The Green Flash

by Winston Graham

  I lay back breathing the muck out of my lungs. Somehow sleep still seemed vaguely threatening, so I opted for a cigarette.

  I chewed over to myself the significance of these nightmares. I tried to decide how much of it had actually happened to me. Certainly the cell; certainly the cupboard door. Of course it was all true! But how much of it did the nightmare exaggerate? Had it all happened exactly like that to me in the past, or had I partly been dreaming about a dream?

  Chapter Five

  I

  The day after Derek left – with no encouragement from me for any of his nefarious schemes – I took an hour off from work and went to Harrods to see about new curtain material. The present stuff was like old sackcloth; what I wanted was a good clear yellow, something lively. The new flat was light, but London gets its overload of dark days. I found some figured silk at a sky-high price per yard, but it looked just the job, so having fingered the material and held it to the light and made a swift guess at the hole it was going to make in my overdraft, I looked around for an assistant. In the distance was a dark trim young gent deep in conversation with a fat woman about some cushions. Nearer, a female assistant was on the telephone. Five or six other people milled about variously concerned with looking after themselves. I waited. I looked at my watch. Choosing this particular stuff, plus a hold-up finding a parking place, had taken longet than expected. There was a brush I had to have with Shona when she got back – to do with marketing Faunus – and she was due at three thirty. It was now three fifteen.

  Of course there was no great hurry. She would be there until four thirty.

  I walked into the next department and said to a personage: ‘Pardon me, can you help me over some curtain material I want to buy.’

  The personage looked at me. ‘I’m afraid that isn’t my department, sir. I’m sure someone will be free in a few moments.’

  ‘I’ve been more than a few moments,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m sorry. I’ll try to find someone to attend to you.’

  I wandered back to the curtain material. The lady assistant was still on the telephone. The other one had changed his tack with the fat woman and seemed to be trying to interest her in a bedspread. I fingered the material and let it fall back. It was about a quarter roll, a bit more than I should want. I looked at my watch. Three twenty-five. The assistant on the telephone had stopped bleeping but was holding the receiver to her ear, a hard-worked, patient expression on her face. With her free hand she tapped her order book.

  It was three twenty-seven. I picked up the roll of material, put it under my arm and walked out of the department. It was long and quite heavy, and you certainly couldn’t hide it. Two women were arguing about a linen ruffle but didn’t raise their heads. I sidestepped them and walked past them, through the television department to the lift. No one took any notice. There were stairs just round the corner, but I waited for the lift. Presently it came. It was half full of shoppers but they were all concerned with their own affairs. One small boy did stare at me with a fair amount of interest but he made no comment.

  The lift reached the ground floor and belched out its passengers. I walked through the various departments to the side door and went out. My car was just round the corner. I threw the curtain material into the passenger seat and drove off.

  II

  As it happened I was in for a bigger brush with Shona than I expected. It began on the Faunus thing, of course, but halfway through she told me she was of the opinion that I was intent on cheapening the reputation of the firm.

  Then it all came out. It was the talcum powder I’d ordered last week. I’d made it grade five instead of grade one, and only accidentally it had come to her notice. Certainly John Carreros could never have told the difference. But now that it had come to light, they were both furious.

  I said: ‘You know as well as I do how many grades there are. Let’s not deceive ourselves. If we’d changed from deep-mined talc to the open-cast, sterilized stuff you could say I wasn’t playing fair by the customer; but first to fifth is really a distinction without a difference. And it saves us money. I am trying to save you money, not make money for myself. In bulk buying –’

  ‘I know very well what it saves in bulk buying; but I will not have it. Please understand that. You know that some talc carries the spores of tetanus. Would you want –’

  ‘Shona, don’t wave that bogey in my face. Fifth grade is as safe as first. You want the best of both worlds – expansion, bigger sales, bigger profits, fine! – but you still expect to run the place as if it were a – corner shop selling home-made toffee!’

