“It’s no trouble to them, is it?” he asked.
“What d’you mean?”
“They have their kittens without any fuss, don’t they?”
“But I might be out at work.”
“Where d’you work, then?”
“I’m on nights at the G.P.O.”
He was beginning to feel easy and comfortable.
“There’s this about kittens, they don’t have to bother with clothing coupons,” he remarked.
“You’ve said a whole lot there,” she agreed. “I don’t suppose it can be easy for you people back from Germany.”
He could talk coupons as freely as he could technicalities in the office. He at once plunged into a long description of what few clothes he had, including the pink tweed he was wearing and which was useless in London. She listened with more than good grace. She joined in. And couldn’t help reminding herself how she had not meant to be so friendly. It turned out his main trouble was, that he hadn’t yet received the coupons to which he was entitled on discharge from the Army.
“The others said I should apply to C.A.B.” he told her. “Which is that?”
“Citizens’ Advice Bureau,” she explained. “But who are these people you’re mentioning?”
“Why the ones I was staying with.”
“Over the holiday?” she asked. “Well come on, be a friend. Who were they, then?”
“As a matter of fact one was the man I brought here.”
“Oh that fat man again.” That was how she dismissed Phillips. “And the other?”
“She was a girl I work with in the office.”
“I thought so,” she said. “It’s you quiet ones all over. You’re not satisfied with the life we others must lead, you have to have romance.”
He was embarrassed and delighted. He laughed.
“There wasn’t much of that for me believe us,” he said.
“Which is what you say,” she countered. “And how am I to credit anything you tell me? After what’s occurred before my eyes, and in this very room?”
“Well, it’s true enough,” he said. “Jim snitched her from under my nose.”
“I’m not sure this is quite nice,” she remarked, gravely.
“You’re dead right,” he said.
“I wouldn’t want you to think you could tell tales, here. After all, this is my place we’re sitting in.”
He made no reply. Again this did the trick.
“You were too slow, I’ll bet, now weren’t you?” she asked.
He laughed. Then she laughed.
“It takes all sorts to make a world,” she said.
“Certainly does,” he agreed. He was astounded that he could be so easy, sitting opposite. Perhaps she thought that, in the circumstances, it was too comfortable for him, because she next said, with obvious malice,
“If you’re short of clothing coupons, why don’t you ask my precious dad for some of his?”
“How on earth?” he asked, taken aback.
“Well you seemed very thick together. I only wondered. After all, at the age he is, he can’t have much need.”
“I couldn’t,” he objected cautiously.
“That’s you all over,” she said. “The few times you’ve been here I’ve watched you. What harm could there be to have a go?”
He did not reply.
“Because I’ll bet he’s asked you for things.”
“Certainly has,” Mr Summers agreed.
“What sort of things?” she demanded.
“Asked me to come here,” Mr Summers reluctantly told her.
“What else?”
Charley gave way.
“As a matter of fact he was keen that I should tell you about Arthur Middlewitch,” he said.
“I knew it,” she cried, indignant. “Was there ever any girl as pestered? He can’t leave me alone. Why there’s nothing to Art. He’s all talk and no do, that lad is.”
Charley kept quiet.
“A woman can tell in a moment” she said, in a most superior way.
“Hope you didn’t mind me passing it on?” he asked.
“Why no, you’re sweet,” she answered. He was surprised. She may have seen this, because she went on to explain.
“I’ve a lot to answer for, the way I made your acquaintance. But you will admit you came through the door in a peculiar sort of manner, the first time. Still, as I’ve said, I’ve a responsibility, it’s not everyone who’s in my position, the double of a dead woman with a child. Then, when we started off on the wrong foot, like we did, we never seemed to get straight, did we?”
“There it is,” he said, still cautious.
“Well I must say I appreciate your seeing it my way,” she told him. “Things haven’t been easy for me. You know I lost my husband. Then mum came back to keep me company. And I was just about getting straight when these beastly buzz bombs started, and she had to go away again, of course. So now perhaps you realize,” she ended.
“Tough luck,” he said.
He was allowing himself a long examination of her appearance, as he had never dared to when they met previously. She was very well aware of this. But what she could not know was that it was directly due to Dot. This girl’s treachery with Phillips had awakened him to possibilities, and now his eyes guardedly took her in while, at the same time, as never before, he got no impression of his Rose. He was comparing Nance with Miss Pitter. So that he ignored the girl he had loved, who was gone.
Nance was not big, but she was thick and solid where Dot came spindly. She had deep blue eyes, not pale like Dot’s. He could not remember the colour of Rose’s eyes, he found, then at once forgot Rose again. Her hair was black and strong. Her legs were thick. Her breasts were not afraid, like Dot’s. And it seemed to him that Nance was stroking the cat in a way of her own. “Quite a girl,” he thought.
“Well, that’s enough of my troubles,” she said. “Now then, over your coupons. If you haven’t had what was your due when you were discharged, why don’t you take it up with your Old Comrades Association?”
“My O.C.A.,” he echoed. “I hadn’t thought.”
“Some people are making use of you, you know.”
“How d’you mean?” he asked, delighted at the attention he was getting.
“My old dad, for one.”
“He’s not in the O.C.A., is he?”
“Of course not. Whatever’s on your mind? No, he sent you here, didn’t he? And it wasn’t for you he did it, you can be sure of that. He wanted to keep track, now I’m alone once more, that’s all. The next thing was, he got into a spin about poor Arthur Middlewitch. So he turned to you, didn’t he? It’s as plain as the nose on my face.” Charley immediately fixed his eyes on her nose, which she wrinkled at him. “And what’s even more
obvious is, that you must consider yourself for a while. I mean, if you won’t, there’s no one else will, is there? Look, you want to ring the people up.”
