The Twinkling of an Eye. Brian Aldiss

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ for the Small Indoors. Many a time, when Betty and I are drawing happily at the dining-room table, Bill in passing will say, ‘Why don’t you go outside?’ His way of bringing up children is largely admonitory.

      In her East Dereham phase, Dot is generally ‘poorly’. Dr Duygan arrives briskly with his black medicine bag, to prescribe whisky-and-soda and a lie-down after lunch. Teetotal though she is, Dot obeys to the letter. She keeps cachous in her handbag for when she goes out. This is another way in which you tell the sexes apart: men never suck cachous.

      Suffering from teeth problems, Dot’s face becomes swollen. Gazing at herself in the glass, she complains, ‘I look more like a pig than a woman.’

      Four-year-old son, brightly, placatingly, ‘You make a very pretty pig.’ Flattery will become his stock-in-trade.

      Dot is amused. All is well, therefore.

      Later in life, I come to realise not only that Dot suffers from depression at this period, but that she combats it by a method her son unconsciously imitates: she cheers herself up by making others cheerful, by jokes which often include making fun of herself. It is a kindly fault.

      My role in life, according to Dot, is to remain by her side until I am old enough to be sent to Miss Mason’s Kindergarten, where middle-class Dereham kids are instructed. Yet I can easily give her the slip, to escape into the shop, becoming lost on the premises and beyond.

      Downstairs in our hall are two doors, one to the outside world, where the step is scrubbed white with Monkey Brand, one into Father’s outfitting department. This department is immense, a cavern filled with many places for a young subversive to hide.

      Rows of coats and suits, enormously high; ranks of deep drawers, oak with clanky brass handles inset; long counters; islands of dummies wearing the latest slacks in Daks; disembodied legs and feet displaying Wolsey socks; heavy bolts of suitings, wrapped about a wooden core; a repertoire of felt hats; much else that is wonderful.

      And, above all, the staff. I have complete confidence in their entertainment, as they in my distraction, value. Betts, Cheetham, Beaumont, Norton and the rest. Their names over the years have become a litany.

      They work long hours and must be frequently bored; nothing is as tedious as being a shop assistant (but at least they are not part of the dole queue that forms regularly down Church Street). They all wear suits. To look extra alert, they sometimes stick pencils behind their ears, points forward, or a number of pins into their lapels, or else they drape a tape measure round their necks. Safe from the dole they may be, but time hangs heavy; so the intrusion of a small hurtling body, ideal target for a knotted duster, provides a welcome diversion. Oh, what glorious scraps and chases among the fixtures! What laughter!

      There in his little empire, Bill is at his most content. He is on good terms with his staff. Although he runs an orderly business, he too seems to welcome me in the shop, allowing me to run about as I will, providing a little amusement for the chaps.

      His office is tucked at the far end of the shop, next to two fitting rooms. Here he sometimes interviews commercial travellers. When I published an article on the shop in a newspaper during the eighties, one of those travellers, long retired, wrote bitterly to me, saying how little he earned, and how H. H. Aldiss always paid as stingily as possible for his suits. He slept in his car when on the road, to save money.

      As the slow Dereham afternoons wear on, a tray of tea is delivered to Father’s office. It comes from Brunton the Baker, a few doors away. Brunton makes the most delectable pork pies; it also does teas for businesses. Father’s trays include a small selection of buns and tarts. Any young hopefuls hanging about just after four are sometimes permitted to snaffle a jam tart.

      Every evening at closing time, the bare boards of the shop are watered from a watering can and then conscientiously swept. Dust covers are thrown over the stock. The staff, young and high-spirited, departs, whistling into the night. The whole place becomes gorgeously spooky, and would pass muster as an Egyptian tomb.

      So let me continue the tour of this lost Arcadia, to the front of the shop, past the little window of the cash desk, where a pleasant cashier called Dorothy Royou sits, past my uncle Bert’s front entrance, down a slight slope, into the drapery. We will proceed round the property in a clockwise direction.

      The drapery is the domain of H. H. himself. He rules over about fifteen women assistants, all dressed in black. I call him H. H., but everyone – including his sons and my mother – addresses him and refers to him as ‘The Guv’ner’. The Guv’ner he is, monarch of all he surveys.

      I am not welcome in this department. One does not fool about here. The ladies are far more respectable, and less fun than the men.

      At the front of the drapery is the door into the street. Ladies entering here have the door opened for them, and are ushered to a chair at the appropriate counter. With their minds grimly set on fabrics at four and three farthings a yard, they certainly don’t wish to see a small boy skipping about the place.

      To the left of the front door as you enter are grand stairs which sweep up to the millinery, presided over by sombre ladies. To the right, is the very citadel of H. H.’s empire, the keep of the castle. This is where Miss Dorothy Royou sits secure, with her little windows looking out on both the men’s and the ladies’ departments, receiving payments, distributing change. And behind her cabin, on to which she has a larger window, is the Office. The Office is situated in the heart of the building. Miss Royou can communicate with anyone in the Office. The Office is dominated by a safe as large as – and slightly resembling – the front of a LNER locomotive of recent design. Near this safe sits H. H. himself, cordial in a gruff way, impeccably shaved.

      Every morning, H. H. walks to his shop from his home, ‘Whitehall’, buys his morning newspaper from Webster’s in Dereham town square, and then enters the establishment next door, the shop of Mr Trout the Hairdresser. H. H. sits in one of Mr Trout’s chairs and is shaved with a cut-throat razor by Mr Trout himself. He hears the gossip of the town before leaving and walking at a leisurely strut to open up his premises for the day. Bill is already in his department.

      Before leaving H. H.’s office, you must notice the door on its rear wall, seldom opened. The old premises are riddled with more secret passages than you ever heard of in Boys’ Stories. The passage behind this door is dark, and leads – miraculously, to a youthful mind – back into Bill’s part of the shop, where you can pop up unexpectedly behind a counter, to the feigned astonishment of Betts & Co., who stagger about as if they have seen a miniature ghost. It always takes them a minute or two to recover from their fright.

      To add to the fascination of this passage, it contains a blocked-up window. It is clogged up to knee-height by old sales posters and cardboard effigies of men in striped suits looking sideways.

      Leaving H. H.’s office in the regulation way, you are back in the drapery. At its far end are two doors, one a sinister, battered, mean affair, probably stolen from Norwich prison. The other is more of a doorway: its double doors, painted dove-grey, have inset windows of frosted glass, adorned with traceries of flowers and ferns, and birds having a good time.

      The criminal door slams closed when you struggle through it, while the ladylike doors remain always open, welcoming customers into an elegant showroom, where there are grey Lloyd Loom chairs in which ladies sit while sucking cachous and trying on gloves or whatever it is ladies try on.

      You fight your way through the criminal door. SLAM! it goes as you pass into night.

      Another secret passage! This one enormously long, so dark that it could be in the bowels of the Earth. СКАЧАТЬ