by Maggie Ford
“Oh, she’s at home. Said it best I pop in to see you alone, though why is a mystery to me.”
Not to me, thought Henry, and aloud said, “So to what do I owe this honour?”
Geoffrey smiled up at him. “Don’t be like that, old man. Stiff-necked. I know I’ve not been around as much as I ought this year. But I know you and that William Goodridge chap, your restaurant manager, between you hold the fort well without my interference. You know I never was much cop at business. I muck things up. Always did. Best to stay out of the way, don’t you think?”
He was exuberant. Too exuberant. “So what have you come here for?”
Geoffrey’s smile vanished. He became intense, leaning forward. “Don’t stand there looking down at me, old man. Sit down.”
“I prefer to stand.” He reached and took a cigarette from the box on the table next to which he’d been sitting before Geoffrey had arrived. “Geoffrey, I know this isn’t a social visit. You never come here uninvited without a reason. You only come here when you want something. So say what it is.”
He saw his brother gnaw briefly at his lips, all his pretence of light-heartedness leaving him as Henry had known it would. His lips began to move agitatedly. He even cleared his throat awkwardly, the two-faced bastard, as if he knew nothing of why he could worm money out of his brother whenever he pleased.
“Yes, you’re right, Henry. I’m afraid I told a bit of a lie. Pam is still in Monte Carlo. I’ve got to get back there as soon as I can. The truth is, I’ve got myself into a bit of debt.”
He paused as if expecting Henry to chime in with a reprimand, but when Henry remained silent, he went on.
“You see, I’ve been playing the casino. Been doing well out of it too. But then, I don’t know how, but my luck changed. I mean, when you’re on such a winning streak, a little setback is expected before you climb back on to your winning streak. That’s what I thought, so I carried on. But I began to lose more and more. I was so certain all that luck would come back. It couldn’t just fly out of the window. So I borrowed from a friend. Trouble was I lost that too and he lent me some more. I was sure I’d get it back.”
“How much?” Henry couldn’t keep the coldness from his tone.
“I really thought I’d get it back, be able to pay him back, but what I owe him has just got more and more and he’s turned nasty. I tried to reason with him. I thought he was a friend, but he’s threatening to set a few of his ‘acquaintances’ on me, as he puts it.”
“How much?” Henry demanded again.
“Unless I come up with twenty thousand, plus interest – it goes up by the day – I’m in trouble. Bad trouble. I’ve found out that these acquaintances are a syndicate specialising in lending cash. They say they’ll lend me more to recuperate but first I must pay back what I owe. If I don’t…”
He leaned even further forward in his chair in abject appeal. “You’re the only one I can turn to, Henry. I know you’ll help me out. I don’t want to get myself beaten up. Or worse. Henry, you’ve got to help me.”
Twenty thousand pounds! All Henry could come out with at that moment was to repeat the amount and burst out, “Who d’you think you are – some bloody Rothschild? How in hell’s name can you get rid of a sum like that?”
“It’s easy enough, gambling.”
It might have sounded flippant but Geoffrey’s face registered no flippancy, only devastation, and Henry saw all his resolve not to give him another penny flowing away as though someone had opened a valve.
Geoffrey’s story had made him blink. He too had come up against crooks. A part of being a restauranteur was to be alive to the various rackets that went on. He was used to sartorial members of the underworld thinly disguised as respectable members of society doing business with each other at his tables, he being slapped jovially on the back, being called friend, with a shady deal or two offered him.
“A few he’d accepted over the years, nothing too drastic. Others he had steered clear of. Geoffrey, aware of such people, should have known what he was getting himself mixed up in. If his story was true. That was a thought – could this tale of his be believed?”
“How could you be so bloody stupid?” he hollered at him.
Geoffrey looked as if he were about to cry. “I know. I should have realised. But I’ve known this chap for years on and off. I had no inkling. He’s well to do, respectable. He knows all the right sorts.”
“Of course.”
