But by now it really was time to go and pick her up and he hadn’t even time to fill in all the dramatic picture. On impulse just before he left the room he picked up the phone book again and dialled 331–9031. It rang four times and then a man answered. He hung up and went out for the car.
He had to take Flora to Brighton next day so it was a week before he had time off again. The next Saturday it was, he strolled along and looked at Cadogan Mews. It was a classy enough neighbourhood, same sort as Wilton Crescent, and 26 was on the corner as the boy had said. Maybe the mews had been stables once, but that was in the days when horses got better treatment than people. And No. 26 was bigger than the others. She hadn’t married anyone like that red-faced nit at the dance. She’d married money, some weak-kneed fag with a voice like bed-springs creaking.
He propped himself up against the wall opposite and put a wad of chewing gum in his mouth. He chewed steadily for half an hour while there was no action. All the classy folk had gone off to their week-end cottages. Just now and then a solitary stroller would pass him or someone would come out and drive away in a shiny car. No action where he was interested.
He spat the chewing gum out and put in another wad. Just as he was about to give up in disgust a fat old man with a waistcoat like an oven door came out of 26 and walked off towards Cadogan Square. That was the end of activity but it encouraged him to wait a while longer. So half an hour later the fat man came back and this time Godfrey saw more of his face and realized he knew his face somewhere. Whether his picture had been in the papers or on telly or he’d been at some boxing tourney. As Godfrey walked back to Wilton Crescent the name Angell seemed to mean something to him too.
Late on Monday afternoon he tried again. There was no shop around where you could ask, so he went straight up to No. 24 and rang the bell and asked for Mr Angell.
A smart boy looking like a King’s Road boutique answered the door. ‘Mr Angell?’ he said, and looked at Godfrey as if he was something out of the drains. ‘Next door.’
‘It’s the young Mr Angell I want, see. Not the old man.’
‘Next door,’ he said. ‘No. 26.’ And shut the door in Godfrey’s face.
Godfrey spat on his doorstep and tried No. 22. No. 22 did not even know where Mr Angell lived, for Chrissake. So he thought it over and then tried across on the other corner from No. 26, No. 37.
A woman. Tarted and tinted and trying to look young which she never would be again except to a blind man with no arms.
‘Mr Angell? It’s opposite. The white house.’
‘It’s the young Mr Angell I want. Not the old man.’
‘There isn’t a young one – nor an old. Mr Wilfred Angell lives there.’
‘A – a stout gent?’
‘Yes.’
‘But I thought there was a young one.’
‘No, there’s only himself and his wife. He’s just newly married.’
Godfrey stared with his mouth half open and muttered something into his gum shield. Then just as he was turning away she had an idea. ‘It isn’t his servant you want, is it?’
‘Pardon?’
‘He used to have a servant called Alex Jones. He left about three months ago. Tall boy with a lot of dark hair and a sexy walk.’
It was lucky she couldn’t hear what Godfrey said then, but perhaps he did not look too loving because she shut the door quick. Little God was left alone in the hot street with the sun streaming down and just his thoughts for company.
Because it altered a lot. It altered the way he thought about her. Her marrying this fat rich old man. He could hardly believe it. It would have been bad enough marrying a rich young one.
It altered the way he thought about her. He’d thought she was different from the rest, more superior, something out of the top of the bag. But she was the same as all the rest. She’d turned him down because he hadn’t enough glue in his sock and sold herself to this fat merchant who was lousy with money. When he thought of that fat man pawing her he got goosepimples, and red spots floated.
But in one way it was better than a young man.
A few months ago she had almost been Little God’s girl. He had picked her out at a dance and driven her home. Then she’d come with him to Walworth Baths as his girl sitting there watching him box.
But she didn’t want Little God with all his manhood and fire in his belly; instead she went for this old heavyweight who could buy her diamonds and mink. The broad. The crummy stuck-up little broad.
Quite by accident a couple of days later Godfrey was looking at a picture of Venice in the hall at Wilton Crescent and he remembered where he had seen the fat man before. The fat man had called on Lady V a couple of months ago and had stopped to stare at this picture. Godfrey had opened the door for him and there he was, standing there in a suit that was first cousin to a draughtsboard and carrying a bunch of red roses. It was just after Flora had come out of her clinic.
So that night when he was playing rummy with Flora – she was having one of her off days – he brought up the subject in a roundabout way, and she told him who Mr Angell was.
‘This bloke I was with,’ Godfrey said, while the thumbscrews worked in his guts, ‘ this bloke says to me that this Mr Angell has just married a young girl, young enough to be his daughter. That right?’
‘That’s right. Some suburban miss he unexpectedly picked up with. No fool like an old fool. I went round last month to the reception he gave to introduce his blushing bride.’
‘When was this? I never drove you!’
‘No, it was that week you were in strict training after we came back from Cannes. I went by taxi while you were at your gym. There’s a run for you! I throw my knave and I’m out.’
