Bellman & Black (28 page)

·  ·  ·

There are numerous collective nouns for rooks. In some parts people say a
parliament
of rooks.

R
egent Street was alive. Nannies went about with their charges in smart black perambulators. Young women trotted along, listening to their mothers while their eyes roamed the window displays, avid for bonnets, shoes, gloves. Men of all ages made their way busily here, there, and everywhere, dashing between the carriages as they crossed the street. Street hawkers shouted their wares, assessing the passing trade with a professional eye. Children clung to the hands of adults far above them, but even they looked up at certain windows and dragged their feet: there were sugar canes the size of walking sticks and at the tobacconist’s a mechanical monkey smoked a cigar and exhaled real smoke. People ambled or sauntered or strode, they wove in and around each other, absently or impatiently. They were in a hurry or they had all the time in the world. Someone stepped into the street, carriages swerved, drivers cursed and shouted warnings . . .

In one place only there was a stillness and a hush: it was the pavement alongside the new shop, Bellman & Black. Curiously, the crowd was thicker here than anywhere else.

The shop was not yet open, but the day before, behind drapes, the windows had been dressed, and this morning at eight o’clock the black shrouds had come down to display the temptations of Bellman & Black to the world.

Each window was framed by theatrical sweeps of gray silk and contained an artistic still life. One composition was of gloves and fans,
another of urns and angels. One elaborate arrangement presented stationery, a dozen ebony ink pots. There were hats stabbed through with jet hat pins and there were veils. Everywhere were swathes of fabric, in every material and weave imaginable: cottons and linens and woolens and silks; baratheas and worsteds and crepes, each bringing its own individual note to the chord that was black. One window much studied had tombstones and memorial plaques, registering the passing of a number of generic colonels, beloved wives and sisters, and dear children. But the most admired window was perhaps the simplest: a starburst of ribbons passing from white to black through off-white and dove gray and pigeon gray and French gray and donkey gray and slate gray and charcoal gray, more shades of gray in fact than there were names for. The message was understood by all: every gradation of grief would find its match at Bellman & Black.

At the very front of every window, dead center, on just the other side of the glass, was a six-by-eight white card, edged with black, and printed like an invitation to a ball:

Bellman & Black

Thursday 15th May

11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

It was only nine o’clock. The pavement was thick with people staring openmouthed at the displays of funerary and mourning goods. Far from being drab, the black and gray were so artfully composed that the effect was mesmerizing. Newcomers to the crowd looked first to see what everyone else was looking at, then fell into the same state of rapture that had ensnared the others. All were under a spell, conversations were whispered, then halted altogether as a thoughtful hush came over the viewers. Death, grief, and memory offered so exquisitely for sale set the most robust heart throbbing and set the mind thinking.

Impossible to see it without thinking of the time when they would
want the services of such a place. How soon? they wondered. And for whom? Some already suspected the answer to these questions; they considered their choices in advance of the event and calculated the cost.

The windows of Bellman & Black reminded their viewers of what they most feared and at one and the same time showed them where to find consolation. Grief and sorrow come to all, but there is consolation in being able to honor your loved ones by saying farewell in a hat secured with a jet hat pin . . .

Some were there who leaned more heavily on their sticks or felt again the pain that had been troubling them. These knew that they would not be customers of Bellman & Black in person, but that their contribution to the success of the store would be made before too long. They considered the tombstones and rewrote them with their own names.

The clatter of hooves, then shuffling in the crowd to make way for the carriage that drew up at the main entrance. A fine carriage it was too, and a stir of curiosity broke the rapturous disquiet of the crowd. A uniformed driver jumped down to open the door, and a woman emerged, neatly collared and cuffed in her gray dress. Together they went to great pains to extract the second passenger: a tiny, hunched figure swathed in black silk. Was it a child? She had the size of a child, but she was slow and bent like an old woman. Her veil was so dense she must have been all but blind inside it, but she looked up, nonetheless, at the silver insignia announcing the name of the shop, before being guided step by painful step to the entrance.

The crowd parted to let the curious pair through. Neither woman appeared to notice the eyes that followed their progress, and they did not utter a word. All onlookers were thinking the same thing, but all held their tongues, waiting for someone else to speak.

It was a child that said it.

“It’s not open yet. Eleven o’clock, look.”

He pointed to the card.

But there was the sound of a key turning, the door opened just enough, and the two ladies were swallowed up by the shop.

The key turned again.

In the crowd strangers murmured and turned astounded faces upon each other.

The little lad who had spoken pressed his face to the crack between the double doors, but he could see nothing.

“Eleven o’clock,” he repeated. “That’s what it says on the invitation.”

·  ·  ·

Inside there was a feverish circulation of people and goods. Swift feet ran messages; strong arms carried; tidy minds counted and noted; deft hands arranged and displayed. Crates were opened, the contents spilled out. Then, faster than you could believe, all was neatly stacked and ranged, the crate itself disappearing as if by magic, and the same trick was being repeated over and over again in every department.

Among all these black goods being carried about in all directions, was one distinctive cargo. Sedate and slow, Dora was carried through the shop in a sedan chair. Bellman meant to show her the entire shop. She was introduced to department managers, shook hands, and although she did not speak, said with a look and a smile something that in words would have gone like this:
Yes, I know I am peculiar. Think nothing of it.

Everywhere was something her father wished to point out to her: the uniforms of the various staff, the goods arriving, the fittings of the shop, every last detail was something he had imagined, brought into being, and he laid it all before her, the Italian gloves, the Chinese silk, the Whitby jet, the Parisian collars. She admired, complimented, and approved.

