Dance and Skylark (4 page)

“This,” said Mr. Runcorn, tapping it, “is a matter of public interest. I think I need say no more.”

An atmosphere of bleak and wintry indignation filled the room. The Mayor got up to go.

“I'm sorry, Runcorn,” he said, “I oughtn't to have suggested that.”

“No,” said Mr. Runcorn.

“I could bite my tongue off,” said the Mayor. “Please forget it.”

He went out, and even Miss Smith, who had seen Councillors and Town Clerks and on one memorable occasion the Vicar himself dismissed in the same way, felt sorry for him. Mr. Runcorn looked across the room at her and, forgetting for a moment that she was a Beauty Queen, saw her only as a member of the staff who must therefore participate in his sense of outrage.

“The
Weekly Intelligencer”
he observed, “may not be the
Manchester Guardian;
but we share certain principles.”

Miss Smith said nothing; for a number of painful experiences had convinced her that people liked her much better when she didn't talk, and she had developed a kind of defensive mechanism of silence. So she fell to daydreaming again, and, closing her eyes, saw herself in the dress which the Beauty Queen would wear for the Grand Procession. This dress was to be specially designed by a young man called Robin who had been engaged to design all the dresses for the Pageant; and he, protesting that he couldn't possibly contrive clothes for somebody he didn't know, had invited her to tea in his studio. Miss Smith had politely declined, while consenting to go a walk with him instead on one of her afternoons off; for the young man, though attractive, had a reputation for unconventional behaviour and she was well aware of the special dangers inherent in artists' studios. A Beauty Queen could not be
too careful; for that matter—a film-star could not be too careful! Fluttering her eyelids slightly, Miss Smith faded out the long taffeta dress with puff sleeves and replaced it with a dark oblong upon which convolutions of light hurled themselves towards her, formed fantastic patterns, and at last resolved themselves into her own name. Starring Virginia Verity? Virtue? Vane?—Oh no, that was liable to misinterpretation—Valley? Vance? Virginia Vance, she decided, was almost perfect; in quaint gothic letters for a Period Picture, in square modern ones for a Tense Drama, in blue, in old gold, in rose, in emerald green for a piece in technicolor, the beautiful name pirouetted before her eyes.

The girl, thought Mr. Runcorn, must surely have fallen asleep; and although he could but disapprove, some ancient courtesy forbade him to wake her. Instead he stared hard at the almost Grecian profile, stared and stared until suddenly inspiration came. He picked up his pen and began to write, firmly crossing out “pulchritude” and putting “callisthenics” instead.

The Factory down by the river was making beach-balls for Australia, which in six months' time would be bouncing over the firm sands of Sydney. Children tawny as the sand would play with them, strong swimmers
would push them far out to sea, small Brad mans with improvised bats would smite them to tideline boundaries, swift brown girls chased by swift brown youths would toss them like Atalanta's apple to the eager pursuers. Meanwhile it was Edna's task to see that there was no flaw in them, and with deft fingers she drew them one by one over the nozzle of the compressor, turned on the air, and watched them swell till they were as big as ripe melons. It was a sight for the Garden-god, who surely has an eye for such things, when Edna lifted the many-coloured ball off the air nozzle and stood for a moment holding it before her. For in a splendid way they matched. There were no angles, no straight lines such as nature abhors; but tumescence in the happiest conjunction, a symphony of curves.

In a light haze of french chalk a dozen women and girls worked on the bench with Edna, putting in the valves and rubber patches and blowing up the balls to test them. Close at hand Jim and Joe, who six years after the war still wore their green Commando berets, stood as it were at the head of the production line. Jim operated by hand a somewhat primitive-looking machine which lowered the formas into liquid latex, and after an appropriate interval transferred them to a homely little oven where they were dried by means of naked gas-jets in exactly the same way that one cooks a Sunday joint. When they were done Joe took charge of them and dipped them into a tank of water on top of which floated a scum of mixed rubber paint, iridescent like petrol in a pool. When they emerged from this bath they were rainbow-tinted with streaks and whorls of red, yellow, blue and green. After a second drying they
were peeled off' the formas and passed to Edna and her women for testing.

