Collected Stories

The Table

In a public library, looking through the appropriate columns in a businesslike way, Mr Jeffs came across the Hammonds’ advertisement in The Times. It contained a telephone number which he noted down on a scrap of paper and which he telephoned later that same day.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Hammond vaguely, ‘I think this table is still for sale. Let me just go and look.’

Mr Jeffs saw her in his mind’s eye going to look. He visualized a fattish, middle-aged woman with light-blue hair, and shapely legs coming out of narrow shoes.

‘It is my husband’s affair, really,’ explained Mrs Hammond. ‘Or I suppose it is. Although strictly speaking the table is my property. Left to me by my grandmother. Yes, it’s still there. No one, I’m sure, has yet made an offer for this table.’

‘In that case –’ said Mr Jeffs.

‘It was foolish of me to imagine that my husband might have had an offer, or that he might have sold it. He would naturally not have done so without consultation between us. It being my table, really. Although he worded the, advertisement and saw to putting it in the paper. I have a daughter at the toddling stage, Mr Jeffs. I’m often too exhausted to think about the composition of advertisements.’

‘A little daughter. Well, that is nice,’ said Mr Jeffs, looking at the ceiling and not smiling. ‘You’re kept busy, eh?’

‘Why not come round if the table interests? It’s completely genuine and is often commented upon.’

‘I will do that,’ announced Mr Jeffs, naming an hour.

Replacing the receiver, Mr Jeffs, a small man, a dealer in furniture, considered the voice of Mrs Hammond. He wondered if the voice belonged to a woman who knew her p’s and q’s where antique furniture was concerned. He had been wrong, quite clearly, to have seen her as middle-aged and plumpish. She was younger if she had a toddling child, and because she had spoken of exhaustion he visualized her again, this time in soft slippers, with a strand of hair across her forehead. ‘It’s a cultured voice,’ said Mr Jeffs to himself and went on to believe that there was money in the Hammond house, and probably a maid or two, in spite of the protest about exhaustion. Mr Jeffs, who had made his small fortune through his attention to such nagging details, walked on the bare boards of his Victorian house, sniffing the air and considering afresh. All about him furniture was stacked, just purchased, waiting to be sold again.

Mrs Hammond forgot about Mr Jeffs almost as soon as his voice ceased to echo in her consciousness. Nothing about Mr Jeffs remained with her because as she had conversed with him no image had formed in her mind, as one had in his. She thought of Mr Jeffs as a shop person, as a voice that might interrupt a grocery order or a voice in the jewellery department of Liberty’s. When her au pair girl announced the presence of Mr Jeffs at the appointed hour, Mrs Hammond frowned and said: ‘My dear Ursula, you’ve certainly got this name wrong.’ But the girl insisted. She stood with firmness in front of her mistress repeating that a Mr Jeffs had called by appointment. ‘Heavens!’ cried Mrs Hammond eventually. ‘How extraordinarily stupid of me! This is the new man for the windows. Tell him to go at them immediately. The kitchen ones first so that he gets them over with while he’s still mellow. They’re as black as your boot.’

So it was that Mr Jeffs was led into the Hammonds’ kitchen by a girl from central Switzerland and told abruptly, though not intentionally so, to clean the windows.

‘What?’ said Mr Jeffs.

‘Start with the kitchen, Mrs Hammond says, since they have most filth on them. There is hot water in the tap.’

‘No,’ said Mr Jeffs. ‘I’ve come to see a table.’

‘I myself have scrubbed the table. You may stand on it if you place a newspaper underneath your feet.’

Ursula left Mr Jeffs at this juncture, although he had already begun to speak again. She felt she could not stand there talking to window-cleaners, since she was not employed in the house to do that.

‘He is a funny man,’ she reported to Mrs Hammond. ‘He wanted to wash the table too.’

‘My name is Jeffs,’ said Mr Jeffs, standing at the door, holding his stiff black hat. ‘I have come about the console table.’

‘How odd!’ murmured Mrs Hammond, and was about to add that here indeed was a coincidence since at that very moment a man called Jeffs was cleaning her kitchen windows. ‘Oh my God!’ she cried instead. ‘Oh, Mr Jeffs, what a terrible thing!’

