‘My man tells me there’ll be a storm of protest once the Ministry’s plan is known,’ said Portugal.
‘When has there not to any development? One can hardly put down a row of houses in this country without a wail of complaint from everyone in the neighbourhood.’
‘Oh, I know. Don’t we all know. But Handley Merrick being a well known beauty spot, and Handley Oaks a few miles away. Constable painted two of his most characteristic pieces there.’
‘One day a latter-day Lowry will be able to paint two more,’ said Sir Francis, tight-lipped.
‘That’s all right,’ said Portugal. ‘I’m not casting doubts on the deal, only ensuring we know all the hazards. Ministries and governments have been known to yield to protests.’
Sir Francis lit a cigarette, a habit Angell much disliked with a meal half finished. ‘This is too important, Simon. It’s too much a part of a great complex. To yield to pressure here would be to put a whole wide project out of joint. Besides you ought to know democracy doesn’t really work over a thing like this.’ He moved his cigarette, and blue smoke drifted across Angell’s sensitive nostrils. ‘You know what happens, of course. A handful of highly-placed, responsible and dedicated civil servants have come to the decision that with the population explosion what it is and the drift to the south-east an irreversible tendency, a new complex of development must be sited somewhere in the area, say, north-east of Chelmsford. As to its exact position, they have studied the area in some detail, have carefully weighed the various conflicting interests, and after long and no doubt sober debate among themselves they have decided that the area taking in Handley Merrick is the best to develop. That’s as far as it has gone yet, but for all practical purposes, the decision is made. From now on each one of those civil servants will support and defend that decision with all the very considerable power he can muster. And the minister responsible for the actual decision will be briefed in all the facts that make Handley Merrick the only possible choice. He will eventually announce it in Parliament, and later he will defend it in Parliament, largely in language written and drafted for him by those civil servants, and presently it will become a matter of personal face to him to see the scheme through. Even if there is a change of minister before the development takes place the chances are the new man will be equally pressurized, and anyway by then so much will already be sunk in the development in the form of plans and linkages with other plans that it will be irreversible anyhow.’
Portugal watched the wine being added to his glass by the waiter. ‘So let’s hope we wrap it up before there’s a leakage.’ To Angell he said: ‘How is the old lady?’
‘She’s not exactly old,’ Angell said stiffly. ‘Forty-eight or nine, at most. I don’t call on her myself because the last thing we want to appear to be doing is “gathering round”, so to speak. I met her at the Peter Warners’ last month; she seemed well then but I gather she’s in very poor health at the moment; she’s not been out of her bedroom for a week.’
‘I was talking to a friend recently,’ said Simon Portugal; ‘ he knows the Vosper household pretty well and he says it’s in a very peculiar state. Apparently Flora Vosper has a chauffeur who has gained a sort of ascendancy over her. She depends on him absolutely. I suppose there is no special risk to us in this set-up?’
‘Little as far as I can see,’ said Hone. ‘Even if she went queer in the head towards the end, the house and land are not hers to will away.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ said Angell. ‘I am keeping an eye on it. I have had some contact with the chauffeur, and this I think is a useful precaution.’
‘Contact with the chauffeur?’ said Simon Portugal. ‘Whatever d’you mean?’
‘Chance has put me in a position where I may be able to befriend him,’ said Angell. ‘No more than that. I have done nothing unethical. But with the opportunity coming my way it seemed improvident to refuse it.’
They both stared at him.
‘How?’ said Portugal.
‘How? How am I to befriend him? No matter. If it succeeds it will I think have a dual purpose. One, it will help to weaken his ties with Lady Vosper – which must be to the good of everyone. D’you know. Two, it will make him favourably disposed towards me – which, if there were any crisis in the Vosper household, again can do no harm.’ Angell looked at the handsome menu the waiter had put in his hand. ‘No, nothing more. I’ll have coffee.’
‘Well I’m damned,’ said Portugal after a minute. ‘You certainly get around.’
