A Conspiracy of Aunts

by Sally Spencer

  ‘ … Mr Paice and his son’s business, Mr Holroyd and his little tart in Bayswater …’ Aunt Sadie recited. ‘Yes, all of it came from me. Why don’t we sit down, Rob?’

  ‘I don’t want to sit down. I’m not even sure I want to be in the same room as you.’

  ‘Please.’

  I sat down. I never could resist her.

  Aunt Sadie sat opposite me, so that our knees were almost touching.

  ‘You know how you feel about bridge?’ she asked.

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘I feel the same way about money. When I was entertaining in France – hell, why not call a spade a spade? – when I was whoring in France, I told myself that when my savings had reached a certain level, I’d have enough. But you can never have enough.’

  ‘And so you’ve sold your shares in Shelton Bourne to Cypher?’

  ‘Not yet. We’re still negotiating. But in the end, he’ll have to come closer to my price – he really has no choice – and then I will sell.’

  ‘Don’t do it,’ I pleaded. ‘Think of all the old people. They trusted us, and because of that, they’ll lose their homes.’

  ‘I know,’ my aunt said softly.

  ‘It’ll break their hearts,’ I pressed on. ‘It will kill some of them – literally – and in a way, they’ll be the lucky ones, because the rest will be condemned to spend their few remaining years in misery.’

  ‘I know,’ Aunt Sadie repeated. ‘I know. I’m very sorry for them.’

  And I really believed she was. I searched desperately for some argument – any argument – with which I might persuade her to change her mind.

  Money to her was what bridge was to me, she’d said. Would I give up bridge if she asked me to? Yes! Without a second’s hesitation!

  ‘If you won’t do it for the old people, then do it for me,’ I said.

  ‘Haven’t you understood a word I’ve been saying?’ Aunt Sadie asked me – and there were tears in her eyes. ‘I’m a gold digger. It’s as simple as that. I love you more than anyone else I’ve ever met, but I can’t keep those shares – not even for you.’

  I couldn’t bear to look at her beautiful, corrupt face any longer. I stood up and rushed into the garden, where we had spent so many happy hours together. The scent of roses filled the air, just as it had done when I first arrived at the cottage, and I could hear the stream trickling through the rock garden.

  ‘Gold digger,’ I said to myself.

  It was rather unfortunate Aunt Sadie had used precisely that term – because it had started me thinking.

  13

  To my great regret, Aunt Sadie died soon after and, not having yet met Rosalyn, I went without a permanent woman in my life for quite a while.

  PART SIX: Grand Slam

  1

  As the make-up artist’s deft hands and light touch worked on my face, I asked myself – for probably the hundredth time – what I was doing there.

  Stupid question, of course. I knew perfectly well why I was there – I was there because Wesley Heatherington-Gore had made the booking.

  ‘I’ve got you a spot on the Cadbury Joyspear show,’ he’d said, a happy, complacent grin filling his face. ‘Clever, aren’t I?’

  ‘Clever?’ I’d repeated, hardly able to believe what he’d just told me. ‘And what am I expected to talk about on the Joyspear show?’

  ‘Bridge, of course.’

  ‘Oh, I see. You think I should use up ten or fifteen minutes of a prime time television show talking about the intricacies and statistical probabilities of a double finesse?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. It’s jolly interesting.’

  ‘It’s jolly interesting to you, Wesley. To the average viewer, who expects to hear movie stars plugging their latest films, and footballers talking about the most exciting matches they’ve played, it will be a complete bore.’

  A puzzled frown had appeared on Wesley’s face.

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ he’d asked.

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Well, then, maybe you could talk about your childhood.’

  Another great idea! I could tell Cadbury Joyspear all about how I arranged for my aunts to die, and maybe – as a bonus – I could have Les Fliques arrest me on air.

  ‘There are many aspects of my childhood I’d rather not discuss,’ I’d said evasively.

  A glum expression had come to Wesley’s face and lingered there for at least half a minute – a personal record for him. Then his customary optimism had reasserted itself.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll think of something,’ he’d said.

