Angell, Pearl and Little God

by Winston Graham

  ‘Jees, I don’t know how you stay with the old crud!’

  ‘And you want me to come and live with you?’

  ‘How can you? You’re too much in love with Mayfair and posh restaurants.’

  ‘That isn’t the point.’

  ‘Isn’t it? I thought it was.’

  After a minute she said: ‘ Do you love me, Godfrey?’

  He fiddled with the bandage on his nose and grimaced with pain. It was the last thing to ask him now, when his nature was bunched up, muscle-bound with resentment. He knew she was watching him and that he looked like something out of a leper colony.

  ‘I mean truly,’ she persisted. ‘Apart from sex. Enough to marry me.’

  ‘What’s love?’ he said. ‘Never heard of it. I’m a pug. Maybe you haven’t noticed.’

  ‘You never let me forget it,’ she said.

  ‘Why should you want to?’

  ‘Why should I? Maybe because I’m a woman. I don’t mind you being a fighter, but I don’t want you to be only a fighter.’

  ‘So what sort of a set-up is that? Some love nest.’

  ‘I can work. I always used to work. I can perhaps get my old job back.’

  ‘You’d love that, wouldn’t you.’

  ‘It was an easy enough job. I didn’t like the travelling before.’

  They seemed to have nothing more to say. His sarcasm, his mimicry had wrong-footed her, dried her up. She had said all the wrong things in all the wrong ways. His first words had made her feel self-conscious, over-formal, priggish. Now she sat beside him like a paid sick-visitor. But how else should she have come? Run up to the bed, arms round him. ‘Godfrey!’ Sobs. You couldn’t have. Not with him. Anyway a public ward was not the right place to meet. (And the last time they had met in private she had bitten him.)

  A spark was lacking, his crudeness offended her. He wanted her, you could see that, but did he want her more than he did a lot of other women? If only he had been different this afternoon, if he had been receptive to sympathy. Instead he snarled like a maimed wolf, ready to fight to the last.

  So the talk dropped between them. She stayed to the very last minute, wanting more resolution that she could not find, needing him but resenting within herself the existence of the need. She tried to encourage him to talk about his boxing future, but that led quickly back to the old hate. Soon as he was out of here he’d take a rest to get fit again. Then he had a job to do.

  ‘A job to do?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve been fixed. Remember that? By your Pig-Face. Next time I see him I’m going to lean on him. I’m going to knock the stuff out of his guts.’

  ‘Oh, Godfrey, that’s hopeless. Can’t you realize it? How can you prove anything?’

  ‘Prove? Who wants proof? Last time I called on him – your old man – at his office, that time I called at his office, I could tell then that he knew about us. Just the way he sat there – sweating his guts out with hate. He’d have give me poison if he could. There was a bloke called Birman there that day – in the office, in the outside office. You can stand on it: he did the fixing for Angell, he did the dirty work. I’ll settle with him one day. But it’s Pig-Face first. Then Jude …’

  She hesitated, on the edge of indiscretion, wanting to talk but fearing to talk.

  ‘Even if something was arranged – and really I can’t believe —’

  ‘I’m dead sure, so save your breath.’

  ‘But it’s your future you’ve got to start thinking of – not what’s over, done with. What about your reputation? For Heaven’s sake. You’re a name for the first time! Someone who stood up to the champion of Japan for six wonderful rounds—’

  ‘You try it. You try six wonderful flaming rounds with three teeth knocked out and a broken nose and eight stitches and ribs like they’ve been beaten in with hammers. You try it, Oyster, and see how it feels!’

  She said miserably: ‘ Everything I say you turn against me. If I didn’t feel for you, why should I have come? All I am trying to say is—’

  ‘All you’re trying to say is, let your old man off.’

  ‘Not because I admire him. Not because I care anything for him at all any more. You know that. But if you try some – some sort of revenge it can only get you in trouble. You can’t box Wilfred – he’s old and unfit. You can’t even box this man Davis. So why ruin your own life, your own prospects now, when you’ve got a big chance to succeed?’

  The second bell had gone while she was speaking. He was eyeing her up and down.

