Free Dark Places by Kate Grenville Page B

as myself had something to get his teeth into.
    For the sake of completeness, though, I strolled between the various counters, and allowed myself to come to rest, in the most natural way, at the counter of the prettiest girl in black. Father had shown good taste in choosing these shop-girls, and I made a mental note to insert a few wood-nymphs into the hunting portrait.
    I asked this girl a question or two about the sale of pens, and listened with a tremendous show of interest while she blushed becomingly, and gestured with her dainty hands, and tried to explain to Mr Singer just why a ten-guinea pen was a very much better buy than a one-guinea one. Her answer, in spite of her embarrassment at her public show, was quite satisfactory, at least to my ear, and on the strength of the girl’s persuasion I would have bought two of them. ‘Excellent, well done,’ I said. ‘And what is your name, dear?’ ‘Miss Gibbs, sir, Dora Gibbs,’ she said, a bobbed a curtsy behind her counter, and I repeated the name to myself so I would not forget it, and noticed the way she coloured up so charmingly.
    I threw myself with pleasure into the business that Father had allowed simply to run itself. There was dead wood, for a start, that had to be removed. I was generous enough to the dead wood, giving out appropriate sums as pensions, and the kinds of trinket people valued—a watch or a silver-plated tray, those kinds of items—but I had my first lesson in the ingratitude of employees when they protested at being let go, and in a few cases actually wheedled me to let them stay on: ‘For old times’ sake, sir, for your father’s sake, sir.’
    Truckling was too ingrained in Rundle for him to be blunt, but I saw all the folds of his face become more pendulous with each of my reforms. ‘I know he is a little slow, Mr Singer, but he has been with the business since he was just a nipper, sir,’ he might venture, or, ‘His wife is a sick woman, and there are a lot of kiddies, Mr Singer, it will go hard with him.’ I cried out at those lugubrious dewlaps of his, creasing around hard-luck stories, ‘Come along, Rundle, am I a charitable institution?’ and then, since Rundle was puckering and creasing all over again and obviously had never heard of the rhetorical question, I went on quickly, ‘You would not wish to see Singer’s submerge under such a weight of hangers-on, would you, Rundle?’
    Poor old Rundle: he was good at a hearty few words when one of the old chaps got his gold watch and his pension, he was supreme at just the right sort of laboured witticism when one of the girls got herself married; but he waded along through a miasma of woolly-hearted liberal impulses, and he had nothing to say now, only looked at me in an obstinate pleading way, like a faithful old fleabag being teased about a bone.
    Once the dead wood was gone I had the satisfaction of seeing the business look altogether sharper. It was astonishing to see the way men in overalls moved so much faster, and how women in black bustled along so much more industriously after a few watches and trays had been given out.
    As I set off each morning for business, I knew I was proving more than worthy of my inheritance. It was too late for Father to see, and to regret never having thought I would amount to anything. But I myself knew that I had, after my unpromising start, finally come into my own. Albion Gidley Singer walked tall now: I saw the light glancing off my boots, catching a button of my jacket as the breeze flapped it back, felt my soles ring on the flagstones. I was here, Albion Gidley Singer was fully present, a solid body at last. I stood waiting for the ferry, a man who had taken over the reins, and on fine mornings I felt like a newly hatched king. Water dimpled at my feet, green and so clear it was like something you could cut a slice out of; birds bobbed on the swell and eyed me, and I