Andrew Taylor - Bleeding Heart Square

He was reluctant to tell me more. He said it was too shocking for a lady’s ears. In the end, though, I coaxed it out of him. In a moment of madness, when he was a very young man on the verge of leaving with his Regiment on active service, he had married a woman who later proved unworthy of him — indeed, unworthy of any man. It was hard, he said, for a fellow to come home to a cold and unloving hearth. But that had been his lot .

And there had been much worse to come. His wife turned out to be a moral degenerate of the worst sort. She had left him and was now living in New Zealand with another woman in circumstances so shameful that I cannot bear to sully the page of my diary with them. To make matters worse, she had once been a Catholic, so she refused to countenance the very idea of divorce. The hypocrisy makes my blood boil .

He said, very simply, ‘It’s my cross, my dear Miss Penhow, and I must somehow learn to carry it on my lonely journey through life.’

After lunch, if it could be called that, Lydia Langstone went to her first job interview, leaving Captain Ingleby-Lewis snoring in his armchair, his legs covered with a blanket. He looked old, frail and ill.

In her gloved hand was a page torn from Mr Serridge’s loose-leaf memorandum book. On it he had written in pencil: Mr Shires, 3rd floor, 48 Rosington Place, Tuesday, 2.30 pm .

Lydia found the house with no difficulty. It was almost immediately opposite the chapel. Like most of the houses in the cul-de-sac, it had a cluster of brass plates beside its front door. A notice invited her to walk inside without ringing the bell. She found herself in a drab hall with a high plastered ceiling whose discoloured mouldings were draped with dusty cobwebs. There was brown linoleum on the floor and the air was filled with the clacking of typewriters. She scanned the noticeboard on the wall. It listed the offices of at least ten firms, including two sets of lawyers as well as Shires and Trimble, a jewellery importer, a surveyor, a company manufacturing kitchen stoves and a furrier’s.

She climbed the stairs. The house was much larger than it seemed from the street. On the second floor there was a door marked SHIRES AND TRIMBLE set in a partition made of wood and frosted glass. She knocked. After a moment she turned the handle and went in. Immediately in front of her was a narrow counter, beyond which was a general office containing four people. Two men were sitting at high desks, one talking on the telephone; a typist with very red fingernails was attacking the keyboard of her machine with noisily vicious efficiency; and a red-haired boy was licking stamps and putting them on envelopes. No one took any notice of her.

Lydia tapped the bell on the counter. The younger of the two men looked up, sighed theatrically, climbed down from his stool and sauntered over to her.

‘Good afternoon,’ Lydia said. ‘My name is Langstone, and I’ve an appointment with Mr Shires.’

He conveyed her across the general office to the door of a private room, as if without his guidance she might be expected to lose her way. Mr Shires’ office was small, and most of it was filled with a large partners’ desk. The gas fire was burning at full blast and the air smelled of peppermints.

Mr Shires himself, a plump little man in a shiny black suit, was writing at the desk. He capped his fountain pen and rose to a crouching position, not quite standing. He extended a hand across the desk and said, ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Langstone. Pleased to meet you. Do sit down,’ in a continuous rush of words that suggested he was in a terrible hurry. He sank back in his chair and popped a peppermint from a white paper bag into his mouth. His eyes drifted back to the pile of papers in front of him.

‘I believe Mr Serridge has talked to you about me,’ Lydia said.

‘Yes.’ He sucked the peppermint and the tip of his nose twitched. ‘I understand you’re looking for a position.’ He uncapped the pen, initialled the foot of one page and turned it over. ‘And that you have no experience of office work.’

‘That’s correct.’

‘Married or widowed?’

‘Separated,’ Lydia said firmly.

Shires stared at her with weak, watery eyes. ‘Are you living by yourself?’

‘No. I’m staying with my father in his flat.’

‘Of course.’ There was a tinge of amusement in Mr Shires’ voice. ‘In Bleeding Heart Square. Yes, I see. Very convenient.’

Lydia felt her temper slipping away from her. ‘I don’t want to waste your time, Mr Shires …’

‘I don’t want you to waste it either, young lady.’

Lydia gave way to her feelings and glared at him. ‘I’m glad we understand one another. Though I’ve no experience of office work, I’ve run two large houses for several years. I’m a quick learner, I’m methodical, and I’m willing to learn.’

‘Splendid, Mrs Langstone.’ Mr Shires took off his glasses and sat back in his chair. ‘I’m looking for a girl to do some of the donkey work for Mr Smethwick and Miss Tuffley. Mr Smethwick is our junior clerk. Miss Tuffley is our typist. They spend far too much of their valuable time filing or answering the telephone or making cups of tea for our clients. I can make more use of them than that. So if you are willing to do that sort of thing, I can give you a month’s trial on a part-time basis, and we’ll see how we go. Are you interested?’

‘What do you mean by part-time, Mr Shires?’

‘If you come to work for me, Mrs Langstone, you will have to get used to addressing me as sir. Let’s say three days a week. Our hours are eight thirty to five thirty. The precise days and hours may vary from week to week; you would have to fit in with us. Shall we say thirty shillings?’

‘Thirty shillings a day?’

‘No, no.’ Mr Shires belched unhurriedly. ‘Thirty shillings a week.’

‘That’s ten shillings a day.’

‘So it is. Will that suit, eh? Yes or no.’

‘Yes,’ Lydia said.

‘Yes, what?’ Mr Shires said.

Lydia stared at him. ‘Yes, sir.’

Finding a job was proving harder than Rory had anticipated. On Tuesday he had lunch with a friend from university who now worked at an advertising agency in the Strand. When Rory had been in India, the friend had written enthusiastically about the opportunities awaiting him back in London. But now Rory was actually here, those opportunities seemed to have vanished. ‘Everyone’s tightening their belts, old chap,’ the friend said as they drank their coffee after lunch. ‘And people want chaps with the right experience. There’s no getting round it, I’m afraid.’

By the time Rory got back to Bleeding Heart Square, the Crozier had opened for the evening. It was a cold night, and he went into the panelled saloon bar and ordered whisky. The place was crowded with people having a drink on their way home. Lucky people, he thought, people with jobs.

Rory found a seat in an alcove almost entirely filled with a large table, around which sat four law clerks engaged in a slanderous conversation about their employer. He slumped behind his newspaper in a chair at the end of the table and turned to the Situations Vacant. He was aware of the ebb and flow of voices around him. His attention wandered from the newsprint. He tuned in and out of conversations in the alcove and the bar beyond, as though he were twirling the dial on a wireless set.

‘No change then?’ said an educated man’s voice.

‘Found herself a job, I understand. Extraordinary.’

‘Good God. I’d have thought she was unemployable. Where?’

‘Some lawyers at Rosington Place. Perfectly respectable billet, you needn’t worry about that.’

Rory recognized the voice of the second speaker: Captain Ingleby-Lewis, his neighbour on the first floor. He knew he ought to make his presence known or at least stop listening but his curiosity was stronger than his sense of propriety.