Francis Hone ordered cheese. ‘You feeling all right, Wilfred?’
‘Feeling all right? Certainly. What d’you mean?’
‘Only that you’ve eaten less than usual. Half as much as usual, I’d say.’
‘Oh, I’m very well. Never felt better. But I have an afternoon’s work ahead of me.’
‘I’ve never known you have concern for that before. You’ve always said food invigorates you.’
‘So it does. But I’ve had sufficient.’
‘Are you dieting or something?’ Simon asked, smiling.
‘Good gracious, no! What an absurd idea.’
‘Well, my dear chap,’ Vincent Birman said, ‘ I would have thought it could be arranged. I’ve met Jude Davis at the N.S.C. a couple of times. He’s tied up with Eli Margam and that means he’s in with the big promoters. Can you give me any more background?’
Angell swivelled in his chair. ‘ My client says that Davis has seen Brown box once and took a fancy to him. But when he knew that Brown’s contract had a year still to go with his present manager he told Brown to come and see him again when it had expired.’
‘So presumably he wasn’t so keen on him that he was afraid of some other manager beating him to the draw. It looks to me a question of plain economics.’
‘Economics?’
Birman’s innocent bright eyes wandered round the shabby office. The child might have been busy dismembering the spider again. ‘Jude Davis will do pretty nearly anything for money. And he’s not too flush at the moment. He’s got some promising youngsters coming on, but he’s had no big money earner since Llew Thomas retired. I should guess he’s interested in this boy but not interested enough to buy him. Just that.’
‘Well then?’
‘If your client wanted to befriend the boy he should offer to pay the purchase money, whatever it may be, so that Davis can buy the contract from – who is his present manager?’
‘Robins.’
‘Never heard of him. So that Davis can take over Brown without cost to himself. It should be arrangeable.’
‘What will it cost? What would it cost my client?’
‘I should have thought a couple of hundred. Might be more, might be less. It’s a world in which a lot of money changes hands. And most of it is in cash.’
Angell’s stomach rumbled. He thought of the rich loin chops swimming in gravy he had turned down today – and at someone else’s expense. ‘I don’t think my client would go beyond a hundred.’
‘A hundred isn’t much. A manager takes 25 per cent of a boxer’s earnings, you know. Of course it depends how much Robins values Brown and how much he needs the money.’
‘Well, put the matter in hand, will you. I’d like to give my client an answer next week.’
When Birman had gone Angell got up from his desk, pushing the chair well back to give himself room to rise. He padded to the window and looked out over the Fields. The tall plane trees hung motionless in the afternoon sun. Children were playing in the far corner: their thin shouts came distantly to him. It was nearly five o’clock and he was ravenously hungry.
Two cases needed work on them before tomorrow, but he felt disinclined to give them his attention. And one of his junior partners, Whittaker, was demanding a larger share of the profits on the grounds that his side of the firm’s work was increasing out of proportion with the rest. (At present it was divided 40 per cent to Angell, 20 per cent each to Mumford and Esslin and 10 per cent to the younger men
.) One did not want to lose Whittaker to some rival. (He was very hungry indeed, but it would be the height of illogicality to eat now where one would have to pay for what one ate, having only two hours ago deliberately turned down succulencies which were paid for by Francis Hone.)
Never, thought Angell, had Birman even so much as hinted his awareness – though he must surely have known – that the young woman whose life he had investigated in the spring was now Mrs Wilfred Angell. It gave one a sense of confidence in his absolute discretion. One ought to try to put more work in his way. (Not that he lacked work, but one heard that some of it was a trifle shady.)
The Association of Fine Cotton Spinners were asking him for the latest interpretation of the Factory & Workshop Act and whether they had a case against Bromley & Preston Mills Ltd. The death of Sir James Grebe, his father’s oldest client, raised intricate questions of Probate. And he was very hungry, too hungry to concentrate.