  She tapped her foot, but the thick-pile carpet soaked up the annoyance. ‘You argue like a crook, David. I told you from the beginning that if bulk manufacture meant lowered quality then, whatever the sales, you would have failed! So you want to fail, is that it? You can’t do what you said you could do, not because it is impossible but because it is not in your character to do it!’

  I knew I was in the wrong, but that doesn’t make you any more reasonable at the time. The row made me forget altogether about the roll of stuff in my flat, and it was not until I got home late that evening that I saw it and stared at it with critical memory.

  The following morning I put the material against the present curtains and up to the light. It was very grand. Too grand for a top-floor flat. It would have looked fine in Shona’s lush drawing-room. Derek would have loved it. I ate my breakfast and went off to Bond Street, where I was to spend most of the day, but at eleven returned to the flat. I picked up the roll and put it in my car and drove to Harrods.

  Parking was even more difficult than yesterday, and I had to walk quite a way through the streets with the roll under my arm. Fortunately it wasn’t raining.

  Through the enormous food halls, find the lift, and up to the second floor. The state of play seemed very much the same as yesterday, except that the second assistant wasn’t on the telephone; she was leafing in a depressed way through a pile of papers at the pay desk. I went across and put the roll of material back on the pile where I’d found it yesterday. It didn’t seem the time to consider another choice, so I turned away.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said a voice. ‘ Can I help you?’

  It was the assistant who yesterday had been in spirited conversation with the fat old girl.

  I said: ‘This material; afraid it isn’t right. The colour’s too strong. I’ve just had it to the daylight to make sure.’

  He hesitated, his face a notable study.

  ‘I thought … You brought it from the lift, sir?’

  ‘Yes. I wanted to make quite certain. But I’m afraid it isn’t right. Too bright for my flat.’

  ‘Ah.’ We both stood there a few seconds. I made no move to leave. ‘Can I interest you in something else, then?’

  ‘Not this morning; I haven’t the time. I shall come earlier tomorrow. If you’ll give me your card I’ll ask for you.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ A card was reluctantly offered. He was still flatulent with suspicion. It could be that someone had noticed the disappearance of the roll. But there was nothing he could do. No one can be accused of returning a bolt of material.

  I nodded and left him.

  The next morning I was there at nine thirty and bought something less high-society. I don’t trunk he had ever expected to see me again, and it gave me a special pleasure to turn up.

  All the same I was aware that I had been playing the juvenile delinquent again.

  III

  Somewhere along the line people began to speak of Shona and David. It began that year but it was more common the next. We were a couple working together in harness, building and expanding as we went. John got left behind.

  He was a hard man to read, but most of the time he played along. Now and then I caught him looking at me over the top of his Robin Day spectacles and I wondered if he was biding his time. I was helping to lead his firm in a direction he didn’t really want it to go, and if I put a foot
wrong he might kick the other from under me. Particularly if I started making it with his wife. Late in the day I heard tales of two other young men who had been in the firm in the early years and had left. No one knew what had happened to them so I couldn’t ask them for details. There was also a report that Shona had had an affair with some young marquess, but that had been over for a while.

  An American called Barton was appointed as our potential representative in the States, and I went across a couple of times to see how he was getting on. Shona would not come with me, said she would fly over only when the project was fully ready to be launched. Once or twice I brought her back presents: terribly discreet things like a desk set in red morocco with ‘Shona’ on it in gold leaf.

  The con man with a dirk in his stocking had deteriorated into a sleek executive type expanding a business and initiating an export drive, flying to New York first-class in his pinstripe.

  I saw a bit of Caroline Rowton, who’d had a disastrous love affair and wanted someone’s shoulder to weep on. And once or twice I had mild, brief affairs of my own. In so far as I like any company I like the company of attractive women; I enjoy taking them out, giving them a good time, just talking to them and listening to them. But unfortunately there usually comes a point at a quiet dinner where a girl lets out a spark. If it doesn’t ignite in you she isn’t really happy to go on enjoying the dinner and leaving it platonic. She thinks there’s been something disappointing in her, disappointing to you, that is. And it worries her. Or else she thinks there’s something wrong with you. More than once in those years I’ve found myself sleeping with a girl more out of politeness than passion. I’d as soon have gone to bed with a good book.

