The Hireling (8 page)

‘They say,’ she ventured, ‘that it does one good to tell one’s troubles. It’s somehow strengthening. … I’ve … I’ve told you mine, and I’ve felt stronger for it, anyhow for a time,’

‘I don’t agree, my lady,’ Leadbitter said. ‘I think it’s weakening. And if other people know they take advantage, they don’t let you forget it - begging your pardon, my lady,’

The very ungraciousness of this speech piqued Lady Franklin. Supposing it was another kind of trouble, something he was ashamed to tell her, trouble with the police?

In that case she had been very tactless, probing him. She tried to revise her estimate of the whole situation, and said as lightly as she could:

‘Well, perhaps you’ll tell me the next time we go out,’

‘I’m afraid not, my lady,’ Leadbitter said promptly.

‘Why not?’

‘Because there won’t be a next time. I shan’t have the car,’

‘Won’t have the car? Why not?’

‘Because I only have it on the h.p. and now they want it back,’

‘The “h.p.”?’ asked Lady Franklin.

The glad and sorry system. Well, I’m the one that’s sorry,’

Still Lady Franklin did not understand, but she was on her mettle and did not mean to leave the tooth half-drawn. At length she got the story out of him. Leadbitter was paying for his car by monthly instalments. He had also paid a preliminary deposit on it. Now the firm which was supplying it had got into difficulties and had informed him that unless he paid the whole of his remaining debt, or a large proportion of it, in a lump sum there and then, he would have to forfeit the car, and not only the car, but all the money he had already paid.

‘But can they legally do that?’ asked Lady Franklin.

Leadbitter took a chance.

‘Unfortunately they can, my lady.’

Lady Franklin tried to see what this would mean to him.

‘And what will you do?’

Leadbitter shrugged his broad shoulders.

‘Try to get a job as driver with another car-hire firm. It won’t be very easy because they don’t like a man who’s been on his own. I’ve got my customers of course, and they’re an asset - some of them would go with me to the new firm. But I shouldn’t be able to serve them personally, same as I do now. For instance, I shouldn’t be able to serve you, my lady. You’d have to take whoever they sent, it might be me, but ten to one it wouldn’t be,’

‘I should be very disappointed,’ said Lady Franklin, rather grandly, ‘and so I’m sure would all your customers,’

‘Yes, I think they would be. They’ve got used to me, you see, and I’ve got used to them. Getting used to someone means a lot, and it takes time. I was working up a nice little business; in three years I should have had my own car, and in another couple of years I could have bought another car and hired a man to drive it. Seven years from now, if things had gone well, I might have had two men working for me. Now I’ve got to go back to being a hired man myself at four pound ten a week, and no prospect of starting again for years, if ever. The little bit of money I’d put by, my war gratuity it was, I’ve lost. Well, it’s just too bad. A man doesn’t like to think himself a failure but I’m not the only one. Several fellows I know have started on their own and had to go back to wage-earning, because they couldn’t stand the pace, but I thought I’d be lucky,’

The saga of the Leadbitter family life unrolled itself before Lady Franklin’s eyes, the touching scenes, the developing domestic happiness, suddenly ending - how?

‘Will this make a great difference to your life at home?’ she asked.

‘Indeed it will, my lady,’ Leadbitter said grimly. ‘We shall have to look for cheaper quarters right away. I haven’t told my wife yet, though she’s guessed something is wrong, because I couldn’t eat my breakfast,’

‘When will you tell her?’ Lady Franklin asked. She couldn’t help identifying herself with Mrs Leadbitter, and wondering how many hours of blessed ignorance the poor woman still had.

‘Tonight, I shouldn’t wonder, when the children are tucked up in bed,’

Lady Franklin had a vision of their rosy faces half hidden in the deep dents of the pillows, and thought of the imminent fall in their standard of comfort. They were too young to take it in, perhaps; but Mrs Leadbitter -

‘Will your wife mind very much?’ she asked.

Leadbitter’s chin dropped a little.

