The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst [118]
Just before lunch Paul heard a voice in the Public Space, and sensed a small commotion with it—now Miss Cobb had appeared and was speaking in a strange delighted tone like someone at a party: then the voice again, sharply gracious, Mrs. Keeping, of course, “No, no, no, absolutely,” pretending not to demand attention, people glancing round. Paul’s customer went, leaving him with a clear view of her, in a pale blue frock with a white handbag and looking quite like someone at a party herself. She had picked up the Financial Times and was scanning the headlines, her hard black eyebrows raised. Paul watched her nervously, from his ambiguous position, both invisible and on show. She looked up over the page, ran her eye abstractedly across the room, but gave no sign at all of seeing him. He let the smile fade from his face as if preoccupied by something else, his heart quickening for a minute in a muddle of protest and shame. When the lobby door opened she turned slightly and nodded. In a moment Paul saw Mrs. Jacobs, with her heavy tread and humorous questing look, come into view, peer across at him and then approach—“Now then …”—dumping her tapestry bag on the counter between them.
“Good morning, madam,” Paul said almost humorously, unsure if he should use her name.
“Good morning,” said Mrs. Jacobs, genial, rummaging, perhaps herself unaware who he was. Out on to the counter came glasses case, head-scarf, twenty Peter Stuyvesants, a paper bag from Hobday’s with the rattle of tablets, an orange paperback upside-down, a novel … Paul couldn’t quite see … at last a cheque-book. Then the changing of the glasses, the puzzled reach for the pen. She wrote her cheque in a raffish, off-hand way, keeping up a vague air of absurdity, as if money were an amusing mystery to her. Paul smiled patiently back, scanned and stamped the cheque, which was for £25, and asked her how she would like it. It was only then, with a brief stare, that she took in who he was. “Oh, you’re you!” she said, in a jolly tone but none the less placing him, as the funny little man of the night before, whose name she had probably forgotten. Paul smiled as he leant over the cash drawer by his left knee, freed a bundle of clean green oners from its paper wrapper. Rather lovely, it seemed to him, the fine mechanical sameness of the Queen’s face under his counting fingers. He counted them out again for her, at a pace she could follow—“There you are, Mrs. Jacobs.”
“And your hand, yes,” she said, confirming it was him. Paul raised it to show the dressing, and wiggled his fingers to show it was working.
“Good for you,” said Mrs. Jacobs, finding her purse, and cramming the notes into it—again as if she found money somewhat unmanageable. “It’s our young man,” she murmured to her daughter as she rejoined her; but she herself was now murmuring to Mr. Keeping, who had emerged from his office, with his trilby in his hand and his raincoat over his arm, despite the cloudless splendour of the sky as seen through the clear upper halves of the bank windows. Paul supposed they were going to walk him home.
TODAY HE HAD A LATE LUNCH-BREAK, which he preferred—he had the staff-room to himself and read his Angus Wilson over his sandwich without anyone asking questions; and when he got back, it was only an hour to closing time. In the afternoons he felt more confined, on his high stool, swivelling fractionally between the deep cash drawer by his left knee and the wooden bowls of pins, paper-clips and rubber-bands on the counter to the right. Where he’d felt purposeful and efficient in the morning he now felt stiff and disenchanted. The cash drawer boxed him in. His knees were