‘Me too.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
If Pendel was all alertness, Osnard was the reverse. He seemed unaware of the impact of his words and was studiously turning over samples.
‘I don’t think I quite got your meaning there, Mr Osnard.’
‘Old Braithwaite dressed m’dad. Long ago, mind. I was just a nipper.’
Pendel appeared too moved to speak. A rigidity came over him and his shoulders lifted in the manner of an old soldier at the Cenotaph. His words, when he found them, lacked breath. ‘Well I never, sir. Excuse me. This is a turn-up for the book.’ He rallied a little. ‘It’s a first, I don’t mind admitting. Father to son. The two generations both, here at P&B. We’ve not had that, not in Panama. Not yet. Not since we left the Row.’
‘Thought you’d be surprised.’
For a moment Pendel could have sworn the quick brown fox’s eyes had lost their twinkle and become circular and smoky-dark, with only a splinter of light glowing in the centre of each pupil. And in his later imagination the splinter was not gold, but red. But the twinkle was quickly there again.
‘Something wrong?’ Osnard enquired.
‘I think I was marvelling, Mr Osnard. “A defining moment” I believe is the expression these days. I must have been having one.’
‘Great wheel o’time, eh?’
‘Indeed, sir. The one that spins and grinds and tramples all before it, they say,’ Pendel agreed, and turned back to the samples book like one who seeks consolation in labour.
But Osnard had first to eat another cucumber sandwich, which he did in one swallow, then brushed the crumbs off his palms by bringing them together in a slow slapping movement several times until he was satisfied.
There was a well-oiled procedure at P&B for the reception of new customers. Select cloth from samples book, admire same cloth in the piece – since Pendel was careful never to display a sample unless he had the cloth in stock – repair to fitting room for measurement, inspect Gentleman’s Boutique and Sportsman’s Corner, tour rear corridor, say hullo to Marta, open account, pay deposit unless otherwise agreed, come back in ten days for first fitting. For Osnard, however, Pendel decided on a variation. From the samples desk he marched him to the rear corridor, somewhat to the consternation of Marta who had retreated to the kitchen and was deep in a book called Ecology on Loan, being a history of the wholesale decimation of the jungles of South America with the hearty encouragement of the World Bank.
‘Meet the real brains of P&B, Mr Osnard, though she’ll kill me for saying it. Marta, shake hands with Mr Osnard. O-S-N then A-R-D. Make a card for him, dear, and mark it old customer because Mr Braithwaite made for his father. And the first name, sir?’
‘Andrew,’ said Osnard, and Pendel saw Marta’s eyes lift to him, and study him, as if she had heard something other than his name, then turn to Pendel in enquiry.
‘Andrew?’ she repeated.
Pendel hastened to explain: ‘Temporarily of the El Panama Hotel, Marta, but shortly to be moving, courtesy of our fabled Panamanian builders, to -?’
‘Punta Paitilla.’
‘Of course,’ said Pendel with a pious smile, as if Osnard had ordered caviar.
And Marta, having very deliberately marked the place in her tome and pushed the tome aside, grimly noted these particulars from within the walls of her black hair.
‘Hell happened to that woman?’ Osnard demanded in a low voice as soon as they were safely back in the corridor.
‘An accident, I’m afraid, sir. And some rather summary medical attention after it.’
‘Surprised you keep her on. Must give your customers the willies.’
‘Quite the reverse, I’m pleased to say, sir,’ Pendel replied stoutly. ‘Marta is by way of being a favourite among my customers. And her sandwiches are to die for, as they say.’
After which, to head off further questioning about Marta, and expunge her disapproval, Pendel launched himself immediately upon his standard lecture on the tagua nut, grown in the rainforest and now, he assured Osnard earnestly, recognised throughout the feeling world as an acceptable substitute for ivory.