Only The Ruthless Can Play

by John Burke

  Only The Ruthless Can Play

  John Burke

  © John Burke 1965

  John Burke has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1965 by John Long Ltd.

  This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  For Jean, for more reasons than I could list on one page.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  One

  Jessica awoke that morning to the usual pain of impending loss. It was not intense any longer — just nagging and inevitable. Andrew would be going away as he had so many times gone away. After two years of it she was able to cope. Perhaps, she sometimes thought, she wouldn’t know what to do if it weren’t there.

  Andrew was already out of bed. She had been awakened by the familiar sensation of his sliding away. Reluctant to open her eyes, she was nevertheless conscious of the smooth way in which he managed it. He could draw up his feet and swing them out on to the floor without disturbing the bedclothes. One might almost have imagined that he was being considerate, not wanting to wake one; yet this was something which never failed to wake her. She could sleep through a thunderstorm or the sudden bark of a sports car along Old Brompton Road, but when Andrew slid silently away he dragged her up from sleep.

  She turned over and opened her eyes.

  His every movement and sequence of movements were always the same. That was what came of being an ambitious potential executive with time and motion study training. Never off duty, never forgetful. Don’t walk twice across a room when once will do. Don’t get bedclothes in a tangle and don’t get paper tissues twisted when taking them from the box. When going into the bathroom turn on the hot tap while brushing your teeth so that the water will be hot by the time you are ready for it. Arrange clothes in the bedroom so that they can be stepped into in the right order. A glance at the wrist-watch to check the time. A flick of the comb through the hair before putting the jacket on: always before, never afterwards.

  Jessica wondered if this was how his wife, too, saw him.

  He adjusted the handkerchief in his top pocket.

  She said: ‘And your money.’

  He smiled warily at her in the glass. ‘Mm?’

  ‘Your money,’ she said. ‘It goes in your right-hand pocket.’

  ‘Of course.’ He took up his loose change from the dressing table. He grew swiftly irritated if reminded of something which he had in fact not forgotten.

  Jessica pushed herself up in bed. ‘I’ll get you something to eat before you go.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing. I’ll have a cup of coffee on the way in. Treat yourself to another ten minutes in bed.’

  ‘It’s no treat when I’m on my own.’

  They had this same little discussion each time. She knew it was stupid and unreasonable of her but was driven to it. However often and however resolutely he moved away from her she tried despairingly to hold on to him.

  She said: ‘This evening … ?’

  Andrew smiled again. Now it was a neat, careful smile. His lips, so demanding in the night, were now thin and reluctant. The divisions were all so tidy in his mind. There were things he did not wish her to say to him in the morning and things he would not say to her. He did not like her to put her arms round him in the morning. He preferred her not to be naked in the morning.

  He was looking at the door. Already he was far away — a tall man with brown, determined eyes, sandy hair that glinted grey above his ears, a blunt chin and large hands that were always competent and often brutal … a businessman, a stranger in her bedroom, trying to find a polite way of saying goodbye and getting out.

  ‘This will be my last evening with Muriel,’ he said patiently. ‘I can’t very well stay out. That would really cause trouble — now, wouldn’t it?’

  Jessica was all in favour of there being trouble. Not so long ago he had talked savagely of provoking just such trouble. She wanted to remind him that today was an anniversary, but he wouldn’t have liked it. Two years ago today she had moved into this flat and two years ago today he had said that he would soon be leaving his wife and coming to live with her. No, he wouldn’t have been pleased if she had reminded him of that.

  He said: ‘Well … ’

  ‘Well,’ she said.

  He picked up his brief-case and came towards the bed. He stooped and kissed her. She was determined to let him go in silence, but as he reached the door she heard herself saying: ‘We’ll be able to manage something while the Course is on. Nobody will notice.’

  ‘Jess, we’ve already gone over this. It would be silly to sacrifice everything — ’

  ‘Everything?’ His hoped-for promotion, his career, his reputation, the wife he said he detested … that was what he meant. She said: ‘There’s bound to be an opportunity. I know these Executive Courses. I ought to — I’ve shepherded the victims through enough of them in my time. There won’t be any risk. In the hotel, or when we go up to the plant at Belby … ’

  ‘When the Course is ended,’ he said heavily, ‘I’ll come round.’

  ‘You make it sound like an arduous duty.’

  ‘Jess, you know I want to be with you.’

  Did she? Did he? It used to be once a week. Then once a fortnight. Now there was no rhythm, no pattern: unlike everything else in his neatly calculated life, there was no set routine for this. She tried to tell herself it was better this way. She would probably not have wanted him to come home to her every night. She was growing accustomed to things as they were and wouldn’t have wanted him to be there always. That was what she told herself.

  ‘I really must get a move on,’ said Andrew.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes. But, Jess … ’ He was quickly contriving the right blend of firmness, gentleness and faint reproach. ‘You know what the results of this Course mean to me. This is the breakthrough — or failure. I can’t afford to relax. I’m up against tough opposition. I can’t let myself be distracted.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course not. I know.’

