The Green Flash

by Winston Graham

  I had to remember what else I knew about him. Like me he’d been to Loretto, and from there had gone on to St Andrew’s and taken a classics degree. Whispers had filtered down that he’d never actually got a doctorate anywhere but had adopted it for himself. A flamboyant marriage with some noble but impoverished laird’s offspring; a big family; then some scandal or other and a divorce following on the other side; but his wife, in good Catholic fashion, had not taken her grievances to the courts. She’d died, I remembered, a few years ago and he had remarried, to another Scottish girl, but this time a rich one from the lowlands of Ayrshire.

  After dinner somebody mentioned motor cars, and he and I discovered a common interest where the old animosities didn’t show. He had owned a 4½-litre Bentley and swore with his usual zeal that it held the road better than any other car there ever was. We rattled on about Alfas and Astons and the like until the coffee and the brandy were done.

  One other guest came as quite a surprise. He arrived late, just as we were going in to dinner. Derek Jones.

  III

  Though we broke up late we went straight back to my flat and made love. A sudden need, a crawling demand of the flesh. More than I’d ever felt before. It was heady and startling and not unbrutal.

  Afterwards I said; ‘I never knew before that sex was so addictive.’

  Ah … That is when it is just right … You are joking?’

  ‘No, this time I’m not joking. You ought to know.’

  ‘I do know. But you are so prone to the throwaway line.’

  After a pause: ‘Will John wonder where you are?’

  ‘He’s in Madrid. I did not tell you?’

  ‘Think he tumbles?’

  ‘Not yet … Tell me, who was that loose-jointed, shambling young man who was almost late for dinner?’

  ‘Derek Jones. The chap I shared a flat with for a few months.’

  ‘My God, and you are angry if people take you for one of them? You couldn’t have chosen a more obvious one!’

  ‘Coming out of clink you’re not too choosy, and he offered me a bed when things were pretty bleak. That adds up to more than a bag of beans.’

  ‘What is his background?’

  ‘I don’t think his name is Jones; he took it for a whim; says he likes to feel anonymous. He calls himself an underwriter. His father bought him a partnership, or whatever it’s called, but I doubt if he ever puts in an appearance.’

  ‘What made you leave him? His peculiarity?’

  ‘Not his sexual one. The peculiarity I took exception to was his friendship with Roger Manpole.’

  ‘So we are back with him … I saw him again only last week – the first time for a year. Ever more respectable. If you did not know you would not think him crooked from his looks.’

  ‘I suppose it depends what you mean by crooked. He’s never been into drug-pushing or any of the really serious stuff, has he? He’s just an off-colour, moneymaker who runs his little companies through nominees.’

  ‘Derek Jones is one of them?’

  ‘Not in a permanent sense. But he does the odd thing. They’re very friendly and that’s not for me.’

  ‘But Roger Manpole offered you work when you came out?’

  ‘D’you know what it was? Being secretary for a company called Saurus. Overseeing their reps.’

  ‘Saurus? That is in our line – but cheap.’

  ‘Yes. They’ve got three hundred reps. Suitcase men.’

  ‘They’re the men who –’

  ‘Yes. They stand in the street with their suitcases in front of the big stores with open copies of Vogue magazine showing a full-page colour ad. for Saurus perfumes at fifteen pounds ninety-five a quarter-ounce bottle. And the men say: ‘‘Ladies, here is the same perfume at five ninety-five, and for the first four ladies to buy, only five pounds a time. Exactly and in every way precisely as advertised!’’ ’

  ‘So, yes. So, yes. Tell me how it is a cheat?’

  ‘It’s a cheat because one of Roger’s other companies, Henry Gervase Ltd, the one that turns out pornographic magazines, prints the advertisement, and clever men insert it into the current numbers of Vogue or Homes and Gardens or whatever, and the salesmen show it as if it had actually been put in and paid for.’

  ‘Surely the law can stop that! It is doubly illegal! The magazine can sue and the public can sue. I have always had a great faith in the English law because it is above politics.’

  ‘It’s above politics, but first you have to catch the rabbit and then you have to skin him. Can you imagine a judge saying: ‘‘Am I to understand this prosecution has been brought solely on the allegation that spurious pages were inserted in a certain magazine?’’ After all the public are getting five pounds’ worth of perfume for every five pounds they pay.’

  Shona snorted. ‘And he offered you this?’

  ‘Not to be a suitcase man but to be in charge of ’em – their boss. Good money. Not much less than you’re paying me now.’

  ‘We will have to look into that … Anyway you behaved quite well tonight.’

  ‘I see; good for a raise.’

  ‘You did not clutch anybody by the throat, nor smash any glasses. Almost polite to your cousin! Can it be that you are really on the mend?’

  ‘The mend from what?’

  ‘I do not know. You will not tell me. At least on the mend.’

  ‘You’re out of your tiny,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe.’ She laughed – or coughed. ‘Well, tell me more about your cousin.’

  ‘Nothing I know.’

  ‘I thought he was delightful.’ She paused. ‘How does he come into the family? Is he a first cousin?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’ve told you all I know.’

  ‘You’ve told me nothing.’

