The Driver's Seat

no longer blue, his shoulders draped with an assortment of cardigans and fringed leather garments, heavy for the time of year.

Mrs Fiedke looks with interest and whispers to Lise, ‘They are hermaphrodites. It isn’t their fault.’ The young man turns as he is touched on the shoulder by a large blue-suited agent of the store. The bearded youth starts to argue and gesticulate, but this brings another, slighter, man to his other shoulder. They lead him protesting away towards the emergency exit stairway. A slight disturbance then occurs amongst the record-hearing crowd, some of whom take the young man’s part, some of whom do not. ‘He wasn’t doing any harm!’ ‘He smelt awful!’ ‘Who do you think you are?’

Lise walks off towards Televisions, followed anxiously by Mrs Fiedke. Behind them the pigtailed girl is addressing her adjacent crowd: ‘They think they’re in America where if they don’t like a man’s face they take him out and shoot him.’ A man’s voice barks back: ‘You couldn’t see his face for the hair. Go back where you came from, little whore! In this country, we …’

The quarrel melts behind them as they come to the television sets where the few people who have been taking an interest in the salesman appear now to be torn between his calm rivulet of words and the incipient political uprising over at Records and Record-Players. Two television screens, one vast and one small, display the same programme, a wild-life documentary film which is now coming to an end; a charging herd of buffalo, large on one screen and small on the other, cross the two patches of vision while music of an unmistakably finale nature sends them on their way with equal volume from both machines. The salesman turns down the noise from the larger set, and continues to address his customers, who have now dwindled to two, meanwhile keeping an interested eye on Lise and Mrs Fiedke who hover behind.

‘Would that be your gentleman?’ Mrs Fiedke says, while the screens give a list of names responsible for the film, then another and another list of names. Lise says, ‘I was just wondering myself. He looks a respectable type.’

‘It’s up to you,’ says Mrs Fiedke. ‘You’re young and you have your life in front of you.’

A well-groomed female announcer comes on both televisions, small and large, to give out the early evening headlines, first stating that the time is 17.00 hours, then that a military coup has newly taken place in a middle- eastern country details of which are yet unknown. The salesman, abandoning his potential clients to their private deliberations, inclines his head towards Mrs Fiedke and inquires if he can help her.

‘No thank you,’ Lise replies in the tongue of the country. Whereupon the salesman comes close up and pursues Mrs Fiedke in English. ‘We have big reductions, Madam, this week.’ He looks winningly at Lise, eventually approaching to squeeze her arm. Lise turns to Mrs Fiedke. ‘No good,’ she says. ‘Come on, it’s getting late,’ and she guides the old lady away to Gifts and Curios at the far end of the floor. ‘Not my man at all. He tried to get familiar with me,’ Lise says. ‘The one I’m looking for will recognize me right away for the woman I am, have no fear of that.’

‘Can you credit it?’ says Mrs Fiedke looking back indignantly in the direction of Televisions. ‘Perhaps we should report him. Where is the Office?’

‘What’s the use?’ Lise says. ‘We have no proof.’

‘Perhaps we should go elsewhere for my nephew’s slippers.’

‘Do you really want to buy slippers for your nephew?’ Lise says.

‘I thought of slippers as a welcome present. My poor nephew — the hotel porter was so nice. The poor boy was to have arrived on this morning’s flight from Copenhagen. I waited and I waited. He must have missed the plane. The porter looked up the timetable and there’s another arriving tonight. I must remember not to go to bed. The plane gets in at ten-twenty but it may be eleven-thirty, twelve, before he gets to the hotel, you know.’

Lise is looking at the leather notecases, embossed with the city’s crest. ‘These look good,’ Lise says. ‘Get him one of these. He would remember all his life that you gave it to him.’

‘I think slippers,’ says Mrs Fiedke. ‘Somehow I feel slippers. My poor nephew has been unwell, we had to send him to a clinic. It was either that or the other, they gave us no choice. He’s so much better now, quite well again. But he needs rest. Rest, rest and more rest is what the doctor wrote. He takes size nine.

Lise is playing with a corkscrew, then with a ceramic-handled cork. ‘Slippers might make him feel like an invalid,’ she says. ‘Why don’t you buy him a record or a book? How old is he?’

‘Only twenty-four. It comes from the mother’s side. Perhaps we should go to another shop.’

Lise leans over the counter to inquire which department is men’s slippers. Patiently she translates the answer to Mrs Fiedke. ‘Footwear on the third floor. We’ll have to go back up. The other stores are much too expensive, they charge you what they like. The travel folder recommends this place as they’ve got fixed prices.’

Up they go, once more, surveying the receding departments as they rise; they buy the slippers; they descend to the ground floor. There, near the street door, they find another gift department with a miscellany of temptations. Lise buys another scarf, bright orange. She buys a striped man’s necktie, dark blue and yellow. Then, glimpsing through the crowd a rack from which dangles a larger assortment of men’s ties, each neatly enfolded in transparent plastic, she changes her mind about the coloured tie she has just bought. The girl at the counter is not pleased by the difficulties involved in the refund of money, and accompanies Lise over to the rack to see if an exchange can be effected.

Lise selects two ties, one plain black knitted cotton, the other green. Then, changing her mind once more, she says, ‘That green is too bright, I think.’ The girl conveys exasperation, and in a manner of vexed resignation Lise says, ‘All right, give me two black ties, they’re always useful. Please remove the prices.’ She returns to the counter where she had left Mrs Fiedke, pays the difference and takes her package. Mrs Fiedke appears from the doorway where she has been examining, by daylight, two leather notecases. A shopman, who has been hovering by, in case she should be one of those who make a dash for it, goods in hand, follows her back to the counter. He says, ‘They’re both very good leather.’

Mrs Fiedke says, ‘I think he has one already.’ She chooses a paperknife in a sheath. Lise stands watching. She says, ‘I nearly bought one of those for my boy-friend at the airport before I left. It was almost the same but not quite.’ The paper-knife is made of brassy metal, curved like a scimitar. The sheath is embossed but not, like the one Lise had considered earlier in the day, jewelled. ‘The slippers are enough,’ Lise says.

Mrs Fiedke says, ‘You’re quite right. One doesn’t want to spoil them.’ She looks at a key-case, then buys the paper-knife.

‘If he uses a paper-knife,’ Lise says, ‘obviously he isn’t a hippy. If he were a hippy he would open his letters with his fingers.’