GBH

by Ted Lewis

  So although I conclude that that particular possibility is virtually not on, there is an aura about her that doesn’t make me close my mental book on her entirely, and although not normally a gambling man, I keep the book on her open as a way of passing the time. I also run a little side bet on the man with the crossword. Will he or won’t he, and if so, how?

  He gets his chance when she checks her wristwatch against the clock above the bar. An enquiry as to whether she’s waiting for someone or not. Her reaction to that is neither a frost nor a come on. Although I can’t hear what either of them is saying, from that point on the conversation appears to flow fairly smoothly, with just the faint expression from the girl to the man that it is not a conversation that in any way will lead to a discussion concerning territorial gains. In fact the closest he appears to get to her is when he buys her a drink. To do this he stands up and when the drinks have been replaced he hands her hers and sits down on the stool that previously stood between them.

  By that time my fish has arrived and for a while, because it’s so good, I devote my attentions to that. I don’t look across at the bar again until I’ve finished eating. Sipping my wine, I now see that the girl is no longer there. So perhaps I was wrong. Or perhaps he couldn’t afford the asking. In any case, so what? I have to pass my time somehow but …

  Vaguely irritated, I refill my glass, and the waitress appears to take my order for dessert. I order ice cream and when the waitress goes away, the girl has returned to the bar and is again sitting on her stool. She’s only been to the powder room. And so now I begin to re-speculate, even more irritated with myself. Whoever she’s waiting for, if she’s waiting for anyone, is by now very late. She’s showing no irritation at the lack of arrival, and appears to be enjoying the conversation, though not perhaps as much as he would like her to.

  I shake my head. Even though my instincts still nudge me towards a different conclusion, sense tells me that if she was a brass they would have left together at least a quarter of an hour ago.

  The ice cream arrives and I eat it in a couple of minutes flat; my obsessiveness is really beginning to get on my nerves. I call for my bill and get up and leave the restaurant and go out into the precinct, in search of a movie to occupy my mind for the rest of the afternoon.

  THE SMOKE

  HENRY CHAPMAN WAS THE first. When Mickey brought him in he looked a very worried man, but then anybody being picked up by Mickey and being brought into Sammy’s house would look worried, innocent or not.

  The room was set up as before, and, as before, Jean was there.

  Henry was asked to sit down in the chair. He declined my offer of a drink.

  “All right,” he said. “Just what the fuck is going down?”

  I lit a cigarette. “How’d you like living out at Marlowe now, Henry?” I asked him. “The missus got used to the neighbours yet? Kids settled in at the new school all right?”

  “Look, George, fuck the fun and games. I’m here for a reason. First off, I want to know what it is.”

  “Maybe you already do?”

  “I know all sorts of things, George, as you are very well aware.”

  I nodded.

  “Those apart,” I said. “The new house, I mean as I mortgaged it for you, I know what it’s costing you a month. And the school fees, those are a couple of good schools. And then there’s the Algarve, and Las Palmas, and—”

  “I can afford all that. As you pointed out, you know all about my financial situation.”

  “Do I?”

  A short silence.

  “This is about money, isn’t it?” Henry said.

  “You’re getting warm.”

  Henry considered what he was going to say. Then he said, “George, I’ve been a member of this firm a long time. A very long time. And I’m not stupid; I know how well paid I am. I don’t go out on fourhanders any more, not even for you; I don’t have to. Failing a financial situation of the kind that happened in Germany before the war, not only am I set up for the rest of my life, but so are my kids. So, would I, in my right mind, put all that down the pan for sake of creaming a few extras?”

  “So you know that’s the area we’re going to be talking about?”

  Henry shakes his head.

  “George, give me the kind of credit you give me for being able to do my job.”

  “All right. Supposing it wasn’t you. What about the other three?”

  “I don’t know, do I? I should imagine they’re as happy in their lot as I am in mine.”

  “And those you collect from?”

