by Bill James
But Ralph himself didn’t care for Christmas, although he had nothing against the nativity. He believed it the time when he was most likely to get shot and killed, probably on his own premises, The Monty. He recognized, of course, that his feelings about the festival might seem odd, a paradox. After all, as so many of the members seemed to realize, it should be a season of happiness, goodwill and liquored-up merrymaking, this merrymaking not necessarily causing damage to The Monty or any of its staff or membership. Yet the Christmas period brought Ralph thoughts of violent death. His. Those worries were eternally with him, but at Yule they boomed.
He had to try to be festive, though, or, at least, to seem festive. There was a saying among actors and theatre producers, ‘the show must go on,’ and Ralph applied this brave slogan to the club, and to his own role. The Monty brought responsibilities. Ralph could not shirk them. It was not in his nature to. He was host and seasonal affability, or, apparent affability was required. People in a celebratory state would expect him to be celebratory, too. Although the recession meant a very severe tightening of budget for many families, not all Monty members had suffered an income drop; for some, the glorious, interesting reverse, in fact. The obvious point was that the downturn squeezed businesses as well as ordinary people and a lot of companies had been forced to cut back on hired security personnel, leaving their premises tastily vulnerable.
Because of this, that political phrase ‘the feel-good factor’ was exceptionally robust among Monty members. The state of the British economy impacted positively and encouragingly on the careers of quite a few club regulars. Possibly they’d have an even better Christmas than usual because of the slump, their cash flow in brilliant spate. London clubs, such as The Athenaeum and The Carlton, could never match this. Simply, they seriously lacked memberships ready to balaclava up and jemmy warehouses and stores whose watchman patrols had been overhastily slashed to reduce costs. Some of their members might actually own the kind of business properties now more than usually liable to get done over big because of stupid skimping on guards.
Of course, Ralph wished The Monty didn’t have its crummy special distinction as a depot for villains, and he still hoped to make enormous changes soon. He’d already made a kind of start. For instance, he did his best to stop people automatically rendezvousing at the club for the profits share-out ceremonies after selling stuff to their receivers of acquired goods. That type of fiscal get-together could end in curse-rich yelling and/or multi-participant violence, if someone suspected there’d already been skimming off the top of the ‘overs’, as their loot total was fondly known; exactly the kind of very unpleasant, raucous atmosphere Ralph struggled to exclude from The Monty, thanks very much. A good deal of champagne and rum and blackcurrant might be bought for these distribution sessions, so by barring them Ralph was doing himself out of good business. But put a couple of bottles of champagne plus rum and blacks inside some of these people and you couldn’t be sure how the rest of the evening would turn out. Ralph loathed disorder, whatever the season.
Even when these divvying up occasions went off peacefully, Ralph did not find them acceptable or wholesome. No, no, no. He remembered comic-paper strip cartoons enjoyed as a kid where robbers would be portrayed with a sack on their back marked ‘SWAG’. He hated to have The Monty blatantly associated with swag. It grieved and disgusted him to see piles of twenties and even fifties laid out on a bar-room table in front of four or five smug, gloating members. They’d make a disgraceful, smirking mini-drama out of totting up their cut and of checking for the watermark and special thread in the fifties by holding the notes one by one up to the light to confirm them genuine, not forged. They had no thought of The Monty’s reputation as a social centre, nor of the club’s possible fine, elegant future.
Perhaps, though, Ralph could sympathize a little with their disregard for The Monty’s future because they would be no fucking part of it, the uncultured, mercenary sods, though they wouldn’t know it, not yet. Out, and stay out! Flap your trade fifties about somewhere else. Ralph detested vulgar display. Endlessly he sought decorum, and couldn’t always rely on finding it at the current Monty.
Also, Ember objected to the choice of the Monty for meetings to shortlist forthcoming targets and discuss the details of forced entry methods, muting of alarms systems, CCTV coverage, category of goods to be taken, freighting requirements. But he couldn’t supervise every corner of the club during all its opening hours.