‘She will, my lady. It’ll half kill her. She never wanted me to take the plunge, of starting on my own, I mean. She thought it was too risky. She’s one of the cautious type. But when I’d taken it she was as pleased as Punch. She won’t say “I told you so”, she’ll stand by me, of course. But it’ll break her heart. For myself I don’t mind so much. I’m used to roughing it, and I don’t mind what the neighbours say, let them get on with it. But she will, she won’t like dropping in the social scale, no woman does. She’s rather house-proud, but I told you that,’

Tears came into Lady Franklin’s eyes, and for the first time for many months they were not tears for herself. Through the thick defences of her own sadness she was pierced by the sadness of the outside world, a sadness unrelated to and greater than her own. It was for Mrs Leadbitter that she felt the most; men were still shadows to her. But she felt for Leadbitter too, wounded in his masculine pride, but taking it all so stoically.

He saw her distress.

‘I oughtn’t to have told you, my lady,’ he said. ‘I didn’t really mean to. But when you get used to somebody, things - well they just slip out. You’d have had to know sooner or later, though, when I didn’t turn up with the car,’

This was Leadbitter’s boldest throw. How he was going to account for the fact that he would turn up with the car the next time Lady Franklin ordered it, if she did order it, he himself didn’t know. It was also, for its effect on Lady Franklin, a master-stroke. Suddenly she felt deprived, deprived of something whose importance she hadn’t realized, her expeditions with Leadbitter, a streak of vivid life within the greyness. She had begun to look forward to these outings and to the vicarious form of living which consisted in listening to the annals of the Leadbitters. Now she had nothing to look forward to - nor had they. Am I a porte-malheur, she wondered, do I bring bad luck? The horrible thought began to slide into her being; she felt it dropping, like a wicked seed, into that steaming hot-bed which nourished such monstrous growths. The fear was physical; she moved, she clutched her bag, she opened it - anything to distract herself - and her eyes lit on her cheque-book, that long, thin, pale-green talisman.

‘May I give you something?’ she said to Leadbitter. ‘Would you accept a present from me?’ He thought a moment.

‘I should be a fool, madam,’ he said, forgetting the ‘my lady’ though his voice was steady, ‘if I didn’t. I hope I’m not such a fool as that,’

‘I’ve no idea how much would be any use,’ said Lady Franklin. ‘Ten pounds, fifty pounds, a hundred?’ Leadbitter didn’t lose his head. ‘A hundred pounds would be a help,’ he said. Lady Franklin heard the reservation in his voice. Of course a hundred pounds wouldn’t be enough. What was a hundred pounds? It wouldn’t keep her two houses going for a week. What a paltry sum to offer a man whose livelihood was at stake! Whose wife and children, whom she knew as well as if she had seen and talked to them, were threatened with privation? What could have possessed her to be so mean? Her heart swelled with the joy of giving, swelled almost to bursting, like a fruit when ripeness overtakes it. She seemed to feel vents and fissures opening through which her spirit breathed. The relief of action became imperative: she couldn’t even if she had wanted to, have delayed it. They must be running into London, for houses lined the road: otherwise she had no idea where they were.

‘May we stop?’ she asked. Despite her regal moments she had never learned the habit of command: her habit was to ask permission.

Leadbitter didn’t answer, but the next thing she knew the car was at a standstill.

What am I going to do? she thought. She was paralysed, she could not move, and why? Because she had the Franklins up against her, her solicitors and her trustees against her, her own youth with its straitened means, against her. She had signed large cheques many times, of course, but only when she had been told to. Wealth had not exorcised her fear of money; she thought in terms of petty cash, not large lump sums. She had sometimes given such sums to charity, but charity was a collective object with a headquarters somewhere, not one man sitting beside her in a car. What would they say, this cloud of hostile witnesses, to her mad act of extravagance?

The conflict deepened in her, seemed to split her in two. She felt as if her childhood was being torn out of her. She lost sight of the issue; she only knew that she was fighting for her right to be herself. She triumphed, she looked out through other eyes, the eyes of a freed slave. They lighted on the cheque-book and the pen. But all else fled from her mind, even the driver’s name.

‘Whom shall I make it out to?’ she said, flushing at the absurd contretemps.

His eyes released from the tyranny of the road, he turned and looked at her. How pretty she was, with this new warmth in her voice and the softness in her face.

‘Were you going to write a cheque, my lady?’ he asked, in a neutral voice and as if he was not concerned in it.

‘Well yes, to you,’

‘The name is Leadbitter,’ he said.

‘Oh yes, of course,’ How could she have forgotten? ‘I meant your initials,’

‘S,’

‘What does “S” stand for?’ she asked him, her pen poised.

