The Broken Penny

by Julian Symons

  ‘None whatever. He needs help, that’s all. Are you going to withhold it from him?’ The whole great head was thrust forward menacingly.

  From the doorway Latterley began to chortle. ‘You’ve done it, Chief, you’ve done it.’

  ‘Be quiet.’ There was a look of anger on Sir Alfred’s face. The look changed slowly to a smile as he saw Garden’s expression. He came forward with hands outstretched to clasp Garden’s shoulders: ‘You’ll do it. I knew you would, and I know you’ll do it well. You don’t say much, but I’ll lay it’s a good man that can shift you when you’ve made up your mind.’ The hands tightened on Garden’s shoulders, the great face, magnificent in its seriousness and power, was inches away from him. At the doorway Latterley wore his characteristic smile.

  Chapter Three

  ‘So it’s a holiday you’re taking,’ said little Mr Goldblatt. ‘I got to find myself another night watchman, that’s what you’re telling me. I tell you what now, let me make a guess, is it money you’re interested in?’ Garden shook his head. Mr Goldblatt took no notice but went on talking, peering sharply at Garden now and then through his gold-rimmed spectacles.

  ‘If it’s money, if you’re telling me you can’t live on what I pay you–’

  ‘I can live on it,’ Garden said. ‘Just.’ They were talking in the office next door to the night watchman’s room in Goldblatt’s Fur Repositories, near the Elephant and Castle.

  ‘I know, I know, don’t tell me. You look at all the lovely furs coming in here, you look at Goldblatt who’s got all the money in the world, Goldblatt who’s getting fat because he eats so good because he’s got so much money and can’t find any other way to spend it, and you say to yourself, “Garden, I’m underpaid”. Ain’t I right now, ain’t it a pistol you’re holding at poor old Goldblatt’s head to make him put up his hands?’ And here Mr Goldblatt did in fact put up his hands.

  Garden began to laugh. ‘No, it’s not money, though it’s true enough you’ll never get another honest night watchman for the money you’re paying me.’

  ‘Don’t I know it,’ Mr Goldblatt said disarmingly. ‘I tell you what I’m going to do with you. From today it’s another pound a week, how’s that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And I pay your insurance stamp, the whole of it. That ain’t legal, mind, but I do it.’

  ‘No, it’s no good.’

  ‘And two weeks’ holiday I pay for,’ said Mr Goldblatt in desperation. ‘You think yourself hard done by you don’t have a holiday in three years, well I ain’t had one in ten years. I don’t complain. But you want a holiday. All right, I pay for it, two weeks. What more do you want?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Garden was laughing again. ‘But I tell you it’s no good. There are some things I’ve got to settle up, and I don’t know how long they’ll take.’

  ‘Oh, ah, things to settle up, that’s different. Family affairs, eh?’

  ‘Not family affairs.’

  ‘Personal is it, a girl you’ve been hiding from me? Ah, before I had my ulcer, believe me I was a boy for the girls.’

  ‘No, it’s not a girl.’

  ‘Pity. A good-looking boy like you should have a girl.’ Suddenly Mr Goldblatt’s head nodded up and down in horror. ‘I know you’re a bit of a politician. Don’t get telling me it’s politics you’re going in for.’

  ‘In a sort of a way, yes.’

  ‘You’re not standing for Parliament.’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘Thank you for that. But politics now, it’ll never do.’ Mr Goldblatt, a second generation Polish Jew who was a pillar of his local Conservative Association, frequently indulged himself in long political arguments with Garden. ‘Setting the poor against the rich is it, burning down respectable people’s houses, turning the old palaces into rest homes, home-made bombs to blow up the banks – eh, eh.’ Mr Goldblatt clasped his stomach with his hands, as though in pain.

  ‘Nothing like that.’

  ‘Believe an old man, it’s always like that. However it begins, it always ends like that when you say politics like you say it. And it never does any good in this world. I tell you what now, you collect all the money in the world together and divide it all equal, weigh it out with scales you can, and in ten years you know what happens? The same people have got all the money again and the poor ones are starving. It’s a sad thing, my boy, but you know what the old song says – the rich get richer and the poor get children, and that’s the way of the world.’

  ‘Not for ever.’ Garden got up to go. ‘Good-bye, Mr Goldblatt.’