It was this confusion, this silly error that Mrs Hammond quite admitted was all her fault, that persuaded her to let Mr Jeffs have the table. Mr Jeffs, standing with his hat, had recognized a certain psychological advantage and had pressed it imperceptibly home. He saw that Mrs Hammond, beneath the exterior of her manner, was concerned lest he might have felt himself slighted. She is a nice woman, he thought, in the way in which a person buying meat decides that a piece is succulent. She is a nice person, he assured himself, and will therefore be the easier and the quicker to deal with. He was correct in his surmise. There was a prick of guilt in Mrs Hammond’s face: he saw it arrive there as the explanation dawned on her and as she registered that he was a dealer in antiques, one with the features and the accents of a London Jew. She is afraid I am thinking her anti-Semitic, thought Mr Jeffs, well pleased with himself. He named a low price, which was immediately accepted.

‘I’ve been clever,’ said Mrs Hammond to her husband. ‘I have sold the console table to a little man called Mr Jeffs whom Ursula and I at first mistook for a window-cleaner.’

Mr Jeffs put a chalk mark on the table and made a note of it in a notebook. He sat in the kitchen of his large house, eating kippers that he had cooked in a plastic bag. His jaws moved slowly and slightly, pulping the fish as a machine might. He didn’t pay much attention to the taste in his mouth: he was thinking that if he sold the table to Sir Andrew Charles he could probably rely on a hundred per cent profit, or even more.

‘An everyday story of country folk,’ said a voice on Mr Jeffs’ old wireless, and Mr Jeffs rose and carried the plate from which he had eaten to the sink. He wiped his hands on a tea-cloth and climbed the stairs to the telephone.

Sir Andrew was in Africa, a woman said, and might not be back for a month. It was far from certain when he would return, but it would be a month at least. Mr Jeffs said nothing more. He nodded to himself, but the woman in Sir Andrew Charles’ house, unaware of this confirmation, reflected that the man was ill-mannered not to acknowledge what she was saying.

Mr Jeffs made a further note in his notebook, a reminder to telephone Sir Andrew in six weeks’ time. As it happened, however, this note was unnecessary, because three days later Mr Jeffs received a telephone call from Mrs Hammond’s husband, who asked him if he still had the table. Mr Jeffs made a pretence of looking, and replied after a moment that he rather thought he had.

‘In that case,’ said Mrs Hammond’s husband, ‘I rather think I would like to buy it back.’

Mr Hammond announced his intention of coming round. He contradicted himself by saying that it was really a friend of his who wanted the table and that he would bring his friend round too, if that was all right with Mr Jeffs.

‘Bring whomsoever you wish,’ said Mr Jeffs. He felt awkward in advance: he would have to say to Mr Hammond or to Mr Hammond’s friend that the price of the table had doubled itself in three days. He would not put it like that, but Mr Hammond would recognize that that was what it amounted to.

Mr Jeffs was in the kitchen, drinking tea, when they called. He blew at the mug of tea, not wishing to leave it there, for he disapproved of waste. He drank most of it and wiped his lips with the tea-cloth. The door-bell sounded again and Mr Jeffs hastened to answer it.

‘I am the nigger in the woodpile,’ said a Mrs Galbally, who was standing with Hammond. ‘It is I who cause all this nonsense over a table.’

‘Mrs Galbally hasn’t ever seen it,’ Hammond explained. ‘She, too, answered our advertisement, but you, alas, had snaffled the treasure up.’

‘Come into the house,’ said Mr Jeffs, leading the way to the room with the table in it. He turned to Mrs Galbally, pointing with one hand. ‘There it is, Mrs Galbally. You are quite at liberty to purchase it, though I had earmarked it for another, a client in Africa who has been looking for that very thing and who would pay an exceedingly handsome price. I am just warning you of that. It seems only fair.’

But when Mr Jeffs named the figure he had in mind neither Mrs Galbally nor Hammond turned a hair. Hammond drew out a cheque-book and at once inscribed a cheque. ‘Can you deliver it?’ he asked.

‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Jeffs, ‘provided it is not too far away. There will be a small delivery charge to cover everything, insurance in transit, etcetera. Four pounds four.’

