Angell, Pearl and Little God

by Winston Graham

  On the day of the sale Angell was taken with acute stomach pains. He thought, he said, it was something he had eaten – or perhaps it was lack of food, lack of the correct nourishment to which his body had become accustomed. He stayed in bed and telephoned his office and had only lemon tea for breakfast. Pearl was for calling in the doctor, but Wilfred would not hear of it. A day’s rest, he thought, would set him right; he could do a little work in bed and could be in constant touch with his office. When Mrs Jamieson came at ten Pearl said:

  ‘Will you be all right now, dear?’

  ‘Oh, I’m better, please don’t worry about me … What d’you mean? Why are you asking?’

  ‘I was thinking about the sale. You’ll miss it.’

  ‘Yes … yes, that’s too bad. I’m sorry. But, well, there’ll be another one.’

  ‘I was wondering, Wilfred. If you’re feeling better, could I go along and bid on your behalf?’

  ‘Certainly not. It would be most hazardous. You have no experience. You might lose your head and pay far too much, or buy something we didn’t want. It’s very easy to make a mistake in those surroundings.’

  ‘Yes … I suppose so. Well, we know what Mr Moreton thinks of the pieces we’re interested in. Couldn’t you phone him your bids? Then I can go along and watch and see if we get anything.’

  Angell stirred uneasily in his bed. He looked like a small boy feigning illness to avoid going to school.

  ‘I don’t like to do that. One can so easily be let in, even by one’s friends. I think – as I’m feeling so much better – the pain has almost gone – if you’d do me some scrambled eggs and bacon – I’ll have them and then get up and we can take a taxi there. I don’t want to disappoint you and I know how interested you have been in these pieces.’

  So he had his breakfast and got up. But it took him a long time – naturally he was weak.

  The sale began at eleven. By the time he was ready it was eleven-thirty. Most of the lots they were interested in were low numbers. The auctioneer in question was a man known for his efficiency and speed.

  Still a little unwell, he reached the sale rooms on Pearl’s arm at five minutes past twelve, to find that because of some dispute over the earlier lots, the later ones had been taken first. They were in nice time.

  Even so, he was not defeated. His keen sense of the saleroom, developed over many years, enabled him almost always to stop while he could still be outbid, and even Pearl’s excited pressure on his arm only forced him into error twice. In the end they bought a peridot brooch – the nearest they could afford to emeralds – and two diamond clips, at a total cost of £150. Wilfred was careful to point out to Pearl that the antique setting of the pieces would appreciate faster than the actual value of the stones.

  They went out to dinner that evening, Pearl insisting on treating him, and afterwards by unspoken agreement went to bed together. This time her gratitude overcame her embarrassment at his bulk and his ineptness, and this helped him to achieve more than he had done before. He was delighted, confident at last, even chuckled at her next morning; talked about it over breakfast, began sentences with, ‘ I flatter myself …’ kissed her when he left.

  After he had gone she went upstairs to tidy her room but instead went to the window and pulled the curtains aside to watch him walking off towards Cadogan Square. It was a sunny day and his coat was open and blew in the breeze. He walked like a big male swan breasting the air with his size, his satisfaction and his importance. She stood at the window for a long time after he had disappeared, her face expressionless. Then she let the curtain fall and went to examine her jewellery. But he had locked it away in the safe.

  When Angell reached Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Saul Montagu, Q.C. had at last delivered his option agreement. Immediately Angell rang up Hollis, but Hollis was on holiday in Bournemouth and would not be back till the 23rd. Spitting his annoyance, Angell spoke to Hollis’s partner, Mr Quarry, who was guarded as to the amount of work that had been done on drawing up the draft contract. Angell guessed that nothing had been done at all. He said that he would send the option agreement round by hand that morning and asked Quarry to give it his immediate attention. Quarry promised to do what he could, although, as he pointed out, this was really Mr Hollis’s concern as Mr Hollis had always dealt personally with the Vosper family. Angell retorted that Mr Hollis would be back from Bournemouth in ample time to deal with the final details personally; what he, Angell, wanted was to feel that an energetic start was being made. At this Quarry became rather stuffy.