  For holidays I started popping off to Barbados. I hit on an excellent hotel first time and stuck to it. Good beach, just tolerable company, good sunshine, good food and no temptation to gamble my salary away, as sometimes happened in London.

  Shona and I talked and argued much more on a personal level now – and on a more or less equal basis that could register a disagreement without ill will. Although committed to the expansion she was still influenced by John, still kept turning her head to look over her shoulder at the old ways, the aristocratic advantages of scarcity, the principle of restricted supply and restricted outlets, the fact that when a woman opened her handbag and took out a Shona lipstick knowledgeable people would be aware that she could only have bought it at one of a few exclusive shops.

  When we had disagreements they were hardly ever aired at the monthly get-togethers which took place in the new assembly room at the Stevenage factory; they’d brew up before or after in the semi-privacy of her own office. But because of the none-too-thick walls, these set-tos were conducted in the lowered voices of terrorists about to plant a bomb, and this made it all the more difficult to work up a temper over them. Once she hissed at me: ‘Go to hell, you stupid little man!’ and then seeing how comic it was she burst out laughing.

  She didn’t have a nice laugh; not like the clear note of her voice – it was broken, like a twelve-year-old boy’s. But it suited her.

  When I came back from Barbados the second time she asked if I had enjoyed myself and then added: ‘Have you ever fenced, David?’

  ‘Fenced? At school a bit. Centuries ago.’

  ‘That’s at least five years. Well, I go once a week to the Sloane gymnasium. It is perhaps the nearest I can now get to ballet, and it is an aid to fitness. If you are doing nothing tomorrow night, possibly you would like to come with me?’

  ‘OK,’ I said. It was the first sign of social friendliness in more than two years. Even John Carreros, with that one invitation to bridge at his club – which had never been repeated – had been more forthcoming.

  So on the Tuesday I went. The fencing school was in this big hall, as big as a film studio, with the floor marked out in white paint to line out the fencing territories. A fair number of people turned up, some getting tuition, others practising on their own or having mock contests. Those actually in contention had wires running from their backs to a control panel, so that every time a hit was scored a bell rang and a light showed on the board. That didn’t stop them howling out in triumph as well – a sort of ‘gotcher’ without the consonants.

  Shona was good, as I suppose you would have expected, and you could guess at her Bolshoi training by the way she used her feet. We did a bit of limbering up together, then I sat and watched while she had a couple of bouts with a slim, fair, pretty female who was better still. The girl won 9–1 and 9–2, and then Shona, breathing hard, took off her mask and sat beside me and introduced me to this girl, who was called Erica Lease.

  Eighteen or nineteen: long narrow face, deepish voice, a cheeky way with her, sultry eyes which didn’t quite match her comic style. They said she was among the top women fencers in the country.

  After she had cooled off Shona said: ‘Come, David, let us try a little engagement.’

  We shoved on protective masks, got wired up and had a go. It was a casual bout without any formality except the bells, and of course she scored the first seven points over me more or less as it grabbed her. I was rusty. When she put on her mask there had been a glint in her eyes; now when I saw her sword flickering over my chest it seemed to me to be warlike behaviour that went a bit beyond ordinary fencing. And the ‘yah’ she uttered every time she scored a point riled me. They hadn’t shouted like that at Loretto. So I began to concentrate. I tried to recall in five minutes all I’d forgotten over the last decade. I scored two hits before she won 9–2.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, grasping my hand in the formal way. ‘You did well.’

  ‘Not well enough.’ I rubbed my arm where her last point had been scored.

  ‘You could be good, I think. You have quick reflexes. Do you not think so, Erica?’

