by CL Skelton
Outside the theatre, in the crowds milling in the soft June darkness, Sam located Jan Muller and managed to steer him into one of the waiting London cabs, and sent the driver on his way to Claridges before anyone else could think to join them. He needed a few minutes with Jan alone if he was to hope to avoid a new eruption of the conflict Emily so deftly had fended.
‘Where?’ he said, as the cab pulled away from the kerb. Jan knew at once what he meant. He looked out of the window, avoiding eye contact as he did when he talked of the war. Suddenly that habit worried Sam, as he read potential new significance into it.
‘Palestine.’
Of course Palestine, Sam thought impatiently, but only said, ‘When?’
‘During the Mandate.’
‘Before the War?’
‘After. The last days. I do not wish to talk about it.’
‘Sorry, mate. I do.’ Sam heard his voice as surprisingly sharp. So did Jan, who looked startled and slightly guarded.
‘I am sorry. I was startled. I did not expect to see him … again. I lost control. It will not happen again. He is your family, I will respect that.’ He raised his hands, open and weaponless, as a kind of pledge.
‘I want to know what it was about,’ said Sam. ‘I have to know.’
‘Why do you not ask him?’ Jan said.
‘I’m not sure I can trust him to tell the truth,’ Sam said honestly.
‘But you are not sure you can trust me, either,’ Jan replied, at once. Sam was shaken. He had not realized it showed, his new uncertainty. He shrugged. ‘Show me I can,’ he said quietly.
Jan was silent for a long while, but when he spoke it was in a conversational tone, without undue emotion, ‘You must understand that war is complex. It means different things to different people. One man’s war is merely another man’s opportunity. The life of a nation … a people … sometimes it is only business. One cannot, I suppose, blame a business man for doing business.’ He spoke with careful logic, like a lawyer discussing degrees of murder. ‘You do know his business?’ Jan said cautiously, as if he feared revealing a secret.
‘I know he deals in armaments,’ Sam said. ‘I assume that’s what we’re talking about.’ Jan shrugged again.
‘Armaments,’ he said, delicately.
‘All right. He’s a gun-runner. Or he was. I didn’t marry the bastard, Jan. My …’ he paused, finding as always the term difficult to apply to Helen Brannigan, ‘my grandmother did.’ He looked out of the window at the slowly passing lights, thankful for the stream of heavy traffic. The black cab felt isolated from all the world. ‘My family isn’t all that close, Jan. But they are my family.’
‘They were my family,’ Jan said softly, as an echo. And he repeated, ‘That is what they were. My family. My only family.’ He looked up suddenly, meeting Sam’s eyes with a steadiness that relieved Sam of his suspicions at the same time it unnerved him with its bitter intensity. ‘You sell a man a coat; a bad coat with no lining, so,’ he shrugged again, hearing somehow a distant echo of his mother’s cousin, Isaac Mandel, ‘so he is cold in the winter. He is not dead. He is cold.’ His eyes darkened and never left Sam’s face. ‘But a gun, Sam, a gun for a man fighting a war, fighting for his homeland, his life, his children … a gun that does not work, a gun for which the spares are wrong, the ammunition wrong. A gun you do not deliver, but sell again to his enemies …’ He was shaking suddenly and clutched Sam’s wrist with his trembling hand. ‘So, it is only business but they were my family, my only family, those young men, boys, and girls, girls too fought in those days. And they died. A bad coat, one is cold. A bad gun, one dies. Mike Brannigan killed them, Sam. Not the fedayeen.’ He let go of Sam’s wrist, coming to awareness of himself, as he had in the theatre after Janet Chandler had passed. He shook his head, and covered his eyes with one hand. ‘I will respect your family,’ he said.
‘You gettin’ out, guv, or staying the night?’ said the cabbie. Sam looked up, startled, to see they had arrived at their destination and the taxi was idling before the main entrance of Claridge’s Hotel. He looked once more at Jan, wondering if they should both go back to their rented rooms in Earls Court, much more their style anyhow, and avoid a confrontation.
‘You have nothing to fear,’ Jan said, as if reading his thoughts. And Sam nodded, opening the door of the cab and reaching into his pocket for the fare. He knew Jan’s scrupulous, almost fastidious good manners would prevail, once his honour had been so pledged, as long as Brannigan also practised some restraint. That, of course, was subject to debate.
