The Collected Stories

‘Not too hot on the Costa in May. If you need any help –’

‘Just the bookings.’

‘I’d be happy to make them for you. Look in any time. Britt the name is. I’m on the counter.’

‘If I may, Mr Britt. I could slip out maybe at four, or roundabout.’

‘Today, you mean?’

‘We want to fix it up.’

‘Naturally. I’ll keep an eye out for you.’

It was hard not to call her madam or miss, the way he’d normally do. He had heard himself saying that he’d be happy to make the bookings for her, knowing that that was business jargon, knowing that the unfussy voice he’d used was a business one also. Her friend was a man, he supposed, some snazzy tough in a car. ‘See you later then,’ he said, but already she was serving another customer, advising about lipstick refills.

She didn’t appear in Travel-Wide at four o’clock; she hadn’t come when the doors closed at five-thirty. He was aware of a sense of disappointment, combined with one of anticipation: for if she’d come at four, he reflected as he left the travel agency, their bit of business would be in the past rather than the future. She’d look in some other time and he’d just have to trust to luck that if he happened to be busy with another customer she’d be able to wait. There’d be a further occasion, when she called to collect the tickets themselves.

‘Ever so sorry,’ she said on the street, her voice coming from behind him. ‘Couldn’t get away, Mr Britt.’

He turned and smiled at her, feeling the movement of his moustache as he parted his lips. He knew only too well, he said. ‘Some other time then?’

‘Maybe tomorrow. Maybe lunchtime.’

‘I’m off myself from twelve to one. Look, you wouldn’t fancy a drink? I could advise you just as easily over a drink.’

‘Oh, you wouldn’t have the time. No, I mustn’t take advantage –’

‘You’re not at all. If you’ve got ten minutes?’

‘Well, it’s awfully good of you, Mr Britt. But I really feel I’m taking advantage, I really do.’

‘A New Year’s drink.’

He pushed open the doors of the saloon bar of the Drummer Boy, a place he didn’t often enter except for office drinks at Christmas or when someone leaving the agency was being given a send-off. Ron Stocks and Mr Blackstaffe were usually there in the evenings: he hoped they’d be there now to see him in the company of the girl from Green’s the Chemist’s. ‘What would you like?’ he asked her.

‘Gin and peppermint’s my poison, only honestly I should pay. No, let me ask you –’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it. We can sit over there, look.’

The Drummer Boy, so early in the evening, wasn’t full. By six o’clock the advertising executives from the firm of Dalton, Dure and Higgins, just round the corner, would have arrived, and the architects from Frine and Knight. Now there was only Mrs Gregan, old and alcoholic, known to everyone, and a man called Bert, with his poodle, Jimmy. It was disappointing that Ron Stocks and Mr Blackstaffe weren’t there.

‘You were here lunchtime Christmas Eve,’ she said.

‘Yes, I was.’ He paused, placing her gin and peppermint on a cardboard mat that advertised Guinness. ‘I saw you too.’

He drank some of his Double Diamond and carefully wiped the traces of foam from his moustache. He realized now that it would, of course, be quite impossible to give her a hug on the street outside. That had been just imagination, wishful thinking as his mother would have said. And yet he knew that when he arrived home twenty- five or so minutes late he would not tell Hilda that he’d been advising an assistant from Green’s the Chemist’s about a holiday on the Costa Brava. He wouldn’t even say he’d been in the Drummer Boy. He’d say Blackstaffe had kept everyone late, going through the new package that Eurotours were offering in Germany and Luxembourg this summer. Hilda wouldn’t in a million years suspect that he’d been sitting in a public house with a younger woman who was quite an eyeful. As a kind of joke, she quite regularly suggested that his sexual drive left something to be desired.

‘We were thinking about the last two weeks in May,’ Marie said. ‘It’s when Mavis can get off too.’

‘Mavis?’

‘My friend, Mr Britt.’

Hilda was watching Z-Cars in the sitting-room, drinking V.P. wine. His stuff was in the oven, she told him. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

Sometimes she was out when he returned in the evenings. She went round to friends, a Mr and Mrs Fowler, with whom she drank V.P. and played bridge. On other occasions she went to the Club, which was a place with a licence, for card-players and billiard-players. She quite liked her social life, but always said beforehand when she’d be out and always made arrangements about leaving food in the oven. Often in the daytime she’d go and make jewellery with Violet Parkes, who also went in for this occupation; and often Violet Parkes spent the day with Hilda. The jewellery-making consisted for the most part of threading plastic beads on to a string or arranging plastic pieces in the settings provided. Hilda was quick at it and earned more than she would have if she went out every day, saving the fares for a start. She was better at it than Violet Parkes.

‘All right then?’ she said when he carried his tray of food into the sitting-room and sat down in front of the television set. ‘Want some V.P., eh?’

Her eyes continued to watch the figures on the screen as she spoke. He knew she’d prefer to be in the Fowlers’ house or at the Club, although now that they’d acquired a TV set the evenings passed easier when they were alone together.

‘No, thanks,’ he said in reply to her offer of wine and he began to eat something that appeared to be a rissole. There were two of them, round and brown in a tin-foil container that also contained gravy. He hoped she wasn’t going to be demanding in their bedroom. He eyed her, for sometimes he could tell.