A SALESMAN’S ROMANCE
My friend Charlie Ford was a commercial traveller in the office-equipment business, and one of the nicest commercials I have known. And, in spite of all the propaganda against them, you meet some very nice commercials. At their best, they are artists in their own right—people who make something out of nothing.

Charlie had only one drawback from my point of view, which was that he could never resist trying to sell me things, just for practice. And they did not have to be office chairs or any other sort of commodity. That is the sign of the true salesman; it isn’t the money alone that appeals to him, it is salesmanship for its own sweet sake.

Charlie, for instance, was from Connemara, and wild horses wouldn’t have dragged him back to it, but I could not mention Connemara over a drink without Charlie’s trying to sell it to me, and the tears would come in his eyes and a catch would come in his voice, and the Mother Machrees and the evening rosaries would get so colourful that nothing but blasphemy would put a stop to them. Then he would smile sadly at me, put a fat hand firmly on my shoulder, and tell me in a deep voice that he wished I did not talk like a wrecker. I wasn’t a real wrecker, of course, not at heart. Other people might think so, but he knew that at heart I loved all those beautiful things as much as he did, and concealed it only out of modesty. And I declare to my God, before I knew where I was, Charlie would be selling me a substitute self with a heart of gold that the manufacturers would replace within two years unless it gave perfect satisfaction. All the same Charlie liked me. I was a sort of laboratory for him, and whenever he succeeded in selling me anything like a new movie or a funny story, it set him up for a week.

Charlie was engaged to a girl called Celia Halligan. Celia was handsome; she had a dirty tongue and an attitude of cynical but good-humoured contempt for men, yet even she could not resist the coloured enlargement of herself that Charlie presented to her in a gilt frame, and he had only to give her a sweet, sad smile to make her skip demurely back into it.

Now, one night the two of them were motoring back from a pub outside Rathfarnham, cruising gently down the mountain-side, admiring the toylike, whitewashed cottages above them, and the valley of the city far below with the lamp-lit prow of Howth thrusting out into Dublin Bay, when all at once as they turned a corner, there was a jaunting-car ahead of them, going hoppity-bump, with no lights on the wrong side of the road. Charlie was a first-rate driver and boasted that he had been driving for fifteen years without an accident. He did not rush his car into the ditch or try to pass out. Instead, he put his brakes on hard and ran the bonnet of his car under the well of the jaunting-car without doing any more damage than to raise the driver and pitch him gently forward on the back of his old horse. The bump was so slight that the jarvey’s bowler hat still remained on his head, and the horse, who had all the sense of responsibility required by the situation, stopped dead with the jarvey plastered affectionately across his back, and waited for somebody to do something.

Then presence of mind came to the jarvey’s assistance: he judged the road and the steadiness of the horse and the intentions of the driver behind him and slid gently to the ground. It was as neat a bit of work as Charlie had seen in years. By the time Charlie reached him, he was doing a convincing take-off of unconsciousness that deceived even Celia.

“Is that fellow dead, Cha?” she asked anxiously.

“No, dear, only stunned,” Charlie replied comfortingly, but it was he who felt stunned. He knew he had a ripe and subtle intelligence to deal with. Then he cursed softly because he heard two cyclists talking as they pushed their bikes up the hill. The jarvey heard them, too, and lay doggo till all the proper questions had been asked. Then he opened his red-rimmed eyes and asked feebly:

“Where am [?”

“In the presence of witnesses,” retorted Charlie, who couldn’t resist it. The jarvey, a small man with a thin mournful face that had the blue glaze of the confirmed alcoholic all over it, looked at him reproachfully. Charlie could smell the whiskey off him from the side of the road.

When they had found a farm-labourer to look after the horse and car, the jarvey, whose name turned out to be Clarke, permitted himself to be driven to hospital, and an over-conscientious medical student decided to detain him for the night, while Charlie went off to report the accident to the guards with a certain sour satisfaction at the thought of the presence of mind that enabled a boozy little man like that to seize on a moment’s opportunity and turn it into a career.

