‘Hell’s rotate?’ asked Osnard from below where he was standing with his hands in his pockets, examining ties.
‘No suit should be worn two days running, least of all your lightweight, Mr Osnard. As I’m sure your good father will have told you many a time and oft.’
‘Learned it from Arthur, did ‘e?’
‘It’s your chemical dry cleaner that kills the real suit, I always say. Once you’ve got the grime and sweat embedded in it, which is what happens if you overwork it, you’re on your way to the chemical cleaner, and that’s the beginning of the end. A suit that isn’t rotated is a suit halved, I say. Marta! Where is that girl?’
Osnard remained intent upon the ties.
‘Mr Braithwaite even went so far as to advise his customers to abstain from cleaners altogether,’ Pendel ran on, his voice rising slightly. ‘Brush their suits only, the sponge if necessary, and bring them to the shop once a year to be washed in the River Dee.’
Osnard had ceased to examine the ties and was staring up at him.
‘Owing to that river’s highly prized cleansing powers,’ Pendel explained. ‘The Dee being to our suit somewhat of your true Jordan to the pilgrim.’
‘Thought that was Huntsman’s,’ Osnard said, his eyes steadfastly on Pendel’s.
Pendel did hesitate. And it did show. And Osnard did watch him while it showed.
‘Mr Huntsman is a very fine tailor, sir. One of the Row’s greatest. But in this case, he followed in the foot-prints of Arthur Braithwaite.’
He probably meant footsteps, but under the intensity of Osnard’s gaze he had formed a clear image of the great Mr Huntsman, like King Wenceslas’ page, obediently tracing Braithwaite’s pugmarks across the black Scottish mud. Desperate to break the spell, he grabbed the bolt of cloth and, with one hand for the ship and the other clutching the bolt like a baby to his breast, he groped his way down the step-ladder.
‘Here we are, sir. Our mid-grey alpaca in all its glory. Thank you, Marta,’ as she belatedly appeared below him.
Her face averted, Marta grasped her end of the cloth in both hands and marched backwards towards the door, at the same time tilting it for Osnard to inspect. And somehow she caught Pendel’s eye, and somehow he caught hers, and there was both question and reproach in her expression. But Osnard was mercifully unaware of this. He was studying the cloth. He had stooped over it, hands behind his back like visiting royalty. He was sniffing it. He pinched an edge, sampling the texture between the tips of his thumb and forefinger. The ponderousness of his movements spurred Pendel to greater efforts, and Marta to greater disapproval.
‘Grey not right for us, Mr Osnard? I see you favour brown yourself! It becomes you very well, if I may say so, brown. There’s not a lot of brown being worn in Panama today, to be frank. Your average Panamanian gentleman seems to consider brown unmanly, I don’t know why.’ He was already halfway up the ladder again, leaving Marta clutching her end of the cloth, and the grey bolt lying at her feet. ‘There’s a mid-brown up here I could see you in, not too much red. Here we go. I always say it’s the too-much-red that spoils a good brown, I don’t know if I’m right. What’s our preference today, sir?’
Osnard took a very long time to reply. First the grey cloth continued to hold his attention, then Marta did, for she was studying him with a kind of medical distaste. Then he raised his head and stared at Pendel up his ladder. And Pendel might as well have been a trapeze artist stuck in the big top without his pole, and the world beneath him a whole life away, to judge by the cold dispassion that was displayed in Osnard’s upturned face.
‘Stick with grey, if you don’t mind, ol’ boy,’ he said. ‘ “Grey for town, brown for country.” Isn’t that what he used to say?’
‘Who?’
‘Braithwaite. Hell d’you think?’
Pendel slowly descended the ladder. He seemed about to speak but didn’t. He had run out of words: Pendel, for whom words were his safety and comfort. So instead he smiled while Marta brought her end of the cloth to him and he reeled it in, smiling till his smile hurt and Marta scowling, partly because of Osnard and partly because that was the way her face had set after the doctor had done his terrified best.