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Authors: Eric Newby
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she simply stood there without listening while the instrument emitted a series of squawking noises.
‘How much more material do you need for that special?’ she said finally when he had exhausted himself.
‘A yard and a quarter. That seems a hell of a lot. All right, send for it this afternoon.’
Miss Webb thumped down the receiver triumphantly. ‘He can do what he likes with the others but this is Lane and Newby.’
For me it was an exhausting day. Most of the rolls of cloth I needed were in the cellar together with the Morning Posts , the Observers and the last six dozen of my father’s port, wines with resounding names such as Fonseca and Tuke Holdsworth, prudently locked away behind an iron grille. I made many journeys up and down narrow staircases, like a sherpa on the North Col. By the time five-thirty came I had run my shears through many dozens of pieces. Except when writing I was still left-handed. The shears were right-handed. The results of trying to use them upside down were deplorable; the cut edges resembled the temperature chart of a sufferer from undulant fever.
‘I’m putting you on buttons tomorrow and you can do the carrying,’ said Miss Webb. ‘I don’t know what Mr Newby would say if he saw what you’ve done to all that stuff. He’d have a fit.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
All Bruised
There were three separate departments at Lane and Newby: The ‘Mantle’ Department, the ‘Gown’ Department and the ‘Costume’ Department. (The firm’s letter-heading still proclaimed to a slightly incredulous world that we were ‘Mantle Manufacturers and Wholesale Costumiers’.) More than anything else they resembled tribal areas in which the aboriginal inhabitants lived cheek by jowl but insulated one from the other by their own magic circles. They were also prevented from impinging on one another by a fierce independence and by a fourth circle of more powerful magicians of which my father and mother were the necromancers and Miss Gatling and her Counting House staff the active familiars. Of the three, the Mantle Department, which was responsible for more than half the entire turnover, was the most potent.
In a world in which every square foot of space was becoming yearly more expensive, to maintain these vast areas was the despair of our accountants. Any reasonable organisation would have used one showroom for the short periods in each year when the clothes had to be ‘shown’ and let off the others, but this was unthinkable in a firm such as ours.
These great rooms were surrounded by workrooms in which the original prototypes were constructed and by a labyrinth ofsmall cubicles, vest-pocket stockrooms containing buttons and trimmings, in which single-minded enthusiasts pursued undisturbed, except at times of stock-taking, the same way of life that they had always done since the coming of the internal combustion engine.
In my travels about the building in those early days I used to come upon them by chance. Occasionally a door would open for a moment, disclosing a grey-haired occupant happily engaged in counting sequins or hooks-and-eyes. Then the door would begin to close as an arrangement of pulleys and counter-balance weights filled with lead shot started to operate and all would be quiet as the grave except perhaps for a single, discreet cough. At such moments it seemed to me that I would never get to know all the secret places of this extraordinary establishment, let alone their inhabitants. I felt like an heir to the Castle of Glamis who had not been told the secret of the Beast which dwells somewhere within its walls.
But for the moment it was enough that I was the most junior member of the Mantle Department.
This was the home of Mr Wilkins.
Mr Wilkins was elderly, as impassive as a mandarin, almost bald and a complete mystery. In 1914 he had gone to the Kaiser’s war as a member of a Territorial regiment; the following year he had been severely wounded in the leg by a sniper’s bullet.
‘How much more material do you need for that special?’ she said finally when he had exhausted himself.
‘A yard and a quarter. That seems a hell of a lot. All right, send for it this afternoon.’
Miss Webb thumped down the receiver triumphantly. ‘He can do what he likes with the others but this is Lane and Newby.’
For me it was an exhausting day. Most of the rolls of cloth I needed were in the cellar together with the Morning Posts , the Observers and the last six dozen of my father’s port, wines with resounding names such as Fonseca and Tuke Holdsworth, prudently locked away behind an iron grille. I made many journeys up and down narrow staircases, like a sherpa on the North Col. By the time five-thirty came I had run my shears through many dozens of pieces. Except when writing I was still left-handed. The shears were right-handed. The results of trying to use them upside down were deplorable; the cut edges resembled the temperature chart of a sufferer from undulant fever.
‘I’m putting you on buttons tomorrow and you can do the carrying,’ said Miss Webb. ‘I don’t know what Mr Newby would say if he saw what you’ve done to all that stuff. He’d have a fit.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
All Bruised
There were three separate departments at Lane and Newby: The ‘Mantle’ Department, the ‘Gown’ Department and the ‘Costume’ Department. (The firm’s letter-heading still proclaimed to a slightly incredulous world that we were ‘Mantle Manufacturers and Wholesale Costumiers’.) More than anything else they resembled tribal areas in which the aboriginal inhabitants lived cheek by jowl but insulated one from the other by their own magic circles. They were also prevented from impinging on one another by a fierce independence and by a fourth circle of more powerful magicians of which my father and mother were the necromancers and Miss Gatling and her Counting House staff the active familiars. Of the three, the Mantle Department, which was responsible for more than half the entire turnover, was the most potent.
In a world in which every square foot of space was becoming yearly more expensive, to maintain these vast areas was the despair of our accountants. Any reasonable organisation would have used one showroom for the short periods in each year when the clothes had to be ‘shown’ and let off the others, but this was unthinkable in a firm such as ours.
These great rooms were surrounded by workrooms in which the original prototypes were constructed and by a labyrinth ofsmall cubicles, vest-pocket stockrooms containing buttons and trimmings, in which single-minded enthusiasts pursued undisturbed, except at times of stock-taking, the same way of life that they had always done since the coming of the internal combustion engine.
In my travels about the building in those early days I used to come upon them by chance. Occasionally a door would open for a moment, disclosing a grey-haired occupant happily engaged in counting sequins or hooks-and-eyes. Then the door would begin to close as an arrangement of pulleys and counter-balance weights filled with lead shot started to operate and all would be quiet as the grave except perhaps for a single, discreet cough. At such moments it seemed to me that I would never get to know all the secret places of this extraordinary establishment, let alone their inhabitants. I felt like an heir to the Castle of Glamis who had not been told the secret of the Beast which dwells somewhere within its walls.
But for the moment it was enough that I was the most junior member of the Mantle Department.
This was the home of Mr Wilkins.
Mr Wilkins was elderly, as impassive as a mandarin, almost bald and a complete mystery. In 1914 he had gone to the Kaiser’s war as a member of a Territorial regiment; the following year he had been severely wounded in the leg by a sniper’s bullet.
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