The Man Who Won the Pools

by J. I. M. Stewart

  ‘Artie,’ Phil called, ‘what’s the moon like? Not Superman stuff. Honest scientific.’

  ‘Day larsts a month,’ Artie said. ‘Then nights larst a month. Cold like you wouldn’t believe.’

  ‘Cold by day?’

  ‘I’d ’ave to look it up. But might be quite ’ot, I think. Sun comes up like it might be a distillery on fire. Great tongues of flame, see? You’d see it that way ’cos of there being no atmosphere to speak of. That long long night, with darkness and cold you wouldn’t think of, like I said. Then this ’orrid sunrise. P’raps nothink else. Only if there was just a bit of air, kind of thawing out and blowing round in the daytime, then you might ’ave lichen and stuff, even little flowers, coming up in the ‘eat and lasting from dawrn to dusk. Insecks, even.’

  ‘Only twelve days in the year?’ George asked wonderingly.

  ‘Jes’ that.’ Artie was confident. ‘And I wouldn’t arf mind a month of Sundays.’ He looked at Phil. ‘What d’you want to know about the moon for?’

  ‘He’s going there,’ George said, sticking half-serious to his idea.

  ‘Setting up his country seat among the lunatics,’ Fred said. ‘Have his deer park in a bleeding volcano.’

  Phil wasn’t listening. He was up in outer space, weightless except that there was a small pull towards the centre of gravity in the rocket. He looked out through the perspex and there was darkness and some stars – stars just as far away as when you are on earth, but from here naked and blazing. And you could hear the silence, the terrifying silence out there as they moved on their courses. What though in solemn silence all roll round the dark terrestrial ball. Only of course they weren’t rolling round anything. They were stars and plunging and plunging, that was it, farther and farther away. And the farther away they got the faster they got away, thrusting and thrusting and thrusting into the expanding universe. He looked back – not that of course you could, but he kidded himself he did. Through some sort of super telescope he looked back at Earth. And there was England and Oxford and his auntie’s two up and two down. There was Prendick going round handing out cheques to mugs. There was I love Derek by Wendy. There was New Street and Gas Street and the Primitive Methodists 1843. There was Beryl. And there, too, was the girl called Jean.

  Abruptly Phil’s rocket or whatever dissolved into air or ether around him. He was lying on his back beside the canal, and Fred Prescott and Artie Coutts were on their feet making perfunctory noises of farewell, having fixed up to go and do he didn’t care what. But old George Pratley was still lying beside him on his stomach, idly investigating his teeth with a grass-stalk that was stiff enough for the job. George completed this dental work at leisure and then flung away the bit of grass.

  ‘Fred—‘he spoke more apologetically than accusingly—‘don’t talk very nice about it. I think it’s a hell of a fine thing to happen, Phil. Honest I do. To you, you know. You’ve got ideas, you have.’

  ‘Ideas? Garn! I just got to settle down. Beryl and all.’

  ‘I know you two been knocking on together.’ George spoke with great care. ‘Beryl’s not a bad kid. But she’ll be pretty dateless, won’t she, as the wife of a man with hundreds of thousands of pounds?’

  ‘It don’t mean a thing.’

  ‘Yes, it does. You got brains. Reading and all that.’

  ‘Never hardly open a book, I don’t.’

  ‘Fine day, you don’t, Phil. You could get somewhere, you could, with that money. You could go to the Varsity for a start.’

  ‘Christ! I’d be dead before.’ Phil sat up. ‘I did meet a chap yesterday,’ he said inconsequently. ‘Nice chap from one of the colleges. Working-class parents. There’s a lot of them.’

  ‘You could do a heap of things. Go into politics.’

  ‘That’s what he’d do. This chap I met. If he had a lot of money, he said.’ Phil lit another cigarette and chucked the packet at George. ‘What was that you were saying about Beryl?’

  ‘She wouldn’t go along with you. She’s limited, Beryl is.’

  There was a silence. Phil had been about to say ‘You leave Beryl alone.’ But he had realised that honest indignation just wouldn’t be honest – not with George.

  ‘I couldn’t ditch her,’ he said. ‘Not now.’

  George stared.