And a career it looked like becoming. The solicitor for the insurance company, an old friend of Charlie’s called Cronin, agreed to defend the case, but this was mainly on Charlie’s account, because Charlie felt about his driving as good women feel about their reputation. You could call Charlie a sex-fiend and he only smiled; you could call him a swindler and he positively chortled; but suggest that he hadn’t taken proper precautions at a corner and you were in danger of losing a friend.

As the weeks went by, the jarvey’s case grew like a masterpiece in the mind of a great artist. It looked as if it would never stop. After months he was still in bed, because, according to himself, he got reelings when he rose.

“Ah, it’s the girl,” said Cronin, a cheerful, noisy little man who was never depressed about anything except the law.

“What has Celia to do with it?” Charlie asked sternly.

“You’ll soon see when they ask you what you were doing with her in the car,” said Cronin gloomily. “I told you to let the case go.”

“But that’s scandalous,” Charlie said hotly. “I’m not the man to do that sort of thing when I’m driving.”

“You’re not, like hell,” said Cronin cynically, leaving Charlie uncertain whether to take it as a compliment or not.

Altogether it was a shocking experience for Charlie. He was a man of eager temperament, not the sort to have a thing like that hanging over him for months, and he had the illusion, common to eager men, that all he had to do to speed it up was to call regularly on Cronin, whose office was in a little lane off Dame Street, a sunless hole where Charlie could not imagine any prosperous professional man choosing to work. Usually he had to wait for half an hour in the outer office with secretaries as unattractive as the room, and passed the time in trying to sell them his version of the accident. When finally he was admitted and learned that nothing had happened, he burst into a long tirade to which Cronin listened, sitting back in his chair balancing a pencil and looking bored and depressed. Charlie could not stop trying to sell you things, and again he tried to sell Cronin the scandalous story of the drunken jarvey, and the idea that he should bring a counter-suit against the jarvey, but he was beginning to see that you couldn’t sell a lawyer a safety-pin even if his braces had burst.

“You don’t understand these things, Charlie,” Cronin said wearily, leaning farther back in his chair and playing patiently with his pencil. “Linnane isn’t going to do anything like that. This is a jury case, and juries are trickier than judges, and judges are trickier than the devil. You’re a fine-looking, well-dressed man, and, by your own account, this jarvey is a shrimp. Now, what happens if you get a jury of shrimps is that they’ll decide the poor shrimp in the box is entitled to compensation for life from the insurance company. They can damn well afford it. If you were a shrimp you’d feel the same. Forget about the booze!”

By the time the case came up for hearing, Charlie was feeling a wreck. For two nights he hadn’t slept, going carefully over all the points on which the other side might try to trap him, and all the sins of his past life that they might resurrect against him. Counsel for the jarvey was an old acquaintance of Celia’s called Michael Dunne, and Charlie hoped that on this account he might show some consideration. On the other hand, if he decided not to do so, he would know more about Charlie than was desirable. It was a bad business. He went to court with Celia, feeling like death, and saying in a dull voice that he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to drive again. It would hang over him for the rest of his days, and it was blackmail, and everyone knew it was blackmail, but the state permitted it, and the lawyers encouraged it. Celia said nothing at all. She thought it would have been cheaper to buy off the jarvey for a few pounds. She was going to a dance that night with another man. She had asked Charlie to bring her, but he had refused. He even thought it heartless of her, considering that he was a man with no future. And there at the other end of the seat from him was the jarvey who had blasted his career, looking sick and resigned, his bowler hat on the seat beside him.

Charlie leant forward over the seat ahead of him as he concentrated on the first case, and his depression grew because he didn’t understand a word of it. The judge was an oldish man with pink cheeks and white hair. He seemed to be deaf, and irritated by everybody. Then the jarvey’s case was called, and Michael Dunne rose. He was a tall, ascetic-looking man with a neat black moustache and big dark glasses. To his alarm, Charlie noticed that no considerations of friendship seemed to restrain him in the remarks he made.

