‘Edward Blakeston-Smith,’ said the new young man. ‘My father was an Army man.’
‘So you live with your mother, eh?’
‘No, Lady Dolores. My mother died as she carried me into the world. My father never forgave himself. He tried to make it up to me.’
‘I see,’ said Lady Dolores. ‘Very nice. And now you’re here for work?’
‘I’m hoping to find my feet, actually. I’m trying to be my age.’
Edward had determined that he would set out into the world and play again the game as an adult, disguising his conversation so that its shortcomings might not be noticed. For himself, he would have been happy playing draughts all day, but he knew full well that this was not the way of the world; he knew that excessive draughts-playing was not what his father had expected of him, nor his mother whom he had met in that rudimentary way. He could quite visualize the hurt look on his father’s face if he discovered that his only son used up his time playing games of draughts with children or old men. His father had died four years ago, on manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain.
He has been sent to me, thought Lady Dolores, changing the cigarette in her holder; he has been sent through that door by Almighty God. She smiled at Edward, and told him that growing up was a difficult business. She told him not to be afraid.
‘You have been sent to me, Mr Blakeston-Smith,’ said Lady Dolores. ‘Now why, can you imagine?’
‘Sent? No, no: I rang up on the telephone. Yesterday afternoon.’
Edward was puzzled by Lady Dolores’ conversation, and puzzled indeed by the woman herself. She was a person, he noticed, who seemed to be almost as broad as she was tall, attired in rough clothes, with black hair flowing down her back, thick-lensed spectacles that sat squarely before her eyes, darkly framed. Her teeth appeared abruptly when she smiled, and were unexpectedly long, pale rather than white. He was puzzled by the content of her speech, and by the intense way she fixed her deep-set eyes on him.
‘It’s difficult work,’ Lady Dolores said. ‘It’s not all beer and skittles.’
Eager to accept any kind of paid labour, Edward said he understood that.
‘You are aware of the extent of mail? And its unfortunate nature?’
‘I’ve read about it.’
‘There’s never a let-up. Love goes on, Mr Blakeston-Smith. You follow me on that?’
‘I think so.’
‘Well, then?’
Edward looked about the room, at the walls and the ceiling.
‘Don’t do that,’ said Lady Dolores. ‘Let me warn you, Mr Blakeston-Smith: like the old song says, as a lovely flame dies.’
‘I’m sorry?’
Lady Dolores lit another cigarette. The glowing end of it was quite near to Edward’s face, because Lady Dolores’ cigarette-holder was inordinately long.
‘Smoke gets in your eyes,’ said Lady Dolores. ‘It’s the marriages that count.’
‘I see.’
‘You couldn’t see. You’d have to be here before you saw. I cry in my bath, Mr Blakeston-Smith, every day of my life.’
Edward wondered if this woman was still in her senses. He wondered if it wouldn’t be quite a profitable act to walk out now and sell the story of this interview to the Daily Express.
‘Take these letters,’ said Lady Dolores, handing him a dozen, ‘and sit yourself down at an empty desk. They are letters from Englishwomen in distress.’
Edward smiled.
‘See what you make of them,’ said Lady Dolores. ‘We get people pulling our legs in this department.’
Edward took the letters, and paused. Lady Dolores made an impatient movement, waving her right hand in the air. ‘Get on,’ she said snappishly. ‘Get hold of a jotter and a ball-point.’
All the clerks in the love department were supplied by Lady Dolores with ball-point pens and jotters for making notes in. She warned them that she would tolerate no horseplay or discussion among themselves of the mail, threatening instant dismissal if her wishes were ignored. She had had youths in the past who had thrown the envelopes about and had eaten pies at their desks.
Edward sat down and asked the clerk at the next desk for a jotter and a ball-point pen. ‘Open the drawer,’ said the clerk, which Edward did, and discovered the materials within. He smiled, and murmured quietly some words of thanks, attempting to be discreet, since discretion seemed to be the order in the love department. He began to read the documents that Lady Dolores had given him, and was shocked beyond measure.
As he perused the letters, Edward was aware that his mind was registering words that the letters did not contain. The words seemed to be in the air, and at first he thought he must be imagining them. Then it seemed to him – an odd fact, he thought – that his colleagues were issuing them, muttering the words, or shooting them out in a soft, staccato manner that made Edward jump. As he listened, concentrating on what he heard, he reflected that a conversation among ghosts might be quite like this.
