The Odd Flamingo

by Nina Bawden

  He was half way up the side of the earthwork, crouching in the gorse. The match flared up brightly and I saw him clearly, his knees drawn up against the side of the hole, his arms outstretched and clinging on to the gorse. He looked filthy; the whites of his eyes were a dirty yellow colour and bloodshot.

  He said, “I wondered if you would come,” and dropped on to the ground beside me. He was breathing heavily and he smelt appallingly of sweat and dirt and fear.

  I said, my voice loud with relief, “Well, you’ve made a pretty mess for yourself, haven’t you? How d’you think I’m going to get you out of it now?”

  He said, “Shut up, for God’s sake. Do you want to bring them about my ears?”

  The match went out and I could see nothing of him except a patch of lighter darkness which was his flaxen head.

  I said, “No one saw me come. I swear it.” I gave him a cigarette and he lit it thankfully. We crouched on the damp floor of the hole and talked in whispers. I said to him all the things I had planned to say. I pleaded with him, bullied him and encouraged him. And all the time he stayed as still as stone, a sullen, angry stranger, out of my reach. I could only guess at the depth of his terror; he had all the blind, irrational panic of the hunted man, nothing mattered to him any longer except that he should not be caught. I asked, to shock him into reason, whether he had killed Jasmine Castle. He denied it dully and without feeling, as if it were not important.

  I told him that I was looking for Rose. I began to ask him questions, small, practical things. He was quite logical and clear when he answered me.

  I said, “Did you know that Piers was a member of The Odd Flamingo? He told me that he never went there. That it wasn’t his sort of place.”

  Humphrey said, “He’s always posing, you know. Maybe he thought it wasn’t grand enough. He has a ridiculously inflated sense of dignity.”

  I said, “The police think there is something fishy about the place. Did you notice anything?”

  My eyes were used to the darkness now and I saw him grin. “I was usually tight,” he said. “It isn’t the sort of place to contemplate sober.”

  I asked him if he had ever met anyone called Jimmie and he was doubtful. “I don’t think so. There were any number of youngsters I knew by their christian names, but I don’t remember a Jimmie. There was a James. Piers called him James, anyway. That’s his way. He likes to be formal. He thinks it makes him sound like a nice old Edwardian gent. This boy was about twenty. Would he be the one?”

  I said, “I don’t know. Tell me about him.”

  Humphrey had only seen him once. The boy had lint-white hair and he wore a cheap, smart suit, very broad across the shoulders and very tight round the hips. He carried what seemed to be a great deal of money in an expensive pigskin case. He had been on his own on the evening that Humphrey had met him with Piers and it seemed, though Humphrey could not be sure about it, that Piers had met him before.

  He said, “They seemed pretty matey. James seemed to think a great deal of Piers. He listened to him as if he were listening to God Almighty. It seemed a bit out of character in a boy like that. Piers lapped it up. He likes adulation, you know. You’d never think it was all that important to him, would you? That he should be admired, I mean.”

  I asked, “Do you remember what they talked about?”

  “I don’t think I do. I wasn’t very interested, honestly. He wasn’t a particularly pleasant young man.”

  I said slowly, “Humphrey, have you any idea how Piers makes a living?”

  Humphrey shifted his position on the damp bottom of the earthwork. “God, I don’t know. I never enquire. You know his mother left him a packet when he was twenty-one? He spent it all in a couple of years. I think it’s probably true what he says—he lives on horse-racing. He’s surprisingly adept at it. I don’t expect he pays income tax or anything silly like that.”

  I said, “What was his interest in this boy?”

  “I don’t know. He likes to be admired and he was getting it in full measure from this kid. You know his usual line of patter? Always agin the government and saying how stupid it is to pay attention to law and order when you can get on so much better without it. I don’t know that he’d ever do anything illegal himself—apart from the small matter of not paying his taxes—but he likes to see other people misbehaving themselves.” He laughed softly. “I must say he makes it sound practically a moral duty.”

