Of course it would be worth a fortune to see him so beaten, taken down a peg, his bantam cockiness destroyed, his insufferable insolence humbled …
Nor did the successes of the rest of his life in any way compensate. Contracts had been exchanged, a cheque for £10,000 passed across a table; Lord Vosper, enjoying the proceeds in Lausanne, was now as legally bound as human ingenuity could make him to sell Merrick House and all that went with it, to Land Increments Ltd, for a further £80,000, if or when it became his property. Sir Francis Hone was very pleased there had been no announcement in the House during the debate on the Queen’s speech. Things were going quietly ahead, and he knew that a firm of consultants was about to be approached by the Ministry to advise on the development plan …
Sir Francis was also pleased about the purchase of the Canaletto. As soon as he got possession of it he had called in independent experts, who had substantiated Christie’s opinion. The picture now occupied a place of honour over Sir Francis’s Adam fireplace.
To Wilfred it was all ashes in the mouth, dust underfoot. The only zest he found in life was at the table, and he brought a perverse enjoyment to making up the weight he had lost. He kept up the pretence of dieting at home, but his meals out were gargantuan. His club was not a gourmet’s paradise; members went there for conversation rather than food; so even on his bridge evenings he more often took to one of the notable eating restaurants in Soho. One Tuesday at the end of November, he dined in St Martin’s Lane, off pastry turnovers with Roquefort cheese, followed by sole Bercy, and a whole small roast chicken with chicken liver canapés and mushrooms, then a fillet steak with fresh foie gras and truffles and Madeira sauce. Following this was a vanilla soufflé and coffee; and he drank two bottles of wine.
When he arrived at his club and settled to bridge he had heartburn, which worried and surprised him. He had drawn as his partner an old man called Maurice who had been one of the noted male courtesans of the twenties. Poets and peers had quarrelled over his Greek profile, there had been bitter jealousies about his favours in the Bloomsbury set, he had been a noted figure in one of the great scandals of the time. Now he was a withered old man with furrowed cheeks, receding grey hair and a droop to the corner of his mouth. One had to make an effort even to begin to perceive that there had ever been beauty there.
He was a kindly enough old boy, fussy and old-maidish; but his presence irritated Angell tonight. He seemed to Angell to be a reminder of his own mortality and what all youth and beauty must come to in a short time. They were a niggling reminder of the youth and beauty at home in 26 Cadogan Mews, succulent and yielding and fresh, that might even now be prey to another man who was invading his property and stealing his happiness and pleasure.
They played one rubber and lost, then cut together again. Maurice had been a good player in his day but the slight stroke had made him absent-minded. They somehow got into a three no-trump call without a single guard in clubs, but thanks to a bad lead Angell just made his contract. In the next hand, because they were vulnerable and because he was not sure how reliable his partner was, Angell allowed himself to be jockeyed out of a game call in spades and justifiably doubled his opponents’ five diamonds. In the course of the play their opponents took two tricks in hearts, on which Maurice dropped first the knave and then the three. As soon as trumps were led Angell played his ace and led a heart. Maurice had the ten. The contract was made.
Angell said: ‘ What were you thinking of, man? You signalled a doubleton in hearts. We could have just got them down.’
‘Did I, Wilfred?’ Maurice lisped. ‘Oh, that’s so, old boy, I remember. I was bluffing them, d’you see. I thought they’d make their contract by cross-ruffing, so I thought I’d bluff them into getting their trumps out.’ He chuckled at his own subtlety. ‘One never knows, of course, when one is going to deceive one’s partner, what?’
The next hand, the other side bid and made a small slam in diamonds. Angell declined a further rubber. It was only nine-thirty but he was tired and wanted to go home. A sense of fatalism and doom had come on him. If he was going home to discover them together, then this was his fate. He could not evade it for ever. He drank two stiff whiskies and went out and hailed a cab. In the cab he felt sick.