  ‘What is there to say? My family – on my father’s side – comes from the west coast of Scotland. Catholics, always have been, never changed. Lochfiern House. Far north. Near Ullapool. Nicholas Abden was made a baronet in the time of James II – of England, that is. It still goes on. The present one is Sir Charles Abden. My father was his younger brother, Stewart. There’s a brood of ’em up there now. Stewart, my father, never conformed; God knows why. He went in for motor racing, won a few things, married my mother, ran through what money he had and then through hers. He became an estate agent – quite successful – but took to drink. Or maybe it would be truer to say he went in for it more earnestly. He died when I was eleven – result of a fall.’

  ‘And Malcolm Abden is the heir to the baronetcy?’

  ‘You have it.’

  ‘So that is what I have suspected. You are the true aristocrat, not I.’

  I grunted. ‘Maybe we should bring out a Scottish moisturizing cream which has been the closely guarded secret of the Abden clan since the days of Mary Queen of Scots. How was it Mary retained her beauty so long and was able to captivate the handsome and daring young men who came to visit her from Elizabeth’s court? Only because of the secrets passed on to her in her captivity by Sir Nicholas Abden whose secret formula –’

  Shona put her fingers on my lips. ‘What is it like, this area of England? I have not been north of Glasgow.’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘D’you mean you have never been yourself?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Never met your other cousins? Surely that is a strange way to behave even in this cold-hearted country.’

  I turned over against her. ‘ I have to tell you, Shona that the Abden family didn’t at all approve of my mother; so when my father married her the family cut off all communication with him. He’d finally gone to the devil, they thought.’

  ‘Why, what is wrong with her?’

  ‘First, she was English, which would have been a bitter pill anyway. But what put her right outside the gates was that she was a Jewess.’

  There was a long silence. Then Shona breathed out gently through her nose. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Certainly is.’

  ‘I th
ought that did not happen here. But when was this – a generation, two generations ago! What were they: Nazis?’

  ‘Not quite. My uncle went through the war as a captain of the Argyll’s. He got the MC and bar. My other uncle, Duncan, was killed at Aruhem. My father tried to enlist but was turned down … You don’t latch on to some of the old families up there – particularly the Catholic ones. They take immense pride in having survived through everything: wars, persecutions, rebellions, the lot; so it’s especially important, they think, when they marry to keep the strain pure, and to keep the religion pure.’

  ‘You’re explaining very well.’

  ‘I’m not. It’s crap. But I’m explaining how they think. For a Catholic Abden to marry a Jew was pretty much the end. He’d have been as popular if he’d married Gandhi’s mother.’

  ‘And so you’ve never been to see them?’

  ‘Nor ever will.’

  ‘But you met your cousin this evening for the first time! Must the prejudice endure even in this generation?’

  ‘I would think so. My prejudice against them does. And yet …’

  ‘Yet?’

  ‘I might put him to some use.’

  ‘That sounds very calculating.’

  ‘So it is. You mentioned the other day about our never having supplied the Royal Household. I’m sure he’d have connections or will know someone who has. I’ll ring him next week.’

  ‘I think from what he said that he had heard you had been in trouble. That may add to his – er – prejudices.’

  ‘No matter. I can overcome them.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Just by being persuasive.’

  ‘Yes, by God,’ she said, looking Russian. ‘You can be that!’

  There was a long silence. She lit a cigarette.

  ‘You know I have a father in Paris?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Also a brother. I go over to see my father from time to time. When I came west, after I had begun to establish myself, my one aim was to have some of my family rejoin me. It was like the labour of Hercules to get them out. One. Then the other. Oh, the trouble! But I have run away from the Soviets and their prejudices, not expecting to find them here!’

  ‘Don’t pretend these are the first prejudices you’ve come across in the West … Anyway, if you are so family-minded, why don’t you have your father in England?’

  ‘He will not come. He speaks French – badly and laboriously, but he speaks it. He cannot master English at all. And he is deaf. And my brother has established a taxi service. Training to be a doctor in Russia … he began by driving a taxi in Paris. Now he owns a fleet and is well off. That is why they do not join me – not from absurd, infantile prejudices and resentments about race.’

  ‘All right,’ I said after a minute. ‘ I told you my family was mad.’

  ‘No, you did not. But I have been seeking to find why you have this – what do you call it – chip.’

  ‘A chip off the old block,’ I said.

  ‘Now you are only trying to confuse me. Is this – this family feud the reason why you dislike Scotsmen?’

  ‘Not altogether. But perhaps, to some extent.’

  ‘But then you are disliking a part of yourself! You are half Highland Scottish. You are tearing yourself asunder!’

  ‘Asunder,’ I said, ‘is not in colloquial use nowadays. You might say: ‘‘ split down the bleeding middle’’.’

  ‘However you describe it, that is the fact of the matter.’

  ‘Why should you worry?’

  ‘Because I believe you would be a better human being if you came to terms with yourself.’

  ‘And better in bed?’

  She sat up slowly, wiped her lips carefully with a tissue. ‘It depends how you mean the word. Not physically, of course. But if you were a more complete human being, then that must be so. Sometimes when we are making love – even tonight when it has been so I special – I see a look on your face almost of hostility. Almost as if you disliked me – or disliked the act.’