  The problem was, sitting there in the make-up chair, I hadn’t thought of anything yet.

  ‘What’s Joyspear really like?’ I asked the girl who was working so diligently on my face.

  ‘He’s lovely,’ she said, ‘a simple, unspoiled Irishman who still can’t quite believe his own success.’

  She sounded as if she was reading a script – and she probably was.

  ‘A simple unspoiled Irishman …’ I repeated.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘... who has a PhD in the development of nineteenth century Transylvanian moral philosophy.’

  The make-up girl froze.

  ‘How did you know that?’ she asked.

  I knew it because I was a professional bridge player – and a professional bridge player never sits down at the table without finding out all he can about his opponents first.

  ‘Help me out here,’ I pleaded.

  ‘I shouldn’t …’

  ‘Don’t send me into battle with a plastic sword.’

  ‘If you weren’t so cute, I wouldn’t be telling you this,’ the girl said, in a whisper. ‘All Cadbury wants out of life is to be adored by his audience. If the audience likes you, then he likes you – because he’ll be getting the reflected glory.’

  ‘And what if the audience doesn’t like me?’ I asked.

  ‘Then he’ll get them on his side by tearing you apart.’

  Great!

  2

  As I stood in the wings, listening to Joyspear interview his first guest – a man who had constructed a working model of Tower Bridge out of dried prunes – my mind inevitably reviewed the chain of events which had led to me having the opportunity to humiliate myself in front of millions of television viewers. And that, of course, meant I was thinking about the first time I met Wesley.

  ****

  It was a warm Thursday afternoon in St-Jean-de-Luz, shortly after I’d made my hurried departure from England. It was not a happy time for me. I owned no more than a suitcase of clothes and the few hundred francs in my pocket, and I considered myself to be on the run. Not, you understand, that I thought Les Fliques, super-cop, could actually prove anything against me, but given the nature of the beast, I had decided it would be wisest to stay well clear of him.

  It was in the casino that Wesley hi-jacked my life and annexed me to his restless spirit. I’d been playing blackjack that afternoon, and having won just enough to enable me to survive for the next few days, I’d cashed in my chips and was heading for the door when I felt the tap on my shoulder.

  ‘Fliques!’ my panicking mind screamed.

  I swung round, and saw Wesley for the first time. He must have been about twenty-five or twenty-six then. He was chubby rather than fat, with a head like a football which was not quite fully inflated and cheeks as round and shining as apples. He had silky, fair hair, and when a lock of it fell over his eyes, which happened often, he would flick his head back as if a wasp had flown up his nose.

  A buffoon? In some ways, perhaps, but there was a depth of experience in his eyes which was fascinating to a boy brought up by a conspiracy of aunts.

  ‘Wesley Heatherington-Gore,’ he said, holding out a podgy hand. ‘I say, are you actually old enough to be in here?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’ I demanded, fingering the passport I’d hir
ed for the afternoon from a perpetual student I’d met earlier.

  ‘No offence meant, old chap,’ Wesley said, flicking back a strand of hair. ‘Just curious – that’s all. I’ve been watching you at the table, and you’re really rather good. Do you, by any chance, play bridge?’

  The magic word!

  ‘Now and again,’ I said cautiously.

  ‘How about a drink?’ he asked. ‘You do drink, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The bar that Wesley had in mind – ‘a place the fishermen use, absolutely charming if a little unhygienic’ – was at the other end of the Promenade de la Plage, and as we walked along, Wesley told me all about himself.

  ‘I received my education – if that’s what you want to call it – at “Donners”,’ he said.

  ‘Donners?’

  ‘Donnington! You must have heard of it.’

  ‘No, I don’t think I have. Is it like Eton?’

