Something Wholesale. Eric Newby

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       CHAPTER TWO An Afternoon at Throttle and Fumble

      ‘It’s not the slightest use hanging about here all day doing nothing,’ my mother said firmly. ‘You’re becoming demoralised.’ She had come into the bedroom where I was skulking unhappily for what she called ‘a little talk’.

      My leave was not proving to be as pleasant as I had expected it to be. Most of the girls I knew were in jobs they refused to discuss, alleging that they were ‘secret’. (At that time it was fashionable to be in something secret even though you were issuing camp beds at the White City.) By day I had been forced back on the company of a succession of predatory widows, who drew false hope from my air of melancholy and who listened with awe to the rumbling noises made by a stomach which had been unable to stand the strain of liberation. My friends all seemed to be prisoners of war, busy like me nursing their private neuroses and we had so much in common that we used to cross the road to avoid meeting one another.

      Even the Army seemed to have lost interest. Four days after I arrived home I received a letter from a remote camp in Ayrshire. It was signed by the Adjutant and ordered me to report there forthwith for posting. Someone who knew the place told me that it was in a bog ten miles from a railway station. I disregarded the letter. Every Friday for two months I received a letter from the Adjutant. It was always the same letter, except for the date and no reference was ever made to the previous ones. Finally they ceased altogether. I felt slighted. ‘I’m very worried about you,’ said my mother, sitting down on the edge of the bed. ‘I’ve been speaking to your father and we both think that you must do something.’

      ‘I am doing something.’

      She wasn’t listening. ‘We’re sending you to Sheffield,’ she said, ‘with the Gown Collection. Mr Wilkins is ill.’ (Mr Wilkins was the Traveller.) ‘There’s a new Buyer at Throttle and Fumble. She hasn’t been in to see us this season and we can’t afford to lose the account.’

      Here I must explain that my parents were in the wholesale business, what is known in the trade as ‘The Better End’. Twice a year, Summer and Winter, they made a collection of Models, based until the war came, on something that was supposed to have happened in Paris (what heavier industries call prototypes), and invited the buyers of the big department stores and smaller enterprises, called ‘Madam Shops’, to visit London and place an order for the coming season. But not all the buyers came to London and some of those who did would pass my parents by. It then became necessary to stalk them on their own ground and make a killing there – this was where Mr Wilkins came in, but Mr Wilkins was ill.

      I was not in the business myself and knew nothing about it but now my mother had me cornered. I couldn’t think of any reason why I shouldn’t go.

      ‘You can take Bertha,’ she added, ‘to show the gowns.’

      Bertha was a free-lance model my parents employed to display their outsize clothes so that the buyers could make their choice under battle conditions. I had first met Bertha some weeks previously at a fashion show at a London hotel at which our firm was ‘showing’. My mother had insisted on me attending it on the grounds that ‘it would cheer me up’. Bertha was very outsize indeed and grunted as she eased herself down at our table after the show. She had fat little feet of which she was inordinately proud and quite soon Bertha was massaging my ankles with them under the table, like a mare scratching itself against an old post. I was absorbed in studying the model girls employed by less-specialised firms, who looked like racehorses, and in wishing that we were showing small sizes. Before she left, unasked she wrote her telephone number on my programme.

      ‘I’ll do anything,’ I said, ‘as long as it’s not with Bertha.’

      ‘Then you’ll have to show them on the hangers,’ said my mother. She sounded vexed. ‘But they won’t look the same without Bertha. She’s such a willing girl.’

      ‘I know, that’s why I’d rather show them in the hand.’

      ‘I think it will do you good to get away, dear,’ my mother said, as she got up to go, triumphant as usual. ‘Oh, and by the way, a Mrs Bassett has telephoned three times already. I said you were asleep.’

      Two days later I arrived in Sheffield, by train. I was wearing a pre-war suit that was so full of moth holes when I first put it on that it looked as though it had been peppered with shot. My mother had had it neatly repaired in the workroom with wool of an odd shade of blue.

      It was raining steadily and although it was only eleven o’clock in the morning the sky was almost as dark as night. With me were four enormous wicker baskets, things called ‘skips’, which contained the Gown Collection.

      ‘Commercial?’ demanded the man at Left Luggage. He was a gloomy-looking, hollow-eyed fellow. If it was always like this it was difficult to see how he could have looked otherwise.

      ‘No,’ I said. At this stage I was sensitive about my amateur status. ‘Have it your own way,’ he said. ‘Cheaper if they’re Commercial. It’s all the same to me if they’re full of corpses,’ and gave me a ticket.

      My father had written to Throttle and Fumble announcing that ‘Our Mr Newby will be calling on you,’ but no reply had been received when I left London, so I telephoned.

      ‘Throttle and Fumble,’ a voice said at the other end and I pressed Button A. There was a click and I was disconnected. All attempts to gain the attention of the operator failed.

      There was an interval while I bought a magazine I didn’t want in order to collect some change and a further wait in a queue for a telephone.

      ‘Throttle and Fumble,’ said the voice again.

      ‘I want to speak to the Gown Buyer.’

      ‘Speciality Model Gowns, Model Gowns, Dream Girl Room or Inexpensives?’ the voice said, archly. Confronted with such a choice I wasn’t sure.

      ‘Well, if you’re not sure, I can’t connect you.’

      ‘Speciality Model Gowns,’ I said, guessing wildly.

      There was a whirring noise and a new voice said, ‘Throttle and Fumble, Dream Girl Room, Good morning.’

      ‘I want Speciality Model Gowns.’

      ‘Just СКАЧАТЬ