Mr Jeffs drove his Austin van to the address that Hammond had given him. On the way, he reckoned what his profit on this journey of three-quarters of an hour would be: a quarter of a gallon of petrol would come to one and three; subtracting that from four guineas, he was left with four pounds two and ninepence. Mr Jeffs did not count his time: he considered it of little value. He would have spent the three-quarters of an hour standing about in his large house, or moving himself to keep his circulation going. It was not a bad profit, he decided, and he began to think of Mrs Galbally and Hammond, and of Mrs Hammond who had mistaken him for a window-cleaner. He guessed that Hammond and Mrs Galbally were up to something, but it was a funny way in which to be up to something, buying antique tables and having them delivered.

‘They are conducting an affair,’ said Mr Jeffs to himself. ‘They met because the table was up for sale and are now romantic over it.’ He saw the scene clearly: the beautiful Mrs Galbally arriving at the Hammonds’ house, explaining that she had come about the table. Perhaps she had made a bit of a scene, reminding the Hammonds that she had previously telephoned and had been told to come. ‘And now I find the table is already disposed of,’ said Mrs Galbally in Mr Jeffs’ imagination. ‘You should have telephoned me back, for God’s sake! I am a busy creature.’

‘Come straight in, Mrs Galbally and have a glass of brandy,’ cried Hammond in Mr Jeffs’ mind. ‘How can we make amends?’

‘It is all my fault,’ explained Mrs Hammond. ‘I’ve been quite hopelessly scatty, placing our beautiful table in the hands of a Jewish trader. A Mr Jeffs whom Ursula in her foreign ignorance ordered to wash down the kitchen windows.’

‘The table has brought nothing but embarrassment,’ said Hammond, pouring out a fair quantity of brandy. ‘Have this, Mrs Galbally. And have a nut or two. Do.’

‘I had quite set my heart on that table,’ said Mrs Galbally in Mr Jeffs’ mind. ‘I am disappointed unto tears.’

‘A table for Mrs Galbally,’ said Mr Jeffs to a woman with a shopping basket who was leaving the block of flats.

‘Oh yes?’ said the woman.

‘Which floor, please? I have been given this address.’

‘No one of that name at all,’ said the woman. ‘I never heard of no Galbally.’

‘She may be new here. Is there an empty flat? It tells you nothing on these bells.’

‘I’m not at liberty,’ said the woman, her voice striking a high pitch. ‘I’m not at liberty to give out information about the tenants in these flats. Not to a man in a closed van. I don’t know you from Adam.’

Mr Jeffs recognized the woman as a charwoman and thereafter ignored her, although she stood on the steps, close to him, watching his movements. He rang one of the bells and a middle-aged woman opened the door and said, when Mr Jeffs had inquired, that everyone was new in the flats, the flats themselves being new. She advised him quite pleasantly to ring the top bell, the one that connected apparently with two small attic rooms.

‘Ah, Mr Jeffs,’ said the beautiful Mrs Galbally a moment later. ‘So you got here.’

Mr Jeffs unloaded the table from the van and carried it up the steps. The charwoman was still about. She was saying to Mrs Galbally that she would clean out the place for six shillings an hour whenever it was suitable or desired.

Mr Jeffs placed the table in the smaller of the two attic rooms. The room was empty except for some rolled-up carpeting and a standard lamp. The door of the second room was closed: he imagined it contained a bed and a wardrobe and two brandy glasses on a bedside table. In time, Mr Jeffs imagined, the whole place would be extremely luxurious. ‘A love-nest,’ he said to himself.

‘Well, thank you, Mr Jeffs,’ said Mrs Galbally.

‘I must charge you an extra pound. You are probably unaware, Mrs Galbally that it is obligatory and according to the antique dealers’ association to charge one pound when goods have to be moved up a staircase. I could be struck off if I did not make this small charge.’

‘A pound? I thought Mr Hammond had –’

‘It is to do with the stairs. I must honour the rules of the antique dealers’ association. For myself, I would easily waive it, but I have, you understand, my biennial returns to make.’

Mrs Galbally found her handbag and handed him a five-pound note. He gave her back three pounds and sixteen shillings, all the change he claimed to have.

