The ship sailed from Southampton. No sooner had he entered the embarkation lounge than a tall woman in a hat waved at him. He fluttered his hand in response; it was a reflex action. Since appearing twice a week for four months, two years before, in a popular television series he had become used to people thinking they knew him. Usually, unless drunk or young, they darted towards him, realised in mid-stride he was merely a character on the box, and turned heel. The woman in the hat kept on course. She was middle-aged and her eyes were bold. ‘Hardy Roget,’ she said. ‘Such a pleasure. I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you.’
‘How kind,’ murmured Roget. He didn’t meet many people who actually knew his name, and certainly none who pronounced it as though he had compiled the Thesaurus.
‘I booked immediately I read you were giving a lecture,’ she said.
‘It’s not a lecture,’ he corrected. ‘There’s some sort of script-writing course for beginners … I’m merely on hand to act out the finished results.’
‘I wouldn’t miss it for worlds,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you buy me a drink?’
Her name, she said, was Sheila Drummond. This was her third cruise, only this time she was travelling with Fiona, her tennis club friend of twenty years. For all of ten minutes he enjoyed her company, felt flattered she had sought him out. They sat on stools at the bar and her crossed knee shone. She was very confident, very amusing. Nor did she pester him with inane questions about the fictional goings on of Bev and Ron and Didi; she didn’t say she’d last seen him enclosed in black bin liners on the floor of the extension in that house in Newcastle. Instead, she spoke about the recession and how her husband, John, distrusted the notion of the so-called ‘green shoots’ of recovery. John wasn’t accompanying her because it wouldn’t look good, he nipping off to enjoy himself while business forecasts were so dreadfully bleak. Then she said, ‘You know how it is with some men … they grow old before their time … any excuse will do,’ and she pressed the palm of her hand against the breast of Roget’s suit.
Immediately, he felt uncomfortable; he nodded and smiled but his mouth tightened. Quite apart from other things, if he wasn’t careful she’d be expecting him to buy her drinks for the duration of the voyage. Struggling up the gangplank he managed to give her the slip. He found himself ahead of two girls, one of whom cried out, ‘I don’t believe this. Pinch me. Is it really happening?’
His cabin steward was called Gary. ‘I’m at your beck and call,’ he assured Roget. ‘Should you need anything, just press the button by the bed and I’ll whizz in like a bumblebee.’ He placed Roget’s suitcase on the bed and stroked its top. Roget handed him a tenner. He could scarcely afford it, but theatrical gestures were second nature to him.
‘Glad to see you escaped your plastic bags,’ Gary quipped.
That evening there was the usual round of cocktail parties given by the Captain, the first held at five o’clock and the most prestigious one at seven-thirty. Roget was depressed that he had been asked for the six o’clock ‘do’, along with thirty-five members of a wine-tasting club, a group of senior managers from Sainsbury’s and a young honeymoon couple who had won some sort of competition. ‘It was ever so easy,’ the bride told the senior managers. ‘You just had to tick what was the most important thing, money, love, or a sense of humour.’
‘She put love,’ said the bridegroom, at which everyone listening roared with laughter.
At dinner, Roget was placed at a round table with the tutor of the script-writing course, a man and a woman who only opened their mouths to eat, and two young girls, one from the Midlands and one from Cardiff. During the meal, Roget gathered that they had both entered a writing competition and come joint first out of five hundred entries. Their prize was a week’s cruise and free tutoring on the script-writing course.
‘I still can’t believe it,’ squealed the girl from the Midlands. ‘I have to keep pinching myself.’ The tutor stirred his soup round and round and emptied a bottle of red wine in under five minutes.
When the girls had gone – they’d heard there was a disco on a lower deck – he said, ‘I hate this sort of thing. I’m a poet, for God’s sake.’ Lighting a cigarette he blew smoke across the table. The woman opposite began to cough.
‘Christ,’ said the tutor, glaring at the couple. When they, too, had left he confided gloomily to Roget, ‘Tomorrow morning, half a dozen matrons from the Home Counties will sign up, wear us out for two hours asking damn fool questions about writing for Emmerdale Farm and then never be seen again.’