  Among the other matters to be considered and resented this morning was Vincent Birman’s account of thirty guineas for arranging the transfer of Godfrey Brown. Much as he would have liked to, he did not feel he could come on Pearl for Birman’s charges too. Pearl in the first place had told Wilfred that she wanted Godfrey helped because the young man otherwise might become a nuisance. Godfrey was convinced, she said, that Mr Angell was such an important man that he could do anything if only he would try. Godfrey had, in fact, said Pearl, got a sort of fixation on Mr Angell; she was only important now because she was married to him.

  Wilfred, only half convinced, and not above a twist of jealousy, had nevertheless complied for his own good reasons. But thirty guineas was still a lot to pay, and he toyed with the idea of sending the bill back to Birman with a letter of complaint. This he knew would produce no result, and as a firm they could hardly afford to default. One could only keep the man waiting as long as possible so that the thirty guineas would earn something in one’s own account first.

  He had been spending money far too lavishly since he was married, and he drew up on a sheet of the firm’s paper a list of economies they might make. One of the great difficulties of married life of course was just this question of economy. It was very difficult to cut one’s wife’s indulgencies without cutting one’s own. The list began: (a) Mrs Jamieson three days a week instead of six. Why not? (b) Impress on Pearl the foolish wastefulness of taxis. (c) Spanish burgundy instead of claret, except on special occasions. (d) Give up dining out with Pearl (e) Cut evening paper, one can always see the headlines at one’s club. (f) Less milk: it is often wasted. (g) Does Pearl know that Polish butter is just as good and quite a bit cheaper? (h) Salads are expensive; Pearl spends too much on these. (i) Stop buying cigars at the club; one can get them wholesale from Evans’s. (j) Watch the lights. As the evenings draw in, careless use of them runs away with money. (k) Ask Pearl if she can manage on less per week. If she is short she can always draw a cheque on her own account. (l) Cancel those shoes.

  At this stage he stopped and read through his list, then screwed the paper up and threw it in the waste-paper basket. At such a time, on such a day, with a knowledge of the night’s triumph behind him, it was inappropriate to consider these things. Now of all times he knew himself to be a success, in business, in the home, in society, in life. To hedge now, to quibble, would be unworthy of one’s destiny.

  He took a deep, satisfied breath and pressed the bell for Miss Lock, to dictate the morning’s letters.

  Before he went out for lunch he rummaged in the wastepaper basket and found the crumpled paper. He folded it several times and put it in his pocket book for future reference.

  Chapter Twelve

  In early October Jude Davis said to Godfrey: ‘ Spencer’s out on the 10th, the X-rays show a splintered bone. Think you’d like to tackle Vic Miller?’

  ‘I’ll tackle anyone,’ said Godfrey. ‘Give me half a chance.’

  ‘I’m putting you in, then.’

  Godfrey knew all about it. A welter-weight title fight at the Albert Hall. Nobody cared much who featured on the undercard: you drew the crowd in for the big fight, and the rest was any old thing you could scrape together. But it was the Albert Hall, and even if half the spectators had not yet come, because the big fight wasn’t due until nine, or had already left, because the big fight was over, you still boxed before several thousand people, with a few of the Press at their t
ables, and if you put up a good show it was worth a lot publicity-wise. Miller he’d never seen; he was from Dundee and had only turned pro about a year, but they all said he was a rising man and he was managed by Karl English, who had one of the best stables in the business.

  That night he wrote a short letter to Pearl: ‘I’m fighting at the Albert Hall Thursday the tenth. Thanks to you. A title bill. I’m in the groove. Regards. Little God.’ He walked over and pushed it under her door.

  Pearl showed the letter to Wilfred. ‘It was addressed to you but I opened it by mistake. Awfully sorry, dear.’

  Wilfred stared at the note. ‘ Little God. I wonder if he thinks he is, with those striking looks and that small physique. Strange young man.’