Upstairs in the packing-room eight more women were employed; and at busy seasons there would be at least another dozen at the long testing-bench. But to-day the work went leisurely in an atmosphere like that of a family party. The compressor kept up a low whine, and the air released from the beach-balls made an intermittent soft sigh, but since there was no noisy machinery everybody could talk to everybody else. When Jim in his harsh corncrake's voice said: “Carrots is right. What we wants is 'ouses,” the conversation at once became general.

“'Ouses and a bit more rations,” agreed Joe, “instead of these faldadiddles and goings on.”

“Mind you,” said Jim, “I ain't against fun, don't anybody think that, us all needs a bit o' fun these days. But who's going to pay for it, that's what I wants to know?”

“Us,” said Mrs. Greening, the blowsy woman next to Edna. Her name was pronounced Grinnin.

“Us? How?” said another woman.

“Bit on the fags, bit on the booze, bit on the pools, bit on the PAYE. We allus does pay for everything.”

“'Course,” added Jim, with a glance at Edna, “I'm not saying aught against Beauty Competitions. Apart from putting ideas into folk's heads, I dare say they don't do no 'arm.”

“You'll be too snooty to know us, ducks,” said Mrs. Greening, prodding Edna in the ribs, “when you're on the fillums and we pays sixpence to go and see you.”

“Not me”—Edna laughed— “I only went in for a lark. I haven't won it yet, anyhow.”

“But you will, ducks. You got more personality than her. The stuck-up bitch,” said Mrs. Greening.

“Oh, I dunno. She's all right. We shan't quarrel, whoever wins.”

“You're too easy-going, ducks.”

“Well, it's only a lark.”

The whole of life was a lark to Edna: the cheerful companionship of the long bench, the chi-acking over cups of tea, the naughty stories Mrs. Greening whispered in her ear, the Saturday-night dances at the Town Hall, walking out on Sunday afternoons, holding sticky hands with boys in the pictures. It was “just for a lark” that she had accepted Robin's invitation to tea in his studio, after he had explained with engaging frankness why he couldn't possibly design the same dress for both the finalists and must therefore have a design in readiness for whichever of them turned out to be the chosen Queen. “Your personalities, your colouring, and if I may say so your figures, my dear, are absolute opposites.” Edna had giggled; and she had a charming giggle, which came from very deep down and was like the gurgle of a mountain stream bubbling up between the ferny rocks. It wasn't long before she and Robin were holding hands, and being of a yielding and generous nature she didn't leave his studio until long after nightfall. But that, too, was “only for a lark.” She wasn't going to fall in love with Robin, oh dear no, not after seeing all those sketches of women without any clothes on decorating the studio walls. She had found it difficult to
believe his protestations that he had painted them out of his head.

Joe said: “Here's the last: batch of mucking old beach-balls, and then we've finished.”

“Finished?” said Edna. “What's the next job?”

“Kaput. Finished,” croaked Jim. “No more orders for nothing, that's what the Boss said.”

“No more export?”

“The Yanks,” said Joe, “'ave got tired of poppin' balloons at Christmas parties. Likewise the Aussies and the Argentinos. But we're going to make a few fancy lines on spec, like, teddy-bears and jumbos, and then it's curtains unless something turns up.”

“One thing,” said Mrs. Greening, “he won't put us off, not until he got to.”

“Not him,” said Joe. “When he was wounded at Walcheren, wounded and very near drownded he was, the first thing he wanted to know was about us chaps. Was Jim and Joe all right, he said.
And
shot through the stummick!”

Just then the big creaking double-doors opened—the tumbledown place had been a warehouse, and long ago a tannery, before John Handiman the ironmonger's son converted it into a balloon factory in 1946—and there entered a very small messenger-boy carrying a very large bunch of flowers. “For the office,” he said, and marched through the shop towards the door marked “Private,” at the far end. All the women at the bench turned round to peer at the dewy pink petals just showing above the tissue paper.

“Roses this week,” sniffed Mrs. Greening. “Must 'ave cost a packet.”

“It was tulips last time,” said Joe.

Mrs. Greening gave Edna another friendly dig in the ribs.

