“Well, some people do,” said Mr Bellow. “But I have always made it a rule never to sell at the wrong time of the year.”
I looked at him and I saw that his eyes were twinkling.
“Then when is the right time of the year?” I asked.
“There is never a right time of year as far as I am concerned,” said Mr Bellow.
“You mean you don’t sell them at all?” I asked.
“Very rarely, said Mr Bellow. Only occasionally, perhaps to a friend.”
“Is that why you wouldn’t let that woman have a bird the other day?”
“Yes,” he said.
“And all those birds in the window marked ‘SOLD’, they aren’t really sold, are they?”
Mr Bellow gazed at me, judging whether or not I could keep a secret.
“Actually, between you and me, they are not sold,” he admitted.
“Well, then how do you make a profit?” I asked.
“Ah,” said Mr Bellow, “that’s the point. I don’t.”
I must have looked utterly bewildered by this news for Mr Bellow gave a throaty chuckle and said,
“Let’s go downstairs and have some tea, shall we? And I’ll explain it to you. But you must promise that it will go no further. You promise, now?”
He held up a fat finger and waved it at me.
“Oh, I promise!” I said. “I promise.”
“Right,” he said. “Do you like crumpets?”
“Er..., yes, I do,” I said, slightly bewildered by this change of subject.
“So do I,” said Mr Bellow. “Hot buttered crumpets and tea. Come... Come downstairs.”
And so we went down to the little living-room where Mr Bellow’s retriever, whose name, I discovered, was Aldrich, lay stretched, sublimely comfortable, across the sofa. Mr Bellow lit a little gas ring and toasted crumpets over it and then buttered them quickly, and when he had made a tottering, oozing pile of them, he placed them on a little table between us. By this time the kettle was boiling and he made the tea and set out thin and delicate china cups for us to drink it out of.
“Do you like milk?” he inquired.
“Yes, please,” I said.
“Sugar?”
“No, thank you,” I said.
We sipped our tea and then he handed me a crumpet, took one himself and sank his teeth into it with a sigh of satisfaction.
“What... what were you going to tell me about not making a profit?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, wiping his hands and his mouth and his moustache fastidiously with his handkerchief, “it’s rather a long and complicated story. The whole of this lane — it’s called Potts Lane, by the way — once belonged to an eccentric millionaire called Potts. He was what would be known nowadays, I suppose, as a socialist. When he built this line of shops he laid down special rules and regulations governing them. The people who wanted the shops could have them on an indefinite lease and every four years their rent would come up for revision. If they were doing well, their rent was raised accordingly; if they were not doing so well, their rent was adjusted the opposite way. Now, I moved into this shop in 1921. Since then I have been paying five shillings a week rent.”
I stared at Mr Bellow disbelievingly.
“Five shillings a week?” I said. “But that’s ridiculous for a shop like this. Why, you’re only a stone’s throw away from Kensington High Street.”
“Exactly,” said Mr Bellow. “That is exactly the point. I pay five shillings a week, that is to say one pound a month rent.”
“But why is the rent so ridiculously small?” I asked.
“Because,” he said, “I make no profit. As soon as I discovered this section in the lease I immediately saw that it would provide me with a convenient loop-hole. I had a little money put by — not very much, but enough to get along on. And what I really wanted was a place to live where I could keep my birds. Well, this provided me with the ideal opportunity. I went round to see all the other people in Potts Lane and explained about this clause to them, and I found that most of them were in a similar predicament as myself; that they had small amounts of money to live on, but what they really wanted was a cheap abode. So we formed the Potts Lane Association and we clubbed together and we got ourselves a very good accountant. When I say ‘good’ I don’t mean one of these wishy-washy fellows who are always on the side of the law; those are no good to man nor beast. No, this is a very sharp, bright young man. And so we meet once every six months or so and he examines our books and tells us how to run at a loss. We run at a loss, and then when our rents come up for revision they either remain static or are slightly lowered.”
“But can’t the people who own the property change the leases?” I asked.
“No,” said Mr Bellow, “that’s the beauty of it. I found out that by the terms of Mr Potts’s will these conditions have to stand.”
“But they must have been furious when they found out that you were only paying them a pound a month?”
“They were indeed,” said Mr Bellow. “They did their very best to evict me, but it was impossible. I got a good lawyer. Again, not one of the wishy-washy sort that thinks more of the law than he does of his customers. He soon put them in their place. They met with an equally united front from all the other shops in the lane, so there was really nothing they could do.”
I did not like to say anything because I did not want to hurt Mr Bellow’s feelings, but I felt sure that this story was a complete make-up. I had once had a tutor who lived a sort of schizophrenic existence and who used to tell me long and complicated stories about adventures that had never happened to him but which he wished had. So I was quite used to this form of prevarication.
“Well, I think it’s fascinating,” I said. “I think it was awfully clever of you to find it out.”
“One should always read the small print,” said Mr Bellow, wagging a finger at me. “Excuse me, but I must go and get Mabel.”
He went off into the shop and reappeared with the cockatoo on his wrist. He sat down and, taking the bird in his hands, laid it on its back. It lay there as though carved out of ivory, quite still, its eyes closed, saying “Hello, hello, hello”. He smoothed its feathers gently and then placed it on his lap where he tickled the feathers over its tummy. It lay there drowsing in ecstasy.
“She gets a bit lonely if I keep her out in the shop too long,” he explained. “Have another crumpet, my dear boy?”
So we sat and ate crumpets and chatted. Mr Bellow I found a fascinating companion. In his youth he had travelled widely round the world and knew intimately a lot of places that I longed to visit. After that I used to go and have tea with him about once a fortnight, and they were always very happy afternoons for me.
I was still disbelieving about his story of Potts Lane, so I thought I would conduct an experiment. Over a period of days I visited in turn each shop in the lane. When I went to Clemysira’s, for example, I went to buy a hat for my mother’s birthday. They were terribly sorry, said the two dear old ladies who ran it, terribly sorry indeed; I couldn’t have come at a worse time. They had just run out of hats. Well, had they got anything else, I inquired? A fur, or something? Well, no, as a matter of fact, they said, all the stuff they had in the shop was bespoken at the moment. They were waiting for a new consignment to come in.
When was my mother’s birthday? Friday week, I said. Oh, we think it will be in by then, they said; yes, we’re sure it will be in by then. Do come again.
Mr Wallet, the tobacconist, told me that he did not stock the brand of cigarettes I wanted. He also did not stock any cigars, nor did he stock any pipes. Reluctantly, he let me buy a box of matches.
I next went to the plumbers. I had called, I said, on behalf of my mother because there was something wrong with our cistern and could they send a man round to look at it?
“Well, now,” said Mr Drumlin, “how urgent is it?”
“Oh, it’s quite urgent,” I said. “We’re not getting any water into the lavatories or anything.”