Three Brothers

by Peter Ackroyd

  “He was going into that Ruppta’s building.” These offices were immediately across the street from The Wait And See. Asher Ruppta was a businessman, of ambiguous nationality, who had become the subject of hostile controversy and bitter complaint in Notting Hill Gate. He was known as a brutal and rapacious landlord, buying up old houses and subdividing them into smaller and smaller flats that were then rented to immigrants from the West Indies. It was reported that he terrorised the older residents until they were forced to move out or to sell their properties to him. Then he would bring in new tenants and charge them exorbitant rents. His “agents” always had bull terriers with them. “Then I saw them walking towards the park. Later, that is.”

  What would Webb have to do with Ruppta? The fact that Webb was in the housing department occurred to Harry as soon as he asked himself the question. But why would he visit Ruppta’s offices? Why did not Ruppta go to Whitehall? “Did you tell me once,” he asked her, “that Ruppta’s staff use the coffee shop?”

  “That’s right. Lunchtime. She eats so much. She orders three sandwiches.”

  “Who does?”

  “The secretary. And then there’s a typist, who looks a little bit like a mongoose. No. A marmoset.”

  “What does a marmoset look like?”

  “Like her. Anyway she’s leaving. I don’t think she likes it there.”

  “You remember how to type, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do. Have you forgotten how to breathe?”

  “Are you any good?”

  “Any good?”

  In his excitement it did not occur to him that Hilda might want to stay at the coffee shop.

  It did not take him very long to devise a scheme whereby Hilda would enter the office of Asher Ruppta. She took the secretary and typist into her confidence. “You know,” she told them, “I am sick of making sandwiches.” Later she added, “I used to be a typist, like you. I loved it.”

  “Well, you can go back to it,” the typist said on the following day. “I’m off. I’ve had enough.”

  So Hilda entered the employment of Asher Ruppta. He was a short thickset man, in middle age, of olive complexion. He had gold rings on the second and third fingers of his right hand; he wore an expensive silk suit, and a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles hung from a silver chain around his neck. He could have been a banker, or a heart surgeon. Hilda later described him as “very sleek.”

  “So you know my ladies,” he said to Hilda on the morning she had come for an interview. “My ladies are very special. They are very good ladies.” He could not have been more polite, more gallant. Could this have been the man who threatened old women with bull terriers? He looked at her with a certain amount of merriment, as if he had divined her question. “Julie says that you are an excellent typist.”

  “I hope so. I think so.”

  “How many fingers?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “How many fingers do you use?”

  She held up her hands. “All of them.”

  “Excellent. You have a pianist’s hands.”

  “I can’t play a note.” She was laughing.

  “You can make music on the typewriter. Please to sit there.” She sat down in front of a large Remington. “Now, Miss Hilda, you can begin.” He started to dictate to her a letter concerning the freehold of a property in Lancaster Gate. He seemed to Hilda to be making up the figures as he went along.

  She and Julie Armitage, the secretary, now shared an office. Julie was thin, but she rarely stopped eating. She kept a pocket knife and a jar of Colman’s mustard in the drawer of her desk. She cut up a Scotch egg, or a pork pie, into several very small pieces; then she spread mustard on each one of them evenly before placing them in her mouth in a rapid but somehow absent-minded fashion.

  Julie was not happy with the world as she found it. Her face looked as if it were incapable of smiling, and the sides of her mouth were sure proof of the theory of gravity. She complained about the weather, about the bus service, about the previous night’s television programmes—and of course about her own job. “I’ve got too much on my plate,” she said one afternoon. That was true, Hilda thought, in another sense. “Mr. Ruppta doesn’t understand.” She pronounced his name in a deliberately formal way. “I am that busy. I hardly have time to take a wee. And my back is giving me gyp.” Hilda could not help laughing. Julie looked at her in a pained fashion. “It’s all right for some.”

  “Let me help.” Hilda tried to sound apologetic. “Give me some of your paperwork.”

  “Would you?”

  So Hilda became better acquainted with all aspects of Ruppta’s business. “He’s claiming for payments he never made,” she reported to Harry. “That’s thieving, isn’t it? He makes up lists of works that were never done. He lies about the number of tenants in a property. I know that for a fact. I have the real numbers in my desk. Sometimes I hear him talking on the ’phone. He is ever so smooth and polite. A real charmer. He talks very carefully and precisely. Like a walking dictionary. He never loses his temper. Not him. I should think he would stay calm in an avalanche. Yes, he would. He is never even annoyed. Which is annoying. But I don’t think he’s a gentleman at all. I think he is a bit of a villain. I have to pass on messages to him. ‘Flat 38 is done.’ Or ‘number ten is vacant.’ That kind of thing. Very suspicious. But he just smiles and puts a finger up to one of his eyebrows. He likes to smooth them down. ‘Thank you, Miss Hilda,’ he says.” Harry had been taking notes.

  There had as yet been no further sign of Cormac Webb. Then, one evening, he walked into the office. Asher Ruppta had been to the bank earlier in the day, and had drawn out a large sum in cash. Hilda knew this because he had taken with him a black attaché case equipped with a safety lock. He always used this to carry money.