“Which people?”
“Your old Association of course. Stick out for your rights. Tell them you didn’t make all those sacrifices to be treated like you’re being now, when you’re back. Make out it’s their fault.”
He laughed in admiration, more particularly of her looks.
“I don’t know how you poor souls get on at your work, I really don’t,” she said. “I’ll bet you’re under her thumb all right.”
“Whose thumb?” He was smiling.
“Oh, you can laugh, but I’m serious. What’s the girl’s name?” “Pitter,” he said. “Pitter is it?” She continued, “Because it’s not funny what she served on you over the August. It’s serious, that is.”
He was embarrassed once more. “Well it’s not … we didn’t,” he murmured, and could not finish.
“I know,” she said, laughing. “But she played you up, now didn’t she?”
“All right, she did.” He was smiling again.
“And are you going to lie down under it?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“I’d know if I was a man and in your shoes,” she brought out. She was looking straight into his eyes.
He had a brain wave. He wanted to bring the conversation back to themselves.
“Might I ask a question?” he enquired.
“Why, go ahead,” she said.
“What was the reason you changed your name back to your mother’s?”
She turned her eyes away at this. Yet, when she replied, it was in exactly the same tone of voice that she had been using all along.
“Because when Phil was killed I was finished,” she said.
If he was surprised that he had asked, he was almost struck dumb at the reply. “I know,” he feebly murmured.
“I bet you don’t,” she countered in a loud voice.
“With me, it was Rose Grant,” he explained, and yet it was as though he could do this painlessly, as of a rib that had been removed.
“I shouldn’t wonder,” she said, calmer. “But speaking about them,” she went on, almost at random, so as to change the conversation, “Have you been down to Redham lately?”
“No.”
“I wonder what’s become of my dad?”
“Why?”
“Because I haven’t heard from him.”
“How’s that?” he asked. “I haven’t called on his behalf, you understand.”
“I know that,” she said. “No, it’s only that he hasn’t sent the usual these last two weeks, as a matter of fact.”
“Look, if you’re short …” he began, like a fool.
She took him up in her old manner, in just the way she had on his previous visits.
“Who d’you think you are?” she demanded, indignant. “Why I’ve never heard such a thing. I should imagine not, indeed.”
Then he did cleverly for himself. He made excuses and left. It was to avoid trouble, as he considered. Actually it made her feel she was in the wrong. It set him up with her once more.
Directly after the August holiday there was another, and a worse, explosion in the office. Charley was seated in Corker’s room, who was saying to him,
“It won’t do Summers, won’t do at all. I haven’t said my last word yet about this card index of yours, but, man alive, you’ve got to understand me. There’s no visible or invisible system, or whatever it may be, it doesn’t exist, which can take the place of ordinary office routine. Now d’you comprehend that?”
“Yes sir.”
“Because I’m telling you for the last time, for your own good, you can’t just put one system over another, and then be satisfied to sit back and use the top one without any sort of a check. Let’s get down to bedrock. Everything that’s ordered out is ordered by the drawing office, isn’t it?”
“Yes sir.”
“And everything that’s been delivered has an advice note, or should have. Right?”
“Yes sir.”
“These advice notes are checked off for the quantities, and all that, against the copy orders in the drawing office? Well then, there’s the system, the routine we’ve run on all these years. When Mr Pike, or Mr Benfield, or even I want to look into the position with regard to any contract, we turn up the copy order and find marked there what has been delivered and when, don’t we?”
Charley stayed silent. He was very upset, and this choked him.
“Whereas, with these card indexes I let you install against my business instincts,” Mr Mead continued, red in the face, his neck congested, “you’ve superimposed them on the drawing office, there’s two checks being kept, your own and Mr Pike’s. So you rely on your own, and it’s let you down. Why has it? For the reason it’s not accurately kept. It’s untrue to the facts.”
Charley could not answer.
“And what’s the outcome? The stuff’s coming along all anyhow. I’ve been into this, Summers. Take the fifth plant now. We’ve got the oven bodies in, we’ve enough of those for the next three consignments, but there’s no trays when we’re gasping for ’em. And why aren’t there any? I’ll tell you. It’s easy. Because on your cards it’s shown that five more sets of trays have been delivered than have actually been received. Yet, on the copy order, there’s the right number given. You’ve fallen down. You’re squint-eyed with your own system, while we get invoiced for goods like those extra oven bodies that we don’t yet require, and shan’t do for another six months. Think of the financial side, man.”
“Yes sir,” Charley said.
“Not to mention the question of storage space. Besides that’s the very job we entrusted you with. To bring the stuff along, as and when it was required.”
There was a long pause.
“What’s that girl of yours like?” Mr Mead asked.
Charley saw again an empty bed, Eton blue in the moonlight.
“Hard to say,” he answered, at last. He was thinking of Dot.
“Is she accurate?”
Charley did not reply.
“Well she can’t be, can she?” Mr Mead answered himself. “No, I’m not altogether blaming you, my boy,” he went on. “These days there’s nobody can get any assistance. And when you
came with this idea of yours about a card index, Mr Pike, he did say to me, quite rightly, that his view was you couldn’t always be running into his office to look up the details in the order book. Not while he’s using it making out fresh orders.”
This argument seemed more promising to Charley.
“There it is, sir,” he agreed.
“But dammit, that’s no excuse when all’s said. Two wrongs don’t make a right, do they? We’ve got to take steps. There’s nothing for it but you’ll have to stay late and check through every blessed one of them cards, till you know there’s not an error left. Either that, or we shall be in queer street.”