Pook In Business

ONE

You dare not mention the last war nowadays without people thinking you are out for a stroll from the Old Folks’ Home and offering to help you across the road with a kindly shilling for a bit o’ baccy. Anyway, you will remember some of my war adventures when I was knocking about all over the world like a do-it-yourself Harry Lime type—and believe me, there were plenty of us trying to extend the old war life as long as possible.

We had never had it so good. What a glorious life, we used to exclaim delightedly, the ideal existence if it weren’t for all that blood and noise between parties. But even I could see the thing just couldn’t last. Not that I was dismissed the Service or anything vulgar like that, but when they train you for years to destroy everything in sight which hasn’t got a Union Jack flapping over it they shouldn’t moan overmuch if the odd brass-hat gets poked in the eye once in a while in the officers’ mess. Merely a hazard of war.

Anyway, I returned home to England with my war novel in manuscript—nearly half a million words of combat, travel, espionage, sex—the lot. So had everybody else. It was difficult to meet anybody who had abstained from putting his bared soul down on paper, and one wondered how all these exciting events had happened when obviously the battlefronts had been dominated by the rattle of countless typewriters.

The authors ranged from one’s cowardly childhood friends who had obtained victory single-handed in the face of Nazis now conveniently dead, to the more subtle lads who served up the death-grapple of the Great Powers as a six-year sex orgy.

In our local pub we would point derisively to fellows who had not even a war-diary to their credit. Even the landlord himself had done one, wittily entitled I Also Served—and he hadn’t so much as been called up. Three things struck me about my author friends. The first was that mighty few of them ever got into print, and secondly they must have been the youngest men to hold such high ranks in the fighting forces, although they never appeared in uniform publicly. Thirdly their casualty-rate in Operation Matrimony threatened to eliminate them almost overnight from the mad gaiety of the post-war carnival.

Sadly I did my duty as best man every Saturday at noon with the feelings of a State witness at some Communist purge, until our gallant band had dwindled to a membership of two—Michael O’Brien and myself. Mick swore that having come out alive from a prison camp he had no intention of undoing the good work by voluntarily entering another one.

How we jeered at the weaklings we lost for ever; how we bravely painted the town red—albeit a very small town by now and showing definite signs of resistance to being painted any colour at all. How Mick prophesied, in his cups, that soon I would be taken, leaving him to hold the fort alone, happy in his virgin state, as he brazenly put it.

But one night Mick failed to appear at our rallying point the Taj Mahal bar of the Bold Forester—just like that. Next day he phoned to say, or rather to hiss, that he had a sore throat. Later in the week he seemed to have lost the use of his vocal cords completely by not phoning at all. Don’t worry yourself overmuch about Mick because he’s on his way out of this story anyway— about another twenty lines if I can manage it.

My inquiries at home elicited the information that he was down at the surgery. He reckons he’s got laryngitis, Peter, explained his father knowingly, and I don’t wonder at it by the way he keeps yapping on the blower to that receptionist at Doctor Thrumps. Can’t understand him, though he is my own son—he never opens his mouth at home except to shovel food into it.

It was a painful wedding in more ways than one as Mick stood swaying beside his bride, sodden with liquor derived from a stag-party which had extended itself from the previous evening into this very morning. Steady the Buffs, he kept repeating to me with an inane giggle as I dropped the ring into his cupped hands —which was an odd thing to say considering he’d been in the Marines with me.

After the reception a few faithful followers carried him on board the honeymoon ship which was to carry the couple across the Solent to Ryde, owing to Mick having spent all available funds on the aforesaid stag-party. We laid his unconscious bulk the length of the seat up on the boat-deck, where I raised his ruddy face to the light and deposited it on the lap of his medical bride from the surgery. She quietly brushed a piece of confetti from his moustache and kissed his closed eyelids. At least she seemed glad to have him—dead or alive.

I returned alone to our silent local, the Bold Forester, to the heavy atmosphere of opening-time. The landlord gazed steadfastly into space, as though he were reading I Also Served at a great distance.

He’s gone then? he asked eventually in a funereal voice. Oh, we shall miss him all right, mark my words, he added, automatically turning his eyes towards the cash-register. I stared hard into the froth of my Guinness to fight back what every Englishman dreads—any display of emotion, but the little face in the froth seemed to sneer back at me.

Hey, Charlie, what’s up with this Guinness then? . . . I demanded. The froth is sneering at me instead of smiling like it does in the adverts. You’d better change it, mate."

Charlie gave me a strange look as he examined the froth. Listen, Peter, you know as well as I do there’s no question of the froth smiling at you or anything else—it’s just a gimmick. You’ve had a hard day, that’s the trouble, and you’re missing poor old Mick already. Have a few jugs and a chat, then you’ll find the froth will be all chuckles and tellin’ you jokes an’ all.

Later that evening my brain became crystal clear and it began one of those urgent conversations with myself which tend to arise when you have handed the best part of a pound over the counter. Work—that is the answer. Sheer unremitting toil to exhaust both mind and body, suggested the nagging voice within. "A complete rehabilitation course and an interest in life at the same time. Work for yourself instead of making a fortune for somebody else. Business, that’s the answer. Buy and sell. Look at those clever people, so dear to the popular press, who throw up their jobs as research chemists to open dog-meat shops and suchlike.

