‘I don’t know the widow,’ I said.
‘Good time to get to know her then, isn’t it? By the way, what’re you driving?’
‘A DB6.’
‘Watch the tyres on that.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘They’re high-speed jobs, designed for maximum road grip but not for long life. After eight or nine thousand miles you’ll find the rubber will go as soft as orange peel.’
II
He’s nothing to me. I scarcely knew him. Which was as true as sin. But now he was gone I was narked that he had cracked his skull in a cartwheeling car and had got himself buried too deep for me to have a chat with him again. His stupid flamboyant arrogance had fretted me when I met him, but somehow the surface antagonism hadn’t counted too much. I couldn’t go so far as to say he was the first Scotsman I’d actually liked, because I wasn’t sure I liked him. He was engaging, meretricious, stimulating, and worth bumping against again. That was all. But it was enough.
With more time for thought, I thought about my last visit to Quemby. Seeing my mother again in that casual way had been like jogging against an old barred window silted with dirt. Some of the muck of years had fallen off and you could peer between the bars. I wondered how much I had actually hated my father. Of course I’d been scared of him, especially when he was gassed; but a lot of the time, it seemed to me, we maybe hadn’t got on too badly. I remembered him rolling down a field with me when I was about seven, all the way down to the bottom, and his bright blue eyes twinkling with enjoyment at my laughter. I remembered him telling me about motor cars and him letting me sit on his knee and hold the wheel as we drove along. I remembered him teaching me to skate, and the way he picked me up that first time I fell on my belly and winded myself. I remembered the walks we had and the talks we had. But that was all earlier in my life before the poison began to spread. Funny how you forget things and how they sometimes squirm up into your mind again.
Sometimes I get this feeling of being separated from other people, different. Not better, not worse, but living on a different plane, living another sort of life. Their problems are not my problems; my problems are not theirs. Nor are their pains. This feeling is specially strong when I’m on my own. But then again, if the truth be told, maybe I always am on my own.
It’s a funny old world. You’re never quite sure how much of it is real.
One day, just for the hell of it, I thought I’d see how far I could get across London without paying a fare. I walked up to Selfridge’s and got on a bus going east. We were at Oxford Circus by the time the conductor came round.
I said: ‘Marble Arch,’ with a foreign accent.
‘You’re going the wrong way, mate. Across the street. Any bus except a 25.’
‘Thank you. I am so sorry.’
I got off and walked towards Oxford Circus, caught a bus going down Regent Street. The conductor came when we were near Piccadilly Circus.
‘Selfridge’s, please,’ I said.
‘Not on this bus you don’t. Look, man, you cross over and, see that stop? Catch a 6, a 15 or a 60.’
‘Thank you. I am so sorry.’
This way I got right across London to Hackney, never having too far to walk and earning a dirty stare from only one conductor, a Paki, who looked as if he’d seen it tried on before. In the end I got fed up with waiting at bus stops and took a taxi home.
Actually I’d had a semi-purpose in going to Hackney, because I thought of calling in at Henry Gervase Ltd to see if, now that pornography was more or less legalized, they were coming up with any new tricks. But when I got there I found they’d moved and the place was now occupied by ‘ Best Friend Dog Foods’. It did occur to me that this might be just another front, but I thought if I went in and it was run by Roger’s nominees they might think I was looking for a job. I saw a chap coming out whom I vaguely knew – smart dark type with thin moustache – and this tended to confirm my hunch.
During this week I caught up with my play-going. I went to something every night and three matinees as well.
I went to the zoo and watched some rather jollier monkeys than those I’d seen at TBM Ltd. On the whole I thought well of monkeys. They had a simple, unaffected approach to life, and looked a deal more intellectual than the crets on the other side of the bars. Then I went to look at the ospreys and the eagles and wondered if my cousins in their far Highland pastures had anything as handsome to see on their lonely crags.
Odd that that relative of mine should have been done in by a defective tyre, just as surely, just as effectively as by a terrorist bomb or bullet. But instead of the world – and for ‘world’ one reads ‘ media’ – screaming their horror at another dastardly crime – from the Kennedys for ever backwards, into the so-called dark ages – instead of that, it was all slickly passed off as a motor accident, an unfortunate mischance, a tyre split that might or might not be somebody’s fault, but who knows, who cares, it happened yesterday, it’s past, soon over. Goodbye, Malcolm, planted in the ground.
I wondered where my father was buried. Couldn’t remember a thing. I certainly hadn’t been to any funeral, any cremation. I suppose I’d been, then in what the shrink called ‘self-protective isolation’. Maybe that was my normal state even now after all these years. I’d been a hell of a good sales manager for Shona & Co.; no doubt about that. But all the time – even through the whole of my fairly passionate affair with the Russian lady – had there not been this refusal to become totally committed? Wasn’t this what she had always been beefing about? It all came to the same thing in the end.