  Webb did not identify himself to Julie or to Hilda but went over to Ruppta’s door and gave it a sharp double rap. “Ah,” Ruppta said as he opened the door, “my very good friend!” The two men shook hands, and entered Ruppta’s private office. Hilda pretended to be checking her pages of typing, but in fact she was listening as carefully as she could without arousing Julie’s suspicion. She heard stray phrases, such as “the provision” and “the regulator,” but the rest was murmured conversation. After a few minutes Webb left the office, carrying the attaché case. He still did not seem to notice the presence of the two women. But he was smiling.

  Harry was delighted with the news. “This is it,” he said. “We’ve bagged him.”

  He cleared the story with James White. “That little cripple,” White said with some satisfaction. Cormac Webb had a slight limp.

  The news editor then took the story to Andrew Havers-Williams who remarked that “Webb is not one of nature’s gentlemen.” It only remained, he said, for “that chap, Hanway, to catch him at it.”

  Julie volunteered the next piece of information. “That person,” she said to Hilda on the following morning, “comes here every month. On the dot. I don’t know who he is and I don’t want to know. He has ever such a cruel mouth. What does he do with all them attaché cases?”

  Hilda observed that, on the day after Webb’s visit, Asher Ruppta purchased a property in Queensway that had previously been subject to a “building order.” It seemed that this order had been lifted only a week before. A “building order” gave tenants certain rights of appeal and of rehousing.

  Looking back over the files, Hilda noticed that other “building orders” had been allowed to expire or had been lifted. In one file she noticed a letter, dated 31 October 1968, with the heading of the Department of Housing. It was signed by Webb himself. It was couched in formal style, but the gist was clear enough. Asher Ruppta’s property holdings were due to be investigated by an official from the department, but the government had decided that such action was neither necessary nor desirable. It seemed that Webb had intervened and stopped an investigation into Ruppta’s business.

  “I’ll tell you what he’s doing,” Harry said t
o Hilda that evening. “He is giving Ruppta inside information. That’s what he’s doing. I wonder how much he’s being paid.”

  “Hundreds.” She opened her eyes wide.

  “Heck.” He had a habit of scratching his face that Hilda still found endearing. “When is he coming next?”

  “The first of next month. Around five.”

  On that day, Harry and a photographer from the Chronicle were sitting in The Wait And See. They were drinking coffee and watching the street from the window. There was a new girl behind the counter, Millicent, who had been handed a pound note for allowing them to stay there. “Here he is,” Harry said. He had become very excited. The photographer swiftly picked up his camera from the Formica table, and took several photographs of Cormac Webb walking down the street and entering the building. Thirty minutes later, he photographed him coming out of the premises with an attaché case.

  Webb had seen them. He seemed to Harry to have some difficulty in mastering his expression as he walked across the road towards them. The photographer kept on snapping him.

  “You can put that fucking thing down,” Webb said as he came into the coffee shop. “Can we speak outside?”

  “Sure,” Harry replied. “We can speak anywhere.”

  “I know you. You’re from the Chronicle. You interviewed me.”

  “That’s right. Can I ask you about your relationship with Asher Ruppta?”

  “I don’t have one. And that’s that.”

  “What’s in the case?”

  “That’s none of your business. I warn you. I don’t remember your name.”

  “Harry Hanway.”

  “I warn you, Hanway, that if you publish any of this you will be out of business.”

  “Out of business? That’s a curious phrase.”

  “You will be finished. Do you understand that?”

  “That really depends on whether you have done anything wrong or not.”

  Webb glared at him, and limped away.

  Harry spent the next two days preparing the story. He consulted the Land Register. He found out the leases attached to various properties. He found the title deeds and records of “building orders.” There was a significant pattern of Ruppta buying up properties within a few days of the “building order” being lifted. Harry was not able to prove directly that Webb had sold Ruppta information, but he knew how to surmise and suggest within the bounds of libel.

  He was about to give the story to James White when he was called to the office of the editor. To his surprise he was greeted there by the proprietor of the Chronicle, Sir Martin Flaxman. He was a small man and seemed frail; but he had a full head of sleek black hair which was, perhaps, a little too long at the back. He had a forceful manner, with a bluffness that might have been mistaken for geniality. Harry wondered how such a small man could make so much money. In fact Flaxman had made his fortune from selling medical supplies in Asia and Africa.

  “Well, Harry,” he said, “I’ve been hearing all about you. You know when to go for the balls, don’t you?” He squeezed Harry’s arm. “Fuck it. I’m frightened of you already. Look at me. I’m shaking.” Andrew Havers-Williams, strangely divorced from the conversation, was looking out of the window towards the steeple of St. Bride’s Church. “Do you know what I tell Andy here? Spread enough shit around and something will grow.” He was still holding onto Harry’s arm. “There’s good shit and there’s bad shit. I’m looking out for you, Harry. You’re my boy.” And with that he abruptly left the room.

  “Very colourful.” The editor cleared his throat. “That story about Webb and Ruppta.”

  “Yes?”

  “How far has it got?”

