An Unlikely Agent Page 3

  As I stepped onto the pavement I bumped into someone coming from the opposite direction with a jarring shock that sent me stumbling onto my knees.

  “Miss Trant! Are you hurt?”

  I looked up in bewilderment to see the massive form of Mr Smith towering over me. He extended his immense hand and I took it and allowed him to pull me to my feet.

  “Thank you! I’m quite all right. I’m terribly sorry – I wasn’t looking where I was going.” I dusted down my skirts and glanced about, but there was no sign of the man I had thought was pursuing me. To my dismay, I realised that Mr Smith was regarding me with curious intentness.

  “You ought to be careful, Miss Trant. I should say it wasn’t safe for a lady to go out walking on her own so late at night.” He made a courteous inclination of his head. “I’d be glad to accompany you the rest of the way home.”

  “That’s very kind of you, but I shouldn’t like to put you to any trouble.”

  “Not at all – it’s not very far in any case.”

  I should have liked to turn him down, for there was something about the way he was looking at me that made me feel decidedly uncomfortable, but I felt that to do so would be rude, so I nodded without meeting his gaze and murmured once again, “You’re very kind.”

  I could think of nothing else to say to him and we walked back in silence. At the garden gate he lifted his hat and his lips curved in a smile that did not reach his eyes. “Good evening, Miss Trant.”

  “Good evening, Mr Smith – and thank you.”

  He turned abruptly and strode off in the direction from which we had come. With the toe of my boot, I pushed aside a newspaper that someone had dropped in front of the gate and walked despondently towards the house.

  Three

  The following day, as I alighted from the tram, I noticed a man in a checked jacket gazing up at the windows of Plimpson and Co. To my surprise, the blinds were all open, but the morning sun shone in at such an angle that it was impossible to see inside. I hurried across the street, glancing over my shoulder at the stranger, whose eyes remained fixed on the upper storeys of the building. Filled with anxiety, I ran up the three flights of stairs and turned the handle of the plate-glass door, which was unlocked.

  I removed my hat and coat, then approached the door to Mr Plimpson’s office, clutching my letter of resignation.

  “Come in!” My employer was writing at his desk and scarcely looked up to acknowledge my entrance. To my great relief, he was clean-shaven and dressed in a freshly laundered shirt and a neatly knotted tie, and looked in every respect utterly transformed from the unhappy wretch I had seen leaving the office on the previous day.

  “Good morning, Mr Plimpson. There is something I should like . . .”

  “Wait a few moments, would you, Miss Trant? I don’t want to lose my flow.”

  He continued to write with painstaking concentration for several minutes, mouthing the words to himself as he formed them with his pen. I watched impatiently as he signed his name with a flourish, folded the paper in half and inserted it into an envelope. At last he looked up, and his eyes fell on the letter that I held clasped against my chest. “Is that for me?” he asked. “I’m glad to see the postman’s decided to come at a decent hour for once. Or was it delivered by hand?”

  “Mr Plimpson, before I give you this I think I ought to mention that on my way in I saw a man on the other side of the street staring up at the windows of this office.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me, looking smug. “Oh, I shouldn’t concern yourself about that, Miss Trant. Just nerves on your part, I expect – quite understandable after what passed between us yesterday. However, I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble from the parties I alluded to – I have resolved the situation most satisfactorily. I imagine he was just some innocent fellow looking up at the advertisements on the building while he was waiting for his tram. The girl with the soap bubbles is remarkably pretty, you know – why, sometimes I even stop to glance at her myself.” He flashed me a smile and gestured towards the window. “Go on – I’ll wager you a day’s pay that he’ll be gone already.” He held out his hand to seal the bet, but I pretended not to see and went across to look outside.

  Mr Plimpson was quite right; though the opposite pavement was thronged with passers-by, there was no sign of the man in the checked jacket. Feeling rather foolish, I turned back into the room and laid the envelope on his desk. As I did so tears sprang unexpectedly into my eyes and I hurried out, determined that my employer would not see me crying. However, I scarcely had time to blow my nose before he bellowed out my name. With a palpitating heart, I stood up and scurried back into his office.