Actually, he had an irritating idea that, despite his well-known disapproval, more, not fewer, income-allotting rituals and planning conferences took place in The Monty now, because of those increased project opportunities. These were sensitive, grab-all folk whose instincts or genes told them conditions wouldn’t always be so splendidly bonny, and they should seize the day, meaning, mainly, the night.
Ralph thought he could stay seated at his desk reminiscing for another few minutes, and then he’d help the bar staff serve drinks. He didn’t mind ‘mucking in’, as he called it. He regarded himself as a ‘hands-on’ licensee – another of Ralph’s personal phrases – not someone who stayed detached and aloof. Ralph abhorred snobbery along with vulgarity and a failure of decorum. Yes, he regarded many of those he would one day kick out as gutter filth. But this was only because they were gutter filth and any other way of regarding them would be evasive and false. And ‘hands-on’ as regards his work among the club staff had no groping overtone when he mucked in enthusiastically and graciously with female employees. Ralph found all that droit de seigneur stuff – entitlement of the master to access in-house girls – ignoble and unnecessary for someone like himself, rather hounded by opportunities.
Margaret would look in a little later and she and Ralph could have a ploughman’s lunch. He liked the sound of that – ‘ploughman’s lunch’. It suggested tradition and fundamental, honest quality, the kind of attributes he sought for The Monty. Margaret didn’t often come to the club these days – possibly saw it as slightly uncouth, maybe massively uncouth – but she was shopping for Christmas presents this morning and would need a break before going to collect the children from ski lessons at the artificial slope.
Margaret, yes. At the time of his supplementary gawp trip in the Volvo to Mondial-Trave during the early PU days she and he were living near King’s Cross station in London, not a bad district, and had two daughters, Venetia and Fay. The family remained the same. She didn’t know then the kind of career he was starting – hoping to start – with Pasque Uno and Gladhand. There’d been no need for a full prospectus right away. When she’d asked he’d said, ‘Marketing’, which, to a degree, was true. He realized she knew, and/or guessed a good deal more about his businesses now, of course. She put up with them. He thought this was probably how she’d describe her attitude if they ever spoke frankly about it. They didn’t. She’d see there was a household to be financed, daughters to be privately educated, ski-tripped and ponied, a country house, ‘Low Pastures’, to be heated, lit and kept up to standard.
Plainly, she’d had relationships before Ralph, but he’d prided himself on not being the sort to get nosy, prudish and unforgiving about that, and he’d felt totally sure she was spruce, although, clearly, you could never tell what previous men had brought to bed with them from other heartfelt, ardent connections. This might put the potential infection range on to infinity. And infinity added up to one hell of a number. Ralph had believed then, and believed now, that a vast amount of interlocking occurred in the world, making vigilant hygiene essential for both parties. And threesomes or more than three would send the mathematical calculation of risk into millions, even billions. Men travelled abroad to Africa and/or Canada, for instance. There might be imports.
Health was not something you could ask a woman about, though, pre-closeness. That would be hurtful and insulting. Condoms possibly reduced the dangers but made things unspontaneous, and, in any case, might burst. But, of course, he knew now that his decent faith in Margaret, and in the type of partne
rs she had picked prior to Ralph, proved to be wholly and characteristically OK.
He recalled that he would have liked to talk to her immediately after the Mondial-Trave episode about the arrival of Superintendent Davidson, the apparent contact with someone in an apartment, the jotter, and the grim likelihood – certainty – that Pasque Uno or Opal Render contained a well-informed fink who talked prospects and locations to the police; talked so convincingly to the police that Davidson had to come for a renewed dekko. Margaret possessed a good brain. He’d have valued her take on this situation. But he’d decided it was unnecessary to disclose that much to her. How would he have worded it, for God’s sake? He tried to imagine the kind of oh-by-the-way, chatty, conversational approach about a potential massacre:
‘Margaret, could I put a bit of a problem to you? I’d be grateful for fresh thoughts on it. You might have heard of two drugs firms, Pasque Uno and Opal Render. Me, I’m in Pasque Uno – new laddy, at the indentured apprentice stage, but getting ahead, I believe. They spot a true flair for the trade in me, I think. For a while both sides have been preparing for a final, winner-takes-the-lot battle. The victors would secure permanently the Mondial-Trave slice of desirable commercial territory. We in PU have been confident that we could annihilate OR in any gun scrap. For us, it’s nothing like, say, the Battle of the Ardennes in the Second World War, but just a normal, routine instance of healthy business competition; healthy for those who survive, and with all their limbs and faculties, that is, obviously.
