by Ted Lewis
Books by Ted Lewis
The Jack Carter Trilogy
Get Carter
Jack Carter’s Law
Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon
Crime Novels
Plender
Billy Rags
Boldt
GBH
Other Novels
All the Way Home and All the Night Through
The Rabbit
First published in Great Britain in 1977
by Michael Joseph Ltd.
This edition published in 2014 by
Syndicate Books
www.syndicatebooks.com
Distributed by
Soho Press, Inc.
853 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
Copyright © 1977, 1993 The Estate of Ted Lewis
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-61695-507-6
eISBN 978-1-61695-508-3
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
Ted Lewis: Making it Real
About the Author
Chapter One
THE RAIN SLIDES DOWN my bedroom window.
“You’ve got to be joking,” I say to Audrey. “You and me! I mean, do me a favour.”
She rolls over on top of me and puts her mouth next to mine and our lips brush together briefly and she says: “I’m just about to.”
“No,” I tell her. “Be serious. Just for a bleeding minute.”
“For a lot longer than that,” she says. “For quite some time, in fact. Unless something’s happened to you since last week, that is.”
She tries to find my mouth again but I twist my head to one side and grab hold of her wrists and heave her off and over, reversing our positions.
“You know,” she says, “considering you feel about that suit the way some people feel about their racing pigeons, you’re not exactly looking after it proper at the moment. Let me put it on a hanger for you.”
“When you stop being so fucking stupid, yes,” I tell her. “And just as a matter of interest, what time was it when you had your first livener this morning?”
“I’ll tell you,” she says, smiling a particular kind of smile. “If you really want me to.”
I look at her without any expression at all.
“Then I’ll begin,” she says. “Now what time was it? Oh yes. About quarter to six—”
“Quarter to six?”
“Could have been ten to. The curtains were drawn and you know how small the luminous figures are on my watch and how I always forget to wind it up.”
“You wind me up something chronic,” I tell her.
“Do I really?” she says, all mildness and moderate surprise, so I shake my head and let her get on with it.
“Anyhow, it was about that time or thereabouts, when what should happen then but a strange man opens the door and walks into my bedroom, and as you know there’s no one stranger than my old man, and stranger still for him to be coming home at that time of the morning. Normally he never comes home at all, excepting weekends we’re at the house in Surrey.”
I open my mouth in order to tell her to leave out the domestic arrangements when she raises her head and sticks her tongue into my open mouth and draws back quick and goes on:
“So I’m asleep, aren’t I? I mean, I know something’s up by the way he slings his jacket across the room at the chaise longue and it doesn’t hit right but this morning he doesn’t go over and pick it up, and he’s a bit like you about his gear so there’s got to be something, hasn’t there?”
“All right, all right,” I tell her. “When do we get to the bit about the three bears?”
“Just one bear in this story, sweetheart,” she says. “So anyway, he starts taking off the rest of his clothes like he’s trying to make the Guinness Book of Records and while he’s doing that he says to me, ‘You awake, Aud?’ And I lie there as though they’re about to sink the screws in me lid and Gerald says: ‘Don’t fucking con me, you slag, I know when you’re awake and when you’re not, so let’s be having you.’ Which of course is precisely what he wants, to be having me. Although I don’t know that yet. So I prop myself up on my elbow and switch on the lamp and ask him what the bleeding idea is waking me up at this time of the night, what’s the matter, has Terri’s burned down. While I’m asking him this he’s standing at the bed end, slipping out of his Austin Reed knickers and I can see he’s stoking himself up a hard-on and then of course I get the idea and I say to him: oh no, no chance, you don’t think you’re coming back here after getting fuck-all elsewhere and waking up the old lady to get rid of your inhibitions. No fucking chance at all. Go and run some blues and have one off the wrist. Then he hardens up in more ways than one and drags all the sheets off the bed and gets on and starts crawling up the bed and I try to roll off it but he grabs hold of my ankle so I’m hanging half off the bed and he crawls up a little bit more and hauls me back on the bed, but I’m still struggling, see, which I shouldn’t be doing because I should know better, I’m likely to get one in the mouth any minute, and I do mean a punch. But I’m so pissed off with it, common sense doesn’t enter in to it, so in the end Gerald gets astride me and pushes my nightie above my head so that my arms aren’t free any more and he takes hold of the hem and knots it round one of the brass rails at the bed-head. You remember those brass rails, Jack, don’t you, that one time you were there?”
“I remember,” I tell her. “I remember thinking at the time, how appropriate, brass.”