  ‘It sounds all right the way you say it. You might even be thinking of me.’

  She picked up her bag.

  He said: ‘Anyway you’ll be there on Monday when I get back to my room?’

  She said without hesitation: ‘If you want me to.’

  ‘That’s a date. Here, you take the key of the room. I expect I’ll be home about twelve. Eleven’s the time they jet people out of here. So I should be there by twelve. I got a spare key if I’m early. You can cook me dinner.’

  Their eyes clashed. ‘All right,’ she said.

  They had stayed together through Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in a silent arid desert of enmity. After a lot of hesitation she had decided not to make the final break until after she had seen Godfrey, then when she saw him he had never given her the sort of encouragement she wanted. She so much wanted to be able to say to Wilfred: ‘I am going to Godfrey,’ instead of ‘I am going home.’ So again the break was postponed, this time until Monday.

  As for Wilfred, each time he came home and found her still there he breathed a sigh of relief, though he was careful not to show it. His supplications of Tuesday evening humiliated him to remember and he tried to forget they had ever happened. If she told him she was leaving him now, he persuaded himself he would be able to bear it, and each hour that passed without an announcement gave him a fraction more confidence. In a month he would be persuading himself that his abject surrender of Tuesday had hardly happened. Also the light of day, of several days, had convinced him that she had out-manoeuvred him on the night by pressing her accusations and disregarding his own. A woman caught in adultery is not a particularly admirable sight even in these permissive days. He had every right to divorce her and turn her off without a penny. His own retaliatory act was the merest justice, a fit retribution. He was bitterly angry with himself and with her that a woman half his age should have been able, by sheer nerve, to get the better in open conflict of a man like himself.

  All these thoughts he thought more convincingly when in his office surrounded by his pink- and green-taped documents. When confronted by her, the sight of her weighted the scales of justice alarmingly by reminding him of what he might lose. Those beautiful legs, of which she showed so much, those long elegant arms, the fine skin of brow and cheek and neck and breast, the glinting blue eyes and the long fair hair. It was utterly unfair that she should be so capable of undermining the rational process.

  Since Tuesday he had not dined at home, but on the Friday he came back and clearly expected something, so she cooked him a shoulder of pork, and they had a selection of cheeses to follow. Like all the breakfasts, it was a silent meal, punctuated only by the clink of knife and fork and the sound of his breathing. Afterwards he sat in front of the fire with a cigar and a glass of port while she cleared away. When she came back into the drawing room she saw he was reading the Boxing News she had bought that day. He glanced up and saw her look and rashly spoke.

  ‘Well, they speak highly of Brown – or Vosper – they speak highly of him in this boxing paper that you have. It cannot have done him all that much harm, this defeat. He should be grateful for having had the chance to shine.’

  Echoing Godfrey, she said: ‘A broken nose, eight stitches in his cheek, two in his eyebrow, concussion. I’m sure that’s something to be grateful for.’

  He dropped the paper on the floor and sipped his port. He should have known that the longer the subject was avoided the better. Keep off it. Talk of anything
else. Compliment her on her frock, her cooking, her hair. He must not gamble with his future. But now the subject, like a vein, was irrevocably opened. Now his frail cause might bleed to death.

  ‘I saw him yesterday,’ she said.

  He nursed his fear and his enmity, keeping them close, trying not to let them show.

  ‘He’s in Bethnal Green Hospital,’ she said.

  ‘I suppose I should have expected it.’

  ‘Expected what?’

  ‘That you would go to see him.’

  She poured herself a glass of his port. She didn’t like it, it was over-sweet, cloying, like a moneyed existence.

  ‘He knows all about it. All about the arrangement between yourself and Jude Davis.’

  It was so quiet that you could hear the 18th-century French Ormolu clock in the bathroom striking ten.

  ‘I don’t understand. You are imagining things. What have you been telling him?’

  ‘I told him nothing. I pretended I didn’t understand. But he knew all about it – or he’d guessed – as I did. He said he was going to get even with you both.’

  Angell put his port down. His cigar smouldered in the ashtray. ‘I’ve never even met Davis, wouldn’t know what he looks like. It’s a persecution complex Brown’s got. Anyway, how could he possibly – get even, as you call it?’

