spending every penny they had on clothes and rarely eating a decent meal. The German-wine firm had turned out to be a dull place for a girl to work in too, or so at least it seemed after a few years. Often, though, while finding it dull, Angela had felt that it suited her. With her poor complexion and her bulging contact lenses and her small, thin arms, it was a place to crouch away in. Besides herself, two elderly women were employed in the office, and there was Mr Franklin and Mr Snyder, elderly also. Economy was practised in the office, the windows seemed always to be dusty, electric lightbulbs were of a low wattage. On the mornings when a new pimple cruelly erupted on her neck or one of her cheeks, Angela had hurried from bus to tube and was glad when she reached the dingy office of the wine firm and lost herself in its shadows. Then a girl in the flat introduced her to Pure Magic, so good at disguising imperfections of the skin. But although it did not, as in an advertisement, change Angela’s life and could do nothing at all for her thin arms, it did enough to draw her from the dinginess of the wine firm. A girl in the flat heard of the vacancy with Miss Ivygale at C.S. & E. and, not feeling like a change herself, persuaded Angela to apply for it. The shared opinion of the girls in the flat was that Angela needed drawing out. They liked her and were sorry for her: no joke at all, they often said to one another, to have an inferiority complex like Angela’s. The inferiority complex caused nerviness in her, one of them diagnosed, and the nerviness caused her bad complexion. In actual fact, her figure and her arms were perfectly all right, and her hair was really pretty the way it curled. Now that she’d at last stopped wearing spectacles she looked quite presentable, even if her eyes did tend to bulge a little.
‘Oh, you’ll like it at C.S. & E.,’ Gordon Spelle said. ‘It’s really friendly, you know. Sincerely so.’
He insisted on buying her another drink and while he was at the bar she wondered when, or if, she was going to meet the people he’d mentioned, the other employees of C.S. & E. Miss Ivygale had narrowed her eyes in her direction and then had looked away, as if she couldn’t quite place her. The black-haired receptionist had naturally not remembered her face when she’d come into the bar with the two men. The only person Gordon Spelle had so far introduced her to was the man called Tommy Blyth, who had joined the group around the fire and was holding the hand of a girl.
‘It’s the C.S. & E. pub,’ Gordon Spelle said when he returned with the drinks. ‘There isn’t a soul here who isn’t on the strength.’ He smiled at her, his bad eye twitching. ‘I like you, you know.’ She smiled back at him, not knowing how to reply. He picked up her left hand and briefly squeezed it.
‘Don’t trust that man, Angela,’ Miss Ivygale said, passing their table on her way to the Ladies. She stroked the back of Gordon Spelle’s neck. ‘Terrible man,’ she said.
Angela was pleased that Miss Ivygale had recognized her and had spoken to her. It occurred to her that her immediate employer was probably shortsighted and had seen no more than the outline of a familiar face when she’d peered across the bar at her.
‘Come on, have a drink with us,’ Miss Ivygale insisted on her way back from the Ladies.
‘Oh, it’s all right, Pam,’ Gordon Spelle said quickly, but Miss Ivygale stood there, waiting for them to get up and accompany her. ‘You watch your step, my boy,’ she said to Gordon Spelle as they all three made their way together. Gordon Spelle told her she was drunk.
‘This is my secretary, Alec,’ Miss Ivygale said at the bar. ‘Replacing Sue. Angela Hosford.’
Mr Hemp shook Angela’s hand. He had folded Miss Ivygale’s red coat and placed it on a bar-stool. He asked Angela what she was drinking and while she was murmuring that she wouldn’t have another one Gordon Spelle said a medium sherry and a gin and Britvic orange for himself. Gordon Spelle was looking cross, Angela noticed. His bad eye closed again. He was glaring at Miss Ivygale with the other one.
‘Cheers, Angela,’ Mr Hemp said. ‘Welcome to C.S. & E.’
‘Thank you, Mr Hemp.’
People were leaving the bar, waving or calling out goodnight to the group she was with. A man paused to say something to Mr Hemp and then stayed to have another drink. By the fire the receptionist and another girl listened while Tommy Blyth told them about car radios, advising which kind to buy if they ever had to.
‘I brought her in here to have a simple drink,’ Gordon Spelle was protesting to Miss Ivygale, unsuccessfully attempting to keep his voice low. ‘So’s the poor girl could meet a few people.’
Miss Ivygale looked at Angela and Angela smiled at her uneasily, embarrassed because they were talking about her. Miss Ivygale didn’t smile back, and it couldn’t have been that Miss Ivygale didn’t see her properly this time because the distance between them was less than a yard.
‘You watch your little step, my boy,’ Miss Ivygale warned again, and this time Gordon Spelle leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. ‘All right, my love?’ he said.
Miss Ivygale ordered Mr Hemp another Bell’s whisky and one for herself, reminding the barman that the measures they were drinking were double measures. ‘What’re you on, Dil?’ she asked the man who was talking to Mr Hemp. ‘No, no, must go,’ he said.
‘Bell’s I think he’s on,’ the barman said, pouring a third large whisky.
‘And a gin and Britvic for Gordon,’ Miss Ivygale said. ‘And a medium sherry.’
‘Oh, really,’ murmured Angela.
‘Nonsense,’ Miss Ivygale said.
In the lavatory Gordon Spelle swore as he urinated. Typical of bloody Pam Ivygale to go nosing in like that. He wouldn’t have brought the girl to the Arms at all if he’d thought Ivygale would be soaked to the gills, hurling abuse about like bloody snowballs. God alone knew what kind of a type the girl thought he was now. Girls like that had a way of thinking you a sexual maniac if you so much as took their arm to cross a street. There’d been one he’d known before who’d come from the same kind of area, Plymouth or Bristol or somewhere. Bigger girl actually, five foot ten she must have been, fattish. ‘Touch of the West Countries’, he’d said when she’d opened her mouth, the first time he’d used the expression. Tamar Dymond she’d been called, messy bloody creature.
Gordon Spelle combed his hair and then decided that his tie needed to be reknotted. He removed his pepper- coloured jacket and his waistcoat and took the tie off, cocking up the collar of his striped blue shirt in order to make the operation easier. His wife, Ruth, would probably be reading a story to the younger of their two children, since she generally did so at about seven o’clock. As he reknotted his tie, he imagined his wife sitting by the child’s bed reading a Topsy and Tim book.
‘Oh, say you’re going to Luton,’ Miss Ivygale said. ‘Tell her it’s all just cropped up in the last fifteen minutes.’
Mr Hemp shook his head. He pointed out that rather often recently he’d telephoned his wife at seven o’clock to say that what had cropped up in the last fifteen minutes was the fact that unexpectedly he had to go to Luton. Mr Hemp had moved away from the man called Dil, closer to Miss Ivygale. They were speaking privately, Mr Hemp in a lower voice than Miss Ivygale. The man called Dil was talking to another man.