  Henry shrugged.

  “They know me. They know what’d happen if I caught them at anything. That’s one of the reasons you gave me the job.”

  I poured myself another drink. There was a long silence.

  “Does the missus know about the cottage outside of Saffron Walden?” I asked him.

  Henry went the colour of cream cheese.

  “And does she know how much it costs to keep Millie Rowson there fifty-two weeks a year? Not to mention what it costs when she comes up to town shopping or goes on her holidays.”

  Henry didn’t bother asking how I knew about Saffron Walden. Instead he said, “The cottage is an investment. When I decide to sell it I’ll be quids in.”

  “So why didn’t you come to me for the finance?”

  “I didn’t need to.”

  “You didn’t need to about the house.”

  “You offered. You look after your best people like that.”

  “And if you’d told me about the cottage, I would have offered again, wouldn’t I?”

  Henry didn’t say anything.

  “So why didn’t you tell me about it?”

  Henry breathed in.

  “Look,” he said. “All right. I’ll tell you.”

  “Do that, Henry,” I said to him.

  “Look,” he said. “It’s like this. I don’t know quite how to put it. Supposing something goes down. Supposing there’s an earthquake. Old Bill suddenly has to start eating people. I mean I heard about the Shepherdsons’ latest stroke.”

  I waited for him to go on.

  “So I got this place,” he said. “It’s a place to go. Millie’s neither here nor there. Well, I mean, you’ve got to have somewhere to go, don’t you? I mean, even you must have made contingency arrangements for whatever goes down, if it ever does.”

  “Must I, Henry?” I said.

  Henry seemed a bit embarrassed.

  “Well, what I mean is, I didn’t think anyone knew about mine. In your case … well, you know what I mean.”

  I didn’t tell him that I knew what he meant. Instead, I said, “That place cost you seventeen thousand five hundred pounds.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You put it all down at one go.”

  “I could afford it.”

  “Still a lot of money. All at one go.”

  “I’m telling you. I could afford it.”

  I stubbed out my cigarette.

  “So that’s as far as you’re prepared to go?” I said.

  “That’s as far as I can go,” he said. “Except to say that whatever’s going down, you’re talking to the wrong man.”

  I topped my glass up. Henry was a very convincing fellow. And up to now he’d been like Caesar’s wife. That was why he was in the job I’d given him. I took a drink. I liked Henry. I looked at Jean. She was standing still, by the blanket-muffled curtains. She liked Henry too. I remembered once asking her if she fancied him. She’d said, yes, she’d fancy Henry if I wasn’t around. It was the kind of thing we used to ask each other about other people. Of course it was academic, just part of a general gee-ing up process in our mind games. Not that she hadn’t had sex with other men since we’d been married. But those times were with different kinds of people, of both sexes, and on occasions different to having sex singly with someone because she wanted that particular someone. Those were the occasions committed to video-tape and to film, the cast of supporting pl
ayers as anonymous as was possible; Henry was a fantasy to Jean, a shared mind experience with myself.

  Now, Henry was here.

  Jean’s face was deliberately void of all expression. Which meant I knew exactly what she was thinking.

  I gave Mickey the nod.

  THE SEA

  AFTER THE MOVIE, I cruise slowly out of the town and back along the main road, in the direction of the bungalow and of Mablethorpe. Cars continually rush by me, the drivers now office-free, rushing headlong home to get back to wives they probably are not particularly eager to see. Stupid haste to risk getting yourself smashed up.

  Dawdling along, I remember Jean’s questions when we’d got back to the Penthouse, after Mickey’d worked on Henry.

  After we’d made love.