‘Imagine it!’ exclaimed Mrs Galbally. ‘I thought that cleaning woman must be your wife come to help you carry the thing. I couldn’t understand why she was suddenly talking about six shillings an hour. She’s just what ‘I’m looking for.’

Mr Jeffs thought that it was rather like Mrs Hammond’s au pair girl making the mistake about the window-cleaner. He thought that but he did not say it. He imagined Mrs Galbally recounting the details of the episode at some later hour, recounting them to Hammond as they lay in the other room, smoking cigarettes or involved with one another’s flesh. ‘I thought she was the little Jew’s wife. I thought it was a family business, the way these people often have. I was surprised beyond measure when she mentioned about cleaning.’

Naturally enough, Mr Jeffs thought that he had seen the end of the matter. A Louis XVI console table, once the property of Mrs Hammond’s grandmother, was now the property of her husband’s mistress, or the joint property of husband and mistress, Mr Jeffs was not sure. It was all quite interesting, Mr Jeffs supposed, but he had other matters to concern him: he had further furniture to accumulate and to sell at the right moment; he had a living to make, he assured himself.

But a day or two after the day on which he had delivered the table to Mrs Galbally he received a telephone call from Mrs Hammond.

‘Am I speaking to Mr Jeffs?’ said Mrs Hammond.

‘Yes, this is he. Jeffs here.’

‘This is Mrs Hammond. I wonder if you remember, I sold you a table.’

‘I remember you perfectly, Mrs Hammond. We were amused at an error.’ Mr Jeffs made a noise that he trusted would sound like laughter. He was looking at the ceiling, without smiling.

‘The thing is,’ said Mrs Hammond, ‘are you by any chance still in possession of that table? Because if you are I think perhaps I had better come round and see you.’

There rushed into Mr Jeffs’ mind the vision of further attic rooms, of Mrs Hammond furnishing them with the table and anything else she could lay her hands on. He saw Mrs Hammond walking down a street, looking at beds and carpets in shop windows, her elbow grasped by a man who was not her husband.

‘Hullo, Mr Jeffs,’ said Mrs Hammond. ‘Are you there?’

‘Yes, I am here,’ said Mr Jeffs. ‘I am standing here listening to you, madam.’

‘Well?’ said Mrs Hammond.

‘I’m sorry to disappoint you about the table.’

‘You mean it’s sold? Already?’

‘I’m afraid that is the case.’

‘Oh God in heaven!’

‘I have other tables here. In excellent condition and keenly priced. You might not find a visit here a waste of time.’

‘No, no.’

‘I do not as a rule conduct my business in that way: customers coming into my house and that. But in your case, since we are known to one another –’

‘It wouldn’t do. I mean, it’s only the table I sold you I am possibly interested in. Mr Jeffs, can you quickly give me the name and address of the person who bought it?’

This question caught Mr Jeffs off his guard, so he at once replaced the telephone receiver. Mrs Hammond came through again a moment or so later, after he had had time to think. He said:

‘We were cut off, Mrs Hammond. There is something the matter with the line. Sir Andrew Charles was twice cut off this morning, phoning from Nigeria. I do apologize.’

‘I was saying, Mr Jeffs, that I would like to have the name and address of the person who bought the table.’

‘I cannot divulge that, Mrs Hammond. I’m afraid divulgences of that nature are very much against the rules of the antique dealers’ association. I could be struck off for such a misdemeanour.’

‘Oh dear. Oh dear, Mr Jeffs. Then what am I to do? Whatever is the answer?’

‘Is this important? There are ways and means. I could, for instance, act as your agent. I could approach the owner of the table in that guise and attempt to do my best.’

‘Would you, Mr Jeffs? That is most kind.’

‘I would have to charge the customary agent’s fee. I am sorry about that, Mrs Hammond, but the association does not permit otherwise.’

‘Yes, yes, of course.’

‘Shall I tell you about that fee, how it’s worked out and what it may amount to? It’s not much, a percentage.’

‘We can fix that up afterwards.’

‘Well, fine,’ said Mr Jeffs, who meant when he spoke of a percentage thirty-three and a third.

‘Please go up to twice the price you paid me. If it seems to be going higher I’d be grateful if you’d telephone for instructions.’