“Ain't you jealous, ducks?”

“Good luck to her,” laughed Edna. “But I do wonder who her boy is.”

Jim's voice like a saw cutting a rough piece of wood grated through the whole shop:

“Must be rich, must be crackers, must 'ave plenty of guts.”

He peeled off the last batch of beach-balls and tossed them to Edna. Adroitly she stuck the valves in and slipped them over the air-nozzles, plugging each ball in turn as it was blown up. The sunlight coming through the open double-door fell on her as she held a whole bunch together, like giant grapes, and for a moment she ceased to belong to the dingy factory with its leprous coating of french chalk, she was a Bacchante strayed there, a vision of the vineyards glowing and shining, a beaker full of the warm South.

It was a fault inseparable from Miss Foulkes' colouring that when she blushed she went salmon-pink, arms, neck and face, and when the flush subsided it left her unnaturally white, with the freckles standing out against her pallor like specks of sand. She always blushed when the flowers arrived, and there was always an uncomfortable silence in the office afterwards.

John Handiman busied himself ostentatiously with his letters. Miss Foulkes said to the messenger-boy: “Put them
down there,” and he laid the roses on the filing-cabinet next to the bowl of fading tulips which he had delivered last week. The week before it had been anemones, and the week before that hyacinths. Whoever the sender might be, he was a most faithful and persistent fellow, and John was profoundly puzzled, because however hard he tried he could not for the life of him imagine Enid Foulkes with a young man.

But why not? he asked himself. She was only twenty-nine, her flaming hair was a challenge, she was not at all bad-looking, she was clever—and yet there was something which seemed to obviate the very possibility of courtship, it was a sort of angularity, he decided; her bare elbows lying on the desk were little sharp nobbles, and her shoulder-blades showed like knife-edges through her thin dress. Perhaps that was because she lived chiefly on nuts. But hers was not simply an angularity of physique, but of disposition. Her character was all sharp corners; there was no smooth side to it, no place for compromise, it would cut a man to pieces, thought John oddly, to match his mind to hers. Perhaps the unknown suitor had learned this lesson, and was trying out the softening effect of roses.

“The debit balance at the Bank,” said Miss Foulkes, white-faced now that her blush had faded, “is two hundred and seventy-three pounds eight and a penny; leaving two hundred and twenty-six pounds eleven and eleven pence to carry on with before we reach the limit of five hundred.” She ruled a neat red ink line at the bottom of the sheet of paper. Miss Foulkes' accounts, even when they were only memoranda, were always decorated with red lines, single
ones and double ones and in certain complex cases treble ones, and these lines were never smudged or crooked, but were as thin as hairs and as straight as ramrods. Somehow they seemed to express her personality; for Miss Foulkes was meticulous. She was so meticulous that when she found a halfpenny one day upon the office floor she put it into the Petty Cash and now, three years later, that tiresome halfpenny still appeared in the monthly totals, in the annual balance, and even in the audited accounts. John Handiman loathed the sight of it.

“You haven't allowed for this week's wages?” he said.

“No.”

“Then unless some money comes in soon we're going to be in a jam. And we can't hope for anything much before the beginning of July.”

Miss Foulkes promptly handed him two typewritten sheets headed respectively “Creditors” and “Debtors,” each heading being underlined in red. There was not much comfort to be found in them; and it ran through John's mind that the adventure which he had embarked upon so eagerly after the war, which had seemed almost like another Commando operation because Jim and Joe were in it with him, was likely to end, as adventures so often did, not with a bang but a whimper. There would be no sudden and startling bankruptcy; but the orders would dwindle away, the profits would gradually contract, the chatter and the laughter at the long bench would die down, and one morning Miss Foulkes would rule a treble red line, just a shade thicker than usual, at the bottom of the last page in the ledger. When that happened she and Jim and Joe, Mrs. Greening,
Edna, and the rest would have to look for new jobs; and he would be back in his father's little shop selling fishhooks to urchins.

He said:

“Look here, Miss Foulkes. You juggle with figures eight hours a day. Tell me frankly, what's going wrong with this show?”

She answered without hesitation: “Too small a profit-margin on a small output.”