On the second Tuesday, having decided to miss the first, I went to the fencing school. If Shona was there I could always duck out. She was not there, but Erica was, full of her usual spit and insolence. I found myself liking it more. The international fencing jamboree was just over and she had done well, so was feeling on a high. She had strange lines bracketing the sides of her mouth – strange in one so young, that is. They were laughter lines, chiefly. The sultry eyes were, I’d guess, not in character; she was essentially breezy, comic, full of herself, a bit superficial but ready for anything. Once again she made it clear that the anything could include me. After two weeks on my own I really didn’t see any reason why it should not.
I said to her: ‘What comes, second in your life after fencing?’
‘Fencing.’
‘And after that?’
‘Oh … fun. Swimming, skiing, men, sunshine, caviar, rock, dinner parties, supper parties …’
‘Wait, wait,’ I said. ‘You’ve lost me. Where exactly do men come – is it eleventh or twelfth?’
‘Somewhere like that. Why, are you feeling lonely?’
‘You could say so.’
‘D’you really think you’ve cracked up with Shona for good?’
‘Oh, yes. She made that very clear.’
‘And you?’
‘And me.’
She gave me the going-over with a long glance. ‘Well, I’m not above offering you solace.’
‘I rather fancy that.’
‘Just for a day or two – a week or two. Nothing serious.’
‘I’ll probably go along with that too.’
‘Come to my flat to supper tomorrow evening.’
‘Why not to mine?’
‘Because I thought of it first. But mind – nothing serious.’
‘Agreed,’ I said. ‘Just fun.’
III
Derek had been away, but when I rang him and told him what had happened at Shona’s he sounded amused.
‘Well, we’ve made a few thou, whether or not. Shall you keep the company in being?’
‘Shona suggested we might become jobbers in a big way. If she spreads the word – as she’s pretty sure to – there won’t be any more pickings in the perfumery industry; but there are other things. Fancy, mooching round junkyards?’
‘Not much. But I’ll keep an eye open. Shall you keep your flat and your flash car?’
‘
What?’
‘I suppose it’s essential for a conman to have a good front, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ I said.
‘But I do, darling – I know how irresponsible you are.’
A couple of days after this I went to Bexhill and took Essie Morris out. She was an odd old girl – very ingenuous, considering that her late husband had done time for armed robbery and her son a three-year stretch for opening safes that didn’t belong to him. You wondered how she had kept her illusions through it all. But she had. Men and women, in her eyes, were always better-intentioned than ordinary people gave them credit for. Even screws, she thought, were human; and the police force had some ‘nice boys’ in it. I took her to Herstmonceux to the Observatory, and to Bodiam Castle. Another day I picked her up and drove her to a matinee of a musical at Drury Lane and then took her back.
It wasn’t until then that I explained to her why I had so much time to spare. She was genuinely upset, seeing, to my annoyance, Shona’s point of view as well as my own. Even more annoyingly she thought it might still be patched up.
‘My dear Essie, you just don’t know human nature. Or you only know your own (which is very kinky, peculiar, odd, eccentric and romantic) and judge other people by it. Shona’s too hard. I’m too hard. There’s simply no meeting ground any more. I wouldn’t want there to be. Change the subject.’
‘Of course, love. Anything you say. But how will it affect Arthur?’
‘Not at all, I hope. I asked him last weekend if he had had any word, but no, just his pay packet as usual. So it looks as if Madame is only venting her spleen on the one who deserves it.’
‘I’m glad for Crack,’ Essie said. ‘But I’m scared if your influence isn’t there any more. You know what he’s like, love, a little teeny bit weak. Easy led. It’s risky. Especially without you.’
‘My dear Ma,’ I said, ‘if you can’t lose any other illusions, please try to lose this one about me. The last thing I ever expect to be in anyone’s life is a good influence! Everybody who knows me – except you – would rattle with laughter at the thought. Please laugh too, so that I can know you’re not serious.’
‘What he needs,’ Essie said after a moment, ‘what Arthur needs is a good wife. It would make all the difference. As you do, love. Don’t you think?’
IV
Several times Marks and Leo rang me during the second and third week, obviously in trouble, not knowing what to do about orders and deliveries and an advertising campaign we’d been about to launch. They hadn’t seen much of Shona either, and when they did see her she looked so thunderous they didn’t go near. The rumour was she was advertising for my successor; but I reckoned that would take several weeks, even if she was lucky. Considering how choosy she was, it might take six months. Her best bet was to poach a top man from some rival firm. Otherwise, I wasn’t flattering myself to suppose, the newly blooming expansion was likely to turn yellow.
My affair with Erica went pretty well. There was no consuming passion on either side, but often that can be a good thing. Sex on a limited-liability basis was what I’d always favoured before, and it has a lot to recommend it. I was right about the sultry eyes; they didn’t mean a thing, and that was a relief too. But we got along, laughing together often enough (which is rare for me) and parting and going our separate ways and coming together again without more prior notice than a telephone call. She was zesty with appetite and go, sometimes temperamental but never tired, full of fun and practical jokes. Yet under it she had a laid-back, cool, down-to-earth streak. Money she’d always had – she knew how to use it to get what she wanted in terms of enjoyment. At the moment the thing she wanted most was to be the top woman fencer in England, and that was something she couldn’t buy. So she went for it level-headed and hard-headed, and that meant keeping to a rigid regime. Nothing was allowed to get in the way of that, though sometimes she had such vitality she was able to burn the candle at both ends.
