Hotbed

by Bill James

  ‘Has he disappeared?’ Sally said. ‘He is missing?’

  ‘In the sense that the flat seems unoccupied for a longish period,’ Ember said.

  ‘And doesn’t he turn up at your business, if you’re a colleague, that is?’ Graham said. ‘So, he’s not at home or at work.’

  ‘Violent sounds, do you mean?’ Sally said.

  ‘Anything unusual,’ Ember said. ‘Raised voices. He lived alone, didn’t he? Did you hear sounds of company at all?’

  ‘We often wondered what business Mr Brown was in,’ Graham said. ‘He seemed to keep strange hours. And his beard. It didn’t seem an ordinary office worker’s type of beard, nor suitable in a manual job.’

  ‘Just unusual sounds that, when you recall them now, you wonder what might have been happening in 15A,’ Ember said, ‘yet at the time you let it pass.’

  ‘What was happening?’ Graham said.

  ‘This is scary,’ Sally said. ‘It’s always been a trouble-free road. We’re buying our flat, not just renting. It seemed a sound investment.’

  ‘Is there a lot of travel in . . . well, in your kind of work, suppose you and he are colleagues?’ Graham said. ‘Perhaps there’s an entirely simple explanation for his absence. If he were visiting clients elsewhere – possibly abroad.’

  ‘These younger people think nothing of distance,’ Sally said. ‘Talking of phrases, there’s one to sum this up, I feel – the world has become “a global village”.’

  ‘Ah,’ Ember replied. He walked back to his car. Neither leg gave trouble.

  ‘Are you leaving on account of more commitments?’ Sally called.

  When Ralph arrived at the Monty, he saw Harpur standing near the bar with a drink – what looked like his usual, gin and cider mixed in a half-pint glass: a double or triple gin, the rest cider. A couple of people played pool. Not many members would hang about in the club once Harpur showed there, especially if they were evolving some project. They’d wonder what he wanted. They’d wonder what he knew. Ember wondered what he wanted. Ember wondered what he knew.

  ‘I’ve been out and about, Ralph,’ he said.

  ‘I won’t ask where.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘And now I thought I’d look in for a nightcap,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Excellent,’ Ember said. Harpur was the sort who could guess from watching who talked together in the club the kind of job they might be planning. He knew people’s individual flairs – safes, or hold-ups or driving or menaces, or sometimes a combination.

  ‘How’s everything generally, Ralph?’ he said, in his grand, man-to-man, phoney fucking way, keeping matters vague and harmless so far, but then moving in on what he’d really come for. They had police courses in lulling.

  ‘Good,’ Ember said.

  ‘Good. And Manse?’

  ‘Good. You know Mansel! Always positive. And then there’s his marriage coming up.’

  ‘This will be a blessing for him. You’re to star, I hear.’

  ‘Not quite star. But, yes, Mansel has kindly invited me to be best man.’

  ‘I suppose it’s one way to help him feel reasonably secure.’

  ‘Secure?’

  ‘Your people won’t be able to blast him when you’re standing so close with the ring etcetera.’

  ‘I feel gratitude bordering on pride that he asked me, you know, Mr Harpur. It’s a testimonial.’

  ‘The marriage should bring Mansel real happiness.’

  ‘One does hope so.’

  ‘In some ways, he deserves this,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Which ways especially would you say he deserves this?’

  ‘Many.’

  ‘The other women he’s been knocking off on rota since his wife went – they’ll understand he needs something settled as he gets older – Carmel, Lowri, Patricia. They’ll resent the severance, yes, but shouldn’t give him too much trouble. In any case, he might still have enough spare time for them.’

  ‘Yes, something settled.’

  ‘I’d hate to think of any of them yelling abuse outside an ex-rectory. Also, there’s his first wife, Sybil. Temperamental. Ex-wives can turn unpleasant if their ex-husband remarries, even if it was the ex-wife who destroyed the marriage. It’s a pride thing. And possessiveness. The house and so on,’ Harpur said.

