Yours Faithfully,
Matthew Coppice
On my way to the Horlickstones my fist was tingling, as if it had been dipped in a tin of iodine. The tube ticket almost dropped from my fingers as I went through the turnstile. I would teach the bastard to get Maria pregnant. And yet, did she really want me to? – I wondered by the time I got out into the sunshine at the other end. Bridgitte had bullied her into the idea, I was sure. In any case, hadn’t I committed far worse actions than Horlickstone? Was I losing my sense of fair play? It was hard to say what drove me on, but, looking back, I’m more than glad that something did.
The trees along the streets smelled fresh, and it felt good to be outside, neither in a car nor in Blaskin’s cluttered flat. Horlickstones’ house was doublefronted and freshly painted, a garden in front and no doubt a bigger one behind with greenhouse and Wendy hut and a rope hanging from a tree with an old Volvo tyre swinging on the end even when there was no breeze.
It was Saturday, so I hoped he would be home, and not on his way to a football match. I hammered the iron knocker. They were too upmarket to have a glockenspiel or Swiss yodel-alarm. I expected to see a new au pair girl, but maybe he had put her up the spout as well, and packed her off home on the Newhaven ferry, because a woman who was obviously the type to be his wife opened up and asked what I wanted. ‘I’ve come to see Mr Horlickstone. They sent me from the office.’
‘You mean Harlaxton, I assume.’
‘That’s right. So I do.’
She had a narrow, delicate, fine-featured face, and would have been young-looking for a woman in her late thirties if it hadn’t been for the wrinkles around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. Nevertheless, she had that combination of worry and good looks that attracted me, though it was hard to know what kind of female would not have got me on the hop. My mother was right when she said I should never go bald.
‘On Saturday?’
‘It’s important.’
She was dark-haired and blue-eyed, but didn’t have much of a figure. Jeffrey had worn her out by his permanent hard-on, and when he’d got tired of her he had worried her to a frazzle by his hanky-panky with secretaries and home helps. I almost turned and walked off without accomplishing what I had called for, not knowing whether I didn’t because I was afraid she would phone the police – suspecting that I’d called to burgle the house but changed my mind on seeing somebody in – or because I really wanted to blat her husband and give her the pleasure of seeing that for once he’d had to pay for one misdemeanour in his life.
‘Why didn’t they phone, I wonder? They’ve never sent for him on Saturday before.’
‘I know. But it’s on fire. Somebody broke in, poured petrol over the art department and set a match to it.’
She went into the house, while I stood with hands in pockets as if prepared to wait all day. But Jeffrey came immediately. He was a stocky man with short fair wavy hair, but rather worn skin, and was dressed in trousers, shirt and carpet slippers. His grey eyes glared at having been disturbed, but I couldn’t tell whether it was from looking through his stamp collection or rumpling the skirts of his latest au pair while she was picking up Galt toys from the Habitat bedroom floor. ‘What’s all this I hear?’
‘I don’t know what your wife told you,’ I said, ‘but I’m here on behalf of Maria de Sousa, your Portuguese skivvy. Remember? I didn’t want to mention it in front of your wife.’
He moved back sharply – to close the door in my face – but I got half inside and held it firm. ‘I want to tell you that she’s pregnant.’
He laughed, legs apart, head back, as if I’d told him the award-winning joke of the Universal Joke Contest. He seemed such a good sort that for a moment I knew I wouldn’t have been there if Bridgitte hadn’t made me promise. ‘Not another!’ His laughter made him so much younger and better looking than when he first came to the door. ‘Oh marvellous! Wonderful! I’m populating half the bloody planet. But you see, it couldn’t have been me, old boy, and if you think so you’ll never prove it. It’s impossible, out of the question.’ His face turned red, and he pushed me, but with a clenched fist. ‘I’ll have no truck with blackmailers.’