The party in Janet Chandler’s personal suite was well under way when they arrived. There was music. There were tables laden with an after-show buffet supper. There were crowds of glittering strangers with the flamboyant cheerfulness of theatre people, and a small circle of Hardacre family, looking more lost than ever. Harry Hardacre was tugging at his wing collar and glancing surreptitiously at his watch. Hetty was sitting down, looking tired. Mary Gray was staring wide-eyed and sleepily at more famous people than she was ever likely to see again, Maud and Albert Chandler were holding hands in a corner, whispering alone like sweethearts, and Emily Barton was getting drunk.
Mike Brannigan was already drunk and monopolizing the company of a round blonde girl who lisped breathlessly in open imitation of Marilyn Monroe with a cockney accent, and Helen Brannigan was watching darkly from the corner of one dark mascaraed eye. There was about the entire company that restless feeling, akin to that of departure lounges of ports and railway stations, where people fill in time with half-hearted interest, while waiting for the journey to begin. Sam knew, just looking at them, that Janet Chandler was not here.
‘Perhaps she will not come,’ Jan Muller said at his shoulder, as if he had voiced his thought aloud. But Sam realized that Jan’s thoughts were as much on the young star of the evening as were his own, and the thought disturbed him. He wandered off for a drink, keeping a wary eye on Brannigan, but Mike was too involved with the cockney girl’s cleavage to pursue his argument with Jan. He chatted with his uncle Harry who wondered if he could, in decency, leave yet, and then joined Emily, trying and failing to deflect her from her too-steady drinking. He felt suddenly out of place in the crowded room, not because he was ill-dressed for the occasion, or among strangers, both circumstances that had rarely troubled him in the past, but because Terry was not there. Parties had always been a joint love of both brothers, and a remnant of the twinned existence he had forsaken. He felt suddenly too old, and too restricted, at once, finding the smoky air intolerable and wishing he was back up north, out on the Dainty Girl, or tinkering with her grumpy engine, with Mick and Pete Haines. He thought of leaving, but saw that Jan was now deeply in conversation with Albert Chandler, and obviously not ready to depart. Bored, he reached for his pack of Senior Service and noticed, as he took out a cigarette, the address and phone number of the contact he had made that afternoon on the Thames. He remembered, then, having promised to telephone Mick with news of the day’s business and realized Mick would be waiting at the Ship’s Wheel, whose telephone they conveniently borrowed, for want of one of their own. Fumbling in his pocket for change, he went towards the outer door of the suite, glancing back to determine that Jan was still involved with the Chandlers. Once out in the corridor he made his way towards the lift shaft, intending to find a telephone in the foyer on the ground floor. His mind was on business now, miles away, with the wartime wreck off the Humber Estuary, the brass fittings of which he had earmarked for the London scrappie. When he heard the voices ahead of him, around a corner in the corridor, they hardly registered. But as he reached the turning of the hallway there was a sudden loud crash, as of something thrown, and a yelp of genuine alarm. He strode forward, rounded the corner and instantly dived against the opposite wall as a glass ashtray flew by, skimming his sleeve and shattering in blue-white splinters against the floor.
‘Jesus Christ, Janet, you’ll kill some poor bastard!’ shrieked the yelping voice.
&nbs
p; ‘Yeah, you snake’s asshole, maybe you,’ said the lady in the lilac gown. ‘Maybe this’ll be my lucky day.’ She looked up then from the shrinking figure of a small, slim man in a maroon dinner-jacket who huddled against a door jamb and her blue-green Hardacre eyes met those of Sam. They widened for a moment, as if a vestigial dignity yet lurked there, engendering embarrassment, but she was far too angry for that. ‘What the eff-all are you staring at, you big twerp?’ she demanded. ‘Screw off, this is a private fight.’
‘Madam,’ Sam said, his own eyes crinkling up with amazed fascination, and his slow grin spreading, ‘could I possibly buy my way in? It looks the best game of the night.’ Her mouth opened and closed once, like a particularly beautiful bullfrog, but she said nothing. The small man in the maroon dinner-jacket scrambled to a more upright position and approached Sam with outspread palms, shooing him back as if a wild animal was advancing down the corridor to the attack.
