“I’m very sorry, Steve. I think you know I’m on your side. I’m only telling you how things are. But that’s what I reckon they’re cooking up for you, and you might as well know it as far in advance as possible.”
They looked at each other. “Okay,” said Stephen decisively. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Now, here’s what I want you to do, Tom. First of all, you tell Gibson and all the others that I’m giving up the ghost. I’m admitting defeat, I’m pulling out. Tell them that I’ve asked you to keep on as manager, running the pub my way until I’ve made all the necessary arrangements with the lawyers in London to unload it, but that after that, naturally I shall have no further say in the place whatever. Okay so far?”
Tom nodded, watching him very closely.
“Right,” continued Stephen. “You tell Gibson also that I shan’t be here much at all between now and when I sell up. But say that I’m going to have one farewell occasion here, and ask him to bear with me as far as that goes. Okay?”
“Okay,” said Tom slowly. “But… this doesn’t… it doesn’t sound quite your style, if I may say so, Steve. About the last thing in the whole world I could imagine you doing was capitulating — especially to someone like Gibson. Is there anything else you’d, er, like to tell me?”
“Oh, yes,” said Stephen. He looked up, and they saw that his eyes were shining merrily. “Oh, yes. You’ll know in time, Tom, don’t worry. For the moment I’ve got a lot of arrangements to make. But I’ll let you know exactly what’s going on well in advance. For the moment, I’ll just tell you this much. I want you to pass this all on to the opposition, especially Pat Gibson and his gang. Okay?” Tom nodded once more. “Right then,” said Stephen. “The plan’s this…”
* * *
“D’you think Tom’ll be all right?” asked Richard as they pulled away from the pub.
“Yeah, I’m sure he will,” said Stephen absently, his mind already working on the arrangements for their farewell performance at the Crown. “I’d back him to know how to take care of himself.” He looked up abruptly at Richard. “You do think I’m doing the right thing, don’t you?” he said.
Richard, concentrating on negotiating the narrow lanes, didn’t answer until they hit the open coast road. Then he said briskly, “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. This place has been bad news for us since the moment we first set foot in it.”
“Except my hundred and fifty,” said Stephen, smiling fondly to himself at the memory.
“Yes. Except that,” said Richard, with an answering smile. “But the pub itself’s been nothing but grief and misery. For me, anyway. I’m glad you’re getting rid of it, and I don’t see that it’s any worry of ours who you get rid of it to.”
“Good,” said Stephen. “We’ll do it, then.” Richard put his foot down and drove fast towards Brighton.
* * *
They spent a while wandering from pub to pub together in Brighton, sightseeing. Though the new clientele at the Crown had to some extent prepared them for the gay scene, and although Richard had occasionally been to such places before (“out of curiosity,” he had said in answer to Stephen’s question), they were a little taken aback by some of the things they saw. However, they had specific objectives, and after a while they ceased to notice things that had initially caused their eyes to widen and, at times, their mouths to drop open.
Eventually they agreed to separate. Stephen copied out a list of the places they could try, marked those that he planned to call on, and handed it to Richard. They gave each other a friendly kiss, neither passionate nor a mere peck, and felt a sudden warm douche of pleasure and relief at being able to express their feelings and themselves so freely in a rather densely filled public place. Then Stephen strolled out, unaware of the numerous pairs of eyes that watched him admiringly as he did so. Richard, meanwhile, went to the bar, where he got himself a drink and had no difficulty in getting into conversation with the landlord.
It took them a week, in all, to find both the people they were seeking.
15
“You’ll do it?” exclaimed Stephen excitedly to the man sitting with him in a discreet alcove in a Brighton pub. The other man nodded, grinning. “Yeah,” he said. “I think it’s a great idea. I like it.”
“And you’re sure you can find the others?”
“No problem,” said the man. He had already taken a pen from his pocket, and was scribbling names rapidly on the back of an envelope.
“Great!” said Stephen. “I’ll cover all costs and expenses, don’t forget. I don’t care what you have to do — if you have to fly someone down from Edinburgh or something, do it, I’ll pay, gladly.”
“Won’t be necessary,” said the man, still chuckling. “I can get as many as I need without ever going farther than London. They’ll be fighting each other for the privilege of being in on this. All I need from you is a number where I can ring you, to tell you I’m all ready to go.”
Stephen laughed delightedly to himself, and wrote Richard’s parents’ number carefully in the diary the big man proffered. “You won’t forget me in all this, will you?” he said.
“What!” cried the man, cowering and peering from behind his hands in mock horror. “Perish the thought!”
“Good,” said Stephen, satisfied at last. “Well, be sure to mark me down. This may all be great fun for you and the others you’re going to get hold of; but it’s my show — well, mine and Richard’s — and I want it to be a roaring success.”
“I shan’t forget,” the man assured him.
“Great,” said Stephen once again, and left him to go on to his second meeting.
* * *
“You really are interested in buying it, then?” he said, hardly able to believe that such a transaction, so vast, as it seemed to him, could be agreed so easily, almost casually, with such an absence of fuss.
