Angell, Pearl and Little God

by Winston Graham

  Armitage got up, and the girl drifted to the bar with him, and Jude Davis tucked his camel hair coat around his knees and looked at Godfrey.

  ‘Your real name is Brown, then?’

  ‘Well, if I have a real one. It’s only one as was given me because people didn’t know no other.’

  ‘But you began boxing under the name of Godfrey Brown.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Little God thought up new curses for Cohen.

  ‘And you changed after you’d served your suspension.’

  ‘I work for a woman. Chauffeur-handyman, see. She suggested to me, she said, you should change your name, so I did. She said, change your name.’

  ‘People don’t lose their identities as easy as that in the boxing world.’

  ‘Didn’t try, Mr Davis. I told the B.B.B.C.’

  ‘You’d have been in trouble if you hadn’t. But what was the idea?’

  The idea? I don’t know. Making a fresh start, like. Thought it would help.’

  ‘I hear you were suspended for being too handy with your fists out of the ring.’

  Godfrey’s eyes glinted. ‘ That’s right.’

  ‘No excuses?’

  ‘I was needled. I was cheated.’

  ‘It happens to us all, every week of the year.’

  ‘Think so?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  Armitage and the girl returned, Armitage carrying more beer, and that broke the conversation. Godfrey stayed on. He was going to be late back for Flora but Flora would have to whistle. Eventually they all got up and moved towards the door.

  Davis said: ‘I like the look of you in the ring, Brown. Or Vosper, if you prefer the name. You’ve got a classic left – which I think comes natural to you, and that’s saying something; you’re very quick on your feet and you’re full of fight – anyone can see that! You need experience with good men, that’s your chief lack and you ought to get it.’

  ‘I could take on Alf Manter any day.’

  ‘Maybe. But you’ve got to learn to keep your temper out of the ring, and that’s yet to be proved. D’you say you’ve another year with Robins?’

  ‘Bit more.’

  ‘Well, I’ll keep an eye on you. When your contract expires come and see me if you’re still interested.’

  ‘Jees, but I’ll be twenty-four then! It’s another year wasted! Can’t you do something for me before then, Mr Davis?’

  ‘Not wasted. You can find your way a few rungs up the ladder. See this next winter out with Robins and look me up, if you want, about next July. I’m in the telephone book. Or you can get me at Viking Enterprises.’

  They were driving down to Handley Merrick at 2.00, and Little God did not appear at Wilton Crescent until 2.30. Lady Vosper was furious and Godfrey snapped back at her, and they had their first full scale row. And this time there was no titled lady and chauffeur about it. It was a young man and an older woman violently quarrelling on a level. Even their language did not differ, for Flora could match any Godfrey produced. It ended as quickly as it had begun – not with any apologies from Godfrey, not with any easier words to finish: it just dried up. Then Flora said: ‘ Get in the car, we’re late enough. I can’t help your troubles,’ and Godfrey carried the two bags out of the house, flung them in the boot and Flora slammed the door of the flat and got in the passenger’s seat.

  Godfrey drove out of London with all the frustration of his angry body in the soles of his feet. They stormed up to traffic lights, shot away from other cars like a jet; as the traffic lights spaced out they were up to 80 m.p.h. from a standstill while they took three quiet breaths, then heavy braking at the next red brought them almost pushing through the windscreen. All this Lady Vosper took without comment. No word was spoken all the way down.

  They stopped outside Merrick House with a long slither of tyres on the loose gravel, and the car ended diagonally across the drive.

  Flora said: ‘Right. You can get out tomorrow! A month’s wages in lieu of notice. I want no insolent little rats in my employment!’

  Godfrey said: ‘I’m not leaving tomorrow and you needn’t think I am! Now I’ll tell you why I’m mad.’

  ‘I don’t care a bloody damn why you’re mad! I’ll not have servants of mine throwing nasty little fits of temper.’

  ‘I got a chance this morning of being taken on by a real manager, a real manager. I missed it. I got cheated of it. Listen. I want to tell you. I got a chance.’

