The Clothes They Stood Up In by Alan Bennett

great.”
    â€œBut it must be too big for you,” said Mrs. Ransome.
    â€œI know. That’s why it’s so great. And you’ve got tons of scarves. Cleo thinks you’ve got really good taste.”
    â€œCleo?” said Mrs. Ransome.
    â€œMy partner.”
    Then, catching sight of Mr. Ransome by now pop-eyed with fury, Martin shrugged. “After all, it was you who gave us the green light.” He went into the sitting room and came back with a folder, which he laid on the kitchen table.
    â€œJust tell me,” said Mr. Ransome with terrible calmness, “why it is our things are here.”
    So Martin explained. Except it wasn’t really an explanation and when he’d finished they weren’t much further on.
    He had come in to work one morning about three months ago (“February 15,” Mrs. Ransome supplied helpfully) and unlocking the doors had found their flat set out just as it had been in Naseby Mansions and just as they saw it now—carpets down, lights on, warm, a smell of cooking from the kitchen.
    â€œI mean,” said Martin happily,
“home.”
    â€œBut surely,” Mr. Ransome said, “you must have realized that this was, to say the least, unusual?”
    â€œVery unusual,” said Martin. Normally, he said, home contents were containered, crated and sealed, and the container parked in the back lot until required. “We store loads of furniture, but I might go for six months and never see an armchair.”
    â€œBut why were they all dumped here?” said Mrs. Ransome.
    â€œDumped?” said Martin. “You call this dumped? It’s beautiful, it’s a poem.”
    â€œWhy?” said Mr. Ransome.
    â€œWell, when I came in that morning, there was an envelope on the hall table. . . .”
    â€œThat’s where I put the letters normally,” said Mrs. Ransome.
    â€œ. . . an envelope,” said Martin, “containing £3000 in cash to cover storage costs for two months, well clear of our normal charges I can tell you. And,” said Martin, taking a card out of the folder, “there was this.”
    It was a sheet torn from the
Delia Smith Cookery Calendar
with a recipe for the hotpot that Mrs. Ransome had made that afternoon and which she had left in the oven. On the back of it was written: “Leave exactly as it is,” and then in brackets, “but feel free to use.” This was underlined.
    â€œSo, where your overcoat was concerned and the scarves et cetera, I felt,” said Martin, searching for the right word, “I felt that that was my
imprimatur.
” (He had been briefly at the University of Warwick.)
    â€œBut anybody could have written that,” Mr. Ransome said.
    â€œAnd leave £3000 in cash with it?” said Martin. “No fear. Only I did check. Newport Pagnell knew nothing about it. Cardiff. Leeds. I had it run through the computer and they drew a complete blank. So I thought, Well, Martin, the stuff’s here. For the time being it’s paid for, so why not just make yourself at home? So I did. I could have done with the choice of CDs being a bit more eclectic, though. My guess is you’re a Mozart fan?”
    â€œI still think,” said Mr. Ransome testily, “you might have made more inquiries before making so free with our belongings.”
    â€œIt’s not usual, I agree,” said Martin. “Only why should I? I’d no reason to . . . smell a rat?”
    Mr. Ransome took in (and was irritated by) these occasional notes of inappropriate interrogation with which Martin (and the young generally) seemed often to end a sentence. He had heard it in the mouth of the office boy without realizing it had got as far as Aylesbury (“And where are you going now, Foster?” “For my lunch?”). It seemed insolent, though it was hard to say why and it invariably put Mr. Ransome in a bad temper (which was why Foster did it).
    Martin on the