The Man Who Won the Pools

by J. I. M. Stewart

  ‘A banker can sometimes advise on a number of things.’ Mr. Sackbutt hesitated again, ceased to look professionally calming and benevolent, and this time plunged heroically. ‘Not necessarily about the money. For all this means a big change for you, I imagine. You’ll be finding yourself, perhaps, in unfamiliar circumstances, and so on. So if you get yourself into any sort of—’ Mr. Sackbutt pulled himself up short before what was plainly to have been ‘trouble’— ‘into any situation where the experience of an older man might help—’

  ‘Yes,’ Phil said awkwardly. ‘Yes, I see. I mean, thanks again.’ He moved confusedly towards the door. He ought to have been touched, perhaps. Or, alternatively, angry. But he was young and healthy, and he had been living in a state of excitement for days. So he was simply enormously hungry. And with this enormous, even symbolical, hunger he went out of the bank. He’d have a meal, and it needn’t be a quick one. He wasn’t meeting Beryl for a couple of hours yet. He still had time to think, and he’d better begin now.

  Only he didn’t. Because when he stepped out on the pavement it was to run straight into Sharples – him of the evening before.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Peter!’ Phil said. It was funny having made a new pal just that way, but he could see from Peter’s quick look that they were pals all right. ‘I sent that P.O.,’ he said.

  ‘And it’s true? It is you? Of course it must be.’

  ‘You seen a paper or something?’ Phil grinned cheerfully. ‘ ‘Course it’s true. Can’t you see by the look of me? And this here is my bank.’

  ‘It’s my bank too, for that matter.’

  ‘Perhaps it is.’ Phil was feeling like saying any silly thing. ‘But did you ever have a quiet chat with old Sackbutt, the Manager?’

  ‘Of course not. My balance is three pounds. Remember asking me yesterday about having twenty thousand? Was that how much you thought it was going to be?’

  ‘Yes. But my financial position has improved since then. Ameliorated, you might say.’

  Peter Sharples took this last expression with a quick blink under his black fringe. ‘Know what you’re going to do with yourself?’ he asked.

  ‘Eat. You and me. Now. Will you?’

  ‘Pompadour?’

  ‘Best hotel.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Peter looked disturbed. ‘Going to your head, man.’

  ‘I’m hungry. And I want to spend something. Part with cash—see?’ Something seemed to have lifted from off the top of Phil’s chest since he’d got clear of the well-meaning Mr. Sackbutt. ‘You been in these places, Peter?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Then come on. You’ll show me—see? Or I won’t bother to be shown. Ever read Kipps?’

  ‘Kipps?’ Peter stared. ‘Yes, I’ve read Kipps.’

  ‘Little draper’s assistant came into a fortune just like me – although not nearly so big. Spoons and forks in a hotel got him down. Every sort of snobbery got him down. Wasn’t happy till he’d crawled out – lost his money and taken a little shop. All right enough for those days—see?’ Phil, still standing on the steps of his new bank, was excited and talking rapidly. Something had come over him, as he could see that Peter saw. But that didn’t stop him. ‘But not for now. Keep spoons and forks in their place, and they needn’t mean a thing. Not nowadays. You have to use them, I expect. Just for getting along. Think big – think up to your opportunities, like – nobody’s going to mind. Not anybody that matters. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘I’m not sure that I know.’ Peter was taking a quick look at Phil that was rather like old Sackbutt’s look. ‘But I’ll come along. If you pay, that is. I don’t fancy doing another Pompadour getaway – not after remembering not to eat rice pudding with a spoon.’

  ‘I won’t eat rice pudding at all. And I’ve got fourteen nicker. Let’s try to spend ten.’

  ‘Eight.’ Peter was now leading the way through an Oxford rush hour. ‘If we looked like going beyond that, they might ask for a deposit. And that would make you feel like Kipps, after all.’ Peter hesitated. ‘Undermine your confidence in the niceness of things.’

  Phil shouted with laughter. And it was only before the revolving doors of the hotel that he had a qualm.

  ‘Peter—’ he began.

  But Peter scarcely paused.

  ‘You’ve come into a fortune,’ he said. ‘Acquired private means. Or call it public means, since half Britain has contributed. Public means which public manner breeds. That’s Shakespeare. So now for the public manners. A blow-out. It’s vulgar, but we’re vulgar too. Ever had caviare?’