‘This morning I went down to take a further gander at the ground because previously I was distracted by abominable slurs from another member of PU, wilfully ignoring what many are kind enough to observe in me – you among them – the young Charlton Heston resemblance. A remarkable fluke ensued. I don’t think I exaggerate. The detective chief of the borough, Superintendent Esther Davidson, was also there, apparently to do her own survey of the area and record her findings in a jotter: that is, the same sort of mission as my own. I watched her from a hairdresser’s porch which gave some concealment but also allowed good vision through two panes of window glass.
‘We have to ask, haven’t we, what are the implications of this visit by her? As I see it – and I’d value your view of my view, yes yours of mine, in a moment, please – as I see it, the implications are:
‘(One): The police know something special is due at Mondial-Trave. The ground needs charting, perhaps re-charting.
‘(Two): This suggests they have an informant in one of the companies, PU or OR.
‘(Three): We can’t tell how much this informant, and, therefore, Davidson, know about what is scheduled for Mondial-Trave, but the informant and she are aware that something is planned for there. She’ll probably decide she must make preparations.
‘(Four): Some of these preparations might already have been undertaken. She appeared to signal a greeting to a contact/contacts, on the fourth floor of an apartment block. This apartment could be regarded as what is known as ‘a vantage point’, and there might be others. A vantage point is a point that offers someone, or more than one, the advantage of a vantage or view.
‘(Five): We might ask who is/who are this contact/these contacts?
‘(Six): The fourth-floor apartments have a wide vision field. I think an intelligent assumption as to its occupants – temporary, ad hoc occupants – would be that he or she or they is/are a camera crew conducting a continuous snoop on one major section of Mondial-Trave.
‘(Seven): It would also be an intelligent assumption to expect there are other camera positions covering the rest of Mondial-Trave.
‘(Eight): She might know from her informant, or deduce from her police experience and police intuition, that what is to happen at Mondial-Trave is a turf shoot-out. Her jotter activity – words and/or sketches – could be to do with noting possible battleground features and their potential use.
‘(Nine): If this is so, she will arrange for a tooled-up, sizeable police group to be present, probably concealed, ready to blast PU and OR, ostensibly for putting uninvolved citizens at risk through gunfire on the streets, but, really, because it’s a sweet chance to annihilate the two companies, as if in a praiseworthy operation to protect the public.
‘(Ten): Instead of a one-to-one confrontation of the two firms, there will be a third party presence, a police contingent including marksmen, markswomen, better trained than any of us, possibly better armed, and numerically superior to the units from both firms added together.
‘Now, Margaret, you will ask – and are absolutely entitled to ask – “What, then, is the problem – the central, core problem – that you wish me to comment on, Ralph, dear?” My answer is easily put, Margaret: do I tell the head of PU, Dale Hoskins, what I have seen and what I suspect? Ah, but I can tell you are surprised. You feel, do you, that there is no problem here? You consider it obvious that I must tell Dale and colleagues. You may say that my discoveries have changed the whole nature of the Mondial-Trave situation and that Dale Hoskins and the rest of PU will be deeply thankful for my individual enterprise and tactical skills, such as spotting the suitability as a nook of the hairdresser’s porch.
‘You may well explain: “Your intervention, Ralph, will save lives, possibly including your own, but also those of PU members in general. It’s true your brilliant coup will most likely also save Opal Render lives, which you might regard as a hugely unfortunate snag. If, because of what you have revealed, Dale Hoskins decides to abandon the Mondial-Trave project, there will be no street fight and the police party will have no cause, no pretext, for using their weapons on the Opal Render party, suppose they turned up, ready to do battle, but unaware that PU won’t show.
