So Tod plunged.
There was an empty shop in Duke Street, a long tunnel of a shop that had
been the home of a local iron-monger who had failed to meet his
creditors. The owner of the premises showed himself to be a very
adaptable and progressive person. He agreed to spend a hundred pounds on
the place, refit it, put in a new front with big glass doors, and knock
down part of a back wall so that cars could circulate by way of a
backyard and side lane. He added ten pounds to the rent—but Tod was
delighted; he did not grudge his landlord his ten per cent.
Western’s Garage was opened on New Year’s Day. The shop front was
painted red; and a big blue-and-white sign jutted out on an iron bracket
and let everybody know that there was a garage in Duke Street. Tod,
under Miss Hornblower’s inspiration, had been very lavish with his gold
lettering on the plate-glass windows. Orders were “promptly attended
to”—“All trains met”—“Touring cars for hire.” The shop window was full
of lamps, horns, tools, an assortment of tyres, jacks, oil cans, and the
like. The garage held one taxi and one American touring car, both
obtained under a system of deferred payments. The staff consisted of
Tod, a driver-mechanic, and a boy.
Tod had learnt to drive a car. He had read all the automobile journals
with great diligence, and paid various visits to London and the
Midlands. Someone in Wardour Street offered him certain commercial
facilities, one of those keen gentlemen who are so clever at making
money out of other people’s enterprise and energy. Tod was “advised” by
this Semite in Wardour Street. He obtained various agencies, but they
were agencies for rather second-rate firms who built the cheaper and
more dubious sort of car. Old Pumpelly had snaffled all the others. But
the business moved; Tod’s taxi snorted about quite busily, took people
to the station and to theatres, and staggered home again without an
accident. The American touring car had a rather more gentlemanly and
luxurious life, but then it was a summer car, and Tod had no spare
driver. Miss Hornblower would commandeer it on occasions, and make Tod
drive her up and down the front. He had bought her a fur coat, and all
the young women in Horrox & Horrox’s were aware of Millie and her coat.
But the business moved. People came into the shop and bought things,
tyres, petrol, oil, grease, repairing outfits, French chalk, sparking
plugs, oil cans. Tod advertised himself as ready to undertake repairs,
and Love—his driver-mechanic—was put to the test. Love was a fat
little man, sallow, greasy, with a slight squint and an immense display
of superficial self-assurance. He talked Tod into believing him an
expert, pouring out streams of technical jargon with a sort of biblical
gusto. “The mag” needed attention, or the “brasspot had a bit o’ fluff
in its tummy.” Somebody’s “gears were bottoming,” or “she wanted her
big-end rebushing.” Mr. Love always spoke of a car as “she,” and with an
intimate and affectionate shrewdness that embraced the whole sex. Tod
got a little breathless in trying to follow Mr. Love through all these
feminine details and subtleties, poring over motor-manuals at night, and
going to bed with his head full of “crown wheels” and “short circuits,”
“lay shafts” and “forced-feed lubrication.” He did not desire this man
Love to be a Mumbo-Jumbo, a Witch-doctor, a Priest of all the Mysteries
in his business. He wanted to keep a grip on the greasy seat of Mr.
Love’s trousers.
The driver-mechanic appeared to perform quite creditably upon one or two
ramshackle machines that were entrusted to “Western’s Garage” for
repairs. They ran when they left the repair shop, and that was good
enough for Mr. Love.
“Good enough.” That was his great phrase, containing a philosophy so
dear to the heart of the lazier sort of English artisan. If a car came
back again at the end of a week, Mr. Love insinuated his greasy person
into its entrails, spat, rubbed his hands on his trousers, and was ready
with a learned explanation.
“Old, bag o’ bolts. She’d shake something loose every hundred miles.”
He talked the owners into dazed acquiescence.
“She wants ’er timing-wheels resetting, sir. Had ’em done by the village
blacksmith—what? Of course. And the universal joint wants looking to,
and her water-pipes are all fur and muck. There’s not much I don’t know
about cars.”
Tod was very busy and very happy, and business shaped so well those
first few months that Tod began to buy furniture and to think of
marriage. He wanted Milly, and he wanted her very badly, for she had
begun to provoke the natural man in him and spring was in the air.
She came hurrying into the garage one Wednesday afternoon, and found Tod
in the little glass box of an office, entering up his books. Last
month’s receipts were more than respectable, and Tod was remembering
that he needed a summer suit.
“Oh, Toddy, dear!”
“Hallo!”
“It’s free—it’s to let.”
“What’s to let?”
“Why, our little house—that ducky house in Guildford Lane.”
