The Balliols (39 page)

At the office there was the same scurry of events. The departure of Walker to the front soon after the battle of Neuve Chapelle had issued its demand for reinforcements, was the first of more than one vacancy in Peel & Hardy's staff. The necessity for conscription was being forced home by the headlines of the daily press. The poster campaign on every hoarding reminded the laggard to the recruiting booths that those who did not go of their own free wills now, would be compelled to later.

Half-way through the summer, Smollett asked for an interview with Balliol. Such interviews had been frequent during recent weeks. Prentice had been right in his prophecy that the war would see a boom in tobacco sales. Cigarette cases in regimental colours, tobacco pouches with regimental crests, amber cigarette holders, patent lighters with watches let into them had become stock presents for departing subalterns. People had more time to smoke, more money to spend on cigarettes. Girls were growing less and less shy of opening cigarette cases in public. The firm was showing better profits than it had for years. In part these profits were due to the innumerable guest nights at innumerable officers' messes. But whisky was more popular than claret. It was considered unpatriotic to drink hock. Balliol had always specialized in German wines and held large stocks in bond. The profit on whisky was standardized
and small. Moreover, with Hugh a soldier and with many of his agents, such as Roy Rickman—married now to comfort, a captain in the Loamshires, and unlikely to return to trade—drinking more port than they were selling, he was unable to profit by the boom as fully as he had hoped. In proportion the tobacco side, though in actual turnover infinitely smaller, had shown a far greater increase of profit.

Week by week Smollett had presented his results in a self-consciously aggressive manner, as though he were saying, “That's pretty good; I know it; you ought to know it. But I don't suppose you will. You don't know what I'm doing. Well, that's your look-out. I'm not worried.”

It seemed to Balliol that Smollett was on guard against fifteen things at once. He was on guard against his employer's presumed low opinion of him; against a betrayal of his own pleasure in his success. He wanted to be praised, yet did not expect to be praised. He was on his guard against any suggestion that he felt resentful. Yet at the same time he wanted to make a “God-damn-you-anyhow” impression. He had so many inferiority complexes that Balliol never knew which one would be in the ascendant. He drew more pleasure from Smollett than from any member of his staff. Smollett was never quite the same twice running. Balliol always received with a pleasurable anticipation a request from Smollett for an interview.

He was not on this occasion to be disappointed. There was a new excitement on Smollett's face; also a new nervousness; as though something definite were at stake.

“Well, Smollett?”

Smollett cleared his throat; lifted his finger to the knot of his tie, moving it backwards and forwards as though he were trying all at once to straighten, loosen, and tighten it.

“I'm twenty-nine, sir. I'm not married. I'm in good health. It's my duty to join the army.”

His attempt to keep his voice controlled and dignified was not particularly successful. It gave his announcement the effect of a simultaneous apology and boast. “He's probably thinking that if he were to go it should have been much earlier.” At any ordinary time Balliol would have enjoyed watching the convolutions of the man's embarrassment, but at a time like this he felt that he must make things easier for him.

“That's very fine of you. We shall miss you. You don't need telling that, I hope. Your place will be waiting for you when you return. What regiment do you think of joining?”

“That's what I've come to ask you about, sir. I wanted to join the Inns of Court.”

“What!”

Balliol's surprise was too great to be concealed. He stared at Smollett incredulously. His astonishment sent up Smollett's defences with the abruptness of a medieval portcullis lowered to meet attack. His face changed colour as it did on the provocation of any large excitement. First of all it went a dead white that stranded the pimples on his forehead in scarlet and high relief; then, as though the pimples possessed not so much the protective capacities of the chameleon as the ability to make the surrounding landscape conform to their own appearance, a flush appeared to ooze out sideways from them, spreading down to the cheeks and chin; leaving them no more than damp projections from a uniform ruddiness of surface.

“I wanted to know if you would ask Lord Huntercoombe to be so good as to give me a testimonial.”

He had meant to ask Balliol himself for such a testimonial. His request to be sponsored by more august authority was an indirect but appreciable counter attack. It was as though he were saying, “Yes, I know I'm not the officer type. If I went on my own merits they would not look on me. So much so that your recommendation wouldn't help me. I'd need something more than that. Someone like Lord Huntercoombe.” Balliol did not miss his point.

“I'll see what I can do.”

“That's very kind of you.”

Balliol's eyes followed him as he walked towards the door. He had broad shoulders. His limbs moved easily. His back curved cleanly to his waist. He had an odd stoop; or rather lowering of his head between his shoulders. A drill sergeant would soon set that right. He might look well in uniform. A cap made a great difference. Hugh had told him that when colonels interviewed candidates for commissions, they had invariably made them take off their hats so that they could see what they were really like. Smollett might look no worse in the streets than a great many other “temporary gentlemen.” It was probably only because he was used to thinking of him as a subordinate that the idea of him as an officer seemed strange.

When he mentioned the matter to Huntercoombe the next morning, Prentice burst out laughing.

“What, that fellow! But, my dear Balliol, they'd never take a man like that.”

“They would, on our chairman's recommendation.”

“Nonsense! They'd take one look at the fellow and decide that he was mad.”

Huntercoombe shook his head.

“Standards are changing.”

“They can hardly have changed that amount.”

Said Balliol: “It'll be amusing to find out.”

Prentice fixed him with an amused, mocking look.

“I sometimes suspect, my dear colleague, that you have retained the natural inquisitiveness of a child.”

“What am I to take that to mean?”

“Nothing: except that I feel slightly on my guard with a person whose actions are largely dictated by curiosity. I cannot help feeling that one day a situation will arise when you will be faced by two alternatives. You know what'll happen if you go one way. You don't know what'll happen if you go the other. You'll follow the unknown route irrespective of whether it is the wise one.”