  ‘He could be good.’

  ‘I’ll come again,’ I said, ‘after I’ve done a job on my reflexes.’

  Pupils a muddy grey, even though the whites were clear. Maybe they masked the mischief. ‘Come next Saturday,’ she said. ‘ We have some good county trials. Shona, bring him then.’

  ‘I cannot,’ said Shona. ‘We shall be in the States.’

  ‘Ah. Then the week after. Or as soon as you come back.’

  ‘I will do that.’

  ‘Have you fenced for long?’ I asked the girl.

  ‘Oh, all my life.’ She pulled off her gauntlet and grinned at me. ‘Mine, they say, was a foil birth.’

  ‘The sport’s on the increase,’ said a chap standing near. ‘There’s a new school opening in Lambeth later this month.’

  ‘Yes, I put money into it,’ said Miss Lease. ‘Have you time for a chink, Shona? We’re all going round the corner in a minute.’

  Eight of us went. It was a jolly party, and for once Shona seemed overshadowed by the others, who all chattered in loud voices and interrupted each other and yelped good-humouredly at their own jokes. After the stimulation of the sport she was in one of her quiescent moods, hair screwed back any way, small-boned and foreign in her camel-hair coat. Not the great lady for the time being.

  She caught my eye, blinking her own through somebody else’s cigarette smoke.

  ‘I expect you do much of this in Barbados, David.’

  ‘Much of what?’

  ‘Drinking in bars.’

  ‘To excess. It’s Jerry Dawson’s weakness.’

  ‘Does he go with you? I didn’t know.’

  ‘This year, yes. Of course the whole island is a sink of vice.’

  ‘That is a funny joke; but who knows? Think of Haiti.’

  Talk of holidays had gone around, and it seemed Erica had recently been to Cap Ferrat. She had met the Gregory Pecks while she was there. And David Niven. And Trevor Howard.

  As I drove Shona home I said: ‘A high-flying filly.’

  ‘Who, Erica? Yes. Lives a full life. If she concentrated on her fencing she would be a world beater.’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘No.�
��

  ‘Lovers?’

  ‘Why, are you interested?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Though I see she would be top of the milk for many a good man.’

  ‘Not for you? Oh, come now. Pray be honest.’

  ‘You know that’s not my best policy.’

  She laughed, broken-voiced. ‘You’ve not stolen anything from the till yet, have you?’

  ‘Not a bean. Disappointing.’

  ‘But you can still be honest about Erica?’

  I pondered. ‘ She’s OK, yes, I could bed her. But she’s not really my style.’

  ‘Who is?’

  It was an incautious question. I said: ‘You, of course.’

  The lights went green and I edged forward. The car in front carried an L-plate. The driver was so nervous that even her brake lights were trembling.

  Shona said: ‘I think I had better take that remark as unspoken.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was not looking for that answer.’

  ‘Well, now you have it.’

  We turned into South Audley Street.

  ‘It would never do.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I need you still to remain in the firm.’

  ‘Of course. I don’t see that the two ends are incompatible.’

  She patted my arm. ‘But I am afraid, David, that that is how it is.’

  Chapter Six

  I

  I flew to New York on the Friday and was met at Kennedy by Jim Barton and by another man we’d engaged called Phil Grogam, a big hearty Jewish character who had been an executive with Estée Lauder. Shona reluctantly followed on the Monday. John would not come, so she arrived quite alone. She was met at the airport, of course, by a bandwagon of reporters and publicity men, and photographed and interviewed in the airport buildings, in the limousine, in the lobby of the Pierre. I was surprised to see how edgy she was; I suppose she realized she was now in the country of the big talkers, the big sellers and the big spenders. All the same in the end she had her way and insisted on a quiet luncheon with me. I explained to her about the party we had arranged at the hotel that evening; the fashion press would be there in even greater force, of course; the buyers for the major stores, a variety of people who counted in one way or another; and a few celebrities.