  ‘Go to hell.’

  ‘I been doing my first rounds with Alf. Alf Manter, that is …’

  Lady Vosper took a cigarette packet from the ledge under the facia and lit up. She said absolutely nothing while Godfrey told what had happened. Then just as he was finishing, Joe Forms came out for the luggage. Flora went into the house without saying anything more to Godfrey, and he drove round to the rear and put the car away.

  She dined alone that night and had no word with him at all. But no more was said of his getting the sack.

  The next day she said to him. ‘Get the car out. I want to go to Norwich.’

  ‘D’you want me to drive?’

  ‘Yes, if you know how.’

  ‘Oh, I got over that. I was in a rage. You might say Little God couldn’t take it.’

  ‘You might say Flora Vosper doesn’t have to.’

  ‘No, well …’

  ‘So I’d like an apology.’

  Godfrey chewed his bottom lip. ‘Yes, well, I’m sorry. It was just one of those things. I got in a rage. You can see why, though. I got in a real rage.’

  They stopped some distance outside Norwich at a factory. Flora went in, leaving Godfrey in the car; but in ten minutes she came out with a man in a track suit who had what to Godfrey sounded like an Etonian voice. They drove on through some gates and came to a smooth macadamed road almost like a race track. Two mechanics pushed a low-built sports car out on the road, and Flora and the man in the track suit bent over it and walked round it and inspected the engine and the chassis. Then Flora buckled on a crash helmet and walked back to the Jensen.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to come with me. This is a development car I’ve been invited to try out for next year’s Le Mans.’

  Godfrey slouched out and followed her. It was an open two-seater, blue, very low-built, small, streamlined to the point of having disappearing head-lamps. Lady Vosper and the man were discussing some technicality about compression that Godfrey did not follow. ‘Get in,’ she said to him, with a flick of her thumb. He got in.

  One of the mechanics offered him a crash helmet. He sneered his refusal. Flora climbed in beside him and slammed the door, started the engine. ‘ I’ll try a couple of laps,’ she said to the man. ‘See what I make of it.’

  ‘O.K. There’s no hurry. I’ll be around.’

  They set off. For half a mile Flora drove normally, familiarizing herself with the gears and a few half stops on the brakes. Then on a straight piece she suddenly slid into first, screamed away, flicked up a gear, up another, and at 100 miles an hour charged for a clump of trees rapidly flying to meet them on a corner. When within shouting distance she changed down and down again, braked, flung the steering wheel round and they skidded on all four wheels towards inevitable death. Just before the crash the tyres bit into the road and they had somehow skidded a complete circle and were roaring away up the next straight. Here she got into top gear and climbed to 120 m.p.h., roared to the next corner, changed once only and swirled round its banked end. They came within inches of the edge and Godfrey had a wild sight of fields and countryside and quiet lanes into which he knew he would immediately be hurled.

  This curve led to a straight downward slope and here the car seemed to take off as if it were being flung across country by a breakdown in the earth’s gravitational pull. There was a slight rise coming, and they zipped at it as if there were no road beyond at all. Flora changed down and up a couple of times and they passed three men staring. It was only as Godfrey suddenly saw himself being projected at gun speed
towards a familiar clump of trees that he realized the three men were those who had launched them on this suicide pact and that they were going round the course for the second time.

  Another lurching screaming skid, and this time they came out of it badly and got into a speed wag that Flora kept over-correcting. Then Godfrey perceived that, far from trying to correct the tail wag, it was she who was creating it. At ninety miles an hour she was flicking the car from side to side of the road. They were approaching the banked curve and she took it much more sharply and lower down and braking hard. With a smell of tyres and with his stomach left somewhere by the roadside, they screamed full throttle down the other straight. This time only one man was there. Flora raised a hand.

  Altogether she did four laps, the third time even more suicidally than the first two. On the fourth she did front wheel skids. They pulled up by the single man, who was the man who had brought them out, and the two mechanics reappeared.

