The Moon At Midnight

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘You shot big game with Ernest Hemingway?’ For a second Basnett was visibly impressed.

  ‘No, sir. Just crap.’

  At last, giving up on the lack of seriousness of the company, Basnett led the way through the drawing room to the card tables. He indicated that he was to be in the North seat and his partner, the enviably beautiful Marcia Farrow, in the South. Despite having met her and played against her before Waldo took time out to breathe in her magnificent beauty. Her fine sculptured face was, it had to be admitted, quite breathtaking. The almond eyes, the doeskin complexion, the sensual mouth, the air of haughty insouciance, it all had to be carefully noted before facing the cards. No, he must not be distracted by the stunning looks of South.

  Having firmly put aside the image of Marcia’s beauty, turning it into something quite ordinary, and not at all distracting, Waldo found himself picking up the first hand of the night, an interestingly distributed hand, with long lines of clubs and diamonds, a singleton heart and a void in spades, but without enough points to open. If Lionel held cards strong enough to put them in the game, it could be a most interesting hand, a promise that looked even more like being fulfilled when Basnett and Waldo, not to mention Marcia, passed, leaving any bid to be made up to Lionel seated at West. Waldo waited. As the pause for Lionel became longer than usual he continued to stare at his cards while beginning to feel vaguely worried. After another fifteen seconds and still no bid, his anxiety accelerated. After all, a great deal was running on the game that night.

  ‘What a – what a . . . Ruddy Yarborough. Got a ruddy Yarborough.’

  Waldo kept his eyes on his cards while his heart sank, and he waited for the referee.

  ‘West?’ the referee began, only to be interrupted by Lionel.

  ‘It’s going to be this sort of evening,’ Lionel continued as if nothing had happened. ‘First hand and I get dealt a ruddy Yarborough. Although why it was ever called such, I shall never know.’

  ‘West?’ commanded the referee, his tone expecting silence.

  ‘Some earl apparently called every hand with nothing over nine after himself. He was so determined to be famous. And damn it, he is.’ He stared at his cards more intently. ‘Nothing over nine! Not a ruddy card.’

  The silence around him had grown leaden with astonishment, a major contribution coming from various spectators who had drifted into the room from other parts of the house. Everyone was looking at Lionel, including Waldo, who like Basnett and Marcia had placed his cards face down on the table.

  ‘Something wrong?’ Lionel demanded. ‘Chatty bridge, is it? Any round with no bid over one thrown in and play again, no shuffle? That’s the ticket?’

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ the referee intoned. ‘I declare a misdeal.’

  ‘I have never witnessed anything like it,’ Basnett muttered. ‘Never.’

  Waldo summoned the referee. Nodding at Lionel, he said, ‘Case of nerves, I’m afraid. Most unusual. If you will just give us a minute. He’s on pills, might have affected him, you know. Shan’t be long.’

  He stood up and taking Lionel by the arm directed him into the next door room while Basnett and Marcia sat back sighing and lifting eyebrows at each other.

  ‘Look – Lionel?’

  Lionel looked at Waldo, a pathetic helpless look, as if he didn’t know what was happening and needed Waldo to tell him.

  ‘Look, Lionel,’ Waldo began again, and then, realising that if he told Lionel that he had just committed a major blunder it might lower his self-esteem even more, he changed his mind, and contented himself by saying, ‘Look, concentrate on the cards, old boy. Just try to concentrate. You had a little lapse, that’s all, so you need to concentrate even harder now, do you understand?’

  ‘Extra hard. Of course. I understand.’

  They returned to the card room only to be confronted by Basnett once more on his high horse.

  ‘We can’t have this kind of fiddle-faddle,’ he burst out. ‘This game is meant to be conducted on the highest playing level. I therefore demand that we set a bond in place. Five thousand pounds, we are all witness to this, five thousand pounds paid by anyone who further breaches the rules of the game.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Waldo reached into his breast pocket for his cheque book and quickly signed the security, handing it over to the referee without a sign of emotion. If it was money that Basnett wanted, he would give him money, and then he would thrash him leaving him scarred for any other game, in the same way that in the old days he would have left him with a duelling scar.

