Eric Newby - A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

This particular dress was a disaster that no one was going to overcome. Its real name, the one on the progress board on the wall of the fitting-room, pinned up with a little flag and a cutting of the material, was Royal Yacht, but by general consent we all called it Grand Guignol .

I held a docket on which all the components used in its construction were written down as they were called up from the stockroom. The list already covered an entire sheet. It was not only a hideous dress; it was soaking up money like a sponge.

‘How very odd. According to the docket Grand Guignol’s got nine zips in it. Surely there must be some mistake.’

Hyde-Clarke was squatting on his haunches ramming pins into Grand Guignol like a riveter.

‘This dress is DOOMED. I know it’s doomed. BOTHER, I’ve swallowed a pin! Pins, quickly, pins.’

The fitter, a thin woman like a wardress at the Old Bailey and with the same look of indifference to human suffering, extended a bony wrist with a velvet pin-cushion strapped to it like a watch. He took three and jabbed them malevolently into the material; Milly swore fearfully.

‘Mind where you’re putting those … pins. What d’you think I am – a bloody yoga?’

‘You MUST stand still, dear; undulation will get you nowhere,’ Hyde-Clarke said.

He stood up breathing heavily and lit a cigarette. There was a long silence broken only by the fitter who was grinding her teeth.

‘What do you think of it now, Mr Newby?’ he said. ‘It’s you who have to sell it.’

‘Much worse, Mr Hyde-Clarke.’ (We took a certain ironic pleasure in calling one another Mister.) ‘Like one of those flagpoles they put up in the Mall when the Queen comes home.’

‘I don’t agree. I think she looks like a Druid in it; one of those terribly runny-nosed old men dressed in sheets at an Eisteddfod . How much has it cost up to now?’

I told him.

‘Breathe OUT, dear. Perhaps you’ll look better without any air. I must say there’s nothing more gruesome than white jersey when it goes wrong.’ ‘Dear’ breathed out and the dress fell down to her ankles. She folded her arms across her shoulders and gazed despairingly at the ceiling so that the whites of her eyes showed.

‘There’s no need to behave like a SLUT,’ said Hyde-Clarke. He was already putting on his covert coat. ‘We’ll try again at two. I am going to luncheon.’ He turned to me. ‘Are you coming?’ he said.

We went to ‘luncheon’. In speech Hyde-Clarke was a stickler in the use of certain Edwardianisms, so that beer and sandwiches in a pub became ‘luncheon’ and a journey in his dilapidated sports car ‘travel by motor’.

Today was a sandwich day. As we battled our way up Mount Street through a blizzard, I screeched in his ear that I was abandoning the fashion industry.

‘I saw the directors this morning.’

‘Oh, what did they say?’

‘That they were keeping me on for the time being but that they make no promises for the future.’

‘What did you say?’

‘That I had just had a book accepted for publication and that I am staying on for the time being but I make no promises for the future.’

‘It isn’t true, is it? I can hardly visualize you writing anything.’

‘That’s what the publishers said, originally. Now I want to go on an expedition.’

‘Aren’t you rather old?’

‘I’m just as old here as on an expedition. You can’t imagine anything more rigorous than this, can you? In another couple of years I’ll be dyeing my hair.’

‘In another couple of years you won’t have any to dye,’ said Hyde-Clarke.

On the way back from ‘luncheon’, while Hyde-Clarke bought some Scotch ribs in a fashionable butcher’s shop, I went into the Post Office in Mount Street and sent a cable to Hugh Carless, a friend of mine at the British Embassy, Rio de Janeiro.

CAN YOU TRAVEL NURISTAN JUNE?

It had taken me ten years to discover what everyone connected with it had been telling me all along, that the Fashion Industry was not for me.

The rehearsal was set for four o’clock on Tuesday. At eleven o’clock on Tuesday morning I was called to the telephone. It was the London agent of one of the great New York stores.

‘Miss Candlemass is coming to see your Collection this afternoon.’

‘We’re only having the rehearsal this afternoon. The opening’s tomorrow.’

‘Miss Candlemass has a very tight schedule.’ (I wanted to say I was sorry and hoped that it would be better soon.) ‘She’s on her way home from Paris. She’s open to buy.’

‘We’ll be very happy if she comes to the rehearsal. It’s at four o’clock.’

‘She’s only free at one-thirty. Make it one-thirty and you’ll have to be READY. She doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’

He went on to say that Miss Candlemass was only interested in tweed suits and that the material had to be of a precise weight and proof against the corruptions of moth and rust and every other natural and unnatural ailment.

I told the Managing Director. He pretended to be unimpressed. I told the Head of the Boutique, who was not unnaturally furious, We told the workrooms that they had two and a half hours less to make the final adjustments in the suits and one of the skirt-makers had hysterics and had to lie down on the couch reserved for those suffering from female disorders; we told the model girls that they would have to lunch in the canteen, all four had lunch dates; the Commissionaire was warned to man the porte cochère ; the counting-house was ordered to stand by from one o’clock onwards to be ready to answer any difficult questions about shipping and customs. I set off in a taxi on a circular tour of London cloth merchants to obtain swatches of the sort of material required by Miss Candlemass. Then I came back and re-costed the collection.

By one-thirty the atmosphere was electric. The Commissionaire was in position; the Head of the Boutique was ready to receive Miss Candlemass; the model girls were poised on the threshold of the changing-room with the first suits strapped on, like racehorses under starter’s orders. I had just finished heavily annotating three programmes in dollars. The only person not present was Hyde-Clarke.

‘I do not propose to change the habits of a lifetime to suit the convenience of a citizen of the United States,’ he remarked, and departed to luncheon. He proved to be the only one of us who had correctly appreciated the situation.

At half past three Miss Candlemass arrived. It was quite obvious, without her saying so, which she did incessantly during her brief stay on the premises, that she had been lunching at Claridges.

The party consisted of the Shoe Buyer from the same store, readily identifiable because he was wearing a pair of brown crocodile shoes; the Agent, normally a man of briskness and decision, now reduced to a state of gibbering sycophancy by the proximity of Miss Candlemass; and Miss Candlemass herself. All three were a uniform, bright shade of puce. I must say in my lunchless state I envied them. The Head of the Boutique, a Scotswoman of character, refused to admit their existence, for which I admired her deeply, so that it was left for me to escort them to their seats.

Miss Candlemass was about nine feet high and hidden behind smoked glasses in mauve frames studded with semi-precious metal. She was like a lath, with very long legs, just too thin to be healthy, but she was very hygienic, smelled good and had fabulous shoes and stockings. With her dark glasses, the general effect was that of being engaged in watching an eclipse of the earth from the moon.