by John Lawton
‘I’ve already said I don’t. All the same, how did you know I was here?’
‘Anna,’ Woodbridge said simply, and it was quite enough for Troy.
‘I stopped off at a bookshop in Chelmsford. Wasn’t a lot of choice. But there’s a new Marge Allingham and a Graham Greene I didn’t know was in paperback. I don’t know whether you like Greene?’
‘None better,’ said Troy. He’d read Our Man in Havana, but he’d enjoy reading it again. He’d not read the Allingham, but then he never read detective stories – not since he was young, before he became a copper – but Rod read them, as he put it, as a “parliamentary relaxation”, and Rod rated Allingham. It was thoughtful of Woodbridge and Troy hoped he wasn’t about to pay their price in an afternoon bearing witness to his self-pity.
Woodbridge picked up the Herald. Looked at the headline. Tossed the paper back on the coffee table.
‘I don’t even know what “procurement” means. I’d never heard of it.’
‘It means introducing a woman under the age of twenty-one to a man over the age of twenty-one for the purposes of sexual intercourse.’
‘Parliament must have been mad to pass a law like that!’
‘Most of the time you are.’
‘I mean – how is a chap to know when he introduces Miss X to Mister Y that they’re going to do it? Half the chaps I know would be in jail if that were illegal.’
‘What do you mean “if ”? It is illegal.’
‘But the twins are twenty-four or five!’
‘They’re not twins. So, they’re lying about the age of one them regardless. And how old is Clover?’
‘I didn’t have sex with Clover.’
‘Really?’
‘Believe me, Troy. Not only did I not fuck young Clover, Fitz did not introduce me to the Ffitch girls. I met them at his house, true, but the mood he was in he offered no introduction. I chatted to Tara and asked her if she’d have dinner with me some time. She said, “We do everything together.” I said, “Everything?” “Yes,” she said, “so if you think that’ll cramp your style I wouldn’t ask any further.” She short-circuited all the chat-up lines I knew. We all three of us had dinner in the West End a couple of times and then we all three of us went to bed together. Fitz had no part of it. I shouldn’t think he knew till we started going down to Uphill on a regular basis.’
‘And now, according to the Sunday Post, Major Ffitch is threatening to horsewhip you.’
‘Worse. Young Clover’s grandfather has threatened to thrash me in public if he finds out I had his granddaughter.’
‘I didn’t see that.’
‘No. It’s not in the papers, it’s just gossip, but these days what few friends I have left seem to think it essential to tell me every whisper that reaches their ears.’
‘Who is this old fool?’
‘Dunno. Sir Somebody Something. Nobody seemed to have a name. Just some old bugger with a knighthood.’
‘Good Lord – did Clover strike you as a recent descendant of anyone with a title?’
‘I give up on accents these days – I thought she was a cockney sparrow, but it could have been an affectation. The number of people you meet nowadays affecting Scouse, I’m surprised she didn’t sound like John Lennon.’
‘Classlessness ain’t what it used to be.’
Woodbridge laughed at this. It diverted them both, but as the laughter died Woodbridge reached a new level – a frankness Troy could not see as wholly devoid of self-pity and the self-centredness which seemed an inescapable part of the man’s charm.
‘You know, I did nothing wrong.’
‘Try telling my brother that.’
‘I’m a widower. I’m not a married man. I’m not an adulterer. I took the view that who I slept with was no concern of my colleagues in the House, nor of anyone else. If people think three in a bed is kinky, I can’t help that. I did not do it in the street. I did not frighten the horses. It’s not illegal. I didn’t choose it, but between you and me I’d recommend it to any man past his prime as a way of taking ten years off the clock.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ said Troy flatly. ‘However your pleasure is no more important than your guilt. The point is Fitz.’
