A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. Eric Newby
She’s open to buy.’
‘We’ll be very happy if she comes to the rehearsal. It’s at four o’clock.’
‘She’s only free at one-thirty. Make it one-thirty and you’ll have to be READY. She doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’
He went on to say that Miss Candlemass was only interested in tweed suits and that the material had to be of a precise weight and proof against the corruptions of moth and rust and every other natural and unnatural ailment.
I told the Managing Director. He pretended to be unimpressed. I told the Head of the Boutique, who was not unnaturally furious, We told the workrooms that they had two and a half hours less to make the final adjustments in the suits and one of the skirt-makers had hysterics and had to lie down on the couch reserved for those suffering from female disorders; we told the model girls that they would have to lunch in the canteen, all four had lunch dates; the Commissionaire was warned to man the porte cochère; the counting-house was ordered to stand by from one o’clock onwards to be ready to answer any difficult questions about shipping and customs. I set off in a taxi on a circular tour of London cloth merchants to obtain swatches of the sort of material required by Miss Candlemass. Then I came back and re-costed the collection.
By one-thirty the atmosphere was electric. The Commissionaire was in position; the Head of the Boutique was ready to receive Miss Candlemass; the model girls were poised on the threshold of the changing-room with the first suits strapped on, like racehorses under starter’s orders. I had just finished heavily annotating three programmes in dollars. The only person not present was Hyde-Clarke.
‘I do not propose to change the habits of a lifetime to suit the convenience of a citizen of the United States,’ he remarked, and departed to luncheon. He proved to be the only one of us who had correctly appreciated the situation.
At half past three Miss Candlemass arrived. It was quite obvious, without her saying so, which she did incessantly during her brief stay on the premises, that she had been lunching at Claridges.
The party consisted of the Shoe Buyer from the same store, readily identifiable because he was wearing a pair of brown crocodile shoes; the Agent, normally a man of briskness and decision, now reduced to a state of gibbering sycophancy by the proximity of Miss Candlemass; and Miss Candlemass herself. All three were a uniform, bright shade of puce. I must say in my lunchless state I envied them. The Head of the Boutique, a Scotswoman of character, refused to admit their existence, for which I admired her deeply, so that it was left for me to escort them to their seats.
Miss Candlemass was about nine feet high and hidden behind smoked glasses in mauve frames studded with semi-precious metal. She was like a lath, with very long legs, just too thin to be healthy, but she was very hygienic, smelled good and had fabulous shoes and stockings. With her dark glasses, the general effect was that of being engaged in watching an eclipse of the earth from the moon.
She didn’t get as far as the showroom. As she clicked across the hall, she was attracted by the scent counter. She swooped on the largest bottle of scent we put out, a Rajah size flagon as big as a port decanter, and began to croon over it.
‘Why don’t you take it, Minnie?’ said the man in the crocodile shoes, to whom I had already taken a violent dislike.
‘Well, I rather think I will. I just adore these people’s perfume.’ She opened an enormous black gladstone bag and dropped it in.
They sat down and the model girls came streaming in wearing our beautiful new suits. I handed Miss Candlemass the annotated programme and a nicely arranged pattern card with the fruits of my morning’s labours neatly arranged on it.
Miss Candlemass wasn’t paying any attention. She was well away describing the Duke of Norfolk who had been lunching at the next table, in minute, ecstatic detail, for the benefit of the agent, who, by reason of his status, had been given a seat with his back to the engine.
‘What do you think of them, Miss Candlemass?’ Sixteen suits had passed in front of her.
‘A very lovely family; and so old.’
‘Yes, but the suits?’
‘Suits. I don’t want any suits, do I? I’m filled up with suits. I want to see some dresses.’
‘But, surely, Miss Felsheim buys the dresses?’
‘Yes, Lulu buys the dresses, but I just adore to see dresses. You know all that lovely perfume makes me feel in the mood for dresses.’
We showed the dresses. Finally Grand Guignol hove into sight. Great changes had taken place but it still looked ghastly. Miss Candlemass loved it and swore to tell Miss Felsheim about it. As Milly tore round for the long beat to the changing-room, she passed me two envelopes. One contained the perfectly enormous bill for the scent, beaten out in a white heat of rage by the ladies in the counting-house. The other contained a cable. I read it.
It came from the British Embassy, Rio de Janeiro, and was addressed to ‘Eric Rubey, Shammersmith’ (I lived in Hammersmith), which would account for the slight delay. How it had arrived at all was a mystery. It bore three words.
OF COURSE, HUGH.
The showroom, already large, suddenly expanded. I understood what Sassoon meant when he wrote, ‘Everyone suddenly burst out singing.’
Miss Candlemass was saying, ‘I’m afraid you haven’t got it, Mr Newby.’
‘Splendid, splendid.’
‘We did much better with Raymond Beale; he really studies the American market.’
‘Mr Beale has since gone bankrupt. Hi-de-ho.’
As they were leaving I handed the bill for the scent to the agent.
‘I think Miss Candlemass is expecting that as a pourboire.’
‘So do I, very strict firm this, tum-te-tum, very businesslike.’
‘I don’t think she’s going to like this, Mr Newby. It may make things more difficult.’
‘She can put it down to the shoe department, tra-la-la.’
‘I’d better give you a cheque if you insist. You’re very cheerful for someone who hasn’t had an order. Are you always like this?’
‘No, hardly ever. I’ve just had some really good news.’
He wrote a cheque. When they had gone I gave it to Madame Fifi, the aged vendeuse who ran the scent department.
‘Good boy,’ she croaked, patting my cheek. ‘That was a dummy bottle – full of coloured wattair.’1
Hugh Carless, who had replied so opportunely to my cable, entered the Foreign Service in 1950. The son of a retired Indian Civil Servant, himself a man of unusual intellectual attainments, he is, like so many Englishmen, in love with Asia. For a time he was posted to the School of Oriental Studies, from which he emerged with a good knowledge of Persian; then to the Foreign Office, from which he frequently disappeared on visits to industrial plants; once he went down a coalmine. It was even suggested that he should visit a couture house and he approached me with this project, which did seem to have a certain educative value. It at least accorded far more with my pre-conceived ideas of the Higher Diplomacy, which derived from an intensive study of the works of E. Phillips Oppenheim, than the visits to atomic piles and computer factories that the spirit of the age demanded.
His Persian being both fluent and academic, he was lucky to be posted to our Embassy at Kabul where he could actually make use of his talents.
From time to time he wrote me long letters, which came to me by way of the District Postmaster, Peshwaar, which I read with envy in the bedrooms of the provincial hotels I stayed in when I ‘travelled’. They were not the sort of letters that third secretaries in the Foreign Office usually write, full of details of the compound, the current indiscretions, the cocktail parties