  ‘Caviare and pink champagne.’ Phil wasn’t going to be over-called by this transformed Peter Sharples. ‘And in we go.’

  He’d been right about the spoons and forks. They didn’t exist. He just didn’t notice them. But he noticed what they ate and drank. Not caviare but smoked salmon. Not pink champagne but hock. With a lot of other things. And he noticed them not just as one big blurred effect, but each sharply and individually. Peter did the ordering – not, Phil could see, much to the manner born – but knowledgeably and confidently. It showed you. Of course Peter was very clever, but in his heart Phil had no notion that he was himself entirely a fool. So it showed you how open the world was to any clever observant chap. As for this business of eating expensively, Phil just had a natural talent for it, like he had for some things in electricity. And Peter seemed to have it too. Peter was taking the menu as seriously as if it was his poor old Labour Party’s Forward to Socialism or whatever. No dish was worth considering, Peter said, that wasn’t substantial and subtle at once. It was a notion that seemed to call up rather a heavy meal even for twenty-one-year-olds. By the time their pancakes had been concocted over a spirit-affair on a table beside them, and well soused on Peter’s instructions in Green Chartreuse, they knew as well as any two elderly gourmets that only brandy and coffee taken at large leisure would comfortably close the occasion. So finally there they were, a little solemn but entirely pleased with themselves.

  ‘We ought to say we were just as happy in the Pompadour,’ Peter said. ‘But it wouldn’t be true.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be true.’ Phil swirled his brandy entirely expertly in its large bubble of glass. ‘This is my life.’

  ‘No—that isn’t true either.’ Peter shook his head sagaciously, so that his black fringe, that seemed to have grown a quarter of an inch nearer his eyebrows since yesterday, swayed gently. ‘It’s not really your life, any more than it’s mine.’

  ‘Why not? I expect that even Labour M.P.s get a lot of meals like this. Every day, when there’s a Labour Government.”

  ‘And paid for out of Mr. Philip Tombs’s Surtax?’ Peter shook his head again. He had just rather startled Phil by calling for cigars. ‘Don’t you believe it. I never sponged a meal like this before, and I don’t expect I’ll ever so much as try to again. Don’t you think there are things that happen only once?’

  ‘That’s right. There are things that happen only once – and this is one of them.’ It seemed to Phil that Peter had said a deep thing, such as could drop only from one who was enjoying a Varsity education. ‘It wouldn’t do – not going on like this, it wouldn’t. Screwing and drinking and eating.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Peter looked startled.

  ‘Rot a man in no time. Something a pal of mine said. And yet I don’t know, you know. Scoff like this is all right for some chaps every day. And knocking back the brandy and all.’ Rather cautiously, Phil knocked back some brandy. ‘ ‘Course, it wouldn’t make you happy for long. Just this time, that’s more a matter of you and me, come to think of it. But just as a comfortable habit …’ Very oddly, Phil quite lost the thread of his remarks. ‘Here!’ he said. ‘Will you do the paying? I’ll shove the lolly at you under the table.’

  ‘Not for half an hour yet. Light your cigar, man. One match just to char the end, and a second really to get going. And you’ll pay yourself.’ Peter laughed. ‘You’ve seen all this being done on the flick
s. That’s where I’ve seen it too. But not happiness.’

  ‘No – you never see happiness on the flicks. Not really. A chap might think he’d be happy with Jayne Mansfield. But would he? It’s all illusion, as you might say, that sort of thing.’

  Peter’s voice had dropped and gone rather husky. ‘There are just some moments that come, like this one, without planning. There’s just that—’ Peter paused to apply the second match with careful steadiness to his own cigar— ‘and giving yourself to some large impersonal purpose.’

  ‘Like getting to the moon?’

  ‘Like getting to the moon, if you like.’

  ‘That’s what a pal of mine says I ought to do. Now I’ve got this money. Get to the moon.’

  ‘You could do better, if you ask me.’ Even if Peter got half-jarred, Phil thought, he’d go on being serious really. ‘I mean, you may get to the moon, but you’re not likely to make much impression on it. Changing things is the true joy of life, isn’t it? Creating new institutions, new kinds of thought, new ways of feeling – that, and seeing them grow.’

