Plender

by Ted Lewis

  There were twenty-four replies for the first ad and seven for the second. Of these, six were from Leeds, six from Doncaster, three from Halifax, two from Barnsley, two from Scunthorpe, two from Grimsby, one from Scarborough, and one from Harrogate. The remainder were from towns or small villages, mainly places I’d never heard of. I made a list of the names and addresses which they’d so trustingly supplied and put them in my secretary’s in-tray for her to begin on when she came in on Monday.

  Her job was to find out who they were by checking electoral roles, credit files, company lists, business directories, street directories, etc. All she thought she was doing was finding out their credit-worthiness for H.P. companies. Well, in a sense, she was. Except that the H.P. company was me. When she’d told me what I wanted to know, the few names that remained from the original list would go on file and a few days later these select correspondents would receive replies to their letters suggesting dates and times and places. Then I would sit back and wait for the braver of the remaining correspondents to commit themselves to action.

  After I’d made out the list of names I went through the remaining unsolicited letters, the ones I hadn’t slung out, the ones containing drafts of ads to be placed in the magazine. There was one that might bear checking out: WEALTHY EDUCATED EXECUTIVE, 50, UNDERSTANDING, EASY MANNER, SENSE OF HUMOUR, SEEKS INVITATION TO VIEW ENTHUSIASTIC AMATEUR FRIENDLY COUPLE/S. HIS VISIT WOULD COMBINE DISCRETION WITH CHAMPAGNE AND COULD MEAN USEFUL WEEKLY INCOME. PHOTO WITH DETAILS APPRECIATED. DISTANCE UP TO TWO HUNDRED MILES ROTHERHAM. (YORKS).

  I read it again. Sounded as though it might be right up Andrea’s street. Her and Les would be ideal to follow that one up. I filed the letter and got up and walked over to the window again. The rain was still belting down but the sparse lights across the river were still visible. I turned my head slightly and looked farther down the river, farther inland my eyes searching the blackness for the small collection of lights that mapped out my home town. They were so far away and so faint that at first I couldn’t see them: it was always the same when the weather was bad. Then I saw them and I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t been able to see them before. I wondered what was going on over there right at this minute, what it was like right now. I hadn’t been back in ten years. I hadn’t wanted to. But just occasionally I wondered. Sometimes I thought I’d like to go back there and splash the cash and let them all see how well I’d done, give them something to chew on, something that they wouldn’t like swallowing, the fact that Brian Plender, against all prediction, had made it.

  I saw the reflection of the light on my desk wink on in the black window before me so I stopped thinking about all that and went back to my desk and pressed the button. Eventually the green light above the door came on and I pressed the other button and Gurney came into the room.

  “Well, that’s that,” he said.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. I dropped her off and that was it.”

  “Did you see her into the house?”

  “I saw her to the door. Nice place Gorton has.”

  “Ought to be. The money came from his percentage for the Rotham by-pass contract. Did you see Gorton?”

  “Briefly. He fluttered about a bit at the door. He couldn’t wait to get inside.”

  I lit a cigarette.

  “Anyway,” I said, “I know you’ve had a busy week, but I’m afraid there’s something come up.”

  “What?”

  “Camille has a client. I want you to supervise the cine and the rest of the gear.”

  Gurney’s face twitched a little bit, which was his way of throwing a tantrum.

  “Oh, I mean to say, sir—” he began, but I didn’t let him get any farther.

  “I’d do it myself only Mr. Froy wants me to do something special for him. And Froy is keen to get the goodies on Camille’s Playmate of the Month. He doesn’t want any slip-ups.”