“I never once imagined… He’s Italian, but lives permanently in the South of France, has a huge mansion, gives vast parties, all the best people, even royalty go—”
“For Christ’s sake, Geoffrey!” Henry’s roar cut him off mid-sentence. “I don’t want to hear how bloody wonderful this friend is – was. How much do you owe together with this interest he’s asking?”
Geoffrey’s voice sounded sheepish. He sank back in his chair. “Three days have gone by and it’s now twenty-one five. Tomorrow it’ll be twenty-two and he says he’s being lenient by not charging any larger per cent.”
Once more he leaned forward. “Henry, I’ve got to have it. I’ve got to get out of this. I promise, after I’ve paid it back, I’ll come home. I’ve learned my lesson. This has terrified me, I can tell you. If you—”
“All right!” Henry stubbed out his cigarette viciously in an already half-overflowing art deco ashtray nearby. Making a rapid calculation, he supposed he’d be able to write out the cheque now and tomorrow get rid of a whole batch of his personal shares. He would not dip into the restaurant any longer. The place wouldn’t be able to take it. Nor was that trust to be touched, and anyway he’d have to consult their sisters before he could do that. He’d still have a decent few shares left, depending on what those sold would bring.
Quickly he got his cheque book from the bureau at which his father had so often sat keeping his accounts straight, frugally, astutely amassing a fortune from what his own father had left him, which he’d made from the restaurant his grandfather had begun as a small oyster bar from a stall. Feeling somewhat as though every stroke of the fountain pen was being torn from him, he made out the cheque, signed it and held it out to his brother.
“Twenty thousand. The rest you can find yourself.”
Geoffrey was sitting very still. He merely held up one hand and took it rather like an automaton, his handsome face rigid. “I won’t have a bean in the world after paying the interest. I was losing around sixty thousand of my own and Pam’s money before borrowing in hope of getting it all back.” Losing their rigidity, his features began suddenly working. “Henry, old boy, I’m destitute. After I’ve paid off this loan, I won’t even be able to afford to get the two of us home.”
Before this last gabble Henry stood gazing at his brother, the pen still in his hand, unable to take in what he was hearing. His mind whirled at the sum confronting him. Eighty thousand pounds. God Almighty! Something snapped in his brain. With a violent wish to kill, he turned and aimed the fountain pen clear across the room with all the strength he had in him. It hit the wall, leaving a trail of ink splattered across the expensive wall-covering as it clattered to the floor.
“Then go to hell! Take the fucking cheque and do what you have to do! I’m not parting with another fucking sou. Damn you and damn her! You and she can do what you bloody like, because I’ve had enough!”
When he turned, Geoffrey was still sitting there, staring at him. “What am I going to do?”
“I don’t care.”
“But you’ve always been ready to help me out of any spot. Why now when I need it more than I’ve ever done in my life? And my life might even depend on it?”
“Because I’m sick and tired of being blackmailed. I can’t even be sure if you’re spinning me a tale. You’ve done that before now. But I tell you this. It’s over. You and Pam can tell whoever you like. I don’t care any more.”
There was a deep pain in his chest making it hard to breathe. It was travelling across his shoulders, down his back
, his arm, even up around his jaw. Damned indigestion. Should have been resting after that heavy Sunday breakfast, but instead he was dealing with this. He felt he’d never hated Geoffrey and Pam as much as he did at this moment.
“Blackmail?” Geoffrey was saying. “What blackmail?”
“Don’t tell me that,” Henry gritted. “You and her had it all nicely sewn up, didn’t you? Well, it’s over.” He screwed his face up with the pain deep in his chest. “You can sing for your supper somewhere else.”
He had to get out of the room, get away from that smarmy look of bewildered innocence.
“Why should I blackmail you, Henry? What about, for God’s sake?”
“Liar! Bloody liar!”
“I say—” At last Geoffrey rose to his feet, but Henry was railing on.
“You know as much as Pam. Don’t tell me she hasn’t told you.” The pains were making cold sweat break out on his forehead. His cheeks had begun to feel strangely flabby. “One more of your bloody lies, Geoffrey? You and she are in it together.”