The entrepreneur nodded. “Yes,” he said. His voice was firm but unemphatic, his decision made with no haste but without delay. “I’ll buy it, if the price you ask is right.”
“How do we know if we’re asking the right price?” asked Richard, who was sitting in on the second, and much the most important, of Stephen’s three meetings that day.
“Have your own advisers present, of course,” said the tycoon easily. “They’ll know when I’m offering you good money, when you ought to accept. If I don’t offer you a fair price, they’ll tell you so. Then it’ll be up to you whether you accept their advice or whether you’re so anxious to get rid of the place that you’re willing to disregard their advice and unload anyway. But I shan’t try to cheat you, or beat you down to a give-away price. That’s not how I’ve ever done business. Contrary to popular legend, most people like me aren’t double-dyed crooks, who only think we’ve done a day’s work if we’ve diddled some little old lady out of her life savings, or bought somebody out for the price of a lunch when we should have set him up for life. We’re just businessmen like any others, only a bit richer, and with a shrewder eye than most for the really good offer.”
“You don’t seem very worried about the problem with the licence,” said Stephen doubtfully.
The man laughed. “No need for you to worry about that, is there?” he said. “If I buy the property from you now, it will have been my problem for months before the Brewster Sessions come up. Why worry yourself about my future headaches?
“Still,” he went on, “it’s nice of you to concern yourself. You don’t need to, though. I’ve been dealing with little local difficulties like this one for far too many years to be worried by it; I employ people, specialists in this kind of field, to get round just this kind of problem; and, if you really want to know, I’ve got far too many people… on my side, to feel anxious on that account. No, you stop worrying yourself about things you don’t need to worry about, and concentrate on the ones you do.”
He got up to leave, thrusting out a hand to Stephen, then to Richard, and giving each a hard, brisk handshake. Then he swung round and
marched out of the pub without looking back.
“Well,” said Stephen, “That’s that.”
“Just our hairy friends to go now,” said Richard, giving him a friendly cuddle and getting up to fetch fresh drinks.
* * *
Pat Gibson came into the Crown in his customary noisy fashion and found his usual corner occupied. One of the two men leaning casually on the bar and chatting was big. The other was enormous. Gibson went and took up position as near to his usual spot as he could, and called out to Tom, who was serving at the far end. Tom nodded and went on serving. When he was finished he came down and said loudly, “Pat Gibson, none other. What’s it to be, Pat?” Gibson stared at him for a moment in surprise. “Well, the usual, Tom, of course. What else?” He did not observe the bigger of the two strangers give him a rapid but close look up and down, and then unobtusively nudge his companion.
He took a long pull at his pint and sighed appreciatively. Then, with none of his usual cronies yet in to talk to, he propped the bar up and listened, without any great interest at first, to the conversation going on behind him. Very shortly, however, he pricked up his ears, as he realised that the two newcomers were talking about rugby, which was his own great passion in life.
After a while one of the men smiled at Tom and signalled for new pints. When Tom delivered them the man said casually, “Any interest in rugby in these parts?”
“Oh, yes,” said Tom. “Lots.” He hesitated. “Any special reason for asking?”
“Yes, there is, as it happens,” said the big man. “My friend here” — he indicated the still larger man with a jerk of his thumb — “and I are looking round for a base for a short tour. We want to get in a bit of serious pre-season practice. We thought some proper match practice would be very useful, alongside the usual training. Then we thought maybe we might combine business with pleasure, and maybe set up a short tour. I do a lot of business down this way, so I thought immediately of this as a good area to look round in.”
“Pat’s your man,” said Tom, gesturing behind the two men to Gibson, who was by this time openly listening in to the conversation. “Pat Gibson,” said Tom, “and…”
“Nick Lister,” said the spokesman, turning and offering Gibson a huge paw. “And Alan Bridges,” he added, waving the paw at the still bigger man. Bridges straightened up to his full height as Lister introduced him, and Gibson, who had had to look upwards to offer a smile of greeting to Lister, had to take a pace back to do so for Bridges, who stood somewhere about six feet nine. Hands were shaken and greetings exchanged all round, and Gibson called for an immmediate round of fresh pints.
“Rugby man?” asked Lister.
“Fanatic,” said Gibson enthusiastically. “Frustrated fanatic, unfortunately. We don’t get too many rugby men in here, more’s the pity. It’s damned good to see you two. Makes a welcome change,” he went on, with a meaning glance at Tom behind the bar.
The two strangers gave the neutral, polite smile that people give when something is referred to that the company clearly understand but to which they are not privy.
“Sorry,” said Gibson, interpreting the smile. “Of course, you wouldn’t know. This pub’s become infested with a lot of unwelcome visitors just lately.” The two raised their eyebrows. “Yes,” went on Gibson. “We’ve been having the pleasure of a lot of very weird characters just lately.”
“Weird?” said Lister, raising his eyebrows in polite enquiry.
“Yes,” said Gibson bitterly. “Bloody queers — mostly from Brighton.”
“Oh,” murmured Lister and Bridges together.