  ‘Play,’ the referee commanded, presenting North with a new pack of cards. Basnett dealt, and the game was on.

  They seemed to have hardly begun when the small crowd that had gathered to watch swelled with the intensity of the play. As Waldo well knew Marcia Farrow was famous for her seemingly rash play, play that actually hid a cool head and a pragmatic heart. Throughout the subsequent game it was apparent to Waldo that Marcia, as always, had worked out the percentages, the distribution and the possible displacement of the cards with the precision of the Ice Queen that he knew her to be. But then with the thrust of the bidding, the to and fro of the play, it became gradually apparent to her opponents that Marcia might, just might, be still judging the elderly gentleman on her left to be as feeble-minded as he had first appeared to be.

  Waldo stared at his cards. Bound by the rules of competition bridge he was unable to glance at Marcia. If he had been able to he might have sensed her dilemma, that she was hoping that her partner’s singleton diamond would prove to be the ace which would without doubt give her a slam, a small one, but nevertheless a slam, and would effectively block her opponents’ chances of going to Seven Diamonds. Both couples were vulnerable and therefore liable to draconian penalties for overbidding. But. The eternal but that changes the nature of play – her partner had doubled, and if their opponents were bidding diamonds up to slam level that double had to mean something – that her partner had the required ace of diamonds. Banking on her hunch, Marcia called, taking the gamble for two reasons.

  Firstly, the old gent was clearly only half there, it would explain the oddness of his opening bid, and secondly the thing Marcia Farrow was most famous for at the bridge table was her cunning mixed with dash, her apparent ability to throw her hat into the ring before plunging into an unjustifiable contract. So now it was that seeing the winning post well in sight Marcia took the plunge and bid Six Spades.

  ‘Double.’ The spectators all stared at the old gentleman, knowing that he was possibly the least reliable of the four.

  ‘Redouble,’ came from a Basnett who suddenly did not care that he was out of control, so great was his impatience. He then repeated his bid, to be quelled by a look from the referee.

  Since there were no other bids forthcoming, the auction was closed and the contract stood at Six Spades by South, doubled and redoubled.

  The atmosphere intensified as Lionel led his ace of hearts on which Waldo discarded the five of clubs, having no hearts, just as Lionel had hoped. Lionel at once led another heart, which North, having hearts, had to cover, only for Waldo to trump it with a low spade, gambling on the fact that South must have high hearts in order to make up her points. He was proved right and the contract failed from that fell card alone. As it happened, and as Waldo and Lionel had sensed, they won another trick at the eleventh round when South’s attempt to draw trumps without losing any foundered against Lionel’s void in spades and Waldo’s five spades to the ten. Distribution had won the day, but would not have done so had it not been for the astuteness of Lionel’s read of the cards and his subsequent boldness in bidding.

  Severely rattled now, as well as penalised 1000 points, Basnett and Farrow fell meekly and with hardly a blow struck in their defence in the next hands. When Waldo and Lionel got up from the table to enthusiastic applause they felt that not only had luck gone their way, but a little bit of good play had been rewarded too.

  As they drove home, Wa
ldo having torn up his bond – in the absence of Lionel who had marched off to pay nature a well earned visit – Lionel began to laugh.

  ‘OK, so share the joke, you old rascal.’

  Lionel put on a feeble face and assumed an old shaking voice. ‘First hand I get dealt a ruddy Yarborough. Wonder how it ever got its name. Yarborough. Something to do with some earl, I believe.’

  Waldo stared at him briefly before forcing his eyes to return to the road. ‘You played the old fool up to the hilt!’

  ‘Touch and go. I thought that miserable prune Basnett was going to call it a day, and then we’d have been done for, and that’s the truth.’

  ‘You fooled me, and you fooled them, and I can tell you at a pound a point I’m very glad you did – even if you didn’t bargain on my having to stump up the bond.’

  It was Lionel’s turn to stare at Waldo.

  ‘A pound a point? A pound a point? My God, Waldo – that means I’ve won – we’ve won – I’ve won. . .’

  ‘Two thousand pounds, old boy.’