She tries to bring her knee up into my crutch but I’m ready for that one and I’ve already slid a little to one side but I’m still keeping a tight hold on the wrists above her head. She lies silent for a minute before carrying on and then she says:
“Bit like this it was, really. In fact a lot like this. Me with me arms above me head, immobile, arms and head all bundled up in the nightie, like I’ve got a sack over me head. In fact I remember saying words to that effect to Gerald at the time, about he needs to sack me before he can poke me, but I don’t think he really heard, the words being a bit muffled, like, and in any case, he’s already started going to work, and saying a few things himself. I mean, you can imagine the kind of thing Gerald chants while he’s pumping, being the kind of bloke he is, you know, you cunt, you bitch, you whore, you cock sucker, etcetera, etcetera. I expect you can imagine.”
“What I can’t imagine, you’re going to tell me anyway.”
“Go on,” she says. “I bet you’re imagining already. Let go of my wrists and let me see if I’m right.”
“No way,” I tell her.
She smiles.
“I am right, aren’t I?” she says. “Anyway, like I say, Gerald goes to work, and do you know, it’s funny, I begin to start liking it, all trussed up like that, unable to do anything about anything. I mean it’s quite a new experience, being raped by your old man. Sort of adds a new dimension, know what I mean?”
She rolls her eyes a little bit, indicating the grip I have on her wrists. I know what she’s getting at, but there’s no
way she’s getting it, not yet.
“I think Gerald quite enjoyed it, too,” she says, “because afterwards, he didn’t leave me there like a drawn turkey and he didn’t roll off and start snoring right away. He lay on his back and lit a fag and got quite expansive. Started talking about you, how you’d been taking a lot of weight on your shoulders on the firm’s behalf recently. How it was about time you had a bit of a holiday.”
I look at her.
“It just doesn’t occur to you, does it?” I say to her. “You’re so fucking sure of yourself, it just doesn’t occur to you. You ever hear of free association, and I don’t mean what they do in Sweden. It never fucking occurred to you that Gerald has you, straight after that he starts thinking about me, straight after that he starts talking about me going away and that. Bleeding stroll on. You barmy or something?”
Audrey’s expression changes to one I’ve seen often enough but not very often when we’re just on our own.
“If I was barmy those two chancers wouldn’t care because we’d be in bits and pieces in Epping Forest.”
“Maybe they’re just barmier than we are.”
“You know what they are and I know what they are. We’re the firm, not them.”
I shake my head.
“And it’ll just be down to them if we do what you’re suggesting.”
She shrugs again. There is a silence. Then I say to her: “What else did he say?”
“He didn’t say anything else. That’s all he said.” She pauses. “Except a minute or two later he bursts out laughing.”
I look at her. Then she bursts out laughing.
“You bitch,” I tell her. “You bleeding cow.”
“Well you should never have asked me when I had my first livener, should you? I mean there’s liveners and liveners, isn’t there?”
“Right,” I tell her, and start giving her the treatment she’s been asking for all along, and outside the rain keeps coming down as though it’s never going to stop.
Chapter Two
AND AN HOUR OR so later it’s still beating against the glass of the Penthouse as I find out Audrey hadn’t been joking at all. Gerald and Les are sitting on the low white leather settees with the backs placed where the split level breaks down into the sunken square in the room’s centre. They’re sitting opposite each other in poses that perfectly describe their different personalities. Though they’re both relaxed, leaning back in the plump leather, holding their glasses, Les is not relaxed enough for his pose to create any more wrinkles in his mohair than are absolutely necessary. He’s resting his glass on a neatly crossed knee, one hand on the glass, the other holding his cigarette close to his shoulder, delicately, almost effeminately, and not a speck of ash on his mohair, whereas Gerald, of course, looks as though he’s been letting Les use his suit as an ashtray and there are so many wrinkles in the material that you’d never guess the suit was one of a half dozen he’d had sent round from Sammy three weeks ago. He’s sunk down in the leather with his legs wide open and his shirt half out and the drink in his glass about to slop out onto his left shoulder.
“Jack,” he says, twisting round, giving the final impetus to his drink. “Jack, my old darlin’, we just been talking about you, haven’t we, Les; ain’t that so?”
Gerald looks at Les as if he’s asking to be backed up in a barefaced lie and Les answers as if he couldn’t give a fuck about anything at all.
“Yeah,” he says. “We were just talking about you.”
Gerald gets up, beaming, expansive, vindicated.
“You see?” he says.
“Yeah, I see,” I tell him. “All depends what the fuck you’ve been saying, doesn’t it.”
Now it’s time for the hurt look.
“As if we’d ever say anything nasty about our number one son,” Gerald says. “As if we would, Les, eh?”
I walk over to the drinks cabinet.
“That’s right,” says Les. “Make yourself at home.”
One of these days, the years of cool I’ve maintained with Les is going to unfreeze and he’s going to go sailing out through the plate glass into the darkness of W.I.
But not today. Today, I’d rather just pour myself a drink.
“I thought as number one son I’d be entitled,” I say to Les, dropping a slice of lemon in my glass.
“Les,” says Gerald, “you know what your trouble is? You’re petty. You’ve always been petty. Even as a kid, when mother broke her leg that time and couldn’t get out the buildings for a month. Any errand she wanted doing you always tried to get a tip out of it. Before you went.”