Bellman led the procession of Dora, sedan, carriers, Mary, from floor to floor. When he had shown all the departments in the sales floors, they visited the offices, the clerks, the cashiers, Bellman’s own office. Next they went up to see the seamstresses’ area. Here again Dora felt herself being spied upon from the corner of eyes, understood that
glances were being exchanged behind her back. Again she admired what she was called upon to admire, approved what was to be approved.
Don’t mind me,
her eyes said to the seamstresses who could not help staring.
Be glad of your curls and your limbs and the curves beneath your clothes. Enjoy your good fortune.

The staircase was too narrow to admit the sedan chair to the top floor. Might one of the porters carry her up? She was relieved when the decision went against. But Dora was not to be released yet. Oh no! For there was the basement still to be seen. She was shown the dispatch room, and the canteen, and the kitchens at the side of the store where the windows opened into a narrow pit that permitted the smell of cooking to escape through a grille at ground level above. “My!” Dora exclaimed.

“And it’s not over yet!” Bellman exclaimed.

At floor level, at the back of the shop, next to the goods entrance, were wide double doors that opened onto a coach house. The Bellman & Black brougham was a sight to behold. A graceful black carriage, the B&B insignia in silver on the doors. A fine black horse was stabled nearby so that two seamstresses and a coachman could travel at a moment’s notice anywhere within eighty miles of the capital.

Bellman opened the door to show the interior. With the air of a conjuror, he opened a compartment under the seat. In the dark it looked empty, and she was bewildered till she realized it was filled with fabric, crepe, the blackest fabric available, so absorbent of light it seemed to be made of darkness itself.

“And this!” her father exclaimed, opening one of the portable cases with a flourish. Inside were a hundred little compartments, and each one filled: scissors and tape measures and needles and spools of thread and a silver thimble.

“It’s a miniature Bellman & Black’s!” she marveled.

“In just two days our traveling seamstresses can provide essential mourning wear for a family; in four days, evening wear too. Give them
a week and the servants of the house will be in black, down to the little girl who lights the fire in the mornings.”

She had run out of words and nodded her weary approbation.

“And what is more, as it goes through the streets of London our brougham will make a very fine impression. Everyone will turn to see it. When it races through the streets, when it arrives at the finest houses, it will be noticed. When the Earl of This and the Marquess of That call in Bellman & Black everyone will know. It will bring in more business than a hundred—a thousand—advertisements. So, what do you think, eh?”

He was tense with expectation, rushed through his words, awaited her verdict with obsessive intent. His eyes glittered, his pale face glittered. She hardly recognized her taciturn, frowning father. Bellman & Black had him in its grip.

Dora was astounded by her father’s creation. Troubled too. It was beautiful, she supposed, in a powerful, uncomfortable way. “A cathedral” someone had called it in the newspaper. She understood what they meant. But she had seen something beneath the feverish activity, the agitation and the rush. The sense of something silent, biding its time. What was it waiting for? The idea of a mausoleum knocked at her mind, and she turned it away.

Her eyes returned to the seamstresses’ bags. She picked out a silver thimble and held it up to the light. Even this was engraved with the double
B
motif.

“It is quite astonishing. You forget nothing, Father. Not even a thimble!”

They lifted the sedan and carried Dora back to the ground floor. Bellman led the way. He kept turning to tell her one more thing and then another about his grand project. She half listened, drifting in her own thoughts, until a thought struck her, idle but curious enough to make it worth interrupting her father.

“Father, you have never told me. Who is Black?”

That name on her lips! He should have thought of that.

“No one!” he told her, wide-eyed, a fraction too fast. “No one at all.”

One minute to eleven.

·  ·  ·

The doorman stood like a sentry at the gates of heaven. If ever a man had been born to be employed by a mourning emporium, it was Mr. Pentworth. With his downturned mouth incapable of rejoicing and eyes that were full of lugubrious sympathy, he was the very embodiment of sorrow. Mr. Dent and Mr. Hayworth smoothed their impeccable gray lapels and positioned themselves behind their counters. Salesgirls stood in orderly fashion, backs straight, hands clasped, meek as children at Sunday school. Upstairs, every pencil lay straight and every needle was in its place. Smiles, coughs, and other fidgets were suppressed. Everywhere was solemnity and composure.

Behind a column on the first floor, three-quarters concealed, Bellman stood and looked over the railings to watch the door below. As the clock hand moved to eleven and Pentworth opened the door, a heart a hundred times greater than his own jolted to life in his chest. It was the heart of Bellman & Black.

They came. Curious, fearful, longing, astonished, awestruck, pious, acquisitive, they poured in; and the first, whether they intended it or not, were swept deep into the shop by the sheer pressure of those behind. There was much dazed milling about as, overwhelmed by the scale and the beauty of it, people lost sight of whatever it was they had come in for—for most had invented some reasonable little need in order not to appear to themselves as mere tourists. They could not help it: on seeing the majestic glory of it all, they fell into passive, voluptuous rapture. Women and men, young and old, the bereaved and the unbereaved, all thronged, staring and marveling and whispering.

For all their awe, it was not long before one soul, hardier than the rest, resolved upon a purchase. One yard of one-inch grosgrain to edge the fraying sleeves of a winter coat.

It was not the cheapest thing to be had at Bellman & Black, but it was certainly modest. No matter.