  ‘There’s my girl.’

  He looked at his watch once more and turned away. Jessica rolled over on her side to watch him go. At the door he waved self-consciously as though from a train drawing away from a station platform. She waved back. After the door had closed she heard the rattle of the hanger as he took his overcoat out of the hall cupboard. Then there was the click of the front door.

  She turned back towards the dressing-table mirror. He had gone. He had left her room and her mirror. It reflected a tilted pattern of wallpaper and a corner of the ceiling. A short time ago Andrew’s face had been there. Now there was not even a lingering ghost.

  From this angle she could not see herself in the glass. It didn’t matter. She knew all that the mirror could tell her. She was Jessica Rogers, she was twenty-eight. She had fair hair and hazel eyes, her upper lip would be bruised because of Andrew last night, and there would be a red mark on her left shoulder. She had a flat of her own, a red Mini-Minor, and a view into a square that was really an oblong of yellowish grass shaded by sycamores and a lime tree. She had a job, a life of her own, and a lover.

  Funny word, lover. It sounded odd, as any word does if you say it over a few times; particularly at this time of day. Perhaps Andrew was right: one ought to be prosaic in the morning.

  Jessica forced herself to get out of be
d and draw the curtains.

  The April morning was still and opaque on the square. There was a faint haze which would remain a haze through most of the day, tinted by spring sunlight so that the houses opposite would glow through the trees in the afternoon. But she would not be here this afternoon. She would be making the last-minute arrangements for supplies of leather binders and pencils to members of the Intersyn Fifth Executive Course, and checking the list of names ready for tomorrow.

  You know what the results of this Course mean to me … Oh, yes, she knew all right. Promotion for the star pupils. A job as General Manager in one of the overseas subsidiaries or top grade personnel work in the production plants. High level Public Relations and liaison posts. After they had watched you and questioned you and lured you on in question and answer, challenge and reaction, they would assess your potentialities as a manager, your ability to handle men and figures and campaigns and technicalities.

  Success would also mean her seeing less of Andrew.

  He had evaded this admission but she knew the score as well as he did. She had been Course Secretary for long enough to know that success wasn’t something that you achieved once and for all. When you got to the top you had to work to stay there. You had to show that you were worthy of the Company’s confidence in you. And the Company liked its top executives to be married and settled. It liked them to fit into its established scheme and to accept its established values. It wanted mature, responsible men. It didn’t like them to visit younger unmarried female employees in South Kensington love nests.

  Jessica began to dress. However much Andrew might say to her in the frenzied, ecstatic darkness, whatever promises he might give or imply, she knew he was unlikely to leave his wife if he came through this Course triumphant.

  *

  Muriel said: ‘It’s just another excuse. I’ve said so all along. You’re looking forward to being away from me all that time.’

  Andrew nudged his brief-case along the sofa and put his head back, closing his eyes for a few seconds. ‘You know perfectly well what it means to us,’ he said wearily. ‘It shows I’m in the running for a top job. It’s what I’ve worked for. It’s one of the really big things. I haven’t slogged away so hard all these years for nothing.’

  ‘I’d sooner you stayed at home and gave some of your attention to me,’ she pouted, ‘and didn’t try so hard.’

  ‘Once you’ve started, you can’t stop. You know that. God knows I’ve told you often enough.’

  ‘God knows,’ she agreed, ‘you have.’

  He banged his hand down against the edge of the new sofa. ‘You don’t object to the money. You use it up fast enough. You’ll be glad of an increase when I get it.’

  ‘I’d sooner see more of you than more money.’

  It was simply not true. Even as a debating point it was feeble. But Muriel was shameless in her arguments, utterly convinced of the truth of whatever she was saying at the moment she said it.

  Andrew said: ‘What about a drink?’

  For an instant there was a possibility that she might argue even on this. If he had phrased it carelessly — ‘Couldn’t we have a drink?’ or ‘For God’s sake let’s have a drink’ — she would certainly have used it against him. But by lobbing it casually at her as though not worrying whether she caught it or not, he had given her no easy way of retaliating. Besides, she wanted a drink herself. It was not a truce but it was at least a lull. She poured a large whisky for each of them.

  They drank. He ought to try some genuinely pleasant gambit, some jokingly affectionate remark that would make her smile and somehow open up the evening for them. But it wouldn’t work. It had ceased to work a long time ago.

  All he could do was wait until she came gradually up to the boil again — up to what he thought of as her critical distillation point.

  Muriel put her drink down. It had briefly soothed her and then provided new energy. She said:

  ‘So I won’t be hearing from you for heaven knows how many weeks?’

  ‘The weeks,’ he said, ‘are fixed. I’ve given you all the details. I can see you the weekend before we go north to the plant. And no bar has been placed on our writing letters.’

