The First of July(3)

“Tranquility. That’s what the name Somme means,” Vignon said. “In an ancient language.” He waved an arm in the direction of the past. “And here we are, tranquil in our boat. Or at least I’m tranquil and you are sweating like a bull—so we’d better tie her up for the evening or your mother will be around to deal with me, fierce as a tigress.”

Giving Jean-Baptiste another of his slow smiles, lines radiating outward from his black eyes, he pulled out a white handkerchief from his creased linen jacket, raised his hat, and mopped his brow.

“One must never be late for a lady.”





CHAPTER TWO


Frank Stanton, London,

July 1913


THERE ARE THREE RULES YOU can swear by:



Never be late.

There is a system for everything.

You can say what you like about bicycles, but for a young man they are the way ahead.



When I arrived in London in 1910, I was nearly nineteen years old and a carpenter of sorts. I had had a falling-out with my old man, and it was pride that made me spend the little money I’d inherited from my dead mother on a third-class ticket from Totnes to London. That, and an advertisement I had read in a newspaper wrapped around a delivery of brass fittings.

I applied for a manual position in a shop: “Shelves, counters, and general carpentry. Knowledge of fine woodwork an advantage,” although in truth all I had knowledge of was building coffins. But shelves and coffins have more in common than most people know or, strangely, wish to. Both can be a work of art or something flimsy that cannot take weight and is fit only for gimcrack. I have known disasters to befall—in other hands than mine—even in the best of stores. You no more want the deceased to reappear through the bottom of a coffin as the obsequies are being read, than you do some young lady, leaning on a counter, to plunge head-first into a display of Belgian lace.

But Dad had trained me in fine work, and the coffin trade is a punctual trade and one that must adapt to whatever life, or death, brings. In my years of beveling and filleting, chamfering and mitering, I was never late for a customer, and I took that habit to London with me. In stories, London is a place where a man’s fortunes can change in a twinkling of an eye. There are no such tales told of Devon.

It was at Debenham and Freebody that my chance came. The new director, Mr. Frederick Richmond, found me working at 8:17 P.M. I was recutting a piece of discarded timber that I could see need not be wasted. In coffins we had learned to improvise, refitting wood, and, although it was never pleasant, on some occasions also the deceased if they were of exceptional height. I told Mr. Richmond this (a need not to waste, not the other business) when he asked me a little about myself. I being honest and he being a board man, I told him about coffins.

Mr. Richmond said “No wonder you’ve got a feel for the work. We’ll move you on to counters.”

Great slabs of oak they were: wonderful grained wood from Kent.

“I expect you’ve handled plenty of oak in your sad business,” he said.

“Only for the likes of you, sir,” I said, and on seeing his face I added: “I mean gentry, sir.”

He looked pleased but puzzled, so I said “Oak, fine solid oak like your counters, is for the highest in the land.”

I didn’t say that mostly all the coffins I ever made was of elm or pine, and that my father had started me off on tiny little pieces for babies where weight counted for nothing and we used mostly offcuts.

So I worked on counters for a while, but that time flew by and the glaziers and gilders in the store were soon done; and just as I was thinking I’d have to find another job, Mr. Richmond returned. He says he’d be sorry to lose me and then, thinking, calls over this grave and sleek party: very upright, of middle age, everything black and white, even dark eyes behind wire-rimmed spectacles.

“Mr. Hardy,” Mr. Richmond says. “Here’s the man I was talking to you about. Very punctual and reliable. It is highly unorthodox, but perhaps we can find a place on the shop floor for young Mr. —?”

“Stanton, Frank, sir,” said I. Embarrassed, not wanting to catch the superior person’s eye.

Mr. Hardy seemed cautiously pleased to have me. “You have an opportunity to rise that is granted to few,” he said. “I am sure you will repay our trust.”

So that’s how I became, in time, senior assistant in ladies’ gloves, traveling cases, umbrellas, and parasols. Also gentlemen’s straw hats and riding crops, although our ladies mostly go elsewhere for these—usually to where they are fitted for hunting clothes—but there is, as Mr. Hardy tells us often, always the lady who buys on impulse and can be persuaded by a riding crop with an ivory fox head and a sparkling stone for an eye. Not a real lady, Mr. Hardy says. But those who are new to the business of being a lady and still attracted by little novelties.