Woodbridge got up, walked to the window and stared out. A plump Jersey cow ambling into view. Coming summer in an English meadow, the dappling light of trees in leaf, the vast parasols of oak and sweet chestnut nibbled level by countless cattle. He sighed and he dragged it all out, but Troy would not prompt him. This was a man hoisted on the hook of his own naivety, and he saw no reason to let him off it. Men like Woodbridge and Fitz lived by unwritten codes and Troy could not understand why they bleated like lambs when an unwritten code turned out to be a code like any other for all that it was unwritten. They protested as loudly as Rod when he caught Troy cheating at Monopoly. But they were the ones cheating, and they were the ones protesting, ‘It’s not illegal!’ – as though that meant a damn thing.
A pair of iridescent blue damselflies had flitted in through the window. They hovered, as though suspended in the spell of Woodbridge’s silence.
‘There’s nothing I can do for Fitz,’ Woodbridge said at last. ‘I’m out of it. I’m nobody now.’
The spell broke. The flies circled one another and flew away.
He probably was ‘out of it’. Troy doubted very much whether the prosecution would dare call Woodbridge as a witness. It would be to unzip Her Majesty’s Government like a ripe banana. It would also seem that Woodbridge was not volunteering for the defence, and for reasons Troy could only guess, Woodbridge also seemed to think they were not going to call on him either. But it baffled Troy how anyone like Woodbridge, anyone who had done what he’d done, been who he’d been, and had half the hacks in Fleet Street camped on his doorstep, could ever assume such counter-arrogance as to believe he was ‘nobody’. Whatever happened in the Old Bailey, when or if the state managed to get Fitz in the dock and begin Regina v. Fitzpatrick, Woodbridge would be the ghost, the nobody in the machine. And if he didn’t know that, he was not just naive, he was stupid too.
Troy heard tapping. Someone trying to attract his attention on the glass door. Woodbridge turned before he could and he knew from the utter transformation in his demeanour, the sudden brake put on his self-pity, the synchromeshed shift into oversmile, that his visitor was a woman. He was at an awkward angle, his neck ached as he squirmed in his chair, and then he saw Foxx.
She set down her packages by his chair, pushed him back into it as he tried to get up.
‘Gosh, you look startled,’ she said.
‘I . . . just wasn’t expecting you.’
She kissed him on both cheeks, her hair falling into his face as she stooped, a lingering scent swept over him – hours later he could smell it still.
‘I’ve not come at a bad time, have I? I meant to surprise you. I thought it would be so easy to surprise you. But it wasn’t. It’s taken me four hours of trains and buses to get here from London. I’ve got to set off back soon. As my mum used to say, “I won’t tek me coat off, I’m not stopping.” ’
‘I’m going back to town,’ said a voice from behind Troy. ‘I could give you a lift.’
Troy realised that Woodbridge was waiting for an introduction, waiting for an entry – his voice that languorous baritone that Troy had long presumed men meant to sound seductive.
‘Shirley Foxx, Tim Woodbridge,’ he said reluctantly. ‘I’m sure you’ve seen Tim’s face in the papers.’
Foxx ignored the sarcasm.
‘A lift? That’d be marvellous.’
Troy glowered at him. Woodbridge threw in a glance-at-yourwatch gesture and said, ‘Look, you two don’t have long together. I’ll pop out for a while. Just come and find me in the car park when you’re ready to leave.’
He disappeared through the glass doors into the house.
‘I didn’t know you knew Woodbridge,’ Foxx said.
‘I’m not sure I knew it myself.’
She pulled her two packages over, set the smaller of them in Troy’s lap and sat down opposite him. It was a stack of longplaying records and the larger package was a Dansette record player – the sort that looked like a small leatherette case with a plastic handle.
‘That’s very kind. It’s just what I needed. I find I can’t read much. Something to listen to besides the wireless will be great.’
