‘Two thousand pounds?’
‘From your client,’ said Birman, not quite able to keep the irony out of his voice.
Angell detected it, but blood was beating so thickly in his ears that caution could hardly be heard. Possibly the fiction that he was acting on behalf of a client had outlived its usefulness.
‘What am I to assume from that?’
Birman shrugged. ‘You are to assume that human nature is as nasty as we all supposed.’
The colour was coming back to Angell’s face. He cleared his throat.
‘I thought Jude Davis had refused. Refused.’
‘So did I. But he’s had time to think and he’s changed his mind. There’s no righteousness in the world.’
Angell’s trousers were sticking to the chair. He shifted. At the last, now that revenge was almost on his tongue to be tasted, like a suspect wine, he drew back for a moment, aghast.
‘Do you mean … What guarantee do we have that, once the money is paid, the agreement will be followed?’
Vincent Birman smiled thinly. ‘None, old boy. Absolutely none. You’ve got to face the fact, I’m afraid, that once you step off the path and start walking on the grass you may get your feet wet. But I only give Davis a thousand now, and the second thousand when it’s all over. At the worst you can only be cheated of half.’
Angell stared out of the window at the false sunshine which from here gave the same illusion of warmth as Birman’s smile. Almost to his own surprise, a twinge of conscience, an echo of old training and beliefs. They legitimized the objections which arose from his hatred of squandering money. He hesitated and felt the roughened filling with his tongue. Then he thought of Godfrey – the man who had made him a cuckold, that derisory figure of all farce. The world was black at this moment, when the prospect of revenge opened up, blacker and more hopeless than it had ever been.
‘Unless,’ said Birman, ‘ your client has gone cold on the idea and wants to withdraw.’
‘No,’ said Angell. ‘When last I spoke to him he was quite decided that this was what he wanted. I’m empowered to pay out the money on his behalf. A thousand pounds now?’
‘Two thousand pounds now. I have to guarantee that the second thousand is in my possession when the first is paid.’
The following week Godfrey was skipping in the gym when Jude Davis beckoned to him and they sat down in a corner together. Davis had been distant recently, so Godfrey was glad to find him in a confidential mood.
‘Look, boy, I’ve got a big possibility for you. You know Tokio Kio?’
‘Who doesn’t?’
‘Well, you know he’s booked for ten rounds at York Hall next month with Kevin O’Shea, the Irish champion?’
‘I ought to. I was hoping to get on the same bill.’
‘Well, maybe you will …’
‘Oh? That’s what I like to hear.’
‘O’Shea’s manager rang up last week. O’Shea’s twisted his ankle in training and is out.’
Godfrey ran a hand through his springing hair. ‘ What you trying to say?’
‘Take it easy. You know Tokio Kio’s main job in coming to Europe is to meet Karl Heist in Hamburg at the end of Feb. for the world title. He wanted a fight before it to get used to things over here. He’s never been to Europe before. This ten-round bout with O’Shea was just intended to be a limber up. It was going to be a break for O’Shea as well.’
‘How d’you make that out? Kio would have eaten O’Shea. Everybody says so.’
‘Yes … Yes.’ Jude Davis stared at the gold signet ring on his wedding finger. ‘Go and put your robe on; you’ve been sweating.’
‘No, this towel’s O.K. What are you driving at, Jude?’
‘O’Shea has had a bad deal recently. We all feel that. He got that decision – in Dublin of all places! – then he broke his hand in Liverpool and was out of the game for six months. He needed a come-back. Now he’s ruined the works by spraining his ankle.’
Godfrey grunted. ‘What sort of a come-back was he going to make against a feller with the heaviest fists in his class?’ He stared at his manager. ‘ D’you mean it was going to be fixed for him to win?’