  ‘I think he means in the way you arranged it for him,’ Pearl said with malice.

  Angell’s face quite noticeably paled. It was as if the blood had suddenly remembered another appointment and gone elsewhere. He stayed quite still.

  ‘I’ve never heard anything so absurd,’ he said boldly. ‘This is a law-abiding society.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Why, a man can be convicted merely for uttering threats. In some cases he can be sent to prison for uttering threats. Brown had better be careful.’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘You told him to be careful?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He wouldn’t take any notice of me. No notice at all.’

  A further silence endured, until the clock in here also struck ten. Angell wanted to ask her if she were seeing Godfrey again, but this other sudden danger which had arisen impeded his tongue. Physical danger to his body, not just danger to his possessions. Inconceivable.

  ‘Of course it means nothing,’ he said with conviction. ‘Just empty words.’

  ‘Yes. I expect so.’

  ‘But empty words that show his vicious nature.’

  ‘Aren’t we all vicious?’ said Pearl.

  On the Sunday they had booked for a concert at the Albert Hall, but she would not go with him. He went along half an hour before the performance and tried to sell the tickets. He failed in this so went to the concert by himself in order that only one ticket should be wasted. When he came out it was dark and he took a taxi home. He was not sure what day Godfrey came out of hospital. He realized that for quite a long time perhaps he would have to take taxis home.

  He was an hour late reaching his office on Monday morning, but as soon as he got in he rang Vincent Birman. Birman was out but rang back at twelve and they arranged to have lunch.

  When he heard what was on Birman said: ‘Well, I’ve been as tight as a clam. You know me. I don’t spill. And the only other feller in the know is Jude Davis, and you can bet he wouldn’t say. He’s got a licence to lose. Brown can only guess, and how he has guessed is your problem not mine. How d’you know he blames you?’

  ‘I happen to know. And he’s threatening some sort of reprisal.’

  ‘On you? Or on your client?’

  Angell bit his lip. ‘On me apparently. Though I have only been the go-between.’

  ‘Like me. I believe he did see me in your office one day. Maybe that’s the link. But you surely don’t take it seriously. A little broken-down pug. He’s got no influence, no money. And no vestige of proof. What could he do?’

  Angell said to the waiter: ‘More soup. And bring the grated cheese.’ Because he was paying for this meal they were eating at an inexpensive luncheon café in Fleet Street. ‘One does not know what a vicious little prizefighter like that might attempt if he brooded on his grievance … Did you say “broken-down” pug?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ said Birman to the waiter, and watched Angell swallowing the soup. ‘Well, he did take a terrific beating, didn’t he?’

  ‘You were there?’ Wilfred was startled.

  ‘Yes, I went along, old man. I’d agreed to hand over the other thousand pounds that evening. It was part of the bargain.’

  To hide his pain Wilfred broke a roll and stuffed a piece of it in his mouth.

  ‘Davis wasn’t there,’ Birman said. ‘He was ill, or pretended to be, so I had to go to his house. That’s another ten shillings for a taxi on your expenses.’

  Angell said: ‘My client must have been out of his mind to spend so much. Brown was certainly well beaten, but one wonders … Beyond some temporary disfigurement … Beyond that …’ He spooned up the last of the soup and looked at Birman hopefully.

  ‘Beyond that is anybody’s guess. Boxing’s a funny game, as I’ve told you before. Boxers come into the ring with their tails up. It’s a psychological thing. When they get stopped the way your man got stopped last Tuesday something happens to them. Their bodies have got to recover – and that can take a time: that Kio had one of the most vicious right hooks I’ve ever seen. That’s a physical thing. But their minds have got to recover too. Before this they’ve always gone into the ring knowing they’re going to win. They always have won – or if they lose on a cut eye it’s just bad luck, or a points decision they can con themselves the ref was wrong. They never admit they’re beaten: there’s always some excuse: it’s the way they go on fighting. But when you get beaten all over the guts and brains like your man on Tuesday, there’s no excuse they can dream up for that. They know there’s stronger, cleverer fists in the world than theirs, and it may be they’ll never quite go into a fight with the same zest again. That’s mental. Then they’re over the hill. Even at twenty-one you can be over the hill. So it’s just a matter of luck with Godfrey Vosper. We’ll just have to wait and see.’

