‘The used scissors are in these cases over here. I don’t know whether you’re interested in anything else? Golden hammers? Silver trowels? Ceremonial switches? Certainly, sir, the switches are along this wall here. How about that big one at the back? It was formerly used by the Duchess of Middlesex to open the new Whuish hydro-electric scheme. What had you in mind exactly, sir . . . ? Computers? Perhaps this one with the gold-plated condensers would be rather suitable. We built it on the premises here for Miss Romaine Roxy to switch on the illuminations at Weston-super-­Mare. Then it was used again for the illuminations at South Shields, with the Lord Lieutenant of Durham officiating, if I remember correctly. It’s seen a bit of life, that switch, sir.

‘As a matter of fact I often think to myself, “If only some of these things could talk, what a tale they’d have to tell!” I mean, take that little hammer with the ivory handle over there, sir. It’s a special lightweight model made for the Dowager Marchioness of Menai, when she was laying the foundation stone of the new gymnasium at her old school. She’s very frail, you know. Or look at that golden spade in the corner. That was used by Lord Frome to plant a memorial oak in the Fellows’ Garden at the Andover Presbyterian Seminary in 1927. He was eighty-four at the time, and he rose from his sick-bed to do it. And within a week, sir, he was – dead.

‘Think of the doors that have been opened with these golden keys, sir! Think of all the cakes these ceremonial swords have cut! Incidentally, sir, if you see anything you would like demonstrated we have a demonstration theatre fully equipped with a foundation stone, a cake, a ship’s prow . . .

‘That, sir? That’s the gold-plated starting-pistol with which Sir Robert Gumble started the Mandated Territories Games in 1936 . . . That’s the silver microphone through which Rock Richmond sang the thousandth song published by the Cathedral Music Publishing Company . . . the silver corkscrew used by General Sir Roderick Talltrouser at the bicentenary of Brown’s Club . . . the silver-gilt penny with which Horace Walpole inaugurated Croydon’s new public lavatories in 1921 . . . the solid gold starting-­handle with which the King of Rumania started the first Austin Seven to be sold in Bucharest . . . the diamond fuse-pin out of the grenade with which Mussolini opened the invasion of Abyssinia . . .’

Haugh was entranced. He ordered the ‘Balmoral’ scissors, a jewelled switch, a silver-gilt trowel, a length of golden chain of unspecified purpose, a golden key, and a gas-fired golden taper with which ex-Princess Beatrice of Swabia once lit a flame of undying remembrance to the cows and sheep which fell gloriously in the municipal abattoir at West Wandsworth.

20

When he was tired and teleological, Goldwasser sometimes believed he could discern a purpose in Nobbs’s existence. It was to keep him, Goldwasser, in his place by counterbalancing the inherent simplicity of his work in the Newspaper Department, compared with that of his colleagues in all the other departments.