“In what together?” Geoffrey had come to stand with his face a few inches from his own. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And call me a liar again, I’ll biff you, Henry, right where you stand.”
He got no further. Henry’s own fist shot out and caught him clean on the jaw, knocking him off his feet. Not pausing to see if he had knocked him out, Henry turned and made for the door, flinging it open, practically falling into the hall. Collapsing to his knees, arms hugging his chest against the pain there, he felt himself topple slowly forward on to his face.
Sixteen
Henry was in hospital, his wife at his bedside, his sisters popping in from time to time to check on his condition. They would be sad if their brother died, but since their marriages they had not been that close. Of course, if he were to pass on, there would be a will that could disrupt their lives, but they’d pray it wouldn’t come to that.
Geoffrey too hung around the hospital but for the most part stayed well away from his brother’s private room, consumed by guilt, seeing Henry’s heart attack as his fault.
In the background Mary waited discreetly and gleaned what news she could, mostly from William who, virtually running the restaurant single-handed, was being kept up to date with the sick man’s progress by his wife.
Sick at heart, Mary spent her time isolated from him on her own and, knowing of his wish that their relationship remain secret, not daring to visit and praying to the God that she, like so many people, seldom thought of except when in need. She even felt, superstitiously, that her lack of communion with Him during easier times could even be being punished, Henry taken from her for all her last-minute prayers.
Pam was another kettle of fish. In the South of France she’d received Henry’s cheque with bad grace, cabling her parents to bolster her bank account to pay the interest owing, facing Geoffrey’s creditors alone. She had come home to sulk in Epping and have a furious row with Geoffrey - or at least he had had one with her, furious that she could stoop to blackmailing his own brother.
“And how the hell would you have survived if I hadn’t?” she shot back at him, striding about the house, he following her wherever she went, intent on having this out with her.
“I wouldn’t have been such an fool as to gamble like that,” he yelled back. “Him being so generous. I just thought he—”
She turned on him. “You thought! Did you not ever once query why he was being so generous – over-generous – with you? Did you not ever stop to wonder why he should be that open-handed? Did you not think at times that it was just a little bit unnatural?”
“NO!” was all he said, though he bellowed it out.
“Then you’re a simpleton, Geoffrey.”
“You should have told me what you were up to. You’ve been keeping me in the dark and I can’t forgive you for that. I always thought we were honest with each other.”
“Don’t be an idiot, darling. Would you have gone to him so trustingly if you’d known?”
“He accused me of knowing. I was outraged. I was even going to hit him. And all the time…”
“It’s done now.” Pam shrugged her shoulders. “From now on you will have to learn to draw your horns in, at least until your brother recovers.”
“If he does,” Geoffrey bawled at her. “And if he does, I suppose you’ll expect to continue your little racket. Well, I want no part in it. I never dreamt you could be so damned underhanded. I’ll never forgive you, Pam.”
“Yes you will,” she said simply. “You couldn’t exist without money.”
* * *
To Mary’s intense relief, Grace’s also; maybe the vague disappointment of his sisters, kept to themselves, of course; Geoffrey’s heartfelt gratitude in no longer having to feel guilt, and Pam’s pleasure, Henry began to recover.
He spent weeks in hospital, then convalescing. He should have gone away to sunnier climes to recuperate with winter coming on, but things in Europe remained unstable despite Neville Chamberlain waving his bit of paper at the end of that September signed by himself and the German and Italian dictators, proclaiming Peace In Our Time to the overwhelming relief of the British people. So Henry had spent his convalescence in Eastbourne.
It was there, with the mid-December evening already closing in, that Mary came to see him in answer to a letter he had written her. Making sure his wife and anyone else visiting had left, she crept into the nursing home, telling the sister in charge – who had said that by rights he should now be resting – that she had travelled quite a distance. The nurse relented, saying she would allow her a few brief minutes.
She found him reclining in an easy chair reading a book. Glancing up as she entered a loving smile flooded his face.
