by Colin Murray
‘Fancy coming up West tonight?’ I said to Jerry as Enzo plonked our cups down on the table. Coffee had slopped on to his thumbs, and he licked it off.
‘What for?’ Jerry said.
‘It’s the job,’ I said. ‘It’ll mean a few drinks in a couple of pubs . . .’
He beamed. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘London’s answer to Sam Spade is on a case.’
‘Jerry,’ I said, ‘I am not a private investigator.’
‘Of course not. You’re an accountant.’ He left a beat. ‘Just a very strange one.’
We’ve had this conversation a number of times, and there didn’t seem any point in continuing it. ‘Seven OK?’ I said.
‘Sure,’ he said. He finished his coffee and stood up. ‘So, the sophisticated dame is an actress, eh?’
I nodded.
He smiled and left me to pay for the coffees.
I brooded in Enzo’s for a while and then trudged across the road to the doubtful delights of home.
It amuses Jerry to think that I’m something glamorous like a gumshoe. But I’m not.
An accountant is closer because that’s what I trained as after school. But, somehow, after the war, I never settled to it again. I do look at the books for the local tradesmen, to check their figures, make sure they haven’t made any egregious mistakes, and they slip me a fiver or two, but that doesn’t pay the bills and I have to be careful that no one finds out. Impersonating an accountant, apparently, is as heinous a crime as pretending to be a policeman. The profession doesn’t like it. So it was a godsend when Les Jackson tracked me down a couple of years ago and put me on a retainer so that he could call on my ‘specialist skills’.
Les’s brother met me in France back in 1944, and Les had probably heard some colourful accounts of my exploits. My only real skills – surviving, and speaking French like a native because of the accident of birth – are ones that he’ll never have a use for.
In the time I’ve worked for Les, I’ve found myself negotiating with a bookie on behalf of a sleazy second-rate matinée idol with a gambling habit and an appalling taste in dogs. And there have been two minor blackmailing schemes involving starlets and compromising photographs. Tame stuff, really, and easily dealt with.
Keeping stories of stars’ drinking habits or sexual activities out of the papers is not so difficult either. Reporters just have to be reminded about libel laws and then be given ‘exclusive’ access to the stars. The exclusivity lasts until another star is caught misbehaving – so not that long.
The newspaper strike meant that Les’s boys and girls could get up to whatever they liked for a few weeks.
After a plate of bacon and eggs – all that my limited larder had on offer – I shaved at the scullery sink, put on a clean white shirt, my decent blue suit and a blue tie, and I was ready for a long evening.
TWO
Jerry hadn’t changed his clothes. He’d just added a black corduroy jacket and a racy black fedora to the outfit he’d been wearing.
He always made me feel old and staid. But, then, we were separated by more than the six years between us. I was from another generation, the one that had fought. The one that had got a little row of coloured ribbons and a demob suit to put it on.
Jerry had done his National Service, of course, but that had been afterwards and he hadn’t seen action. In fact, the way he told it, his two years had been a series of beer-sodden escapades separated from each other by weeks of boredom broken only by the ripe insults hurled at him by NCOs. That was not how I remembered my time.
There were other, more profound, differences too. It mystified him that the Goons left me completely cold. He had long since given up greeting me with the cry, ‘You deaded me,’ because he knew that the smile I managed to twitch at him was forced.
He spent the entire Underground journey from Leyton to Tottenham Court Road reading The Old Man and the Sea. He was well prepared for our journey. Which was more than I was. I’d forgotten that there’d be no discarded Evening News to pick up, and so I sat and stared through the fug of other people’s cigarette smoke at my distorted reflection in the filthy window opposite, thinking about the mole on Beverley Beaumont’s otherwise flawless neck.
We walked quickly down Charing Cross Road, though Jerry, like some saucer-eyed urchin outside Hamleys, did press his nose up against the window of a record shop that specialized in imported jazz and blues and stare into the gloom.
I’d decided on a short itinerary: a couple of pubs and then on to the Imperial Club. But it was just an itinerary – I wasn’t fooling myself that I had a plan – and to be honest I would rather have skipped one of the pubs and the Imperial Club.
