by Gerald Kersh
“Dreamt you were flying a kite? Why, Teddykins, you old silly, you! You’ve just been worrying about that cheque you went and cashed, that’s all.”
Middleton slapped himself on his tousled head and cried: “Good Lord, what a fool I am not to have thought of that!”
To fly a kite, in vulgar parlance, is to put into circulation a questionable cheque. It does not necessarily mean, that a “kite-flyer” is uttering a worthless cheque with intent to defraud . . . although it comes perilously close to meaning something like that. For example: an unscrupulous man, knowing that he hasn’t a penny in the bank, but knowing that five days must pass before a crossed cheque is cleared, might buy something on cash terms, paying by cheque, and so, in effect, get his goods on credit, since he had bought someone else’s property with money that he has yet to find. If he does not find this money, of course, he is likely to find himself in trouble. But somehow he manages things so that his cheque is honoured – even if he has to ask a favour of a “kite-flying” friend and ask for another worthless cheque which he may pay into his account, with a flourish, and so snatch another few days of time. There are few self-made businessmen who have not, at some critical period in their lives, “flown a kite”. Still, as a practice, “kite-flying” is generally deplored; it is dishonourable, in principle, because it necessarily involves prevarication, misrepresentation – and if your kite-string happens to break, you are no better than a cheat unmasked.
Now Middleton knew all this. He knew that it was not merely dishonourable but positively dangerous to “fly a kite”, and so his cautious and respectable consciousness had kicked the memory of that vulgar expression into the coal-cellar of his memory. He said: “Of course, of course,” and was gracious enough to add: “You’re a clever girl, and I’m a fool, Louie dear. But my God! Say there’s some delay!”
“Well, that’s what I was trying to say yesterday, only you wouldn’t listen, would you? I don’t want to be one of those nagging wives, but I did tell you so, didn’t I? But don’t worry,” said Louisa, smoothing his hair, “all you’ve got to do is take the letter to the bank first thing Tuesday morning.”
“What about the office?” said Middleton.
Louisa said: “Oh never mind your old office! You won’t need to worry about your office much longer – you and your old office. You can ring up and tell them you’ve just come into money. Anyway, you’ll have to go to the solicitor’s first thing Tuesday, won’t you?”
“Yes,” said Middleton, sighing with relief. “I’ll go to the solicitor first, then to the bank, and if Mawson doesn’t like it . . .”
“If he doesn’t like it he can lump it. Do you know that, Ted, I’m only just beginning to realise this is true! Wasn’t it a lovely evening we had yesterday?”
“To-night,” said Middleton, firmly, “we are going to a night club.”
“Ted!”
“A night club, definitely.”
“Oh, but Ted, you asked Dick Trew to come along to-night.”
“Ah, come on now, Louie dear; don’t be so unkind to poor old Trew. Old Trewie does his best, and we’ve always been the best of friends. Besides, he livens things up.”
“I’ve never forgiven him for what he did the day we were married,” said Louisa.
“What, do you mean squirting water in my eye out of that artificial flower? Oh come on, Louie dear, can’t you take a joke? I can. It was well meant. If Trewie had thought for one moment it’d hurt your feelings, he’d never have dreamt.”
“All right, Teddykins darling.”
Middleton said: “You know what? When I’ve got everything in order on Tuesday I’m going to take you out shopping – Piccadilly, Bond Street, anywhere you like – and buy you everything you can possibly think of. . . . Louie dear, look: I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night, so d’you mind if I take a little nap now so as to be fresh for to-night?”
“There, there, you poor tired Teddykins!”
So Middleton slept, deeply and dreamlessly now, while Louisa, drinking a cup of strong tea, thought of shopping in Bond Street. In her present condition it would be a waste of money to buy smart suits and elegant gowns. But there were many other things to buy – including a three-quarter length fur coat. A fur coat in August? Yes: not to wear in the street, but to have; to keep for the autumn. At this time of the year, furthermore, good furs could be bought at a low price. She saw herself in December. The baby was born strong and healthy, and she was walking, slender in a tailor-made and gorgeous in a three-quarter length fur coat. But not a silver fox! Anything but a silver fox – marmot, catskin, rabbit, no fur at all rather than sickly-scented silver fox!