  ‘Not quite like Eton, no. I suppose, if you were being strictly accurate, you might say it was only a minor public school, but it was a jolly fine place. Anyway, the Officer Training Corps was run by the chaplain – an awfully bloodthirsty chap – and he was as keen as mustard on me entering the army. He said I’d be a general in no time at all. But there’s no military tradition in our family, and anyway, I had my sights set on Oxford.’

  ‘You went to Oxford University?’

  ‘Well, no, actually. Just missed getting in, or so the Admissions’ Tutor at Oriel told me. But there it is, so I thought to myself that if I couldn’t go to Pater’s old coll, the next best thing was to sit down and write a best-seller.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Not yet. Haven’t even put pen to paper, as a matter of fact. What I have been doing is collecting experiences for it.’

  ‘What kind of experiences?’

  ‘All sorts. I was a deck-chair attendant until the unfortunate incident of The Fat Lady Who Got Her Tits Caught in the Mechanism. I worked in a mortuary for a while, but that was deathly boring. And I once applied to be a mercenary – it sounded less stuffy than the real army – but they said I needed experience killing people somewhere else, first.’

  ‘So what are you doing now?’

  ‘Considering my options … surveying the opportunities …deciding between various short-term career moves.’

  We had reached the bar, which was on the Quai de l’Infante. Wesley seemed to be a regular, and the moment he sat down, the waiter brought him a large anise.

  ‘And a beer for my friend,’ Wesley said in a language which – on a good day – might have been charitably interpreted as vaguely resembling French.

  Wesley took a generous sip of his own drink.

  ‘Filthy muck,’ he pronounced, ‘but if your aim is to alter your brain chemistry, it’s as convenient a reactive agent as any.’ He leaned across the table conspiritorially. ‘You’re wasting your time in the casinos, you know.’

  ‘I did all right today,’ I said defensively.

  ‘Chickenfeed, my dear boy. Why peck around for single grains of corn when there exists the possibility of getting your hands on the whole sack?’

  ‘The whole sack?’

  ‘Croupiers are professionals, and however good you are, it’s never wise to go up against pros. What we’re looking for is someone who thinks he’s professional, but is no more than a gifted amateur.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ I agreed.

  ‘And blackjack is the wrong game, because the mugs find out too quickly which way the wind is blowing. That’s why I asked you about bridge. With bridge, they’ve always got the hope that with a couple of good hands, they’ll re-coup their losses. Never do, of course, but it gives them the incentive to keep losing.’

  ‘Are you saying we could make a living out of it?’ I asked, intrigued.

  ‘Of course we could, dear boy. Easy as pie. But we’ll never find a serious game here. We’ll have to go to Nice or Monte, and mix with the Arabs and Russians.’

  He spoke as if the whole matter were settled – which, in fact, it was. It suited me very well to put more miles between myself and Fliques’ investigation. Besides, there was something irresistible – unstoppable – about Wesley. He was Mr Micawber with a public school accent – as free as a bird, as uninhibited as a puppy. He became my firm friend, and has the distinction of being one of the few people I got close to who didn’t come to an unpleasant end.

  ****

  ‘My next guest tonight is regarded as something of a phenomenon in the bridge world,’ Cadbury Joyspear said. ‘He was the youngest player ever to be awarded the title Grand Master and the youngest ever winner of the European Bridge League Mixed Pairs Championship. So would you please give a warm welcome to Rob Bates!’

  The studio audience, like trained monkeys, applauded thunderously, and I wondered – almost hysterical now – if my legs would ever obey my brain and take me down the steps. If I’d known then what I know now – that as a direct result of appearing on Joyspear, I’d meet the woman who would eventually become my fiancée – I’d have had no trouble moving. In fact, I’d have been though the door and out into the street before Joyspear could say “platitude”.

  The applause was starting to thin, and I was still standing there.

  ‘If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else will, either,’ Mother’s voice said, from somewhere high up in the studio lighting.

  ‘Quite right, Mother,’ I said, and took the first steps on the path which would lead to yet another violent death.

  3

  Cadbury Joyspear shook my hand warmly and vigorously, and offered me a seat on the couch.

