The Twinkling of an Eye. Brian Aldiss
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over the years have become a litany.
They work long hours and must be frequently bored; nothing is as tedious as being a shop assistant (but at least they are not part of the dole queue that forms regularly down Church Street). They all wear suits. To look extra alert, they sometimes stick pencils behind their ears, points forward, or a number of pins into their lapels, or else they drape a tape measure round their necks. Safe from the dole they may be, but time hangs heavy; so the intrusion of a small hurtling body, ideal target for a knotted duster, provides a welcome diversion. Oh, what glorious scraps and chases among the fixtures! What laughter!
There in his little empire, Bill is at his most content. He is on good terms with his staff. Although he runs an orderly business, he too seems to welcome me in the shop, allowing me to run about as I will, providing a little amusement for the chaps.
His office is tucked at the far end of the shop, next to two fitting rooms. Here he sometimes interviews commercial travellers. When I published an article on the shop in a newspaper during the eighties, one of those travellers, long retired, wrote bitterly to me, saying how little he earned, and how H. H. Aldiss always paid as stingily as possible for his suits. He slept in his car when on the road, to save money.
As the slow Dereham afternoons wear on, a tray of tea is delivered to Father’s office. It comes from Brunton the Baker, a few doors away. Brunton makes the most delectable pork pies; it also does teas for businesses. Father’s trays include a small selection of buns and tarts. Any young hopefuls hanging about just after four are sometimes permitted to snaffle a jam tart.
Every evening at closing time, the bare boards of the shop are watered from a watering can and then conscientiously swept. Dust covers are thrown over the stock. The staff, young and high-spirited, departs, whistling into the night. The whole place becomes gorgeously spooky, and would pass muster as an Egyptian tomb.
So let me continue the tour of this lost Arcadia, to the front of the shop, past the little window of the cash desk, where a pleasant cashier called Dorothy Royou sits, past my uncle Bert’s front entrance, down a slight slope, into the drapery. We will proceed round the property in a clockwise direction.
The drapery is the domain of H. H. himself. He rules over about fifteen women assistants, all dressed in black. I call him H. H., but everyone – including his sons and my mother – addresses him and refers to him as ‘The Guv’ner’. The Guv’ner he is, monarch of all he surveys.
I am not welcome in this department. One does not fool about here. The ladies are far more respectable, and less fun than the men.
At the front of the drapery is the door into the street. Ladies entering here have the door opened for them, and are ushered to a chair at the appropriate counter. With their minds grimly set on fabrics at four and three farthings a yard, they certainly don’t wish to see a small boy skipping about the place.
To the left of the front door as you enter are grand stairs which sweep up to the millinery, presided over by sombre ladies. To the right, is the very citadel of H. H.’s empire, the keep of the castle. This is where Miss Dorothy Royou sits secure, with her little windows looking out on both the men’s and the ladies’ departments, receiving payments, distributing change. And behind her cabin, on to which she has a larger window, is the Office. The Office is situated in the heart of the building. Miss Royou can communicate with anyone in the Office. The Office is dominated by a safe as large as – and slightly resembling – the front of a LNER locomotive of recent design. Near this safe sits H. H. himself, cordial in a gruff way, impeccably shaved.
Every morning, H. H. walks to his shop from his home, ‘Whitehall’, buys his morning newspaper from Webster’s in Dereham town square, and then enters the establishment next door, the shop of Mr Trout the Hairdresser. H. H. sits in one of Mr Trout’s chairs and is shaved with a cut-throat razor by Mr Trout himself. He hears the gossip of the town before leaving and walking at a leisurely strut to open up his premises for the day. Bill is already in his department.
Before leaving H. H.’s office, you must notice the door on its rear wall, seldom opened. The old premises are riddled with more secret passages than you ever heard of in Boys’ Stories. The passage behind this door is dark, and leads – miraculously, to a youthful mind – back into Bill’s part of the shop, where you can pop up unexpectedly behind a counter, to the feigned astonishment of Betts & Co., who stagger about as if they have seen a miniature ghost. It always takes them a minute or two to recover from their fright.
To add to the fascination of this passage, it contains a blocked-up window. It is clogged up to knee-height by old sales posters and cardboard effigies of men in striped suits looking sideways.
Leaving H. H.’s office in the regulation way, you are back in the drapery. At its far end are two doors, one a sinister, battered, mean affair, probably stolen from Norwich prison. The other is more of a doorway: its double doors, painted dove-grey, have inset windows of frosted glass, adorned with traceries of flowers and ferns, and birds having a good time.
The criminal door slams closed when you struggle through it, while the ladylike doors remain always open, welcoming customers into an elegant showroom, where there are grey Lloyd Loom chairs in which ladies sit while sucking cachous and trying on gloves or whatever it is ladies try on.
You fight your way through the criminal door. SLAM! it goes as you pass into night.
Another secret passage! This one enormously long, so dark that it could be in the bowels of the Earth. Lit only by one light, halfway along.
The far end of the drapery tunnel is not the end of all things. A bizarre room without windows is situated there, all wood, all drawers, with things hanging. Too scary by half to enter. Take a right turn at a run and daylight gleams ahead. You can escape into the yard, and freedom.
Or you can climb a mean flight of stone stairs, which rises just before you reach the yard door. At the top of these stairs, you come (but not very often) into a huge echoing room under a high pitched roof, its stresses held at bay by transverse metal bars. It is a vast room, like a hangar for light aircraft. Several people work here, on either side of a long battle-scarred table. Sewing machines whirr. They are presided over by a huge woman dressed for all eternity in red flannel, matching the flames in her face.
‘What do you want, boy?’
‘I came to see how you were getting on.’
‘Well, keep quiet, then.’ The kid’s the boss’s son, ain’t he?
The red flannel terror has a gas ring burning by her side, guillotines being hard to come by in East Dereham. Things steam, pudding-like, but do not smell like puddings. Flat irons of antique brand and purpose heat over radiators. The denizens of this department are making felt and other hats and goodness’ knows what else. The red-faced Queen of the Inquisition has wooden heads which split in twain at the turn of a wooden screw. Pieces of material are strewn everywhere on the huge central table, as if laid for a banquet of cloth-eaters. The gas hisses. The pale-faced people stare, saying nothing. They have lived here for ever, their existence controlled by the huge terror in red. I turn to leave.
‘And shut the door behind you,’ yells the terror. She roars with laughter at what she mistakes for a joke.
There is someone else in the aircraft hangar, a man, the only man. Father calls him ‘Perpsky’. Perpsky dresses in a pin-stripe suit snappier, darker than anyone else’s, and manages to wear the tape measure rather flashily round his neck. He is bald and cheerful. He likes to sit me on his knee and tickle me. Although I do not care for this, I am too polite to say so. Father tells me to stay away from Perpsky. Later, Perpsky leaves H. H. and sets up on his own as tailor and outfitter.
So now you are in the yard, in the middle of the topographical tangle, with buildings all around, each devoted to different aspects of the retail trade. Removal vans come and go, the name ‘H. H. Aldiss’, complete with a curly underlining, large in mock-handwriting upon their sides.
Here is a giant Scots pine, which you can see from the sitting-room windows. It grows outside Bill’s garage. The Rover is kept here, square and black, inside