  ‘I think Manse will be prepared for possible outbursts of stonking. And his fiancée is mature and understanding. She realizes that Mansel has lived, as it were, in the world. Naomi is very much to do with art, and therefore knows something of the bohemian lifestyle.’

  ‘Do you see Manse as bohemian?’

  ‘They enjoy the Pre-Raphaelites. This provides a happy bond.’

  Harpur went even more genial. ‘But then there’s you and your family, Ralph. How are the daughters – Venetia, Fay?’

  ‘Fine. All of us.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Harpur said.

  The barman brought a bottle of Kressmann armagnac and poured a drink for Ralph. Harpur stuck to gin and cider.

  ‘Is Venetia settling after France?’ Harpur said.

  ‘No problems, thank you.’

  ‘That will stand her in good stead.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The experience over there.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Not just the language, but another way of looking at life.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘I should think those schools are half full of crooks’ kids. They’re almost the only ones who can afford the fees,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Beautifully sited, some of the schools,’ Ember replied. ‘Former chateaux with orchards and moats.’

  ‘Venetia will be a teenager by now, I suppose,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘They’re developing a real personality at that age. I’ve watched it in my own elder daughter.’

  ‘True,’ Ember replied.

  Harpur gazed about the club. ‘It’s looking great here, Ralph – the mahogany and so on.’

  ‘I’m thinking about some changes.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘In due course.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Developments.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I see potential here,’ Ember stated.

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘I think of certain clubs in London as kind of models of what I might do: the Athenaeum. Often I read in The Times of meetings at the Athenaeum – the Ruskin Society, that sort of worthwhile gathering. This is what I have in mind for the Monty. Or another London club I like the sound of is the Garrick.’

  ‘Theatrical connections there, I think.’

  ‘What I plan is –’

  ‘Someone was saying – don’t recall who – someone was saying that one of your people – a lad with an odd first name – Joachim – or in that area – Joachim Brown has a brother who’s doing pretty well on the West End stage,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Yes, I believe so.’

  ‘Fascinating the way brothers can go in for such different careers,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Perhaps it’s best we’re not all the same, Mr Harpur. When I was doing my Foundation Year at the university I remember a lecturer talked about “the principle of plenitude”. That is, the world’s need for fullness, for variety, for a multitudinous creation. And so, there’s a place for, say, wasps, though they might appear to us only a pest. It would be a different world without wasps, a lesser world. It came up in a book we studied, A Passage to India. Aprofessor in this tale will not kill a wasp because it’s entitled to a life as much as the professor is – Alec Guinness in the film – and as much a part of creation.’

  ‘I don’t have anything against universities,’ Harpur replied.

  �
��Your friend, Denise, is an undergraduate, isn’t she?’

  ‘What would you say were his main abilities?’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘Joachim Brown’s.’

  ‘Oh, yes, he’s a valuable part of the firm,’ Ember said.

  ‘I wonder – is the acting flair present in him, also, though less obviously, obviously?’

  ‘We don’t have a company Christmas panto, so I couldn’t say on that one.’ God, ‘less obviously, obviously’. But Ralph saw why Harpur’s conversation might get clumsy: trying not to sound nosy, he skated around so many dicey topics that his words fell over themselves. Ralph went back to those basic questions – what did Harpur know, or think he knew, about Turret Brown? What did he know, or think he knew, about Venetia? And how did he know it, or think he knew it?

  ‘And Venetia rides?’ Harpur asked.

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Horses and ponies, I mean, not a bike.’

  ‘Very keen on the equestrian side. There’s plenty of ground for her up at Low Pastures, you know. Paddocks. Convenient. Do your daughters ride, Mr Harpur? I’m always conscious of a kind of parallel in our situations, yours and mine – both with two daughters around the same age. But do you still live down in Arthur Street? Are there stables in that area, I wonder.’

  ‘Which would be her favourite type of pony or horse?’ Harpur said.

  ‘A whole range. If it’s got four legs she’ll ride it. That principle of plenitude again. Across the boardism, as it were.’