  ‘In that case that’s my swan song, Waldo old thing.’ Lionel stared ahead of him, smiling, and paying no heed to the newness of the car he placed his feet up on the dashboard and closed his eyes contentedly. ‘What a way to go, thrashing someone like Basnett, it’s the stuff of dreams, really it is.’

  ‘Come, come, you can’t retire.’

  ‘No, no, I shan’t retire, I just won’t play any more. But we certainly have had some sport, you and I. Great days.’

  And he fell to silence, staring once more at the road in front of him lit by the Aston’s headlights, by the moon overhead, by the memory of his last great evening at cards.

  Chapter Five

  Four thousand miles away Tam was not having such a happy experience. His first impression of the vast ranch on which he found himself in the hinterland of Texas was one of terrifying size, since it seemed to him that the whole spread must be as big, if not bigger, than his native Sussex.

  ‘It’s beef mostly, boy,’ R.J. Dysart the owner told him, driving his huge red Dodge truck one-handed while smoking the longest King Size cigarette that Tam had ever seen with the other fist. ‘We have ten thousand head of beef, and we do a bit of wheat and corn too, as well as forage for the stock, course.’

  ‘How many acres do you farm altogether, sir?’ Tam wondered, watching a herd of wild mustangs gallop across the track in front of them only to disappear in a cloud of dust over the nearest rise.

  ‘I’ll be rounding you scoundrels up later,’ R.J. murmured as he too watched them, before stubbing the end of his half-smoked cigarette out between thumb and forefinger and dropping it out of the truck window. ‘And if you’re going to smoke here, boy, don’t ever let us catch you throwing a lit butt out of no window, d’you hear?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Do you ride, boy?’

  ‘No, sir, no, not really, just a bit. I imagine that’s one of the things that I’m going to learn out here?’

  ‘Sure is.’ A deeply bronzed and craggy face turned to study Tam as he continued to drive without watching the track ahead. ‘It sure is. And you wanted to know much land we farm, that right? Is that what you asked? How much land we farm?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I did,’ Tam replied, anxiously watching the road ahead, as if he might be able to do something should another herd of mustangs gallop across their path stampeding towards the hills.

  ‘Don’t you worry ’bout my driving, boy. I know every inch of this land better than I know Mrs Dysart. And I tell you, in these parts, if you know how much land you have, you ain’t a real Texan.’

  R.J. roared with sudden laughter, and shook his head a few times, still appreciating his own humour as he returned his eyes to the road.

  ‘No, sir,’ he repeated. ‘You certainly ain’t a real Texan.’

  ‘Mr Astley told me you two had known each other for quite a time,’ Tam said, still stunned at finding himself abandoned in the vast and daunting state whose symbol was a yellow rose.

  ‘Waldo?’ R.J. stated with a dramatic raise of his eyebrows. ‘Hey, listen here, I would not be here, boy, if it were not for Waldo Astley. Waldo Astley, if you’ll pardon me for so saying, saved my ass. But then as you must know Waldo Astley has made a bit of a lifetime’s vocation of saving people’s asses, if you’ll twice pardon me, boy.’

  Again the large Texan shook his head of shock-white hair and threw back his head and roared with laughter, reminding Tam of some great giant in a children’s story. Shaking out a fresh King Size from a crumpled pack of Pall Mall which he’d fished from his shirt pocket, he caught it with alarming accuracy between his huge white teeth, and rolled it around his mouth before lighting it with a large steel lighter with THE BIG U engraved upon it in no uncertain letters. Finally they drew up in a cloud of dust in front of the ranch house, a collection of buildings in front of which there seemed to be ceaseless activity.

  ‘Now we’ll get you hunkered down, so you’ll be ready for your first day on the Big U.’ R.J. turned and glanced at Tam, perhaps seeing him for the first time. As he eyed him Tam began to feel uneasy, as if R.J. was measuring him for something really rather unpleasant. ‘You’re going to need to muscle up some, boy, before you’ll be much use to the Big U. Yes, sir, muscle up and fill out, like a young bull, but then I dare say that won’t take too long neither.’

  He leaned across Tam, smelling of everything from cigarettes to cattle feed, and flung open the truck door.