‘His dog prowls,’ remarked a clerk.
‘Now, red mechanic!’ said another.
Edward kept looking up and smiling when he heard a bout of words begin, but no one paid any attention to him. ‘My husband has brought a woman in,’ he read, and then read on, and could hardly believe what lay before his eyes. He began to repeat it aloud, assuming that that was what the others were doing, but he was quickly asked to desist.
Two of the clerks began to argue about a king. ‘Sweet king beribboned,’ the first one said, but the other quietly objected, questioning the suitability of ribbons as a decoration for a king. ‘Medals, surely?’ he suggested. ‘You don’t put ribbons on the monarchy, I mean.’ The first clerk narrowed his eyes. ‘I put what I like on the monarchy,’ he said. ‘Any frigging object I fancy.’ He spoke then of his veins, stating in a clear, low whisper that there were trespassers in his veins by night. ‘Neck death,’ said the other clerk. ‘Eat your meat!’ Both clerks laughed gently. ‘Smiling mortician,’ said one, and both were solemn again. Edward wondered if the afflicted clerk knew that the veins were a danger area, for it happened that he had known of a man in whom trouble with veins had proved swiftly fatal. The reference to a mortician had reminded him of this, and he wondered if the clerk had been wise enough to seek medical advice. He was about to mention that one couldn’t be too careful with the veins when the words began again.
‘Holy citadel,’ said a third clerk, a worker who had not yet spoken, one with a black beard. ‘Oh, cherished Roman!’
‘Look here,’ said Edward. ‘What’s going on in this joint?’
But the clerks ignored his plea. For many minutes no one spoke; the ball-point pens were poised and ready, eyes ran over yards of paper. A letter from Flintshire was put to one side for Lady Dolores’ attention, and a pencilled missive signed Joe from Bantry was thrown away.
Behind a fastened door, Lady Dolores removed her stays and placed them in a drawer. She sat more comfortably then, her feet on a hassock that one of her assistants of the past had bought in a church furnishers’ for her, and she read through the pickings of yesterday’s mail.
Lady Dolores shook her head over it, finding nothing remarkable, and thought again of the women of Wimbledon. She saw them in her mind’s eye, sitting down at writing-desks in their houses and starting their letters off. Dear Lady Dolores, I am in a mess … She had once sent a private detective up to Wimbledon, to poke about and bring her back information, but all the man had done was to get drunk in the local public houses. That was essential, the man had said, in order to get to know the people, to discover the lie of the land. He had presented her with a bill for beer consumed by the gallon, by himself and by the local people, and in the end had presented her with nothing else except an address in Putney, which he claimed was relevant. ‘Seventeen pounds for beer,’ she had cried out in horror at the time, and handed him five shillings. The man had ambled off, with a cigarette sticking to a corner of his lips, not even bothering to protest.
Lady Dolores opened a
drawer and withdrew the piece of paper on which this detective had written the address in Putney. She was regarding it, considering and wondering about it, when she was struck by a notion that seemed at first to be absurd and then to be of such truth and value that she threw her head back and ejaculated with a will. She curled her toes into the flesh of her feet; and having calmed herself down, she examined the notion and saw no flaw in it.
‘Where’s the new fellow?’ said Lady Dolores, standing in her open doorway. ‘Come in here, Mr Blakeston-Smith.’
Edward noticed, as he had noticed before, the contrast between the two rooms: Lady Dolores’ was wholly businesslike, bare of curtains and embroideries, a room that was entirely grey.
Lady Dolores placed a cigarette in her holder and lit it. She said nothing. She picked up a large piece of paper covered with figures and began to read them, moving her lips. Edward watched her nostrils tighten and relax. He wondered if he should go away.
‘You know the rules, Mr Blakeston-Smith?’ said Lady Dolores eventually. ‘Only marriages get on to the books. The unmarried I cannot help, and will not. They can go to hell for all I care. Letters from unmarried persons go straight to the wall.’ She slipped a hand under her hair at the nape of her neck and shook her tresses wildly about, tousling everything, to Edward’s considerable surprise. ‘What I’m asking you now is, have you an aptitude for the job? Have you picked out any letters? Go out, Mr Blakeston-Smith, and bring us in what you’ve spotted this day.’
