first, lingerie and women’s fashions on the second, furniture on the third. The roof-top cafeteria had been equipped with small metal chairs and tables, set with plates, cutlery and bowls of tiny flowers.
On the corners to the left and right of the store were the bank and supermarket, with the town hall diagonally opposite. Again, these were perfect replicas of their originals: in the drawers behind the counters in the bank were bundles of minuscule banknotes, a glitter of coins like heaps of silver dust. The interior of the supermarket was an exercise in a thousand virtuosities. The stalls were stacked with pyramids of tins and coloured packets almost too small for the eye to distinguish.
Beyond the buildings dominating the crossroads were the lesser shops and premises lining the side-streets — the drapers, a public house, shoeshops and tobacconists. Looking around, the entire town seemed to stretch away into the distance. The walls of the box had been painted so skilfully, with such clever control of perspective, that it was almost impossible to tell where the models ended and the walls intervened. The micro-cosmic world was so perfect in its own right, the illusion of reality so absolute that it appeared to be the town itself, its very dimensions those of reality.
Suddenly, through the warm early morning sunlight, a shadow moved. The glass door of one of the shoeshops opened, a figure stepped out for a moment onto the pavement, glanced up and down the still deserted street, then retreated into the dark recesses of the shop’s interior. A middle-aged man in a grey suit and white collar, it was presumably the manager opening the shop in the morning. In agreement with this, a second doorway opened farther down the street; and this time a woman came out of a hairdresser’s, and began to wind down the blind. She wore a black skirt and pink plastic smock. As she went back into the salon she waved to someone walking down the street towards the town hall.
More figures emerged from the doorways, strolled along the pavements talking to each other, starting the day’s business. Soon the streets were full; the offices over the shops came to life, typists moving in among the desks and filing cabinets. Signs were put up or taken down; calendars moved on. The first customers arrived at the department store and supermarket, ambled past the fresh counter displays. At the town hall clerks sat at their ledgers, in their private offices behind the oak panelling the senior officials had their first cups of tea. Like a well- ordered hive, the town came to life.
High above it all, his gigantic face hidden in the shadows, Mr Goddard quietly watched his lilliputian scene like a discreet aged Gulliver. He sat forward, the green shade shielding his eyes, hands clasped lightly in his lap. Occasionally he would lean over a few inches to catch a closer glimpse of the figures below him, or tilt his head to see into one of the shops or offices. His face showed no emotion, he seemed content to be simply a spectator. Two feet away the hundreds of tiny figures moved about their lives, and a low murmur of street noises crept out into the room.
The tallest of the figures were no more than an inch and a half in height, yet their perfectly formed faces were completely furnished with character and expression. Most of them Mr Goddard knew by sight, many by name. He saw Mrs Hamilton, the lingerie buyer, late for work, hurrying down the alleyway to the staff entrance. Through a window he could see the managing director’s office, where Mr Sellings was delivering his usual weekly pep-talk to a trio of department heads. In the streets outside were scores of regular customers Mr Goddard had known intimately for years, buying their groceries, posting their letters, exchanging gossip.
As the scene below him unfolded, Mr Goddard gradually edged nearer the box, taking a particular interest in two or three of the score of separate tableaux. An interesting feature of his vantage point was that by some freak of architecture or perspective it afforded him a multiplicity of perfect angles by which to observe almost every one of the diminutive figures. The high windows of the bank provided him with a view of each of the clerks at their counters; a transom beyond exposed the strongroom, the rows of deposit boxes on their shelves behind the grille, one of the junior cashiers amusing himself by reading the labels. The department store, with its wide floors, he could cover merely by inclining his head. The smaller shops along the streets were just as exposed. Rarely more than two rooms deep, their rear windows and fanlights provided him all the access he needed. Nothing escaped Mr Goddard’s scrutiny. In the back alleys he could see the stacked bicycles, the charwomen’s mops in their buckets by the basement doors, the dustbins half-filled with refuse.