He looked at Foxx, seeing her and wondering how she saw him. He’d known her since she was twenty-two – the best part of seven years. They had lapsed as lovers. Lapsed and retrieved, at his count, no less than six times in seven years. Until his present wasting ailment, he would have said that she had changed more than he. The edges smoothed off her Derbyshire accent. Her habitual look of the American teenager – blue jeans and baseball boots – had long since given way to a dazzling wardrobe of whatever was stylish and fashionable – today a vaguely Mary Quant look, a neat suit with huge pockets and big buttons, her hair shorter than usual, curling in at the chin to wrap her face in a blonde oval. She had grown sophisticated, just as his own sophistication had ground to a halt. He’d known for years now that he’d end up like his father, drunk on words, lost in the power of language, never out of his dressing-gown whatever the time of day. Foxx’s new-found sophistication, plus the natural attributes of blonde hair and bottle-green eyes, added up to Woodbridge woman, the green-eyed version of Tara and Caro. He was not surprised Woodbridge had turned on the charm – Foxx had pushed his buttons simply by being Foxx – what surprised him was that so many fell for his particularly vacuous brand of charm. But she wouldn’t. He was sure she wouldn’t.
Every so often the jeans would reappear. She would, especially in summertime, turn up on his doorstep looking exactly as she used to – the faded blue of denim, the bright white of T-shirt and the scuffed and fraying canvas boots. She had made blue jeans her business. A small shopin Kingley Street in the West End of London, selling imported American teen clobber. She rang the changes. She had taste. He had never been entirely sure that he had.
‘When do you get out?’
‘Wish I knew.’
‘Whenever it is – I want you to come and see me in the new place.’
‘New place?’
‘I’m moving the shop. Not far. Only about fifty yards. Into Carnaby Street.’
Carnaby Street? He knew Carnaby Street. He did not like it. Bad memories. England’s first jazz club – the Club Eleven – had opened there a few years after the war. He had been to the club several times to hear the British version of be-bop– and had been lucky enough not to be there the night the Vice Squad had chosen for a raid. He never was very good at noticing things – like who was smoking dope – he was too busy watching the sax players. He’d never allowed himself to go there again. To be caught in a raid would be . . . embarrassing, unforgivable. Objectively, Carnaby Street was narrow and poky, the wrong end of Soho and hardly the height of fashion. Hardly the place for a clothes shop. Scarcely better than Kingley Street. And Kingley Street was an alley. It was not so much frying pan to fire, as frying pan to frying pan.
‘Bit risky, isn’t it?’
‘Good God, Troy. You sound like my bank manager. Of course it’s a risk. What isn’t a risk? If I wasn’t into risk I’d’ve slammed the door on you years ago.’
He looked at the Dansette. Her eyes followed his. It was remarkably like the pink suitcase he’d been clutching when he had turned up on her Derbyshire doorstep at breakfast all those years ago.
‘Take me away from all this,’ he said.
‘Eh?’
‘That, more or less, is what you said to me at the time. Just when you should have slammed the door.’
‘If you say so. I’ve no regrets.’
‘I wish I were saying it now.’
‘Just get better, Troy. Look, I’ve got to dash. I have an architect coming in at seven. Kiss and run.’ Over his shoulder he caught a glimpse of Woodbridge, biding a little of his endless time beyond the glass doors. He had been buttonholed by Alfie. Troy could read his lips but he did not need to. He could have written the script blindfold.
‘You know what you are Woodbridge? You’re a bleedin’ ’ero, that’s what you are!’
‘Are you really going to accept a lift from Woodbridge?’ he said.
‘Why not? You don’t think he’ll leap on me between here and London do you?’
‘He’s a wide boy.’
She glanced at the two men, grinning at each other, laughing. God knows what gag Alfie had seen fit to split with him. Two peas in a sleazy pod, thought Troy. Class rendered into classlessness – sex the leveller. He who fucks and fucks around is equal to he who also fucks and fucks around. As the song had it, it’s a man’s, man’s, man’s world. Troy did not feel like a man. He felt like a wraith.
‘Wrong class, surely, Troy?’
‘Maybe, but a common characteristic. He thinks the world was created for his pleasure. It revolves round the end of his dick.’
‘You know, Troy, I don’t think I’ve ever met a man who didn’t think that.’
He wondered if she meant him. It was pretty damn clear she did.
‘I’ve got to dash. Really I have. Enjoy the music, and do come to the new shop when you get out. I’ve so much to show you.’
She pecked him on the cheek. Squeezed his hand in hers. He felt cheated.
