The Night of Wenceslas
LIONEL DAVIDSON
WENCESLAS
TO VLASTA
who kissed and told first
T
HE
little swine had his head well down in the books when I went in, so it was clear Miss Vosper had forestalled me after all. I had been popping up and down half the day to peer through the frosted glass panel of his door, and she wouldn’t miss a thing like that.
He kept his head down religiously – usually he’d have a quick blink up to see who it was – and after a couple of minutes I shuffled my feet and coughed somewhat aggressively.
He looked up then, pretending his rather charming ‘tired’ double-take and said, ‘Yes, Nicolas?’ He kept his finger ostentatiously on the line.
‘I’d like a word with you if you’re not too busy.’ I’d promised myself I wouldn’t say the last bit, and to salve my pride added loudly, ‘It’s important.’
‘If it’s important it won’t wait,’ said the Little Swine humorously, and he carefully jotted down his last figure and pushed the ledger back an inch. ‘What can I do for you, Nicolas?’
‘It’s about money,’ I said, taking the seat he hadn’t offered. I used to sit in it as a little boy waiting for my father. The Little Swine had been junior partner then. ‘I just can’t manage on seven quid a week.’
The Little Swine stared at me disbelievingly. ‘A young man with no responsibilites can’t make seven pounds last seven days? What are you telling me, Nicolas? A postman with a family manages on very little more.’
‘Well, I can’t. When I’ve paid for my digs and fares I’ve got about fifty bob left. I’ve got to buy clothes and – and entertainment, taking a girl out occasionally….’
The Little Swine was shaking his head. ‘What new clothes, Nicolas? You got yourself a fine rig-out when you left the army. I myself buy a new suit only once in three years. It’s the car, Nicolas. At the time I told you – a certain liability, unjustifiable extravagance. Do I have a car?’
He waited for me to speak, smiling, knowing in his swinish little way that he’d cobbled me, and when I didn’t, said, ‘Nicolas, be a good boy and try just for once to follow my advice. You’re a boy twenty-four – all right, a man then! When you’ve learned the business thoroughly you’ll take up your full duties as a partner. This talk of jobs and rises is undignified in your position. You’re getting spending money – a very handsome allowance – while you learn the business. Do you think you’re worth even seven pounds a week to the business at the moment?’
He paused again with his hands outstretched and a whimsical smile on his face. I knew he’d tell me all this and Maura had told me what to reply, but for the life of me I couldn’t sort the answers out. The Little Swine had known me all my life. His younger sister had been my nanny. He’d come into this room one day when I’d wet the chair. I even used to call him Uncle Karel – it still slipped out sometimes.
I said glumly, ‘All I know is I can’t manage. I’m borrowing all the time and I’m in debt.’
‘Debts? Who are you in debt to?’
There was a bill for
£
7 16s. outstanding at the garage for the past four months.
‘Various poeple,’ I said. ‘I even had to borrow a fiver from my mother a few weeks ago.’
‘You should not borrow from your mother,’ the Little Swine said reproachfully. ‘You know I would always lend you the money. It is too bad to worry her. How is the sweet lady?’
‘She’s all right,’ Maminka lived in Bournemouth, and I knew I had really borrowed the money from old Imre, who lived in
the same private hotel; she would merely ask him for a loan until I had repaid it.
‘It is so long since I have seen her,’ the Little Swine said sadly. ‘With business so hard to find I have not had a moment for years to go and pay her a visit. Is she still so beautiful?’
‘Yes,’ I said truthfully. She was.
‘And Mr Gabriel? His lungs?’ The Little Swine inquired delicately.
‘Imre’s all right.’ There was nothing wrong with Imre’s lungs. He had been in love with my mother for years and his supposed enfeeblement gave him an excuse to live in Bournemouth, too. He ran a small stamp business from the hotel.
‘I must go down to see them. I will try next month after the audit.’
He looked as if he meant it, so I said hastily, ‘She lives in the past a great deal, you know.’ She had always treated the Little Swine in a very condescending manner (his first job had been sweeping the floor in her father’s glassworks) and had got it into her head that he was merely superintending the business until I wished to take it over.