  ‘Out you go, and the boys’ dormitory is straight in front of you. Take your bag from the back and I’ll see you in the house for an egg and steak. I dare say you’ll be needing it.’

  Tam did as he was told, and the truck drove off leaving him to walk up to the boys’ dormitory, his heart sinking as he heard the sound of music and laughter from within. He was English, he had no muscle, and no head for drink, and what was more and what was worse, he couldn’t really ride. He thought of Bexham and his grandfather, he thought of their sailing days together, and deep down inside he sighed for the blue, blue days of his boyhood. He’d spoken to his family, and to Kim, before taking the train down from the East, that had been nice, but now – now was not nice. He opened the wooden door. A boy’s face grinned down at him from a bunk as he walked further into the room, which was swirling with smoke and shaking to the sound of a loud and local radio station.

  ‘Hey! Hank? The new Blue’s arrived.’ He turned on his side and stared down at Tam once again. ‘Out here on the Big U we always call all English boys Blue, on account their letters when they arrive are always blue.’

  He waved an airmail letter at Tam before throwing it at him. Tam leaned down to pick it up, immediately recognising his mother’s writing, and just as quickly feeling a lump coming into his throat. His mother’s writing on letters, on shopping lists, little notes left to him in his school satchel to urge him on to better things at school.

  ‘I dare say you’ll be gettin’ a ton of these before too long – Blue!’

  Besides his genial but obviously tough host, no one else took much, if any, notice of the new arrival from England. Sue Sue, R.J.’s third wife, usually treated Tam as if he was invisible, being much more interested in staring into the many mirrors that adorned the main part of the ranch house.

  However, as Tam appreciated whenever he caught sight of her, Sue Sue’s looks warranted taking care of, of that there was no doubt. Tall, even for Texas, she was, as she frequently stated, ‘just under six feet in my stockings’, sporting blond if over-stiff hair, and a figure whose measurements would have made any movie star, anywhere, very proud.

  A large staff was in permanent residence at the ranch house, which meant that Sue Sue had no need to concern herself with anything other than such vital matters as painting her toe and finger nails, and going into town to spend hours in the beauty salon. Passing Tam now and then she would wave to him, either from her personalised purple ragtop, or from horseback. That she did this was probably, Tam realised,
because he was English, and so, different from the other hands.

  Not that the other hands took much notice of him either, unless it was to get a cheap laugh from mocking his odd way of talking, or to try to rile him because of what they considered to be his puny physique. Tam didn’t mind. Before setting foot in Texas he thought he’d come to understand exactly why Mr Astley and his parents had decided to send him out to America to work on a ranch. It was to make him suffer. Every time he tripped and fell into yet another dung heap or water barrel, or backwards off his horse, it was to the sound of Texan laughter. Tam felt like writing to tell everyone back at Bexham that he hoped they’d be glad to hear he was suffering all right. He was black and blue, and lonely.

  At night as he heard the wildlife hooting or calling outside the wooden structure of the boys’ dormitory, as he heard the cows bellowing for the calves taken from them in such arbitrary fashion, or the far distant sounds of a car filled with drunken hands driving down some dirt track somewhere, it seemed to him that it mattered little if he lived or died, because he was certain no one else seemed to mind. Bitten by mosquitoes, his hands red-raw from the work, the only thing he lacked to make his life totally intolerable was a slave-driver with a bull-whip; although even that, he knew, could come at any moment; and that too finally presented itself to him, albeit in an unexpected form.

  Her name was Tammy, and she was R.J.’s daughter by his second wife, and it was quite obvious from the start that she loathed Tam, and for one reason, and one reason alone.

  ‘You’re not going round with my name, boy, leastways not if I have anything to do with it. You’re going to have to change that for a flying start, and that’s the truth.’

  ‘Why not just call me Blue like everyone else,’ Tam suggested carefully.

  Tammy looked at him, and then round at her three brothers who’d joined them in the yard staring at the new boy who’d dared to sport their sister’s name.

  ‘Blue, you say? No, hold on – surely Yellow’d be better, because from what I hear tell you’re a funk, English boy, isn’t that so?’