Inch of Fortune

by Simon Raven

  There wasn't. Fenland roads are very narrow and a three-ton lorry had come round a corner only fifty yards in front. Both Esme and the lorry were driving inattentively, neither slowed down, they scraped in passing, and the back-door frame of the van was badly battered while half the top section of the doorpost was tom away. Terence woke up with a start, and they got out into the twilight road.

  The fault was evenly divided. There was no occasion for fuss. They would say nothing whatever about it, a few pounds would settle the damage to the van. So eager was Esme to create an atmosphere of reconciliation that it never occurred to him that an insurance claim would require details of the other party involved. They drove on to Badlock to show their work to the gardener.

  The gardener said it was not a bit serious, and would take twenty-odd pounds to repair. He would notify the agent, who in turn would notify the lawyer and the insurance company. Of course Mr Sa Foy had the name and address of the lorry-driver...? Well then, did he have the number of the lorry...? Well then, it looked as though twenty quid was coming out of Mrs Fairweather's pocket.

  VIII

  This was a depressing thing to have occurred, but Esme didn't think much about it. After all, from what he could see of things, Sandra was involved in one crash after another: and all she did was merely to buy a bigger and faster car each time, so that the accident rate went up in geometrical proportion. A few pounds on a garden van were neither here nor there. Once more, Esme's lack of acquaintance with the rich was letting him down: when Sandra crashed a car, Sandra got the kick — both out of the crash and the next car. She paid without a murmur. But when Esme had a smash, though the money involved was by comparison nothing at all, it wasn't the same thing. She hadn't been there: money in excess of the bare necessary amount had been wasted: ergo she was being exploited. Another simple syllogism — with a general application that all young men involved with rich families would do well to bear in mind. While the rich can see their money being spent, no matter how foolishly spent, they are perfectly, indeed childishly, happy: provided they themselves are present, you can even spend it for them; but they grudge every sheet of lavatory paper used in their absence — which is tantamount to saying they grudge every sheet of lavatory paper that is used at all.

  Esme, however, had yet to find this out, and in any event something occurred on the following Wednesday, something both miraculous and yet in a way irritating, that put the whole business of the garden van clean out of his head.

  At eleven o'clock in the morning he went to talk to Terence, who, with more than usual disregard of routine, was lying in bed reading. Spread over the bed and the floor were the fruits of their expedition to Merlin's Bookstore in St Martin's Lane; Esme sat down on the end of the bed, and out of sheer idleness grabbed the first paper within range, which happened, of all things, to be the so-called 'Luritania Supplement' of the New York Herald Tribune.

  This abominable rag filled him with disgust but at the same time a peculiar fascination. The Luritania, it seemed, was a new ocean-going liner of unsurpassed tonnage and amentities, and had made its maiden voyage from New York to Cherbourg some three weeks back. Nothing could be more 'regal' than the state apartments (photos on page 6 of this supplement), the dining-room was a sort of fairy palace, and the ballroom (chandeliers by Charue) had a floor you could see yourself dance in. There were also five different bars, six squash-courts, and a masseur's parlour for both sexes. The food, Esme learnt, was prepared so hygienically that a qualified doctor was employed whose sole job it was to detect possible contamination in the kitchens. Cartier, Molyneux, Balmain — a dozen other top names in jewels, clothes and furs — all had experienced and courteous representatives on board. On the Luritania one wanted for nothing except manna — and even that could doubtless be arranged.

  There were also a few passengers. These ranged from a well-known Argentine diplomat down to Monsieur Yaw and a gang of students, who had been doing valuable field work as a representative party of the European League for T.W.E. (Teach the Workers Economics). Some of the passengers had little columns about themselves: the Princess Fuina Gheika (fresh from a drink cure in Boston, Mass.) was off to Cannes, Esme noted, to cam the right to another one; Guy Bolton, Jnr, had recovered from his nervous disorders consequent on failing his B.A. (Ord.) for the third time running, and was returning to Oxford for a fifth year of gas-fires and benzedrine; Mr Richard Temple Muir, who had just completed a tour round the world with his friend, Mr Peter Dixon, was joining his mother and the remnants of his capital in

  London; and Mr William Gomery, the poet and novelist,—Mr William Gomery, the poet and novelist, was going to spend a fortnight in Paris at the Bellman Hotel, from where he intended to fly to Bordeaux. There he would stay with friends and revise his latest book (Ten Dahlias in a Window Box) which was to be published the following spring. He was going to Biarritz in early August, where he had many friends, including the Duke and Duchess of Panton, who were also expected at the Hotel du Palais.