  ‘In the meantime …’

  ‘In the meantime I hope your client’s satisfied.’

  ‘In the meantime I am considering these threats …’

  ‘Oh, those. Forget ’em, old man. That’ll be his excuse, no doubt. He was framed, it wasn’t a fair fight. That’ll help him to recover. But as for reprisals. If he was one of the big boys who could pay to have a couple of thugs look after you, there might be a bit of danger. But not from a little down-at-heel feather-weight.’

  This was much in line with Angell’s reasonable thinking: but reasoning is not all. ‘Nevertheless I’d like to know something of his movements. I’d like you to keep an eye on him for a few weeks.’

  Birman sighed. ‘I’ll assign one of my men if you like, but it will cost you more than it will be worth. I’ll forecast Brown’s movements for you. He’ll have made a nice little packet out of this fight and he’ll probably take it easy for a while – even go for a holiday to Brighton or somewhere where he can pick up a girl or two and play the slot machines. But as soon as ever he feels fit he’ll tire of that and come back to the gyms and start hanging around waiting to pick up a few pounds sparring until his manager arranges the next fight. He’ll be far too busy thinking about himself to think of taking it out on you.’

  ‘He’s a very peculiar man,’ said Wilfred. ‘What little I’ve seen of him …’ He knew that if he insisted, the results of this order to Birman would be likely to be double-edged and would probably expose his wife’s perfidy to another’s gaze. He did not like this, but he saw no way out. For the moment fear was the dominant emotion, over-riding all the others. Fear and hunger. Fear and hunger. They seemed to have a common frontier. Fear and hunger, worry and hunger, jealousy and hunger. They met in a psychosomatic no-man’s-land between the countrie
s of the body and the mind.

  ‘I want him watched,’ Wilfred said, and waited impatiently for the steak and kidney pie.

  Pearl left her house at 11.30 and took a taxi to Lavender Hill. No one answered the door so she went in, climbed the two floors without meeting anyone and let herself into Godfrey’s room. She had brought food for a midday meal, and she prepared this before setting about clearing up the mess. There was only a gas-ring and tiny oven, and the grease on them suggested they hadn’t been wiped over for a month. The bed was roughly made, but the imprint of his body still marked the tattered counterpane, and comic papers were strewn on the floor. As she picked up the papers and glanced through them she shivered slightly: they emphasized the paradox of her passion, which all through her maturing mind, her ambition, her fastidiousness, had fought against.

  An old pair of boxing boots were under the bed along with two pairs of hand-made brogues and two other pairs of expensive shoes. She rubbed these over and put them in the wardrobe, which she was startled to find stacked with almost new clothes: sweaters, jackets, suits, silk shirts. All from Lady Vosper, no doubt. She shivered again. It was as if she again detected something parallel in her life and Godfrey’s. They had both lived with older people, who doted on them, and from this association were loaded down with the small profits of their servitude. She had married Wilfred. Was that the only difference?

  By one o’clock the flat was looking a different place. (The outside of the window was still filthy but she did not fancy leaning out and trying to clean it.) The furniture was free of dust, the threadbare rug reversed so that the worn end hardly showed. She had waited to put the steak in, but the potatoes and cauliflower were nearly ready and she thought he was sure to be here any minute now. (It was strange to be cooking for someone who only cared for food as a secondary consideration.) She had brought a bottle of Wilfred’s best wine, and although there was no decanter it was at the right temperature. The deal table was covered with a check cloth, and the old bone-handled knives and the drunken-pronged forks were laid. There was nothing more for her to do, so she washed her hands again and rinsed her face and powdered it and re-fixed her lips. She knew he didn’t like her hair too tidy, so she did not comb it. He preferred his steak rare, so she took his out and allowed hers to sizzle for another few minutes. When that was done she turned down the gas and left the dish on the top of the oven and hoped it would not spoil.