When his suspension was up he had been in her employment four months, but he was not for throwing up such a comfy berth for a while. He was as flabby as Tottenham pudding, and he had to get in training again, and he put it to Lady V that he could do this in his off time and meanwhile look out for a new stable which wasn’t going to be any piece of cake while Regan was telling his story of a black eye, etc. The name of Godfrey Brown was going to be a smear word for quite a time to come. So then she said, ‘Why don’t you change your name? People soon forget.’ ‘They’ll take care to remember this,’ he said. ‘ Boxing’s a small world.’ So she said: ‘ Yes, but it’ll be easier under another name and Brown is such a dull name. Did you ever know your father?’ ‘ I never knew my mother,’ he said, ‘ the bitch. Brown was give me at the orphanage.’ ‘Given,’ said Lady Vosper. ‘Eh?’ ‘Given. Was given me at the orphanage.’
They were talking on their way down to Handley Merrick and suddenly he said: ‘How about me taking the name of Vosper? Not for keeps but for boxing. Boxing as Godfrey Vosper.’ He hadn’t an idea how she’d react but she seemed pleased by it, amused, it tickled her fancy like having a racehorse named after her, so that was how it was fixed.
Soon after that he met Robins who was an old pug and managing two other lads and was willing to take him on. Robins was even less lively than Regan and not the man for a pressing youngster, but at least he was in London, so Godfrey signed up, but only for two years instead of the usual three because Robins would pay him nothing to join. Godfrey still hoped that Lady Vosper would be able to pull a few strings or put in a word for him with one of her friends, but no such luck.
He had two fights under his new manager – crummy preliminaries they were, while the audience were still scratching their way into their seats – and Lady V watching him win the first well inside the distance, when she had to go into hospital for a couple of weeks and he was left on his tod.
So being free he took the big car and did a little joy-riding in it and after a row with his current girl he ended up one night at the Trad Hall Redgate, casing the talent, and who should he pick up with but this girl.
She was too big for him really, and not his usual style at all, he liked more glitter. And anyway she didn’t want him. So he tried to forget her.
And he tried to forget her.
There was a woman at that first fairground in Yarmouth that used to sell love potions. Godfrey thought that maybe somebody had shaken some of this potion on his chips in place of pepper. Not that he admitted anything to do with the word love. It wasn’t in his book. But he wanted Pearl the way he had not wanted anyone before, and he felt he wanted her for keeps. It was that bad. And what Little God wants Little God gets.
After chatting her up on the train and the second Big Brush-Off he did nothing for a while. Flora Vosper had come out of her hospital and was temperamental and hard to get on with. He guessed she still had a hangover from all the tests and things, and when you caught her without her make-up she looked a bad colour like she had had one in the solar-plexus and was trying to hide it. Usually he could make her laugh – she laughed easy – but it was not so easy now.
It was at this time that he first caught Miriam up to something. In the flat in London, the woman, Mrs Hodder, came in daily and cooked the midday meal and went home at four. Almost every night Lady V would go out to dinner, but once in a while she would stay in and cook something or have a salad and a glass or so of champagne. They always ate separately even when there was just the two of them, she in the dining room and he in the kitchen, but after, if she asked him in for a brandy, he would know what this meant. He would go in and sit down and talk and make her laugh, and she would swallow two brandies to his one, and after a while they would drift into her bedroom. It was dead smooth: he came in one door Brown her chauffeur, an hour later he would follow her through the other door, Godfrey her bed mate. Then after they had fraternized he would slip out and pad off to his own little room, Brown the chauffeur, back on his beat.
In the kitchen there was the usual cutlery but also a lot of odd junk that had been brought from Merrick House, clumsy spoons and forks with three prongs instead of four, and one evening when Miriam had been visiting he came in the kitchen unexpectedly and she was stuffing some of these in her handbag. He pretended not to notice but the next day he asked Lady Vosper what they were and she said they were Jacobean and had belonged to a Sir Henry Vosper, way back before the first Viscount. Godfrey guessed then they were worth a lot of folding so he told her he had seen Miriam putting some of them in her bag.
