Speciality Model Gowns? I want to speak to the Buyer.’
‘I’m Miss Flagstone, the Under Buyer. Miss Trumpet can’t be disturbed. She’s having a Fashion Parade. Whom do you represent?’
‘Lane and Newby of London. My name is Newby.’ Put in this way it sounded ridiculous.
‘Oh yes, we had a letter about you. You should have been here earlier. We don’t see Travellers after eleven o’clock, and Miss Trumpet has done all her buying. I’ll have to speak to her. She’s just going to coffee. Are they nice dresses?’
‘All the dresses are very nice,’ I said.
There was an interval of five minutes which seemed longer. People were banging on the door of the telephone box.
‘Miss Trumpet doesn’t want anything unless you have something very special she could use in her parade.’
‘They’re all very nice.’
‘In that case Miss Trumpet says to come right away. Don’t bring a lot. And she doesn’t promise to buy.’
There were no taxis outside the station.
‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ said the porter, who was trailing after me with a trolley piled high with my wicker baskets. ‘Like Gol-dust. You need a Barrow Man.’
‘Barrow Man?’
‘Chap with a barrow to push your stuff up to Throttle and Fumble.’
‘How far is it?’
‘Couple of mile.’
At this moment, a man appeared, pushing a barrow. He was a shifty-looking little man with watery eyes.
‘Throttle and Fumble. Cost you a couple of quid.’
It seemed a lot of money.
‘Carry ’em yourself,’ said the little man, ‘it’s all the same to me.’
The immense load was transferred to the barrow. I rewarded the porter, I thought handsomely.
‘What’s this?’ he screamed. Other travellers waiting for the taxis that were now beginning to appear turned at the noise.
‘Five shillings.’
‘Five—shillings! What do you think I am a—coolie?’
‘I think you’re a—robber,’ I said with a sudden resurgence of spirit.
‘I’ll take a quid in advance,’ said the Barrow Man, who was listening to this exchange with interest.
I thought of hurrying on to Throttle and Fumble to announce my arrival, but terrible stories of lost collections, recounted by my parents, made me stay with the Barrow Man. At first I walked on the pavement a few paces behind him but this seemed rather snobbish so I descended into the gutter and marched a few yards ahead with my umbrella up. It was like a procession.
‘Throttle and Fumble,’ said the Barrow Man after an interminable journey.
The store was housed in an Edwardian building shaped like a hunk of cheese. It was difficult to see how human beings could be accommodated in the thin end of it at all. We came to a slithering halt outside one of the principal entrances at which a commissionaire in an absurdly pretentious royal blue uniform stood guard.
‘You can’t stop here. Round the back for travellers,’ he said. Then he looked at me again and said, ‘Oh, blimey!’
‘Frognall,’ I said, ‘what the devil are you doing here? And in that rig-out?’
Frognall had been one of our less-attractive acquisitions in the Middle East. He was a boastful, drunken fellow who enjoyed dropping dark hints to his girl friends about the nature of the operations on which we were employed. In Alexandria, far from war’s alarum, unless watched closely he went about armed to the teeth with fighting knives and a .45 Colt Automatic.
For security reasons our unit did not possess a badge; each man wore the badge of the regiment from which he had been seconded. Frognall invented one, a tasteful design of crossed tommy-guns over a submarine, wreathed with the names of places on the enemy coastline which had been visited by members of our organisation in the course of their work. He had it embroidered in the bazaar. Frognall had left us in 1942; the last I had heard of him was that he had deserted.
‘More to the point, what’re you doing?’ Frognall said belligerently, there had been little love lost between us. ‘Come down a bit, haven’t you?’
‘I’m selling clothes, Frognall. But what are you doing with all those medals.’ He was wearing the ribbons of the Distinguished Conduct Medal, the Military Medal and Bar, and the Croix de Guerre with Palm.
‘Gottem in ther Resistance.’
‘You had to work fast to do that.’
‘I’m Sarn-Major Bodkin now,’ said Frognall defiantly, ‘at Throttle and Fumble.’
‘Well, when I’m back in London I’ll remember you to the Commanding Officer. He’ll be glad to know that you’ve done so well.’
‘I shouldn’t do that,’ said Frognall, ‘towards the end I wasn’t on very good terms with the C.O.’
‘All right, Frognall, we’ll see. But just at this moment there’s a nice bit of work here, carrying these baskets upstairs.’
Speciality Model Gowns were on the third floor. The lift was too small to accommodate us. We puffed up the stairs with the first basket, butting the shoppers with it, through the restaurant where the customers were gorging themselves on bilious-looking cakes, through the Dream Girl Room and into the Department.
At first I thought that it was being demolished. The showroom was full of workmen sawing wood and hammering away at something that looked like a packing case for an obelisk. One wall was stacked with little gold chairs.
‘STOP!’ said a great voice.
It came from a woman more than six feet high with hair dyed bright orange. I had never seen anything like her in the whole of my life. She was like a Valkyrie. The remains of such women are occasionally discovered, together with their consorts, decked with amber beads, stretched out in the bottoms of Viking burial ships.
‘STOP!’ she said again, even louder. ‘Where do you think you’re going with that basket. SERGEANT-MAJOR, PUT IT DOWN!’
We let it fall in terror.
‘Good morning,’ I said, ‘Miss Flagstone?’
‘I am not Miss Flagstone. I am Miss Trumpet, the Buyer. Who are you?’
‘I’m Newby of Lane and Newby of Flagstone … I mean London.’
‘I know nothing of you. I never see travellers in the Department.’
‘Miss Flagstone …’
‘She