  ‘I think he’s got a crush on you,’ she said. ‘ Shall we go?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To watch the boxing. The Albert Hall is nice and easy to get to.’

  ‘It’s a Thursday, I can’t. My bridge night. And anyway seats at boxing matches are very expensive.’

  ‘I thought you’d never been.’

  ‘Nor have I. But one gets to know prices.’

  ‘Sometime I’d like to go. Just for the novelty.’

  ‘Sometime you shall, my dear. There’ll be other opportunities.’

  The next morning, mindful of Wilfred’s exhortation not to take taxis, Pearl walked to the top of Sloane Street and took a bus to the Albert Hall. When she had bought her ticket she put it deep in her handbag where it would not be pulled out by mistake.

  Since his marriage Wilfred had given the occasional dinner at home – the Portugals had been twice, the Hones once and the Warners twice – but had refrained from asking people to bridge. But this evening he had told Pearl he was bringing three of his club friends back with him. Pearl had not met any of the three men before; one was a County Court judge, one was an antique dealer of great repute, one was the editor of a literary weekly. They were all scrupulously polite to her, their manners had been long groomed in unobtrusive courtesy. She liked them all. The youngest was sixty.

  She watched the bridge for a time and noticed how the game affected Wilfred. It brought out the aggressiveness of his nature: this was the sort of combat he enjoyed, an intellectual battle which released his adrenalin and while there was no physical risk to carry it beyond the limits of enjoyment, there was a small financial risk which added to the agonies of failure and the zest of victory. Perhaps these qualities made him a good lawyer.

  When she went out to get coffee and sandwiches she heard his voice above the others; it was the voice he would use to gain attention in restaurants, to put a case in the lower courts, to silence a group if he wanted to recount an anecdote. During supper the three men were again beautifully deferential towards her, but she wondered if they would be so kind when discussing her among themselves.

  After supper she cleared away and washed up, then slipped upstairs to bed. But she did not sleep and heard them leave about 1.30.

  The next morning at breakfast she said: ‘You never told me you’d been in the army.’

  ‘What?’ He looked up from his Times, his lip damp and discoloured with coffee. ‘Oh, yes. Didn’t I? I think I did. What makes you ask?’

  ‘Judge Snow last night said something about you being in the Western Desert.’

  ‘Oh, yes. It is not a period of my life I look back upon with pleasure.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were old enough.’

  He blinked uneasily. ‘I was just. It interrupted my university career. I told you.’

  ‘Tell me about it again sometime. It’s a bit hard …

  ‘What?’

  She was going to say she found it hard to imagine him with a trim figure and a youthful step undergoing the hardships of a campaign. ‘It’s a bit hard to think what the war was really like. I – wasn’t born, you know.’

  ‘I do know. Well, even for me, my dear, it seems to belong to another age, as if I were not born and it all happened to somebody else.’

  ‘But you weren’t in the fighting, were you?’

  ‘I was in a non-combatant unit – the Pay Corps. But the war in the desert was so fluid that distinctions of that kind did not always work out. I was in considerable danger at times. And of course the hardships were endless. Have you more toast?’

  ‘I’ll get some. But there’s Ryvita.’

  He grunted and looked at his watch. ‘Don’t bother, then. I’ll make do.’

  Godfrey neglected his Flora for the week before the fight, as she predicted he would have to. Although he had kept in training of a sort all summer, he needed to be tightened up for a fight that, whatever the bored audience thought, might be a turning point in his career. Jude Davis’s trainer was Pat Prince – an ex-middleweight of fifty-odd, with scar tissue sewn into the bags under his eyes, and a throaty voice. Godfrey despised him at first, but when it came to ring craft you had to hand it to him that he knew his job, and he put Little God fairly through his paces during the last week. He confided to Godfrey that if he had had his way Godfrey wouldn’t have been in a single fight for the first six months while he unlearned his bad habits, but Davis had overruled him and said the boy needed extending and could learn while he fought. Godfrey was all with Davis in this.