It was always a touchy point. Whenever he mentioned Miriam Lady V would get an attack of stuffed-shirtism, so there was the usual haughty answer, and it took him all the following day to get on friendly terms again. But the next week she suddenly said: ‘ I spoke to Mrs McNaughton about what you said. She was taking the silver to be cleaned and polished. Afterwards it will be lodged in the bank, as it’s too valuable to leave about.’ He didn’t believe a word of it, not one word, because of Miriam’s attitude.
Just after this Lady Vosper decided to go to Cannes and she wanted Godfrey to drive her down. This was awkward because he was now in training for a fight – it was out in Reading but was about the best he had had so far with Robins and likely to be the last of what you might call the season – and Robins would play up if he didn’t train properly for it.
So he told Flora Vosper that he could not go. She had been feeling seedy again, but she still seemed badly to want him around and in attendance. Instead of giving him the sack, as he expected, she sent for Robins unknown to him and gave Robins a couple of snorting drinks and offered to let her chauffeur train in Cannes, and Robins was so impressed at talking with a real Countess – as he called her afterwards – that he said it was all right for Godfrey to go.
They were all set to leave on the Friday morning, so on the Thursday he asked if he could borrow the car for an hour or two. He wanted to see Pearl again before he left. It was crazy maybe, it was crazy. But he wanted to see her again. Somehow he’d got to make her. It was more of a challenge than being in the ring.
So he drove down to Selsdon thinking to call at 12, Sevenoaks Avenue, and wondering whether he’d get the evil eye from that foreign woman who opened the door before, or whether he should just hang about outside in the hope Pearl would not stay in the whole of such a smashing evening. And he was still very undecided and just turning into Badger’s Drive a second time, which is the next avenue, when who should he see but Pearl herself stepping out briskly towards her home.
He came up slowly behind her. She had a light summery frock on, short enough to see all but the best part of her legs, and a thin mack over her arm and a green lizard handbag, and she was wearing her browny-blonde hair loose, but she’d had it cut a bit and it was shoulder length and swung and fell heavy as she walked. Not many women in short skirts look good from behind. She looked good from behind. He said to himself, play it gentle, God, take it easy, don’t scare her.
But how do you play it gentle, when you’re catching her up like this? If he didn’t say something …
So he said something. He said: ‘Hi, there, Pearl! Can I give you a lift?’
Well, whatever way it ought to have been done, that wasn’t the way, because she threw a start like someone had given her the needle and stared open-eyed at him, looking as if she was going to drop her mack and run.
‘Take it easy,’ he said. ‘I was just passing and saw you. Thought I’d stop and see how you was going on.’
Her eyes had glazed over after the first surprise, and she turned away and started walking on without saying a word. He followed her, kerb crawling, keeping pace.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’ve not got leprosy or V.D. I told you I’m sor-ry. Can’t you just stop and chat?’
They went on. It was a long avenue, and no parked cars here, thanks be.
He said: ‘I’m going away tomorrow. I’ll be away some while. Going to France.’
&n
bsp; ‘Please stay away,’ she said. ‘Stay away from me.’ And she seemed out of breath.
Just then a car came towards them and blew its horn loud because Godfrey was driving on the wrong side of the road. Somebody shouted, ‘bloody fool!’ as it swerved past. Godfrey tapped the accelerator and shot ahead, killed the engine, then got out and came back to meet her.
She came on and then stopped. It was still daylight although the sun had set, but there was no one about. There was this sound of a lawn mower somewhere, and a dog yapping, that was all. She came on and they were about twenty feet apart. She looked white round the gills. Then she looked at the house she was near, and quick as you please she had turned to open the gate. ‘Oyster!’ he shouted. ‘ For Chrissake!’ and he jumped at her and grabbed her arm. It felt good but she wrenched it away and her sleeve tore and she went running up the path and banged on the knocker of this house.