Godfrey totted up how much he was down on the hand. ‘How old d’you reckon he is?’
‘Who?’
‘This Angell.’
‘Oh, just the right side of fifty, I should say. Of course she’s pretty enough in a rather sweet unanimated way. She was nervous at the party. One wonders what she is getting out of it. All his friends were absolutely astounded, I can assure you.’
‘Been married before?’
‘Wilfred? Heavens, no. Most of us thought he was a pansy.’
Little God watched her deal the next hand. Seven each. She made a click with each card. Her hands were strong but tapering and the nails had an orange coloured varnish on them.
‘Mind you, it has happened before,’ she said.
‘What has?’
‘An old queer gets rather past it, so he puts aside his boys and takes a wife so as to become one of the majority in later life.’
‘Think that’s the case with Angell?’
‘I wouldn’t know. He may have been a Don Juan all his life on the quiet … I’d hardly think so with all that weight. And anyway he’d be far too careful of his money!’
Godfrey thought afterwards it was strange how things turned out. He had been spar mate to Alf Manter two years ago before Alf hit the big time, and in September Alf was going to Boston to fight Joe O’Connor, and he thought he could persuade Cohen his manager to take one spar mate from this side for his three weeks’ training at Boston. It looked a great chance, and if Godfrey had got it he would have left Flora flat and maybe thought no more of Oyster and how he would have liked to look inside and find the Pearl.
But Cohen played around with the idea and then wouldn’t wear it, so it all came to nothing after all. This made Godfrey more frustrated than ever. Robins was useless and he was getting nowhere. And he would soon be getting to his peak now, age wise, and he hadn’t for ever to wait. He needed a manager who was in with the ring, the real promoters, not a small time push-over who just hung around their offices waiting for a word, and when he got it didn’t speak the same language.
So he was back with Flora V, and he had nothing to train for until maybe October when Robins was trying – and so far failing – to fix something up. So he thought more and more about Oyster and the closed shell a
nd the Pearl inside. And he thought of W. J. Angell Esq. who had taken his girl. And of the firm of lawyers called Carey, Angell & Kingston where he worked. And of 26 Cadogan Mews only just round the corner from here. And he tried to think how he could put his spurs in. He tried to think how he could get in on their lives, how to keep the pot boiling, or maybe just simmering so that sooner or later Little God could get a taste of the soup.
Chapter Six
Lawyers are by training, by habit, and often by temperament, cautious people. It is of the essence of their profession that they look at all possible flaws in a deal or in a line of action before the deal is completed or the action under-taken, so that adequate provision be made to deal with the flaws before they arise. No good solicitor will approve a will which does not appear to be legally tight-bound against the worst that mischance can do to upset its intended provisions. No solicitor can convey a house or a parcel of land without ‘searching’ the previous deeds for the disadvantages his client may incur by completing the purchase. It is never the solicitor’s function to be the optimist. It is never his lot to think: ‘ But of course this in all probability will never occur.’ It is always his lot to think: ‘ What else might occur?’
So, not unnaturally, a professional habit becomes an ingredient of personal behaviour. More solicitors carry umbrellas on fine days than any other profession.
But that being said, it is surprising that these habits of exemplary caution, assimilated, ingrained and inherent, do not invade their private lives more than they actually do. At times there appears to occur a subconscious rebellion within the psyche which will launch a hitherto circumspect solicitor upon a course that naturally less cautious people would hesitate to take. The history of the Disciplinary Committee of the Law Society is full of such cases. And some of the most noted rebels of the past began in law.
Wilfred Angell of course would not have admitted even to himself that marrying Pearl Friedel, a relatively unknown girl less than half his age, was an incautious or precipitate act. There was naturally a degree of risk, but so there is in any human action. Logically there were many advantages. He needed a wife. This year, reluctantly, he had come to that conclusion, though not altogether for the reasons Dr Matthewson had suggested. The social and domestic advantages were clear. A young woman was both more attractive than one of his own age and less set in her ways; he did not think he could ever have tackled a woman of forty-five. Also Pearl reminded him of Anna: this was a sentimental thing but not unimportant. She was half Jewish and therefore more likely to appreciate a bargain whether in the market or the registry office; and Vincent Birman’s unobtrusive researches into her private life had shown her to be healthy, of a respectable family though not well-to-do; modestly educated but with some accent on manners; she was fond of music, especially the clarinet, and she was reserved for a girl of these days. She went out with young men but had a reputation for being fastidious. She liked the good things of life, the things that money could buy, and she was not particularly comfortable at home. It seemed to Angell that he could offer her all but one of the things a sensible girl could desire.
Of course there had been moments in the courtship when he had been nervous, when he had had doubts. That first dinner party at home had been embarrassing because she arrived early and before he had had an opportunity of telling the story he had made up to explain her presence. However he swallowed his annoyance and noticed that she bore what to her must have been quite an ordeal with the utmost composure. Also she looked very pretty, and although this meant nothing to him in the ordinary way, she had for him something of the intellectually sensuous appeal of a Rodin.
