If the labour market had been overcrowded in January, in March it was infinitely worse. The days passed barren and workless, and Kif rationed himself to two meals a day—and these he censored—in his desire to keep that precious sum in the bank intact. He felt that if he tapped it even to the extent of ten shillings the magic would somehow have gone from it and he would not be able to resist further inroads. He no longer bought papers. Mrs Connor pointed out that there was no need to buy a paper just to look at advertisements; you could see all the papers you wanted in a public library. So Kif made one of the eddying impatient crowd round the green baize supports in a murky reading-room whose very atmosphere breathed despair. A railway waiting-room may be the abomination of desolation, but there is a smug certainty on the faces of the jetsam who occupy for a little its penitential benches; trains are inevitable as night and day, and the tide that washed them up on so forlorn a shore will take them out at the appointed time, or thereabouts. But a London reading-room at ten o'clock of a working morning is hung with a gloom shot with malice and despair. In 1919 it was the mouth of the pit. Each individual in the crowd round the daily papers pushed and squeezed so that they might not be the one to be forced over the yawning edge. Every day they jotted down on the backs of envelopes or in little notebooks the precious addresses and hurried out so that they might be in the first flight, and always on the morrow they were back, their roughened fingers clutching the much-licked stub of pencil, their eyes searching the columns again. Except for their hands, and the set of their shoulders, and the look in their eyes they had outwardly as little in common as that first gathering that flooded the barracks on the outbreak of war. In mufti they had once more reverted to type, this to spats and this to a muffler. The time had not yet come when spats were to disappear in favour of the bare necessities of clothing. At present their only common attribute was the stamp of their service, and their need; their urgent need. Some of them, it is true, tried to camouflage the urgency under a mask of indifference; but it deceived no one. The man to whom a job is a matter of indifference does not consult the daily press in a public reading-room at ten of a morning.
'I say, mister,' said a small man in a government suit and a rubber collar to Kif one morning, 'what's a fly-tyer?'
Kif could not help him.
'Oh well, it don't matter. I'll have a shot at it.'
'Good luck!' said Kif, grinning at him; the man's cheerful remark was less suggestive of present need than of the old army motto: Apply for everything, just in case. Kif never saw him again, so he was never enlightened on the mysteries of fly-tying.
The odd spasmodic scraps of work which eventually came Kif's way were thrown in his path by blind chance, not obtained by any effort or premeditation on his part, and none of them offered more than a short breathing space in the battle. He was going despondently down the stairs of some Strand offices one afternoon when a wild clattering announced the descent of someone in a hurry, and a small fat man shot past him, arrested himself several steps down by dint of a grab at the railing, and, evidently overcome by a sudden idea, said to Kif:
'Not looking for a job, by any chance, are you?'
'Oh no,' said Kif bitterly, 'trailing up and down stairs is just my amusement.'
'C'mon!' said the small man, laying a plump pointed hand on Kif's arm and urging him upwards again. He propelled him into a cigar-thick office lined entirely with photographs, and said triumphantly to the man who was tearing his hair at the desk: 'I've got one, Sol. Ain't he a beaut!'
'Keep them in a pocket or what?' grunted the other.
'No, I got this one on the stairs.'
That night and for fourteen nights after, Kif, chocolate brown all over except for the necessary apron demanded by a grandmotherly censor, held a flaming torch (electric) up stage centre in act two of a new production with an Eastern motif. The new production flopped severely, and Kif ended his stage career without having found a substitute for it.
And then came the great idea.
In a paper one morning he read 'Wanted, a gentleman with capital (£100—£150) as partner in bookmaking business, working or sleeping.' Kif answered the advertisement and by return received a letter asking him to call at an address in Charing Cross Road. He exchanged his now disreputable tweed for the carefully preserved brown suit. As he drew the trousers from their resting-place below the mattress he whistled. Walking through the spring streets he whistled soft tuneless phrases under his breath. Climbing the dark stairs in Charing Cross Road he was still whistling. He was climbing the road to fortune. His luck had turned. He knew it.