The criticism was put in so impersonal a way that it was scarcely criticism; certainly not hostile criticism. So that Balliol was able without weakness to admit that it was in part justified. Yes, he did like to see human equations worked out like sums in algebra; trying to guess at what it would all look like when the brackets had been taken away.

“I, on the other hand,” said Huntercoombe, “have considered man's greatest blessing an ignorance of the future.”

“But to gratify my instinct I trust that you will write that letter?”

“Oh, very well, then.”

Three days later Smollett returned from Lincoln's Inn with the news that Huntercoombe's testimonial had proved successful. He brought the news in the same spirit that he had brought his weekly sales sheet; a mingling of pride, defiance, and self-distrust.

When Hugh heard the news, he lifted his arms in a histrionic gesture of despair.

“God! And don't I know the type! We had a few in the Inns of Court when I was there. They've got a good deal more now, by all accounts. They always push themselves forward. They ask questions at lectures. They get given a stripe, which most chaps can't be bothered with. They've never been under authority. They're touchy as hell. They've never exercised authority. So they make fusses over the wrong things and let things pass that they should be firm about. They get an enormous kick out of giving orders to
people who six months earlier would have been ordering them about; yet they are aware of those people all the time. They're trying to get their own back but don't know how to set about it. There's nothing much more trying in a thing like the Inns of Court than the N.C.O. who hasn't been to a public school.”

“What sort of an officer does he make?”

“Oddly enough, quite a decent one. He's got his confidence: found his feet; besides, he's ordering about men that he feels he has a right to order. I should say that Smollett in a mess would be the kind of chap whom anyone would be glad to have around, but I bet you anything he'll have a stripe before he's been at Berkhamsted ten weeks, and I'll bet you that his section's hell.”

Smollett's departure made a gap in the firm that it would be, both Balliol and Prentice realized, extremely difficult to fill. There was no one else in the firm who had any real inside knowledge of the tobacco trade.

“We'll have to ask Smollett's advice,” said Balliol.

Smollett was prepared for such an inquiry. He received it as though whatever answer he gave would be suspected; that if he suggested someone who could take his place, he would be accused of nepotism; that if he had no suggestion to make, he would be giving a false impression of his importance and value to the firm; as good as saying that he was indispensible. Yet at the same time he wanted it to be quite clear that his advice was impartially given and the soundest available.

“I had been considering that,” he said; and his tone had the inflection of one who addresses an audience. “It is very necessary that we should both maintain the position we have won and endeavour to increase it. I know a man who is dissatisfied with his present employment. He works for Margin's. He feels he has insufficien scope there. He is a very close friend of mine. He would, I know, be very glad to make a change in his position.”

“How old is he?”

“He's my age. But there is no likelihood of his being accepted for military service. He has offered himself, but he has a very weak heart, varicose veins, and he is forced to wear very-powerfully-lensed spectacles.”

“From your account I should infer that before the army has need of him, the world that that army protected would be too weak-stomached for cigars.”

“One might put it that way.”

“Then we'd better see him. He realizes, of course, that when you return he will have to give up his post?”

Smollett smiled.

“I think he realizes that no one knows what the world will be like or who will be in it when the war ends.”

“He sounds practical, anyhow.”

When Smollett had left the room, Balliol turned to Prentice with a smile.

“I must say that I look forward to meeting the kind of person with whom Smollett would have what I believe is called in such circles ‘a jolly up'!”

The boon companion proved to be the kind of person with whom anyone might be expected to have a “jolly-up.” It was a little difficult indeed to picture him in any other light. He was little and perky; he was frankly vulgar; he had a short, wispy moustache that was stained ochre-dark with cigarette smoke. He wore a bright spotted tie and a check suit that clashed with it. His hands fluttered incessantly as he talked; he kept half moving them towards you, then withdrawing them, as though he had wanted to take you by the lapel and then thought better of it. You could picture him leaning against a bar button-holing, literally, the object of a ten minutes' friendship: “And this now, is another one. …” It was much easier to picture him in a saloon bar than an office.

“I suppose we've got to take Smollett's word for it,” said Balliol.

“I don't see that we have an alternative.”

“It's only for what is termed ‘the duration,' after all.”

To their surprise, however, they were forced to realize before long that the substitute was an exceedingly efficient one.

Other vacancies in the staff were filled less easily. Walker was not the only packer to enlist. Nor was it only packers who enrolled under the Derby scheme and appeared in the counting-house with red-crowned armlets on a khaki background. It was not long before the unmarried were taken at their word and
Punch
was afforded the opportunity of pointing out the mobilization poster to a Derbyite with the words “I congratulate you. Your country needs you before you expected.” The gaps in the counting-house were not filled easily. There was not the necessary supply of men qualified in mathematics who were prepared to spend forty-eight hours a week on a stool in return for less than twice as many shillings. They could earn far more in the munition factories. For a little the experiment of working later and harder with raised wages was attempted. But
the ledgers got behindhand. The columns of turnover were increasing monthly. Fewer men could not be expected to do more work, and more men were unobtainable.

“There is no alternative,” Balliol announced at a board meeting. “We shall have to employ a girl clerk in the counting-house.”

There was a silence in the board-room when the announcement was proclaimed: almost a funereal silence, as though an epoch were being buried. A girl clerk; in Peel & Hardy's; in the counting house; powdering her nose, scattering powder on the ledgers, distracting the men's attention, giggling, flirting. Girl clerks in the counting-house of Peel & Hardy's!

Balliol listened to the objections of his colleagues. He had expected them. He was prepared for them. Young girls were different nowadays, he informed them. They were employed in Government departments. His sister had organized women mechanics, women farm labourers, women lorry drivers. Apparently their work gave satisfaction. The Government continued to make use of them. “And anyhow, we have no alternative.”