St. Urbain's Horseman

by Mordecai Richler

  “All right, then. If that’s the way you put it.”

  Riding too many large gins, flattered with wine, Harry revealed that he had first become entangled with the law in Lady Docker’s England, when there was still rationing and Gilbert Harding, Ealing comedies, Attlee, war in Korea; and Harry Stein, a beginning bookkeeper, read in the News Chronicle of the disappearance, possibly a kidnapping, of a particularly coarse and ostentatious lady, the wife of a merchant banker. The police beat the bushes of neighboring Putney Heath, they scoured the abandoned railway sidings, hoping for the best but awaiting a phone call with instructions. Or a ransom note.

  Harry obliged.

  If you wish to see your wife alive again, you will deposit £5,000 in used one-pound notes in a small suitcase on Wednesday night, at 7 p.m., beside the gate to the cemetery in Putney Vale. I put it to you that this is no more than you donate to the Conservative Party annually or have indecently earned in a “bad” month out of the honest sweat of the working man. Meanwhile, your wife is safe. I could hardly be sexually aroused by such a spent old bag, but she is cold and frightened. Should you go to the police, she will die, and the same holds true if the money is marked.

  Alas for Harry, the lady was discovered in a seaside hotel in Sussex on Wednesday afternoon, none the worse for a post-menopausal fit of amnesia, but Harry didn’t know, he couldn’t, and as he strolled past the Putney Vale gates on Wednesday evening at seven, the police pounced on him. Harry fervently denied everything, he didn’t know what the police were about, but confronted with samples of his own handwriting, undone by stupidity, he then claimed it was all a joke. He had not, after all, kidnapped the lady, which was undeniably true, and he had intended to turn over the money to the defense fund for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

  Mr. Justice Delaney, at the Old Bailey, took a rather different view. While a family, stricken with anxiety and grief, had waited through seemingly interminable nights by the telephone for news of a loved one, this wretched young man, motivated by malice and greed, had done his utmost to add to the family’s considerable torment. Indeed, Mr. Watkins, who had suffered a coronary attack only two years earlier, had had to be put to bed with a sedative on receipt of Stein’s abominable note.

  “I am asked to take into consideration the accused’s hitherto unblemished record, but the case is most repulsive, and all too symbolic of the decadent society in which we live today. Already one tenth of the population of this country is either physically or mentally deficient. It is unfit for citizenship of this great nation. It is, I say, a terrible result of the random output of unrestricted breeding. In my view, young men such as this are treated leniently at society’s peril, turned loose only to prey on respectable citizens. This policy is unwise, most unwise. I intend to make an example out of you and my order is that you be sent to prison for three years.”

  To which Harry, before being escorted below, smiled thinly and replied, “Thank you, my Lord.”

  Staggering out of the restaurant, the pubs shut, Jake teased Harry into an invitation to his flat, insisting he needed another drink but actually determined to see how he lived.

  The cry of birds from Regent’s Park Zoo could be heard in Harry’s three-room basement flat, comprised of a kitchen, sitting room, and bedroom, photographic equipment lying everywhere, the bathroom also serving as a dark room. The bed was unmade, the sheets unspeakable, a sticky jam jar, bread, and a knife on the bedside table. Stacks of dishes drifted in the kitchen sink. There was a poster of Che in the sitting room, as well as a nude study of Jane Fonda. Harry rinsed a couple of glasses and came up with a half-bottle of Scotch. Encouraged, he read Jake one of his poems:

  Time-Server

  The bloke with-

  out

  lsd

  or

  fre

  edom

  doesn’t know it.

  he’s caged

  ineveryfactoryeveryofficeeveryday

  but doesn’t know it.

  docile, obliging

  he’s a domesticated pussy.

  purring at his master’s smile.

  But when the bloke with-

  out

  lsd

  or

  fre

  edom

  shows his teeth or shits on the carpet

  the master calls for his riding crop

  summons his dogs.

  Turned worms must be squashed.

  Then he agreed to show him some of the photographs he had taken. Among them, one of an Oriental girl with enormous breasts, her arms upraised, the wrists knotted together by a rope, and hanging chains brushing against her.