The Little Swine took the point, but he said, ‘And what a past! You would hardly remember Prague, of course, but your mother was the uncrowned queen, I assure you. An enchanting lady. It is no wonder she prefers to think of those days.’
He sat there with a rather lingering smile on his face, no doubt well satisfied at the changes in their respective fortunes, until he recollected himself and drew the ledger back. ‘Well, Nicolas, we must not think of the past, but of the present and the future. There is a good one waiting for you as soon as you settle down and take an interest. Meanwhile, get rid of the car, my boy, and you will find you have money to spare.’
He gave me a little nod, and automatically I stood up. I was outside his office before I realized I’d got nothing out of him. Nothing at all. No promises. No half promises. Nothing I could tax him with, even in my own mind. I didn’t know what I was going to tell Maura.
My face must have been so glum that Miss Vosper, drawing
her own conclusions, tried hard to suppress her hideous delight and began sticking stamps with her enormous gargoyle tongue.
‘I’ve stamped all yours,’ she said with her unique leprous smile, ‘and checked the stamp book. It was only out ninepence this week.’
‘Right.’ The single word must have sounded so bitter that she turned her head to conceal a smile. The suppression seemed to release a gust of her special odour, and a cloud of it wafted towards me. I blew my nose hard.
‘Is Mr Nimek free now?’ she asked, almost giggling.
‘Yes.’
She stood up with her notebook and paused over my desk for a moment so that I was almost choked and had to turn my head away. ‘He’s been a thorough tartar all the week.’
The idea of the Little Swine as a tartar was so singular that when she went I stared after her. Miss Vosper had been with him seventeen years; ample time to see him as he was. This new vision of him rivalled in lunacy only her demoniac hatred of me, the interloper, the young toff, the threat from the past.
My father had started this business, an Englishman who had worked for years in Prague where he had met and married my mother. He had set up the English end as a selling outlet for the Bohemian glassworks just before I was born, and had sent Karel Nimek, the Little Swine, over to look after it. The Germans took over the glassworks in 1938 and the London importing firm became the main business.
My father had died of cancer in 1941, having made over most of his shares to the Little Swine. He had not got much for them, for the main assets of the business consisted in a claim for compensation after the war. But he had left me thirty per cent, and had come to an agreement with the Little Swine that I was to be allowed to establish parity with him in our respective shareholdings when I left university and had received a grounding in the business. He had then bought my mother an annuity, settled a sum for my education, and had died confident the agreement would be honoured.
Why he expected the Little Swine to honour so vague an undertaking I had never known. In effect he had put the Little Swine on his honour. A chancy thing to do. Since coming out of the army nearly a year before, I had been the general dogsbody of the office. My shares meant nothing, since he had never distributed any profits. Seven quid a week.
It was just on five – another hour to go before the office closed. I didn’t think I could stand it a moment longer. I picked up my mac and the letters and walked out.
The liftman hated to come up two floors to take down-passengers, so I leaned on the bell till he did so. He came up white and shaking and silent with rage and, cheered a little by this, I rode down and walked out into the street and as far as the Princess May before realizing I had forgotten to post the letters. I slipped them into my pocket and went into the saloon instead.
‘Bitter?’ Jack said.
I had been going to say Scotch, but thought better of it and nodded.
Jack pulled it. ‘What’s up with you?’ he said. ‘Lost your granny?’
I said, ‘Aa-ach,’ and took an enormous swallow of beer. ‘It’s a bloody life,’ I said.
He stood leaning against the bar, amused. ‘Got the sack?’
‘No such luck.’
‘Women?’
‘No.’
‘Car broke down again?’
‘It’s the only thing that hasn’t.’
‘Here,’ he said, ‘that reminds me.’ He groped in a cubby hole behind the till and brought out the back of a cigarette packet with markings on it. ‘A customer wants to buy an old M.G. You thinking of selling?’
I started to say no, automatically, and changed my mind. ‘How much is he prepared to pay?’
‘He’d go up to two hundred for what he wants.’
‘Cash?’
Jack scrutinized the card. ‘He didn’t say. He looked as if he could afford it You interested?’
‘I might be. You’d better take my phone number in case he looks in again.’