  Phil took a deep breath. He’d read things like that. He’d heard them drooling out of the radio. But he’d never had them from somebody of his own age, and over the remains of a stupendous meal.

  ‘You’d be changing the—the whole human situation, like,’ Phil said boldly. ‘Getting to the moon, I mean. Give human beings a new notion of themselves. Show them they’ve been behaving kind of small, scrapping away for colonies and that, just down here.’

  ‘We’ll get rid of scrapping by getting rid of financial and industrial chaos. You just can’t have decent life on top of a nightmare of greed and muddle. Not even your new friends the rich can.’

  ‘I’m not having new rich friends. Not just like that.’ Phil was vague but emphatic. ‘I’ve got to think my way past all that, haven’t I?’

  ‘All right. But what I say’s true. The rich don’t get much life – not really. They know what they’re sitting on the lid of. It seeps up through their fat behinds and seeps into their heads as a haunting guilt and anxiety. You can see it in their gilded youth. All that stalking about in breeches and bowler hats is a sham. There’s a complete failure of confidence underneath.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Phil knew that he was responding to a vocabulary and a tone that weren’t what really made Peter Sharples interesting to him. And he knew that he didn’t himself agree in his head. He remembered Sir Aubrey Moore in Melchizedek’s. Old Melchizedek had got the better of the silly kid, of course. But Phil didn’t believe in the theory of much guilt and anxiety in young Sir Bleeding Aubrey. It even occurred to him that Peter’s P.P.E., whatever it was, didn’t insure a chap against the survival of fixed ideas picked up earlier on. But he didn’t challenge Peter on this. ‘That’s right,’ he repeated good-humouredly, and finishing his brandy. ‘But I’m not political.’

  ‘You’ve got brains, I’d say.’

  ‘I got something under the hatch.’ Phil grinned at Peter. ‘But, somehow, it always goes wandering round, like. Never would fix itself on the sodding binomial theorem and that. Which is why my schooling didn’t take, isn’t it? Nothing special about me, Peter. You’d think a thing like this would put you on top of things. So it does, just now and then. But it takes the bleeding use out of you as well. See? This place is new. Just listening to you is new. Remember your saying, yesterday in the Pompadour, money lets a chap change himself the way he wants to change himself? Well, I been thinking. And it’s a race, it seems to me. Change or be changed, see? Peter, I got to find something big to latch on to. Haven’t I? Or it’s curtains. Screwing and eating and drinking, like my pal said. I ain’t all that strong. I know I’m not. P’raps I’m only a bleeding little Kipps. Christ, I’d be desperate.’

  Peter Sharples had listened to this sudden appeal – as it plainly was – round-eyed. But he was clever and Phil could almost see him thinking – could see him thinking back into this Varsity education for an answer.

  ‘You’ve got curiosity, haven’t you?’ Peter asked. ‘Give it a fair go. It’s what will see you through.’

  ‘Curiosity? Takes you into knocking-shops, that does.’

  ‘Don’t be a bloody fool.’ For the first time, Peter was angry. ‘A thing isn’t silly just because school teachers and dons plug it at you. Knowledge is the hard road to the best buy. Socrates, who was the first don, said something like that. It might be your buy. It might be what you mean by saying you’re not political.’

  Phil shook his head – so emphatically that his biggest curl came down over his nose. At the same time he glanced round the nearly empty restaurant.

  ‘I say,’ he said anxiously, ‘oughtn’t we to be getting out?’

  ‘Not till it’s our fancy, man. Not like the Pompadour. Those chaps are hired to go on standing around. Chief one would go out on his own neck if he brought you your bill before you asked for it.’

  ‘No kidding?’ Phil was much impressed.

  ‘Well, it’s the theory. Of course he may take liberties, if he thinks we’re young and unassuming.’

  ‘He has been looking at us.’ Phil in his turn looked covertly at the head waiter. ‘Would five bob be right for the tip?’

  ‘Fifteen, at least. Roughly speaking, about ten per cent of the bill.’