  ‘You’re not thinking what that clueless Artie was thinking, along of his girl? There’s not a bit of trouble blowing up?’

  ‘’Course not. But all the same. With this money.’

  George stole a cautious glance at his companion.

  ‘First come, first served, were you?’ he asked. ‘Or following along?’

  ‘Shut your bleeding gob.’ Phil had got to his feet, scowling. But when he saw George Pratley’s friendly concerned face he made that it had only been to get more comfortable in his trousers. ‘It’s a day,’ he said as he sat down again.

  ‘It’s a day, man.’

  They lay on their backs in a long silence, staring up at the sky from under half-closed lashes. A Yank bomber with its wicked-looking raked-back wings went over. The crew would be looking down and seeing their own shadow sweeping across the fields and villages. Phil had been to a demo and a chap had said there was always some in the air with the things on board all fused up and they flew out towards Russia in relays and if they didn’t get a recall they’d fly on. That couldn’t be true, it was too mad, but anyway it was getting to be like that almost. He was an orphan because his mum and dad had been killed by a bomb, a small old-fashioned bomb that smashed a house or two and blew a few people’s heads off and guts out. Chicken feed.

  Phil shut his eyes altogether and drew in his belly and braced his buttocks just to feel how alive he was. The roar of the plane faded to a drone, and what he heard instead was the clanking and juddering of the shunting locomotives on the railway sidings behind him. It was a good sound, the same he’d been hearing in bed almost as long as he could remember. He’d used to think of the men working through the night in the marshalling yards as a sort of patrol on the frontiers of his world of little streets and little pubs and the gas works. And now he stretched out his arms as if he was crucified, and turned the palms of his hands upward and felt the warmth of the sun on them at once. The warmth was making the canal smell a bit now, but there was some smell of growing things as well – for all that they’d chosen to settle down in front of nothing but tiles and chimney pots that looked far too big on the ground, and behind that was nothing but an ugly dirty church spire on some modern church. And then suddenly there was a lark, it might be straight over his head, singing so that you’d think it must do something to every soul in Oxford.

  ‘George,’ Phil said.

  ‘Man.’

  ‘There was a girl. There was a girl came with these people brought me the cheque.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘I fell in love with her, I have.’

  George Pratley sat up – which was natural with such unusual words suddenly fired at him.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘What I say. And your talking of Beryl made me say it. I got to be fair to Beryl. She done a lot for me, and I wouldn’t do her harm.’ Phil looked at George in troubled silence for a moment. ‘Only I know all about her, see?’

  ‘And about this girl?’

  ‘I don’t know a bloody thing. I don’t—’ Phil corrected himself oddly— ‘know a thing, man.’

  For a minute George Pratley said nothing. Then, although full of delicacy, he pressed on boldly.

  ‘Looks like what I was saying,’ he said.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘This girl you just seen yesterday may be something, or she may be nothing at all. Nothing at all, like enough. But she belongs where you can go places and see things now. And you’ve got to, Phil. You’d be no bleeding good if you didn’t.’

  ‘Shall I be any bleeding good, George, if I start off with some mean-gutted walk-out?’

  George, with unusual casualness which was in fact absor
bed thought, took another Camel unasked.

  ‘D’you know,’ he said, ‘I been wondering once or twice lately …’ He hesitated, ‘No,’ he said. ‘Forget it.’ He looked at his wrist-watch – massively golden and on a gold bracelet you might put round a high-class female slave. ‘I got to bugger off,’ he said. ‘Got a girl too, haven’t I?’ He grinned at Phil, all commonplace happiness again. ‘Got to take her to our local flea-pit. The film of the century again. Get walking.’

  Chapter Six

  It was close on twelve when Phil got back to Carfax. He remembered it was Saturday. He thought he’d go into the Savings Bank and get out a bit of money. And then he remembered this thing in his pocket.

  Remembering made his head swim – just like those dirty photos had done at breakfast. He’d have to do something. He’d have to do something for himself, seeing he’d been so uppity about Prendick and his advisory service. Well, there were real banks here. Phil walked into one of them.

