Greybeard

All the letters told the same story. The one that hit hardest came from his most valued representative, old Percy Pargetter, who had travelled for the firm since the late forties and worked on sales commission alone before Arthur changed that. Percy was a good representative. He was coming to see Arthur in the morning; meanwhile, he made the situation clear. Nobody was buying his toys; the retailers and the wholesale trade had cut purchases to absolute zero because their outlets were clogged; the customer was not interested in Sofftoys any more. Even his oldest friends in the trade now winced when they saw Percy’s face at the door. Percy thought some dreaded rival must somehow have scooped the market in baby toys.

“But who, who?” Arthur asked himself in anguish. From the trade and financial papers, he knew that conditions in the toy trade were bad generally. That was all he knew. Finance and industry fluctuated between boom and slump, but there was no thing new in that, except that the fluctuations had become more violent in the last six months. He spread the letters back on his desk, shaking his head over them.

He had done all that could be done, at least until Moxan came up with their wretched report. Working with Keith, he had cut production to a minimum, had postponed until nearer Christmas the puppet film series that would advertise Jock Bear on ICV, had cancelled deliveries, had squeezed creditors, had cut overtime, had killed the contract with Straboplastics, had shelved their plans for the Merry Mermaid Rattle. And had dropped the idea of moving house…

He went to a metal file and turned up the last letter from Moxan, checking the name of Gaylord K. Cottage — not, he thought sourly, that it was a name one would normally forget; Cottage was the bright young man who was in charge of Moxan’s investigation into the reasons for Sofftoys’ slump. Arthur looked at his watch. No, it was not late. He might still catch Cottage at his desk.

The phone rang at Moxan’s end for some while. Arthur sat listening to it and to the traffic beyond his office. Finally a grumpy voice came on to the line and asked what Arthur wanted. The vision cleared and a shabby round face peered out at Arthur. It was the night porter; at Arthur’s insistence, he agreed to ring Cottage’s extension number and switch the call through.

Cottage came on the line almost at once. He sat at a desk in an empty room with his jacket off. A hank of hair swung over his brow, his tie sagged under one ear. Arthur hardly took in his appearance beyond realizing that he looked less debonair than on his visits to Sofftoys. When he spoke, to Arthur’s relief, he sounded less the unsympathetic and chromium-plated young man than he had done at their last meeting.

“Your report’s up in Process, Mr. Timberlane,” he said. “The slight delay was beyond our control. I am full of apologies that we didn’t get it to you earlier, but you see — oh God, the thing’s a bloody bust! Look, Mr. Timberlane, I must talk to someone about this. You’d better listen before complete government censorship clamps down.”

He stared keenly at Arthur. Either the colour on the line was bad or he was very pale. Inside his blue serge coat, Arthur felt small and cold. “I’m listening, but I don’t know what you mean about censorship, Mr. Cottage. Of course I feel very sympathetic about your personal troubles, but -”

“Oh, this isn’t just personal, friend, not by a long chalk. Look, let me light a cigarette…” He reached for a packet on his desk, lit up and inhaled, then said, “Look, your firm’s bust, flat, finished! You can’t have it plainer than that, can you? Your fellow director — Keith Barrett, was it? — was all wrong when he said he thought you’d been scooped by another toy firm. We’ve done our research, and you’re all in the same boat, every firm from the biggest to the smallest. The figures prove it. The fact is, nobody’s buying kiddy toys.”

“But these summer season slumps come and -“ Cottage waved a hand in front of him, sneering as he did so.

”Take it from me, this is no seasonal slump, Mr. Timberlane, nothing approaching it. This is something much bigger. I’ve spoken to some of the other chaps here. It isn’t only the toy industry. Know Johnchem, the firm that specializes in a whole range of infant products from prepared strained foods to skin powders? They’re customers of ours. Their figures are worse than yours, and they’ve got ten times your overheads! Radiant, the pram and baby carriage people — they’re in the same boat.”

Arthur shook his head as if doubting the truth of what he heard. Cottage leant forward until his nose blurred out of focus.

“You know what it means,” he said, pressing his cigarette down into an ashtray, billowing smoke from his lungs into the screen. “It means one thing — ever since that accident with the van Allen belts a year ago last May, there haven’t been any kids born at all. You can’t sell because you’ve got no consumers.”