Free Something Wholesale by Eric Newby Page A

most of them different. When not engaged in the soul-destroying work of matching sets of four I matched satin linings with materials, most of which seemed to be in a dreary shade of brown.
    ‘That’s Donkey,’ said Miss Webb, helpfully. After having shown what I was capable of when left to myself she was seldom far from my elbow. I was immeasurably cheered by her remark. To me allthe browns with which I was contending had the uniform tint of farmyard manure.
    At this moment Lola, the owner of the leg, flounced into the Stockroom fresh from yet another encounter with Miss Gatling. ‘Coo!’ she said, ‘I’m going to let my hair down.’ This she did quite literally by pulling out the pins which kept it up at the back in a style that was currently called Pompadour.
    ‘Glad that’s over!’ she went on, letting it fall over her face and shoulders in a black cascade. Then her mood changed.
    ‘Boo! You wicked old thing,’ she said peering through it at Mr Wilkins, like a hairy Ainu. ‘And they say they don’t know what happened to Jack the Ripper.’ As always, Mr Wilkins affected to take no notice.
    To me she was more genial. ‘Well you’ll be a nice change,’ she said, squeezing my hand encouragingly, disregarding Miss Webb’s monitory glare. She then spent a happy half-hour experimenting with her hair, twisting it into plaits and piling it on top of her head, all the time humming to herself in a mindless way.
    In her high-heeled shoes Lola was almost as tall as the guardsmen to whom Mr Lane had been so partial but there was certainly no other resemblance. She was one of those girls who was so remarkably silly that their silliness has a sexual quality that adds to their desirability. It was fascinating to watch Lola in repose as, completely absorbed in what she was doing, she wove her hair into ever more hideous forms. With her mouth half-open in what must have been an habitual expression, with slightly protruding teeth and moist lower lip, she had the almost half-witted look that some prostitutes cultivate in order to stimulate their clients. Across her face, as if the wind was ruffling a shallow pond, there passed expressions of impatience, sadness and a look that I was later to identify as hunger. She reminded me of a borzoi in whom Dr Pavlov had lost interest half-way through an experiment.
    At eleven o’clock there was a sound like a traction engine mounting a steep hill and Mrs Smithers, an enormous woman as short as Lola was long, with great brawny forearms, came grunting up the stairs from the cellar bearing a tray loaded with ‘elevenses’ – tea and whatever else she had been able to obtain on the special ration that was allowed to businesses such as ours. The traction engine simile was banished by her actual appearance. Mrs Smithers’ husband had gone down at the battle of Coronel and she herself retained an air that had something naval about it. With her bulges encased in a whalebone corset that was as solid as armour plate she resembled a great sea-going monitor.
    ‘Morning all,’ she said. ‘Let me have the tray back when you’ve finished, there’s a dear.’ This to Lola who had immediately ‘perked up’ (as Miss Webb said) at the sight of food, as though Pavlov himself had rung a bell in the laboratory for mittagessen.
    As Mrs Smithers and her ancient aides mounted the stairs with more and more trays of strong, brown tea and grisly pastries, the sounds of activity, the whirring noises from the workrooms on the upper floors and the sounds of typewriters beating out the monthly statements in the Counting House died away and Lane and Newby’s ground to a standstill.
    Although Lola’s real surname was Topper and she lived in Muswell Hill, Mr Wilkins always referred to her as Lola Pagola. Even to me it seemed far more suitable than Topper. In addition he had created an entirely imaginary world for her, as lush as a feather bed which he only allowed to spring to life when we were sitting