It was too dark on the landing to read the white card on the door, but he knocked confidently, and a voice roared a cheerful 'Come in!' and Kif went. At a large square table furnished simply with a telephone sat a pallid little man with dead eyes and a peevish mouth. He had the complete colourlessness of something that has grown under a stone. If Kif's spirits were dashed by the sight of so unattractive an individual he was reassured when his gaze met the merry blue eyes of the man who was lounging in the window. This was the owner of the voice undoubtedly, a ruddy person of forty or so.
'Hough and Collins?' he said.
'I'm Collins,' said the pallid man. 'This is Mr Hough.'
'I'm Vicar, come to talk business.'
'Pleased to meet you, Mr Vicar,' said the pallid man with an airy gesture to his forehead. Hough came forward and shook hands.
'Just out of the army?' he asked, and Kif had the feeling that it was not merely a conventional or business query.
'Not just. Last January.'
'Beat me by a month. France, was it?…Carnshires. I was in Egypt most of the time with the—Yeomanry. Horses have always been rather in my line. Before I joined the army I helped my father in a "silver ring" business. And now that I'm out of it I'd like to go back to the old job, with a little promotion. Mr Collins here knows the business from A to Z.'
It did not require any perspicuity on Kif's part to realise that Mr Collins, though Hough's junior by nearly ten years, had not had sufficient love of horses to draw him into any yeomanry. No army had owned the wan-skinned thing at the table. How had he managed to escape service? In what way could this spineless object have been indispensable? He was answered almost immediately when Collins rose and crossed to a cupboard. The man was so undersized in every way that even a bantam battalion would have looked askance at him. A shade of pity mingled with Kif's contempt until he wondered suddenly in what capacity Mr Collins had learned the business from A to Z. A stable lad or a jockey? Not a jockey certainly; his shoulders were ill-developed and narrow. Nor did he look like a bookmaker's clerk. He was more like a tout. There was about him that subtle suggestion of having no legal standing in the universe, of being perpetually ready to run. Kif's glance went back to the glowing solidity of Hough, who was setting out chairs. Hough caught the look and smiled rubicundly. 'Expect you're looking for a billet for your gratuity, same as me,' he said. Kif assented absent-mindedly. He was wondering how he was to test the apparent frankness of Collins' partner. He certainly had every appearance of having seen service in Egypt, but how was he to know? And then he remembered a boy who had come one night to dance at the Barclays, a trooper in the 2nd ——, a pleasant youth with a devastating stammer.
'Which battalion of the —— were you in?' he asked casually.
'The 2nd.'
'Ever met a fellow called Heseltine?'
'You b-b-bet your b-b-boots,' laughed Hough. 'Shared a blanket with him often.'
So that was all right.
'Have a drink, Mr Vicar,' said Collins, proffering the bottle he had taken from the cupboard. Kif refused.
'Perhaps you're right,' Collins said in his thin creaking voice. 'Never drink before a business discussion.' And Kif took the indicated seat by the table.
Collins talked, with occasional appeals to Hough for corroboration. He had, it appeared, been a partner in a small bookmaking business before the war. He had not attended the meetin
gs, but had looked after the town end of the business. For the last two years he had been making munitions and had spent even with decent living only half of what he had made. With the other half he now proposed to start business. Hough, who was coming in as junior partner, would do the outside work, attending the meetings—'He has a daisy of a voice!'—and Collins would look after the office side. If Kif was able to do clerk's work he was to be roped in as Hough's second on the course. If not, he could be a sleeping partner and a clerk would be engaged. But their original idea was to have the third partner as clerk.
He produced ample proofs of all his statements and Kif was satisfied.
Kif explained that he had always been interested in racing, and that he would like to do the clerk's work if it were possible to pick it up. Figures were the only kind of learning he had ever received praise for.
In the end it was agreed that a clerk should be engaged for the first weeks and Kif could attend and learn the business until he was able to take his place. 'I don't expect that business will be so brisk to begin with that anyone will be killed in the crush,' Collins said.