She was flushed and greatly excited, and her enthusiasm had all the
seduction of her sex.
“I’ve just seen the board up. The people are going out next week. I went
in and asked.”
Tod got off his stool and kissed her.
“You want it, dear?”
She snuggled in close, ignoring Mr. Love, who was deep in the “innards”
of a derelict car.
“Of course I want it. Don’t you, Toddy?”
“I want all sorts of things, and I want them so badly——”
“Oh, naughty boy! But it will be rather nice, won’t it, just you and me
in that dinky house?”
“Let’s go and look at it,” said Tod, putting business behind him.
Needless to say, they took “Carnarvon,” with its pepper-pot turret, mock
oak, casement windows, gravel path, and standard roses. Tod prepared to
be married in June. The sun shone. All the pessimism of Uncle Remus and
Mr. Rathbone Cragg seemed like so much senile snivelling.
About a week before Tod’s marriage Bob Twine strolled up Guildford Lane
and slouched self-consciously through the gate of “Carnarvon.” It was
six o’clock and he found Tod pottering about the house. Tod was in his
shirt-sleeves, and his hair was rumpled, and Bob Twine caught him on his
hands and knees in the kitchen, nailing down linoleum.
“Hallo, kid.”
Tod looked hot and happy, but quite pleased to see Twine.
“Hallo, Bob. What do you think of this pattern?”
“Classy. All alone, are you, and learning to be the handy man?”
“Come and look at the house,” said Tod, getting up with all the
enthusiasm of a house-proud husband; “I’ve got the carpets down and most
of the furniture in.”
“Hire purchase, system, old chap?”
“Well, it’s easier to begin with. I hope to wipe off the lot by next
Christmas. Now look at this dining room suite. Millie chose it.”
“She did, did she? Mind if I light a cigarette?”
“Have one of mine. Aren’t those chairs jolly? And I think the carpet’s
just splendid.”
They strolled over the house, and even the obtusely happy Tod could not
help noticing that Bob Twine seemed glum and uneasy. The generous and
innocent Tod explained his friend’s depression by wondering whether he
was rubbing his own happiness into the raw of some discontent, and
whether Bob Twine yearned greatly for a home of his own.
“Why don’t you get married and settle down?”
Twine stared, swallowed something, and laughed.
“I’m not made that way, old chap, and I haven’t the money.”
“But you’ll want to get married some day.”
“Talk about something else,” said Twine flippantly. “Wish I was in the
army, somewhere east of Suez. God, that chap Kipling knows a bit.”
He threw the fag end of his cigarette into an empty grate, and became
boisterously cheerful.
“Well, kid, you’ll be the solemn father of a family in ten years. Taking
’em down to paddle, and teaching ’em to swim. Queer, isn’t it, and
you’re only a kid yourself. But—damn it—I wish you the best of luck,
and I hope the girl knows you deserve it. Think I’ll be toddling. So
long.”
Tod, holding a hammer in one hand and a box of tin-tacks in the other,
watched the swarthy man slouch down the path.
“Poor old Bob,” he thought; “he wants a home and won’t say so.”
Twine was cursing women and himself.
“I ought to have told him, but, damn it—how could I? He’s like a
blessed cherub blowing about with a hammer and a box of nails. Happy? My
God! Oh, you little devil, I hope you’ll play game by him.”
A week later Tod was married. It was a quiet wedding, not nearly so
decorative as Millie Hornblower would have desired. Her mother was the
only relative who attended it, and Tod wondered why Mrs. Hornblower
smelt of drink. The two bridesmaids came from Horrox’s, and Mr. Mann of
the Furnishing Department gave Miss Hornblower away.
Old Tom Lavender served as Tod’s best man. Millie had said that he was
far too old for it, but Tod had proved obstinate, for Tom Lavender had a
younger heart than most young men. Uncle Remus was not there, and he
sent no present. And away in the north the great Mr. Burgetrode was as
silent as death.
The honeymoon lasted four days, Tod not caring to leave the business to
Mr. Love and the garage boy. They spent the days at Maidenhead, Millie
Hornblower’s choice, and they did much lolling in a punt on the river, a
punt that refused to humour Tod’s first activities with a punt pole. But
who cared about progress? There were over-hanging and shadowy trees,
cushions, and a girl, a girl like a soft, white, sensuous flower with
lips tinted red.
For the first six months of his marriage Tod was supremely happy. He had
married a highly sexed young woman, a young woman who woke the dormant
man in him and taught him to delight in new physical experiences. During
those months Tod was the most passionate and uxorious of young husbands,
and his wife’s sensual frankness rather pleased him. She wanted him and
she wanted him with passion. His habits changed. His early morning swim
became a thing of the past. He ceased to play games, for sex was the
game of the moment, and Millie played it in all its variations. But she
did not want children.