I wrote it for him on the cigarette packet and he returned it to the cubby hole.
I couldn’t afford another, so I left, feeling more dolorous than ever at the idea of giving up the car.
I thought about the car all the way home. I thought I might as well pick it up from the lock-up in case the chap did want to come and see it over the weekend. This was not such a simple operation, for the rat-faced proprietor of the garage had been growing definitely old-fashioned towards me of recent weeks, demanding payment in full before I took the car out again. I still had the key however.
It was now just after six and the garage would be shut. I thought it was worth a try. My spirits rose a little when I saw the drive-in deserted, for the proprietor sometimes monkeyed around for half an hour at the front. They fell again when I turned in to the alley and the lock-ups. His daughter, a solitary child of ten or eleven, was dancing about in some hop-scotch squares. She ran off the moment she saw me.
I unlocked the door, pulled out the M.G. and was just relocking when Ratface appeared.
‘Good evening,’ I said.
‘Were you thinking of paying off your bill?’
‘I’m afraid I’ve not brought very much money out with me.’
‘Well, you can just push that car back and give me the key. I’m not interested in promises or excuses. There’s ten hours’ work gone into that car in addition to the petrol feed, the car burettor, and the gaskets. I don’t mind letting you run on a bit with your lock-up rent, but I’ve come to the end of my patience. Pay up or the car stays here.’
Silently I reached for my wallet and scrutinized the contents. Six pounds ten in notes; pay-day. ‘I could let you have a couple on account,’ I said.
‘I’ve told you. I want the lot.’
‘I’m very sorry, Mr Rickett. I just haven’t got it I’ve been trying to get the money for you.’
‘Well, try a bit harder,’ he said. His face had gone pale with passion and his little pointed head was down dangerously as though he meant to savage me. ‘I don’t want to be hard,’ he said after a moment, relaxing a little, and no doubt realizing that some was better than none. ‘You can take it if you pay half now and your word that I get the rest by the end of next week.’
Half was nearly four pounds. That meant no rent for Mrs Nolan. Or no lunches for me, and no dates with Maura. I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to be seeing her tonight. The thought momentarily distracted me so much that I gave him the four pounds. I made one last stand. ‘Would you mind shoving a couple of gallons in? I think I’m rather low.’
He looked at me and something that could have been a smile crossed his rat face. ‘Well, you’re cool, I must say,’ he said. But he seemed so taken with the coolness that he actually unlocked the pump and let me have a gallon. ‘There’s one,’ he said, ‘to get you off the premises.’
He stood and watched me with the same smile on his face as I backed down the alley, and this tribute to my coolness, added to the pleasure of taking over the wheel, raised my spirits instantly. I backed into the road, pulled her round in two cool, snappy movements, and actually waved to him as I shot up the road. He did not return the wave.
This aged, red, strap-bound M.G. was my most important possession and if not, in fact, actually priceless, certainly represented to me more than it could possibly fetch. The week before I had bought it I had been unable to think of anything else. There were many things I should have thought of, like getting a flat and some furniture.
One of the troubles was that I had not known what I wanted to do. If the vague haven of the business had not been awaiting me for several years, maybe I would have exerted myself in some
direction. As it was I was lazy, unable to project any alternative to Maminka’s vision of the glorious future that awaited me.
Maminka’s idea of the business was so grotesque that it embarrassed me to hear her talk about it. In my fadier’s day, certainly, it had been a little more attractive – the office had occupied the whole floor, and somewhere in the East End there had been a large warehouse. Since then the Czech glass imports had dried up and the Little Swine had gone in for sidelines. He was now running a rudimentary two-room organization that suited him perfectly.
All through university and the army, on the infrequent trips I had made to see the Little Swine, the business had grown smaller and tattier, and his increasing joviality – ‘Well, Nicolas, we will soon be ordering your desk’ – had depressed me more and more. In the event he hadn’t even done that; I took over the desk of a clerk he sacked.
I had never known if this was all part of some deep-rooted scheme of the Little Swine’s to make the future so unattractive that I would opt out of it, or if his affairs had not merely become with the years a more faithful expression of his personality; whatever it was, the prospect of settling in for life with him held no enchantment.