  I said, “You mean he goes round inciting people to break the law?”

  Humphrey said, “Leave him alone, Will. He’s a dishonest bastard, but I love him.” His manner had become, while we were talking, almost light and easy as though we were sitting in the drawing-room at the School and not crouching, like rabbits, on the floor of the burrow.

  Now, suddenly, the sound of fear was back in his voice. He said, “I rang him up last night. After I’d spoken to Celia. I rang from a box on the Folkestone Road. I was terrified all the time. There were a lot of cars going by and the headlights seemed to pick me out. I thought he’d be able to help, you see. He knows a lot of shady people I thought he’d be able to tell me where to go. But he didn’t, want to talk to me. He said he couldn’t help, that it was too dangerous. He said the best thing I could do was to stay out of the way for as long as I could. It was almost as though he wanted to be rid of me.”

  He sounded helpless and surprised. I said, “God damn him to hell,” a righteous and ridiculous anger filled me. I think I was surprised, too. I had thought that Piers’s affection for Humphrey was the only genuine thing about him.

  There was a silence that hung heavily and awkwardly between us. Then Humphrey said, “Will, have you got any money? I may need it. I took some food from the house.”

  I gave him all I had in my wallet and he, took it with too much gratitude so that I felt a kind of revulsion. I had no love for him any more, only a forced and unhappy pity.

  There was nothing else that I could do for him. I think I wished him luck and told him that if there was anything I could do that he was to get in touch with me. We were both embarrassed and suddenly conventional. I remember that we shook hands with great and absurd solemnity.

  And then I went away and left him in his rat-hole.

  Chapter Nine

  I went to the office in the morning and tidied up my work as well as I could. After lunch I drove to London; it was still very hot and there was little traffic on the roads, so that I reached the West End in a shorter time than usual. In Maida Vale the streets slept in the sun; the roar of buses on the main road sounded muted and benign.

  The blinds in the flat were drawn. When Piers opened the door he looked sluggish and the contours of his face were sagging as if he had been asleep.

  He said, “It’s you, is it? What do you want?”

  His head, on the thick neck, was thrust forward. He stared at me with sleepy eyes. He looked like an old, belligerent rhinoceros.

  I said, “Piers, I want to talk to you.” Then as soon as I had spoken, I was afraid. I didn’t know why. I only knew that fear had come upon me without warning and that my mouth was dry.

  Piers stood aside. “You had better come in,” he said.

  The flat was untidy and unkempt. The air smelt sweaty and stale. The blue cat snarled at me, indolent on his silken cushion. Piers lay down on the sofa before the darkened window, his head in shadow. He was half-dressed, his paunch hung loosely over the top of his trousers. He looked seedy and middle-aged. His voice had none of its usual suavity, it was grumpy and bad-tempered. He hated to be caught at a disadvantage.

  He said, with his eyes shut, “Well, William? Say what you have to say and go.”

  All the time I had been driving to London I had rehearsed what I was going to say to Piers and now the words had gone from my mind. There only remained a kind of pointless anger.

  At last I said, and the words sounded awkward and stumbling, “I want to ask about a young man you knew at The Odd Flamingo. A young man called James.”

>   Piers sat upright on the sofa. He said, “How very extraordinary you are, William. Why should I know anything about your young man?”

  His face was not bad-tempered now, but bland and unrevealing.

  I said, “I know you used to go to the club although you told me you did not. I don’t know why you should lie about it—your pretensions to grandeur do not concern me. But I am interested in James. It was only you who called him James, wasn’t it? Everyone else called him Jimmie.”

  Piers stared at me, his eyes bright and fixed. Then he said, “It is inconceivable to me, dear boy, why you should interest yourself in this young man. As for your explanation of why I did not want to identify myself with the club, it is typical of you. But it is not your business; Is that understood?”

  His voice was cold. He was in control of himself.

  I said, “I want to know Jimmie’s other name and where I can find him.”