The jarvey himself was called and went slowly up the courtroom, looking as though he might drop dead at any moment. He answered questions in an ailing voice that was barely audible from the jury-box. He had the jarvey’s technique of plausibility, and treated the court as if it were a party of American tourists he was taking on a conducted tour of the Lakes of Killarney. He pointed to the places where he felt the pains, as though they were of historic importance. As for reward, he indicated that he was an unworldly little man with no notion of the value of money, and he left it entirely to the natural generosity of his fares. Charlie began to realize that Cronin and Linnane had known their own business. He recognized the technique and despised it. It was the technique of the poor mouth.

Fortunately, it became obvious after a quarter of an hour that the judge thought he was trying another case and was confusing the jarvey with a truck-driver who had been hit by a railway wagon. Michael Dunne in his attempt at getting his Lordship on to the right track went into convulsions of deference, almost suggesting that there wasn’t really much difference between a jaunting-car and a truck, but the judge wasn’t having any. He had been insulted, and he was going to take it out on somebody. He got down behind his bench as though he were taking up a firing position from which to decimate the court.

“I’d be very pleased if Counsel would realize that I still have my wits about me,” he snapped.

“I beg your Lordship’s pardon,” said Dunne. “I wasn’t suggesting for an instant—”

“And, though I may not be quite as young as Counsel, I still know the difference between a truck and a jaunting-car,” said the judge, and he still continued to make comments which ignored witness and counsel till the poor jarvey’s pose was completely broken down and he was yelling. The atmosphere of the conducted tour had been completely dissipated.

That did the trick. Charlie had been growing more and more disgusted, more and more terrified, as his own turn drew nearer. Then as he strolled slowly up the courtroom to the witness stand he had a sudden moment of revelation and joy. He recited the oath in a thrilling voice that made it perfectly clear that here at least was a man who knew the meaning of words. The judge glanced at him with the air of a child who sees a new toy. Charlie bowed very low to the judge, who was so astonished that he bowed back; then he bowed—not quite so low—to the jury, gave them a winning smile, and sat down, crossing his legs. In that moment of revelation he had seen that the wretched occupants of the court were distracted with boredom, and he knew that the only cure for boredom was to buy something. The whole country was mad with boredom because it had been brought up to count every penny. To express your faith in life it was necessary to buy a stake in the future.

So Charlie proceeded to sell the jury the story which no lawyer would buy. He took Linnane’s questions for what they should have been rather than what they were, and disposed of them as though they were no more than the promptings of a good listener. He demonstrated exactly how the supposed accident had occurred, using his hands, his feet, and his magnificent voice, till even the judge turned into a possible customer. He threw in amusing little side-swipes at the County Council and the condition of the roads, at the habits of Irish motorists, and—completely ignoring Cronin’s warning—at the jarvey’s drunkenness as well. Dunne was on his feet at once, protesting, but the judge had still not forgiven him his unmannerly correction and snubbed him. He said that Charlie struck him as an honest and observant witness who told his story in a straightforward and, above all, audible way.

Even when Dunne got up to cross-examine, Charlie did not feel in the least rattled. On the contrary. He no longer saw Dunne as an inquisitor with subtle devices for forcing him to reveal the secrets of his past life, but as a wrecker, a man without confidence, the sort of small-town expert who sneers at even the finest office furniture. Charlie put on the air of melancholy suitable to such a mean-spirited wretch. Dunne, who had a trick of looking away as though in search of inspiration, tried to suggest to Charlie that he was speaking from depths of meditation that no one had ever reached.

“Mr. Ford,” he said, looking at Charlie contemptuously over the big horn-rimmed spectacles, “you ventured to suggest that my client was under the influence of liquor on the night in question. Now, before we go any further, perhaps you wouldn’t mind enlightening the court as to where you and your lady friend were coming from?”

“Not in the least,” Charlie replied sweetly. “We were coming from the Red Cow.”

“The Red Cow?” repeated Dunne, who was under the illusion that to look at the ceiling and repeat a name as though he had never heard it before was a good way of making it seem significant. “Would I be correct in assuming that the Red Cow is a hostelry?”