Later that evening he plugged in the Dansette and looked through the pile of records Foxx had brought him. Miles Davis, from the mid-fifties, when Coltrane had played sax for him on ‘Steamin’, Cookin’ and Relaxin”. They were American records, imports, expensive – she must have searched everywhere. The fourth LP was new. Four hairy blokes leaned over a staircase and grinned at him – The Beatles. ‘PLEA SE, PLEA SE ME, with Love Me Do and 12 other songs’. There’d been a lot of fuss about this lot. The papers were full of them. They cropped up every so often on the Light Programme of the BBC. At best they’d been background to him, but then so much else had – out beyond the bubble.
He stuck it on. He knew it at once. It was the record Clover Browne had played over and over again that long weekend at Uphill. He found she had, by repetition, lodged every tune in his mind, as unconscious melodies and rhythms. He knew them. He just didn’t know he knew them. There was a Broadway cover, an old song from The Music Man; there were two or three cover versions of what he knew to be black American songs – but what pleased him was what he knew to be original. He found a piano in the upstairs sitting room, blew the dust off the keys and tried picking out the tune of the title track. It didn’t lend itself to the piano at all. It seemed to be conceived wholly for the primitive set-up of the beat group: three guitars, drum kit and a dubbed-on mouth organ. He was not at all sure he could ever come to terms with it. It was remarkable, as startling to his ears as when he had first heard Little Richard a few years ago, or Thelonious Monk – and that was fifteen years ago now – but it did not invite him in. He played the record a couple more times, until they told him to put a sock in it. Then he stuck it in his bedside locker and thought little more about it.
A day or two later Alfie appeared in his tartan dressing-gown, hands deepin the pockets, a twinkle Troy could never be sure lacked malevolence in his eye, and said, ‘Why not put on yer Beatles record, Fred.’
It was not a question. Troy had no objection. Besides, to give in was the line of least trouble with Alfie – to argue was to risk being talked to death.
The Beatles tore into ‘I Saw Her Standing There’. Alfie sat on the edge of Troy’s bed. Jigged up and down without ever taking his hands from his pockets.
‘They got summink, though. Entthey? Don’t you think they got summink, Fred?’
He did not understand Alfie. A man in his mid-twenties, or thereabouts, articulate in the restricted mode, confident in who he was, wholly devoid of self-knowledge, worldly, innocent – the perfect wide
boy. A man of the moment, living, it seemed, for that moment. A man whose memories of the war were a child’s memories . . . and in so thinking, for he said nothing by way of reply, and Alfie did not seem bothered enough even to repeat the question, just jigged and smiled the more, Troy realised the truth of Charlie’s last rant. The glue that held them together would not hold once their generation passed – well, not passed exactly, but lost its grip. Catesby’s had loosened long ago – for all he’d said, Troy still doubted whether he had entirely grasped the Second World War. He had fought in both but was so very, very much a man of the First, of a generation made and unmade by it. Now Troy’s, the generation of the Second War, the coalition held in place by the ‘glue’ that was that war, was facing the children of the war, the war babies, as Troy now faced them – that new generation – in the shape of Alfie. Alfie, in all his struggle for meaning; Alfie, in all his terrifying banality.
‘Alfie?’
‘Yers?’
‘Did you do National Service?’
‘O’ course. RAF, 1955 to 1957. Hated every bleedin’ minute of it.’
‘Aircraftman?’
‘Leading Aircraftman. A difference of about seventeen an’ sixpence a week. Why do you ask?’
Troy asked because it was the obvious question to put to a man of his age. National Service – a euphemism that did nothing to disguise the true nature of peacetime military conscription – was the war’s bequest to its war babies. It was gone now. After eighteen years. The last reluctant tommies, the cockleshell antiheroes, were tearing off their blues and khakis at that very moment to return to civvy street, only to find that their Teddy Boy suits hung on their spare military frames like sacks, and that no one wore winkle-picker shoes any more. Peacetime conscription had been unique, pointless, undemocratic and decidedly un-English – but Troy did not doubt this last tendril of the war marked and bound Alfie in some way.