After the party he did not make any further move for three weeks. He had directed an inquiry as to Frank Friedel’s financial situation. Also it seemed good policy to leave Pearl alone for a while so that she might begin to be afraid he was letting her drop. Then he invited her to lunch at the Ritz. It seemed unavoidable to spend some money at this stage, and after careful consideration he came to the view that such a meal offered the most impressive surroundings for a not too extortionate outlay.
They talked there, and for the first time he allowed her to see that he was genuinely interested in her, not merely as a casual friend. He told her of his busy and interesting and prosperous life which to some extent lacked a centre, a focal point to which one might always hope to return for companionship, for friendship. He put this well, he thought, as a distinguished and important man might.
She did not seem surprised, and did not make any comment – it might not have been directed at her at all – and it was at this stage perhaps that he came nearest to giving up the pursuit altogether. At the end of the meal he found himself sweating and beset by doubts, and they separated without any future meeting being arranged. As he had said to Matthewson after the medical examination, his life at present was beautifully ordered and singularly uncomplicated. Was he not now in process of doing precisely what he had then derided others for? However little he might feel for the girl sexually, there had to be an element of sex in the association because of the very nature of her being. However equable now, she might in later years become temperamental, difficult, or – worst of all – extravagant, and one could not discharge her as one could Alex. One might be in for ‘scenes’. Although she might by her good sense save some money in the house, inevitably she could cost him far more than he saved, in clothes, in perfume, in hairdressing, even in holidays. She might even want a car.
He thought of the paintings he could buy, the furniture, the tapestries, the sculpture. Meals, if they ate out, would cost twice as much. (Or anyway one and a half times as much.) Only a few months ago he had thought contemptuously of John Matthewson and his faded wife and his two public school children. What was he about now?
But the fact remained that he was steadily becoming richer. If this Vosper deal finally went through he was likely to become richer yet. Pearl Friedel was another acquisition. Over her whole life with him she could hardly be as expensive as a Rouault. If moderately extravagant she might cost him as much as a Guardi. With luck she might not amount to more than a couple of Louis XV armchairs. In return he would get gratitude from her for raising her out of the common ruck, some companionship when he needed it, and possibly even a little affection. He would have a table companion at dinner who was a quick learner and who already looked the part; his sexual position in society would no longer be open to misunderstanding. And, of course, she still reminded him of Anna.
The Vosper deal rather irritatingly hung fire. Old Hollis had advised Lord Vosper against the agreement, on principle, Angell was certain, rather than as an informed decision, but Claude Vosper was sheltering behind this advice to avoid making up his own mind. A vacillator by nature, he clearly wanted the money but no doubt thought that a little reluctance might bring him even better terms. Francis Hone, Angell, Simon Portugal and the rest had decided against any increased offer: it could only raise suspicions that there was something behind the deal.
But there was not all the time in the world. News might leak. It balanced rather on a knife edge. Between attending to the business of his firm, playing bridge at his club or in select private houses, courting Pearl, haunting the sale rooms of Sotheby’s, eating monumental meals and under-tipping waiters, Angell fretted over the chances and the sums involved. During the last two months he had only seen Flora Vosper once, and then she had looked unchanged. An uneasy fear stirred in his mind sometimes that in some way he might have misunderstood Dr Matthewson’s prognosis, or that Matthewson himself might be mistaken. But an attempt to check with Matthewson had met with a rebuff.
Nor could he very well call on Lady Vosper again unless invited. Apart from his morbid distaste for illness of all kinds, such a visit would tactically just not do. He considered engineering a meeting with Lady Vosper’s daughter Miriam; but he had never even met her, only seen her once; and to do this would be more noticeable even than calling on her mother.
Angell
sat uncomfortably at luncheon in his club one day eating a double helping of baron of beef and listened to two young men, one an architect, the other a surveyor, speculating on the possibility that the government might pick on a site in Suffolk for its next satellite town. It was disconcerting.
So back to Pearl, his symbol of adventure in a rather grey and frustrating world.
A car-hire firm called International, in return for certain legal coverage and advice, offered Angell cars at a 50% reduction, so one splendid Sunday in June he hired a chauffeur-driven Princess and took Pearl out for the day. They went to Oxford and he showed her round his father’s college and explained how the war had prevented him going there. He made an effort to talk well, and when he tried he could. She was impressed by his sharp caustic judgments, his wide cultural range, his sophisticated knowledge of life. Often she instantly saw that he was right in his opinions, though she would not have had the wisdom to think so first. She wished she were like him.
On the way home they stopped at a famous restaurant on the river and took a quiet dinner. Soon after the sun set he asked her to marry him.
She did not speak for quite a while, and Angell wondered a little how she would frame her acceptance.
At length she said: ‘Wilfred – I’ve never called you that before, have I?’ And she laughed apologetically. ‘ Wilfred, it’s super of you to ask me. Really it is.’
Angell, Pearl and Little God Page 11