that would not be necessary. He apologized, blaming a rogue thought that had engendered the suspicion. He would rest assured, he said.

  ‘Be good as well,’ replied his wife, with a little laugh.

  Mr FitzArthur walked out of the telephone-booth and saw at the far end of the road, hiding behind a bicycle, the red-cheeked young man who had been listening to his conversation. He considered approaching him and complaining further but he decided that no good could come of it. Nowadays, he supposed, one must expect ill manners on the street, and the constant invasion of all privacy. He walked ahead, and a moment later heard a crashing noise close behind him and looked around to see the young man depositing his bicycle by the pavement’s edge.

  ‘Look here,’ said Edward coming forward and barring Mr FitzArthur’s way. ‘It’s time we had a talk.’

  ‘Talk? What talk?’

  ‘I know all about you,’ said Edward. ‘I know who you are.’

  ‘What the hell are you on about? You were listening in to my conversation. Stand out of my path, sir.’

  ‘You stole money from a woman. It is against the law, you know, to go up to women and walk away with money just like that. You think you can do anything you like with women.’

  ‘You young pup,’ said Mr FitzArthur.

  ‘We’re warning you off,’ said Edward, speaking breathlessly but with clarity. ‘We’re warning you off this district altogether, this or any other district, unless you want to land up in a prison cell.’

  ‘Get to hell!’ said Mr FitzArthur. ‘Stand out of my way at once, sir. Are you a raving lunatic?’

  ‘I am in all my senses,’ said Edward quietly. ‘Why should I not be?’ He handed Mr FitzArthur the list of women that had been typed from Lady Dolores’ file. ‘These, eh?’

  Mr FitzArthur read the names of a large number of women of whom he had never heard, and then, to his considerable surprise, he saw that his wife’s name lay at the bottom of the list.

  ‘What’s my wife doing there?’ he demanded. ‘What is all this, for God’s sake?’

  Edward laughed. ‘These are all your wives. Or have been, in a sense. You know quite well what I mean.’

  It came to Mr FitzArthur then that the young man was referring in some way to the fact that he had been married many times.

  ‘You’ve got your wires crossed,’ said Mr FitzArthur. ‘I know only one woman on that list, although it is true I have been married several times. Are you a Jehovah’s Witness or something?’

  ‘You cannot outwit me,’ cried Edward. ‘There’ll be none of that. You are forbidden to walk these streets. If I were you I’d take the next boat out of the country.’

  ‘I have a perfect right –’

  ‘You have no rights of any kind whatsoever. You bring misery into marriages. You leave a trail of disaster and unhappiness behind you.’

  ‘My private life is no affair of yours.’

  ‘Your private life is the affair of every decent man in the country. You’re the sort who starts trouble in picture houses, edging up to women and messing them about.’

  ‘Shut your mouth, sir,’ cried Mr FitzArthur in a rage. ‘Let me by at once.’

  ‘If you insist upon more of the truth, I’ll tell you this: I’m a Scotland Yard man in everyday clothes. We’re cleaning up the area.’

  ‘Now, look here –’

  ‘You think of women in terms of money only. You can’t pass a woman on the street without putting the bite on her.’

  ‘I did not put the bite on any woman. I merely wished to make an urgent telephone call, to which for some reason you saw fit to listen.’

  ‘I was doing my duty, sir. I am obliged to do that.’

  Mr FitzArthur, certain now that the young man was insane, glanced around to see if he could see a policeman. But the road was a quiet one and was rarely visited by a constable on the beat. Mr FitzArthur said:

  ‘I had better be getting on.’

  ‘Where to?’ demanded Edward. ‘Look, will you come to a rehabilitation centre with me and let that be the end of the matter? There’s a good place down in Clapham; I passed it this morning. They’ll hand you out decent work and ask no questions about the past. Let me give you my address and I’d like you to report to me every three days. Really, you know, this has worked out splendidly.’

  Edward imagined Lady Dolores’ face when he walked into the love department and said that he had taken Septimus Tuam to a rehabilitation centre in Clapham and that the sympathetic people there had found him work immediately: in a television showroom, Edward thought it might be, or with a car-hire firm.

  ‘How would you like,’ said Edward to Mr FitzArthur, ‘to try your hand at selling television sets? Does it appeal to you at all?’

  He could just imagine Lady Dolores smiling at him and screwing up her eyes, delighted by the news. ‘Well done, Mr Blakeston-Smith,’ he could hear her saying in a low voice, and then, as soon as she had said it, he would ask her about the words the clerks used. As he thought of that, the words themselves invaded his mind, interfering with his thought processes. He saw the words Neck death gleaming in the air in front of him, as though lit up in fine neon writing.