  “She’s got goose pimples,” Jake said, finding it easiest to joke as he passed on to the next photograph.

  In this one a heavy girl squatted, smirking at the photographer, legs opened wide as she tugged a serpent out from under her and held it to her mouth, her tongue flicking out for a kiss.

  “Hershel, Hershel, what’s to be done with you?” Jake asked.

  Hours later they drained the bottle, sharing the last of the Scotch. Red-eyed drunk, dizzy but exhilarated, Harry talked endlessly. “You know I’m different, see. I’m only telling you this because you understand I’m no cipher. That I’ve read a book or two and been to a concert. I want you to know what it was like when I was in my twenties. I want you to imagine what I went through. I mean to say, shit, who wouldn’t have had a breakdown, if that’s what you want to call it? I had nothing, mate. Sweet fucking nothing and grand expectations of more sweet fucking nothing. And the years were slipping by. Only I knew it, see, not like the others. I knew what I was missing and that’s always been my trouble. Not like the others. Terrified of getting the sack. Storing shillings in the post office account like hamsters. Out of their minds with joy for a ten-shilling rise. Not Harry. Harry uses his loaf and that’s his trouble, isn’t it? One day, listen to this, one day, this fat old geezer in a Bentley pulls up, he lowers his window and asks, ever so polite, would you know how I could get to Battersea Bridge from here? Actually, yes, you old fuck, I said, but first you tell me how much you’d pay to be my age again, because you’re not long for it, are you, mate, with all your money. I thought he’d have his stroke right there. I went to the boat show. Did I tell you that one? About the boat show at Olympia? I went to the boat show, you see, 1960 it was, you can look it up in the newspapers if you think I’m lying. I went thinking I’ll buy me a thirtieth birthday present. What a laugh! I picked one out for me (I’ve still got the pamphlets, you know), having the salesman on about the delivery dates. A thousand nicker all in it was. And I realized if I went without for the next ten years, I still couldn’t afford it. I was never going to bloody have it. Any of it. No yacht. No MG. No weeks at Monte. Even though I’m among the top two percent of this country intellectually, and you’ve got the proof of it now, haven’t you, mate? Even though I’m scientifically proven more intelligent than you and certainly any of that lot, I wasn’t going to have anything. Because I’m an insect.”

  And so, Harry went on to explain, laughing with fond remembrance, he had gone to a call box around the corner, put on his Latin accent, and warned them there was a bomb set to go off in thirty minutes as a protest against the government’s Cuban policy.

  “They took it seriously, you know. Old Khrushchev waving his shoe at the U.N. Castro in New York, raising hell. They didn’t take any chances. Police cars. Fire trucks. The lot. And all those dignified cool bastards and their tarts, you should have seen them move. Spilling out of Olympia very smartly indeed. I watched from across the street, fit to be tied. Do you know they raked that place over from top to bottom. They turned Olympia inside out that night, looking for my time bomb. You look it up, if you don’t believe me. Maybe I’ve still got the press cuttings.”

  12

  THE NEXT MORNING, AFTER DRIVING SAMMY TO school, Jake sought out Ruthy at the dress shop. But she had not come in to work. Her eldest boy, David, had a temperature of 103.

  “
Oh, it’s you,” she said, opening the door to Jake. “I had hoped it was the doctor. I should have known better.”

  “Why?”

  Ruthy explained that she had absolutely refused to bundle up David and take him to Dr. Engel’s surgery. She had threatened Engel with a letter of complaint to the National Health Service if he refused to come to the house, and now she was terrified because she knew he would not call for hours, and that when he did finally show up he would be horrid. He was, she said, such a foul-tempered man any way. Almost as bad as Dr. West. When David had only been a baby, running a temperature of 102 and vomiting, Dr. West had grudgingly come to her flat to look at him. “You’re fussing,” he had said, “fussing. He’s teething, that’s all.” But twenty-four hours later, with David’s temperature still rising, she had bundled him up and taken him to the hospital, where they discovered he had bronchial pneumonia and put him in an oxygen tent.

  So Ruthy had demanded her cards back and gone to register with Dr. Engel. Owl-faced Engel, dribbling cigarette ash, had flicked through the cards, piles of letters from the hospital, and other records, and then said: “You know there’s only one kind of patient who comes to me with a record like this.”