  ‘Good-bye, good-bye. And believe an old man, if it’s politics you’re going in for, it’ll do no good to anybody in this world.’

  Chapter Four

  Garden walked into a big white office building, took the lift to the third floor, went twenty yards along a corridor and stopped outside a door with an opaque glass panel. Words on the panel in fresh black lettering said: THE NEAR-EASTERN, EUROPEAN AND BRITISH GENERAL SECURITY COMPANY LIMITED. Below them, in smaller black lettering, appeared the name COLONEL CHESNEY HUNT. Garden opened the door and stepped into a small passage where another door faced him. He pressed a bell which said PLEASE RING. A small wooden panel just by the door shot open, a woman’s head appeared for a moment, fair and small, the face rouged and doll-like. The Cupid’s-bow mouth also opened and shut like the mouth of a ventriloquist’s doll. ‘Mr Garden? Come in.’

  The room was small and warm. There was a window which looked down to the street, and another door with an opaque glass panel and gold lettering, which said this time COLONEL CHESNEY HUNT, DSO. There were four new steel filing cabinets. There was a new desk on which stood a typewriter and small telephone switchboard. The little woman who had opened the panel sat at this desk in a tip-back typist’s chair, and smiled. ‘My name’s Fanny Bone.’ Her hair was bleached almost white, and drawn back to show very white ears. Rouge had created a patch about the size of a crown piece on each of her cheekbones. Her lips and fingernails were the same colour red.

  Garden sat down.

  ‘You’re coming to work with us, isn’t that so?’ Miss Bone fluttered her eyes at him, and then slowly cast her gaze down to the desk.

  ‘I don’t know about that. I have an appointment with Colonel Hunt.’ Garden eyed her curiously. Miss Bone was hardly the kind of secretary that he expected to find in an organisation used by the Minister and Latterley.

  ‘Oh, he wants you, no doubt about that.’ Miss Bone pressed down a switch on the board in front of her, and sang rather than said: ‘Mr Garden is here, Sir.’ She said to Garden. ‘He won’t keep you a moment.’ Then she got up and made a journey across the office to one of the steel files, brushing past him as she did so, skirts almost touching his trousered knee, hips swinging and buttocks turning in the wind of her own passage. She consulted a paper and made the voyage past him again to her desk, smiling triumphantly when she had returned, rather like a visitor to the zoo who has tempted a wild animal behind bars with no untoward result. ‘The Colonel’s awfully nice, and Mr Bretherton too. You’ll like them.’ This seemed to Garden not to call for any reply. Miss Bone pursed her Cupid’s bow of a mouth in disapproval of such sullen silence, smartly swung in her chair a quarter-turn to the left, took writing paper, carbon sheet and copy paper from the three separate drawers in her desk, and began to type a letter. She had typed only two or three lines when the outside bell rang again. With a brief doll’s glance at Garden, Miss Bone reached toward the panel from which she had inspected him. Before she could open it a man’s voice called, ‘It’s only little me,’ and the handle of the office door was turned.

  The man who came into the room was hardly more than five feet in height, and although he did not walk exceptionally quickly, the high heels that he wore and his black bird’s eyes that did not rest on any person or object for more than a second or two, made all his movements seem both rapid and slightly unpremeditated. He wore a fawn trilby hat which he took off as soon as he entered the room, a dou
ble-breasted fawn overcoat, a well-pressed brown suit discernible under the overcoat and light tan shoes. His small face was round and fresh as a little apple, and when he took off his hat his hair was revealed as lightish in colour and parted exactly in the centre. He carried in his hand a neatly rolled umbrella, which he poked playfully at Miss Bone.

  ‘And how’s Fanny?’ he asked. ‘How’s the delectable Miss Bone? Excuse me.’ He skipped daintily past Garden and walked with little tip-tapping steps over to an umbrella stand. He placed the umbrella in the stand, sat down, pushed his small legs out in front of him, hitched up his brown trousers to show gaily patterned socks and regarded Miss Bone with a cocked, inquisitive eyebrow.

  Miss Bone positively chirruped at him. ‘I’m very well, thank you, Mr Hards. And how have you been keeping? You’re looking very spick and span, I must say.’