It’s always been my belief that if you’re going to do something, then do it when it’s unexpected. Surprise furthers. Shock accomplishes. It’s not often, though, that the perfect opportunity presents itself. Now it did, because there’s often no one more surprised than the bloke who, having taken a poke at you, gets one back. I hit him so that he lost his balance and did a spinning two-step along the hall and knocked an umbrella stand flying. ‘Elizabeth,’ he called, ‘phone the police.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and I’ll tell them why you’re down on the floor. Anybody can get into that sort of scrape with a woman, but you shouldn’t have laughed. Maria’s my sister-in-law. My sister’s married to Maria’s brother. Her whole family are on their way from Portugal to cut you up. I’m in touch with a lawyer, and he’ll write to the big chief of your advertising firm telling him about it. Get the coppers by all means, but you’ve had one fumble too often. When she has the baby it’ll be dumped on your doorstep. Make no mistake about that.’
I was wondering whether to hit him again if he got up, when Frances Malham came out of a room further along the hall. ‘What’s that noise, Uncle Jeffrey?’ Not only was she blessed with the most exquisite intelligence, but she had a superior memory to match: ‘Oh, it’s you!’
Life was too cruel. I’d just hit the favourite uncle of the woman I’d fallen in love with only the night before. I knew she was the girlfriend of the feckless Delphick, but I wasn’t averse to a taste of unrequited love as long as I got there in the end. ‘What are you doing here?’ Her voice was not altogether pleasant, for there was a trace of blood under Jeffrey’s left nostril. ‘What happened?’
His laughter was almost as real as when I had told him about Maria. ‘These damned slippers. I tripped in my hurry to get to the door and banged my snozzle.’ His wink was meant only for me as I helped him up. ‘What did you say you wanted?’
‘I have a message for Miss Malham – for you,’ I said to her. ‘I was in Town this morning, and Ronald Delphick was beaten up by a gang of skinheads. They smashed his panda-wagon, but I managed to fight them off. I got him into a taxi and took him to my father’s flat in Knightsbridge.’
Her lovely cheeks turned pale. ‘Oh my God!’
‘I’ve come to take you to him. He’s not badly hurt.’
‘You are good.’
‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘But he’s asking for you, naturally.’
‘I’ll get my coat.’
Jeffrey came close. ‘Was that true?’
My heart beat faster than when I’d hit him. ‘No, but I had to say something. Maria is pregnant, though. My wife and I are looking after her. She’s all right at the moment, but you’ll have to do something when the kid pops out. As for thinking I’m a blackmailer, you should be ashamed of yourself.’
He came close, his eyes six inches from mine. ‘How did you come to be able to lie so well?’
‘Quick thinking,’ I smiled. ‘Sorry I was over-hasty. That’s another of my faults.’
He rubbed his nose. ‘Faults? It’s a quality very much lacking in the world today. What’s your job?’
‘I’m a writer.’
‘Do you get published?’
‘Yes, but I write under a pseudonym. My father’s Gilbert Blaskin the novelist.’
‘You don’t say.’ He considered for a moment. ‘Have you ever thought of working in advertising?’
‘Occasionally.’ What else could I say?
He reached for a jacket on the coat hook, and took a card out of his wallet. ‘Give me a ring on Monday, and we’ll talk things over.’
Frances came back with her coat, and a leather shoulder bag. ‘Shan’t be long, Uncle Jeffrey. Elizabeth’s in the garden. Peter’s been sick. He’s all right, though. Must have eaten too many sausages at breakfast.’
; I noticed his touch as she passed by, and wondered whether such a desirable medical student niece had been able to keep him off.
It had never ceased to amaze me how quickly one’s prospects could be transformed for the better. Or, now and again, for the worse. But here I was, walking along the tree-lined Saturday morning suburban road with Frances Malham, when on seeing her for the first time the night before I would never have thought it possible, especially with Ettie and Phyllis causing so much trouble over ten paltry quid Delphick had conned out of them.
‘You’re walking too quickly for me.’
I would do anything to hear the sound of her voice, but slowed down, and she came level so that I could see the bloom of her cheeks. ‘I’m glad I found you in.’