He got home and went in without any pretence at stealth, shut the front door with a bang, dragged off his coat. There was a light in the hall and under the drawing room door, but nobody called. He went lumberingly in. Pearl was sitting there mending the hem of a skirt. Alone.
‘Wilfred,’ she said, ‘ you’re early. Is anything wrong?’
‘I don’t feel well,’ he said. ‘I feel – very peculiar.’ He sat down with a thump on a chair and nearly broke it.
‘What is it? Can I get you a brandy?’
‘It’s my heart, I think.’ He had felt a pain when he arrived at the house. ‘I think I’ll just rest here for a while.’ She went out to the kitchen where Wilfred insisted all drink should be kept. (The cocktail cabinet or the miniature bar were vulgarities beyond all redemption.) While she poured it she thought, what an escape, Godfrey only putting it off at six. Lady Vosper sick unto death, he could not get away, what an escape.
She brought the drink and stood over him solicitously while he drank it. ‘Have you been doing too much? What happened? Were you taken ill at the club?’
‘Not taken ill, but I felt unwell and came home. I’m glad you are in, Pearl.’
‘But of course. Shall I call the doctor?’
‘Not yet.’ Was this genuine concern on her part or did she hover about him already speculating on his death and its advantages to her? The pain was hovering too, like an evil thought, not quite there, not quite dismissed. ‘A busy day. I felt tired when I left the office. I should have come straight home.’
He finished his drink and took another. Presently he allowed her to help him into the bedroom. His head was swimming. He allowed her to help him to undress, but when she would have gone he asked her to stay, to sit by the bed for a while. All the food and drink he had taken was beating in his head.
She sat by the bed and he put out his hand and held one of hers. He needed comfort. Whether it was sham comfort or genuine, he still needed it. Once as a child his mother had slapped him hard across the face, and immediately he had fallen into her arms seeking solace from the blow.
Presently with a third brandy the pain went away and he was left only with a feeling of fullness and distension. But he was still emotionally demanding. It was on his tongue to pour forth all his distress, to confide in her as if she were not one of the participants, to fall into the arms of the one who had struck him. Only a small eroded core of common sense warned him that that way he would lose her.
Instead he suddenly began to talk about Anna. It was an inspiration; he could transfer all his present distress to that old tragedy; he could pour out the whole tale and demand sympathy and receivesympathy. He told her of their first meeting and of the later ones. He did not explain that he had met Anna soon after the end of the war when his years of discomfort and humiliation in the army had just come to an end and when, in comparison to the rough and tumble of service life, civilian life and civilians had seemed less intimidating than they were ever to do again. He had a brief spell of physical confidence, and during it had met and wooed Anna. Her death had killed more than their love affair.
‘The last time I saw her,’ he said. ‘It’s something I try not to think of, something I can forget for months, and then, suddenly – D’you know. Perhaps marriage to you has made it more vivid. It’s as if she came alive again in you.’
Pearl hunched her shoulders in discomfort. ‘I don’t want to be anybody’s reincarnation.’
‘No, you’re not. But perhaps it’s true that I’d never fallen out of love with her, and so being in love with you …’
It was one of the first times in their association that he had ever mentioned love. It fell strangely from his lips like someone experimenting with a foreign quotation in a language
they did not know too well.
‘That must have been why you spoke to me on the plane.’
He sipped the last of his brandy, dried his lips with his fingers. ‘That last visit I paid her … She had been ill for only a month – noticeably ill, that is – off her food, her beautiful complexion fading, like a lily with a worm at the root. D’you know. There were doctors, consultations, tests, then she wrote me to go and see her. I went and was worried, but chiefly at her loss of looks. I thought it was jaundice or something – at twenty-two one does not die, one is ill but recovers. I – well, men are attracted by looks, I hoped she would not lose hers. I was still having sensual thoughts about how we should meet when she was well. Then a week later I called again. I have told you that her father was something of a recluse; they lived alone in that big house except for one woman. This time the door was opened by a nurse. She said, “Oh, yes, you’re Mr Angell, Miss Tyrrell is expecting you. Come this way.” So I went up to her bedroom and she looked much better. Or so it seemed. I suppose I did not realize how much of it was due to make-up. She had had time to prepare. The nurse left us and we talked for half an hour. Anna let me kiss her. We chatted cheerfully and made plans. I thought she was tense, on edge. Suddenly she said she thought it was time for me to go. I got up, a trifle offended. I kissed her again, saying I’d be in again next week, and she said good-bye.