What was this insanity he was acceding to – whereby he deprived his fine vigorous body of strength and sustenance merely to come nearer to the conventional norm? He had always prided himself on being different from the herd. Even his appetites were larger, more expensive, of a finer more discriminating taste. Why should it not be so? What was there to be ashamed of in mere size? He had married a suburban small-minded middle-class woman who drew such ideas as she had from the society in which she had passed her formative years. And now he was suffering for it. What a fool to get so involved! He should have been content in his former happy state. Marriage had not merely brought him down to the common level, it imposed on him judgments which he knew to be the judgments of the herd.
He pressed the intercom for Miss Lock.
‘Not the office tea!’ he said testily. ‘Tell young Richmond to go up to King’s Restaurant in Holborn. It will only take him five minutes if he hurries. And some fruit cake, I want. Several pieces of good fruit cake.’
This done, he was able to spend a few minutes on the affairs of the Association of Fine Cotton Spinners. But not for long. He was aghast at his own foolishness, not merely in the matter of cutting down – voluntarily, and without any apparent pressure from her – his intake of nourishing food, but in his other insanity, that of offering to buy the girl jewellery. There were times, such as this, when he was surrounded by all the furniture and fittings of his profession and in full possession of his critical faculties, when he stared at his own actions and could not recognize them for his own.
Of course he could – and would – get out of his rash and lunatic suggestion. Nothing would ever get him to Sotheby’s on the day. But he still could not understand the disrupting influences which had prompted him to have the idea in the first place. It was not even as if he had held out the lure of jewellery as an inducement to her to sleep with him. This might have been conceivable. But she needed no such inducement; indeed they had already completed their unsatisfactory juncture, and a moment before he had been considering leaving her bed with cold dignity and making an end of their intimacies for ever. Then, like a weathercock in an errant breeze, he had swung round and promised her jewels. It hardly bore thinking of. That such a man as he should become so unpredictable …
He worked on at peripheral jobs for ten minutes. One wondered if Whittaker would be worth an extra 5 per cent of the profits. He was a good man, young and restless and striving. But once you gave in, how long before his next demand? And whom could the 5 per cent come from except from Wilfred Angell? It would leave him only 35 per cent, plus his fee from various companies and of course his profits from Land Increments.
His tea came and he snapped at Richmond for being so long. Still working in a desultory but more satisfactory way, he ate all the currant cake that had been brought and drank four cups of tea. Then he leaned back in his chair belching slightly and put aside his pen and his papers and thought of Pearl.
Pearl had two further meetings with Godfrey, one when he called on the following Tuesday and she had no news for him and would not let him in, one when he came on the 17th September and told her that he had been seen by Jude Davis and arrangements had been made for him to change stables.
Through all this Pearl kept her strict distance, but the second meeting, when Godfrey was so obviously delighted, was hard to keep on quite the same level of hostility. What had begun as a hard bargain with enmity as its only motive became somehow a remarkable favour for which he was overwhelmingly grateful.
He said: ‘Jees, I didn’t think you had a prayer, didn’t think your old man could fix anything. I put it to you like a challenge, just to see; didn’t think it’d work but thought I could come back on you then. But it’s worked – what a gas – it’s worked! I’m on top. Swinging. Thanks.’
It is almost impossible to feel hostile towards someone you have just helped. You can work at it and get back to the old fear and dislike in due time. But it takes time. And Pearl was not by nature a grudge-bearer. Anyway the favour had cost her £200 – Wilfred had refused to bear any part of it – so she thought herself entitled to feel the benefactor.
Before he left he talked away to her about his boxing future, on and on, confiding in her like a friend, and his final words, that he now intended keeping his side of the bargain and she would see him no more, carried conviction that even the hot regretful look in his eyes did not quite belie.
Flora Vosper was not so pleased at the news. ‘Does that mean you’re going to leave me, little man?’
‘Come off it. Wouldn’t be such a rat.’
‘Even rats have been known to desert a sinking ship.’