“I never bleeding got one, though, did I?” Les says.
“Listen,” Gerald says to him. “One of these days you’ll learn the value of public relations. You’ll learn how to show people how much you value what they do for you instead of crapping all over them.”
“It’s all right,” I say to Gerald. “Don’t macaroni. I don’t give a fuck the way he is. I’m satisfied with what I get in this firm. I don’t need bonuses from that wanker.”
I take my drink and sit down on an armless easy chair in the floor level part of the room.
“Now see what you’ve fucking well done,” Gerald says to Les.
“Piss off.”
“And this was going to be a nice friendly chat when we showed Jack some appreciation for all he’s done for us this year.”
“It’s all right, Gerald,” I tell him. “Take it that I appreciate your appreciation.”
Gerald looks at Les. There is a long silence. Then Gerald says:
“Look, let’s forget it. Jack, have another drink.” He walks up the few steps from the centre of the room and takes my glass from me and back to where the drinks are. “No,” he says making the fresh drink. “What we were talking about, what we’ve been thinking of—we’d been saying, what a good year we’d had, mainly due to the way you’d looked after your side of the business.” Not to mention every other fucking side of the business, I think to myself.
Gerald comes back with my drink.
“So, how can we show our appreciation?” He stands there, palms appellant. “Money? Jack don’t need no money. Birds? Jack takes care of that himself. A gift? What can we give him his money can’t buy? And that’s what made us think of it. What can’t money buy?”
Gerald waits for me to ask him what money can’t buy and when I’ve done that he says:
“Time.”
I look at him.
“What, you going to shop me, are you?” I say to him.
Gerald blinks then bursts out laughing. “Great,” he says. “Fucking great. Isn’t that great, Les.”
“Favourite,” Les says.
Gerald laughs so hard he nearly bursts a gut. That goes on for another two or three minutes and then when he’s finished Gerald says:
“No, but seriously. When did you last have a holiday?”
“Skegness, fifty-three.” Les says.
I look at Les.
“Something like that,” I say.
“Shut up,” Gerald tells Les, without looking at him.
Then he goes on. “Jack, you should take a holiday.”
“Fine,” I tell him. “I’d like that. Can I start now?”
“No, I mean a real holiday,” Gerald says. “A proper one. Not lying on your back in your flat all day, not in this country, in this weather. No, you should go abroad. The sun. Get some sunshine down you. A fortnight’s worth.”
I look at him but I don’t say anything.
“So what we thought was,” Gerald says, “why don’t Jack use the villa for a fortnight?”
I still don’t say anything.
“The villa,” Gerald says. “In Majorca.” He looks at me with the expression of a conjuror who’s just done a trick. When the applause doesn’t materialise he goes on:
“It’s great, you know it is. You’ve seen the slides. Way up in the hills. Miles from anywhere. The pool. The sunshine. What more could you want?”
I look at him. Gerald closes his eyes then smacks the side of his head with the palm of his hand.
“The birds,” he says. “Of course, the cunt.” He opens his eyes again. “Listen, Wally Lomas’ll fix all that up for you. He knows the form out there. No need to take nothing with you. Like taking coals to Newcastle with old Wally fixing for you.”
“Wally Lomas? That old slag?”
“Yeah, well, I know he’s past it, but we gave him the job on account of what his old lady asked us on her deathbed that time Wally was given a compassionate and was on his way to see her. Only he got there too late, didn’t he? She asked us to see if we could do something about keeping Wally out of nick on account of their baby daughter, Tina, because she didn’t want Wally’s mother getting her hands on the offspring. So we promised her we’d see what we could do and with that she expired. Five minutes later Wally arrived. What a scene.
“Anyhow, next time that Wally gets out, we put it to him like this: There’s this villa we’ve just had converted and we need somebody to look after it and see to us and our guests whenever we’re out there which, as you know, is often. ’Course, Wally needs some persuading because he sees himself as an embryo Charlie Richardson but we tell him he’s already done more time than Charlie’ll ever do, including Charlie’s present stretch, and in any case, Wally should have stuck to the restaurant business like his old dad, because Wally’s almost as good as his old dad was. You should taste his meat balls in sauce. Anyway, in the end, we finally get through to him, and he’s been out there ever since. Never regretted a minute of it, he hasn’t.”
“Have you?” I ask Gerald.
Gerald smiles.
“Listen, don’t be stupid. Whose name’s on the contract? Who do you think it says owns the villa?”
I don’t say anything.
“Right,” Gerald says. “Wally’s finally made it. At last he’s got his castle in Spain. In a manner of speaking. So it works out fine for all of us. He’s a big wheel and we’ve got a front.”
I shake my head.
“Besides,” Gerald says, “Wally was so chuffed the way we attended to his old lady’s arrangements, he felt he was doing us a favour, not the other way around.”