“You’d hardly be correct in assuming it, Mr. Dunne,” Charlie replied with quiet amusement. “Assumptions are made about things of which we have no direct knowledge.”

There was a chuckle from the jury-box at this, and Dunne grew red and went on in a hurry.

“And did you have some—um—refreshment there?”

“Yes, sir,” Charlie said meekly. “That is generally my purpose in going to a bar.”

Dunne pointed at the judge.

“Tell my lord and the jury how many drinks you had.”

“Three,” Charlie said steadily. “You see, Mr. Dunne, it was a very hot night, and I’d been driving for a good part of the day, so I was rather thirsty.”

“And you ask the court to believe that after three drinks—on a very hot night—when you’d been driving for a good part of the day, as you’ve admitted—you were still capable of driving a car properly?”

“I ask the court to believe that if I wasn’t capable of driving properly, I wouldn’t be driving at all,” said Charlie sternly.

“The guards made no test to ascertain if you were capable of driving?”

“I presume the guards are aware that there is no test known to science that will prove the existence of lemonade in the system,” replied Charlie.

Of course, Charlie didn’t know whether there was or not, nor was there much danger of his being examined about it if there was. For several of the jurymen laughed outright, and even the judge gave a smile of glee. His own style of wit was rather like that.

“You mean you drink nothing but lemonade?” asked Dunne, who was beginning to lose his temper, and with good reason, for it was not often that he had a witness like Charlie to deal with. But Charlie was beginning to get tired of him; he knew that if he was to complete his sale he must crush this knowing customer, so he paused a moment before replying.

“I mean nothing of the sort, Mr. Dunne,” he said gravely. “I mean that a man who drinks anything stronger when he’s in charge of a car is a dangerous lunatic.”

“An exceedingly proper remark,” said the judge, nodding four times and knocking his bench in approval. Nothing goes down so well in a court of law as a well-aimed platitude.

Dunne had given up hope of shaking this unruly man, and contented himself with a few perfunctory questions intended to suggest that Charlie and Celia had been too busy in the car to pay attention to the road.

“This young lady and you are friends?” asked Dunne.

“No, Mr. Dunne,” Charlie said gently. “Just engaged.”

“And you hadn’t your arm about her shoulder?”

“Ah, no, Mr. Dunne,” Charlie said wearily. “You and I ought to be beyond the adolescent stage.”

This produced a real roar, and after a few further efforts Dunne sat down and pretended to be absorbed in his papers. Charlie bowed again to the judge and jury, and returned to his seat with the transfigured air of a man who has been to the altar. Cronin winked at him, but Charlie failed to return the wink. Instead he smiled wanly and, closing his eyes, covered them with his fat hand. Charlie, of course, knew as well as Cronin did that the case was in the bag. Charlie, the universal salesman, had sold his story to the jury, and nothing short of an earthquake would break the spell he had woven about them.

But then it was Celia’s turn, and Charlie’s heart sank when he saw that she had learned nothing from his example. Instead of taking the oath as though she had been waiting months for it, she had it extracted from her word by word like teeth. She looked beautiful and angry and, what was worse, alarmed, and Charlie knew within a few moments that her unhappiness was spreading to the courtroom. She replied to Linnane’s friendly questions as though he were cross-examining her, and when Dunne rose she gave him a positive scowl. Charlie hoped that as an old friend of the family he might show some sense of decency, but he was still smarting under Charlie’s thrusts.

“And were you also drinking lemonade, Miss Halligan?” he asked with his shoulders hunched while he jingled the coins in his trousers pockets.

“Ah, I was not,” she snapped with a shrug. “I wouldn’t touch the blooming stuff.”

Charlie had noticed the impressive effect of a platitude; now he noticed the effect of a simple statement of prejudice. A shudder seemed to go through the court.

“Tell the court what you were drinking.”

“I was drinking whiskey, of course,” she replied in a shrill, shocked tone. “What do you think?”

Dunne bent forward and looked at her satanically over his glasses.