  That shut him up. Gurney was Froy’s man. He was the only person who worked for me who knew about Froy and the Movement. Apart from the muscle and the informers and the queers and the brasses and the con men, the other politically motivated gentlemen who worked for me were from such scramble-headed groups as the N.F. or the Union with Europe mob. The two things my little helpers had in common was their dedication to the job and the fact that they all had records. They knew I had political links with something they could only guess at and that was good enough for them. They were well pleased to find themselves so gainfully employed. But Gurney was different. Gurney had been Froy’s man from way back. He’d been a condition of my employment. Not that I didn’t want him: I did. But he hated my guts. He felt he should be sitting where I was. But Froy hadn’t thought him good enough. So he had to put up with the ride I gave him. The only satisfaction he got was his reporting back to Froy, letting Froy know what I was up to, because that was a part of his duties, too. But so far he’d had nothing of any consequence to report. He knew nothing of my extra-curricular activities; he knew nothing of my file on Froy. So he was just waiting his time out, waiting for me to slip. But he’d have a long wait. I’d no intentions of getting my feet wet.

  “So there you are, Gurney, old boy,” I said. “Looks like another working weekend.”

  Gurney smiled one of his smiles.

  “Looks like it, Mr. Plender,” he said.

  KNOTT

  I looked at my watch.

  “Here, look at the time,” I said. “It’s twenty to eight.”

  Eileen knocked back the dregs of her fourth gin and bitter lemon.

  “Time flies when you’re enjoying yourself,” she said, giving me the knowing look she’d given me at least fifty times in the last hour. “Still, we’ve got plenty of time. The night’s young.”

  “Well, we’d better get a move on. It’ll take an hour or two to get through.”

  I got up and gave Eileen a hand and she levered herself out of her seat.

  “I hope I can stand up straight,” she said. “I’d hate to make a muck of your pictures.”

  PLENDER

  I hated Peggy’s Bar. It made my skin crawl. All that perfume and shrieking and prancing about. But I’d thought I’d better wander over just to check on Camille. Make sure he turned up. It would’ve been typical of him not to—he even behaved like a woman in that department, too.

  I walked into the bar. Thank God. It was almost deserted. The rain must have kept most of them in.

  I sat down on a stool at the bar.

  “Good evening, Mr. Plender,” Peggy said. “To what do we owe this rare pleasure?”

  Peggy was the exception to the rule. Peggy I could stand. I don’t know, but he was the only one that didn’t make me feel creepy. Perhaps because he was getting on a bit and he was a bit cynical about the whole scene.

  “Thirst,” I said.

  Peggy smiled.

  “I was afraid so,” he said. He poured me a vodka with ice and a twist of lemon. “On me.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I took a sip. “Business good?”

  “You must be joking. It’s wicked.”

  “That bad eh?”

  “Use your eyes. It’s been like this since Wednesday. Appalling.”

  “I thought it was tonight. The weather, like.”

  “I wish it was. I wish it was.” Peggy looked at me. “And just as a matter of interest, what brings you in here on a night like this? It must be business or else you wouldn’t be in here in the first place.”

  “Well, in a way, yes.”

  “In a way,” said Peggy. “Anyway I don’t want to know what it is. You keep it to yourself. The less Auntie Peggy knows about what you get up to the better it is for Auntie Peggy.”

  “Don’t worry, Peggy,” I said. “I’d never shit in your bar.”

  “I know damn well you wouldn’t,” said Peggy. “Otherwise you’d never get past that
doorway.”

  I smiled.

  “Give me another drink,” I said. “And have one yourself.”

  “Ta,” said Peggy. “I’ll have a gin and bitter lemon, if you don’t mind.”

  Peggy made the drinks and I gave him the money.

  “And if you don’t mind,” I said, “I’m going to sit in one of your cozy little booths.”

  “Get a better view that way, do you?”

  I smiled and said nothing.

  “Sometimes, Mr. Plender,” said Peggy, “you really give me the fucking creeps.”

  I smiled and turned and walked away from the bar. Peggy knew I used the place from time to time to put the drop on clients but he didn’t care so long as none of his regulars were involved or one of the clients brought the law back with him. Well, there was no danger of that. Not with the people I arranged to visit Peggy’s with.

