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In the morning, Mr. Verloc left his store with his wife’s brother, which was easily done because he hardly ever had customers, especially late in the afternoon. His store was located in the same building as his house. He sold mainly pictures of naked women, sex books, and a couple of funny French cartoon books. These goods usually attracted either very young or very old men. Both types were quite shy about being seen walking into the store. The old men would wear long coats with the collars turned up in order to hide their faces.The young men, on the other hand, would stand on the sidewalk, trying to seem uninterested while taking secret looks at the pictures in the window. Then,when they knew what they wanted, they would run in, buy it, and run back out.
Mr. Verloc did not care about his store at all. He did not keep his appearance nice and clean for the customers, nor was he very friendly to them. When the broken bell at the top of the door announced that a new customer had arrived, he would walk from his home to the shop and stand silently behind the counter, waiting for the person to buy something expensive and useless.
In the evenings, Mrs. Verloc worked in the store.This often made the customers (all of them being men, of course) quite uncomfortable. However, it was good for business, because people would also buy other things, like pens or envelopes, in order to make it seem like they had not come only to buy dirty pictures.
Most people who came in the evening were not customers, however. Instead of looking around the shop, they would say “hello” to Mrs. Verloc and walk directly to the back of the store and down some stairs. There was only one entrance and exit from the house, and that was through the door of the store.
Mr. Verloc did not often leave his home. He found that everything he needed to do could be done there. Life at home was quite comfortable for him, because his wife took very good care of him.
He also had his wife’s mother around the house. She had once owned an old hotel with a bar on the first floor. It was located in an area that used to be considered very wealthy, but was now less fashionable. She rented rooms to anyone who needed them. Most of her customers were quite poor and less than perfect gentlemen.
Mrs. Verloc’s mother was quite old and had bad legs. In order to keep the business going, Mrs. Verloc had worked in the bar. She was good at the job,for she was beautiful and enjoyed talking with the customers.
Before they were married, Mr. Verloc was a frequent visitor of the hotel. He would leave the hotel late in the evening and return very early in the morning. He always told the young barkeeper that he had just come back from abroad, where he had been doing business. He never made clear what kind of business he had done.
When they got married, Mr. Verloc decided that his mother-in-law’s business would have to be sold so that he and his wife could start their own business. They moved into the home that was described earlier and Mr. Verloc began to spend most of his evenings out. The result was that Winnie hardly ever saw him, and was never taken out for a night on the town, like a good husband would do. When she asked him what kind of work he did, he would only say that it was related to politics. She accepted this and treated his political friends very well when they occasionally came over in the evenings.
When Mr. Verloc’s mother-in-law moved in with her daughter and son-in-law, her health got worse. She could no longer walk at all. Realizing the kind of shop that Mr. Verloc owned, she was a little surprised. However, she accepted it, because she liked him. It made her happy to know that both her daughter and son, Stevie, would be taken care of for the rest of their lives. She was especially worried about Stevie, because he had a disability that would make him like a child for all of his life. Winnie was very close to her brother and planned to always care for him in the future.
Stevie worked as Mr. Verloc’s delivery boy .However, because he found everything on the street so interesting, he would often make mistakes or forget where he was going.
When he was fourteen, a friend of the family gave him a job in his office helping the workers with small tasks. One day, however, he surprised everyone in the company by lighting many fireworks inside the building. The loud noise and smoke frightened many people and caused them to run outside, fearing for their lives. When asked why he had done it, Stevie said that two other boys in the company had upset him. The manager fired him immediately. It was clear that Stevie would not be able to work among the rest of society. Now, he had a room on the first floor of Mr. Verloc’s home, next to his mother’s. When he was not helping his sister with housework, he spent his time drawing circles on a piece of paper with a pencil.