And that is how Kif became a part of Hough & Collins, the Firm You Know, The Sure Payers. He proved a good pupil and made a smart enough clerk because he liked the life. The shifting situations in the day's work were what he had always sought. For no two consecutive minutes was the outlook the same; the unexpected became the usual. And what would have been mechanical work in an employee became a never-ceasing interest for him since he was part of the firm. It was his fortune that was being made or lost. It was his tragedy when Oak, the favourite, fell lame on the way to the gate and made the race an easy for Old Sinner which had stood at fives in their book. It was his good luck when Mealybags, which no one had ever heard of, pipped the well-backed Musical Evening on the post. And he liked the changing scene of their fortunes; here to-day and there to-morrow. He liked the coming and the going; the leisurely arrival in the high-light of noon, the dawdling setting-out of their paraphernalia, the atmosphere of expectant waiting, of shared jests; the hasty last paying-out, the hurried packing and rush for the trains. But most of all he liked the period of stress between.
He still kept the attic at Fitzmaurice Lane, but had two rooms instead of one. Occasionally Hough took him back for a meal with his wife, a little dark woman, pretty and birdlike, in their rooms in Fulham, and they went to theatres together. And once or twice he went by invitation to visit Collins, who was a bachelor and lived a lonely and apparently misanthropic existence in a small flat on the floor above their office. Mrs Hough introduced him to her 'crowd', which was limited, good-hearted, and a queer mixture of extravagance and hardheadedness. Kif liked them mildly, and did not regret them when he was away from them. He was still to a large extent self-sufficient. He danced expertly if unenthusiastically with the wives and sisters of the Hough circle and remained heart-whole in the midst of their by no means limited attractions, and apparently unimpressed by their approval of him. Mrs Hough's sister, especially, a little Dresden beauty who had enjoyed the war and found it difficult nowadays to put the necessary 'pep' into existence, made no secret of her preference for him.
'What can you see in him?' asked her best friend of the moment. 'He's ugly. And he hasn't a word to say for himself. I thought you liked them snappy.'
'So I do. But he's a heavenly dancer.'
'Lord, since when have you fallen for a man's feet?'
'Not his feet, his figure. He's got a divine figure, you'll have to admit, Kitty Farrant.'
'Yes, his figure's good enough, I suppose.'
'You suppose! And his eyes just make me weak. They're so dark, and sort of lazy and not taking any notice of anything, and then they wake up all of a sudden and tease you, sort of.'
'Huh! You've got it all right. But that doesn't alter the fact that he's plain. Nice and all that, but plain.'
'You're jealous, that's what it is.'
'So far I haven't anything to be jealous about. He isn't exactly pining away for you, is he?'
This being only too true, the infatuated one acknowledged it and changed the subject. Kif infinitely preferred an evening in unalloyed male company to playing cavalier. His happiest nights were with Hough at the Ring. As a spectacle boxing never lost its first fascination for him; indeed the understanding of the game which his sparring with Carroll had brought him had added rather than detracted from its allurement. He sat literally and metaphorically at the feet of the combatants, his eyes eager, his brain retentive. And afterwards, alone in the attic, he would rehearse feint and parry with his shadow on the wall, and would go to bed with a glowing body and a speculative mind. Carroll had said he was good. Presently he would get someone to give him lessons. After all, he was only twenty.
He was entirely happy.
And then one Saturday night he decided to do what he had been meaning to do as soon as he had found a job. He would not go to Golder's Green as an out-of-work nobody, a suppliant for favours. But as as a partner in Hough & Collins he could go with a free mind. Early on Sunday afternoon he departed from Fitzmaurice Lane, radiant, rather nervous, full of reminiscence. The thought of the Barclays had lain at the back of his mind all those months like a promise—a promise to himself—so that they had come to be associated in his thoughts with his graduation, his promotion to fortune and recognition. In the bus going up Baker Street he remembered how he and Tim had walked from Victoria in the dark; how uncertainly he had stood in the damp garden, afraid of his reception, afraid of life among these people, whose ways and thoughts he did not know. And there had been nothing to be afraid of after all. And never would be again.