  'Hey, Terence,' he yelled before he could stop himself, 'I've found your Uncle Bill.'

  'There's no call to scream about it,' said Terence, 'what do you mean, found him?'

  'In the "Luritania Supplement". It says he's gone to Bordeaux to revise a novel called Ten Dahlias in a Window Box.'

  'Crappy name,' said Terence.

  'I didn't know he wrote novels.'

  'Why should you? He doesn't so's anyone'd notice. He never sold ten thousand in his life.'

  'He's going to Biarritz in August, to see the Duke and Duchess of Panton.'

  'That means we'll be there,' said Terence, 'the Duke was sweet on Mother and she goes for Dukes.'

  'Fair enough,' said Esme, and returned to Charue's photogenic chandeliers.

  But a little consideration told him it was not as fair as all that.

  For one thing, the odds against Terence and himself getting to Biarritz had considerably lengthened. Everybody seemed to frown whenever the place was mentioned. (He remembered Mrs Valley's tart remarks on the subject of poor 'Charles'.) Then there was the McTavish veto: and for all he knew it would be echoed, for the same or different reasons, by Dr Fibula Trito. Admittedly Sandra seemed fairly keen on going there, and no doubt the Duke who had been sweet on her (not to mention Uncle Bill) would provide a further attraction; but she was under no obligation whatever to take Terence and himself along with her. Finally, there was the desperate uncertainty and lack of balance that seemed to predominate in all her arrangements. A day or two ago, when he himself didn't know where he wanted to go, this very uncertainty, with the scope it gave for desirable alterations, had seemed an altogether excellent thing. Now that he had a definite goal, he longed for a little precision.

  Another thing that was puzzling him more and more was the strange omission of Bill Gomery from Mr Chynnon's list. At first he had thought that it was a mere slip: Gomery, after all, could have been a very slight acquaintance of Marshal Acre's who had come to know Sandra better as the years went on. But everything pointed against this. In the first place the man was Bellamy's godfather: and this implied a fair degree of intimacy with Sandra at the time of Bellamy's adoption — which was not, after all, so very much later than the decease of Marshal Acre. Again, William Gomery' had now been revealed in the light of a man of letters — a feeble one, no doubt, but well enough known as such to command snob value of the calibre required by the 'Luritania Supplement'. And if it was a question of snob value (on which issue, after all, the whole affair was hinged), what was all this about the Duke and Duchess of Panton? Even if Gomery had only been Acre's office-boy one would have thought that his subsequent advance, if nothing more, would have earned him a place in Mr Chynnon's list. The conclusion one drew was that there was something highly peculiar cither about Uncle Bill, or about Mr Chynnon's list — if not both.

  Here was a distinctly unsettling line of thought. For if you came to think of it, Mr Chynnon's list was a highly arbitrary document. Hotel guests and American
friends — well and good. But why no one else? Both Sandra and Marshal Acre had travelled very widely, Sandra at least had a substantial place — still did — in the 'Continental set', and it was to be presumed they both had many friends littered all over the Continent, of whom not a few would have been seen frequently in America and almost certainly at Sandra's home on Long Island during and before the Acre courtship. Not to mention Sandra's friends in England.