  Piers laughed. “Do you think that I know the name and address of every young scoundrel I speak to? William, I think you must be a little mad.”

  He made a contemptuous gesture with his white hands and lifted his legs back on to the sofa and closed his eyes.

  My hands were shaking and I pushed them into my trousers pockets to keep them still. I said, “Piers, this is important. Rose used to go to The Odd Flamingo with a boy called Jimmie. I want to find him and her. I want to help Humphrey. Don’t you?”

  He got up heavily from the sofa and lumbered across the room. He took a cigarette from a silver box and lit it.

  He said, “I’m as anxious as you are, William, to see this business put right. But I cannot see why you should make a nuisance of yourself to me. If the little tart had a boy friend at the Flamingo why have the police not found him? And why should he be the same boy as a supposed acquaintance of mine whose name I don’t remember? You’ll do more harm than good with your conceited, amateur meddling, you know.”

  I said, “She wasn’t a little tart.” I was surprised how angry I felt.

  Piers grinned. He said, “Have it your own way. But I can’t help you. It’s not my business. I won’t be mixed up with it.”

  They were almost the same words as those Kate had used to me the other night. I turned on Piers with a remembered anger.

  I said, “For God’s sake, Piers, how can you stand by? Humphrey is your brother. Have you no feeling for him? He thinks you have. However vulgar you are and however vain, that must carry some weight with you.”

  Piers advanced towards me slowly, the burning cigarette in his hand. There was a nasty little silence and his mouth was angry and sullen.

  He said, “William, I shouldn’t get yourself in too deep if I were you. It might be dangerous. Don’t let your conceit, drive you too far. My feelings for Humphrey are my concern, not yours. And I shouldn’t waste much pity on him if I were you. Now, get out.”

  He spat the last three words at me with a deliberate venom which was almost frightening because his voice was pitched so low. I took a step backwards away from him. Piers saw me move and laughed gently. He said, in his old manner, “Now run along, dear boy. Can’t you see the old gentleman needs his sleep?”

  I went, troubled by a sense of failure, wondering whether it might not have been stupidity on my part to think that Piers might have known the boy. It was important that I should not let my own feelings about Piers cloud my judgment; I had no evidence to prove that he had anything to do with it at all.

  I drove the car slowly away from the flat, down to Marble Arch. Then I went to The Odd Flamingo.

  I wondered, afterwards, why I had not gone there in the first place. It would have been the logical thing to do.

  It was hotter than ever in the underground room; the hand was absent and there were few customers. The man behind the bar did not seem to recognise me; he gave me the beer I asked for and went on polishing his glasses.

  Carl was sitting at a table by himself. His little face was wizened and brown above a pale pink shirt. He had a Pekinese on his lap and he was feeding it with biscuits. It was a pretty little creature with silken saffron-coloured hair.

  When I spoke to him he started with what seemed to be genuine alarm. His little eyes were shifty and I thought that he would have preferred not to recognise me. Then he gave me a stiff kind of grin and said with hideous archness, “Do go away. Rowley will be here in a minute and he is in such a nasty, jealous mood.”

  The archness was a failure; he was too obviously scared. I said, “Never mind about Rowley. I want you to tell me where I can find Jimmie.”

  He did not look at me. “Jimmie?” he said. He wasn’t a very good actor.

  I said, “The boy who knew Rose.”

  He looked unhappily round the room and then up at me. He said, “I don’t know you. Why are you bothering me? I don’t know who you are talking about.”

  He spoke deliberately loudly. The barman put down the glass he was polishing and stood behind the counter looking at us like a sullen watchdog.

  Then Carl got up from the table. He was little and lithe and he moved very quickly. He was up the stairs and a hundred yards down the street before I caught him up. We stood in the doorway of a shop and he pressed himself against the plate glass as if he thought it would give him protection. The little dog whined in the shelter of his arm.