The Bear and Ragged Staff wasn’t as popular with the arty, bohemian crowd as the Coach and Horses or the Fitzroy Tavern, but it did try. Situated in one of the dark, gloomy alleyways off the Charing Cross Road, it wasn’t quite in Soho (and was nowhere near Fitzrovia) so it attracted a few actors and even fewer musicians from the Opera House and that made it just colourful enough to attract out-of-towners.
It was its usual mid-evening self. An impressive haze of cigarette smoke softened the raw edge of the place, and the ripe smell of stale, spilt beer almost made me gag as we sidled around clumps of drinkers scattered haphazardly across the bare wooden floor.
A raucous group of younger men and one woman by the bar stopped talking for a few seconds and glanced at us as we materialized next to them, but we excited no interest and they resumed their loud conversation and harsh laughter almost immediately.
Incongruously, there was a solitary Scot, in full fig – kilt, sporran, a little dagger stuffed in his sock – standing at the far end of the bar, muttering thickly into his beer. I decided not to approach too close.
The young man behind the wooden counter was dressed in tweed jacket, carefully pressed grey flannels and neatly knotted tie. He looked across at us and then deliberately carried on polishing the glass he was holding. He held it up to the light, then polished it some more before finally putting it down and sauntering over to us.
‘Didn’t I bar you?’ he said amiably.
‘Probably, Alf,’ I said, ‘but that was for being boring. I’ve become much more interesting since then.’
‘All right,’ he said, ‘you can have one drink, but if you don’t say something entertaining then you’re barred again.’ He looked at Jerry. ‘Who’s he?’
‘Jerry, Alf,’ I said, making what passed for a formal introduction on the outskirts of Soho.
He eyed Jerry suspiciously. ‘All right, make your minds up, I haven’t got all night.’
‘Scotch for me,’ I said. ‘Pint of your best horse piss for him.’
I looked around the room. There wasn’t anyone I knew in tonight, though a couple of the faces were familiar from somewhere.
Jonathan Harrison wasn’t among them. I hadn’t expected him to be, but you can always hope.
Alf returned with our drinks, and I gave him a ten-shilling note.
‘Have one yourself, Alf,’ I said.
‘Don’t think you can get round me,’ he said. ‘You’re still barred after this one.’
But he pulled a half-pint anyway. Then he rang up the sale and shoved a small mountain of coppers and silver across the beer-sodden counter towards me. I pocketed the damp coins.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen this bloke?’ I said, showing him the snapshot Beverley Beaumont had given me.
He took it from me and looked at it very carefully. ‘Might have done,’ he said. ‘I get a lot of little pansies like this coming in.’ He paused. ‘I usually bar ’em.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘But you bar most people sooner or later.’
He looked resolutely unamused, but studied the photograph again. ‘He might have been in last week – Thursday – with a couple of other sissies. They drank their gins and orange –’ he sniffed dismissively – ‘and left.’ He looked at the photograph longingly once more before handing it back. ‘Nice-looking tart, though
.’ He stared off into one of the darker corners of the pub, looking young and vulnerable for a few seconds, perhaps recalling someone like Beverley Beaumont, but then he recollected where he was and quickly adopted his usual persona. ‘Now, drink up sharpish and clear off,’ he said and marched off to insult another customer.
‘Nice bloke,’ Jerry said, drinking some beer.
‘Trying to be famous for it,’ I said.
So Alf had Beverley Beaumont’s brother down as a wrong ’un. I decided not to attach too much importance to it. Alf wasn’t always right, and he did tend to throw insults around indiscriminately. He’d probably describe Jerry and me as sissies to the next people who came in.
I swallowed half my whisky, wishing that I’d had the sense, and temerity, to brave Alf’s contempt and ask for some water to go with it. I squinted at the bottle it had been poured from and decided I’d avoid King George IV Old Scotch Whisky in the future. Jerry sipped contentedly at his beer.