‘Surely I won’t be needed right at the beginning,’ said Roget. He had no intention of putting in an appearance a moment before it was absolutely necessary; he had been employed to speak lines, not hang around watching them being written.
He pencilled his cabin number on the back of the menu and suggested the tutor should give him a tinkle in a day or two.
‘But I’ll see you at meals,’ protested the tutor. ‘They’ve allotted us the same table.’
‘Possibly,’ said Roget, ‘but I wouldn’t count on it,’ and added, ‘I have a wasting disease, you see, and don’t feel frightfully gregarious.’
‘Well, sod you,’ said the tutor, pouring himself another glass of wine.
Roget went up on deck and sat on a bench, staring out into the darkness. From the deck below he could hear music; in his mind he saw a glittering saxophone. He was cross with himself for inventing something so debilitating. Once the tutor had sobered up he was bound, out of remorse, to pass the information on to the entire script-writing course. I shall be forced to elaborate, thought Roget. I shall either have to cough a lot or be seen biting my lip against spasms of pain. He was just wondering if secondary lesions in the spine precluded a healthy appetite, when a voice said, ‘There you are,’ and Sheila Drummond plonked herself down beside him. He shifted sideways and hoped she thought he was just making room.
‘It’s not like being on a boat, is it?’ she asked. ‘It doesn’t go up and down, and you can’t open the portholes.’
‘Ship,’ he corrected her. ‘Not boat.’
They had quite a pleasant conversation. At one point he almost wondered whether she wasn’t cleverer than she appeared. He had explained to her, on her insistence, how you could build up character when acting out a part, add little mannerisms, inflections of speech, and she said, ‘Wouldn’t you get closer to the real person if you cut all that out?’
Then she asked him if he lived alone. ‘Recently, yes,’ he admitted. ‘I have just buried my friend.’ In the last few weeks, having uttered the same sentence many times, he had grown used to faces suddenly expressing assumed concern. Of course, he couldn’t see her face, but there was no mistaking the tone of her voice. She said, ‘I hope nobody saw you,’ and he laughed in spite of himself.
He told her that Francis had played the saxophone. They hadn’t been lovers for five years. Health problems, mostly. He said, ‘It was difficult adapting to being just friends.’
‘Who wants men and women to be friends?’ she said. ‘One might as well buy a dog.’
She had obviously misunderstood him and he wasn’t liberated enough to say outright that his friend’s name was spelt with an ‘i’ rather than an ‘e’. It was then, to protect himself from her possible advances and as a preparation for the outcome of the script-writing course, that he told her there was someone waiting for him in Gibraltar; someone he’d corresponded with for two years.
‘What does she do?’ Sheila Drummond asked. He thought he detected disappointment in her voice.
‘She doesn’t do anything,’ he said. ‘She has private means.’
After a pause, Sheila Drummond asked, ‘What does she look like?’
‘Small,’ he replied, ‘with auburn hair. And she has a slight limp. Nothing really wrong, just a war injury in her childhood. Her father was in command of a battery and during a naval battle a shell fell on the barracks and she received a piece of shrapnel in the ball of her foot.’
‘How dreadful,’ said Sheila Drummond. ‘I didn’t know soldiers were allowed to have their wives and children living with them. Not in wartime.’
‘Their family has been living on the Rock for generations,’ he said hastily. ‘An ancestor served under Nelson and is buried in Trafalgar cemetery, just outside Gibraltar’s Southport Gates.’
They talked about Nelson for several minutes, whether it was likely that he had actually cried out ‘Kiss me, Hardy’ before expiring, and then Sheila Drummond complained of feeling chilly. Before returning to his cabin, Roget went to B deck to see if he could find a booklet on the history of Gibraltar, but the library was closed.
For the following two days he managed to avoid both the tutor and Sheila Drummond. He took breakfast in his cabin and ate lunch and dinner in the Club Lido. He read a book on the six wives of Henry VIII from cover to cover and then started it again. It was quite safe to lurk about aft of the upper deck; sea breezes played havoc with a woman’s hair. It was not until Wednesday night, as he was returning from the synagogue on Three deck, that he saw her again. She was with her friend Fiona. ‘You’ve been hiding,’ she said. He was forced to escort both of them to the Grand Lounge and buy them a drink. It was quite obvious it wasn’t their first one of the evening.