She kissed her sleeping husband lightly on the head and whispered: “There, you clever old darling! You wouldn’t go and get yourself mixed up with horrible fat old ginger-heads, would you? . . . You and your silly old kites!”
Middleton slept peacefully until one o’clock, when he jumped out of bed with a joyous cry and forced Louisa to dance with him while he sang “Oh I Wonder What It Feels Like To Be Poor”. “Stop it, you’re making me giddy,” she said. “What would you like to eat for lunch? I’ve got——”
“ – Never mind what you’ve got. Give it to the cat. Get me a cup of tea and we’ll go out. What would I like? I’d like another steak and chips, like last night. Don’t argue, put on your hat!”
He wantonly threw away a razor blade less than half a week used, and shaved with a new blade – with such thoughtless vigour that he cut himself under the nose and bled for twenty minutes; so that it was nearly two o’clock before they arrived in a taxi at the French restaurant in Soho, where Middleton ordered cocktails, chicken à la King, steak, and half a bottle of wine. Partly in irony, but mainly in charity, nostalgically remembering a certain happy Sunday in Vienna in the summer of 1899, the restaurateur bowed low, danced attendance, and gave them of his best. The luncheon cost fifteen shillings; Middleton, who was beginning to get the hang of high life, worked out ten per cent of fifteen shillings with a fork on the tablecloth, and gave him one and sixpence for himself. The restaurateur, who recognised innocent happiness when he saw it, put the three sixpences in his wallet for good luck, and would be carrying them to this day if he had not been almost literally liquidated by a bomb in 1941, five years later.
But Middleton’s cheque had already changed hands again, furtively, in the saloon bar of the “Silent Wife”: a public-house in Mayfair, patronised almost exclusively by butlers and valets employed by the nobility and gentry of the great houses in the neighbourhood.
* * * * *
In this bar, if you kept your ears open, you might learn all kinds of out-of-the-way facts; for here the careful, sober, watchful manservants of the mighty relaxed as much as they dared, and compared notes. Here you might see prim, clipped, close-shaven, tight-lipped gentlemen’s gentlemen in dark blue serge jackets buttoned up to the chin; and beautiful old shoes that must have cost every penny of ten guineas a few years before. (You can generally recognise a valet off duty by his shoes.) Portly, pedantic men of middle age, most of them with white bald heads and glossy purple faces, conversed in discreet undertones of things worth knowing that might be overheard if you waited long enough and listened hard. The landlord himself had been a butler and his wife had been housekeeper to an earl. The casual passer-by, slipping into the “Silent Wife” for a quick drink, felt that he had gone through a magic door into a strange family circle made up of one aunt, nine uncles, and twenty or thirty cousins, all dressed in dark clothes for the funeral of some unimaginable patriarch. Having drunk his beer the stranger went on his way and seldom if ever came back.
One of the most respected habitués of this public-house was a man named Groom who for thirty years had been valet of Colonel the Lord Ayrwick, one of the best-dressed men in the United Kingdom. The valet was darkly conspicuous in the lurid light of his master’s strange glory. From time to time Lord Ayrwick blazed bright in the newspapers when he wrote
some extraordinarily savage letter denouncing soft hats or open collars, or read bloody revolution in a gloveless hand in Hyde Park on Sunday: then Groom grew longer, narrower, and blacker. He had, indeed, the long-drawn-out two-dimensional look of a short, square man’s shadow stretched out by a setting sun. He had refused to sit at the same table with another valet who was wearing brown shoes with a blue suit. When it was reported that Edward, Prince of Wales, had appeared in public wearing turned-up trousers with a morning coat there was hot argument in the “Silent Wife”, until Groom shook his head; and then there was no more argument. Groom had shaken his head. Woe, therefore, to his Royal Highness! It was Groom’s habit to keep himself to himself. He would briefly exchange the skimpiest of civilities with the landlord and landlady and then, unfolding the most infallible of newspapers, read while he drank a bottle of Worthington’s ale.
So everyone was surprised one evening when a man came rolling into the bar, and creeping up behind Groom, whistled through his teeth so piercingly that the glasses behind the bar vibrated. Mr. Groom, instead of blasting the intruder with a look, offered him a double whisky-and-soda, invited him to sit down and make himself at home.