  He brandished the letter at me and demanded, “And what, Miss Trant, is the meaning of this?”

  “With the greatest respect sir, I explained . . .”

  “I suppose you’ve found another job and are too frightened to tell me. Well, whatever it is they’re paying you, I can match it . . . within reason, of course.”

  “Mr Plimpson, as I explained in my letter, I am obliged to hand in my notice due to personal circumstances. I am unable to move house and Deptford is simply . . .”

  “Not getting married, are you?” He eyed me in disbelief.

  “No, Mr Plimpson.”

  His face went ashen and he hesitated for a moment before saying with a quiver in his voice, “I say, that fellow Peters hasn’t been writing to you has he?”

  “No sir, of course not,” I said stiffly. “I haven’t seen Mr Peters since . . . I haven’t seen or heard from him for many years, as you know.”

  Mr Plimpson blew out his cheeks and expelled a breath of relief. His bright little eyes scrutinised my face and, although I had done nothing wrong, I felt myself blush. “I should warn you, Miss Trant, there are some unpleasant people in the world – people who would besmirch the good name of Plimpson and Co. for the sake of a personal grudge. I do hope you haven’t been listening to any rumours.”

  “I really have no idea what you mean.”

  My employer turned puce and thumped his desk. “Well, what is it then? Have you no sense of loyalty to the company? Don’t you realise that you will struggle to find another position even half as good as this?”

  “I am only too aware of that, sir. I am more sorry than I can say to be obliged to leave and I regret very much any inconvenience that my departure will cause you. I will, however, work as hard as I can to ensure that your affairs are left in the best possible order before I go.”

  “I see. Like that, is it, eh?” He stood for a moment as if deep in thought, his paunch resting on the edge of the desk, his forefingers pressed together to form a triangle across the bridge of his nose. But then, all at once, he appeared to make a resolution: his face brightened and he took up his pen with such vigour that it sent a spasm of plum-coloured ink flying across the surface of his blotter.

  “Very well, you may go,” he said, as if suddenly in a great hurry to get rid of me.

  “Mr Plimpson,” I protested, finding myself once again on the verge of tears, “my mother is ill . . .”

  He took out another sheet of writing paper from a drawer in his desk. “Miss Trant, I have no more time for your excuses,” he snapped, wiping his pen on the blotter. “Go now and get on with your work.”

  For the rest of that day, a Friday, Mr Plimpson treated me with cold politeness, but by the following Monday he seemed to have forgotten about my leaving altogether. Nor did I see any evidence that he was looking for a new secretary. He made no further reference to the business troubles that had driven him to near despair only the week before. However, during the days that followed I regularly observed the man in the checked coat or, at other times, a tall fellow with a black beard looking up at the windows of Plimpson and Co. When I mentioned the matter to Mr Plimpson, he chuckled and told me not to “begrudge them their one bit of pleasure” and to “let the poor chaps alone” and so I did not bring up the subject again, though I saw them loitering outside on numerous occasions and sometimes passed one or other of them on my way to or from the office.

  There followed an unhappy month, during which I scanned the newspapers daily in pursuit of the fading hope that I might find a situation before my notice had been worked out. But, though I posted several letters of application, I was not called for a single interview, and the prospect of imminent penury began to keep me awake at night.

  It was with a heavy heart that I walked through the door of Plimpson and Co. for the last time. The rooms by now were cluttered with half-filled packing cases and a sack containing old correspondence had been hooked onto the peg where I usually hung my coat, obliging me to lay it instead on top of some cardboard boxes. I went in to say good morning to Mr Plimpson, who was writing at his desk. Without looking up, he told me to continue packing and to come back at eleven o’clock. I returned to the outer office and began to remove bundles of papers from the cupboard.