‘You’re not sinking, take it straight from me. You’ll be bobbing about like a cork for years yet. I’ll book you a ringside for my world championship fight!’
‘You’ll get your nice looks spoiled.’
‘Not on your life! Look at blokes like Sugar Ray, they come through a hundred bouts and never a mark. I’d be scarred already if I was going to be. Anyway, you watch!’
‘Doesn’t seem that I have much choice.’
He sat on the arm of her chair and put his arm round her shoulders. ‘Now what’s wrong? You’re a real old worry-cat. I just change my manager – get someone more go ahead – what I been wanting all along – what I wanted you to do for me and you said you couldn’t.’ He squeezed her arm. ‘So that’s what I got, a new manager. I’ll have to be in stricter training, that’s all. But his gym’s handy – off Cranbourne Street – no trouble at all – I just nip over there at ten every morning, and I’m back in time to drive you anywhere for lunch.’
‘It won’t last,’ said Flora. ‘You horrible little man. Of course I didn’t expect it to go on like this for ever; but I hoped you’d stay around long enough to see me out.’
‘Why, you’re better this week than you were last, aren’t you? Isn’t that—’
‘Better only because last week I felt like death.’
‘Well, it’s on the up grade. Old Matthewson was pleased yesterday.’
‘Pleased the way an anatomist is pleased when a frog’s leg goes on kicking after the frog is dead. Don’t try to comfort me.’
‘When you’re in one of these moods,’ he said, ‘you’re murder, straight you are. Look, let’s go down to Merrick again. I’m free these next few days. I can pack for you and we’ll be there tonight – we could stay till Saturday. Maybe you’d like to drive. I’ll sit in the back and you be my chauffeur, eh?’
She patted his hand. ‘Damn you, I never thought I should be so dependent on a man! All my husbands and lovers. I was never the clinging sort. When you’re sick the way I have been. Terribly difficult, you know, not to get sorry for oneself. Get me a drink, will you?’
‘O.K. Shall I pack?’
‘Can’t go. Mrs McNaughton’s coming to dine tomorrow, and the Dennisses. No, on the whole London’s best.’
‘Can I borrow the car this evening then?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. How long will you be out?’
‘Ah-ha, that shows you’re be
tter! Oh, I’ll be back about ten if it’s like that.’
‘It’s like that.’ Her hand briefly grasped his sleeve and then let go. She got up, for a moment her old stocky authoritative self. ‘Get me that drink, you lazy little tyke. And when are those suits coming I ordered for you? They’ve been long enough.’
Godfrey laughed at her. ‘They said next week.’
‘Well, see you keep ’em to it. If you’re going to be world champion you’ve got to dress the part.’
Wilfred’s determination not to have anything to do with the jewellery he had rashly mentioned was absolute when he was in his office. At home it was susceptible to the corroding influences of Pearl.
He told her that he had had a word with a man at his club who was an expert and who had warned him that the stuff coming up for sale was generally of poor quality and would mainly attract continental dealers. So there was simply no point in going any further. Pearl said, well, let’s at least read the catalogue, it’ll be fun to go through it. When they read the catalogue Pearl said how could Wilfred’s friend be sure it was poor stuff when the sources of the sale were so different? ‘The property of the late Countess of Didsbury’, ‘Sir Amal Siridabar Khan’, ‘Mrs Chester Caine’, ‘Mrs William Dunbar’. Would it not be a good idea to go on one of the viewing days and decide for oneself? Angell found himself agreeing to go on one of the viewing days.
They went. Pearl was enraptured, Wilfred disparaging. Everything she praised he found fault with. Presently she began to look downcast and hurt and he found himself hedging his disapproval and adding here and there a word of faint praise. At Pearl’s suggestion Wilfred spoke to one of his friends in the firm, and presently about eight items were ticked in Pearl’s catalogue, which they agreed to come and bid for. For the intervening two days Pearl allowed him to see how much she was looking forward to the auction.
Angell, Pearl and Little God Page 18