‘It’s the great day, tomorrow, isn’t it?’ said Sheila Drummond. He was puzzled. ‘You’ll be seeing your friend, won’t you? Barbara, wasn’t it?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Anne … Anne Cleaves.’
Sheila Drummond told Fiona that it was a real love story. There might even be wedding bells. Fiona suggested he bring Anne back on board for supper. There was nowhere decent to eat in Gibraltar. He insisted it was out of the question. Anne wasn’t very well. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘she has leukaemia. It’s only a matter of time.’
‘I thought she just had a bit of cannon ball in her foot,’ said Sheila Drummond.
The next morning the ship docked at Gibraltar. He was on desk as early as possible. Even so, Sheila Drummond waylaid him. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid Fiona and I behaved very badly last night. It was the drink, you know,’ and she pressed his hand and gave a sad, apologetic smile.
He spent the entire day sightseeing. Walking up Engineer’s Road to the Upper Rock he was choked by the exhaust fumes of cars and coaches stuttering their way to St Michael’s Cave. He climbed even higher, until he reached the observation platform on the lip of the North Face. It was raining and the view of Catalan Bay was lost in drizzle. Retracing his steps down Queen’s Road he saw three apes pelting another smaller one with stones. All four animals were hideously ugly, with callused feet and armpits denuded of hair. Their victim was gnashing its teeth and leaping frantically up and down the slope. I know how it feels, thought Roget, and, depressed, he walked back down to the harbour.
At seven o’clock that evening, as he was going towards the Club Lido, Sheila Drummond leapt out at him from the bookshop.
‘Anne’s awfully nice,’ she cried.
He stared at her.
‘And she looks the picture of health. She’s in the Grand Lounge with Fiona.’
He wasn’t at all surprised, though his heart was still hammering, to find Fiona sitting on her own. He was damned if he was going to let them think he couldn’t take a joke. The band was playing an old time waltz. Numerous couples of advanced years were gliding stiffly about the dance floor.
‘Hello,’ he shouted. ‘Had a good day?’
‘So, so,’ she replied. ‘Anne’s gone to the loo. She won’t be long.’
Roget ordered a double scotch. He hadn’t eaten all day and immediately felt amused and uplifted. ‘I saw those God-forsaken apes,’ he said, and gave a mock shudder.
The waltz over, the band struck up a brisk foxtrot. Several ladies approached Roget and demanded a dance. It was Ladies Night and perfectly acceptable. He explained he was already spoken for, that he was waiting for someone.
It was while he was trying to catch the waiter’s eye to order another drink that he saw a small, rotund woman threading her way between the tables. She had very rosy cheeks, wore a blue bow in her red curls and was well into middle age.
‘Hardy,’ she said. ‘Please dance with me. It’s our tune, remember?’
She wouldn’t let him go. She slipped one hand from his shoulder to his neck and caressed his hair; she pressed her stout body to his. She said she was sorry about Francis but that she would look after him and he was to put the past behind him. And he could give up his silly acting career. After all, she had enough money for both of them.
As they sped round the floor he caught glimpses of Sheila Drummond’s face. She was openly laughing.
‘I do think we ought to sit down,’ he said. ‘The doctor warned any exertion might prove fatal.’
‘Did he?’ she said, and clung the closer to him.
The body was taken ashore with almost indecent haste. Roget explained to the police that he had never set eyes on Anne Cleaves until she button-holed him at the Ladies Night. She had said something to him when she lay dying in his arms, and used his name, but he hadn’t caught anything else.
Sheila Drummond told Fiona it was possibly ‘Kiss me, Hardy’, and felt ashamed.