  ‘They can get themselves into attachments,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Girls in their early teens. Or imagine attachments.’

  ‘I’ve heard of that kind of thing. And then there are Romeo and Juliet. Kids, really.’

  ‘Yet genuinely powerful emotions,’ Harpur said. ‘Such girls would suffer if something dark happened to the man in one of these attachments – possibly imagined attachments. I call them possibly imagined, because the man might be hardly aware of it.’

  ‘On the other hand, Mr Iles was certainly aware of it when he started buzzing around your elder daughter, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘But, then, we must all try to avert dark happenings,’ Harpur said.

  ‘Indeed. Anyway, I gather Mr Iles might have given up on your daughter at last. I’ve always said he’s got some decency in him, though kept well buried most of the time. After all, he’s made it to Assistant Chief, so we shouldn’t expect an excess of morality. It must be a relief to you he’s backed off. Was it a kind of revenge thing because of you and Mrs Iles? Is your daughter upset, though?’

  A couple of men both carrying leather holdalls came a few steps into the club but saw Harpur, paused, then turned around and disappeared. ‘Will you keep the Monty name when you relaunch, Ralph, or go for something, say, classical – like the Athenaeum?’

  ‘I feel the Monty must always be the Monty. It’s part of the city. Many see it as . . . well as a fulcrum.’

  ‘Often I hear it described so, and in remarkably far-flung locations. Someone will ask a new acquaintance whether he/she knows the Monty, and the reply will instantly come, “Ah, such a social fulcrum!”’

  Naturally, Ralph realized this was Harpur taking the piss in his lumbering, oafish, vox-cop fashion. You learned to put up with that kind of crude, envious tease. He would never have heard anyone refer to the Monty as a fulcrum. Ralph himself had never thought of the Monty as a fulcrum until just now. The word popped from his mouth, more or less unplanned. How the fuck could a club be a fulcrum? He had wanted an out-of-the-ordinary, daft sort of term that would take Harpur’s mind off the two men who vamoosed a minute or two ago when they saw him at the bar, Shane Gordon Wilkes and Matt Bolcombe. Ralph knew them, of course. They were club members. In fact, there’d been a seven-hour Monty champagne acquittal party for Shane not long ago, when the prosecution collapsed because witnesses would not testify, despite lots of attention and encouragement from police investigative assistants. Probably, the pair had meant to come to the Monty late tonight and do a share-out over drinks, after some sortie. This would be tactless with Harpur present, though.

  Ember felt glad they’d gone. But he did not want Harpur’s main Monty impression now to be of a hotbed where villains arrived to share loot – and a hotbed they fled from because of him, the law. Ralph longed to get the Monty on the path to transformation. Shane and Matt’s abrupt, scuttling exit knocked that hope. And so Ralph had come out with ‘fulcrum’, simply to waylay Harpur’s attention. Ember delighted in the two u’s and the rich jostle of consonants. He spoke them with gorgeous thoroughness.

  Ralph had guessed Harpur would need to activate his creaking, clichéd mockery at such a ripe slice of gibberish. So, have your little giggle, you CID sod, and spin your comic fantasy of a worldwide holy chorus of ‘fulcrums’ whenever the Monty was mentioned – in Belize, Djibouti, Jerusalem, Hobart, Blackpool. Fine if it pushes Shane Gordon Wilkes and Matt Bolcombe out of the reckoning, and leaves the Monty image without further injury. Probably few Athenaeum members would have to bolt if they noticed a detective in the club.

  ‘This brother thing between the two Browns still fascinates me,’ Harpur said. ‘I imagine you’d have to take that into account?’

  ‘Take it into account in which way?’

  ‘Personnel selection.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘As I said earlier, Ralph: suppose you were looking for someone who could pass himself/herself off – the way actors have to pass themselves off as characters in a play. Might you wonder whether that kind of skill dwelt in the blood, a family trait – like brothers, Edward and James Fox, or Vanessa Redgrave and her daddy, Michael.’