‘How did you know I was staying with Uncle Jeffrey?’
‘You gave me the address last night.’
‘That was a friend’s place in Golders Green.’
‘In the press of the moment you must have written this one.’
She wrinkled her mouth, as if such a mistake was the tragedy of the week. ‘Who were those two horrible females at the reading? They certainly took a dislike to Ronald.’
We stood by the main road, hoping to see a taxi. ‘I met them in a pub and they told me about how he had tricked one of them out of ten pounds. It sounded too true to be lies. I met Delphick when I gave him a lift down the Al three months ago. He got money out of me, and does whenever he sees me. He’s incorrigible.’
She sighed, as if he’d bled her dry, or would if she let him. ‘Is he badly hurt?’
It was as much as I could do to keep my hands off her delectable hips as she went into the taxi. ‘Not really. In fact he’s hardly hurt at all. To hear him scream you’d have thought they’d killed him. But he was more concerned for his panda. He’s very English in his love of animals.’
‘Poor Ronald.’
‘He’s a born survivor.’ I thought the joke of her being fond of him had gone far enough. ‘I expect he’s borrowing money from my father right now, though it won’t be easy. He’s Gilbert Blaskin, the novelist.’
Her downcurving lips told me she was annoyed. ‘Can’t you come up with something better than that?’
I realised the folly of taking her to a place inhabited by an old lecher like Blaskin, not to mention by someone like my mother. If they were in the same mood as last night they’d cut her up between them and eat her raw. I hadn’t had time to weigh the ramifications of the lie I’d been forced to blurt out, and it was too late to modify it now. Frances had probably seen photographs of Blaskin, and his features were too distinctive for her to have any doubts when she saw him. You could bet that he wouldn’t hesitate to pull the great writer stunt when he set eyes on someone as lovely as her. And if she was so impressed with a rotten little half-baked poet like Ronald Delphick how would she react to a fully-fledged author like Blaskin, even though he was sixty, bald, drunk, decrepit and, in all probability, poxed up to the eyebrows? ‘I may have my faults,’ I said, ‘but I don’t lie, except in exceptional circumstances, or in a purely professional way, because not only is Gilbert Blaskin my father, but he occasionally throws a bit of writing in my direction.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’
‘I suppose you’re worried about Ronald? You should be. He’s made a lot of enemies. Not that I myself regard him as a bad sort, because he has to live. It might be a good idea, though, if he laid doggo at Doggerel Bank for ten years or so.’
‘Doggerel Bank?’
‘His house in Yorkshire. Didn’t you know?’
She said nothing.
‘It’s a wonderful place. Quite a mansion. He’s got forty acres, though it’s mostly moorland, except for a smallish ornamental garden of five acres. I was up there once. It’s a solid stone-built house looking across the dales, one of the most beautiful views, I should think, in all England. His wife and two kids love it there. At least he said it was his wife, and who was I to disbelieve him?’
Her shoulders were shaking. Time to stitch your lips – now that she was crying. How could she, or anybody, weep over Ronald Delphick? Little did I know. I told her I was sorry. I really was. I’d have done anything to put back those tears. I’d have spread them on bread and eaten them with relish. We were passing Gloucester Road. ‘Shall I tell the taxi to turn round and take you back to Uncle Jeffrey’s?’
‘No. I’ll see Ronald first.’ After a pause, near the Science Museum, she said: ‘Is Gilbert Blaskin your father, or isn’t he?’
‘He is.’
My determination never to lie again was as strong as ever, because I was quickly coming to realise that telling lies never did me any good. On the other hand they rarely caused those I told them to much harm. It seemed hardly worthwhile acquiring the moral taint of being known as a liar. On the other hand, I didn’t know why – if my lying was so ineffectual – I was made to feel so tainted. As I got older my guilt in this respect became worse, especially sitting beside Frances Malham in the back of a taxi, as I took her hand to try and comfort her. If the intention of my recent bout of lying was to put her off a sponging fraud like Ronald Delphick, then they were told in a good cause, but if they were told to draw her in some way closer to me, then the sooner I acted on my determination never to lie again the better. On the other hand (how many hands have I got?) I was so in love with her that any amount of lying seemed justified. These thoughts having gone through my mind, I felt much improved. After helping her out of the taxi, I left the driver a good tip.