“Just you and me together—for a while—Toddy. Besides, we can’t afford
them.”
They couldn’t.
The fact became very obvious to Tod. “Carnarvon” was a thirsty little
house, and Tod had begun to glimpse his wife’s social ambitions. He was
astonished at the number of things that appeared to be required for the
efficient functioning of a genteel house. They had no piano, but a piano
seemed to be a sign and symbol of grace, even though Millie could not
play it. People were beginning to call, and Millie gave little afternoon
bridge parties, and the cakes these people ate, and the cost of them,
worried Tod. His wife’s clothes became a problem. Two good suits were
sufficient for Tod, but the hunger of a woman’s wardrobe appeared to be
insatiable. She wheedled Tod into sundry extravagances; but that was not
the end of the tale, for when the finery had been bought, it had to be
displayed. Tod found himself taking stalls at the local theatre and
going there in evening dress. He even discovered himself in church,
walking up the aisle with a young woman who rustled, a young woman who
would never have set foot in the place had she been dressed in
sackcloth.
That red mouth and those plump white arms dominated him during the first
months of his marriage. He was proud of his wife, and rather proud of
“Carnarvon,” and the calceolarias and the dog, and the maid in white cap
and apron.
At the end of six months Tod began “doing figures.” The business was
prospering, but Tod realised that its prosperity was not commensurate
with Millie’s ideas upon expenditure.
Tod saw that he would have to expand.
He travelled up to town and saw the Semite of Wardour Street, produced
figures, and stated his reasons for believing in a possible expansion of
his venture. The result was the addition of two more taxis to Tod’s
stud, supplied on a system of deferred payments; and the hiring of two
more drivers. Tod had a weekly advertisement in the _Shaston Gazette_.
The red-fronted garage in Duke Street had an air of industrious
prosperity, and the garage boy began to call him “sir.”
But the surest proof of Tod’s success was the coming of Mr. Pumpelly. He
was a succulent and cheerful old Christian with a facial resemblance to
Father Christmas, and a partiality for loud check suits. Mr. Pumpelly
had been the principal jobmaster in Shaston before the birth of the
autocar, and he looked more the man of the horse than of the machine.
Geniality was his great weapon. “Good old Josh—one of the best, do
anything for anybody.” That was how Mr. Pumpelly glimpsed himself, and
there was a bland and worldly cunning under his rosy good humour, a
shrewdness that stood broad-bellied in the sunlight, and smiled.
Pumpelly strolled into Tod’s garage, and looked round with an air of
obvious approval, and then discovered Tod, Tod who had just booked an
order that spelt fifty pounds.
“Morning, Mr. Western. Nice little place you’ve got here.”
“It’s not bad,” said Tod.
“I was passing, and I dropped in to see whether you happened to have a
couple of 700 by 85 Avons in stock. I’m out; they’re wanted urgently.”
“Afraid I haven’t. I could let you have a pair of Speedwells.”
“No thanks. Don’t touch ’em. This your office, is it? Mind me strolling
in?”
Mr. Pumpelly strolled in with the genial casualness of a friend. He
looked at everything with interest, even at Tod’s stool. Then he lit a
cigarette.
“I’ll wire my London agents. Yes, a snug little place, and quite handy.”
And suddenly Mr. Pumpelly’s face beamed with the light of inspiration.
“Look here, Western, here’s an idea. Why shouldn’t we two fix up Shaston
between us? We’d tap different ends, and we’d keep other people out.
It’s an idea, ain’t it?”
“You mean we should go into partnership?” said Tod.
“That’s it. Why not?”
There was something in Tod that did not like Mr. Pumpelly, and he made
one of those swift decisions that was to prove catastrophic so far as
his future was concerned.
“Thanks, I prefer being on my own, but I’m obliged for the suggestion.”
“Think it over,” said Mr. Pumpelly with fatherly impressiveness; “it
would be a good thing for you.”
Tod thought it over, and two days later he wrote a private letter to Mr.
Pumpelly, refusing the offer of partnership. Mr. Pumpelly showed the
letter to a nasty, dark, dapper little fellow who had become interested
in Mr. Pumpelly’s business and was acting as manager.
“He’s one of the independent sort, Britt.”
Mr. Charles Britt passed a dirty forefinger across his little black
moustache.
“If he wants competition he’ll get it. I didn’t work five years with the
Solomons for nothing.”