  I sat down in one of the booths and looked round the bar. It was a depressing place at the best of times, all faded plush and lime green paintwork, but it was worse when it was deserted because you could see all of the décor, all of the lime, in spite of the almost non-existent lighting.

  There were only four other people in the bar; an early evening creeper in clerical grey with his fawn trilby set at its weekend angle; a blank looking Greek sailor obviously in port for the first time; and in the booth opposite the one I was in a man and a girl drinking themselves into an early bed. It wasn’t an uncommon sight in Peggy’s, that. Some blokes thought it turned a bird on, bringing them in to mingle with the gingers. Maybe it did. Maybe underneath all the giggling and the staring the birds cottoned on to the fact that maybe their blokes weren’t so straight after all to want to bring them to Peggy’s; maybe the reasons went deeper. And maybe some sick bitches liked that. It wouldn’t have surprised me.

  I watched the couple for a while. The bird was very young, and she was well away. Not reeling or glazed or anything like that, just giggly in the knowledge that she was all set for the evening’s later coming events. The bloke was sitting with his back to me but even from that angle he was so obviously putting on the Mr. Sincere bit it was painful. There was no need. He’d been home and dry yards back. All I could think, though, was how hard up he must be. Christ, she couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen. What was the point? He may as well have stayed in bed and had a J. Arthur. Because she wouldn’t be worth much more, that was certain. And from what I could see of him it wasn’t that he was a bad looking bloke. He had the gear and the hair. He could have done all right for himself a bit farther up the market. Maybe he was kinky for kids. But he seemed too young to fancy the young stuff. Anyway what was certain was that he was ready for the all off. He’d been drunk up and shuffling ever since I’d come in. Couldn’t wait to get down to it. But she was stretching it out a bit. The cat with the mouse. Playing the sophisticated flirt, or thought she was. She’d decided he was going to get it but she wanted to keep him guessing. It was pathetic, it really was. I went back to my drinking before I threw up.

  I made motions to Peggy. He brought me another large one and I took my time with the first mouthful. I made it last long enough for it to make my eyes water and my chest burn. I didn’t drink a lot but I drank regularly so I made sure that what I drank was clean and relatively harmless. That’s why I stuck to vodka: no hangovers to stop me wanting to get out of bed and do my daily workout. And that was something I never missed. Christ, at school the only athletics I’d ever concentrated on was keeping one step in front of the teachers. I’d thought physical fitness was for thick idiots. But it was like a lot of attitudes you had at school; they were the other way round once you’d left. Like in this case. I’d started doing judo classes when I was seventeen. And funnily enough the classes had been in the gym at my old school, the same place I’d skived off everything that had been shoved at me for the previous five years. And nowadays it wasn’t just judo, thanks to the Palestine police, it was armed hand-to-hand combat as well, plus the daily workouts, twice a day, in the evenings and in the mornings. The difference being of course, that nowadays, there was a reason for everything. A purpose. A purpose that had come with the respect for myself that I’d discovered, the discovery of the importance of respect for self, the power it engendered through the discipline of self. Since I’d discovered I’d become someone new. Whole. Everything worked, instead of just bits of me. And because I functioned properly, my success was effortless, like my body. I couldn’t fail because my mind and my body were tuned to succeed. It was simple. Literally, the healthy mind in the healthy body. The disciplined mind in the disciplined body. I smiled. If the P.T. master could see me now.

  A movement across the other side of the bar caught my eye. It was the couple getting up to leave. The man stood to let the girl get out of the booth. I looked into his face and immediately I was aware that I knew him. But I didn’t know who he was. In fact the face was so familiar the recognition had jolted me. It was like seeing a T.V. star in the street; the initial reaction was surprise that you remembered someone you didn’t actually know, and then when you realised who they were, that explained everything and you felt stupidly embarrassed. But in this case it was a matter of recognising someone without knowing who the hell they were.