The new customer was an ugly one: five feet tall, three feet wide, and marked about the face with a variety of evil-looking scars, and dressed in a tight-fitting suit of dog-tooth black-and-green check. He said nothing until he had emptied his glass; when he made a noise in his nose that reminded someone of a hacksaw going through a piece of iron, and growled: “Well?”
Groom simply walked out of the bar, closely followed by the other man. It was conjectured that this man was Groom’s son, or some near relation – a nephew, or something like that – who had gone to the dogs; there is at least one such in every family.
Later, the landlord, glancing at Groom’s newspaper, observed that it was folded back at the sports page, and that a list of probable runners in the next day’s races at Newmarket had been carefully marked, and that there were strange figures and hieroglyphics in the margin. He then came to the conclusion that Lord Ayrwick’s gentleman was “indulging in a little harmless flutter on the turf”. So when Mr. Groom came in next day, there being no one else in the bar at the time, the landlord asked in a husky whisper what Groom fancied for the first race. “I don’t fancy anything for the first race,” said Groom, coldly.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Groom, but I couldn’t help but observe that you had marked the list of Newmarket probables. Now young Lord Jones’s young man was in yesterday, Mr. Groom, and he heard the owner tell Lord Willoughby to put his shirt on Bright Young Thing, and he assured me that it was definitely a stone ginger cert and unquestionably on the job. I occasionally indulge in a harmless flutter myself and propose to invest five shillings on Bright Young Thing. Labouring under the misapprehension that you were interested in the sport of kings, Mr. Groom, I thought the information might interest you. Pardon me.”
“It’s kind of you, I’m sure, Mr. Hibbs, but I seldom if ever bet. Once in a blue moon somebody tells me something and I put a shilling or two on it. If you’re backing this horse, perhaps you’ll be good enough to put half a crown each way on for me. I don’t know any bookies, you see.”
“I’ll do that with pleasure, Mr. Groom. I do not hold with gambling, but a harmless flutter is quite another thing.”
“Quite right, Mr. Hibbs, quite right. That paper you saw me reading was his Lordship’s. I always take it when he’s done with it. His Lordship still likes to keep in touch with the turf.”
“Of course, perfectly natural, Mr. Groom. I’ll put half a crown each way on Bright Young Thing for you, then.”
“Thank you. Will you let me know if it wins? I don’t take much interest in racing, and I can’t make head or tail of all those lists and figures.”
“Certainly, Mr. Groom, with pleasure. Would you prefer to give me your five shillings now, or let it wait? It is all the same to me, I assure you.”
“Now, if you please, Mr. Hibbs. A person in my position ought not to get into debt, I say,” said Groom, putting down five shillings.
“Thank you, Mr. Groom. By the by, that was a . . . an interesting young fellow who came in to see you yesterday.”
Unusually communicative, Mr. Groom said: “Ah, the less said the better about him, Mr. Hibbs. He’s not a very edifying subject I’m afraid. I’d rather we didn’t talk about him. But – a word to the wise, Mr. Hibbs, you understand – my youngest sister had a son.”
“I quite understand, Mr. Groom, and sympathise. Mrs. Hibbs has a niece . . .”
Then Groom went away to a public call-box, telephoned his own bookie and put five pounds each way on Bright Young Thing. Later, in his room, he unlocked a drawer, took out Sporting Life, Sporting Times, the Racing World, and the Racing Annual, and settled down to study. Among other papers in his drawer there was a recently-dated bookmaker’s bill.
For Mr. Groom was a secret gambler. Behind the soundproof walls of his tightly-closed face his soul howled, hopping mad, at the barrier, while the great gleaming horses passed in thunder. The disease had got hold of him suddenly in the early 1920s when Papyrus won the Derby; finding easy money in his hand Groom became mad. Before Papyrus’s Derby he had had no vices. Now he had one; to conceal which, he had to acquire a second – he became a hypocrite. To preserve his hypocrisy unexposed, he was reduced, in due course, to stealing small articles of jewellery from Lord Ayrwick, who was half blind, and pathetically dependent on him. And that made three. So evil tends downwards. To be a hypocrite one must, of course, be a liar.