  Or edged, you might say, since a man in a bowler hat was just beginning to shut up shop for the day. There were still a few customers at the counter, but on the other side of it a couple of the clerks, or tellers did they call themselves, were disengaged and playing out time fiddling with bank-notes. Phil went up to one of them, fished out his cheque and put it down on the shiny mahogany.

  ‘I’d like something out of this, please,’ he said.

  It was a young chap, and he looked at Phil and then he glanced sideways at a big clock.

  ‘Have you an account here, sir?’ he asked, very civil but plainly disapproving.

  ‘Never been in here in my life before.’ Phil knew this wasn’t good behaviour. But the place made him feel edgy.

  ‘Then I’m afraid—’ The young chap’s glance fell on the cheque, and he frowned. Then he picked it up and had a good look at it. Phil just waited.

  ‘Yes, I see.’ The young chap was feeling it up to him to speak with careful indifference. ‘Perhaps you want to open an account?’

  Phil nodded.

  ‘If that’s the thing,’ Phil said. Of course he knew about banks, more or less. But that edgy feeling was driving him to a bit of clowning.

  ‘I’m sure it can be arranged.’ The young chap paused importantly. At the same time, he was looking round-eyed at Phil. ‘Only it’s usual, on the whole, for new clients to be introduced, or to provide a reference.’

  ‘D’you think so?’ Phil asked. ‘Perhaps I’d better try across the street. More go-ahead there, I’m told.’

  The young chap looked alarmed.

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘There’s no difficulty at all. Only you’d better see the manager. Do you mind?’ This time he looked quite appealingly at Phil. And at the same time he faintly grinned. But derisive was not the word. Quite a friendly grin. Perhaps he didn’t play the pools, and wasn’t feeling his own half-crowns had gone to swell that cheque. Perhaps he was just a nice chap, liking to see a bit of luck around.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Phil said. ‘I’ll see him. But I just want to get fixed up rough and ready, you know. And a bit of cash.’

  ‘Shan’t be a moment. By the way, Sackbutt’s his name.’

  The young chap walked down the length of the counter and through a door at the end. Phil noticed he didn’t pause to murmur to any of his fellows that here was the local chap the pools had come home on. Decorous. Phil waited. He was the only customer left now. The others had all been ejected through a chink in the street door by the bowler-hatted man. There was a rack of pamphlets, telling you how to go abroad or make a will or borrow £500. The clock ticked.

  ‘Will you come this way, Mr. Tombs?’

  Mr. Tombs came this way. Life was opening out upon him. Or was it, he wondered, closing in?

  Mr. Sackbutt advanced from behind an austerely simple desk and shook hands in silence. It was a warm firm handshake that stirred a memory in Phil. When his uncle, thank goodness, had fallen down those lavatory steps in the boozer and broken his neck, the clergyman who had come about the place had given young Phil just that handshake. The imparting of strength and consolidation seemed to be Mr. Sackbutt’s first thought. Then he sat Phil down in a red leather chair like it was a club, and pushed forward a silver cigarette-box.

  ‘Thanks,’ Phil said, and took a fag. He noticed that his own voice sounded smaller than usual.

  Mr. Sackbutt, who was elderly and grey-haired, put on a pair of heavy-rimmed glasses and picked up Phil’s cheque from his desk. The way he looked at it, it might have been something pathological from Phil’s inside.

  ‘Yes,’ Mr. Sackbutt said gently. ‘Yes.’

  Phil felt very frightened. It was almost Sentence of Death stuff, like the picture.

  ‘Would it be all right?’ he asked – although he knew it was a fool question.

  But, foolish or not, Mr. Sackbutt weighted it.

  ‘They certainly have the resources to honour it, Mr. Tombs. They certainly have that.’ He looked at Phil in a sedative and reassuring way. ‘In fact, it is most unlikely that we shall have any difficulty.’ He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again it was very gravely. ‘We must begin,’ he said, ‘by frankly acknowledging that this is a large sum of money.’

  Phil felt his heart sink.

  ‘They do sometimes do it,’ he said. ‘Don’t they? Wonderful publicity, a dividend like that.’

  ‘It is not, fortunately, a dividend, except in the jargon in which these people—’ and Mr. Sackbutt tapped the cheque— ‘like to indulge. Just what it actually is, Mr. Tombs, I wouldn’t care to have to say. Let us adopt our own jargon, and call it a capital gain.’