‘“OR will have committed no offence simply by arriving ready for a shoot-out, and so the superintendent cannot give her unit the order to attack.” You’ll say, Margaret, that this is admittedly a drawback because none of the opposition will get killed or even profoundly maimed, but there will surely be further opportunities to stage the decisive challenge.”’
But, supposing that little chat had taken place, Ralph realized he would have had to make certain points in response.
‘Thank you, Margaret. That is a really well thought-out, clear verdict. I have to draw your attention, though, to some special factors:
‘(One): I do not know as a certainty why Davidson was there.
‘(Two): I have no proper evidence regarding her jotter entries.
‘(Three): Nor have I any proper evidence that there is a camera crew in a fourth-floor flat and elsewhere. Now, Margaret, I have at least one enemy in PU who might be glad of a chance to accuse me of panic and alarmism because I am afraid to take part in the planned battle. He might say I have concocted those speculations about Davidson’s reasons for the Mondial-Trave visit so as to get the operation cancelled by Dale Hoskins.
‘(Four): I see a further damaging point that could be exploited by someone hostile to me: my observation of Superintendent Davidson took place only because I behaved in a blatantly maverick, grossly undisciplined fashion. Dale Hoskins had arranged a discreet, motorized inspection of the Mondial-Trave site so as not to give any sign of an impending clash bringing trouble to the district. By going alone and openly to Mondial-Trave, I have shown a wholesale disregard for all the care and subtlety exercised via a pinched Vauxhall. I could be accused of either deliberately or thoughtlessly destroying the prospect of a Mondial-Trave triumph by PU.
(Five): Whichever way my report was received I would not come out of it well. I might not come out of it alive. Again I say, I do not exaggerate. My career with Pasque Uno could be in enormous peril. And my personal safety might be, too.’
More people arrived at the club and Ralph left his seat at the desk and went to act as assistant barman. He enjoyed buckling down occasionally to this kind of basic duty. It entailed one-to-one, face-to-face contact with some of the members, but nothing too intimate or personal. There was a tipple connection, and no more than that. When a cus
tomer gave his or her order Ralph would repeat it back to them before pouring and serving. He wanted to create the illusion that his life was devoted to getting things exactly right for Monty clientele. ‘Two double vodka and tonics with ice, two glasses of red, large, a large Tia Maria, two pints of Abbot Ale. Coming up!’ They were words without any particular magical quality, but Ralph believed people felt honoured to have their wants so graciously and accurately provided by the proprietor himself, Milord Monty, as some affectionately called him.
Tomorrow, he’d get the Christmas tree and decorations in place. There was always anxiety concerning the tree. If Ralph chose a comparatively small, manageable one, say four or five feet high, a member, pissed out of his or her skull on booze one festive night might pull it and all the lights and wiring from the tub and use it as a weapon against someone who’d upset him or her; or against almost anyone, just for the Yule joy of wielding it and knocking people over, like with a halberd or jousting staff. Ralph had discovered that people’s understanding of the word ‘Merry’, as in ‘Merry Christmas’, varied a great deal and, for some, would include whacking bystanders with a conifer.
On the other hand, if Ralph brought in a much taller tree – too big to be swung about like that – someone might do notable harm to other members and/or the furnishings just by pushing it over, maybe jocosely crying out the lumberjack warning, ‘Timber!’ Ralph had thought of stripping the insulating rubber off the fairy-lights wire. Anyone handling the tree would suffer a grand, momentarily paralysing, possibly fatal, shock, like cows touching an electrified fence. But bare wires meant fire risk. Those insurance bandits would say the disaster had been self-induced if The Monty burned down, and refuse to cough. A pity, this: Ralph might have been able to give the club a completely fresh identity if the building were new: a step on the way to catching up on The Athenaeum for class.
As well as this chanciness, Ralph had to take into account that, although Margaret was not keen on the club, she did bring the children to a party for members’ families and Ralph wouldn’t expose them to that sort of blaze hazard. He’d decided to go for the smaller tree type this year. He might cement it into the tub, though if that block were pulled out with the tree it might make it an even more hurtful item. Sometimes, ownership of the club seemed to Ralph not worth the constant difficulties. But these were minor worries compared to the fears for his safety.