by Colin Murray
‘Thanks for agreeing to come at such short notice, Mr Gérard,’ Dave Mountjoy said. He extended his hand, and I saw no choice but to take it. We shook perfunctorily. ‘Cup of tea?’
I nodded, and he jerked his head at the big man who had steered me into the room. He left silently. I was now far more intrigued than scared. We were going to drink together. What could be friendlier?
‘Sit,’ Mountjoy said, and he indicated a vacant seat by the window. It was starting to get light outside. What I could see of the sky, as I stepped to the chair, had some pale-pink streaks sketched across it.
When I was sitting, Mountjoy beamed at me. ‘Good, good. Tea won’t be a minute,’ he said. He seemed nervous, and I couldn’t understand why.
‘Maybe you could tell me what you want to talk about,’ I said. ‘I’m very curious.’
‘Yeah, of course,’ he said. And then he stood silently for a few seconds, apparently lost for words.
‘I won’t beat about the bush,’ he said, beating about the bush. ‘I’ll get straight to the point.’ He then signally failed to get to the point, either directly or by some devious route, because the door opened and my tea arrived.
The small, delicate teacup and saucer looked tiny in the big man’s big hand. I wondered if there was more than one swallow in it.
‘I didn’t know if you took sugar,’ he said, handing me the cup that looked considerably more substantial when transferred to my hand, ‘so I put two spoons in.’
‘That’s fine,’ I said, though it wasn’t. ‘You were saying, Mr Mountjoy?’
‘Yeah, the thing is we heard – well, Ricky told us – that you had a run-in with him last night, and Ricky just wanted to say he was sorry. You know, like, all forgotten, water under the bridge, no hard feelings.’ He looked across at Ricky and encouraged him to speak.
‘I was out of order last night,’ Ricky said in a flat monotone, staring at the floor. ‘And I’m sorry for having a go at you. I shouldn’t of.’
His father nodded at him again.
‘Yeah, I’m really sorry. I apologize.’ He was squirming like a puppy on a leash being taught to walk to heel.
This was decidedly odd but welcome all the same. If I wasn’t entirely convinced by his sincerity, well . . . I smiled in his direction, anyway. He still wasn’t looking at me. I decided this was probably not a good moment to tell him that Big Malc wanted a word.
‘That’s fine by me,’ I said. ‘There are no hard feelings on my part. I told you that last night. I never wanted to take this thing any further.’
‘That’s good,’ Dave Mountjoy said. ‘So we’re all kosher here. All forgiven, eh? I don’t want any misunderstandings about unfinished business or assumed vendettas. I just wanted it clear that there’s none of that.’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I’m happy to hear that.’ I was really puzzled now, but I suspected I was going to have to be patient. I wasn’t going to find out what this was all about here. I slurped as much sweet tea as I could stomach and then stood up. ‘Well, thanks for the apology, which really wasn’t necessary, and for the tea, which I really needed.’ I looked around the room. ‘All right if I head back home now?’
‘Yeah, yeah. Benny’ll give you a ride back,’ Dave Mountjoy said.
‘No, you’re all right,’ I said. ‘I’ll walk back. It’ll do me good.’ I made for the door and then stopped and clicked my fingers as though something had just occurred to me. ‘Actually, this is quite a coincidence. I needed a word with Mr Mountjoy senior.’ I looked at the old boy, who was still sitting in his comfortable chair, puffing on a pipe. ‘In private. If that’s possible.’
The room fell silent, and Dave Mountjoy looked at his brother who looked at Ricky who shrugged. He had dumb insolence down to a fine art. I almost wished that I had mentioned Big Malc. It would have been a real treat to watch the little oik turn an even sicklier shade of pale yellow.
‘That all right with you, Dad?’ Dave Mountjoy said.
‘What?’ the old boy said. He was wearing a flat cap and had a sturdy walking stick by his side. He had a truculent air about him that suggested he used it more as a weapon than an aid to getting about.
‘Mr Gérard would like a word with you.’
‘What about?’ the old boy snapped.
‘It’s just about something that happened a long time ago,’ I said. ‘Before the war, back in the late twenties.’ The clarification was in case they thought I was going to bring up the beating they’d administered to my father.
