Free Something Wholesale by Eric Newby

As a result he walked with a pronounced limp and most of the time suffered hell with great fortitude. He had the capacity of making anything that anyone said sound like a brilliant idea without believing it himself. He even managed to give the impression that he thought my arrival was an excellent thing for the business, whereas I knew that he couldn’t think anything of the sort.
    Mr Wilkins had two desks: one in the showroom at which he sat at the receipt of custom when the buyers were on the move;and another behind the scenes in the stockroom itself to which he retreated to do his paper work, brood over his expenses and think where he would go next.
    He was extremely methodical and it was at this stockroom desk which discreetly faced a blank wall that he sat, covering page after page in his neat, minute handwriting, warning the customers who had not yet paid us a visit that he was about to arrive on their doorsteps. The formula he employed was invariable.
    ‘… I shall be visiting Edinburgh on Monday, June 28th with the New Season’s Collection of Coats, Costumes, Two-Pieces and Gowns and hope to have the pleasure of welcoming your goodself at the North British Hotel at some convenient time …’
    He then went on to suggest a time that was more likely to be convenient to Mr Wilkins than to the Buyer.
    He had a surprisingly robust sense of humour. The wall above his desk was decorated with coloured postcards of a sort that borough councils in the more squeamish seaside resorts are trying to extirpate. One showed an enormously fat lady in the sea smacking the bald head of a gentleman that was just showing above water level with the caption, ‘Oh, Sir, I am sorry. I thought it was my husband’s behind.’
    It was always assumed that these postcards were Mr Wilkins’ property. He never referred to them, but sometimes he used to look up at the wall and utter a distant rumbling sound, ‘Huh, Huh, Huh,’ that might have been laughter.
    Most of the customers liked Mr Wilkins, but now that he is dead no one will ever know what Mr Wilkins thought of the customers or anyone else – or what he thought of the postcards. He possessed a degree of inscrutability that is rare in the West.
    The head of the Department was Miss Stallybrass. She had been with Lane and Newby since she had started there as a junior salesgirl and in the interval had acquired a considerable presence.She was still sufficiently youthful for the epithet ‘girl’ to be applied to her without seeming grotesque. She shared Mr Wilkins’ capacity for agreeing with any proposition. Unknown to anyone she used to put down large orders for cloth for delivery at some date far in the future, secrete them under her blotter and suddenly produce them to the consternation of Miss Gatling and my father whose budget had not taken such expenditure into account at all. She was jovial, florid, had a laugh that made the chandeliers tinkle, loved parties and was as sharp as anything. My father liked Miss Stallybrass personally but always referred to her as ‘a chancer’. He regarded Mr Wilkins as much more stolid. My mother loathed Mr Wilkins and regarded Miss Stallybrass as ‘full of go’. Providing that neither of the Directors was incapacitated and unable to attend to business this partisan attitude of my parents was the most effective way of dividing and ruling. Together Mr Wilkins and Miss Stallybrass would have been a formidable coalition; divided they were just manageable.
    But in these early days I was ignorant of such intricacies; sorting my buttons and matching my linings, well-hidden behind the scenes I soon found myself prey to more disturbing sensations.
    On my second morning, conscious of the disasters I had perpetrated, I was set to work on buttons and linings. Like a miser contemplating his hoard, I plunged my arms into large boxes full of buttons that were copies of ten-drachma coins from Fifth-Century Syracuse, all executed in black and gold glass and