His friends sometimes told Godfrey that in the ring he didn’t know when to put up the shutters. But he knew now. The torn sleeve did it. For you can talk your way out of most things if you’re smart enough, but not out of a torn sleeve. All they had to do was pick up the blower and dial the dicks. From then on he’d be in trouble.
So before the door was even opened he beat it back to the car, started up, roared off round the corner, and hoped no one had noted his number or he might be in trouble with Lady Vosper too.
They stayed in Cannes three weeks altogether, and as for training to meet Bob Saunders he did nothing, but nothing. Flora was in bed half the time, so he found a girl called Françoise and that way he got about as untrained as he well could be for six three-minute rounds against a smart little up-and-coming southpaw from Reading. But he thought he was getting Pearl thoroughly out of his system, and his mates in the Rob Robins stable had said that Saunders could box but carried nothing really dangerous in either hand.
When it came to the night he had only had one week of hard training but he was pretty confident of himself – he didn’t ever really get soft, he found, not soft – so he took on Saunders with a will. But if his spar mates said Saunders carried no punch they had never been in the ring with him. By the fourth round instead of him having Saunders in a corner it was the other way round and he was bleeding from the old cut on his eyebrow and wearing lips like a Negro. In the end he got the verdict, which was a good thing for Lady V who was in the front row and had put £100 on him, but the decision was so narrow that most of the hall screamed and jeered for the other man.
The next day he was bushed: it was the first time ever since the fight with Carmel that he’d been marked, and he cursed his own carelessness and nervously felt his face to see if a bit of pressing would help it go back in shape. It was the only thing that got him ragged, damage to his looks, and in a way he blamed Lady V for putting the temptation in his way to get out of condition. They had a couple of rows – not about his face of course; rows always develop about something different – but to his surprise he found her taking sauce that a couple of months ago would have seen him out without a week’s notice. It marked a change: she needed him and she couldn’t hide it any longer that she needed him. They went down to Merrick House for three weeks – not that he minded this because he couldn’t even try to see Pearl before his face was back in shape – but when they got down there Flora was ill again and he got pretty well landed as a nursemaid.
All the same, more or less against his will, he was developing a sneaking admiration for old Flora. Sick or well she was a good sport and she depended on him for light relief. He could make her laugh when she didn’t feel like laughing, and it pleased him to have an audience for his jokes. Often he could get her to eat when she didn’t feel like eating. The local doctor shook his head over her a few times, but she still drank enough to sink a row boat and smoked like Battersea Power Station; and the minute she felt better she was off on some jaunt or other.
He knew she would miss him when he went.
In Merrick House he caught Miriam at the same games as before on one of her visits. This time she had taken two little pictures off the walls in the gun-room. It was the purest chance he caught her, and he pretended not to see, and, after some think work, he decided not to mention it to Lady V.
Flora recovered and they returned to London. Summer is a close season for fights, at least for the small fry, so Godfrey kept his comfy slot and worked on her to help him in the autumn. Sometimes he suspected she was playing foxy, pretending that one day she’d help him but privately taking care not to lose her chauffeur.
During this time he thought a lot of Pearl. There was still the challenge, the picturing of what she’d be like.
So one dusty evening when he had taken Flora to bridge and had three free hours, he slipped back to the flat and changed into his new lemon yellow tweed jacket with a navy shirt and a pale silk tie. He thought he looked O.K., and more than one woman thought he looked O. K. when he stopped at traffic lights on the way down to Selsdon. He hadn’t a mark left after the Saunders fight; they’d all cleared up great; only that eyebrow from the bout with Carmel and he had learned a new trick with that: you borrowed one of Lady V’s eyebrow pencils and darkened in the break so that nobody would hardly notice.
He bought a big box of chocolates on the way down. They’re a good excuse for a frontal attack, and surely after all this time …
A boy opened the door of the house, age fourteen or so, sticking his snout round the door as if he expected somebody else. Godfrey the disappointment.