  “And what kind is that, doctor?”

  The neurotic.

  “As if,” Ruthy protested to Jake, “the NHS comes to us free. We’re taxed plenty. If Engel doesn’t like being on the NHS, why doesn’t he emigrate?”

  “And what about you,” Jake asked, “have you ever considered it?”

  “Certainly not,” she replied, affronted. “Harry says you’re going to pay me back what your cousin stole from me. Is that true?”

  “I’ve brought you a check.”

  “Would you care for tea?”

  “Oh, thanks. Yes. Ruthy, if you’re really that worried about your son, why don’t you let me call my doctor. I’m sure he’d come immediately.”

  “All you have to do is snap your fingers. It must be nice,” she mused, “to live your style. With connections everywhere.”

  “Do you want me to call him or not?”

  “Sure, call him. My David is as good as any of yours.”

  “Where’s the phone, then?”

  “The second floor maid is using it. You’ve got six pence?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s in the hall.”

  O’Brien agreed to look in within an hour. Jake followed Ruthy into the kitchen, where he was astonished to see, as she opened a cupboard in search of tea bags, shelf upon shelf of tins, tins of every conceivable size and shape, all of them shorn of their labels.

  “What’s going on here?” Jake asked.

  “Oh,” she giggled, “I’m a competitor from the competitors. Didn’t you know?”

  Ruthy led him to her “office,” the bridge table in the corner of the living room, which was stacked with neatly ordered labels from soups, sardines, soft drinks, biscuits, chocolate bars, crisps, and so forth. There were scissors, paste, envelopes, and entry forms. There was this week’s News of the World Spot the Ball contest, £5,000 for the outright winner, the competitor who, scrutinizing the action photograph of a football game, made his X exactly where the missing ball was in play. Alongside lay entry forms for the Heinz Golden Opportunity contest, the Opals/Spangles competition, Brooke Bond Name-the-Chimp contest, the Daily Sketch Jackpot, Topcat Win a “Woman” Dream Kitchen, the Great Tetley Treasure Island contest and the £1,000 Pepsi Personality Analysis competition, as well as Horlick’s Secret Dream and the Wall’s Name-the-Soup contest.

  “Would you save your labels for me?” Ruthy asked.

  “Well, yes. But which ones?”

  “Any with a contest. You don’t drink Beefeater’s Gin, do you?”

  “I could.”

  “Ooo, they’re giving away a Triumph sports car. Would you bring me the labels?”

  “Yes. Certainly. But have you ever won anything, Ruthy?”

  “You think I’m a dummy. So does my brother. Sure, I’ve won plenty.”

  The bridge table. A stainless steel carving set. A dinner service. A carton of Heinz soup. Seven days at Butlin’s Holiday Camp. And many, many more prizes.

  “I also once won fifty pounds in the pools. So, you think Harry would make a good dad for my boys?”

  “He’s a rather complex man, Ruthy, isn’t he?”

  The boys needed a dad. David, her eldest, was too moody and sensitive for exams; he had failed his 11-plus and had to go to a secondary modern school. Sidney, her youngest, still sucked his thumb. Nothing helped. Not tying his arm, not coating his thumb with hot mustard. But her nephew was a boarder at Carmel College, the Jewish public school in Wallingford. “Not bad for a father who was brought up on the Commercial Road and never got any further than the Jewish Free School.” On the High Holidays, she said, her brother’s family stayed at the Green Park Hotel in Bournemouth. “Have you ever seen it? It’s beautiful. Fantastic. It’s just like Versailles.”

  “Have you been there, then?”

  “Are you kidding? Me? ‘let them eat cake.’ Do you know who said that?”

  David called and Ruthy excused herself. Their voices were raised. Ruthy spoke sharply. David began to sob, then she slammed the door. “He wants to get out of bed. But your doctor’s coming; I’d look like a fool.”

  “What’s his temperature now?”

  “Only ninety-nine,” she admitted glumly.

  O’Brien swept in, examined the boy, and emerged from the bedroom to say, “Mild case of tonsillitis. He should have them out, you know.”