  ‘Now
look,’ said Mr FitzArthur, and did not finish the sentence because he saw no point in finishing it. He had never before in his life been subjected to treatment like this on a public street: a young fellow with a woman’s bicycle who pressed his ear against a telephone-booth in an effort to listen in to a most private conversation, a young fellow who accused him of crimes against women and offered to take him to a rehabilitation centre, and then offered him a job as a salesman of television sets. ‘Now look,’ said Mr FitzArthur again, attempting to walk forward.

  ‘Give up this awful old life,’ pleaded Edward earnestly, ‘I do assure you, it’s for your own good that we work. Give up the bad life, battening on women, peddling your love about. Come with me now and we’ll walk together to the rehabilitation centre. I think you’d like it, you know, in a television showroom. It’s not an uninteresting life.’

  ‘I do not wish to sell television sets, interesting though it may be. I do not have to.’

  ‘What’s the use of that silly old talk? It’s much better to do as we say. Honestly, Mr Tuam.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do as we advise,’ urged Edward, feeling himself to be a grown man, employed in an important way. ‘Listen to what the folk have to say to you down at the Centre.’

  ‘What did you call me?’

  ‘I said I knew you. I said we had you all taped out. I showed you the list of the letters. We’re well aware that the list is not complete –’

  ‘Who do you imagine I am, may I ask?’

  Edward laughed. ‘You are Septimus Tuam,’ he said, ‘the slippery lover of Wimbledon.’

  ‘Good God above!’ said Mr FitzArthur. He stood in front of Edward, lifting his arms up and down, expostulating.

  ‘Why deny it?’ said Edward with a smile.

  ‘Am I to hear nothing but the name of Septimus Tuam for the rest of my days?’ cried Mr FitzArthur, feeling sore and hard done by to a degree. ‘Is it not enough that I have to go through all the other without having people come up to me and saying that I commit crimes against women? Who are you, sir? Is this some mockery, for God’s sake?’

  Edward, still smiling, was suddenly struck by something in the other man’s manner. He saw that the man was outraged, and it slowly became clear to him that some at least of the outrage might be genuine. With less of a smile on his face, he said:

  ‘Who are you, then?’

  ‘The name is FitzArthur.’

  ‘FitzArthur?’

  ‘My name, sir, is Harry FitzArthur.’

  ‘You’re never Mrs FitzArthur’s estranged husband?’

  ‘I am Mrs FitzArthur’s estranged husband. I’m telling you that. Now, what I want to ask you –’

  But Edward was already on his bicycle, pedalling hard away, with tears of shame biting his eyes. In his mind everything was jumbled and jostled together; his face was like a beetroot. ‘What’s she going to say to me?’ he muttered dejectedly. ‘I’m still a child.’

  Edward passed from the leafy roads of Wimbledon and rode down into Putney. The posters, gay upon their hoardings, mocked him and made his failure seem the greater. He felt as though a balloon had been inflated in his chest. ‘Oh, God,’ he cried, looking towards the clouds, ‘say I’m sorry to that man for me.’ But the prayer was of little consolation to him, as he sorrowed and moped over his bad beginning.

  ‘God guide you,’ said Septimus Tuam in the departure lounge at London Airport, ‘and send you safe.’

  A flight number was called and Mrs FitzArthur rose and joined her fellow passengers in a queue, waiting to pass from the building to the aeroplane.

  Septimus Tuam turned away from the window of the departure lounge. He had helped Mrs FitzArthur to pack and had enjoyed the chore, slipping the occasional item into one or other of his trouser pockets. In his stomach lay omelette, wine, tomatoes, bread, coffee, and two of Mr FitzArthur’s peaches. Thoughts of how best to act still filled his mind. He had requested of Mrs FitzArthur, as well as her small gift, a loan of fifteen pounds, and had received twenty-one, making forty-one in all. He was determined, as he always was in money matters, that the sum should not be frittered away: it would be placed and allowed to accumulate due interest in Septimus Tuam’s post office savings account. It would bring the total to four thousand, four hundred and forty-two pounds, seventeen shillings.

  Septimus Tuam eyed the women in the departure lounge and decided to leave them alone. Some were smartly dressed, others more humbly; a few wore fur coats, as though about to fly away to the Antipodes. The women stood about, talking to men, smoking and laughing, or alone, or with their children, en route for Edmonton or Cairo, Brazil, Switzerland, Greece, Italy, Ethiopia, Spain. He wondered a bit about them all and supposed they were much like other women, in any crowd, anywhere: some married, some in love, some in love with their husbands, others with lovers, some divorced and living alone, a few in love with older men, rather more with younger ones, many loving hopelessly. Septimus Tuam passed briefly by these women of different colours and classes, Methodists, Quakers, Episcopalians, American Presbyterians, Baptists from Germany, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Catholics, agnostics, atheists. Nuns walked by with canvas bags, Belgian nuns, or Irish; nuns going out to the mission fields of Africa and Asia, to feed the minds in the name of God, to do their best. Septimus Tuam, respecting the nuns, saw a girls’ chorus from Minnesota, girls of sixteen or eighteen with long white socks that almost reached their knees, and box-pleated skirts, white also, and blazers of navy blue. They were together in a bunch, chewing and speaking. ‘Two hours’ delay,’ announced the woman in charge of them, attired as they were. ‘Why don’t we have some coffee?’ She hastened away and the girls followed her. One saw Septimus Tuam and whispered to a nearby friend, who turned to look at him.