Jude Davis smiled at his fingers. ‘ You have romantic ideas, boy. Tokio Kio wouldn’t spoil his reputation. But Kio’s manager wanted him to have a full work-out with all the trappings of a real fight but without too much pressure on him, as you might say. Training isn’t the same. And an exhibition bout doesn’t have the build-up of tension. Kio’s manager had agreed that Kio should let O’Shea go the full ten rounds, and Kio would obviously win on points. That way O’Shea gets a good write-up – man who went the distance with the probable new world champ. Kio gets his full work-out and the German fans are encouraged to buy tickets for the title fight thinking their man will most likely win.’
Godfrey pulled his towel thoughtfully backwards and forwards across his shoulders.
‘What’s on your mind?’
‘I thought for a bright boy you could probably guess.’
Two young boxers were thumping away at each other in the ring. The bell went and they immediately broke and like zombies began shadow boxing until they could start again.
Godfrey whistled faintly. ‘What a break. But why me?’
‘It is not decided yet, but I thought I’d let you know. Keep it under your hat. Nobody knows yet that O’Shea is going to withdraw. He withdrew last week, and ever since Sam Windermere the promoter has been looking around for a sub. But Boy Anderson is fighting in Australia. Len Flodden has just had an operation on his eyebrows. There’s others who’d give a lot for the chance but I don’t believe they’d do as well on the night. You’re ready for a quick step up. But it’s a question whether you’d pull in the paying customers.’
‘Kio will. Kio would against anybody. He’s the big draw. He’s never been seen in England before. I’d pay to see him!’
‘You’ll see him all right. If this goes through. Anyway you can’t lose.’
‘You mean I can’t win.’
‘Just tell me if you don’t want it. Windermere can get Sanchez over from Madrid.’
‘No, it was me joking, see. ’Course I want it. Both hands and feet. Smashing. But will Kio play?’
‘How play?’
‘Well, at least he was fighting the champion of Ireland – even though it was a bit of a joke. Now he’s only fighting the champion of Kensington, a bloke with only sixteen professional fights under his belt. Won’t it be beneath his dig?’
‘I don’t think so. He’s a stranger over here. The Japanese are very polite. They’ll consider it ungentle-manly to complain about the quality of a substitute. And on the night you’ll do as well as O’Shea would have done.’
‘You can bury me if I don’t do better.’
‘The man I still have to get round is Sam Windermere. He’s half there. Of course he knows it’s meant as a rehearsal for Hamburg, but he can’t afford to let it be generally known. It’s got to be a good show and it’s got to look like a good show on the bills.’
‘Soften him up,’ said Godfrey. ‘ Needle him, get to him, bribe him, put the screw on.’
There was a glint of dislike in Jude Davis’s eye as he took out his notebook and made an entry in it. ‘Leave me to manage my own business, Godfrey. You see to your end. I take it you’re willing to fight Kio if I can arrange it?’
‘You bet!’
‘It’s a big chance. If we fix it up it will mean strict training from now on.’
It meant strict training from then on. And for once Godfrey was prepared to lay off the women. On his second visit to Sally’s flat they had bickered afterwards, scratchily, edgily, more like people getting near the end of an affair than at the beginning; she had flung his clothes off a chair she wanted to sit on, he had sulkily ignored her chatter; when he left there was no suggestion of another meeting. As for Pearl, she was too close to him, and he was too edgy and mixed up inside to want her just now. It was obviously nothing to
do with Flora, it was just that he was used to having the old girl around, someone to rowwith, someone to sharpen his wits on.
When he got home one day to his bed-sitter, in the ten-year-old Vauxhall Velox he now drove, Pearl was waiting for him on the doorstep.
‘Oyster!’ he said, slamming the door of the car and jumping up the steps. ‘Well, stone me! I didn’t reckon to find you slumming it out in Clapham. Come on in! Come on up! I’m third floor, and it’s crummy, but it’s just somewhere to hole out till I find something better.’ While he talked and showed her up, his mind flickered casually over the fact that nine months ago he had had to wait outside herhouse, time after time after time, because he’d got it bad then. Now she’d got it bad, and that pleased him.
He admired her legs all the way up the dark and dirty stairs. Then when he unlocked the door and showed her in he pushed her back against the door and began kissing her.