  No, I’d told her. Henry was safe. In both ways. There was a point beyond which Henry could not have remained silent had he been the one. Henry had told us the truth. And what now, she’d said, now that he’d had that done to him? Could he still be trusted; could I risk keeping him on after what had been done to him? Look, I’d told her, Henry was a pro. He knew what the score was. He’d been the victim of an occupational hazard. He wouldn’t bear a grudge, consider revenge. After the doctor had spent a week with him, Henry would continue as before. He would be free to go about his business on my behalf, to return to the bosom of his family or to the bosom of Millie, whichever he preferred. But now, knowing that he’d once been under suspicion, he’d be twice as scrupulous in his modus operandi, so that his activities would cast not even the tiniest of shadows in my direction. Because next time, he would know, condolences to the immediate family would be in order. No, I’d told her; an excellent soldier would become a perfect one.

  I’m about half a mile away from the turn-off to the bungalow, and I begin to wonder whether or not to go back. There’s no immediate reason for going straight back, but then there’s no reason at all for carrying on into Mablethorpe. My mind is made up for me by headlights flashing in the tea-time dusk of my driving mirror. I pull over slightly to let the following car pass me and by the time I’ve repositioned my motor more centrally I’ve gone past my turn-off, so I just carry on towards Mablethorpe.

  As I drive down it, the street has a slightly warmer feel to it. Although the evening is not yet dark, the lights are on in the few shops that are open, particularly bright in the big supermarket, and at intervals one or two sodium street lights, bronze against the deepening plushness of the blue sky neutralise the garish coldness of the marine paintwork.

  I park the motor where I parked it before, at the foot of the ramp that leads the concrete horizon with its row of bollards.

  I sit in the car and take a couple of pulls from my flask and consider the few early stars that twinkle in the darkening uniform curtain that soars beyond the rim of the ramp. The twinkling of the stars soon becomes boring so I slip my flask in the pocket of the anorak that’s lying on the seat beside me. Then I get out of the car and take the anorak off the seat. I close the door and lock it and when I’m slipping the anorak on I look down the street. The lights from the South’s tall windows stretch across the street’s width, and nearer, just opposite me, the arcade on the corner of the street and the promenade provides both street and promenade with the generosity of its Friday-night light that blazes out into the evening to become quickly diffused by the very slight, almost imperceptible sea mist that is drifting in through the gap at the top of the ramp; in fact it is only the diffusion of the arcade’s light that makes me aware of the mist at all.

  From where I’m standing, I can see into the arcade through its broad plate-glass windows that look out onto both the street and the promenade. For Mablethorpe, its interior dimensions are fairly big, a flattened-down and squared-off area similar in volume to that of the South. There’s hardly anyone about, just handfuls of kids running from machine to machine, a few wandering adults, separate, looking at the machines as if they’re exhibits in the wrong museum.

  I cross the promenade and walk through the open doors and into the arcade.

  The old boy in his white coat is just about upright in the change kiosk. I walk over to him and get a pounds-worth of ten-pence pieces and go over to the aerial Dogfight machine, and spend a quarter of an hour trying to top my previous personal best, which tonight I don’t happen to be able to do. After I’ve failed to do that I decide to go over to a pin-table I particularly like to play. While I’m getting some more change from the kiosk, I clock that this particular machine is already in use, being operated by a dark-haired girl in dark glasses. She’s wearing one of those Afghan coats and a pair of deliberately patchy jeans and white plimsolls. A newspaper is sticking out of one of the pockets of her Afghan. I pick up my change and walk over and lean against the machine next to hers and watch her manipulating the flippers. She’s wearing a T-shirt which reads: I’D RATHER BE HANG-GLIDING. She’s clocking up quite a good score and she’s still got a couple of ball-bearings to come. She takes no notice of my interest. What I notice is that the paper sticking out of her pocket is a copy of The Stage, and also she’s beautiful in a way that goes with the clothes she’s wearing.

  She shoots her final ball. I watch as she juggles the machine as close to Tilt as she can without actually tilting it. In the end, she finishes up with a very good score.

  “You almost got a free game,” I say to her.

  Beginning to move off, not looking at me, she says, “You didn’t.”