  In Mrs FitzArthur’s aeroplane a voice said that seat-belts might now be released, that smoking was permitted. Hostesses offered drinks. Mrs FitzArthur, having wept a little, patted her cheeks with a powder-puff, thinking of her husband and thinking also of Septimus Tuam. She pressed a bell and said when the hostess came that she’d like a full-sized gin and tonic.

  Edward, in a telephone-box, pressed a threepenny piece into the correct slot and spoke to Lady Dolores.

  ‘It’s not good,’ said Edward.

  ‘Who’s speaking?’

  ‘It’s Edward Blakeston-Smith, Lady Dolores. I can’t track down Septimus Tuam. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.’

  ‘You have a cute turn of phrase, Mr Blakeston-Smith. I’m standing here dripping water. What d’you want?’

  ‘You told me to telephone you. I haven’t seen Septimus Tuam. I can’t find him.’

  ‘Then what are you bothering me for? I’m dripping wet from a bath.’

  Lady Dolores replaced the receiver and returned to her bath. Imagine that, she thought: the youth to ring up and to tell her precisely nothing.

  Edward walked disconsolately away from the telephone-box.

  For five hours he had been watching the house in which Septimus Tuam was reputed to have a room and had seen no sign of anyone who answered to his description. Probably the man was a figment of these women’s imaginations, he thought, remembering that he had heard of things like that. He sighed and mounted his landlady’s bicycle, and Septimus Tuam, still at London Airport, spoke in turn into a telephone.

  ‘Mrs Bolsover?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We met in Ely’s,’ said Septimus Tuam, ‘in the button department. I was after an outsize leather one for an old uncle of mine, Lord Marchingpass actually, while you were on to something different. My name is Septimus Tuam.’

  ‘Oh yes, Mr Tuam!’

  ‘Look, I hope you don’t object to my calling you up like this. It’s about your stocking. I’m exceedingly sorry about that, and to tell the truth I’ve been worried over the whole incident.’

  ‘Please don’t, Mr Tuam. Please. It was all an accident. It could happen to anyone.’

  ‘I was upset about two things, i
f I may for a moment be specific: firstly, that I had damaged your stocking and for all I know the calf of your leg as well, and secondly, that you refused point-blank to let me replace your stocking. I had a dream last night, Mrs Bolsover, in which I saw you as a case of blood-poisoning. My wretched umbrella was exhibit A.’

  ‘My leg is perfectly all right. It was just the stocking, and as I said at the time I couldn’t possibly allow you to buy me a new pair. Still, thank you for ringing. I’m sorry you’ve been upset like that. I assure you there’s no need for it.’

  ‘I’ve bought the stockings, Mrs Bolsover. We guessed your size: nine and a half. “She had slim legs,” I said to the girl assistant, “shapely and of average length.” “Try nine and a half,” the girl assistant said, and went away and came back with a pair of Bear Brand. In Autumn Mist.’

  ‘Oh now –’

  ‘I know, dear Mrs Bolsover, I shouldn’t have. Well, the deed is done and that is that. May I post them on to you?’

  ‘It’s extremely kind –’

  ‘I have your address from the telephone directory: 11 Crannoc Avenue. No wait a tic, Mrs Bolsover: I happen to be going out to Wimbledon myself in a day or two. Look here, I’ll drop the stockings in. I’ll pop them through your letter-box.’

  ‘Oh, please –’

  ‘What bother is it, for the Lord’s sake? I’m in Wimbledon anyway, out to see an uncle of mine. Old Lord Marchingpass, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘It’s most thoughtful of you, Mr Tuam,’ said Eve, feeling puzzled and thinking that the man really was going on rather.

  ‘Not a bit of it,’ said Septimus Tuam. ‘It’s quite a pleasure.’

  9

  Eve walked away from the telephone, not thinking about Septimus Tuam. She watched her husband pouring brandy into a glass. She had heard of men, of his colleagues and of similar men, who returned at night to a hobby that absorbed them. Some kept birds in cages, delicate creatures from the equator that now had to be kept in a heated conservatory. Others reared tanks of fish, whose health and habits they read about, at length, in magazines.