  The multiplicity of questions one could raise on the assumption that Mr Chynnon was playing double was quite beyond Esme's computation. The tiling became a hideous and nightmarish matrix. Suppose, for example, you said that there was an Acre secret worth discovering but Mr Chynnon, for some reason of his own, wanted someone else to discover it: why, then, had he specifically directed one's attention that way, thus paying one for efforts that could have been more valuably employed in other directions and at the same time running a distinct, if minor risk of one's finding the secret after all? Why, for the matter of that, had he bothered to employ one at all? Granted the money meant nothing to him, the fact remained that he had taken the trouble to make complicated enquiries about oneself and one's past, and had been prepared to run the considerable risk of one's going to the police and having him charged for maleficent activities. Was one then a decoy? And, if so, whom was one decoying and whither? Or, to go back to the old hypothesis, was the omission of Gomery merely a clerical error after all? And the apparently arbitrary nature of the list merely a turn of one's imagination or the too rigid application of logic?

  Esme, who by this time saw that if he was not to be involved in a revel-rout of interrogation he must be content to have a little patience, came to two comparatively sane decisions.

  The first was that, since Mr Chynnon was now due for the first of his weekly reports he had better have it — and that it would tell him absolutely nothing. He accordingly sat down and told Dear Mr Chynnon that he was settling in, keeping his eyes skinned, and was sincerely E. S. Sa Foy.

  The second may more properly be called a deduction, and was simply this: that whatever mystery there was about Marshal Acre, whatever was peculiar about William Gomery, and whatever might be the motives of Mr Chynnon, the answer lay with Uncle Bill, alias Bellamy's godfather, alias Sandra's torchbearer, alias the friend of the Duke of Panton, i.e. with William Gomery Esquire, poet and novelist, at present in Bordeaux and shortly to be in Biarritz. It was to Biarritz he must go to compete for the thousand pounds, if indeed the offer was genuine: as he had nothing else to do, he might as well assume it was; and it was therefore to Biarritz he must go. And there for the time being he must let the matter rest.

  IX

  But there were a good many other things to occupy his attention. On the evening of the 'Luritania Supplement' discovery, Esme and Terence drove into Cambridge to see a film. Coming out they met a friend of Esme's who was up for the Long Vacation Term, and whose hospitality detained them till one in the morning. When they got back to Badlock they left a little note asking for breakfast at eleven o'clock. As they had both ingratiated themselves with the staff, and as on the whole they gave very little trouble, there was no reason to suppose anyone would mind very much.

  Nobody did, and they were left to sleep in peace — or they would have been, had not that morning been selected for a series of 'phone calls by apparently everyone in the world that knew them.

  The first was from the secretary in London and happened at ten o'clock. The boy's were still in bed, said the maid, but she would fetch Mr Sa Foy.

  'Still in bed, Mr Sa Foy?' said an icy voice.

  'Yes,' said Esme awkwardly, 'that is, we've only just got up.'

  'Well the thing is this,' said the secretary: 'we've just heard through the agent that you've had an accident. Is that the case?'

  'Only a very small accident,' said Esme.

  'I dare say, but Mr Gower, the lawyer, is very upset you haven't let him know about it. And there's another thing — you didn't get the name or anything of the other party, and the insurance have said they won't pay up.'

  'I'm afraid so,' said Esme feebly.

  'Well, everyone's very annoyed and thinks you've behaved in a thoroughly irresponsible way,' said Mrs Chaser with relish: 'and I really must say, Mr Sa Foy — ' 'Is there anything you want doing?' The wind was whistling through Esme's pyjamas and he was beginning to feel curt.

  'Yes: an accident report will be coming for you to fill in just in case the insurance will do anything. Have you reported the accident to the police?'

  'Not yet,' said the miserable Esme.

  'Well, it's meant to be done within twenty-four hours, so you'll have to be rather quick,' said Mrs Chaser sarcastically, and rang off with venom. Esme went back to bed to think it all over.

  But not for long. At 10.30 the phone rang again. It was Mrs Valley. Mr Sa Foy was in bed but the maid would get him.

  'Still in bed, Mr Sa Foy?' said Mrs Valley cuttingly.

  'We've just started breakfast,' said Esme.

  'The maid said you were in bed, still that's your business — I hear you've had an accident.'

  Really, it might be a conspiracy.

  'A very minor one,' said Esme.