‘That’s the usual thing, Mrs Hammond.’

‘But do please try and keep the price down. Naturally.’

‘I’ll be in touch, Mrs Hammond.’

Walking about his house, shaking his body to keep his circulation in trim, Mr Jeffs wondered if tables nowadays had a part to play in lovers’ fantasies. It was in his interest to find out, he decided, since he could accumulate tables of the correct kind and advertise them astutely. He thought for a while longer and then entered his van. He drove it to Mrs Galbally’s attic room, taking a chance on finding her there.

‘Why, Mr Jeffs,’ said Mrs Galbally.

‘Yes,’ said Mr Jeffs.

She led him upstairs, trailing her curiosity behind her. She is thinking, he thought, that I have come to sell her another thing or two, but she does not care to order me out in case she is wrong, in case I have come to blackmail her.

‘Well, Mr Jeffs, what can I do for you?’

‘I have had a handsome offer for the Louis XVI table. Or a fairly handsome offer. Or an offer that might be turned into an exceedingly handsome offer. Do you take my meaning?’

‘But the table is mine. Are you telling me you wish to buy it back?’

‘I am saying something of the kind. I received hint of this offer and thought I should let you know at once. “I will act as Mrs Galbally’s agent,” I said to myself, “in case she is at all tempted to dispose of the article at one and a half times what she paid for it.’ ”

‘Oh, but no, Mr Jeffs.’

‘You are not interested?’

‘Not at all, I’m afraid.’

‘Suppose my client goes up to twice the price? How would you feel about that? Or how would Mr Hammond feel about that?’

‘Mr Hammond?’

‘Well, I am not quite certain who owns the article. That is why I mention the gentleman. Perhaps I should have contacted him. It was Mr Hammond who gave me the cheque.’

‘The table is mine. A gift. I would rather you didn’t contact Mr Hammond.’

‘Well, that is that, then. But since I have acted in your interest in this matter, Mrs Galbally, thinking that I should report the offer to you without delay and involving myself in travelling expenses etcetera, I’m afraid I shall have to charge you the usual agent’s fee. It is the ruling of the antique dealers’ association that a fee be charged on such occasions. I feel you understand?’

Mrs Galbally said she did understand. She gave him some money, and Mr Jeffs took his leave.

In his house Mr Jeffs considered for a further hour. Eventually he thought it wise to telephone Mrs Hammond and ascertain her husband’s office telephone number. He went out on to the street with a piece of paper in his hand which stated that he was deaf and dumb and wished urgently to have a telephone call made for him. He handed this to an elderly woman, pointing to a telephone booth.

‘May I know your husband’s office telephone number?’ said the woman to Mrs Hammond. ‘It’s a matter of urgency.’

‘But who are you?’

‘I am a Mrs Lacey, and I am phoning you on behalf of Sir Andrew Charles of Africa.’

‘I’ve heard that name before,’ said Mrs Hammond, and gave the telephone number of her husband’s office.

‘You say you have been to see Mrs Galbally,’ said Hammond. ‘And what did she say?’

‘I don’t believe she fully understood what was at stake. I don’t think she got the message.’

‘The table was a gift from me to Mrs Galbally. I can hardly ask for it back.’

‘This is an excellent offer, Mr Hammond.’

‘Oh, I don’t dispute that.’

‘I was wondering if you could use your influence with Mrs Galbally, that’s all. If you happen to be seeing her, that is.’

‘I’ll ring you back, Mr Jeffs.’

Mr Jeffs said thank you and then telephoned Mrs Hammond. ‘Negotiations are under way,’ he said.

But two days later negotiations broke down. Hammond telephoned Mr Jeffs to say that the table was to remain the property of Mrs Galbally. Mr Jeffs, sorrowfully, decided to drive round to tell Mrs Hammond, so that he could collect what little was owing him. He would tell her, he decided, and that would surely now be the end of the matter.

‘I’m afraid I have come up against a stone wall,’ he reported. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Hammond, about that, and I would trouble you now only for what is owing.’

He mentioned the sum, but Mrs Hammond seemed not to hear clearly. Tears rolled down her cheeks and left marks on the powder on her face. She took no notice of Mr Jeffs. She sobbed and shook, and further tears dropped from her eyes.