Before you know it they own a chain of dog-meat emporiums throughout the land and you see the photographs in the papers leaving London Airport to inaugurate their first Commonwealth branch in Australia."

By closing-time I had decided that the application of that fighting spirit which had brought Bandsman Bangle to his knees in the third round at Chatham to the world of business would put me in a position successful enough to make Sir Thomas Lipton sound like a fumbling amateur. There was also the question of money. I cared little for money so long as I had plenty of it but when a grateful Government gave me my gratuity, a packet of assorted medals, and a don’t-come-Monday letter I could see it was the final hand-out from that source. The Horn of Plenty had dried up at last.

Hard experience had taught me that roaming the world is a shockingly expensive way of passing the time, only to be undertaken with a television contract in your pocket to film insect life in stagnant ponds of remote lands. Otherwise even the simplest luxuries of the unregimented life such as hitchhiking, sleeping under hedges, and feeding on root-crops do not prevent the rapid dispersal of all one’s spare cash. I had learned that foreign travel is the shortest path to a pauper’s grave with the possible exception of horse-racing.

It so happened that my old friend Eddie was making more than a reasonable living as an antique dealer down at Bournemouth —in fact, not since the blackmarket days in Calcutta had I seen so much money changing hands. One could not help noticing that for all this money which was changing hands a remarkably large proportion of it remained in Eddie’s.

Having occasion to borrow a fiver from him, I was deeply impressed by his casual way of tossing over a large roll of notes with the request that I should peel off as much as you want— it’s making my pocket baggy. Even stranger was the fact that he had recently been one Marine Flaxmon, impecunious batman to Lieutenant Tudor.

On Tuesday I got into my vintage Corba and went all the way from London to Bournemouth in a day. Inside Eddie’s shop was a card which said Please ring the bell, so I shook a little tea-bell which brought him down wearing his dollar-market face.

Oh, it’s you, he said, relaxing from the strain of being nice to the Americans. What do you want, apart from cash?

All right, Eddie, no need to be formal with me. Just tell me how a fellow gets started in your line of business.

My friend’s face de-misted. Listen, Peter, if you’ve got brains and personality there’s very little to it—but first of all you have to take an examination.

This was news to me. Like becoming a chartered accountant or a London cab-driver? I inquired.

Well, in a way, but the beauty of it is you can take the exam right here in Bournemouth.

When? I demanded, impatient to qualify as a chartered moneymaker.

Here and now. Listen, Peter, if you buy something for ten pounds and sell it for twenty, how much profit have you made?

A clear tenner, I answered after a pause.

Near enough, Peter. You’ve passed with honours. Actually it’s a bit more because you stick on the trimmings and delivery, but you should do well in the trade. Remember to be kind to the Yanks and give them the cousin chat—they like that. Oh, and never neglect the pedigree mock-up—they’ll even buy an old commode if they think Boswell sat on it.

You’re all right, Eddie, because you were practically born in a junk-shop but what about me? I hardly know the difference between wood and silver.

Which simply means you won’t enter the trade with any oldfashioned prejudices. Besides, there’s nothing you can’t learn in six months if you put your mind to it—especially you with your built-in cunning and thick hide. Anyway, all I ask is that you give me plenty of elbow-room so don’t open within ten miles of here. In any case Bournemouth is over-shopped. Why not get a place farther out—say Sydney or Toronto. Then we could be pen-pals. I left it at that.

The same week I met an elderly gentleman in a pub who, in consequence of a little financial embarrassment, wanted to sell a pair of duelling pistols. They reposed on green velvet inside an inlaid mahogany box, ready to redeem a man’s honour or blow his brains out as circumstances required. We both stared at the pistols in mutual ignorance until we admitted that neither of us knew their market value. Eventually we solved the deadlock this way. I told him all the money I had was a fiver and he declared that such a sum would satisfy the savage desires of his bookmaker, so we parted each happy in his own way. I had done my first deal and my first client.

Straightway I hurried to a large establishment which displayed a poster advising the public that the surest method of securing that long dreamed-of holiday was to sell them our dirty old gold and silver ornaments which we had been negligent enough to leave forgotten for years in our attics. I reflected that the contents of my own attic would not provide much of a holiday until there was an unexpected demand for boxes of coral and shells I had brought back from the Pacific for no explicable reason. Also in short supply were gold spectacle frames, sovereigns, and dentures.

The ancient seeker after precious metals who greeted me within, sole survivor of Snuff Bros., looked as though he had never experienced a vacation in his life.

What will you give me for these pistols then? I inquired in my new dealer’s voice. Mr. Snuff stared at me gloomily.

Young man, we do not give anybody nothing. This I could well believe. "We do not value goods. You state your price, then we sees if it suits us. If it don’t suit us we ain’t interested. You can’t go around asking what we will give you for things. If you comes in here to buy something—an unlikely event in your case, I should reckon—we don’t say to you ‘What will you give us for it?’ Ho, no, we states a definite price and if the price don’t suit you you goes off mumbling something about the mean old codger

can keep it. Likewise you must state the figure you hopes to get out of us. Ho, no, we don’t give no free valuations here."