  ‘She’s all right,’ said Flora. ‘There’s some rear-end break-away under extreme pressure. Pity you haven’t a chicane here.’

  ‘You might come over to the Park sometime,’ said the man. ‘ If you’ve the time, that is.’

  ‘And there’s a bit of surging from the rubber drive-shaft,’ said Lady Vosper. ‘Look, let me take you one lap. I’ll show you what I mean. I don’t know if it’s too late to correct it.’ To Godfrey she said: ‘Get out.’

  Godfrey got out. He found that he had some hair left and that he could just stand. There was a white mark across his hand where he had been clutching the side. The man got in and they roared off. One of the mechanics grinned at him. ‘All right, mate?’

  ‘Right enough for you, mate,’ snarled Godfrey and went back to his own car. He sat there glowering and biting his lips until Flora joined him. ‘We’ll lunch in Norwich,’ she said. ‘ The manager is staying on here, so we can go right away.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Godfrey and put in the ignition key but did not switch on.

  ‘You all right to drive?’

  ‘Course I’m all right. But I never said Jesus so many times in my life.’

  Flora Vosper said: ‘Next time you have a fit of temper I’ll take you to Brands Hatch.’

  Chapter Ten

  Pearl said: ‘Aren’t you going to your club tonight?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. But I have no bridge arranged, and these catalogues to look through.’

  ‘I was looking at some of your art books today. Fabulous illustrations. Nearly good enough to frame, themselves.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re interested. You have a sense of values.’

  ‘Oh, not over pictures. Some of the pictures here, a few, don’t look worth anything to me. The abstracts, as you call them.’

  ‘They’re more difficult. But rewarding with study. They have what is called significant form.’

  ‘Well, Wilfred, to me form is significant if it – if you can recognize it as something. I don’t so much mind a table with five legs or a woman with three eyes, so long as you know they’re supposed to be a table and a woman. It’s these lines and squares and dots that don’t mean anything to me at all.’

  ‘I hope last Monday night meant something to you.’

  Pearl smoothed an invisible crease out of her skirt. ‘Why, yes … If you mean what I think you mean.’

  ‘You must know that it’s natural these things don’t come right the first time. As between, well, how shall I put it—’

  ‘Between beginners?’

  ‘I was going to say between a man like myself who has devoted his life to intellectual and artistic appreciation, and a young girl as yet unawakened. There is bound to be some – experimental period, as it were. I hope you did not find …’

  ‘Find what?’

  ‘I was going to say I hope you did not find Monday evening embarrassing.’

  ‘No-o. Well, I invited it, didn’t I.’

  ‘It took me by surprise. D’you know. It went beyond the terms of our agreement when we married.’

  ‘Did you mind?’

  He looked at her with slightly uneasy dislike. ‘Not if you did not.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry if I broke the agreement. You see I had had …’

  ‘Had what?’

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Had what? You must tell me.’

  ‘Two vodkas before dinner.’ It was not what she had intended to say.

  ‘I dislike women who drink too much.’

  ‘Well, it’s fun occasionally.’

  ‘I’m glad you found it – fun. With your not mentioning it for a week I thought …’

  ‘Oh, I meant it was fun – just having the drink.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I see.’

  Silence fell. Wilfred cut the tip off a cigar and rolled the end of the cigar round in his lips to make it smooth.

  ‘Lady Vosper’s chauffeur hasn’t been again,’ said Pearl.

  ‘You will be glad.’

  ‘Have you told him I don’t want him calling?’

  ‘Not yet. He’s in Suffolk with Lady Vosper.’

  ‘He’s very small.’

  ‘Some people say he is going to be a champion boxer.’

  ‘Oh, he’s all right – in his class. Feather-weight or something. Have you ever watched a boxing match, Wilfred?’

  ‘No. I have no taste for any form of sport.’

  ‘I think it might be interesting. Would you take me sometime to see what it’s like?’