  I smile to myself. It was one way of getting onto the machine.

  I insert a coin and press the button that sets up the five ball-bearings and then for no reason at all I think there was something about the girl that was vaguely familiar. I look up from the machine in the direction that the girl had gone. And that’s it. She’s gone. Nowhere to be seen. Out into the night and all that. Anyway, why shouldn’t there have been something familiar about her? The town is full of girls. Why should I even care she seems familiar? I shrug my shoulders, like a dog shaking off rain. I’m obsessive about everything these days. I need a new obsession like I need a win on Littlewoods.

  I pull back the spring mechanism and start the game.

  THE SMOKE

  THE DAY ON WHICH I was going to have a talk to Mal Wilson, I had lunch with my lawyer, James Morville. As usual, it was pleasant and relaxed. As long as you allowed him a half an hour to discourse on his two hobbies, opera and the movies, James was happy to spend the rest of the allotted time meandering through any subject you cared to slide at him, giving gentle exercise to a mind that was as sharp as his exterior was smooth. He was forty-two years old, and extremely wealthy. He enjoyed taking out girls but not on a regular basis. Perhaps his legal mind was a disadvantage to the naturally advantaged young ladies in which he specialised; like a chess player, he was always the requisite number of moves ahead of whatever the young ladies had in their minds. But he was much loved by them; on the other hand he was much hated by the Law. It was ironic really; there was no better criminal lawyer in the country. It wasn’t only his courtroom performances that made him unique; it was his backroom tactics that had all that could afford him knocking on their doors for him to let them out. And this was the area at which the Law’s hatred was directed, and not only the straight law. It was as if the immaculate public presentations of his backstage deals, deals which not only saved the faces of his clients but the faces of the Law themselves, it was as if this very perfection got up their noses most of all; it was similar to the money syndrome. The debtor never forgives the person who is the source of his credit.

  And there was nothing James didn’t know; perhaps this was why they hated him most of all. There was nothing he didn’t know about the villains, either, and that knowledge made him safe; he had no family to threaten. Only his own life was on the line. And if any derailment were ever effected James had made it common knowledge that his will provided that the Attorney General received the key to the safe deposit box that contained his memoirs. There would be more
about me in that little box than I could ever remember myself. I often used to say to him, if he ever retired, he should take up biography. There was a big market in biographies.

  Nothing he didn’t know, nothing he couldn’t find, nobody he couldn’t locate. He had his ways, just as I had mine.

  He was a member of the best clubs, and his appearance would have graced the Opposition front benches in the House. And he really loved his work, and the knowledge that he possessed. There was very little I hid from him; and as my lawyer, the more he knew, the better it was for me, should the unforeseen happen. He wouldn’t thank me if it was only while he was standing up in court he discovered I’d sold him a dummy.

  So he already knew of the fates of Philips and Carpenter and Butcher. I’d told him all about it over lunch.

  “Yes,” he said, considering the wine in his glass, “you were quite right. Nothing else you could have done. Not that I can see.”

  He drank some of his wine, savoured it.

  “Farlow’s such an idiot,” he said. “Can’t understand the fellow, screwing it up the way he did. One can only put it down to megalomania. Sheer megalomania.”

  “Well, it’s tough at the top,” I said.

  James smiled and said, “I saw him in Muriel’s the other day; of course he was well aware that I’d know all about it. We had a few words.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  James smiled again.

  “He bought me a drink. You know what he’s like; in buying me a drink, he wasn’t conceding defeat. He was demonstrating that in the larger battle, he’d be the final winner. I sometimes wonder why he doesn’t wear a pair of six-shooters.”

  “And he said?”

  “Oh, nothing specific; the usual heavy irony, not disguising his real meaning. He mentioned he knew of a flat just gone vacant in Brighton. Ideal for the weekends. Sounds super, I said. I asked him for the number of the estate agents. He said how would he know?”