'Good evening,' I said, taking off my cap and trying not to be put off in any way; 'my wife works here in the offices, and -'
'You're Lydia's husband?' she said. 'Oh, come in.'
I shook her hand. 'Jim Stringer,' I said, and she said, 'Ever so happy to meet you. Cicely Braithwaite.'
I stepped through the little door and found myself in a kind of vestibule with wooden walls on either side, with bob-holes cut into them. Cicely lifted the hatch on one of the bob-holes, and I saw the wife talking on the telephone as though to the manner born. She was the only one in a light, wooden office with a high desk and tall, shiny-topped stools.
Cicely Braithwaite dropped the bob-hole door and said, 'As you can see, she's on the telephone presently. She's talking to Manchester, so best not to interrupt.'
'Who's she talking to?' I said, 'if you don't mind me asking.'
'Most likely Michael Hardcastle. He's our, you know, travelling gentleman.'
'I see,' I said, but I did not.
Cicely Braithwaite was going red. 'He doesn't like to be called a salesman,' she said. She was going redder still, crimson now. 'But that's what he is,' she added, firmly. 'That's where I work' she continued, lifting the opposite bob-hole. There was an office inside, but no people. It came to me that she must be the other office girl, the one spoken of by the wife; the one not allowed the Standard typewriter.
'My boss is Mr Robinson' she said. 'Well, was. He used to be one of the partners.'
'He's left though, hasn't he?'
'Yes,' she said, 'he's been sacked.' The redness came surging up again. She couldn't help talking out of turn, and couldn't help blushing over it afterwards. 'The other office, the one Lydia's in… That's Mr Hind's.'
'Old Hind's?'
'No. When we speak of old Mr Hind we always say "Mr Hind Senior".'
'Or "the fossil"' said the wife, who'd opened the bob-hole of her office and put her head through. 'Your hand!' she then cried, and came out into the corridor. 'Hold it up!' she said.
'It's nothing to fret over,' I said, as Cicely asked the wife, 'Shall I go and fetch something for it?'
'Boracic acid,' said the wife, 'that's the best thing.'
Cicely opened the door to the second office and came back holding a bottle of something and a glass of water, saying, 'Drink this. You look parched.'
Cicely handed the bottle to the wife who, looking at the label, said: 'Linseed oil. It'll have to do.' The wife began unwinding my bandage, saying to Cicely, 'Do we have another of these?'
Cicely said, 'They'll have bandages in the weaving room.' She opened a door beyond the two offices, at which moment all conversation with the wife had to stop on account of the racket.
I was looking through the door at the same thing done over and over again: row upon row of crashing looms, each row under a drive shaft, all the looms connected to this shaft by rolling leather belts, so that the machinery on the floor was tangled with the machinery on the roof, as though a giant spider had climbed over everything making a web as it went. The walls were white; the white was light, and everybody inside looked as though they'd just seen a ghost. Margaret Dyson, the woman I'd killed, had worked in there. No wonder she'd been so keen to get away to the sea, if only for a day.
The long blister under the bandage had burst, and there was coal dust inside the wet remains. The wife was shaking her head over this as Cicely Braithwaite came back, shutting the door behind her. The silence was beautiful.
'Was it Michael you were speaking to?' Cicely said to the wife, handing over a length of bandage.
'It was,' said the wife, 'and he's having to take one thirty- second of a penny on the -'
'Not on the twelve-ounce?' Cicely Braithwaite put in.
'Yes,' said the wife, 'on the twelve-ounce.'
'I knew it would be the twelve-ounce,' said Cicely, as we all went from the space between the offices into the wife's office proper. She took me over to a desk and made me rest my hand on top of a Kelly's Directory. Nearby were many other books lying open, with pages made of different kinds of cloth. I knew what they were: sample books, of the kind seen in draper's shops.
'What's the twelve-ounce?' I asked, as the wife poured on the stinging stuff and set to with the new bandage. Every so often she would flash a glance over at the telephone, as if expecting it to jump.
'Twelve-ounce suiting,' said Cicely. 'What do you think about that?'
I didn't think anything about it, so I just shrugged. It was Clive knew all about suits.
'Have you not told him about the twelve-ounce?' Cicely Braithwaite asked the wife, who did look a bit embarrassed over this. There was a kind of force about Cicely Braithwaite that could make you feel a stranger even to your own wife.
'I'm only just beginning to understand it myself,' said the wife.
'It's the biggest disaster going,' said Cicely, very happily. She turned to me. 'Let me put you straight, Mr Stringer. Now look at your coat. A lovely bit of worsted, that is. It's quite filthy, and it's full of burn holes but it's a lovely bit of worsted underneath. I reckon that would be about a twenty-ounce cloth. Most suiting is from twenty to twenty-eight ounce. Well, Mr Peter Robinson, the gentleman I worked for in that office over there -' she pointed in the direction of the second office he had the notion of making something much lighter than your common run of summer cloth: twelve- ounce suiting. Light green suiting.'
'But do you mean light, green suiting, or light-green suit- ing?'
'Why, both,' said Cicely, 'when all our suiting up to now has been normal weight and blue.'
'Well it sounds a perfectly good notion,' I said, as the wife wound the bandage. 'I'd feel a lot brighter in a thinner suit.'
'I daresay,' said Cicely, 'and in some spot like Italy, where it's stifling the year round, it would be just the thing. But they can't give it away here, and they're saddled with miles of it.'
'Well,' the wife put in, 'have they not thought of trying it in Italy?'
'Whatever do you mean?' Cicely asked.
'It would go perfectly well in Italy,' said the wife, 'and would do here too, especially in summers like this, if they just once gave it a starting shove.'
'How do you mean by a shove?' asked Cicely.
'Advertising,' said the wife.
Cicely nodded. 'You would have liked having Mr Robinson here, dear,' she said to the wife, 'if you'd got to know him properly, got to know his ways. He was go-ahead like you. Have you told Mr Stringer of your programme for the filing?'
'I've not,' said the wife, 'because he is not particularly interested in filing.'
I finished off my glass of water and gave Cicely a grin.
'In fact he doesn't even file his own nails,' said the wife.
'Tell me of your programme,' I said.
'Very well,' said the wife, who was finishing off my bandage with a pin. 'When I come to take dictation from Mr Hind, he always ends, "Kindly acknowledge in due course", which means that for every letter sent out we get one back, and half the time the other person puts "kindly acknowledge" on their letter of acknowledgement, so you can see that the smallest little bit of business does rather go on for ever. But when I mentioned it to Mr Hind, and suggested that he stop writing "kindly acknowledge in due course", he said, "It's quite impossible. How can you be sure you've sent a letter if you don't have a reply?'"
'Mr Hind is not go-ahead,' said Cicely, turning to me.
'So,' the wife continued, 'I said you must just put a little trust in the Post Office, and that way you could save pounds every year, to which he replied, "How am I to finish my letters? What am I to put instead?'"
'Well, what is he to put instead?' I asked the wife, after a little while.
'"Yours truly'" said the wife, and she stepped back from me, for the bandaging was now done.