‘That’s a long time ago,’ the old boy said. ‘All right. I’ll see if I remember anything.’
‘Thanks,’ I said and waited for the others to leave.
It took them a long time to cotton on. Eventually, Dave Mountjoy looked embarrassed. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Right. We’ll leave you to it then.’ And he ushered everyone out.
When they’d gone, Mountjoy the elder looked at me balefully. ‘What do you want then?’ he said, chewing on the stem of his pipe, which, mercifully, had gone out.
‘Oh, it’s nothing important,’ I said and told him the story I’d heard about Daphne and his son and how I understood that he and his wife had adopted the child.
When I’d finished, he looked at me like I was a piece of dog poo on the sole of his shoe.
‘Never happened,’ he snapped.
‘What didn’t? I said.
‘None of it,’ he said. ‘None of it.’ He paused. ‘Well, Joe might have knocked the little bint up, and we might have bunged her a few quid, but we never even saw the little girl. Kid. We certainly didn’t adopt the brat. Nah. Never happened. You’ve been misinformed.’ His grip on his stick had tightened, and he looked like he wanted to start wielding it.
‘Well, thanks for putting me right,’ I said. ‘I appreciate that.’ And I started to walk towards the door just as he spoke again.
‘Life’s nothing without a woman,’ he said. ‘Nothing.’
‘Sorry?’ I said, turning towards him.
But he was lost in his thoughts, and he clearly hadn’t been talking to me.
As I closed the door behind me, I wondered what ancient memories I’d dug up.
I was also as sure as I could be that he’d been lying to me. Just as young Ricky had been when he’d said he was sorry and that our little contretemps was at an end.
I walked slowly back along Grove Green Road in the cool, early morning and turned into the High Road as the first bus busily breezed past, lights blazing. It was empty apart from the driver and conductor. I hummed a few notes of ‘St James Infirmary’ and then let Louis Armstrong take up the tune, in the concert hall of my mind.
I stood on the corner for a moment before dawdling towards home, thinking of the old boy, pipe clenched fiercely between his teeth. I wondered what ghosts from the past were haunting him, just what had ‘never happened’. I glanced at my watch as I passed the imposing red brick and Portland stone of the Victorian town hall. There was something solid and reassuring about it. And I needed reassurance. Twenty to seven on a fine Saturday morning. A fine Saturday morning that could well turn into a very ugly day indeed.
Clearly, something very worrying had happened. Something that involved Ricky Mountjoy. And me. I couldn’t think of much that connected us, and I kept coming back to Lee the piano player.
Coronation Gardens wasn’t open yet, so I couldn’t sit there and contemplate what to do. Not that there was much to contemplate. I could either do nothing and wait to find out what had occurred, or I could ask around. The first course of action (or inaction) was very appealing. As far as I could see, its only drawback was the likelihood that something could come out of nowhere and completely floor me. The second was much less appealing. It would mean that I wouldn’t be able to potter about in the garden or watch Orient play that afternoon. The fact that I didn’t have a garden and that Orient were playing at Southend did take the edge off that argument, but it might mean that I wouldn’t be able to schlep out to Ealing to see Mrs Williams �
� Ann – that evening, and I really wanted to see her. It might also see me blundering into matters that were nothing to do with me and were way beyond my control.
There seemed only one way forward.
Fortunately, Enzo had opened Costello’s Café by the time I reached the corner where Jerry’s record shop and home nestled, and the shiny coffee machine that was Enzo’s pride and joy (if such a lugubrious person could ever be said to exhibit pride or joy) was hissing like a seriously cheesed-off and deadly snake.
Enzo performed a very impressive double-take when I entered and, a bit too theatrically, I thought, checked his watch three times.
He wiped his hands on a grubby tea-towel and then leaned on the counter. ‘So,’ he said, ‘it must have been some night, you get home this late.’
‘Just up a bit earlier than usual, Enzo,’ I said. ‘How about some coffee and a couple of slices of toast?’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘When do you ever get up before Sunday on a Saturday?’
I was hurt and would have showed him a very unhappy face if he hadn’t turned his back on me to shove a couple of pieces of bread under the grill and align a cup under a steaming nozzle on his gleaming machine.
