In Mine Own Heart by Alan Marshall

Author:Alan Marshall
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781743430811
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2012-07-27T16:00:00+00:00

15

Whenever the Modern Shoe Company received a large order for shoes Mr Fulsham experienced feelings of confidence in the future. The sight of a van being loaded with footwear for delivery to some well-known retailer suggested prosperity to him and at these times he walked briskly through the factory pausing beside laden racks with an expression of contentment.

He was never pleased to see me entering his office carrying account books. Statements I had prepared to acquaint him with losses incurred on orders he had costed made him irritable.

‘What is it now?’ he would ask, frowning.

He often disputed my figures, finding it much more comforting to discuss the value of the order rather than the loss my figures disclosed as inevitable at the cut rates he charged.

‘If Carter’s can do it so can we,’ he argued.

I suspected that Carter’s, a rival shoe factory, were also running at a loss in an effort to undercut their rivals but they were a stronger firm than we were and could afford to sell below cost till ‘times came good’.

This was the phrase Fulsham clung to as justification for his frequent displays of confidence. A substantial order suggested to him that the depression was lifting, times were coming good.

He based all his prophecies for the future on a belief in the sudden return of the conditions that prevailed in the past when huge government orders for military boots had rocketed him to wealth.

‘What we want is another war,’ he said one day. ‘There was plenty of money about then. It’ll come.’

I loathed war and it seemed incredible to me that there existed men who would welcome it. The thought of a prosperity dependent on death revolted me.

Nor was I fooled by the peaks in fluctuating orders. My bond with the firm came through figures. The orders Fulsham saw as salvation were revealed in my books as disastrous.

For almost a year I had realised that the bankruptcy of the Modern Shoe Company was inevitable and I was finding it difficult to face up to the consequences for myself. I saw myself standing penniless on street corners unable to get a job, my car gone, and prevented from going more than a few hundred yards from some bleak room because I didn’t have the price of a tram ticket.

When I had first realised that the Modern Shoe Company would crash I had discussed it with Arthur and he had advised me to buy the leasehold of an apartment house.

‘What you’ve got to have is a place to live in where you can’t be kicked out for not paying the rent,’ he told me. ‘You might be out of work for years. You don’t eat that much. You could live on ten bob a week.’

The thought of becoming the proprietor of an apartment house was objectionable to me. I regarded it as a parasitical occupation that demanded the development of enmity between proprietor and tenant however disguised that enmity might be. I would be the active, the dominant antagonist; they would be the resentful victims.

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