He hesitated.

‘Stephen. You asked me once before, my lady, and I told you,’ He sounded hurt.

Lady Franklin was horrified at herself. To have asked his name, to have been told his name, and to have forgotten it! Contrition pricked her; the sum she had in mind now didn’t seem enough; she added to it. Released by the act of giving, a sudden rush of love for the whole world possessed her. Her heart melted. She felt as if she had found a treasure, not bestowed one. Signing the cheque with the initial E before her name, as was her habit, she folded it across the middle and put it into Leadbitter’s hand. ‘With my best wishes,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much, my lady,’

To her surprise and rather to her disappointment he did not unfold the cheque to see how much it was for, he slipped it into the slot behind the driving-wheel, as unconcernedly as if it had been the confirmatory copy of a telegram. But when they had gone a little way he slowed down and drew Lady Franklin’s attention to a vast, grey, many-balconied building that was rising on their left. ‘Those are some new flats the Council is putting up,’ he said. ‘They’ve got all the latest gadgets. When my wife saw them she went hopping mad with envy.’ And while Lady Franklin was straining her eyes and trying to imagine what it would be like to live there, he deftly unfolded the cheque and saw the figures in the lower right-hand corner, and turned pale.

Having satisfied her scrutiny Lady Franklin turned her head, meaning to make a comment; her great blue eyes, surprised at last into seeing, rested on Leadbitter’s gun-metal ones.

‘Why, you look as if you had seen a ghost!’ she said, with the new intimacy she was beginning to feel with every living thing.

‘Perhaps I did, my lady,’ Leadbitter said.

‘I hope it was a nice one?’

‘I wouldn’t mind seeing another like it,’ said Leadbitter, with more than his usual gruffiness. Lady Franklin sighed, happy in her happiness and his.

For the rest of the journey their conversation flagged. Leadbitter said nothing about the cheque and therefore could not allude to the change it was going to make in his domestic situation. Inwardly he was much too excited to have invented a new instalment to the family saga, and in any case Lady Franklin wouldn’t expect one until he had had time to break the news.

The same evening Leadbitter rang up the agency to which he was paying the instalments for his car and announced that he was now in a position to buy it outright. He was all impatience to have the deal concluded, but there were certain formalities to be gone through first, and it was not until three days later that he was able to call the car his own.

The telephone bell rang and a voice which Leadbitter recognized with the immediate certainty of dislike said:

‘This is Lady Franklin’s butler speaking. Her ladyship says would you be good enough to call for her with the car next Tuesday morning at ten o’clock,’

‘Ten o’clock I’ said Leadbitter. ‘That’s rather early for you to be about, isn’t it?’

‘Those were her ladyship’s wishes,’ said the butler, ignoring this. ‘Shall I tell her ladyship that you will be able to comply?’

Leadbitter consulted the engagement-sheet in the photograph frame. At half past nine on Tuesday morning he was to take a fare to the Airport. It was a new customer whom he didn’t want to disappoint. The claims of new customers were brighter than the claims of old ones, and he was always having to weigh the one against the other. But Lady Franklin had a special claim and he would give the Airport job to someone else.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there, if you are. How long does Lady Franklin want me for?’

‘Her ladyship didn’t say,’

‘That’s all right,’ grumbled Leadbitter, ‘but I have my living to earn. I don’t just stand and wait. Couldn’t you find out?’

After a pause the butler came back. ‘Her ladyship would like the car for the whole morning if (he added grudgingly) ‘you are free,’

‘Do you know where she’s going?’ Leadbitter asked.

‘Her ladyship has not informed me,’ said the butler, ‘but I think she intends to do some shopping,’

Shopping, thought Leadbitter, that’s a new one on me. In all his experience of Lady Franklin she had never taken him shopping. It was one of her merits as a customer, for he did not like to take women shopping. Shopping, they were at their worst, slow, undecided, changeable, exacting, and above all unpunctual. As a sightseer Lady Franklin was not too bad, but as a shopper! And she would expect him to tell her how his family had reacted to her gift, the threats of suicide it had removed, the blessings it had called down on her. And how was he to do this, dodging in and out of Bond Street? Why, it was murder, even without a customer. Yet she would certainly want her bedtime story, and in a way, he had to admit, she was entitled to it. Well, he would have to do his best, and keep a double guard on his irritable tongue.