Yes, fraid so,” said Gibson easily. “Coming in by the busload. New owner’s one himself, Christ help us, and the news got around, I suppose. Birds of a feather, you know.”
“Yes, of course,” murmured Lister.
“He’s leaving, though, thank Christ,” said Gibson dismissively. “Anyway, let’s get back to your tour.”
They fell to talking rugby shop, and in a very short time the idea had been suggested of a challenge match between the newcomers’ team and a team of local star players, to be got together by Gibson. “I think it’s a great idea,” he enthused. “I don’t play myself any more — anno domini, you know. But I can promise you a good side. I don’t know how good you are, but I’m confident I can raise a side that would give any of the big London outfits a good game. Would you be willing to leave it with me, gents? I’ll have the side ready in a week. How does that sound?”
“Sounds fine to me,” said Lister, and Bridges nodded, grinning his support for the idea.
They talked rugby for a further twenty-five minutes, then the two strangers excused themselves and went out, leaving a jubilant Gibson chuckling to himself and talking excitedly about the match to Tom, who kept his own counsel, but accepted a drink.
“Ha-ha!” crowed Gibson as the door closed on them. “This is a bit more bloody like it! Christ, Tom, what a pleasure it is to get some real men in the bar for a change. Bet your life we’ll get these rugby men back here before the end of this year. And if these two are about, the rugby should be damn good, too. Makes a change from these bloody queers, doesn’t it?”
* * *
The nearest rugby ground available for hire was ten miles away, and despite the fact that it was a filthy day, with bone-chilling sheets of rain lashing hard on a biting, gusty wind, practically every soul in the village had managed to get there somehow. Boys had ridden there on bikes despite the weather, or crammed into fathers’ impossibly, and illegally, over-loaded cars. The aged and the earless were offered lifts, the unpopular cadged them, and no one had the heart to refuse.
Alfie Brett stood under a tree chatting with Major Sealey, with whom he had entered into a tacit alliance on the boys’ side as the dispute in the pub and the village had rumbled on. The Major was also one of only two other people to have been let in on the secret of the match by Stephen, whom he had virtually adopted, for the time when he was in the village, as a kind of surrogate grandson. The other was Tom, who was also in their small but select group, sharing a huge golfing umbrella borrowed from Richard’s father for the occasion. Tom had been grieving earlier that he would have to keep the pub open and thus be the only man in the village not to be allowed to see the epic match. “Balls!” Stephen had scoffed. “I haven’t sold the pub yet. Close the bloody pub and be damned.” Tom had not argued, and had spent the next few minutes yipyipping quietly to himself as he went through his chores in the bar.
Pat Gibson stood on the steps up to the little stone grandstand surveying the scene in mingled satisfaction and perplexity. The almost total turn-out of the villagers was a source of immense satisfaction; but he couldn’t help noticing that the crowd was swelled to well over double the number that the villagers could provide. A lot of the strangers were quite obviously friends, supporters and non-playing members of the opposition. Rugby men, quite clearly, he thought to himself, looking over the racing caps, hulking frames and beer guts prominently on display all round the ground. Former rugby players all, and very good news for the pub. But he couldn’t help thinking he recognised a number of other faces, too, among a large and prominent section of the crowd. “You know what,” he said suddenly, turning to one of his cronies on the steps beside him. “I think some of the queers have turned up as well.”
The crony, by chance, was one of the two who had defected on the occasion when he had offered his deadly insult to Stephen in the bar. The two of them had come to a rapprochement since Gibson’s brief exile and return, but the man had been forced to do a certain amount of thinking by the earlier incident. Now he turned to Gibson and observed mildly, “Well, they can like rugger as well as anyone else, can’t they?”
Gibson stared at him for a moment. “Well, I suppose they might,” he conceded grudgingly. “But you’d think they’d prefer embroidery or something, wouldn’t you? Or at least something poncy, like show-jumping.”
The other man looked at him impatiently. “Be your ag
e, Pat,” he said in more or less good-natured contempt. “You don’t have to be a cunt if you don’t want to be, you know.” And he swung round and tramped down the steps and off round the ground in search of more sensible company for the game. Gibson stood staring after him in astonishment. Then he pulled a puzzled face, shrugged and made his way to his seat of honour in the little box at the front of the stand, overlooking the half-way line.
A few minutes later the teams ran out on opposite sides of the stand from the dressing rooms underneath it, and he had some further surprises. The first thing that leaped to the eye was the visiting team’s brilliant, brand-new kit. Their shirts were black, covered with an intricate pattern of interlocking triangle shapes in a glaring, shocking pink. Their shorts were the same pattern in reverse coloration. Their socks were the same violent pink, with black bands at the tops.
The second thing Gibson saw within the first few seconds, while the teams were still streaming onto the pitch, was that the leader of the visiting fifteen, wearing number 1 for loose-head prop, and also, more significantly to the goggling Gibson, the captain’s black armband, was Stephen Hill. By the time he had got over the impact of these twin, and unwelcome surprises, the teams had whipped through a pre-match chuck-about made exceptionally brief by the vile weather, and were lining up for the kick-off.
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