‘Please, mister,’ he said, ‘I warn you, she’s not gonna like that … Miss Chandler,’ he straightened, reassuming an air of managerial dignity, ‘has had a trying evening.’
‘Shut up, Bernie,’ the lady in lilac said, tilting her chin, so the delicious strength of jawline caught the light. ‘The gentleman wants to play.’ She looked Sam up and down, and where a moment ago he felt quite in control of the situation, now he felt less so. ‘Let him play. Get us a drink, Bernie.’
‘Aw, Janet, you promised …’ Bernie whined sadly.
‘A drink,’ Janet Chandler repeated, with a quick cold glance of blue-green eyes that sent Bernie scuttling away and through a doorway. She looked at Sam again and suddenly she smiled, a wry, wise smile, older than her years.
‘I’m plastered. Bernie’s busy sobering me up for my entrance,’ she shrugged towards the distant sounds from the rooms Sam had left. ‘How’s the party?’
‘A party,’ he said, not taking his eyes from hers.
‘I was afraid of that.’ She leaned against the wall, tiredly. ‘Oh boy,’ she said. ‘Oh boy.’ She appeared then to have an idea and said suddenly, ‘Look, you, whoever you are, shall we have this drink in here?’ she gestured towards the door behind which Bernie had vanished. ‘I mean, the hall’s draughty and I’m not ready yet for … a party,’ she added, with another wry wince. ‘It’s my bedroom,’ she added, ‘I’m just saying that so you don’t do your nut when you see the bed. This is not a seduction,’ she chanted, in a mock-Tannoy voice. ‘Repeat. This-is-not-a-seduction.’
Sam grinned. ‘I’ll try to control myself,’ he said.
She smiled, straightened up from the wall, trailing her mink after her in a slightly self-conscious gesture, as if she were playing the part of a film star like another role. Sam followed, meeting the eyes of the amazed Bernie as he entered the room with a nod and a brief smile. Bernie was fussing over the drinks cabinet.
‘You needn’t bother watering it, pal, I’m having coffee,’ Janet Chandler said.
Sam had coffee, too. It was all he wanted. The company of the young lady in the lilac gown was intoxication enough. She sat on the floor at the side of the bed that dominated the inner room of the two-room complex and leaned her blonde head against the pink quilted satin of the coverlet. Sam, finding the superior height of a chair inappropriate, settled on the floor also, crossing his legs like a boy. She kicked off her shoes and drew up her knees and sipped seriously at her coffee. ‘I’m Janet,’ she said.
‘I know,’ he smiled. ‘I’m Sam.’
‘Sam who?’
‘Sam Hardacre.’
She looked up, startled. ‘That’s my great-grandfather’s name,’ she said, almost possessively, as if Sam had no right using it. She blinked, with the perverse concentration of those too drunk to concentrate.
‘What a coincidence,’ said Sam. She blinked again, and then she turned quite suddenly to Bernie, her manager, or agent or aide-de-camp, Sam was never quite certain who he was. ‘Out,’ she said.
‘Miss Chandler,’ he ventured respectfully. ‘The party …’
‘Out,’ she said again. ‘Go on, Bernie, don’t be a third wheel.’
He sniffed, and stalked to the door, and something in the stiffness of his short precise steps assured Sam that his position in Miss Chandler’s bedroom was only managerial. ‘We’ll be waiting,’ he said pointedly, and closed the door with a curt, peevish little slam.
‘He’s a darling,’ she said absently, after he left.
‘You don’t treat him like a darling,’ Sam returned. She looked up, startled to be reprimanded, but determined to be good-humoured.
‘Bernie understands,’ she said firmly. She looked hard at Sam and said, sounding very sober, ‘You’re my cousin, aren’t you? Arnold’s son. You’re one of the twins.’ Sam smiled again, his eyes still on her lovely face, cherishing even the smear of mascara on one slightly drink-flushed cheek.
Relationships, he reflected, family and all its ties and subsequent taboos, were learned, not grown. Whatever the blood ties between them, he and this young lady, years apart in age, thousands of miles apart in their childhood geographies, and even further in their cultures, were strangers.