  “As far as it can. I was about to pass it over to White.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “I don’t—”

  “We won’t be going on with it.” Harry remained silent. “Sir Martin doesn’t want to publish it.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “I’ll tell you something in confidence. I shouldn’t, but I will. I owe you an explanation. In the past Sir Martin has been in business with Ruppta. As a good reporter, you will be angry. I understand that. But as an employee of the Chronicle, you have to accept it. For the sake of your career.”

  Harry did indeed think of himself as a “good” reporter, whatever that meant, but he did not want to jeopardise his future at the Chronicle. That was more important. Sir Martin Flaxman had, after all, expressed an interest in him. The abandonment of the Webb story was exasperating, but he might be able to use it to his advantage in the weeks and months to come.

  VI

  Squeeze in

  “ACTUALLY, I don’t much care for the place. It isn’t exactly what I expected.” Daniel Hanway was confiding in his former schoolfriend, Peter Palmer, who had come to see him in the middle of the second term. Palmer had been given a place at the University of Liverpool.

  “Have you made many friends?”

  “Friends? No. Not really.” He did not want to admit loneliness or the fact that he looked warily upon his contemporaries.

  “I bet,” Palmer said, “that you don’t feel as clever as you used to.”

  “What do you expect? My director of studies isn’t interested in anything I have to say. He just sits there smoking his pipe. He has the most boring opinions I have ever heard. He’s in love with Ben Jonson, for Christ’s sake. You’re right. I don’t feel so clever any more. I think there are people here who are cleverer than me. I hate that. I might as well be invisible.”

  They were sitting in two black leather armchairs before a small gas fire. It was the biggest room Daniel had ever possessed, and a small bedroom lay off it. He had refused to put posters on the walls, so that his surroundings had a quality of bleakness that secretly he enjoyed. It suited his mood.

  “I feel,” he said, “that I’m on the sidelines of everything. There’s something really great going on somewhere, but I have nothing to do with it.” They could hear from the room upstairs the sound of music and laughter. “Come on,” he said, “let’s walk to Grantchester.” It was a walk he had already done many times, along the path and the fields beside the river Cam, where he could brood on his unhappiness. “I can’t stand the lectures,” he was saying to Palmer as they crossed the first bridge on the outskirts of Cambridge. “Total waste of time. I have come up with a plan to avoid those wankers. Do you want to know what it is?” He savoured a few seconds of silence. “This is what you do. Say that you are studying the poetry of Browning. If you’ve got a strong enough stomach, you don’t have to read him. Not as such. You read nine or ten books about him. They will be so boring that you can sort of skim them. Then you take their main arguments, mix them up, blend them together and press them into shape. Hey, you’ve got yourself a great piece of cookery. A great essay. Then you memorise it for the exam.”

  “Isn’t that, well, a bit mechanical?”

  “The syllabus is mechanical. Exams are mechanical.”

  They walked on a little way until they came to a small stone chapel standing five or six feet back from the bank of the river. “This is the place,” Daniel said, “where the Virgin Mary was supposed to have appeared before a female hermit. Thirteenth century. So they built this little shrine.”

  “You don’t believe that stuff?”

  “I wouldn’t rule it out. Do you smell that lovely scent?”

  “Water lilies.”

  They were silent for a while. “What’s with the moustache and long hair?” Palmer asked him. He had been waiting to ask the question all day.

  “I just woke up one morning and decided to grow them.”

  “You and a thousand other hippies.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The spirit of the age. The new youth.”

  “That’s all romantic shit. I just wanted to grow a moustache. Isn’t that a good enough explanation?”

  “A band of brothers.”

  “Listen to yourself. You’re
as bad as those cunts who go on sit-ins and organise poetry workshops.”

  “You can’t just dismiss them.”

  “Yes I can. They’re pathetic. What does it matter to me that I’m living in the 1960s? Does that make anything so different?”

  They had come to the fields outside Grantchester. “Sunday is the worst day,” Daniel said. “Don’t you feel it? It is so empty. So melancholy.”

  “Now who’s the romantic?”

  When the bell rang for dinner in Hall that evening, Daniel put on his black gown and walked down his staircase. The bell might have signalled a funeral.

  “Squeeze in, dear.” Ernest Hughes was a plump young man who believed that he bore a resemblance to Oscar Wilde, whom he called “Oscar.” “There’s always room for one more. If there is semolina again, I shall scream.”

  This prompted a snigger from Stanley Askisson, a young man from the north who had a great affection for the novels of D. H. Lawrence. Ernest looked at his soup with a placid expression. “Don’t you think, Stanley—”

  “I do think.” He sniggered again. “Don’t I think I should be more polite?”

  “Don’t you think that we should bring back the sedan chair?”

  “Don’t talk shite.”

  “I happen to believe it is the perfect form of transport.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “There’s a difference between me and you, Ernest. Not in money. Not in class. Not in brains. I have my gods. You have your gods.”

  “Oscar said that gods are vulgar.”

  “Oscar Wilde was a great fat insect. A spider.”

  Ernest blinked and breathed hard. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I know a fake when I see one. He was false. False to himself, and false to others. Each man kills the thing he loves. I don’t think so.” He was very fierce. “Not unless that love is unnatural and obscene.”