In the end Mrs Hammond left the room. Mr Jeffs remained because he had, of course, to wait for the money owing to him. He sat there examining the furniture and thinking it odd of Mrs Hammond to have cried so passionately and for so long. The au pair girl came in with a tray of tea for him, blushing as she arranged it, remembering, he imagined, the orders she had given him as regards the windows. He poured himself some tea and ate two pieces of shortbread. It was very quiet in the room, as though a funeral had taken place.

‘Whoever are you?’ said a child, a small girl of five.

Mr Jeffs looked at her and endeavoured to smile, forcing his lips back from his teeth.

‘My name is Mr Jeffs. What is your name?’

‘My name is Emma Hammond. Why are you having tea in our house?’

‘Because it was kindly brought to me.’

‘What is the matter with your mouth?’

‘That is how my mouth is made. Are you a good little girl?’

‘But why are you waiting here?’

‘Because I have to collect something that your mother has arranged to give me. A little money.’

‘A little money? Are you poor?’

‘It is money owing to me.’

‘Run along, Emma,’ said Mrs Hammond from the door, and when the child had gone she said:

‘I apologize, Mr Jeffs.’

She wrote him a cheque. He watched her, thinking of Hammond and Mrs Galbally and the table, all together in the attic rooms at the top of the big block of flats. He wondered what was going to happen. He supposed Mrs Hammond would be left with the child. Perhaps Mrs Galbally would marry Hammond then; perhaps they would come to this house and bring the table back with them, since Mrs Galbally was so attached to it, and perhaps they would take on the same au pair girl, and perhaps Mrs Hammond and the child would go to live in the attic rooms. They were all of a kind, Mr Jeffs decided: even the child seemed tarred with her elders’ sophistication. But if sides were to be taken, he liked Mrs Hammond best. He had heard of women going berserk in such circumstances, taking their lives even. He hoped Mrs Hammond would not do that.

‘Let me tell you, Mr Jeffs,’ said Mrs Hammond.

‘Oh now, it doesn’t matter.’

‘The table belonged to my grandmother, who died and left it to me in her will.’

‘Do not fret, Mrs Hammond. It’s all perfectly all right.’

‘We thought it ugly, my husband and I, so we decided to be rid of it.’

‘Your husband thought it was ugly?’

‘Well, yes. But I more than he. He doesn’t notice things so much.’

Mr Jeffs thought that he had noticed Mrs Galbally all right when Mrs Galbally had walked into this house. Mrs Hammond was lying her head off, he said to himself, because she was trying to save face: she knew quite well where the table was, she had known all along. She had wept because she could not bear the thought of it, her grandmother’s ugly table in the abode of sin.

‘So we put in an advertisement. We had only two replies. You and a woman.’

Mr Jeffs stood up, preparatory to going.

‘You see,’ said Mrs Hammond, ‘we don’t have room in a place like this for a table like that. It doesn’t fit in. Well, you can see for yourself.’

Mr Jeffs looked hard at her, not into her eyes or even at her face: he looked hard and seriously at the green wool of her dress. The woman said:

‘But almost as soon as it had gone I regretted everything. I remember the table all my life. My grandmother had left it to me as an act of affection as well as generosity.’

Mr Jeffs reckoned that the table had stood in the grandmother’s hall. He reckoned that Mrs Hammond as a child had been banished from rooms and had been bidden to stand by the table in the hall, crying and moaning. The table had mocked her childhood and it was mocking her again, with silent watching in an attic room. He could see the two of them, Mrs Galbally and Hammond, placing their big bulbous brandy glasses on the table and marching toward one another for a slick kiss.

‘Once I had sold it to you I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I remembered that my grandmother had always promised it to me. She was the only one who was kind to me as a child, Mr Jeffs. I felt that truly I had thrown all her love back at her. Every night since I sold it to you I’ve had wretched dreams. So you see why I was so very upset.’

The grandmother was cruel, thought Mr Jeffs. The. grandmother punished the child every hour of the day, and left the table as a reminder of her autocratic soul. Why could not Mrs Hammond speak the truth? Why could she not say that the spirit of the old dead grandmother had passed into the table and that the spirit and the table were laughing their heads off in Mrs Galbally’s room? Imagine, thought Mr Jeffs, a woman going to such lengths, and a woman whom he had passingly respected.