The scarred young man in the dog-tooth check suit was not Groom’s nephew. His real name was known to the police; his friends called him Shiv, and he had achieved a kind of dirty glory in the bloody battle between the Sabini Gang and the Brummagem Mob. Shiv had been sentenced to a term of imprisonment and eighteen strokes of the cat for robbery with violence. After that, becoming respectable, he made a living as a collector of bookies’ bills, on a commission basis. Boldly and shamelessly, he would push his way into the most private places, pull out the long narrow sheet of paper, and make his presence intolerable until the money was paid. Shiv was proud of his proficiency. Six bookmakers employed him. Feeling that he had a right to regard himself as one of the professional classes, Shiv called them his clients.
He had said to Mr. Groom: “Look. If you won you’d call my boss a welsher if he didn’t pay, wouldn’t you? Whenever you’ve won, my boss paid out, like a gentleman, didn’t he? You was the first to collect when you was a winner, wasn’t you? But now you’ve ’ad a couple of bad weeks, you don’t want to lolly, do you? Want it all your own way, don’t you? All take and no give, ain’t you? You wouldn’t stand for us if we done things like that, would you? Well, I’m gonna tell you something, Mr. Groom, for your own good. If – you – don’t – pay – us – up – what – you – owe – us——”
“Give me time,” said Mr. Groom.
“Don’t interrupt. Where’s your manners? I’ll make it short and sweet, mister: if you don’t pay us up what you owe us, may I fall down dead this minute, I’ll come along to Lord Ayrwick’s place, and I’ll show you up till you never dare show your face again. I’ll find you wherever you are. Because you are not a sportsman. You’re a crook – you ain’t honest, that’s what you are. I’ll give you one week. One week from to-day, to settle this little account. And after that . . . you wait and see, just you wait and see. Speaking for meself, I’d just as soon you didn’t pay, because I’m only waiting for a chance to show you up; because if there’s one thing that gets me down, it’s an unsportsmanlike crook. So now you know. Find that money in a week. That’s all.”
Now Tishy had fallen a little short of the truth when he told Wild Rose that the old lord was dead. Lord Ayrwick was not quite dead; he was only moribund. His heirs had been expecting him to die any minute for the past seven years. Still he clung to life; paralysed with raging arthritis, but sound of mind; purblind but dangero
usly alert. Many years before, shortly after his first apoplectic stroke, he had called his servants together and told them that he had made his will, by which any servant still in his service at the time of his death would substantially benefit. The housekeeper, the butler, and Groom would receive £2,000 apiece. Since then, whenever the old gentleman (who also had bronchitis) made the house tremble with a most dreadfully-combined pent-up cough and howl of rage and pain, the servants nudged one another and exchanged looks full of meaning. Groom knew that at the first whisper of scandal, he would be sent packing with a quarter’s salary, and so automatically cease to be a legatee of Lord Ayrwick, who, mysteriously, was acquainted with every little thing that went on in the house. His Lordship (may he die in his sleep, God bless him) could not possibly live very much longer. He could not move from his bed.
One fairly large room near his bedroom had been converted into a fabulous wardrobe, in which hung a hundred and thirty suits of clothes.
Quietly gliding about his business, always diligent, constantly on the look-out for stray specks of dust, Groom came and went with armfuls of clothes. Nobody observed that he carried upstairs less than he brought down; he carried so much at a time. He was dutifully putting the wardrobe in order “against your getting up, m’lord.” So, in four days, Groom spirited away twenty-seven assorted suits, and fourteen pairs of boots and shoes.
Desperate diseases call for desperate remedies.
Lord Ayrwick’s suits had cost, on the average, about fifteen pounds apiece in Savile Row. He never wore a suit more than half a dozen times, so that they were all as good as new. Groom calculated that he could get at least four pounds a suit, and a flat thirty shillings a pair for the boots and shoes. He went through the old lord’s cupboards, winnowing and gleaning a shirt here, a pair of socks there – they could not possibly be missed. But when he thought of selling this loot, his heart sank again. How could Lord Ayrwick’s valet offer for sale twenty-seven suits and fourteen pairs of boots and shoes – to say nothing of shirts and socks – without arousing suspicion?