  The girl continued to drift over to the exit. The man went over to the bar to get some cigarettes. The girl waited in the doorway and looked at the man while he opened the packet, took out a cigarette and lit up. Then he threw the match into an ashtray on the bar and began to walk towards the girl. Head forward, shoulders bowed, walking on the balls of his feet. The walk. The walk was even more recognisable than the features. The last time I’d seen that walk was seventeen years ago. Marching out of assembly on the last day of school, three boys away. With his usual mates tagging on. The handsome hair flowing off the clever confident face. Striding out to meet the future his parents were going to pay for. I wondered what he’d made of it.

  Peter Knott.

  I hadn’t seen him since that day.

  I wondered what he’d made of it.

  Had he done as well as me? He should have. He’d had the start.

  I looked at my watch. There was time.

  I drank my drink and got up to leave.

  KNOTT

  The wipers whirred and I wondered for the hundredth time what I was doing, driving this silly cow to my studio to weave her into my web. And yet I always wondered and the wondering never did any good. It was like masturbation! Each time you finished you told yourself that that was it, that was the last time, it’s never as good as you imagine it’s going to be so why bother? But the next time you got a hard on it was always straight to the toilet for a quick one off the wrist. Sometimes it was just to stave off depression but the joke was it always made you more depressed. The same with birds like Eileen; female masturbation machines that were obsolete and boring the minute you came. And like masturbation the more Eileens I had the less they satisfied. The initial excitement was always the same, always as good, the thinking, mind’s-eye wanking, but when it came to the moment of too-real truth, after the ball play was over, then the fall, then the let down, then the desperation and the unnamed (unmanned?) fear.

  So devices had had to be manufactured, introduced into my seductions for the purposes of enhancing the excitement and shielding me from the depressions and the realities of hard flesh. Gauzes and veils and wisps of fantasy had to drift between my eyes and my mind in order to keep my activities enjoyable. The sex act itself was the final necessary stopper to an ever increasing bag of tricks, all equally exciting and, like masturbation, self-defeating, evolving without any direction except perhaps towards some kind of madness.

  I was like an addict. Girls were a habit I couldn’t shake. It was as if there was an empty space in my make-up that needed filling with some sexual experience. It wasn’t as if I was loveless. My wife and I didn’t get on but that was my fault, not hers: she still
loved me, whatever I felt for her, whatever I got up to. And even if she stopped loving me, past experience told me I wouldn’t exactly have a job finding someone to take over where she left off. I’d always been someone who’d got their own way with people, male or female, although these days I no longer considered the fact with pleasure. These days it was just a fact. It had ceased to have meaning since I’d recognised it and admitted it to myself. I’d always wanted to be liked and I’d schemed and plotted in the subtlest of ways to achieve popularity but I’d only recently realised it and to think of it made me feel sick.

  Neither was it night-starvation, my hang up. My wife was good in that department too. (In fact, she was the best screw I’d ever had. And she went along with my games and embellishments, not just for my sake but because she enjoyed them too, that is after she’d been persuaded that what we did was neither debasing nor purely carnal or indicative of any feelings I might have—or not have— for her personally.) And, wife apart, there were plenty of Eileens, a species of female that under normal circumstances I disliked intensely --- shallow, coy, faux-naif, deliberately petulant, the complete suburban, ushered into puberty to the strains of Telstar, sprung into a background where the myth figures of Bernie the Bolt and Robin Richmond entered the common consciousness and steered it along the paths of rightfulness. But it was the very awfulness of their environment that attracted me to girls like Eileen. It gave my intrigues an extra dimension; the thought that I was disturbing the bland subconscious of the great catalogue market, the audience I touched with the gloss of my own photographs.

  But, as usual, no answer, no reply. I wondered if the knowledge would solve the problem, remove the addiction. I knew plenty of people with big sexual appetites who considered themselves perfectly healthy; why did I suspect my own? Was it the refinement of the appetite that caused me to be suspicious?