  ‘I know your letters,’ she said. ‘“Having wonderful time, glad you’re not here.”’

  Her flaxen hair was as sleek and smooth as ever, but like her voice its brightness had hardened and taken on a brassy artificiality. The slightly irregular mouth that had once seemed mocking, knowledgeable and desirable was now permanently twisted so that it wrenched at her words as they came out and distorted them. He must have been very unobservant fifteen years ago not to have seen how she would shape up and how the amusing petulance would cease to be amusing. But he hadn’t seen and now he had this on his hands. In his job it wouldn’t have happened: he wouldn’t have committed Intersyn to a lifetime programme on the basis of a fascinating new theory that might not work out in practice; no chemist’s enthusiasm over an apparent revolution in polymerisation reactions would get him to recommend the buying in of new machinery and new moulds until the pilot plant had been driven to exhaustion under all stresses, all temperatures, all conditions. Unfortunately human beings could not be evaluated in quite the same way. Muriel had started out glossy, smooth surfaced and beautiful. He had thought she would be malleable, but she had congealed too soon. Something had gone wrong and she had hardened instead of remaining pliable. He would never understand why. All he knew was that when a thing like this happened there was no way of going back and starting again: once the material was set, it was set. At this stage a sensible man abandoned the whole project and started again.

  But the Company wouldn’t like that.

  He said: ‘We get two weekends off during the Course. The one before we go north and one — ’

  ‘Decent of them. Like being in the Army, or at school.’

  ‘If a man’s not willing to give up six weeks in order to set himself up for life, the Company wouldn’t be far wrong in thinking that he’s not the sort of man they need for the really responsible jobs.’

  ‘The Company,’ she said on a dying fall of disparagement.

  ‘When we met,’ he reminded her, ‘you were very impressed by my being there. You knew you were on to a good thing. So did your mother and father.’

  ‘My father,’ she said, ‘never spent a day away from my mother during their whole married life.’

  ‘Your father,’ he said, ‘never earned more than five hundred pounds a year and they lived in a Council house which you told me over and over again you hated like poison.’

  ‘Oh, you talk such bloody nonsense,’ she said.

  He knew he had scored. When she said he was talking nonsense she was telling him that he spoke the clear, precise truth.

  Now he could afford to be generous, knowing that patience and generosity made her angrier than anything else. He told her in a reasonable tone how the course was organised and how many other people would be on it and implicitly, complacently appealed to her to see his point of view and sit back and wait while he worked for their future — or, if she preferred, to go out and enjoy herself while he applied his whole mind to the task of coming out ahead of all the other contestants. For it was a contest. And many of his rivals would have a head start over him. They had been to the right schools, knew the right people; could even be related to directors or friends of directors.

  ‘You’re watched the whole time,’ he said. ‘When you’re drinking in the bar they decide whether you’re carrying it off with the right social grace. They like to know if you can argue a knotty problem without putting your opponent’s back up. And by the time you reach the special dinner at the end of the Course ‘

  ‘Wives invited?’ asked Muriel harshly.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘I’d always heard that big companies like to have wives along. It’s got a lot to do with the man’s career. They judge the wives as well.’

  She picked up distorted fragments of so man
y things from so many sources; picked them up clumsily and applied them wrongly. In spite of himself he said: ‘That would finish us, wouldn’t it?’

  Her face puckered with contrived misery. She had been more than half wanting him to say something like that so that she could wallow in the luxury of being wounded. It happened a dozen times a week and it bored and exasperated him at the same time, and also — as it was meant to do — filled him with feelings of guilt. She actively sought unhappiness and then turned it back upon him. She made him feel guilt where there was no logical reason for guilt. He said: ‘Look, Muriel, you know I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘I don’t. I don’t know any such thing.’

  This showed every sign of being a wonderful evening, he thought bitterly. As a matter of principle he had to spend the final evening before the Course started with his wife, but he had known all along that it would be like this. She said she wanted to see more of him and wished he could spend more of his time with her; yet when he was here she used him only as a sounding board for her dissatisfactions. He would have been happier with Jess, having a quiet meal with Jess, going to bed with Jess.

  It had to be admitted, though, that Jess too was getting querulous nowadays. Even in her company this evening there would have been resentful overtones. As if it weren’t enough to feel irrationally guilty about Muriel, he felt twitches of guilt about Jess. Did one have to be plagued with guilt over every woman, every damned little thing?

  The trouble is, he said to himself, that men have consciences; women only have emotions.

  Resolutely he excluded the two women from his mind. He and Muriel had dinner together and talked in bursts of rasping hostility, making no communication. Finally they went to bed together and he even made love to her — or, at any rate, went through the motions. She gave no sign of pleasure; but if he had left her alone and not touched her she would have said, ‘Oh, so I don’t appeal to you any more?’ or something of that sort and they would have been awake half the night arguing. As it was, he had grown skilled at performing the routine while his attention remained uncommitted.