one brown eye quickly cast down, the beginning of a smile on pale lips, and she presented me again squarely with the back of her head.
Puzzled, I opened Ellis Bolt’s door and walked in. The inner office wasn’t much more inspiring than the outer; it was larger and there was a new green square of carpet on the linoleum, but the greyish walls pervaded, along with the tidy dullness. Through the two windows was a more distant view of the fire-escape of the building across the alley. If a drab conventional setting equalled respectability, Bolt was an honest stockbroker; and Carter, who had phoned in just before I left, had found nothing to suggest otherwise.
Bolt was on his feet behind his desk, hand outstretched. I shook it, he gestured me to a chair with arms, and offered me a cigarette.
‘No, thank you, I don’t smoke.’
‘Lucky man,’ he said benignly, tapping ash off one he was half through, and settling his pin-striped bulk back into his chair.
His face was rounded at every point, large round nose, round cheeks, round heavy chin: no planes, no impression of bone structure underneath. He had exceptionally heavy eyebrows, a full mobile mouth, and a smug self-satisfied expression.
‘Now, Mr Halley, I believe in coming straight to the point. What can I do for you?’
He had a mellifluous voice, and he spoke as if he enjoyed the sound of it.
I said, ‘An aunt has given me some money now rather than leave it to me in her will, and I want to invest it.’
‘I see. And what made you come to me? Did someone recommend…?’ He tailed off, watching me with eyes that told me he was no fool.
‘I’m afraid…’ I hesitated, smiling apologetically to take the offence out of the words, ‘that I literally picked you with a pin. I don’t know any stockbrokers. I didn’t know how to get to know one, so I picked up a classified directory and stuck a pin into the list of names, and it was yours.’
‘Ah,’ he said paternally, observing the bad fit of Chico’s second best suit, which I had borrowed for the occasion, and listening to me reverting to the accent of my childhood.
‘Can you help me?’ I asked.
‘I expect so, I expect so. How much is this er, gift?’ His voice was minutely patronising, his manner infinitesimally bored. His time, he suspected, was being wasted.
‘Fifteen hundred pounds.’
He brightened a very little. ‘Oh, yes, definitely, we can do something with that. Now, do you want growth mainly or a high rate of yield?’
I looked vague. He told me quite fairly the difference between the two, and offered no advice.
‘Growth, then,’ I said, tentatively. ‘Turn it into a fortune in time for my old age.’
He smiled without much mirth, and drew a sheet of paper towards him.
‘Could I have your full name?’
‘John Halley… John Sidney Halley,’ I said truthfully. He wrote it down.
‘Address?’ I gave it.
‘And your bank?’ I told him that too.
‘And I’ll need a reference, I’m afraid.’
‘Would the bank manager do?’ I asked. ‘I’ve had an account there for two years… he knows me quite well.’
‘Excellent.’ He screwed up his pen. ‘Now, do you have any idea what companies you’d like shares in, or will you leave it to me?’
‘Oh, I’ll leave it to you. If you don’t mind, that is. I don’t know anything about it, you see, not really. Only it seems silly to leave all that money around doing nothing.’
‘Quite, quite.’ He was bored with me. I thought with amusement that Charles would appreciate my continuing his strategy of the weak front. ‘Tell me, Mr Halley, what do you do for a living?’
‘Oh… um… I work in a shop,’ I said. ‘In the men’s wear. Very interesting, it is.’
‘I’m sure it is.’ There was a yawn stuck in his throat.
‘I’m hoping to be made an assistant buyer next year,’ I said eagerly.
‘Splendid. Well done.’ He’d had enough. He got cum-brously to his feet and ushered me to the door. ‘All right, Mr Halley, I’ll invest your money safely for you in good long term growth stock, and send you the papers to sign in due course. You’ll hear from me in a week or ten days. All right?’
‘Yes, Mr Bolt, thank you very much indeed,’ I said respectfully. He shut the door gently behind me.
There were now two people in the outer office. The woman with her back still turned, and a spare, middle- aged man with a primly folded mouth, and tough stringy tendons pushing his collar away from his neck. He was quite at home, and with an incurious, unhurried glance at me he went past into Bolt’s office. The clerk, I presumed.
The woman was typing addresses on envelopes. The twenty or so that she had done lay in a slithery stack on her left: on her right an open file provided a list of names. I looked over her shoulder casually, and then with quickened interest. She was working down the first page of a list of Seabury shareholders.
‘Do you want something, Mr Halley?’ she asked politely, pulling one envelope from the typewriter and inserting another with a minimum of flourish.
‘Well, er, yes,’ I said diffidently. I walked round to the side of her desk and found that one couldn’t go on round to the front of it: a large old fashioned table with bulbous legs filled all the space between the desk and the end of the room. I looked at this arrangement with some sort of understanding and with compassion.
‘I wondered,’ I said, ‘if you could be very kind and tell me something about investing money, and so on. I didn’t like to ask Mr Bolt too much, he’s a busy man. And I’d like to know a bit about it.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Halley.’ Her head was turned away from me, bent over the Seabury investors. ‘I’ve a job to do, as you see. Why don’t you read the financial columns in the papers, or get a book on the subject?’
I had a book all right.
‘Books aren’t as good as people at explaining things,’ I said. ‘If you are busy now, could I come back when you’ve finished work and take you out for a meal? I’d be so grateful if you would, if you possibly could.’
A sort of shudder shook her. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Halley, but I’m afraid I can’t.’
‘If you will look at me, so that I can see all of your face,’ I said, ‘I will ask you again.’
Her head went up with a jerk at that, but finally she turned round and looked at me.
I smiled. ‘That’s better. Now, how about coming out with me this evening?’
‘You guessed?’
I nodded. ‘The way you’ve got your furniture organised… Will you come?’
‘You still want to?’
‘Well, of course. What time do you finish?’
‘About six, tonight.’
‘I’ll come back. I’ll meet you at the door, down in the street.’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘If you really mean it, thank you. I’m not doing anything else tonight…’
Years of hopeless loneliness showed raw in the simple words. Not doing anything else, tonight or most nights. Yet her face wasn’t horrific; not anything as bad as I had been prepared for. She had lost an eye, and wore a false one. There had been some extensive burns and undoubtedly some severe fracture of the facial bones, but plastic surgery had repaired the damage to a great extent, and it had all been a long time ago. The scars were old. It was the inner wound which hadn’t healed.
Well… I knew a bit about that myself, on a smaller scale.
EIGHT