  “Don’t you think I’m on a waiting list? It’s four months already I’m waiting. Maybe, doctor, with your connections …”

  “Please,” Jake said, “Dr. O’Brien is a very busy man.”

  “You’re all busy men,” Ruthy said, seeing O’Brien to the door. Then she picked up Jake’s check and scrutinized it again. “Assuming it’s good,” she said, giggling, “I’ve got Harry to thank for this. He’s such a brilliant man, but he’s disappointed in himself. If he wasn’t Jewish, with his ability, he’d be very rich today.”

  “Being Jewish didn’t stop Charles Clore.”

  “It’s this country, you know. It’s the class system. Harry’s got the wrong accent. There’s no old boys’ network to take care of him. If he came from Canada, like you, where quality doesn’t count, he’d be very important. His background wouldn’t be held against him.”

  “Maybe Harry’s trouble is self-pity?”

  “You think Prince Charles could get into Mensa?”

  “He doesn’t need to.”

  “You said it,” she replied triumphantly.

  “All right, then, why not emigrate with Harry? Maybe your kids would have a better chance in Canada?”

  “You think I haven’t looked into it? Just listen to this, will you?” She read from the application form. “Have you or has any one of the persons included in this application ever been convicted of, or admit to having committed, any crime or offence?’ That takes care of Harry, doesn’t it?”

  Ruthy opened a dresser drawer and produced a Xerox of the ten-year-old News of the World clipping.

  HITCHCOCK FILM IDEA

  BEHIND BID TO KILL

  STARLET

  A 25-year-old bookkeeper, inspired by a Hitchcock film, conceived the idea of trying to kill a starlet he had developed a passion for by fiddling with the brakes of her Triumph sports car.

  The 24-year-old actress, Carol Lane, who has appeared in Doctor in the House, The Long Arm, and other films, managed to change into lower gear and stop the car, said Mr. Godfrey Hale, prosecuting.

  And what might have been a tragedy was averted, he added.

  The man in the dock, Harry Stein, of Winchester Road, NW3, pleaded not guilty to attempting to murder Miss Lane, who lives in St. John’s Wood Road, nearby.

  Mr. Hale said this was a pathetic case.

  As far as was known, he had never actually met Miss Lane but he had developed a passion for her.
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  For weeks he had tormented her with obscene phone calls, culminating in a call that stated if he couldn’t enjoy her body, nobody else would.

  On the evening of May 10, Miss Lane parked her car outside her flat in St. John’s Wood Road.

  Next morning she drove off in the usual way. On Finchley Road she realized there was something wrong with her brakes. After stopping the car, she called the AA.

  When the vehicle was examined the AA inspector came to the conclusion that the braking system had been deliberately interfered with …

  “He got two years,” Ruthy said, “and she went on to bigger and better parts. Only Harry’s going to re-open the case now. We’re going to clear his name.”

  “Wouldn’t it cost a good deal to appeal the case now?”

  “It’s not Cyril’s money; it’s mine,” she protested petulantly. “My darling brother convinced my late husband I was a dummy, so my legacy is being held in trust. Harry’s read the will. It’s full of loopholes, he says. We’re going to contest it.”

  Poor Cyril.

  “Oh, one thing, Ruthy. Now that I’ve settled my cousin’s debt, as it were, I would like to have his riding clothes. And the saddle, if I may?”

  “Good riddance,” she said, going to fetch them.

  As Jake entered the house, the saddle slung over his shoulder, riding crop in hand, Nancy clapped her hands, “Look, children, it isn’t Daddy. It’s Ben Cartwright.”

  “Ha, ha.”

  Only then did he notice the packed bag on the hall floor. He froze.

  “Don’t panic. The contractions are still fairly mild and far apart. But a child can come quickly.”

  Pilar saw them into the car, sniffling, and Jake drove off with extreme caution. He told her he had given Ruthy the seven hundred pounds.

  “I don’t understand why you even bother with them,” Nancy said.

  “Well, we don’t stand in queues. And my cousin did take her for a ride, you know.”

  “Harry gives me the shivers.”

  “Harry’s a street accident and I just happen to be a witness. What should I do, flee without handing in my name?”