The Scot looked across at us and grunted. He moved a foot or two closer, and I braced myself.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘that Stanley Matthews is a useful player.’
I nodded and relaxed a little. So that was it. He had come down for Saturday’s match and couldn’t yet face going back.
‘Unstoppable on his day,’ I said in as neutral a tone as I could manage. A man can be a little sensitive after a 7–2 drubbing.
‘You can say that again,’ he said, shaking his head. He looked me up and down. ‘What outfit were you in?’ he said.
‘Special Ops,’ I said, noting the ribbons on his kilt jacket. ‘You?’
‘The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders,’ he said, shambling to something that, in his inebriated state, approximated to attention.
‘France?’ I said.
‘Sicily,’ he said.
‘Good men, the Argylls,’ I said. ‘Those I came across.’
‘Aye,’ he said, lifting his beer. ‘Here’s to those who didnae come back.’
I lifted my glass. He nodded at me and turned away with a quiet dignity, no doubt to face down some of the horrors that gnawed at his soul.
I stared at the mirrored glass behind the bar and glimpsed some of my own.
Jerry kept a respectful silence for a few seconds then put his glass down on the bar. ‘I didn’t know you were in Special Ops,’ he said.
‘I’ve never made a secret of it.’
‘I just never knew, is all,’ he said, picking his glass up and taking a delicate sip of beer. ‘I knew you’d been in France. I assumed you were in the poor bloody infantry.’
‘What difference does it make?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I just didn’t realize. They must have taught you all sorts of things.’
‘All right, so I learnt a few useless skills. I expect they tried to teach you how to stand to attention, but I haven’t noticed you doing it much since you were back in mufti. Well, I don’t use much of what I was taught either.’
He sniffed and took another quick drink and then changed the subject. ‘So,’ he said, ‘do you think mein affable host is right and he saw your prey?’
I shrugged in a non-committal way.
‘If he did, shouldn’t we be hot on his trail?’
‘We can hardly be hot on his trail if he came in last Thursday,’ I said. I looked around the pub and was almost swept away by a great wave of ennui. ‘But I suppose you’re right. We ought to be on our way.’ I sighed and finished my whisky. The second half went down no easier than the first. I placed my empty glass carefully on the counter and turned to the door. ‘Drink up.’
Jerry looked at his nearly full pint. ‘Give me a minute,’ he said plaintively, but I was already on my way towards the door. I didn’t care all that much for the Bear and Ragged Staff and its dyspeptic and irritating landlord.
I waited for Jerry in the cool gloom, watching the traffic charging up and down the Charing Cross Road, breathing in the damp air and staring moodily off at the narrow, paved street opposite. It reminded me of my grandfather. He had told me that, when he’d first come to London from Paris, Cecil Court had been known as Flicker Alley because of its associations with the kinematograph trade.
A little flock of Teds, a couple of achingly young girls fluttering along with them, drifted up from Trafalgar Square. One of them stopped and stared insolently at me. He was sixteen or seventeen with a rich crop of blackheads around his nose.
‘You looking at me?’ he said, thrusting his face at me. His crooked teeth were yellowish, but his breath had a minty freshness.
‘Not me,’ I said. ‘I’m just minding my own business.’
He looked back at his mates.
‘I think you was,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said, ‘you’re mistaken.’
I took a couple of paces back, but he followed me. I smiled at him and leaned forward so I could whisper in his ear. ‘I don’t particularly want to break your arm,’ I said, ‘but, if you force me to, I will.’
A little shadow of uncertainty crossed his face. He looked across to his mates again, and his tongue flicked out and licked his upper lip.
‘All right,’ he said loudly, ‘I’ll believe you this time. Thousands wouldn’t.’ And he hurried back to join the others, and they all continued up Charing Cross Road, laughing and yelling. Some of their riper comments were directed at me.
Jerry emerged after a few minutes with beer on his breath and a burp at the back of his throat, and we walked slowly back up towards Shaftesbury Avenue.