  He said pleadingly, “Please go away. I don’t want to talk to you. Rowley says I must keep out of it. I’m a fool, you see. No one tells me anything. I haven’t anything to tell you. Please.“

  I said, “I’ll go away when you tell me what I want to know. Where I can find Jimmie.”

  He was almost crying. He said, “Rowley says I must be careful.

  Look what happened to Jasmine? Such a sweet creature. If I tell you, will you really go away?”

  I said, “I promise I will.”

  His bright eyes were hunted. I found him both distasteful and pathetic. He said, “His name is Callaghan. He lives in the Sandown Road. I don’t know the number but it’s near the end, on the right. Will you let me go now?”

  I said, “Yes. But why must you be careful?”

  He repeated, like a child, “Rowley says so. Rowley says I’m a fool. Kate knows. Kate knows why.”

  Fear had done something to his face; it no longer seemed human. He ducked under my arm and scurried up the road like a little, frightened animal. The dog’s bottom bounced absurdly under his arm; with his free hand he held up his trousers which were too long for him and tripped him up.

  Kate was in. She said she was pleased to see me but she didn’t seem too convinced about it. She looked plain and tired and there was a nervous twitch to her mouth. Her voice was unnatural and sharp; talking to her was like talking to a stranger.

  I think that if I had been, in a more normal frame of mind she would have told me nothing. But I was frightened and in a hurry. I remember that? I talked excitedly and probably incoherently. I told her that I had seen Carl and that he had been afraid to talk to me. I told her about Rose. I said that the police thought her dead and that I did not believe them. That I wanted to find her. That I had to find her.

  She said, sadly, I think, “Are you in love with her, Willy?”

  It was a simple enough question; I was surprised that it should embarrass me so much.

  I said, “How can I be in love with her? I’ve only seen her once.”

  She said, “Not in love with her in an ordinary sense. But in love with the idea of her. You think her innocent, don’t you? Can she be as innocent as all that?”

  I said, “I believe so. Silly, perhaps. Young and foolhardy. But innocent.”

  She looked at me for a little with unhappy eyes. Then she said, “If it is really important to you, Willy, then I’ll tell you about Piers. And about Carl.”

  She looked down at her lap and pleated the stuff of her skirt between her fingers and told me what she knew.

  It was, as I had half-expected, a very dreary piece of nastiness.

  She had met Piers about
a year after she had first come to London and had gone to the Slade with the help of a scholarship. Her parents had died within a few months of each other and she was unhappy and alone although her family life, when they had been alive, had been peculiarly loveless. Her mother had been a petulant semi-invalid and her father had been at home so rarely that he had been a distant figure regarded with more wariness than affection.

  In spite of this their deaths had left her rootless and without friends. It must have been a bad time for her although she did not say so; indeed, she went out of her way to make the lonely child that she must have been appear both worthless and silly. It was almost as though she were too proud to ask for any kind of special pleading.

  When she had met Piers he had been kind to her. He had treated her with a kind of amused contempt that had endorsed her own bad opinion of herself and that, in a curious way, comforted her. She knew that the kind of life he led was, by all accepted standards, wrong, but none of those standards seemed quite real to her. She had no memory of happiness or security that might have given them meaning.

  Piers had taken her into a casual, shallow-rooted society in which everyone was pleasant to her. The people she met were generous and tolerant with their time and their money, they were easily contemptuous of dullness and convention. After a time she became Piers’s mistress, not because she loved him, but because it seemed to be expected of her.

  Most of this I already knew but until this moment she had never talked to me so frankly about it. Perhaps I had never given her a chance. She had always been shy of talking about herself; I had learned about her affair with Piers from Piers himself sometime after I had known that I loved her and wanted to marry her. It had been too great a blow to my love and my pride for me to feel any desire for understanding.

  Then she told me something that I had not known. Piers peddled drugs. He got the stuff from some source she knew nothing about and disposed of it to a small circle of acquaintances. He did not take drugs himself and she thought that he did not do it entirely for profit.