He had heard regularly from Tim at intervals of about a month until the armistice, when Tim went into Germany with the army of occupation. Since he had been in Eastbourne he had had no word, but that was in accordance with the general slackening of effort which overtook everyone when the strain relaxed and safety had once more become the birthright of the humblest private. Kif wondered if Ann would be at home. Perhaps she had found her job; or perhaps she had got married in the last year. She had not been engaged before the armistice or Tim would have told him. It was strange: he had started out primarily to see Tim, but it was Ann who came and went in his thoughts. He got off the bus at the stop with a slight quickening of heart and an approving glance at the boots he had taken such pains with that morning. If grooming alone was a passport to society then Kif was qualified to attend a levée.
He went down the path under the pergola of red ramblers hoping intensely that everyone was out. There was no immediate answer to his ring, and he was consumed with a fear that there was no one at home. And then Alison opened the door.
He was just about to say 'Hullo, Alison!' when her unrecognising glance gave him pause. He asked for Mrs Barclay. At the sound of his voice she looked at him again, puzzled. 'Yes,' she said. 'What name, please?'
'Vicar,' said Kif.
She swung round from opening the drawing-room door. 'Bless us!' she said. 'Goad bless us! Well, I give thanks this day.'
Kif put out his hand, and Alison, with a totally unnecessary wipe of her palm on the hip of her spotless apron, shook it warmly and long, and with a 'Sit ye down' she fled to announce him.
There were new cretonne loose-covers on the chairs, but otherwise the drawing-room was as he had known it. There was a crystal jar of iceland poppies on the mantelpiece. He wondered if Ann had arranged them. And on Mrs Barclay's desk…He crossed the room carefully, lightly, and looked at the photograph. Yes, it was Ann; the level brows, the curved chin, the small laughing eyes, and the uncompromising manner he had known; the Ann who had welcomed him that night in the black-and-gold thing and had taken him so beautifully for granted.
There was a stir at the door, and he turned as it opened.
'My dear boy,' said Mrs Barclay, 'my dear boy, this is nice of you.'
She greeted him kindly and waved him to a seat 'I am so glad to see you looking so well. Tell me all about your
self. You have left the army, of course. And you have found something to do. Something congenial, I hope?'
Kif had been ready, though he did not know it, to give her by degrees the whole of his Odyssey; the greengrocer's, the Egyptian with the torch—all of it. Instead he said: 'Yes, I have a share in a bookmaking business.'
'Racing.' It was impossible to tell whether the word was a question, a statement, or an exclamation; her deliberate voice was habitually unaccented. 'And you like that?'
'Well, it's as near perfection as I expect to get. Yes, I like it.'
'I am so glad. You are lucky to find your métier so easily.'
'Oh, I did a lot of things first. But I'm settled for a while now. How is Tim?'
'Tim went back to the city a month ago and does not seem to be hating it as much as he prophesied he would. He brings home a new tie every day. He says it emphasises the freedom of the citizen or something of the sort. You may understand him; I don't.' She smiled her charming smile at him and arched her brows. 'Ann is poultry farming near Ticehurst in Sussex with two other occupation-mad young people. At the moment she is upstairs engaged in what she calls "poshing up". They take turn about in having the week-ends off, so we see her one week-end out of three. And not very much of that. She is going out to tea now as soon as her hat is at the proper angle. Tim is in Birmingham on business. That is a pity.'
Well, he wasn't going to miss her after all. In a minute or two she would come in at that door. Or—awful thought!—would she go out without coming in? Perhaps she did not know that he was there.
'Is your work office work?' Mrs Barclay was saying. 'You must find that trying after the open air life in the army.'
'Oh no, I'm out in all weathers. I'm the clerk and book the bets. One of the other partners does the shouting.'