The French was packed, which is as it should be. If I have a favourite drinking spot in the West End, it has to be the French. But then I don’t drink beer. I like wine – French wine – and it isn’t that easy to find in this insular city. It’s also, of course, the case that the French is the only pub I know that has a photograph of me on the wall. Well, it’s not really of me. It’s of someone more important. I just happened to be in the background. It’s fame of a sort.
On the other hand, Jerry doesn’t have his photograph on the wall, drinks beer and yet he still enjoys the French. So maybe the place has something about it.
After a little patience at the bar, I bought him a bottle of something dark and evil-looking and myself a glass of Brouilly. Gaston was busy, his impressive soup-strainer moustache hovering thoughtfully over a bottle of Ricard, so I didn’t get a chance to show him the photograph of Jonathan Harrison.
As I struggled through the crowd, back towards the window where Jerry stood, someone touched me lightly on the shoulder.
‘Antoine?’ she said.
No one has called me that in years and I knew who it was instantly. ‘Ghislaine,’ I said.
She beamed at me. She was ten years older, of course, but the years had been kind to her. She was as small and slim as I remembered her, still quivering with good humour and nervous energy. There were some lines around her mouth and eyes, but her black hair was still thick and lustrous. Her teeth were perhaps a little greyer from the thousands of foul French cigarettes she must have smoked in the last decade, but she still looked wonderful. She was dressed in a belted grey raincoat and had a red beret perched insouciantly on top of her curls and managed to be the epitome of chic.
‘You know,’ she said in her hesitant English, ‘I only arrive today. I hope someone here knows where you are. And then, here you are, just like that.’ She snapped her fingers and then she reached up and kissed me on both cheeks.
‘Speak French,’ I said. ‘Your English was never any good.’ I’d always teased her about it.
‘Then I must practise,’ she said imperiously.
Jerry moved a pace or two towards us and looked at me quizzically.
‘Jerry,’ I said, handing him his beer, ‘meet an old friend of mine. Jerry Payne, Ghislaine Michel.’
She smiled. ‘No, Antoine,’ she said. ‘My name is Rieux now. I marry Robert.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Jerry Payne, meet Ghislaine Rieux.’
Jerry bowed
slightly. ‘Enchanté, Madame,’ he said, which was probably all the French he could muster. ‘Antoine?’ he whispered at me with a big smile on his face.
I ignored him. ‘Where is Robert?’ I said, warily. Robert is the man in the foreground of the photograph on the wall of the French. He’s charming, handsome and witty. He’s also the most frighteningly ruthless person I have ever met.
Ghislaine scowled. ‘With his –’ she hesitated – ‘petite poularde.’
I raised my eyebrows.
‘So I come to England to find you.’ She smiled shyly. ‘So we can be together, like before.’
‘Not like before,’ I said.
Jerry was looking at me with an irritating, would-be knowing smile on his face. I glared at him disapprovingly, and he dutifully took an obsessive interest in his beer.
Ghislaine pursed her lips and looked down at the straps on her elegant black shoes.
‘Listen,’ I said, speaking French, ‘I’m your friend, Ghislaine, but we haven’t seen each other in a long time. It was different then. You weren’t married to Robert. There was a war. We were younger.’
‘We were,’ she said, putting her hand lightly on my arm and smiling sadly. ‘We were more passionate too?’
‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘but now you are married to Robert.’
She shrugged extravagantly. ‘Dear Antoine! Always concerned to do the correct thing. How English of you!’
‘And just when did the little country girl become quite so Parisian and casual about wedding vows?’
‘Not long after she moved to Paris and married a man who can’t live without two mistresses,’ she said.
‘But you must have known that before you married him,’ I said.
She shook her head.
‘Then you should have asked me.’
‘And you would have told me?’
‘Probably,’ I said.
‘Pah!’ she said and hit me gently on the shoulder. ‘I have a hotel for tonight,’ she said, looking thoughtful, ‘but I don’t have much money . . .’
‘You can stay with me,’ I said, ‘but my flat isn’t the Ritz. Well, it isn’t even a comfortable pension.’ I looked at my watch. ‘There is something I have to do this evening, though. You can wait here with Jerry.’
