Now Mrs Sabbatani soothes her, saying: ‘Sha, sha! May I never move from this chair, Sam never had anything against Mrs Dory. And she thought the world of my Sonia. Whenever she sees a picture of my Sonia, she cries like her heart would break. I’ll make a nice cup of tea.’
This had been going on, night after night, since Sam Sabbatani died and Sarah came to live with his widow and cheer her up. Having lost her daughter and her husband in one year, Mrs Sabbatani was so broken by grief that it was thought she might go out of her mind. So Sarah came to comfort her. Now, cvery night, as the divan springs twang out their weary discords under the weight of Catchy’s body, Sarah raises her voice in protest, and the end is always the same. Mrs Sabbatani is soft, slow, and sweet as honey; and as obstinate to cling. She always has the last word: Sam had nothing against Mrs Dory, and the child Sonia thought the world of her.
5
More than ten years have passed since the death of Sonia Sabbatani made its little sensation in that part of London. In those days Catchy was still clear-eyed and desirable; she paid her rent regularly and kept her little flat clean. Sabbatani’s shop was prosperous. The paintwork was fresh and glossy; the lettering of the fascia was bold and legible; the window was filled with a tasteful display of gents’ second-hand suits, most of which were practically all that the price tickets proclaimed them to be. There was a ticket which announced that gents’ evening dress and morning dress was available for hire. Sam Sabbatani had a good reputation as an honest and obliging tradesman, and a dexterous man who could alter anything to fit anybody. He had an eye for commodities and for faces, but you could see by the composition of his fat, grave face, that he would never make his fortune — he was like a rich province in a state of civil war. His heart had a fifth column behind the fortified walls of his hard head. He was conscious of this and sometimes tried to silence the sly, insidious voices that, at the crises of certain transactions, whispered:
‘The client needs money. He’s not a business man. There’s no business in him. What difference does a pound make.? He asks threepounds-ten. You could get that suit of clothes for fifty shillings, because he wants the money. But will a pound note break you? Don’t be silly! Look at the boy’s face: would he sell hisbest suit for threepounds-ten if he didn’t need threepounds-ten? Perhaps there’s a wife and child ill in bed. Say, God forbid, it was you with your Gertie or your Sonia. There could be rent to pay, there could be groceries. Give him what he asks. What is a pound note? You’ll get it back. Put an extra ten shillings on the price when you sell the suit: put an extra ten shillings on the blue serge you bought yesterday…’
Then Sam Sabbatani, with a melancholy look at the garment he was buying, would turn to the customer with his Asiaticbulldog face, and say: ‘All right, threepounds-ten,’ and push the money across the counter.
As often as not, the customer went away thinking that he’d been a fool not to ask for five pounds.
When, however, someone came to try on the blue serge suit, the price of which Sabbatani had raised ten shillings, there would be another skirmish in the mysterious region between his solar plexus and his cerebellum…. ‘Look, a respectable boy wants to get a job. Have a look at what he’s got on. A dark grey hopsack, made by a city tailor. Cost six pounds new; made to measure, one fitting. Look — a tie for eighteenpence, a shirt for five shillings, shoes for seventeen-and-six, all nice and clean. Times are bad. Look at his face. He’s making a frown, and a mouth. He’s trying to show you he doesn’t care. Poor boy, does he think he’s a business man? By him a pound is already important. Give him the blue serge for a pound less! What’s a pound note? Will a pound break you? A good suit of clothes makes a man feel better. It makes him confident. Better still — let him think he’s got a bargain out of you — much better still — he’ll go away, get his job, get married, make a nice family, be a Somebody. It can make all this difference. All for the sake of a pound note. Give him the suit. Put another thirty shillings on the crocodile-skin dressing-case with crystal fittings. Anybody that’ll pay ten pounds for a dressing-case will pay elevenpounds-ten.’
Thus twisting his face into an expression of melancholy anger, Sam Sabbatani would say: ‘All right, take it.’
When it came to alterations if the suit did not fit, Reason spoke:
‘Make the alterations free of charge. That way you get yourself a loyal customer.’
By this time, Reason had been undermined by the fifth column. The heart of Sabbatani chuckled in quiet triumph. His head growled impotently. His face scowled.
If anybody asked for the crocodile-skin dressing-case with crystal fittings, it invariably happened that he was a struggling actor invited to an important house-party, and Sam Sabbatani, with a face of doom, knocked off thirty shillings.
He even trusted people. When Catchy’s friend, the one she called Osbert, asked for the loan of a decent suit to wear at lunch with a publisher, Sabbatani, with a glare and a growl, let him have it.
6
Sabbatani was a burly, stooping man of middle height, who liked to wear his hat indoors, and could not touch a thing without working out an estimate of its market price. While embracing a long-lost brother, he would instinctively have pinched up a handful of the back of his coat and judged the cost per yard of the cloth from which it had been cut. And yet there must have been something all-too-human in the man. When his daughter Sonia died, Sam Sabbatani threw away the will to live; and after his death it was demonstrated that he had more debtors than creditors.
He owed money to a clothes-manufacturer in East London, who said: ‘Write it off. Poor Sam!’ The amount of the bill was thirty or forty pounds. A dozen men in his own neighbourhood owed him about sixty pounds between them. Five of these men sighed with relief; three laughed out loud; two of them simply paid their debts; one claimed that Sam Sabbatani owed him a suit which had been sent for alteration; and the twelfth called with a bunch of flowers and said: ‘I believe Sam kept his books in his head, Mrs Sabbatani. I want to tell you how sorry I am. You remember my name, perhaps? Osbert — Tobit Osbert. I owe you fourteen shillings for the hire of a suit. Sam trusted me. You haven’t got the record of what I owe, I dare say. Two days at five shillings a day, and four shillings for repairs. May I pay you now? And I’m sorry these aren’t nicer flowers, Mrs Sabbatani…’
Sam Sabbatani’s widow wept. ‘You’re the third what comes to pay a bill like this,’ she said, looking at the flowers; ‘people are good.’
‘You are good to have such faith in people,’ said Tobit Osbert, a tall, quiet man with a dreamy face and a gentle voice. “You are good, Mrs Sabbatani.’
‘God is good,’ said Mrs Sabbatani. ‘The kettle’s boiling. A cup of tea?’
‘You’re too kind,’ said Tobit Osbert, sighing.
Then Mrs Sabbatani remembered her husband’s sigh before he went away with the strangers. She had been sitting in the shop-parlour. As the door-bell tinkled, Sam leapt up and went out, leaving a cup of tea which he had not yet touched. After a minute or two, something in the tone of a stranger’s voice made her sit up and listen. Then:
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Sam Sabbatani.
‘It may be a mistake, but you must come and identify —’ said a stiff-backed man, in a clipped monotone. ‘Pull yourself together.’
Sabbatani said: ‘_Why_ should anybody? How could anybody? It’s a mistake. No offence — anybody can make a mistake. … I don’t believe it.’
She saw her husband turn towards someone she knew — a flat-footed old police constable who tramped a local beat. The policeman looked wretched, and nodded. Then Sam sighed: he seemed to suck into his lungs all the air in the shop, leaving everyone else gasping for breath. That was a terrible sigh.