  Since the day of my resignation I had lost heart with my projects for categorisation and so I piled the documents straight into boxes without troubling to sort them out. The painful task of preparing for the firm’s removal had done much to contribute to my misery during the past few weeks, for I was continually wrenched by the thought that I was helping to undo almost ten years of hard work and that soon all evidence of my labours during that period would disappear without trace.

  Just as the clock on the mantelpiece was striking eleven, I knocked on Mr Plimpson’s door and entered his office. Immediately, he got to his feet and without looking at me began to speak in an oratorical tone as if addressing himself to an imaginary audience in the far corner of the room.

  “Miss Trant, you have been with the company now for almost ten years. During that time your services have been inva
luable, and they will be sorely missed. We should like to commemorate the sad occasion of your departure by presenting you with this small token of our esteem, engraved in recognition of your dedicated service.”

  He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and handed me an open jeweller’s box containing a silver pocket watch. He gestured impatiently and I turned it over to look at the inscription on the back, which read To Miss M. Trant, devoted servant of Plimpson and Co. 1896–1905, then he sat down and gave a blustery sigh through his moustache.

  “I believe your father would have wanted you to have this too.” He opened his desk drawer and took out a flat parcel wrapped in brown paper tied with a grubby piece of string, and watched with a faraway expression as I picked at the knot.

  “It marks an occasion when Fortune was smiling upon me more fondly than she appears to be at present. Your father had a marvellous head for figures, Miss Trant – better than any man I’ve ever known. It could have been the making of us, if things had turned out differently.”

  I continued to work away at the knot, reflecting how strange it was to hear him refer to my father in such a matter-of-fact tone, after the passage of so many years during which he had made no mention of him at all. At last I succeeded in untying the string, and unfolded the paper to reveal the framed photograph of the two of them in evening dress which had hung in the room next door.

  “Thank you, sir – it’s very generous of you to give me such thoughtful presents. Do you know, I have only recently noticed the lilies . . .”

  Immediately, he glanced at his watch as if the time for reminiscences had run its course and declared, “Take a half holiday, Miss Trant, as a reward for your hard work.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he anticipated my objections. “No, I have an extremely pressing appointment this afternoon and I intend to close the office early.” He ducked his head below the level of the desktop and began rifling through the drawers.

  This was by no means the first of Mr Plimpson’s “pressing appointments”, and I gathered at once that the “holiday” was merely a convenient excuse to get rid of me. Therefore I did not pursue the subject, but muttered, “Thank you, sir,” and left the room.

  Ever since I had started working for him, Mr Plimpson had been in the habit, once a month, of closing the office at midday, giving me a paid half holiday. For nearly nine years I had unquestioningly accepted his explanation that he was meeting a client who “liked to keep things private”, and it was only by chance that I had ever discovered the truth. On one such afternoon, having waited for some time at the tram stop, I recalled that I had left my purse on my desk. I hurried back to the office, where I discovered my employer locked in a feverish embrace with a brassy-looking woman in a bright blue dress. Mortified, I stammered an apology, snatched up my purse and ran out. The incident was never mentioned by either of us, but after that he sometimes sent me out to buy flowers, scent or cheap trinkets shortly before one of these assignations was to occur.

  I began to empty my desk drawer, but was interrupted by the sound of the outer door closing. I looked up in surprise, for we rarely had visitors at Plimpson and Co. Standing before me was the very woman with whom my thoughts had been occupied a few moments before. Today she wore a low-cut dress of a viridian hue, and a little feathered hat was perched jauntily on top of her red curls. It was difficult to make a judgement as to her age, for her face was heavily rouged and powdered, but I should have said that she was nearing forty.

  “May I help you?” I enquired, endeavouring to conceal my surprise.

  The woman scrutinised me closely, gave a grim little nod as if she found me to be no better than she had expected, and said in a tone of shrill and unconvincing gentility, “Indeed you can, Miss Trant. I should like to see Horace at once, if you please.”