‘Kissing cousins, no doubt,’ he whispered and, leaning forwards, carefully took the coffee cup from her slightly shaky hand and bent his head down over hers, his lips on her own. There was for a moment no response at all, and then an inquisitive softening, a momentary struggle, and ready surrender. He had tasted nothing so sweet in seven years. The taste was momentary, and the wine was snatched away.
A shout sounded in the corridor, perhaps Bernie, but then another and then the sound of running feet, a hurried argument, a woman’s voice over Bernie’s and a hammering on the door.
‘Sam, Sam, are you in there?’ the voice demanded, slurred and hysterical. ‘Sam, where are you?’ It was Emily Barton, and desperation rather than drink blurred her voice. ‘For God’s sake, Sam, he’s going to kill Mike.’
Sam ran. He leapt up, leaving a startled Janet Chandler still sitting on the floor in her satin gown, and crossed the two rooms, slamming the door open and bursting out into the midst of Emily and Bernie engaged in a hysterical and, on Emily’s side, drunken, argument over the rights and wrongs of disturbing Miss Chandler. Emily’s amazement at precisely where Sam had disappeared to flickered momentarily across her face, but was hastened away by more immediate concerns.
‘It’s Jan,’ she cried, ‘you’ve got to stop him.’
But Sam knew it was Jan and he was already running, eluding Emily’s plucking fingers on his sleeve. In the months he had known him, he had never seen Jan Muller so much as raise his voice, and yet he was filled with foreboding. Bernie and Emily, and Janet Chandler too, followed after him, but he was utterly unaware of them in his haste.
The door of the party suite was standing open, crowds of its occupants had spilled into the corridor, those one or two afraid of adverse publicity for their own private reasons were already slipping surreptitiously away. Passing them in the corridors came a clutch of dignified, but efficient-looking hotel staff, homing in on the scene of the disturbance like dinner-jacketed prison warders. Sam pushed by a cluster of shrieking women and into the suite, where the sound of shattering glass and a young girl’s high-pitched scream greeted his entrance.
The room was in chaos, one white-clothed table having collapsed across the floor, scattering its contents. The carpet was soaked with spilled wine and glittery with broken glass and mounds of multi-coloured mousses and terrines lay in moist heaps like wet sandhills. Guests were cornered into the outskirts of the room, standing on sofas and behind chairs, and the first person he recognized was Harry Hardacre, isolated by a ring of fallen furniture.
He was saying softly, ‘I say, I say, really, chaps …’ in a voice of courageous optimism, while Hetty cowered behind him, and Jan Muller and Mike Brannigan wrestled full-length on the sodden floor.
The room was clamorous with mixed voices offering advice to the combatants or shouting for help and, conspic
uous in her silence among them, stood Helen Hardacre Brannigan, coolly smoking a cigarette and watching with mild disgust. Mike, who had no doubt instigated the conflict, had clearly put up a good fight; Jan’s bloody face was evidence; but he was equally clearly losing now. He was older, paunchy, and more than a little drunk and, more important, Mike was an unruly brawler, sloppy and uncontrolled. Jan Muller, Sam recognized at once, was a trained guerilla soldier. And he was angry enough to kill. Sam did the only thing he could; he flung himself into the middle of the fight, grappling with Jan, ignoring the outraged squeal of Mike, who wanted to finish the fight, even if it was going to finish him. Jan, as he knew he would, immediately turned on himself, and for the next few moments Sam was thoroughly occupied defending himself from the fierce blows of his outraged friend. Then the rest of the room, galvanized into action by Sam’s interference, also waded in and separated all three combatants by sheer weight of numbers until, at last, they were left standing in silence, with Bernie clucking in circles in their midst like a broody hen.
Sam carefully, hesitantly, released his grip on Jan Muller’s left arm, while a burly London film producer still held gamely to his right. Jan shook his head, wiping blood from his mouth with the torn sleeve of his borrowed dinner-jacket. The blonde cockney Monroe rushed, in motherly fervour, with wet towels for Mike. As she lisped sympathy and dabbed at his cut eyebrow and swelling mouth Helen said, ‘Wrap him up and take him home, honey, if you want. It’s all the same to me.’
‘Aw, sweetheart,’ moaned Mike, remorsefully.
‘You stupid ass,’ she said, and stalked out of the room, leaving the party, and her husband, to pick up the pieces of each other.