‘Is Pearl in?’ Very polite he tried it.
The boy stared at him, hair like a ball of tarred string. ‘She doesn’t live here any more.’
‘What?’
‘Pearl doesn’t live here any more, she’s married.’
Godfrey stared, mouth open, like when you’ve walked into a right hook. Not out, quite easy to stay on your feet, but waiting for the bell to get a breather.
‘Married? Get off.’
‘Two weeks last Tuesday.’
‘Get off. Who to?’
‘A man.’ The boy giggled.
‘I know that, clever. What’s his name?’
‘Angell!’
‘Angell?’
‘Like they fly in the sky.’
‘Leslie!’ called a voice. It was that woman, Pearl’s step-mother. ‘Who is it?’
‘A man. Wants Pearl.’
‘She’s not here.’
‘I’ve told him.’ The door was closing, Leslie disappearing.
‘Hold on,’ Godfrey said and felt in his pocket, fished out half a crown. ‘Got her address?’
The boy looked at the half crown, then looked past Godfrey at the parked car. ‘Tell you for five bob.’
Godfrey would have liked to beat the little gett’s head against the door, but the foreign woman would be out in a second. ‘O.K.’
The boy held out his hand. ‘Pay first.’
Red spots dancing, Godfrey felt in his pocket, found a two shilling piece and sixpence, handed them over.
‘In London,’ said the boy.
‘What? That’s no good. Where in London?’
‘Cadogan Mews. I’ve forgot the number. On a corner. Right in the West End. Smashing house.’
‘What’s the number?’
‘Leslie!’
‘Coming …’
Quick as if he was riding a punch he pulled his head back and slammed the door in Godfrey’s face.
Little God stood there, thinking of kicking the door in. But it would have spoilt his shoes, which were best calf that Flora had bought him in Bond Street. He looked around but there was nothing. Then he spotted a plant pot in the next door garden, with an old moth-eaten fern growing out of it. He leaned over the wall and picked it up, judged the distance to the edge of the street. He nipped in the car and started the engine, then got out and heaved the plant pot through the front-room window. It made a hell of a row on a quiet summer evening, and before the last bit of glass had stopped splintering he was in the car
and revving up and away.
He felt mean. He felt mean like he only did usually in the ring. He could have crashed the car into the first car he met. He would have liked to get out in Purley and pick a fight with a policeman. Or go around with that guy he went round with in Birmingham, breaking up kiosks and smashing bus windows. Or taking a woman some place.
He drove home and got more curses from other drivers than he had ever had in his life before and he kept his window down so he could curse back. By luck there wasn’t an accident, not even a scrape or a bent bumper. He stopped in Wilton Crescent and all the places outside the flat were taken for Chrissake, so he had to park two hundred yards away and walk back. And he let himself in and slammed the door hard enough to nearly bring the chimney pots down. And he went into the drawing room and switched on all the lights and slumped on to the settee and put his expensive calf leather boots up and wiped the dust off them all over a silk cushion, and looked up at the goddam ceiling and wished it would fall.
It wasn’t all that easy for Little God to let off steam. There was a full bottle of Teacher’s and a glass and two siphons, right to his hand, but Little God didn’t drink. And there were cigarettes and cigars and what not, but Little God didn’t smoke, not except after sex. When Little God was mad he wanted to break something.
After a while he got up and started thumbing through the first of the telephone books. There were thirty-four Angells, enough for a flaming heavenly host, but only one of them lived in Cadogan Mews. 26 Cadogan Mews, S.W.I. W. J. Angell, 331–9031. He stared at the book hot enough to make it burn, then fished out Flora’s A–Z. The place was quite close by to where he was, not ten minutes’ walk away. Ten minutes and he could go and beat up the house. Wreck it. Go in, force his way in and see her and then start breaking up the happy home. Mr and Mrs Angell. Send them up to heaven right away. Leave two corpses bleeding on the carpet and then go and pick Flora up from her bridge.
Angell, Pearl and Little God Page 10