‘As I came out of the bedroom there was no sign of the nurse and the house was very silent, just as if there were no one else in it. I thought of trying to find the nurse, but instead I went downstairs. Then – for even then I was something of a connoisseur – I stopped to look at a painting, wondering if it were genuine. She must have thought I had left.’ Wilfred put down the glass and his hand was shaking. ‘She began to scream. She began to scream at the top of her voice as if she were being tortured to death – as indeed I suppose she was. Her voice echoed round and round that empty house. On and on and on and on. I shall never forget it. It all came back this week. I cannot tell you why, but it did. It all came back tonight.’
‘What did you do?’ Pearl asked, quietly, talking into the silence. ‘I mean then. Was she really alone?’
‘No. After what seemed an hour I heard the nurse running up the stairs. I turned and let myself out and I ran, as if the devil and all hell were after me. When I got home I was sick as if I had taken an emetic. Then I went to bed. I was ill the following day. D’you know. I was ill all the following day.’
‘How long did Anna – live after this?’ Pearl said presently.
‘About seven weeks. It was very rapid. From complete health – or apparently complete health – to death was less than three months.’
Pearl got up and switched off a bar of the electric fire. Then she went to the window and peered out. She glanced back quickly at the bed in which her husband lay, the mountain of his bulk, his handsome woebegone face, the thick faded fair hair falling. On the table were his heavy spectacles, the empty glass, a bottle of aspirin, a handkerchief, a bunch of keys, three half crowns, four florins, three sixpences, three pennies, all in columns; a crumpled bridge score.
‘You didn’t go to see her again in those seven weeks?’
‘My father was concerned for my health, sent me to Austria. When I came back she was dead.’
‘You went to Austria for seven weeks?’
‘For five. I – at the last I felt I could not intrude.’
Rattling your knacks. That’s what Godfrey called it. When you died you ‘rattled your knacks.’
Godfrey might have been here and then they would have been discovered. It couldn’t go on like this. There had to be a change. Suppose she said tonight: ‘Wilfred, I have to tell you something. I’m not going to leave you as Anna did, but I’m going to leave you all the same …’
Yet she felt affection for Wilfred, and sympathy. The story he had just told her stuck in her mind like a small poisonous limpet. She could understand its remaining with him for twenty-five years. It was the only memory Anna had left him, the memory of her pain. By speaking now he had at last transferred some of the memory.
‘How is Lady Vosper?’ she asked suddenly, the words just coming out.
She was looking out of the window so she did not see his face. ‘Lady Vosper? Very ill, I believe. It’s only a question of time.’
‘Is it the same with her as it was with Anna?’
‘No. It’s the result of some accident she had many years ago. Godfrey Brown hasn’t been here, has he?’
‘What? What d’you mean?’
‘With some message about her. I wondered, as you asked.’
‘Oh, Oh, no. No, nobody’s been.’
He said sharply: ‘He hasn’t been to see me recently. Brown, I mean. Last time I spoke to him he was cheaply insolent. He betrayed all the limitations of a commonplace vulgar mind. One wonders if it was worth helping him.’
‘Well, it’s done now.’
‘Yes, it’s done now.’ Like a crime committed. But perhaps it could be undone. If only one could unwind these last months, recover them, set them off again on another track like a clockwork toy. ‘I can well understand why you did not like him.’
‘When?’
‘Before we were married.’ He peered at her. ‘When you first knew him.’
‘Yes. Oh, yes … Are you feeling better?’