You finished? I asked him hostilely. Mr. Snuff appeared to be a man who did not squeeze the acme of pleasure from life. Doing a quick sum in my head based on Eddie’s advice—twice a fiver is a tenner, plus trimmings and delivery is fifteen, I said, Seventeen pounds ten shillings to you, Moneybags.

Mr. Snuff’s face assumed the conventional expression of toothache. Where you got in mind for your holiday— Honolulu? he inquired, glancing over at the gold-and-silver poster. Someone’s told you to start high because you can always come down, whereas you can never go up, ain’t they? In your case you decided to go the whole ’og, didn’t you?

You reckon? Then don’t buy ’em, I told him sourly.

Nevertheless, Mr. Snuff began to examine the pistols with the end of his nose as if he had a weakness for the smell of steel.

Suddenly he put them on the counter and said, Twelve pounds is the best we can do, and that’s over the top. Take it or leave it. Then he got on with some overdue dusting. Having heard that old Snuff never altered his figure once he had named it I took the money and departed.

I had made a quick seven pounds profit, and I wondered if I should split it with the original owner. This twinge of conscience soon laid down and died because doubtless he would figure I had been the means of his losing quite a bit of cash. I don’t believe in making other people miserable.

This little incident settled my mind beyond all doubt as to my future vocation, so the next step was to find suitable premises in which to milk off some of the high wages everybody was earning except me. Moreover, I should have to start milking mighty soon because my bank manager had already hinted that I was rapidly becoming as destitute as an author. Anyhow, this was the easy part of the scheme—any fool can buy a shop.

TWO

After a month’s intensive search the chief result, as far as I was concerned, was an intimate insight into the day-to-day workings of estate-agents’ offices, where negotiators consult large books containing one property actually in the market and a hundred others long since out of it—and still make a living. It often occurred to me that if I possessed the money required to purchase some of these premises I should be more inclined to retire on it than enter the stormy world of commerce.

Shopkeepers everywhere were bemoaning the fact that trade was on the floor; things were worse than the slump of the thirties; the wolf was continually scratching at their glass-and-chromium doors; yet they had the odd habit of opening new branches to pull themselves out of penury. It seemed strange that they had workmen toiling like fiends all through the night to speed the opening of what could be only another mad folly.

When I broke the news of my new profession to Olga she winced as though I had kissed her. Coo, that’s a right turn-up for the book, she exclaimed in her sophisticated manner. Why don’t you get a proper job like the other layabouts. You know you can’t go on the dole if you’re self-employed.

Hearing the name Olga may project a picture in your mind of a doorknocker with spectacles but this girl was so beautiful that I found it advantageous to take her with me on my deals, rather like a surgeon takes his anaesthetist—and for much the same purpose. For example, when I bought the vintage Corba. The ad. had read: "Lovely job; new boots, recond. eng:, electric lights, immac. uphol., one owner since war; suit enthusiast or keen mechanic. Owner giving up.

Olga had gone to work on the one owner since war so effectively that the poor lad let us have the car for half the advertised price—would have given it to us if needs be, rather than appear mercenary in front of Olga. From now on, Olga spent her half-days and Sundays gingerly balanced on her stiletto-heels upon the bare boards of the prospective shops I lined up for her, sniffing the musty air with undisguised revulsion.

Another advantage about Olga was the fact that she had a steady job with the Gas Board which enabled her to afford the luxury of my company while I was temporarily out of funds. Way down in my price-bracket were two propositions strongly recommended by the estate-agent. The first was a lean-to shed at £2 a week, described in his pamphlet as a structure of character and unusual design. So unusual a design in fact that I was forced to lower Olga gently to the ground with mild concussion owing to her reading the sign Mind the step instead of the other one higher up which said Mind your head.

You better now, dear? I asked her anxiously as I brushed the mildew off her hair.

I think so, Peter. I couldn’t read that blessed warning in the dark. You’d never believe it’s day outside, would you? It’s uncanny quiet about here too.

Never ought to be, Olga. The brochure says the premises are situated in a rapidly growing area.

Well, Peter, I don’t want to discourage you, but that sounds a funny way to describe a dying slum.

So we drove off to the second place with the feeling that nothing could be worse than what we had just seen. This was listed as a desirable edifice standing in a busy thoroughfare. In need of repair. True enough, for the frank admission apropos of repairs referred to a huge baulk of timber which shored up the entire rear wall of the building like the buttress of a cathedral. Undoubtedly this support was needed owing to the fact that the premises did indeed stand in a busy thoroughfare—so busy that they vibrated in time with the traffic.

The main road to London had been widened at various intervals so that now only an eighteen-inch pavement had been left between the shop window and the multi-wheeled transporters which thundered by, apparently in convoy. The building was of brick and corrugated iron construction, and the whole pile rattled ominously.

"It’s like living on the roundabout