She was in a cream top-coat and he began undoing the buttons. She weakly tried to push his hands away. ‘Godfrey, we’ve got to talk.’
‘What about, Oyster? Talking’s a waste of time …’
‘I haven’t seen you for over a week. A week yesterday. You haven’t telephoned or—’
‘You told me not to—’
‘Well, you could have tried in the afternoon. What is it? Lady Vosper’s been dead for three weeks and now you don’t come. Have you found a new girl?’
He laughed, dark eyes staring steadily into blue ones that were themselves darkening with the sensation of having his hands upon her.
‘Have a bit of common. Where could I find another girl like you? Think you find ’em two a penny in the boxing ring? Have a bit of common, Oyster.’
‘How am I to know if you don’t come?’
‘I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘But a bit later on. Later on I’ll tell you.’
‘Godfrey. I want to know now.’ With a great effort she pushed his hands away and slid along the wall.
He dropped his own hands, petulance, annoyance in his face. ‘What’s biting you? What’s wrong, then?’
She said: ‘When – when Lady Vosper died I thought it would be better. But it’s been worse. You’ve only been near me once. You’ve changed. In yourself. I want to know why. Have I done something?’
Normally he could have taken this in his stride, have jollied her along, laughing and – if necessary – lying, but all the time good-tempered, confident that his good looks, his own particular way with women would do the trick and overcome her doubts. But somehow things weren’t quite like that nowadays. You pressed the usual stops: hearty self-confidence, cheerful easy manner, inquiring practised hands, but they didn’t quite work, even for him. They’d got a false note to them, as if he didn’t believe in them himself, as if bad temper or annoyance or grief or the thought of bloody Flora had put a curse on him – and when you didn’t believe what you were saying to a bird how could you expect her to believe it? And his anger at his failure transferred from himself to her. He remembered, with resentment now, how difficult she had been at the beginning, how her restraint and choosiness had given her a special attraction – all the pains he had been at to break it down. Now it was broken down but she was still difficult. He didn’t want her to be difficult. He had no patience with her. He wanted sex – the appetite was there just the same – but he had no patience with any woman. Any tart would have done, and yet no one did.
He said: ‘ Look, what the hell … I’ve got this fight. It’s the biggest ever. I got less than three weeks to be in absolute peak. You got to get out of my hair – stop needling. Everyone has. Not you but – everybody.’
‘All your other women.’
‘O.K., O.K., if you think that. I’m a sultan. This pad looks like a harem, doesn’t it? I can’t help your worries. Go back to your old man if you don’t like me. He’ll be a treat for you. Does he take his law books to bed with him?’
‘Shut up! You’re horrible! When you sneer I see you all over again. Like last spring. Sometimes I think I’m mad to – to …’
He was surprised to see the unexpected temper in her; it struck a responding chord, and he shouted at her, shouting her down. She glared voicelessly back at him, eyes really blazing, and suddenly hit him across the face. It was like hitting a piece of stone, but her fingers left red marks. He grabbed her hand and twisted it; not hard but his grip hurt. She tried to wrench it free. He put his free hand greedily down into her blouse. She bit him.
He lurched away from her so that she stumbled and nearly fell.
‘You – you great bitch!’ he shouted, out of breath with his own rage, nursing his forearm through his jacket sleeve.
‘I won’t be taken for granted!’ she gasped. ‘I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!’
‘One of these days, little Oyster, you’ll get what’s coming to you.’
‘One of these days,’ she said, ‘I’ll be done with you! And I shall thank God when I am!’
‘But you’re not yet, Oyster, and you know it. You want me and I want you, and that’s the way it’s going to be. So keep your teeth to yourself or one of these days I’ll give ’em a tap and knock ’em out. Nothing easier, see.’
He raised his fist as if to hit her. She stared at him wildly, expecting to be hit, but he did not bring his fist forward. She turned to hide the sudden tears in her eyes, grabbed the door handle, got it open and stumbled down the stairs.