  ‘No tax?’

  ‘Certainly no tax.’ Phil saw Mr. Sackbutt was concealing surprise at this elementary financial acuteness in his new client. ‘Or rather the taxation comes later. Like the pain in modern dentistry or surgery.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Phil was alarmed at the recurrence of this clinical theme. But Mr. Sackbutt, as if he saw this, suddenly stepped up the appearance of benevolent protectiveness of which his features were so capable. It made him look rather like

  Let-Me-Be-Your-Father. ‘But even then,’ Phil said, ‘I suppose there will be quite a lot. I mean, to spend.’

  A faint expression of distaste warred for a moment with the wise benignity of Mr. Sackbutt’s expression. It was almost as if Phil had said some rude word.

  ‘It isn’t to be denied,’ Mr. Sackbutt said, ‘that the conservation of an estate is a tricky matter in these times. Not positively difficult, you understand, but tricky—decidedly. As a very astute merchant banker remarked in the City the other day, the surest way to lose money at present is to leave it alone.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought that,’ Phil said.

  ‘For a more than moderate—um—fortune of this sort—’ and Mr. Sackbutt once more tapped Phil’s cheque— ‘a portfolio of sound Equities is undoubtedly the best thing. Even so, constant vigilance is required. I cannot conceal from you, Mr. Tombs, that your choice of stockbroker – if I may assume, that is, that you have no stockbroker at present – will be of the very greatest importance.’

  ‘A couple of people called Investment Consultants,’ Phil volunteered, ‘wrote to me this morning.’

  ‘No doubt. But that is not precisely the same thing.’ Mr. Sackbutt looked quite anxiously at Phil. He was thinking, Phil could see, of the enormous hazards to which this simple proletarian youth must be exposed.

  ‘And Mr. Prendick,’ Phil went on, ‘told me he had an advisory service for big winners. How would you say that would be?’

  ‘Entirely reputable, no doubt.’ Mr. Sackbutt sounded not wholly enthusiastic. ‘We might discuss the wisdom of making use of it at a later time. But at present, if you have no immediate engagement, I should like to offer you a very simple sketch of the economy as I see it at present. Just that, and a preliminary word or two on the principles governing sound investment.’

  ‘Very kind, I’m sure.’ Phil was beginning to feel hungr
y. For a moment he had a wild notion of inviting Mr. Sackbutt to lunch at the Mitre or the Randolph in slap-up style. He would order Nuits-Saint-Georges and get it exactly right. But a moment’s reflection made this seem a dismal and inferior idea, and Phil in fact sat dumb for another half-hour while Mr. Sackbutt, who was clearly a conscientious man, did his duty by a new and important client. Not that Phil wasn’t rather bewildered, as well as depressed, at the end of it all, so that it was with a dispirited gesture that he eventually drew attention again to the cheque. ‘But I suppose I can leave it with you?’ he asked.

  ‘Certainly you can. And I think our best plan at the moment will be to utilise the Bank of England’s Five Day Scheme. Let me explain it to you.’

  But Phil had had enough of the mysteries of finance.

  ‘And can I have some cash?’ he asked.

  ‘Cash?’ It seemed as if Mr. Sackbutt had to think for a minute before he could place this trivial and unfamiliar word. ‘There need be no great difficulty there, I feel. Just how much, Mr. Tombs, would it be convenient for you to receive?’

  ‘Fourteen pounds.’

  ‘Fourteen pounds?’ Phil was aware of being looked at for the first time not as a perilously declassy young artisan but as a human being carrying his own enigmas. ‘I think we can certainly run to that.’

  ‘It’s what I’ve been earning.’

  ‘I see. Yes, I see.’ Mr. Sackbutt hesitated, rather as if he were on the verge of becoming a human being too. Then he recovered himself. ‘And a cheque-book,’ he said. ‘You had better have that. It will be convenient, after all, to regard a hundred or two of this—um—capital sum as in effect upon current account. The cashier will arrange it for you as you leave. And I am myself always available, you will understand, during business hours.’

  ‘Thanks a lot. See you some more, then.’ Phil stood up, and found he was again being shaken hands with.