  Mr Hards took out a cigarette, placed it between plump cherry-red lips and lighted it with one twitch of a gold lighter. ‘How have I been keeping? Mustn’t grum, my dear, mustn’t grum. Is the boss in?’

  Miss Bone fluttered. ‘He’s engaged. And then he has to see this gentleman. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait.’

  ‘And what better company could I wait in?’ He leaned forward and twinkled at Miss Bone, who twinkled gaily back at him. ‘I tell you what, Fanny. I haven’t taken any pretty girls like you to the pictures lately. No indeed. I’ve thought about you a lot, my dear. Would you believe it?’ Mr Hards twinkled now directly at Garden. ‘Fanny pretends to be afraid to go to the pictures with me. Afraid of a little chap like me. I ask you.’ Now Mr Hards laughed outright, but discreetly, showing near white teeth.

  Miss Bone tossed her doll’s head. ‘It’s not that. I told you that I have a gentleman friend.’

  ‘A dozen, I expect.’ Mr Hards’ eyes twinkled more brightly than ever. ‘One damned man after another, I’ll bet. The more the merrier, and they’re all alike, ain’t they? But I’d lay odds I could name your one particular friend, Fanny my dear, and he’s a very big boy indeed, ain’t that so?’

  ‘Not at all.’ Miss Bone obviously did not care for the turn the conversation was taking. A bell rang, and she put on her earphones. With a sweet doll smile at Garden she said, ‘Colonel Hunt will see you now.’ She got up, opened the door into the Colonel’s office and Garden went inside. Mr Hards twinkled very merrily as Garden passed him, a twinkle of commiseration perhaps that he should have had to wait but when Garden had gone by the expression on Mr Hards’ face changed so that its look of lecherous good nature was replaced by a very stiff and ugly sneer. A friend of Garden’s (if Garden had had any friends) might have been excused for thinking that the little man bore Garden some personal ill-will. But the hypothetical friend would have been wrong, for Mr Hards had never heard of Garden three days before, and had never seen him until that morning.

  In the room a big man with a bald red head got up from behind a light oak desk. ‘How de do, Garden. I’m Hunt.’ They shook hands. ‘Meet our secretary, Bretherton.’ A man about thirty years old, who was sitting in a corner of the room, nodded without rising. He was neatly dressed, his hands were small and white, his face also was white, his lips thin and his complexion bad.

  Colonel Hunt’s hands moved across his bald head frantically searching for patches of missing hair. His face was seamed with deep lines that twitched and changed position as he talked.

  ‘Happy to have you working with us, Garden. Know your job, eh, know your assignment?’

  ‘I had a talk with Latterley, but he left me in the air–’

  ‘No names, no names. Walls have ears, eh, Bretherton?’ The secretary, who was surreptitiously picking his nose, said nothing. Quickly the Colonel ran the long nails of his left hand over his pate, scratching furiously. ‘Expressed myself badly. Know the terms of your job as our agent, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Twenty pounds a week and expenses. We specialise in all forms of foreign insurance – marine, ordinary commercial, other jobs like insurance of livestock going overseas. You’re one of our fully accredited agents. Understand?’ Garden nodded. ‘Sometimes send our agents abroad with an important shipment to keep an eye on it. Got it?’ Very deliberately the Colonel closed one small eye in a wink. Garden winked back. ‘Let’s have a drink.’ From a drawer in his desk the Colonel produced a bottle of whisky with an unfamiliar label on it, and two dirty glasses. He poured a generous measure of whisky into each glass and gestured at Bretherton. ‘No good asking him. Doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, never touches a girl. Must have some real vices, eh? Well, cheerio. No water, no heel taps.’ Garden raised his glass and drank. The liquid ran raw and rasping down his throat, and lighted a fire in his stomach. For a moment he thought he might have been poisoned. Then he saw the Colonel laughing. ‘The real McCoy, eh, Garden? You’re a man after my own heart. Now let’s get down to cases. Your first assignment takes you to Brightsand. Check.’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘There you make contact with our agent, Floy. Check.’

  ‘Your agent?’ Garden raised his head in surprise. ‘Nothing was said to me about anybody else. They only told me to make contact with Arb–’

  ‘No names, no names.’ The Colonel scratched his head vigorously, flaked away dry skin and nipped it from under his nail. ‘Thought you were the only pebble on Brightsand beach, eh?’ He let loose a guffaw in which neither Bretherton nor Garden joined, then wiped a little mist from rheumy eyes. ‘Seriously, Garden, this isn’t a job to be tackled single-handed. And anyway you belong to us from now on. Receive orders, carry them out, leave the headwork to us. Check.’