“Mary! Darling. You got my letter.”
“Don’t get up,” she urged as he let the book fall to do so. He ignored her concern and came towards her to enfold her in his arms.
“Oh, my darling. I’ve wanted for so long to see you.”
“I didn’t dare come before,” she gasped out.
“I know,” he said as he kissed her, no one here to eavesdrop on them. He looked amazingly well, gladdening her heart.
“Are you all right now?” she asked, breaking away. “No danger?”
“I’m fine now,” he said as she remarked on it. “But I’ve been told I must take life easy – no stress.”
At this he gave a bitter laugh as he sat back down in his chair and she dropped on to a hard chair beside him. “That’s the biggest laugh. It will all go back to what it was. No difference if I know that bitch.”
Mary’s eyes widened, discounting his wife. “You mean Pamela?”
For a moment he hesitated, then appeared to come to a decision by the deep sigh he gave. “She came to see me last week. Says nothing has changed. Said she was so glad I’d come through, otherwise Geoffrey would have been lost without his little hand-outs. Hand-outs! Twenty thousand pounds, a hand-out?”
“Good God!”
“Yes. He lost it gambling. But that wasn’t all.” He quickly related how much Geoffrey had really expected out of him and why, and how he had lost his temper and hit out at Geoffrey, sending him spinning. Then, of course, there had been the heart attack. “Stress. And they say I mustn’t be stressed? I told her that if I had died there’d be no more money. She said, ‘Yes, there is that.’ So calm I could have killed her. I mean, really killed her.”
Mary felt the blood flow through her in a hot surge of hatred for those two, and in a rash need to protect Henry, burst out, “You can’t start giving in to her all over again. When would it ever stop?”
“I told her that. I said I couldn’t go on with it. She was furious, said Grace would hear everything. Your William too.” He heaved another sigh. “To tell you the truth I feel I don’t care. I’m tired, washed up.”
Now Mary felt a different rush of blood, this time of fear, immediately followed by anger, unreasonable after she herself telling him h
e couldn’t go on paying. It was his head on the block if Grace were told, but it would be her marriage as well. Could he who held the key let the door swing wide open and to hell with her well-being, her life? Selfish!
Sharply she pushed away the anger, hearing him say, “It’s easy not to care much about things when you don’t know when something like a heart attack can happen again. Next time it could be fatal.”
This really frightened her. But a stand would finally have to be made. Better to face it and the consquences now than to suffer the stress that this continuous blackmail – one of the most evil of crimes – could cause. In his case it had nearly put an end to his life. She forced herself to be resolute.
“We must be strong. You refused Geoffrey once. That’s a start.”
“And look where it put me – in hospital.”
“But you can’t back-pedal now. You can’t fall into their hands all over again.”
“I’m tired, Mary. Sick of the whole business. But Pamela’s right about no more hand-outs for Geoffrey. If I’d died, Grace would have been the one to inherit most of the business, as my wife, and Hugh as my son. Geoffrey wouldn’t be left out of course. But I don’t think he and Pam would get round Grace as they do me, and she knows it. No, with her it’s plain vindictiveness – she enjoyed doing what she did. She’d tell everyone about you and me just for the pleasure of it. I just want to have done with it.”
He looked suddenly at Mary, holding her with his gaze.
“That’s why I asked you to come – what I wanted to see you about. If I suffer another heart attack, next time could be fatal.”
“No!” She couldn’t help crying it out, but he held up a hand.
“There’s something I need to get sorted out. Forget Pam – though I still live in fear of her one day discovering the truth about Helen, and what I want to say concerns our daughter. Mary, my will is all taken care of. But if Grace does get to hear about you and me, neither she, nor anyone else, not even Geoffrey and Pam, must know Helen is my child. For her sake it goes with me to my grave. Only two others know. My solicitor, who drew up a trust for her and whose profession binds him to secrecy, and William. I have to tell you, Mary, he’s known from the time she was born – before, in fact.”