"Christopher Priest - The Space Machine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Priest Christopher)

"No thank you." I had smoked a pipe for a while, but had desisted for more than a year.

He took a cigarette for himself, and made a display of lighting it. Like me, Dykes was a commercial
representative, and often declared I was too conservative in my outlook. I was usually entertained by his
outgoing manner, in the way one may enjoy the excesses of others.

"I hear there's a lady commercial in tonight," he said casually now, but leaning towards me slightly to
add emphasis to his words. "What do you make of that, Turnbull?"

"You surprise me," I admitted. "Are you sure of that?"

"I came in late this evening," he said, lowering his voice. "Happened to glance at the register. Miss A.
Fitzgibbon of Surrey. Interesting, wouldn't you say?"

Somewhat aloof, as I saw myself to be, from the day-to-day concerns of my fellow commercials, I was
nevertheless interested by what he said. One cannot help but become aware of the lore of one's own
occupation, and it had long been rumoured that women were now being employed as representatives. I
had never before met one myself, but it seemed logical that sales of certain requisites - shall we say of a
toilette or boudoir nature - might be better negotiated by women. Certainly, some of the stores I called at
employed women buyers, so there was no precedent barring their entry into the sales aspect of a
transaction.

I glanced over my shoulder, although I knew that she could not have entered the lounge unnoticed.

"I haven't seen her," I said.

"No, and we're not likely to! Do you think that Mrs Anson would allow a young lady of gentle breeding
into a commercial lounge?"

"So you have seen the lady?" I said.

Dykes shook his head. "She dined with Mrs Anson in the coffee-room. I saw a tray being taken there."
 I said, for my interest was persisting: "Do you suppose that what is said about lady commercials has
any substance?"

"Undoubtedly!" said Dykes at once. "No profession for a gentlewoman."

"But you said that this Miss Fitzgibbon was a gentle-"

"A euphemism, dear chap." He leaned back in his easy chair, and drew pleasurably on his cigarette.

I usually found Dykes an amusing companion, for his ready abandonment of social niceties often meant
that he would regale me with bawdy anecdotes. These I would listen to in envious silence, as most of my
time was passed in enforced solitude. Many commercials were bachelors - perhaps by nature - and the
life of constant movement from one town to another led to an inability to make permanent ties. Thus,
when word that some firms now employed ladies as their representatives was rumoured, the
smoking-rooms and commercial lounges of hotels all over the country had been sibilant with salacious
speculation. Dykes himself had been a source of much information on the subject, but as time passed it
became clear that there was to be no substantial change to our way of life. Indeed, this was the very first
occasion on which I had even been aware that a lady commercial was staying in the same hotel as myself.