  ‘Fifteen bob!’ It was Phil who was round-eyed now. ‘If knowing that is what you call knowledge, it must have put back Socrates quite a bit. But listen. Of course your knowledge isn’t me either. I’d not be like I am now – not counting the pools coming home, I mean – if I’d been born an egg-head. I’d have gone scrambling up the ladder same as you, Peter, and never taking my nose out of what they were feeding me, except to see those other little niggers falling off. It’s experience I want, isn’t it?’ Phil knew that he was looking quite anxiously at Peter. ‘Wouldn’t you say that would be me? Sounds vague. Sounds as vague as Kipps. But I do mean something by it. Experience that’s not as small and cheap as Gas Street.’

  ‘Gas Street?’

  ‘And New Street. Have you ever looked at this tower – Tom Tower – from down New Street?’ Phil was ceasing to be very coherent. ‘Do you know the Primitive Methodists 1843? It’s an experience, I suppose, and so is Gas Street, all right. But what I want is something on a level, like, that I just don’t know about. Get?’

  ‘You’re a romantic,’ Peter said.

  ‘What d’you mean – a romantic?’ Phil was thinking how spotty was even the knowledge he possessed. ‘Chap in a cheap yarn?’

  ‘Chap that must have life coming at him big. Fine day, if you latch on to something that is big. Socialism. The moon. Being a poet. Being mad about music.’ Peter also was not too coherent now. ‘Failing that, you’ll hitch it on to sex. That’s what you’ll do. Blow up sex as the rich and idle always have done. Oh, I don’t mean letching round, and chucking about your money to lay this girl and that. That was your pal’s idea – the one that talks about screwing and eating and drinking. All wrong. Not you, that wouldn’t be. I mean elevating the concerns of the senses to the sphere of the imagination. Follow?’

  Phil didn’t exactly follow. But he suspected Peter of having fired something out of a book at him, and he resented this.

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ he said rudely. ‘But I got a girl—see? I know my way around.’

  ‘That’s it. That’s what you won’t put up with – knowing your way around, and finding it what you call small and cheap. Knowing your way around what any Gas Street adolescent calls sex – you won’t take it, man. You’ll want something on a cloud – and all gilt-edged, like Sackbutt’s securities.’

  ‘Here – let’s get out of this.’ Phil was embarrassed and a bit angry. He was embarrassed because he’d suddenly seen – it was what you’d call a purely intuitive thing – that this Peter Sharples, although his own age, was a sodding virgin. It was a gulf between them – and all part of this business of one kid being caught up one way, and one another. And he was a bit angry because, in Pete
r, this went with a streak of malice – but you could understand and forgive that – and with a sort of acuteness on, you might say, the theoretical side. Even when Peter talked out of a book there was sense in it. And that’s education, Phil thought.

  They were out in the street and walking down it. And Peter was still talking.

  ‘Do you know what, Phil? I think you ought to come up.’

  ‘What d’you mean – come up?’

  ‘To the university. I don’t expect it would take terribly long to manage. I’ll fix it you talk to my tutor about it. He knows all the dodges.’

  ‘Tombs the Terror of Trinity. Phil the Fool of Bleeding Balliol.’ Phil, because embarrassed again, did his laughing quick and loud. ‘What about another meal first, Peter? When can you come again?’

  ‘That’s over – like we agreed. But you come to tea with me. Meet some people.’

  ‘Thanks a lot.’ Phil was again hasty. ‘But I’ll be clearing out of Oxford for a bit.’

  ‘Then when you come back.’ Peter pointed at an arched gateway across the street. ‘Just go in and ask. They’ll tell you where I am.’

  ‘See you some more, then, Peter.’

  They looked at each other and there was a moment’s troubled silence. Oxford’s traffic rumbled through it unregarding. There was a red box on the pavement beside them, with an Evening Standard poster leaning against it. The poster didn’t have Phil’s photo. But it did begin: Young Oxford Worker Wins …

  Phil saw that Peter was looking at it too.

  ‘Peter,’ he said, ‘d’you know how it makes me feel? Hunted Man. Like in a film. It came on me yesterday, just before we met.’

  ‘Quite right, too. You’ll be hunted all right, Phil. Brass without class – that’s what you are.’ Peter said it, Phil noticed, exactly like his auntie would. ‘So run like hell when you see the other thing.’

  ‘The other thing?’

  ‘Class without brass, man.’ Peter said it with a laugh, but also with a straight look. ‘Like we ran yesterday.’