  ‘Pass himself off how, where?’

  ‘If you wanted someone to pass himself/herself off – no, not as you so humorously remarked, in the firm’s panto, but to . . . well, pass himself/herself off as a loyal follower of someone he’s not actually a follower of, and, in fact, whose destruction he might be helping with.’

  ‘I think I’m more a cinema person than a theatre person,’ Ember replied. ‘It’s probably a generational matter.’

  ‘But, of course, an actor on the stage – suppose he/she makes a mistake with his/her lines, he/she’s got a prompter to put him/her right. Catastrophe averted. However, that would definitely – disastrously – not be true for someone trying to pass him/herself off in a snooping role if he/she made a mistake. Early curtain.’

  Ember said: ‘I suppose what appeals to me about cinema is its range – it can show us so much, and the more so as technology advances. Like reality. But in the theatre, you can hear their feet banging about on the boards. When King Richard III calls out, “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse,” he’s actually complaining about being in a play, because, obviously, a horse can’t be brought on to the stage.’

  ‘As a kid I used to think it was an ad for Mike Ingdom’s stables,’ Harpur said.

  God. Ember kept his face blank.

  ‘I realize Joachim Brown is only a low-level member of the firm, but would you have much personal contact with him, Ralph?’

  ‘I try to know all our people on an individual basis, as I expect you do with your workforce, Mr Harpur. That’s an essential of leadership, isn’t it? We have a lot in common. I mean, besides two daughters each. Yes, I try to maintain worthwhile links with all members of my staffs, whether in my companies’ general commercial divisions or here at the club.’

  ‘Anyone can see the Monty benefits magnificently from that.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Harpur. The club is dear to me.’

  ‘A fulcrum.’

  ‘One word for it.’ As a matter of fact, Ralph had recently read the obituary in the Daily Telegraph of someone called Mark Birley, creator of one of the smartest clubs in London, Annabel’s. This was a different kind of place from the Athenaeum
or the Garrick – more a nightclub. But it did interest Ember as another possible prestige model for the new Monty. Rich and famous people went to Annabel’s, including Royalty. Birley ran the club with renowned courtesy and taste, his shoes and even his socks custom-made, apparently. Ralph thought he might be able to manage something similar to Annabel’s with the Monty one day. He liked the idea of custom-made shoes, though socks seemed less important. Shoes mattered because the kind of people he wanted to attract would spot at once if the footwear were only ordinary – OK but made for just anyone of his size. He did not mention his Annabel’s project to Harpur, though, because the prole slob would probably have turned even more fucking satiric and sneering.

  Next day there was a rehearsal for Mansel’s wedding at St James’s. Although people wore their ordinary clothes, the rest of the run-through tried to imitate accurately how the service would be. Ralph did not often go into churches, but when he did he always found a few absolutely plus points. The materials generally looked so honest – stone walls in an old building like St James’s, slate plaques to honour dead benefactors, the pulpit of fine, genuine wood, and set above the congregation like a crow’s nest on a whaling ship, though lower than that, of course. When the vicar climbed those few steps to preach you could see him seeming to grow, until he stood there very much on top and able to give the people some decent topic to think about, like kindness or thrift, if they wanted to. Although Ralph didn’t know many vicars, or any at all currently, he would accept that some might be valid. Also, flagstone floors seemed so right to him for a church. They were usually grey or black yet had a kind of glow to them from years, even centuries, of buffing by devout shoes, though none, probably, custom-made.

  Ember could tell that Margaret, his wife, felt a real thrill at the thought of the wedding, and Ralph’s role. It would be crude to tell her Shale had probably picked him as best man so there’d be less chance of Ember’s people salvoing Manse at the service. Of course, Harpur had mentioned this to Ralph. From Harpur, he’d expect such unpleasant, truthful, sourness. Margaret used to worry about the way Shale invited a series of women into his home for spells. She’d thought he deserved something more continuous. Ralph wondered how the hell he got any woman to spend time close to him, continuous or not, including Naomi.