In the fourth week she went off to Rome for a six-day tourney, but she said she didn’t want me with her, so I stayed at home.
On the Tuesday I couldn’t be bothered to go to the Sloane gymnasium, not wanting to run the risk of confronting Shona, so, at a loose end again, I drifted into the Cellini Club in St George Street.
It was upwards of three years since I’d been in the place; but I’d always held a sort of honorary membership because of the people I’d introduced there in the past. Obviously the warranty still ran because I was welcomed like an old friend. The years might never have passed; it all looked the same, and there were the same crowd there – I mean, so far as attendants went: Mario and Frederick and Kurt, and Angelina and Lucie and Maud. The men still looked as if their five o’clock shave hadn’t been close enough and the girls as if they were too big for their frocks. It was a luxurious joint, full of gilt and red velvet plush. Early yet and only one of the tables was busy.
Cellini himself came out of his office to say hello.
‘Ah, David, how are you? Long time no see. I observe you have your carnation still. When is it going to be green?’
The club had been going for forty years, and this Cellini, they said, came from Alexandria. Whether he had changed his name or was a son of the first owner no one knew. He was a small man with the sort of nose you used to see on pharaohs, and he always wore a crimson linen evening suit. He was fond of diamonds, and someone had once mentioned the name Liberace in his presence. That someone was not admitted again.
Yet he wasn’t a bad fellow, and honest enough after his lights. Maybe sometimes his lights were not quite bright enough, but his world isn’t renowned for its integrity.
‘Roger is here,’ he said. ‘Playing bridge. With three Americans. This is their first visit, so I don’t know how they play. We shall be starting a table of Black Jack very soon.’
‘Thanks, Val,’ I said. ‘But I’m over twenty-one already.’
The one person I really didn’t want to see was Roger Manpole. Maybe, feeling like that, I should have taken off while the runway was clear. It was just that I was not in the mood to leave. Because where did I go?
Happiness, I’d said to Essie Morris once, was something I saw only through a dark window. Content – or self-forgetfulness – or a state of non-unhappiness – came sometimes, rarely, but was not in the charts just now. Even my pleasant little affair with Erica, seen from a distance, did not stir me, even though she was young, pretty, vivacious, eager, flippant, everything printed on the bottle. Why not? I didn’t know. I was a new man, responsible to no one. I felt like returning to a life of crime. What could be better, given the right opportunity? I ought to be seeking out Roger, not avoiding him.
At that moment, dead on cue, he came into the room, smooth and Savile-Rowed and self-assured. Handsome house in St John’s Wood, a yacht, now a third wife mink-lined, a son at Eton. Since before the decline and fall of the Roman Empire such men have ruled the middle ground that exists between law-abiding respectability and the underworld.
With him was a tall thin chap who looked like Abraham Lincoln’s younger brother.
‘My dear David.’ We might have met only last week. ‘Just the man I wanted to see. Care for a rubber? My partner has to go.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I was just leaving myself.’
‘Stay an hour. It’s quite a while since we’ve played together. Thank you, Jeff,’ he said to Abraham Lincoln Jnr, and they shook hands. ‘It was a great pleasure.’
‘My pleasure too,’ said the American.
‘I’m far too rusty to play with you,’ I said to Roger.
‘This will give you an opportunity to polish up. The opposition, I must say’ – he lowered his voice – ‘is not what you would call tournament class.’
He was one of those men who ask you to do something politely enough but confidently expect you to do it. They’ve become so used to being obeyed that the thought of anything else scarcely enters their heads.
As I hesitated he said: ‘
I hear you’ve left the Shona organization.’
‘You hear correctly.’
‘Stood not upon the order of your going, eh? I always say it’s a mistake to work for a woman. Fundamentally they’re all unreasonable. After all, it was a very small flutter on the side that you had, wasn’t it?’
I cursed Derek. Not that it mattered twopence that this man knew. Only that he made it his business to know.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘ I never thought it was quite your scene, David. Petticoats and all that.’
‘I enjoyed it.’
‘But I expect you’re glad it’s over. She’s a purposeful woman, but I’ve always thought her rather ghastly. What age is she – sixty?’
‘Forty-two,’ I said.
‘Go on.’ He laughed and patted my shoulder. ‘Somebody’s been having you on … Never mind. You’re well out of it, one way and another … By the way, it occurred to me, is she one of the Chosen Race?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Well, well. You’re keeping your little company?’
‘What company?’
‘This one you floated with Derek and some other man.’
‘For the time being, yes.’
‘If it’s undercapitalized, I have a friend who might be interested in putting up a bit of money.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘Shall we go now, then? Ben and Cliff are waiting.’
I said: ‘I haven’t dealt a card in anger for upwards of two years.’
We went into the card-room. These Americans were two big men, both in their early fifties, well-heeled you could see, a bit flushed with malt but not over the top. Until the end I never knew what they were called, except Ben and Cliff. They greeted me with hearty good-nature, and we sat down. Roger was an above-average performer but thought himself better. Come to that, you hardly ever meet a bridge player who doesn’t think he’s better than he really is.
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