  Angell had not yet lit his cigar. ‘Possibly. Sometime. Brian Attwell, whom you met at dinner here, is concerned in all these things. Pearl.’

  ‘Yes?’

  He struck a match and carefully lit the end of the cigar, shook out the match, put it in a silver ashtray. ‘I have thought a good deal about last Monday. Even though it was not altogether a success.’

  ‘I’m sorry if it broke the terms of our agreement.’

  ‘Oh, that. Well, it certainly did, didn’t it?’

  ‘Well, we can—’

  ‘But what happened has happened. It has altered our relationship. Although this was not the intention of the marriage, it is clearly what all ordinary people would expect to be the outcome.’

  ‘I’m sorry if it’s made everything more ordinary. Perhaps it brought it all down to a lower level in your eyes.’

  ‘A different level. We have – moved on. And I don’t think there is any going back.’

  Pearl uncrossed her legs and crossed them the opposite way. ‘Could I have a cigarette?’

  ‘Oh … of course.’ Angell shook himself out of a temporary hypnosis, and reached up to the mantelshelf, found a packet, hesitated, then got up and offered her the packet waited, lit one for her. It was the first time he had ever done this.

  ‘Thanks. Thank you. I’ve often thought it was strange, our first meeting. If I hadn’t been delayed at home with a sore throat … It’s like fate, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very like fate,’ said Wilfred, accepting the cliché without even a shudder. ‘I may say, although everything was not as it should be last Monday evening, my memories of it are not distasteful.’

  ‘I’m glad of that.’

  ‘I put it badly, of course. Failure is a relative term. I am a man with a more than ordinary appreciation of the aesthetic appeal of beauty. You see the evidences all around you. But until Monday I confess that I had not fully appreciated the aesthetic and – and physical appeal of a young woman.’

  ‘Not even Anna?’

  ‘Too long ago, Pearl. It might have happened to another man. In my memory of Monday the – well, let us put it crudely – the embarrassment, the frustration, are not the predominant memory.’

  Pearl rubbed a speck of ash off her wrist. ‘What is the predominant memory?’

  Wilfred had let his cigar smoulder in the tray. ‘ Frankly – if we must be frank – it is my memory of you unclothed.’

  After a minute Pearl said: ‘D’you mind if I open the window? It’s such a warm night.’


  ‘Someday I’ll tell you about Anna,’ he said, moistening his lips.

  ‘I wish you would.’

  ‘But not now. Sometime. Where did you get that dress?’

  ‘I bought it at Harrods – last Monday.’

  ‘I think last Monday was a very significant day for us both. Was it expensive?’

  ‘What – the day or the frock?’

  Only when he smiled did she realize how rare this occurrence was. He had all his own teeth, that was something He was really a good-looking and certainly a distinguished man, if one ignored his bulk. Unfortunately on Monday it had been impossible to ignore his bulk. It was her predominant memory, that and a wonder that what was so great could produce so little. Yet she did not dislike him and she was not repelled by him. He was her husband, and after his own light was kind and had given her much.

  She opened the window and drew in a breath, but only warm London air was available, air well used and flavoured with the smell of petrol and concrete and tired leaves and warm brick. The sky was a faded cinnamon. In a corner of the mews two people were kissing. No Little God came to menace or disturb her today, or to provoke her into calculated indiscretions. He was down in Suffolk with his Lady.

  She turned back and Wilfred had got up, was standing by the fireplace, just as he had stood last Monday. Perhaps this was going to become a characteristic stance with its own significance. He was puffing at his cigar but did not seem to be savouring it. His fingers as he tapped off the ash were uncertain.

  ‘I’ve had very little to drink tonight,’ she said.

  ‘That could be rectified. That could be changed. Let’s change it. I think – myself – I could do with a stiff whisky and soda.’

  ‘What happened to Anna?’ Pearl asked. ‘Did she die?’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Something in your manner. Something. Is that right?’

  ‘Well, yes. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about anything!’

  ‘Now’s the time, if ever.’