  “I’m sorry, but Mr Plimpson is busy this morning. If you like I could give him a message.”

  She gave a toss of her curls. “Oh, Horace will certainly see me. I’m Miss Hagger.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t recall his mentioning that name.”

  “So he hasn’t told you?”

  I shook my head. “I’m afraid not. Would you care to make an appointment for later in the week?”

  She broke into a peal of artificial laughter. “Appointment, indeed! That’s a good one! We’re to be married this afternoon.”

  “Married?” I repeated weakly.

  At that moment the door to Mr Plimpson’s office opened and we both looked round.

  “Aggie, my dearest! I didn’t expect to see you so early.”

  “That’s clear,” she said, directing a smile of triumphant self-satisfaction towards me. “Your secretary has been very short with me – looking down her nose as if I wasn’t fit to set foot in the office, when it was only yesterday you said to me, ‘what’s mine is yours’.”

  “Indeed I did, my dove, indeed I did.”

  Miss Hagger glared at me, then turned away with a great swishing of skirts and minced across the room, leaving behind a lingering aroma of cheap violet scent. She took her fiancé’s arm and propelled him back into his office, slamming the door behind them. There was a murmur of voices and then the door opened again to emit Mr Plimpson. He cleared his throat several times and ran his hand nervously across the top of his head.

  “So, Miss Trant, it’s goodbye at last,” he said, without meeting my eye. “I expect you’ll want to be off. Plenty to do now you’re a free agent, what?” He gave a nervous laugh, rocking back and forth on his tiny feet, oblivious of the fact that one of his trouser legs had rolled itself up to reveal his garter.

  “Horace!” Miss Hagger called piercingly from the other side of the door. “Horace – have you remembered to write down her address?”

  “Would you mind, Miss Trant?” he said, looking more ill at ease than ever. “I might have questions to ask you about the filing and so forth.” I wrote down the address and gave it to him, then held out my hand. “Goodbye, Mr Plimpson – and might I offer my best wishes to you and the future Mrs Plimpson?”

  “Thank you . . .”

  “Horace!” Miss Hagger shrieked once again. Mr Plimpson gave a violent start, jerked away his hand and retreated hastily into his office.

  Shaking my head over the astonishing tidings that Mr Plimpson was getting married – and to such a woman! – I wiped away the traces of hair oil from my fingers with my handkerchief and continued the task in which I had been interrupted by Miss Hagger’s entrance. I had brought a carpet bag to carry home my possessions, and into this receptacle went an embroidered handkerchief case given to me by my cousin Anna long before the estrangement from my aunt, a fountain pen with a broken nib presented to me by my father on the occasion of my winning the scholarship to St Margaret’s, an old detective magazine, a bottle of smelling salts and sundry articles of stationery, upon which it would be tedious to elaborate. Last of all, I picked up a studio portrait of my mother and father in a silver frame, taken perhaps two or three years after their marriage and some ten years before my birth. Though the young people in the picture were scarcely recognisable as my parents, I found some obscure comfort in the sight of their youthful faces and solemn, self-conscious smiles. Tenderly, I put it inside the bag and did up the clasp.

  The hands of my new watch showed that it was now a quarter to twelve. My gaze travelled around the room, lingering in turn on each of the objects that had grown so familiar to me: the battered walnut cupboard, the hatstand, the tarnished gilt-framed mirror, the cracked Japanese vase in which we kept our umbrellas, the glass-panelled door with its back-to-front writing, and the ornamental carriage clock on the mantelpiece, which had been given to Mr Plimpson in lieu of an unpaid debt. Only a few weeks before, all these things had seemed to me as immutably fixed in their places as I was in my own. Yet now the open packing cases served as an unhappy reminder that the little world I had inhabited for so long would soon cease to exist. With a sigh, I buttoned up my jacket, glanced at my reflection in the mirror, and stood for a moment breathing in the odour of pomatum and cigars before walking out through the plate-glass door for the last time.