When she had gone he took off his coat and rolled up his shirt. She had drawn blood in two places and he dabbed it with a handkerchief and then put on some sticking plaster. While he was doing this and using all the curses a hard life had taught, he was sufficiently occupied to think no further. But when he had done what he had to do he sat on the bed and kicked off his rubber shoes and lay back against the bed-head with his arm on his forehead and stared at the old fight posters he had stuck on the opposite wall.
If he’d played it differently she would be with him now and it would all be coming along fine. She had come for it and she had gone away without it. That was his fault, and for the life of him he did not know what had gone wrong. Even worse, it would take time to make up a row like this, he knew her.
Somehow Flora had still got him. Maybe he’d cared more for the old girl than he’d thought; but it wasn’t just that. While Flora was alive and he was living with her he had gone gaily all through the pursuit of Pearl, and three or four other affairs which had come along so easy you couldn’t call them pursuits at all. He had gone back to Flora all the time, getting fun out of her even though she was so much older. She was his employer, a viscountess, someone not on the ordinary production lines. Yet at the time it hadn’t seemed anything more. She wasn’t his special bit of tail; she wasn’t his mother. Now she was dead she was hard to shake off – that was all.
But while it was like this he put his foot wrong everywhere. He was bloody miserable. He didn’t want his own company and he didn’t want anyone else’s.
He turned his face to the wall. Anyway this mood should make him an even better fighter. Maybe he’d take this Tokio Kio apart.
Chapter Six
Godfrey got his belongings sent on from Merrick House. They were short of a few things, but what the hell. He didn’t understand the law. A seedy lawyer he went to see confirmed what Angell had told him, said he’d probably have to wait months for his money.
The property of Merrick House, not being a subject concerned in Lady Vosper’s will, was handed over without delay to the fourth Viscount Vosper by the trustees administering the third Viscount Vosper’s will.
At this stage Angell tried to prevent Land Increments from immediately exercising their option to purchase the property. He argued that it was an unfortunate coincidence that Flora Vosper should die almost at the same time as the announcement of the development scheme. Had the two events been separated by even a few months it would not have looked such a suspicious case of pre-knowledge; and he felt that if the option to buy were exercised immediately it would look t
oo calculated a manoeuvre.
Francis Hone would have none of this. ‘Of course it was a calculated manoeuvre: this is what business is about. Vosper is bound to be annoyed but he can do nothing. A perfectly straightforward legal proposition was put to him and he accepted it.’
‘My position is a shade delicate …’
‘Nothing of the kind, Wilfred. You know better than I do that the purchaser’s solicitor is in no way bound to disclose information to the vendor’s solicitor. It is the job of the vendor’s solicitor to find out all he can. That’s why you were so wise in putting Vosper off employing a Swiss solicitor, in which case the ethics, you tell me, would have been different. We live in a tough commercial world, not the world of the kindergarten. If Vosper has a complaint, let him complain to Hollis for not exercising sufficient vigilance.’
Claude Vosper had a complaint. He flew to London, something he realized he should have done long ago; and Hollis, soundly – though quite unfairly – upbraided, took him for a long conference with Counsel. Counsel studied the option agreement at some length and informed them that in his opinion nothing could be done to break it. Conveyances must be delivered, as stipulated, within twenty-eight days of the notice being given. They still had twenty-one days’ grace in which to seek further advice if they so wished.
The following day Viscount Vosper called on Angell – without an appointment. At first Angell refused to see him, sheltering behind the ethical point that he could only properly deal with Lord Vosper through Mr Hollis. Vosper sent in a message that Mr Hollis was no longer his solicitor. After some further hesitation Angell consented to see Vosper, and it was a thoroughly unpleasant interview. It ended by Vosper threatening to send a full report to the Law Society.
Angell put on an impressive show but in fact felt extremely uncomfortable. He was particularly susceptible to anything impinging on his professional behaviour, and while he knew he had nothing really to fear he nevertheless feared it. With great relief he heard a week later that Vosper had gone back to Switzerland. It seemed that everything was going to be all right.
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