Edward returned to the desk where he had been sitting and picked a single letter from the waste-paper basket. ‘Blood,’ said a clerk, and Edward smiled at him, and conveyed the letter to Lady Dolores.
‘Let’s see,’ she said, and read aloud: ‘Dear Madam, my husband has brought a woman in, saying she is his daughter by a previous marriage, but I have never heard of any previous marriage. They are always together, especially in the evenings, going out to the café or in her room. I have said to my husband that I had not known that the life had gone out of our marriage but he only stands there. He says that twice-cooked meat gives the girl heart-burn. We are a childless couple, which again is something that I feel, it being borne in upon me that this is definitely due to my inadequacy, if the girl is my husband’s daughter. If she is some other man’s daughter, that of course is worse. She calls me Mum, but I do not know where I am with the pair of them. Yours truly, (Mrs) Odette Sweeney. An educated woman,’ said Lady Dolores. ‘Not a single spelling mistake. Things were better when Mrs Sweeney was a girl. Education was a living thing.’
‘It was,’ said Edward.
‘Well, then?’
‘Well, Lady Dolores?’
Lady Dolores’ large chest heaved about as the air passed through her lungs and slipped in and out of her nostrils. She smiled at Edward suddenly, flashily; her eyes were fixed on him so intently that he was obliged to lower his. He examined the jewellery on her fingers: he had never before seen so many rings on a human hand.
‘Well?’ said Lady Dolores again.
‘I threw the letter away, it being a put-up job. “A couple of lads in a public house,” I said to myself, “trying to take the mickey out of Lady Dolores.” ’
Lady Dolores struck a match, but allowed it to burn without applying the flame to the point of her cigarette. She watched the flame die. She struck another match, lit her cigarette, and brought the palm of her right hand powerfully down on the surface of the desk. The thud of contact made Edward leap. Displaying signs of considerable anger, Lady Dolores shouted:
‘You are a hopeless case. You are a handicapped person.’
Edward rose to his feet, but she told him to take his seat again. She added in a calmer voice:
‘You are useless at the desk, Mr Blakeston-Smith, I’ll warn you of that. You’re sitting out there wanting a fat wage and the damn bit of good you are to me at all. Odette Sweeney writes from a tortured heart, maddened by the presence of a doxy in her house. “Here’s a daughter of mine,” announces Sweeney, coming home one night from the café. “Here’s a young missy come to lodge with us.” What happens then? I’ll tell you, pet, what happens then. The hussy unpacks a suitcase, and two days later she’s hanging out clothes on Mrs Sweeney’s washing line. Two women can’t live happily in circumstances such as those. Can you not see that?’
‘Well, of course –’
‘The girl cooks scrambled eggs and doesn’t clean the saucepan. The girl abuses the electric iron. In no time at all Mrs Sweeney’s house is smelling to high heaven of powder and bath salts. “What can I do?” she cries. “People are talking.” She weeps and she moans, and eventually she takes her courage in both hands: Odette Sweeney writes a letter. A letter from her tortured heart, Mr Blakeston-Smith, that a certain person feels entitled to screw up into a ball and pitch into the nearest waste-paper basket.’
Edward blinked. He felt something clogging his throat and realized all of a sudden that he was going to cry. He panted slightly. He said:
‘I was imagining two Irish labourers concocting in a pub. I couldn’t believe a word that was written there.’
‘Why not? Isn’t it a perfectly genuine letter? You’ve proved yourself a failure at the desk.’
‘I’m sorry, Lady Dolores. I don’t know much about earning a living.’
‘Have a good cry, then, and we’ll forget the whole thing. Have you a hanky?’
Edward said he hadn’t, and Lady Dolores threw him a few paper tissues.
‘I have never cried before,’ said Edward, ‘in my entire life.’ He looked Lady Dolores straight in the eye as he said that, and she knew by his gaze that he was speaking the truth. She knew as well, as though the heavens had opened and she had seen him emerge, that this was the person who would do the deed, who would cleanse all Wimbledon.
Lady Dolores screwed up her eyes and drew quantities of smoke into her lungs, considering how best to proceed.
‘I think what I’ll do,’ said Lady Dolores casually, ‘is put you on the outside jobs. Have you ever heard tell of Septimus Tuam?’