  ‘Certainly not the last,’ I said. ‘ Not even the first. But don’t you think in sex there ought to be an element of conflict?’

  ‘Conflict is another word. Not if there is something destructive in the conflict.’

  ‘You think I am destructive?’

  ‘I think you’re lonely. And you can’t cure that except from within.’

  ‘David the old schizo,’ I said. ‘Abden and Hyde. What more d’you want? Two for the price of one?’

  ‘No, it is not that at all,’ she said in vexation. ‘And you know it is not or you would not suggest it … I want to know, or to find out, if I can, why you dislike people.’

  ‘Who said I did? I can assure you – or reassure you if that’s better – that in spite of the element of conflict you seem to detect in our lovemaking, I certainly do not dislike you.’

  She sighed. ‘That is something to know. You see – it is so dangerous – you have this infinite charm you can put on at will. I suppose you are going to essay it with your cousin – in whom, God help me, I detect some likeness! But there are few if any people you really like. A small number you tolerate; but as for the rest … Only someone who has come to know you as much as I do can have any idea what you think of the rest. Because the charm goes quite deep. It is hard to see through it. But when one does see through it … one shivers.’

  I kissed her. ‘Dangerous character.’

  ‘Yes … dangerous. And horr-ible. And since I am a person who in general is attached to the laws of cause and effect I am seeking, have been seeking …’ She stopped and laughed. ‘No doubt I am out of my tiny. Is that what you said?’

  ‘Like me to stretch out on a couch?’

  ‘You are already stretched out.’

  ‘Carry on, Mrs Freud.’

  ‘How can one carry on in the face of such – derision? Of course I am arguing in circles myself. But you don’t care enough, you don’t feel enough – perhaps not even for yourself. You – you are like a Buddhist, but for the wrong reasons!’

  ‘Well, stone me,’ I said. ‘What trip are we off on now?’

  She saw my eyes going over her and pulled the sheet to cover her.

  ‘A Buddhist cares little for this world because he believes, so long as his life here is based on good moral precepts, that what happens to him in it is unimportant. You care little for this world, care so little what happens, below a certain shallow level, not because you are developing and following your Karma but either because it does not exist or because it is hidden behind a wall, buried too deep to be got at!’

  ‘It doesn’t exist,’ I said. ‘ Haven’t you noticed I have no reflection in the mirror? Makes shaving difficult.’

  After a few moments she sighed. ‘Oh, well, that is how it is, I suppose. It just seems … such a waste.’

  ‘A waste of what?’

  ‘A human being.’

  ‘Well, thanks a million.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘it shows I am beginning to care a little. And that is even more perilous.’

  ‘Very perilous indeed.’

  Chapter Eight

  I

  I went to see Malcolm. I have as horny a sense of pride as any Highland Scot, but I can put it under wraps for the special occasion. This was the special occasion. He wasn’t too hail-fellow when I rang, and still less so when I called. Looking as big, as dishevelled and as impressive as ever, he said he’d had a busy day, there was a long evening ahead of him and he was travelling north tomorrow; but I managed to outflank the early pockets of resistance and got him talking about cars again and advising me what to buy. Then I persuaded him to walk round the corner to Claridge’s, where I bought him a series of champagne cocktails and led him to tell me about himself and his family. Having got up to the right atmospheric pressure, and made it clear to him by a number of casual references to titled people that my present social standing was not despicable, I brought the subject round to the purpose of my
visit.

  He wasn’t enthusiastic, to say the least, and his eyes like unlit electric light bulbs too big for their sockets, ranged round the ornate room for some subject more interesting than the one I’d brought up. He found it in a young blonde who had just come in in a dashing scarlet velvet cocktail frock with a split skirt and choker pearls.

  ‘Damned good-looking girl,’ he muttered.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know her.’

  He looked at me doubtfully. ‘What? You do?’

  I didn’t, in fact, but I knew her by sight. I’d seen her somewhere before.

  She took a table by herself, and a waiter brought her a drink. They exchanged a few words. She looked towards the door.

  ‘Excuse me.’ I walked circuitously towards the restaurant and stopped the waiter. A five-pound note changed hands.

  ‘Miss Adamson?’ he said. ‘Miss Rona Adamson. She comes in quite frequent I think she’s a dancer.’

  That was it, of course. I went across to her.

  ‘Miss Adamson. I wonder if you remember me? David Abden. We met at Lady Rowton’s.’

  She looked at me, and her eyes, from being cold, became less so.

  ‘Lady Rowton’s?’ she said. ‘ I don’t think I know Lady Rowton.’

  ‘Could I be mistaken? It’s Miss Rona Adamson, isn’t it? Would it be at the Bellevilles’, then?’

  ‘I do know Mary Belleville, but I don’t remember –’

  ‘I’m sure you’re expecting a friend, Miss Adamson. But I wondered if you could make our day by sparing five minutes to meet my cousin first? Dr Malcolm Abden. He was most anxious to meet you. Of course you’ll have seen him on TV.’