The first scene to attract Mr Goddard’s attention was one involving the stockroom supervisor at the store, Mr Durrant. Casting his eye at random through the bank, Mr Goddard noticed him in the manager’s office, leaning across the latter’s desk and explaining something earnestly. Usually Durrant would have been a member of the group being harangued by Mr Sellings, and only urgent business could have taken him to the bank. The manager, however, appeared to be doing what he could to get rid of Durrant, avoiding his face and fiddling with some papers. Suddenly Durrant lost his temper. Tie askew, he began to shout angrily. The manager accepted this silently, shaking his head slowly with a bleak smile. Finally Durrant strode to the door, hesitated with a look of bitter reproach, and stalked out.
Leaving the bank, and apparently oblivious of his duties at the store, he walked briskly down the High Street. Stopping at the hairdresser’s, he went in and made his way through to a private booth at the back where a large man in a check suit, still wearing a green trilby, was being shaved. Mr Goddard watched their conversation through a skylight above them. The man in the chair, the local bookmaker, lay back silently behind his lather until Durrant finished talking, then with a casual flip of one hand waved him to a seat.
Putting two and two together, Mr Goddard waited with interest for their conversation to be resumed. What he had just seen confirmed suspicions recently prompted by Durrant’s distracted manner.
However, just as the bookmaker pulled off the towel and stood up, something more important caught Mr Goddard’s eye.
Directly behind the department store was a small cul-de-sac sealed off from the alleyway leading in from the street by high wooden doors. It was piled with old packing cases and miscellaneous refuse, and its far side was formed by the rear wall of the box, a sheer cliff that rose straight up into the distant glare above. The glazed windows of a service lift shaft overlooked the yard, topped on the fifth floor by a small balcony.
It was this balcony that had attracted Mr Goddard’s attention. Two men were crouched on it, manipulating a long wooden contraption that Mr Goddard identified as a telescopic ladder. Together they hoisted it into the air, and by pulling on a system of ropes extended it against the wall to a point about fifteen feet above their heads. Satisfied, they lashed the lower end securely to the balcony railings; then one of them mounted the ladder and climbed up to its topmost rung, arms outstretched across the wall, high over the yard below.
They were trying to escape from the box! Mr Goddard hunched forward, watching them with astonishment. The top of the ladder was still seven or eight inches from the overhanging rim of the box, thirty or forty feet away from the men on the balcony, but their industry was impressive. He watched them motionlessly while they tightened the guyropes.
Dimly, in the distance, midnight chimed. Mr Goddard looked at his watch, then without a further glance into the box pushed the lamp towards the ceiling and lowered the lid. He stood up and carried the box carefully to the safe, stowed it away, and sealed the door. Switching off the light, he let himself noiselessly out of the room.
The next day at the store Mr Goddard made his usual rounds, dispensing his invariable prescription of friendly chatter and bonhomie to sales assistants and customers alike, making full use of the countless trivial insights he had been provided with the previous evening. All the while he kept a constant lookout for Mr Durrant; reluctant to interfere, he was nevertheless afraid that without some drastic re-direction of the man’s fortunes his entanglement with the bookmaker would soon end in tragedy.
No one in the stockrooms had seen Durrant all morning, but shortly after 12 o’clock Mr Goddard spotted him hurrying down the street past the main entrance. Durrant stopped, glanced around indecisively, then began to wander through the showcases as he pondered something.
Mr Goddard made his way out, and casually sidled up to Durrant.
‘Fine day, isn’t it?’ he remarked. ‘Everybody’s starting to think about their holidays.’
Durrant nodded absently, examining a display of alpine equipment in the sports-goods window. ‘Are they? Good.’
‘You going away, Mr Durrant? South of France again, I suppose.’
‘What? No, I don’t think we will be this year.’ Durrant began to move off, but Mr Goddard caught up with him.
‘Sorry to hear that, Mr Durrant. I thought you deserved a good holiday abroad. Nothing the trouble, I hope.’ He looked searchingly into Durrant’s face. ‘If I can help at all, do let me know. I’d be glad to make you a small loan.