Since the unhappy face wasn’t going to cut any mustard, I felt I had to speak.
‘I’m hurt, Enzo,’ I said, ‘that you should think I slug around in bed all the time.’
‘I don’t think that,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I just think that you keep very strange hours for an accountant.’
‘I’m not really an accountant, Enzo,’ I said for the umpteenth time.
‘Then why you do my books?’ he said, turning around and plonking my coffee on the counter.
‘I don’t do your books, Enzo,’ I said. ‘I just check your figures.’
‘I bring your toast in a minute,’ he said.
I shook my head, picked up my coffee and went to find an empty table. That wasn’t difficult, as there was no one else in the place. Well, it was ten past seven on a Saturday morning.
The coffee tasted better than usual. Well, maybe it didn’t. Perhaps I just needed it more than I did on most mornings.
I couldn’t really argue with Enzo about this being a particularly early start to Saturday for me. Basic training, back when I was first called up, had persuaded me that five o’clock reveilles were not events to relish. And, later, when I was in France, working with Ghislaine’s husband, Robert, Big Luc and the others, I developed a hearty distaste for sneaking around before dawn. Particularly when it involved wet fields, irritable, raucous crows and armed men. Which it so often did.
Still, it was beginning to look as if I’d been up in time to see the best of the day. After Thursday’s drop of dampness, Friday had been very hot, but it had rained overnight and it appeared that the spell of good weather had broken. Some cloud was coming in, and it was a lot cooler.
‘Weather’s changing,’ I said to Enzo when he brought my toast.
He looked forlornly through the window. ‘Bloody country,’ he said. ‘It’s going to rain again.’
He was so distraught that I couldn’t bring myself to trouble him for another cup of coffee. Instead, I joined him in staring silently out of the window.
As I watched, a beautiful old black Rolls-Royce sailed around the corner from Lea Bridge Road and shivered to a halt outside Jerry’s shop.
Now I knew something really serious was up because Charlie Lomax, Les Jackson’s driver, jumped smartly out (well, as smartly as a fifty-two-year-old, slightly overweight ex-boxer could – perhaps ‘lumbered smartly out’ would be more accurate) and opened the back door and allowed the man himself, Les, to slide off the leather seat and step on to the pavement, straightening his jacket as he did so.
Now Les is not a lazy man, and it is not unknown for him to be up and at his desk by eight o’clock, but he has never paid me a call before half past seven. In fact, I was struggling to remember an occasion when he had paid me a call at any hour of the day.
‘Excuse me, Enzo,’ I said. ‘I’ll be back in a minute. With a rich customer for you.’
I walked to the door and called to them. ‘Les, Charlie. Over here. I’ll buy you a cuppa.’
It was still cool, and it didn’t look as if the sun was going to break through the increasing cloud. I found I preferred this to the high seventies of yesterday. My new wool suit felt right for the weather.
Les looked up, saw me and stalked across the road, followed by a serious-looking Charlie.
‘No time for that,’ Les said. ‘Get in the car.’ The dark bags under his eyes were a fetching shade of green, and he looked decidedly irritable.
‘And good morning to you too, Les,’ I said.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude.’
‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘Have a cup of coffee, calm down and tell me what’s up.’
He rubbed his eyes, stroked his chin and sighed. ‘Yeah, that’s not a bad idea.’ He turned to Charlie. ‘I don’t suppose you had time for any breakfast, did you?’
‘No, guv,’ Charlie said.
‘Let’s grab some now, then. While we’ve got the chance.’
I led the way back into Costello’s.
Enzo nearly smiled when Charlie ordered bacon, egg, fried bread and beans, but normal service was soon restored and he was back to his miserable self as soon as Les just ordered tea.
‘So, what’s up?’
‘Philip Graham is what’s up,’ he said.
‘Disappeared again?’ I said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Holed up in his flat. Won’t come out. Sounds shit scared.’
Another one, I thought. ‘What’s he scared of, Les?’ I said.
‘Buggered if I know,’ he said. ‘He wouldn’t say. He mentioned you, though. And I thought . . .’ He trailed off and looked at me appealingly.
Les at his most appealing is a cross between an old basset hound and the Cheeky Chappie himself, and difficult to resist. He also pays my wages.