Going up in the lift I sensed a new curiosity coming from her regarding my good self. I smiled, and she couldn’t have been too despondent because the beginning of a return smile settled on her lips. ‘I hope he hasn’t done anything silly like doing a bunk,’ I said. ‘He was certainly making himself comfortable when I left.’
I stood aside to let her out first. She may have been a supporter of Women’s Lib, but I was taking no chances. If my politeness struck the wrong note she could have the pleasure of being scornfully indulgent, but if I was impolite when she expected me not to be her contempt might be fundamental. I was canny enough to know, however, that no female who attached herself to Ronald Delphick could have believed in Women’s Lib.
The flat was uninhabited.
‘Ronald!’ I looked in all the rooms, and came back rubbing my hands – almost. ‘Let me take your coat, then we can sit down and have a drink, while we think the situation over.’
‘Perhaps that’s the most sensible idea.’
Could there have been a more wonderfully intelligent-looking young woman with such a Venus de Milo figure? If only she had no arms to match, though I supposed in that case she would have been very dextrous with her feet when it came to defending herself. ‘What would you like?’
‘Vermouth.’
‘Splash?’
‘Please.’
‘Ice and lemon?’
She nodded. ‘I wonder what’s happened to Ronald?’
‘I expect he’s gone off to Hamley’s for another panda, and to Mothercare for a pram.’
She put on a show of concern. ‘You don’t like him, do you?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘put it this way: no.’
She looked around. ‘I still can’t believe this is Gilbert Blaskin’s flat.’
‘Do you like his books?’ I said nonchalantly.
She thought for a while. ‘Well, yes – though I think his attitude to women is putrid.’
I held up my glass. ‘You can say that again. Cheers.’
‘Cheers.’
I was unable to bite off my tongue. ‘This place isn’t a patch on Delphick’s Yorkshire manor, I admit.’
‘I didn’t mean that.’
I looked into her eyes made smoky by the rimless specs. ‘What do you mean? Do you mind telling me?’
She made a little tremor with her mouth. It was impossible that such a sensitive mechanism as her face couldn’t detect even the most feeble lie. I held out my hand. ‘Come on, I’
ll show you the flat.’
I drew her into Gilbert’s study. ‘Look around. Feel free. His first editions are in that bookcase. In the drawers underneath are his press cuttings. On that filing cabinet is a photograph of him as an army officer with two of his mates. You can easily pick him out. He’s already bald, and you can see by his features that he’s hopelessly corrupt.’
She walked from wall to wall, sipping her drink. ‘You don’t seem to resemble him very much.’
‘You’ve made my week.’ I passed a couple of pages from his latest novel. ‘Read this. Apart from Blaskin, you’ll be the first one to do so – and I doubt if even he has, he was so busy writing it.’
Flushing, she sat on the couch. ‘Really?’
‘You’re the first one.’
‘Shall I read it aloud?’
‘If you must. I mean, if you like.’
‘I can’t read as well as Ronald.’
‘Nobody can.’ I sat by her side. ‘But I’d love to hear you, all the same.’
‘“As soon as he saw her,”’ she read, ‘“he knew it was The Road to Cheren all over again. The paper flowers on the table were pretty, and when he lit his cigar at the candle he tried not to blow smoke into her face. She didn’t trust him, and didn’t like him, but when did that have anything to do with love?
‘“The coppery glow of spring spread over the flat fields. Nothing comes of waiting. He told her that he loved her. She said he never had. He never would. Nor much of hoping, either. Only out of doing does a light show through. And that, all too often, incinerates. There was but one thing he wanted, and he hoped she too was in the mind for it. Moral regeneration was his only hope, and therefore hers.
Life Goes On Page 34