Eric Newby - Something Wholesale

I was not in the business myself and knew nothing about it but now my mother had me cornered. I couldn’t think of any reason why I shouldn’t go.

‘You can take Bertha,’ she added, ‘to show the gowns.’

Bertha was a free-lance model my parents employed to display their outsize clothes so that the buyers could make their choice under battle conditions. I had first met Bertha some weeks previously at a fashion show at a London hotel at which our firm was ‘showing’. My mother had insisted on me attending it on the grounds that ‘it would cheer me up’. Bertha was very outsize indeed and grunted as she eased herself down at our table after the show. She had fat little feet of which she was inordinately proud and quite soon Bertha was massaging my ankles with them under the table, like a mare scratching itself against an old post. I was absorbed in studying the model girls employed by less-specialised firms, who looked like racehorses, and in wishing that we were showing small sizes. Before she left, unasked she wrote her telephone number on my programme.

‘I’ll do anything,’ I said, ‘as long as it’s not with Bertha.’

‘Then you’ll have to show them on the hangers,’ said my mother. She sounded vexed. ‘But they won’t look the same without Bertha. She’s such a willing girl.’

‘I know, that’s why I’d rather show them in the hand.’

‘I think it will do you good to get away, dear,’ my mother said, as she got up to go, triumphant as usual. ‘Oh, and by the way, a Mrs Bassett has telephoned three times already. I said you were asleep.’

Two days later I arrived in Sheffield, by train. I was wearing a pre-war suit that was so full of moth holes when I first put it on that it looked as though it had been peppered with shot. My mother had had it neatly repaired in the workroom with wool of an odd shade of blue.

It was raining steadily and although it was only eleven o’clock in the morning the sky was almost as dark as night. With me were four enormous wicker baskets, things called ‘skips’, which contained the Gown Collection.

‘Commercial?’ demanded the man at Left Luggage. He was a gloomy-looking, hollow-eyed fellow. If it was always like this it was difficult to see how he could have looked otherwise.

‘No,’ I said. At this stage I was sensitive about my amateur status. ‘Have it your own way,’ he said. ‘Cheaper if they’re Commercial. It’s all the same to me if they’re full of corpses,’ and gave me a ticket.

My father had written to Throttle and Fumble announcing that ‘Our Mr Newby will be calling on you,’ but no reply had been received when I left London, so I telephoned.

‘Throttle and Fumble,’ a voice said at the other end and I pressed Button A. There was a click and I was disconnected. All attempts to gain the attention of the operator failed.

There was an interval while I bought a magazine I didn’t want in order to collect some change and a further wait in a queue for a telephone.

‘Throttle and Fumble,’ said the voice again.

‘I want to speak to the Gown Buyer.’

‘Speciality Model Gowns, Model Gowns, Dream Girl Room or Inexpensives?’ the voice said, archly. Confronted with such a choice I wasn’t sure.

‘Well, if you’re not sure, I can’t connect you.’

‘Speciality Model Gowns,’ I said, guessing wildly.

There was a whirring noise and a new voice said, ‘Throttle and Fumble, Dream Girl Room, Good morning.’

‘I want Speciality Model Gowns.’

‘Just a moment, I’ll have you transferred.’ There was a succession of tocking noises and yet another voice said, ‘Sorry to trouble you, dear, will you transfer this call to Specialitys.’

‘Hallo, 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?’