  ‘After an introduction like the one I’ve just given you – a real cracker if I say so meself – you’d better be good,’ he said.

  The audience chuckled at his wit.

  I gave him a thin smile. ‘You almost make that sound like a threat, Cadbury,’ I said.

  It was meant to be humorous – a merry quip – but instead I sounded as if I was stranded in a no man’s land between terrified and aggressive.

  ‘A t’reat!’ the Great Man said to his audience. ‘Now have you ever known me to be t’retening?’

  ‘No, Cadbury!’ the rows of white, round faces called back.

  It was not going well.

  ‘Rob and I were talking earlier,’ Joyspear began. He paused, as if he had heard a heckler in his adoring audience. ‘Yes, we were,’ he said emphatically, addressing the imaginary heckler, ‘because contrary to what some of youse up there seem to t’ink, my guests are not complete strangers to me when they walk down the stairs.’

  But I was. I hadn’t spoken to Joyspear at all, only to a spotty junior researcher with a clipboard.

  ‘Now where was I?’ Joyspear asked when the laughter had died down. ‘Oh yes, we were talking about some of the adventures Rob had before he climbed to the pinnacle of the bridge establishment.’ He turned to me. ‘So why don’t you tell us one of your tall tales, Rob?’

  ‘The Russians?’ I asked.

  Joyspear nodded. ‘That’ll do for a start.’

  ‘There were two of them,’ I said. ‘They called themselves Grand Dukes, although they must both have been born long after the Tsar took his trip down to the cellar from which he never returned …’

  ****

  The younger one was called Dimitri, the older Alexei. We had arranged to meet them in the card room of their Monte Carlo hotel.

  ‘I think we would be more comfortable playing in our suite,’ Dimitri said, and though Alexei looked troubled by the suggestion, Wesley said it was a fine idea, and he was sure we’d be much more comfortable there.

  We hustled them gently, settling for simple games when we could have bid slams, and over a couple of hours we built up a fair number of points on our side of the score sheet. As the play progressed, Grand Duke Alexei seemed to be growing more and more concerned – though I didn’t think it was losing
at cards that was bothering him. As for Dimitri, he looked blacker with each hand, and finally began muttering to himself.

  I suppose I should have been able to read the signs, but having only been in the game for a few weeks, I was still a bit green.

  And Wesley – Wesley, who had seduced me into the bridge racket in the first place?

  He didn’t read signs. He didn’t anticipate. His particular genius was for getting us into a scrape and then – hopefully! – finding a way out of it.

  It was when Grand Duke Dimitri picked up his fourth mediocre hand in a row that he lost control.

  ‘By the Black Virgin of Kazan, I swear you are cheating!’ he shouted.

  ‘Not cheats, old chap,’ Wesley said, taking umbrage. ‘Not cheats at all. Just better players.’

  The Russian’s hand disappeared into his pocket, and when it emerged again, it was holding a large pistol.

  ‘Now this is a powerful hand, my friend,’ he said. ‘This is a hand not to be argued with.’

  ‘Please, Dimitri, not again,’ Grand Duke Alexei said.

  Again! The word bounced around in my increasingly panicked brain: “Again” … “again” … “again!”

  ‘They are cheats,’ Grand Duke Dimitri said. ‘And they are probably Jewish Socialists, too. The world would be well rid of scum like them.’

  ‘You cannot keep shooting people,’ Alexei told him.

  Of course he couldn’t! It was wrong to shoot people – especially when one of those people was me!

  ‘They are cheats,’ repeated Dimitri, whose inbred brain seemed incapable of containing more than a single idea at any one time.

  ‘Remember how much it cost us last time you killed someone?’ asked Alexei. ‘We simply cannot afford it, Dimitri.’

  Not a moral argument against murder, then – only a financial one.

  ‘I will pay the price – whatever it is,’ Grand Duke Dimitri said. ‘I will pay it gladly.’

  He’s really going to do it! I thought. He’s going to pull the trigger! We’ll be dead!