  Garden stiffened. The hectoring tone and the comic boozy militariness of Colonel Hunt represented what he most disliked in the army. ‘Check.’

  ‘Right. Expect they told you we’d made contact already with your assignment? Good. Name of our man is Floy.’

  ‘Floy?’

  ‘Floy, right. A good fellow, one of the best. Arranged a date with him for you. No good using telephone, you never know who may have it tapped.’ He glared at the hand microphone on his desk. ‘Bloody thing. Now the appointment is – is – what is it, where is it, Bretherton?’

  The little finger of the secretary’s left hand was still ferreting in his nostril. He took it out reluctantly. ‘Do you know Brightsand?’

  ‘Yes.’ These people, obviously, lacked the knowledge of his childhood possessed by Latterley and Sir Alfred.

  ‘You’re to meet Floy at two o’clock by the third seat along from the far end of the pier, on the jetty side. Be looking over the rail. He will ask you for a match. You can discuss the situation with Floy and he will tell you how to proceed.’

  Fiercely the Colonel raked his bare head. ‘Recognition, Bretherton? You don’t know Floy?’ he asked Garden.

  ‘No.’

  Bretherton took a small photograph from a drawer in his desk and gave it to Garden. With a shock of surprise Garden saw the face of Hans Peterson.

  Garden had respected Peterson more than any man he had ever known. He had gone out to Spain an enthusiastic boy, mentally innocent in a way possible only for an Englishman, an inhabitant of a country where politics for a century had been conducted peacefully, and where violent minority movements are not a threat but a joke. To watch Peterson, to listen to Peterson had been an education for him. In Peterson’s detachment there had been practically no desertions, there was never any shortage of volunteers for patrol duty. Yet Peterson exercised no apparent authority over his men, and would argue patiently for five minutes if necessary to get an order obeyed. That, he said, was an essential part of democracy.

  ‘But what will happen when the Fascists are attacking us?’ Garden asked. ‘There will be no time for argument then.’

  Peterson spat reflectively. ‘And then there will be no need for argument.’

  Peterson had been wounded on the assault on Huesca, and then sent back to Barcelona. There he had been arrested at his hotel when he had been about to set off for
the front again. There Garden had seen for the last time his narrow head and humorous face. He had taken the occasion of Garden’s visit to him in prison to enlarge his friend’s political education.

  ‘Lesson number one, Garden. This is the kind of thing that is always happening. We know our opponents, we know what weapons they will use against us. Very likely I shall be shot. Or perhaps I shall be lucky, it does not much matter. What matters is this. Lesson number two. Do not let things like this destroy your faith in man, Garden. Do not think because there is treachery on both sides that the two sides are equal. Do not be angry, or indulge feelings of betrayal. Above all, Garden, do not hate. Believe me, I do not hate anybody.’ Looking into Peterson’s deep-set eyes, seeing the calmness of his bearing, Garden realised that this was true. ‘Now you must go. There is nothing whatever you can do for me or for Spain any more. Go back to England. Good-bye.’ Quite deliberately Peterson turned his long narrow back and walked into the darkness without so much as a wave of the hand.

  That was Peterson, whom Garden had thought dead, who was now suddenly alive.

  In comparison with his recollection this photograph was Peterson seen, as it were, through a mist. The face that had been thin was here almost emaciated, the mouth that had once been wide and generous was drawn together in a tight line with the ends curving downward, the hair had greatly thinned.

  While Garden looked at the photograph the telephone rang. The Colonel picked it up and barked a Hello. Then his voice became muffled, his replies monosyllabic. He gestured to Bretherton who picked up a watch receiver, listened for a few moments and then left the room. The Colonel continued the conversation, in which his share was limited to saying ‘Yes’, ‘No’, and ‘I see’. Finally he said, ‘All right, our man will be down at two,’ and replaced the receiver. He hummed tunelessly beneath his breath. Garden, looking up from the photograph, saw the little bloodshot eyes staring at him. ‘Somebody wanted to know when you were coming. Told them you’d be there at two.’