FILTHY LUCRE
OR
THE TRAGEDY OF ERNEST LEDWHISTLE AND RICHARD SOLEWAY
A STORY BY
BERYL BAINBRIDGE
WRITTEN JUNE TO AUGUST 1946
CHAPTER 1
A small coal fire burnt in the wide horse-and-cart grate. It was a murky evening in 1851. The old man bent over his books. His head, lit by three candles, was a grizzled white. His coat was black and dusty, his neckcloth an uninspired blue. Now and then his lips would move frettishly and he would pull his beard worriedly. Once he sighed. Then he looked round the little office at the high stool, the bundles of envelopes, the red-backed books on the shelf high above the picture of the founder of the firm of Andromikey & Ledwhistle. His eyes wandered lovingly over the brass coalscuttle that shone like a buttercup, the threadbare carpet, the nail on the door on which his top hat rested, the files on the junior clerk’s desk, the quill pens in the ginger jar. He sighed again and resumed his work. The clock on the church in Pentworth Street struck the hour.
‘Ten,’ he muttered. ‘Ten.’ He straightened, swept a bundle of papers into his pocket, blew the candles out and reached for his hat. ‘I should have brought me overcoat,’ he mumbled. ‘Serve me right if it don’t.’
The door shut and he walked slowly down the stairs. He opened the big door and went out into the street and beckoned a cab, and as he drove off cast one misty glance at the brass plate on the door. It was Andrew Ledwhistle’s last day at the firm he had administered and nursed for 62 years of his life. There was a lump of emotion in the old man’s throat as he stared out into the November night.
‘Demented old fool,’ he admonished himself. ‘Still, I’ll miss the old job and shouting at old Steinhouse.’ But at least he had the satisfaction of knowing it was not passing right out of his hands. Ernest will do his job well, he thought; he was a likely lad. But there was this Andromikey boy. He was brought back to earth with a jolt.
The coachman blew on his fingers vigorously and a mound of hot air drifted into the November night mist.
Old Ledwhistle paid him a penny and stood for a moment in contemplation as the cab wound down the road, the feet of the rangey horses striking keenly to his ears.
‘You are getting old, Andrew,’ he scolded, ‘you’re nothing but a sentimental old codger.’
He climbed the steps and twisted the key in the lock. It opened more quickly than he was used to and he stumbled a little as he entered the hall. The family were in the parlour. Usually at this hour his daughters were in their beds, but they were up tonight to hear the situation of the firm when Andrew Ledwhistle retired.
He pulled back the red-plush curtain and opened the door. His wife, who was about 65 but still able, was seated in a chair busy with some sewing.
Francis, the youngest boy, was resting his head on his knee looking at a large book of lions. He was a white-faced little fellow of 6 or thereabouts, and he already showed an aptitude for figures. His thick black hair fell in a stain over his calm brow. His sister Charlotte was on her stool next to Fanny, a plump plain girl of some 16 years. Jane, the oldest in the family, was a shy musical girl of five-and-twenty. Engaged at a small table with curvy legs sat Ernest, on which burnt an oil lamp.
The scene was so peaceful and homely that old Ledwhistle halted for an instant on the threshold. His wife, a cheerful woman, rose to her feet and meekly laid her soft cheek against his weathered one. Little Francis jumped around him in delight and pulled his side-whiskers. Ernest hurried forward and dragged off his boots. Andrew Ledwhistle looked old and frail, and his loving family fussed and petted him until he was comfortable.
‘Well, my loves,’ he said, ‘it is settled, is it not? Ernest shall go into the firm to be in my place.’
‘But, Mr Ledwhistle,’ interposed his wife, ‘what of Richard Andromikey’s grandson? He is to go with Ernest?’
‘Yes my dear.’ Old Ledwhistle looked at a paper he had drawn from his pocket. It was a letter. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is from Martin Andromikey, who wishes to partner with Ernest and build up the firm.’
Ernest leaned forward. ‘What is he like, Papa?’
‘I’ve never met him,’ protested his father, ‘but he is coming to the office tomorrow morning.’ He turned to his wife and daughters and youngest son. ‘And now, my dears, to bed. I wish to talk to Ernest. We will surely meet on the morrow with God’s help.’
They kissed each other soundly and retired. Ernest and his father talked well into the night.
CHAPTER 2
Collected Stories Page 18