‘A little. But I’m still not at all well.’
‘Did you eat something that disagreed with you?’
‘You know I eat very little nowadays.’
‘You’ve put on weight again recently.’
‘I can’t tell. I never weigh myself now.’
‘I’m sleepy,’ she said. ‘If you’re feeling better I’ll go to bed.’
She kissed him and went into her room and slowly undressed. Her body felt unused, neglected, deprived. It needed the attention that Godfrey would have given it – more the attention perhaps than Godfrey himself. Her mind was filled with complex emotions that she couldn’t separate. Her perverse passion for Godfrey, her sympathy for Wilfred, were both newly interlaced with apprehension. It was an apprehension that derived almost solely from this evening, from Wilfred’s indisposition, from things he had said, from things he had left unsaid. It was as if her mind recognized but could not identify events that were portending, events deriving from a situation and moving towards a crisis that none of them could avoid.
Godfrey was matched against a light-weight called Sheffield in a catch contest at the Shoreditch Town Hall on 5th December.
‘It’ll keep your hand in,’ said Jude Davis. ‘I want to get you matched with Mickey Johns, but he’s fighting in Denmark next week and there’s no chance of a contest before Christmas. Alf Sheffield will be a useful stop-gap. He’ll be ten pounds heavier than you and two inches taller, but if you lose it’ll do you no harm prestige-wise, and if you win Fred Armitage will sign you up with Johns all the more readily.’
The girl was in the gym this morning, the one Godfrey had only seen twice since that first meeting in the Thomas à Becket. She was dressed in a dark silk blouse and something that looked like a harness for a skirt; at least it was all buckles and belts and it stopped short. To Godfrey it looked pretty kinky and her legs kept showing through it in a kinky way. It made you think of dungeons and mediaeval orgies. Her name he had discovered was Sally Beck. She was smoking from the usual long cigarette holder, and only a glance every now and then from under the artificial fronds of her lashes made you realize she wasn’t indifferent to the company.
After Godfrey had done his usual skipping and shadow boxing and punch-ball work, and after Davis had gone out, he saw Sally Beck was sitting at the solitary table in the corner making her face up. He walked over and sat at the table and looked her over.
She did not lift her head. ‘ Sit down,’ she said. ‘Please don’t mind me.’
‘I thought maybe you had a fag,’ he said. ‘I thought maybe you might offer me one.’
Still staring in her compact mirror s
he pushed the packet across the table. Then with a little finger she began to modify the lipstick at the corners of her lips.
He said: ‘ How is it, then?’
‘How’s what?’
‘Things.’
‘Oh – so-so.’
He took out a cigarette and then carefully replaced it. ‘ Maybe I better not … I’ve seen you three or four times around, but I never had the chance of speaking to you before.’
‘Fancy.’
‘You – a friend of Jude Davis’s?’
What’s it to you?’
‘I was just wondering.’
‘Anything else you wonder?’
‘Maybe. When I see a smashing girl like you it’s not surprising, is it? I just wonder. You must have lots of boy friends.’
‘Yes, lots.’
‘Can I ask another question?’
‘Nobody’s stopping you.’
‘No, maybe I’d better not.’
At that, as he’d expected, she stopped making up her face and looked at him. He smiled back. Coolly her gaze went over his face and hair, his bare shoulders and chest.
‘Are you boxing next week?’
‘Yes. Will you be there?’
‘No. I don’t like it. I’ll be at the dogs.’
‘Maybe we could go together sometime. To the dogs, I mean.’
‘What makes you think I want to go with you?’
‘You like the dogs. So do I. It just seemed natural we might go together.’
‘Why natural?’
He smiled at the peeling wall behind her. ‘ It seems natural to me. How about next Saturday?’
‘What will you see with?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘After Sheffield has blacked your eyes.’
‘Look,’ he said gently, ‘nobody has ever hit me that hard. This feller won’t. Take it from me. Care to bet?’
Angell, Pearl and Little God Page 29