  'I don't know about that, but Mr Gower's absolutely furious, and say's you've behaved in an irr—'

  'I know he says that,' said Esme, 'what is it you want?'

  'Well, since you ask, I rang up to tell you what time Bellamy's arriving. I 'phoned his house-master yesterday.' Interfering bitch.

  'Well, what time is he arriving?'

  'Friday evening, by the last train. He's going to Arundel first to play-'

  'Thank you,' said Esme, taking his chance to ring off with a slam.

  He just had time to get upstairs before Dr McTavish rang up. The maid appeared for the third time.

  'Still in bed, Mr Sa Foy?' said McTavish gloomily.

  'Yes,' said Esme, 'if you want to know, neither of us are feeling very well.'

  'I'm sorry to hear that. You know how to get on to the local man all right?'

  'Yes,' said Esme desperately, 'but I don't think that'll be necessary.'

  'Well, don't take any risks with Terence. I hear you've had an accident.' Had the whole of London heard of it?

  'Not really an accident, we only — '

  'That may be, but Mr Gower is very anxious, I understand. I think perhaps you'd better — '

  'I'm terribly sorry, Doctor,' said Esme, 'but Terence is calling upstairs. Is there anything in particular?'

  'There is, in point of fact. Dr Trito has asked me to let you know he'll be arriving in time for lunch on Sunday. So have everything ready. Bellamy's going to be there too, they tell me.'

  'Yes.'

  'Well, if you find it hard to manage — if there's any sort of trouble — you know where to get me. Arc you quite sure you wouldn't like me to ring the local man and have him come to see you and Terence, if you're not feeling very well?'

  'No, please don't give yourself any trouble, Doctor,' Esme implored, 'he's just a little tired, that's all it is. I think I should get upstairs to him. It was so kind of you to ring up. Good—'

  'Oh, one more thing,' said the inexorable McTavish, 'how's the routine going?'

  'Magnificently,' said the hysterical Esme, 'athletic activity in the morning, an hour of cultural repose after lunch, further athletic activity till tea-time, and creative endeavour after dinner.'

  'Good,' said McTavish dubiously, 'it's essential his hours should be regular and early and that there should be no drifting about. Good-bye, Mr Sa Foy.'

  'Good-bye,' said Esme, and went clammily off to shave.

  All this was upsetting enough, but there was nothing much to be done except wait for the insurance form and the return of Mrs Fairweather. Esme still didn't believe that anyone as rich as Sandra would make a fuss about the doorpost of a miserable garden van.

  The next thing to be settled was a scheme for the approaching weekend. On the whole it seemed likely that this would settle
itself, and Esme was confirmed in this view by his first meeting with Bellamy on Friday night.

  The only things you noticed about Bellamy were his extreme size, his extreme niceness, his excellent sense of humour — and his entire lack of intelligence. No one was more conscious of this deficiency than himself, and he had wisely decided at an early age that he was not going to waste time and energy trying to develop what he hadn't got. This decision had apparently left plenty of time for the development of what he had got, so that his size, his niceness and his humour had come along better than ever. (All of which infuriated Sandra, for she, like all his schoolmasters, refused to understand that knowledge is only a waste of time if you don't get any fun out of it.) Bellamy, then, would really make no difference to anything at all. He was just something pleasant to have around.

  Both boys seemed to know about Sandra's determination to keep them apart; and Esme rather meanly took advantage of this to hold a preliminary council as to the best way of impressing Trito.

  'If you two want to see much of each other,' he said, 'we shall have to create a favourable impression on Dr Trito. You know him and I don't. What's the form?'

  The form, it seemed, was Trito's enormous fondness for food, drink, comfort and backgammon. He always brought a backgammon board with him, and played on the system of optional doubling on a penny basis after each move, so that if you didn't watch out you lost a lot of money. Then he hated having things heavily organized for him — you just wanted to let him sit about in peace and make his own suggestions. Incidentally, he kept analysing everyone in the room the whole time he was there and whatever he was doing — whether for practice, for fun, or merely out of habit nobody knew. He was very nice about this, however, and never told you his conclusions unless, like Terence, it was you he had come to see.