3
As Lady Dolores spoke his name in the love department, the man who was known to her as Septimus Tuam sat in the hall of a Mrs Blanche FitzArthur and devoted his mind to simple thought. Mrs FitzArthur had once written a letter to Lady Dolores, but Septimus Tuam did not know that, nor would he have been much interested had the news been presented to him now. Septimus Tuam, a young man of great paleness and gravity, was concerned with the present: with the fact that he and Mrs FitzArthur were about to set out to buy Mrs FitzArthur a rain hat, and with the more disturbing fact that five minutes ago Mrs FitzArthur had informed him that she had lost the capacity for thought. Sitting on a mahogany chair, Septimus Tuam reflected that a reconciliation between the FitzArthurs was in the air, and that in spite of it Mrs FitzArthur was behaving irrationally, announcing that she was in a dither and wearing out her husband’s goodwill. Mr FitzArthur had laid down his terms in a straightforward manner, declaring quite clearly what he expected of her, while she, for a reason obscure to Septimus Tuam, repeated only that she could not bring herself to make certain statements.
Septimus Tuam sighed loudly and looked down at his hands. ‘I cannot think,’ Mrs FitzArthur had cried. ‘I must go to New York.’ What good would that do? thought Septimus Tuam. He examined his hands, and in his mind’s eye he examined the future. He saw there a Mrs FitzArthur cut off: with a small allowance, while her husband, piqued and out of patience, paired off with another woman. Alternatively, he foresaw the loss of Mrs FitzArthur’s company for a passage of time while she recovered her thoughts in America. He recognized that one way or the other he might easily be taken unawares, and he had never cared for that kind of thing. He drummed his fingers on the mahogany of the chair, annoyed and out of sorts.
‘I put a man on him,’ said Lady Dolores in the love department, ‘and he was no damn good. D’you get me? Septimus Tuam could spot a man like that a mile away. He’s as fly as a granary rat.’
Edward nodded, understanding very little of the conversation. He wanted to ask what the words were that the clerks used, since they didn’t seem to imply what their meaning implied. He wanted to repeat to Lady Dolores that he had never cried before, because she hadn’t taken much notice when he’d told her the first time. ‘Listen,’ said Lady Dolores in a low voice, ‘there’s this person called Septimus Tuam who is a scourge and a disease. He lives in a room in Putney and takes a 93 bus up to the heights and off he goes, peddling his love. It’s a scandal of our times.’ Lady Dolores paused. ‘I want you to put a stop to him, Mr Blakeston-Smith.’
‘A stop?’
‘You have been put on earth,’ said Lady Dolores, ‘for that reason alone.’
‘Oh, surely not,’ said Edward.
Lady Dolores closed her eyes and indulged in a vision. She dreamed that the wispy figure of Septimus Tuam was being pursued along a suburban road called Kilmaurice Avenue by the young man who sat before her; and as Septimus Tuam turned towards the garden gate of Number 10 she herself cried a command in the love department and the young man fell upon the ruffian, smiling at him and saying something. Up rose the women then, from the roads and the avenues, shaking their fists at Septimus Tuam and advancing upon him to tear him limb from limb. Lady Dolores opened her eyes and focused them on her visitor.
‘Be ye as wise as serpents,’ she said, ‘and innocent as doves. Let me supply the wisdom, now.’
Mrs FitzArthur had written to Lady Dolores at a time of crisis in her marriage, not long after she had met Septimus Tuam. She had complained of her husband’s ways, of difficulties she had experienced in extracting money from him. Her marriage, she wrote, had come to a full stop and she did not see much point in hanging on, especially since a younger man had entered her life. Lady Dolores had replied coolly. A younger man, she wrote, had no right to enter the life of a married woman. Mrs FitzArthur must attempt to see another aspect of her husband, she must develop subtleties in the business of relieving him of his wealth. I trust, wrote Lady Dolores, that you continue to keep yourself attractive in the home? I trust you have in no way gone to seed? She had added, with astuteness, that she recognized in Mrs FitzArthur’s complaint a trouble that sprang, not from the parsimony of the husband, but from the upset caused by the advent of the other. She was not prepared to discuss this matter, she said, but gave it as her firm opinion that Mrs FitzArthur should remain by her husband’s side. Two days later Mr FitzArthur discovered all; and having done so, he packed a bag and left the house, threatening divorce.