“I have no opinion, Miss Halligan,” he said reprovingly. “I merely wish to find out if, at the time of this accident, you weren’t a little—elevated, shall we say?”

“Is it after three small ones?” she asked incredulously. “What do you take me for?”

At this point Linnane tried to go to Celia’s rescue, but the judge had taken an instant dislike to her. The judge lived in hope that one of these days he would find one of those modern girls before him, so that he could say what he really thought about them. He knew it would make headlines, and, like most judges, he longed for headlines. He had a strong suspicion that Celia was a modern young woman. He told her that this was a court of law, and he would not permit her to reply to counsel in that impudent fashion, at which Celia, who had no intention of being impudent, looked mutinous as well as angry. He held the case up for several minutes to glower at her, waiting for a back-answer that would give the opportunity he wanted. Dunne knew that the signals were set at “clear” for him, and, though Linnane again intervened, the judge snorted that the witness appeared to be one of those modern young women, so she probably expected to be dealt with in a modern way.

Charlie covered his face entirely. To give him his due, he went through agonies. As Dunne framed each question, he answered it in his own mind, tossing off the awkward ones with light feminine banter, lingering gravely over those that raised moral issues, smiling, frowning, and even prepared to shed a tear behind his hands. And on top of the ideal reply came the real one, all in one tone, bewildered and maddened, and sounding as though it came from the lips of some international courtesan. Dunne made her admit that she was often at the Red Cow, that she had gone there for years with different men, that she had been kissing Charlie in the car before they started; and he almost trapped her into saying that she was in no state to describe what had happened. “Salesmanship!” Charlie thought despairingly. “That’s what the girl lacks. Salesmanship!”

She came down off the stand sulky and furious. Charlie rose and stepped out into the passageway with an angelic, welcoming smile to let her into the seat beside him, and tried to put his hand comfortingly on hers, but she pushed past him as though he were to blame for everything and stalked out of the court. He had to wait for the verdict, and, though it represented victory for him, it brought him no satisfaction. It even left him wondering why he had gone to all that trouble instead of allowing the insurance company to buy off the jarvey.

Next morning in town he ran into a gossipy woman who had heard all about the case and wanted to talk of it.

“And I saw Celia at the dance last night,” she went on joyously. “And I’ll give you three guesses who she was dancing with.”

“Who, Babe?” asked Charlie, kidding her on.

“Michael Dunne!”

“Dunne?” Charlie asked incredulously. “Are you sure, Babe?”

“Sure, I saw her, I tell you. He went up and talked to her, and they were laughing and joking, and the next thing was I saw them dancing. Now, what do you make of that?”

“I don’t know what to make of it, Babe,” Charlie said, shaking his head gravely. “I’d hardly have expected it of her.”

But Celia gave him no satisfaction at all. She seemed surprised and irritated by his attitude.

“But why wouldn’t I dance with him?” she asked. “Sure, he only did what he was paid for, the same as anyone else. He’d do the same thing to his own mother. Did you ever know a lawyer that wouldn’t?”

But, reasonable as she made it sound, it carried no conviction to Charlie. Reason had never yet made a woman friendly to a man she had cause to dislike. Could it be that she hadn’t really resented Dunne’s tone? That she might even have enjoyed it?

He was still more upset when she returned the ring and told him she was marrying Dunne. Charlie was a rational man, and, like all rational men, took the irrational hard. It wasn’t only the loss of Celia that hurt him, though that was bad enough; it wasn’t even the unfairness of her going to the Red Cow with Dunne, as he saw her do with his own eyes. It was the unreasonableness of it all. He took to the drink, and for months it looked as if he would never be himself again. Woebegone and haggard, he went over every detail of it with his friends a hundred times. But gradually, as he repeated it, he began to realize that it was an excellent story, a story you could sell to prospective customers. “Did I ever tell you,” he would ask with a wistful smile, “how I won the case and lost the girl?”

Suddenly, Charlie was himself again. Art had triumphed over Nature. It was the old story—“Out of my great sorrows I made little songs.”

(1956)
Source: Domestic Relations, 1957