‘That I might know something, or squeeze something out of him,’ I said.
‘Perzactly,’ he said.
‘Well, I don’t know anything,’ I said, ‘and I can but try to find something out. Where’s he live?’
‘Somewhere in Ladbroke Grove,’ he said.
‘Really?’ I said.
He nodded.
‘Les,’ I said, ‘you really have to start paying your stars properly. Shouldn’t he be living in Mayfair?’
‘No, he bloody shouldn’t,’ he snapped. ‘He’s an oily rag, and I don’t like him. The camera does, though. Mind you, it doesn’t love him half as much as he loves himself . . .’ He trailed off again and sighed. ‘I’m getting too old for all this. I’m fed up with it, Tony. The unions, the stars, the distributors, they’re all getting me down.’
I took a deep breath. ‘You’re worried about Daff, Les,’ I said. ‘That’s what’s getting you down.’
Enzo brought over tea for Les and Charlie and another coffee for me. Les stirred a spoonful of sugar into his cup and took a sip. I lost count of the number of spoonfuls Charlie put in. He would have saved time by pouring his tea into the sugar bowl.
‘I know,’ Les finally said, ‘and the toothache doesn’t help either.’ He paused. ‘All the same, it’s a miserable bloody business at the moment. It’s just one damned thing after another. Someone’s always trying to stitch me up.’
‘Must make a change from you stitching them up,’ I said.
‘Very funny,’ he said and sipped some more tea. ‘But, yeah, I do miss having Daff around the place.’
Charlie stared steadfastly into his tea. Clearly, he didn’t miss having Daff around. Fortunately, Enzo arrived and slapped a plate of fried food down in front of him and he set to with a will.
‘She always kept me on the straight and narrow,’ Les said.
I laughed. ‘I doubt even Daphne could do that,’ I said.
Les gave a phlegmy chuckle. ‘I supp
ose not,’ he said. ‘But she tried harder than most.’ He paused. ‘Ah, I wish you’d known her before the war. Handsome woman. Smart, too. Sharp tongue on her, mind.’
‘She’s not gone yet, Les,’ I said. ‘You never know.’
‘The forecast’s not good,’ he said. ‘Not good at all, Tony. The quack says there’s not much hope.’ He paused again. ‘By the way, what did she want with you?’
‘Oh, nothing much,’ I said. ‘There’s just a little family matter on her mind. From way back. Well before she met you.’
He sniffed. ‘You going to be able to sort it out for her?’
‘I’ll do me best, Les,’ I said. ‘But the mists of time and all that.’
‘Mists of time!’ he said. ‘I think me memory’s going. Remembering the past is like trying to look through a pea-souper these days. You know something’s out there somewhere, but you’re blowed if you can see what it is.’
‘Come on, Les, you’re not that old,’ I said, thinking of old man Mountjoy.
He finished his tea and stood up, looking impatiently at Charlie, who was busily mopping up the last of his egg yolk with a piece of fried bread. There was a little dribble of bean juice on his chin.
‘Ready when you are, Mr J,’ Charlie said through a mouthful of soggy bread, scraping his chair back across the floor and bending over to swill down the last of his tea.
I left half a cup of coffee. I’d been wrong. It wasn’t that good.
Characteristically, Les waved aside my offer to pay and rummaged in his pocket for a few half crowns. Enzo thoughtfully put the cigarette he’d just lit into the scarred ashtray on the counter and, once again, in another rare moment of peace and happiness, came close to smiling.
Les was misinformed. Philip Graham didn’t live in Ladbroke Grove at all. His flat was at the top of a big, old house in Bayswater. It was pretty rundown though, and there were a lot of stairs. Les looked like he’d just climbed the north face of the Eiger by the time we stood outside the flimsy-looking blue door. He was huffing and puffing like a pressure cooker about to blow. As he said himself, he was getting on a bit. Still, so was Charlie, and he didn’t look too bad. It was all those ‘spots of lunch’ Les treated himself to and those expensive cigars and cheap women that were slowing him down. Come to think of it, though, I hadn’t seen him light a cigar lately, and he hadn’t drawn my attention to the charms of his latest secretary for a month or two. Perhaps he really was feeling his age.