  He met his opponent for the first time at the weigh-in at the Dominion Theatre at midday on the day of the fight. Miller, a dour tough Scot, was making his first appearance in London and therefore was more dour than ever. In the evening they were told they would have to appear just before or just after the main bout, depending how the preliminaries ran. But in fact the preliminaries went their full time so it was after. Godfrey cursed his luck. More people are there just before: just after they all go out to the lavatories or the bars. He sat in the long shabby changing room with its dreary unshaded bulb and its endless shelves to contain the belongings of the orchestras and massed choirs of other evenings, and he listened to the sustained roar: one of the title fighters was Welsh and the hall was full of half drunken Welshmen singing and shouting at the top of their voices. And the top of a Welsh voice is very loud indeed. The coloured heavy-weight, Tom Bushey, who was one of Davis’s coming boys, had just won on points, but he said to Godfrey that he had hardly been able to think how to box, the row had been so great. The audience wanted the main bout, and screamed incessantly and deafeningly for it.

  Godfrey would have liked to see the title fight, but they weren’t allowed out of the dressing rooms. If there was a sudden and unsatisfactory end they would be thrust on immediately to help divert the crowd from their frustration.

  So he waited around talking to Pat Prince, hands ready bandaged and taped, gloves hanging from a convenient nail to be slipped on at the last moment, gum shield, Vaseline and towel on a ledge, green and white towelling coat over his shoulders with Little God stamped on the back. The din outside grew worse and worse. Jude Davis had been in the dressing room beforehand, but like nearly everyone else he had crowded out to watch the big fight.

  ‘Nervous, kid?’ asked Pat Prince, stopping his endless almost silent whistling to let out the two words.

  ‘No more than usual. I know I’m good. That’s all I care.

  ‘Well, take care you keep your temper. I saw you sparring last week when Nevil fetched you a nasty little upper-cut.’ He started whistling a tune out of Oklahoma.

  ‘Nevil’s a big head. One of these days he’ll get it cracked open.’

  ‘Well, I’m only telling you. Better now than after.’

  Just then the screaming suddenly broke in a new wave and carried on. Bushey said: ‘Sounds as if someone’s got it! And it isn’t Evan Morgan!’

  After a few more moments of pandemonium a trainer came pushing in. ‘ Referee stopped fight! Lopez got a cut eye. Morgan’s got the title!’

  ‘Shouldn’t never have been stopped! Lopez was only cut on the eyebrow!’

  ‘Lucky it was that way round! Welshmen’d’ve wrecked the hall if it’d been their man.’

  I
n the chaos that followed, Pat Prince jerked to his feet. ‘ We’re on, boy.’

  They fought their way through crowds of shouting Welshmen and got near the ring. Someone was singing ‘Land of my Fathers’ and everyone in the hall stood up. Then gradually the new champion was escorted out of the hall by half a dozen policemen, and Godfrey saw his opponent climbing into the ring. He followed, while people thrust their way out towards the bars and the few that were left settled into their places. The master of ceremonies appealed for quiet and announced the next contest.

  The applause was as perfunctory as the interest. The arguing point of the evening was clearly going to be whether the referee stopped the fight too soon or whether Evan Morgan was a true champion. The arguing point would have nothing whatever to do with the two unknown, untried and undersized men in the ring.

  The referee had spoken to them, they had touched gloves and gone back to their corners, backs to each other waiting for the bell. Godfrey hated a crowd that had no interest in him and he hated men with freckled skin and red hair. Anyway, unlike many boxers, he always hated the man in the opposite corner. When the bell went he came out into the middle like a demon king, only the green lights and the fiery breath lacking. He dropped his defence and went for Miller with both hands as if this was a fight in a back alley. Miller had only time to raise his guard, and this was swept away and he was back against the ropes. Being no fool, he fought and blocked and dodged his way out of a hail of blows, but was pursued ceaselessly round the ring, as he tried to collect his skill. But there was no stop for the three minutes, and although at the end he had made up some ground he went to his corner puffing and sweating, his light skin reddening on shoulder and arm and rib and cheek where the blows had landed or where he had gone back against the ropes.