‘I’m sorry I’ve burdened you with all this, Mr Jeffs. I’m sorry it’s been such a bother. You have a kindly face.’

‘I am a Jewish dealer, madam. I have a Jewish nose; I am not handsome; I cannot smile.’

He was angry because he thought that she was patronizing him. She was lying still, and all of a sudden she was including him in her lies. She was insulting him with her talk of his face. Did she know his faults, his weaknesses? How dare she speak so?

‘The table should have passed from me to my daughter. It should have stayed in the family. I didn’t think.’

Mr Jeffs allowed himself to close his eyes. She can sit there telling those lies, he thought, one after another, while her own child plays innocently in the next room. The child will become a liar too. The child in her time will grow to be a woman who must cover up the humiliations she has suffered, who must put a face on things, and make the situation respectable with falsehoods.

With his eyes closed and his voice speaking in his mind, Mr Jeffs saw the figure of himself standing alone in his large Victorian house. Nothing was permanent in the house, not a stick of furniture remained there month by month. He sold and bought again. He laid no carpets, nor would he ever. He owned but the old wireless set because someone once had told him it was worthless.

‘Why are you telling me lies?’ shouted Mr Jeffs. ‘Why can’t you say the truth?’

He heard his voice shouting those words at Mrs Hammond and he saw the image of himself, standing quietly on the bare boards of his house. It was not his way to go shouting at people, or becoming involved, or wishing for lies to cease. These people were a law unto themselves; they did not concern him. He cooked his own food; he did not bother people.

‘Your grandmother is dead and buried,’ said Mr Jeffs to his amazement. ‘It is Mrs Galbally who is alive. She takes her clothes off, Mrs Hammond, and in comes your husband and takes off his. And the table sees. The table you have always known. Your childhood table sees it all and you cannot bear it. Why not be honest, Mrs Hammond? Why not say straight out to me: “Jew man, bargain with this Mrs Galbally and let me have my childhood table back.” I understand you, Mrs Hammond. I understand all that. I will trade anything on God’s earth, Mrs Hammond, but I understand that.’

There was a silence again in the room, and in it Mr Jeffs moved his eyes around until their gaze alighted on the face of Mrs Hammond. He saw the face sway, gently, from side to side, for Mrs Hammond was shaking her head. ‘I did not know any of that,’ Mrs Hammond was saying. Her head ceased to shake: she seemed like a statue.

Mr Jeffs rose and walked through the deep silence to the door. He turned then, and walked back again, for he had left behind him Mrs Hammond’s cheque. She seemed not to notice his movements and he considered it wiser in the circumstances not to utter the sounds of farewell. He left the house and started up the engine of his Austin van.

He saw the scene differently as he drove away: Mrs Hammond hanging her head and he himself saying that the lies were understandable. He might have brought Mrs Hammond a crumb of comfort, a word or two, a subtle shrug of the shoulder. Instead, in his clumsiness, he had brought her a shock that had struck her a blow. She would sit there, he imagined, just as he had left her, her face white, her body crouched over her sorrow; she would sit like that until her husband breezily arrived. And she would look at him in his breeziness and say: ‘The Jewish dealer has been and gone. He was there in that chair and he told me that Mrs Galbally has opened up a love-nest for you.’

Mr Jeffs drove on, aware of a sadness but aware as well that his mind was slowly emptying itself of Mrs Hammond and her husband and the beautiful Mrs Galbally. ‘I cook my own food,’ said Mr Jeffs aloud. ‘I am a good trader, and I do not bother anyone.’ He had no right to hope that he might have offered comfort. He had no business to take such things upon himself, to imagine that a passage of sympathy might have developed between himself and Mrs Hammond.

‘I cook my own food,’ said Mr Jeffs again. ‘I do not bother anyone.’ He drove in silence after that, thinking of nothing at all. The chill of sadness had left him, and the mistake he had made appeared to him as a fact that could not be remedied. He noticed that dusk was falling; and he returned to the house where he had never lit a fire, where the furniture loomed and did not smile at him, where nobody wept and nobody told a lie.