The shock of recognising her sent every battered bit of him pulsing, so that he thought he’d have to howl at its all hurting so. But perhaps there was no howl left in him, or perhaps he just managed to shut down on the impulse to do it. Anyway, he found that he was setting his teeth very hard together, and that he could take it. He even thought he could risk unclenching them, if just for a second.
‘Hullo,’ he said feebly. And then he made a sudden and violent effort to sit up, because it had come into his mind that these crooks might be about still, and that she might be in danger. It wasn’t an effort that got him very far, but it did bring within his view a great silver bowl crammed with roses. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Didn’t mean to come bothering you.’ He felt himself frown, and something immediately began trickling into an eye. ‘How’d I get here?’ he asked.
‘The lift. Dolly and I found you in the lift.’ He became aware, as she spoke, that she was kneeling, and that she was in a new dress like for a ball, and that she wasn’t taking her eyes off him.
‘I get,’ he said. His mind was beginning to work again. ‘Delivered me back where they collected me, they did. Goods not wanted, like.’
‘But who did?’ She had put out a hand and very gently touched his face. Then she turned her head to someone he couldn’t see. ‘Dolly,’ she said, ‘don’t just stare. Warm water. And both the towels.’
‘Who did?’ He moved his own head to see if it hurt. And it did. ‘McLeod. The monkey-suit tough. Hotchkiss. Them that beat me up.’
‘Beat you up? It hasn’t just been a street accident?’ Jean started back, horrified.
‘Street accident!’ He heard himself speak feebly but with large contempt. Then he managed something like a grin. ‘I clocked them a bit. Then they clobbered me proper. Belted the wind out of me. Got me good in—’ He checked himself. ‘Not your kind of thing,’ he said. ‘And not your girlfriend’s.’
‘Girlfriend?’ She was puzzled.
‘Her I haven’t seen yet. Dolly.’
‘Oh!’ There was a second’s something he was still not up to catching. And then she laughed. ‘Dolly isn’t a girl. He’s a man.’
‘My mistake.’ It sounded silly to him – but then so would a lot of other things in her world do, he supposed. ‘If 1 could get my head up a bit,’ he said.
‘Let me help.’
She put a hand under his head, so that her fingers were in his hair. And then things happened that his mind seemed to open to and grasp as if by a lightning flash. His scalp was messy like other parts of him, so when she brought her hand away there was blood on it. She looked at the blood, and then at him, straight from this ruck. And it was as if the thing that hadn’t happened over that rice stuff and Chianti was there in an instant between them. Her breast was heaving, and she looked at him like he couldn’t describe – it was as if he wasn’t a person hardly, and no more was she.
‘Phil,’ she whispered. ‘Phil.’ And she stooped swiftly and crushed her mouth on his bruised lips.
She’d hardly drawn back when he was aware of Dolly. At least he was aware of a pair of dress shoes and black trousers – and then vaguely of a dinner-jacketed figure holding a bowl of water he’d brought from some wash-place. Phil wondered what the time was. He hadn’t known offices were used this way by – Younger Set types all got up for gracious living.
‘Is the poor beggar bad?’ Dolly asked this in a voice that somehow reminded Phil of that morning in the train. But it certainly wasn’t Mark Thickthorne’s voice. What it was, in fact, was the Oxford Varsity voice that Phil himself had been fooling around with. Only this was a real one. ‘Better call an ambulance or something,’ Dolly said. ‘And have him taken away.’
‘Nonsense,’ Jean said. ‘I know him.’ She was now sponging Phil’s face, and she had spoken with complete self-possession. ‘I had lunch with him, as a matter of fact. Am I hurting, Mr. Tombs?’
Phil managed to say that he wasn’t being hurt.
‘Had lunch with him!’ Phil hadn’t yet been able to see this Dolly’s face, but he could imagine that it was registering astonishment. ‘Why, he’s—’ It seemed to Phil that what Dolly was going to say was something like ‘He’s a young Ted, isn’t he?’ But, instead, Dolly said, rather lamely, ‘He’s a new face to me.’
‘What we must have is a doctor. What we mustn’t have, on any account, is fuss or publicity.’ Jean was as cool as cool, so that Phil could hardly believe she was the same girl who, only a minute before, had done that naked passionate thing. ‘I don’t think Mr. Tombs has broken anything, but we can’t take risks. I’ll telephone.’ She stood up, and Phil was able to take a glance at her that acknowledged absolute divinity. He felt as weak as a baby, but he didn’t believe it was any longer from the beating he’d taken. It was because, miraculously, he’d passed some unbelievable gate.
‘All right, Jean. But hurry up.’ Phil could just see Dolly’s wrist move, and he guessed he was looking at his watch. ‘Of course we’ve got to do the right thing, and all that. But we don’t want the evening mucked up.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Not this evening, of all evenings.’
Phil’s heart gave a jerk behind bruised ribs. And then he heard Jean cut in with a new sharpness.
‘Almost everybody’s out of these offices. That’s all to the good. But the switchboard’s off. I’ll have to go down to call the doctor.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Dolly said. He said it, Phil thought, what you might call correctly but not eagerly.
‘No—I know just what I want to explain. Stay with Mr. Tombs. If he wants to move, help him – very cautiously. But don’t try shifting him off your own bat. That’s dangerous, till he’s been examined.’
She’d gone. There was silence. The young man called Dolly stood motionless for a minute. He didn’t seem to have a fancy for rolling back his sleeves and continuing with the job of mopping Phil up. But he did seem to feel that Phil was due something.
‘I say,’ he said, ‘could you manage a cigarette?’
‘Thanks a lot.’
As Phil said this it came to him that this lying there like a sack was getting a bit silly. He didn’t feel too good still. But he did somewhere possess, after all, a bleeding will. So he sat up. It might have been worse.
He sat up, and so for the first time got a clear view of Dolly. And he realised why Dolly’s voice had rung that bell. He recognised, in fact, whose Oxford Varsity voice he’d been imitating on the train. Sir Aubrey Moore’s, of course. Dolly was him.
Chapter Seventeen
Phil felt he wanted to reach to a pocket and fetch out the last of those Camels for this Moore – just in memory of Melchizedek’s. Or he felt like saying, ‘How’s your tobacco coming along?’ Only, as he thought of it, it sounded dead common – rather like ‘How’s your mum off for dripping?’ that the kids had a silly notion it was rude to shout at you in the street. And, anyway, here was Moore producing his own fags very civil, and giving Phil a light. Turkish, the fag was. And heaven.
‘I’m frightfully sorry the brutes got you so badly.’ The young man seemed honestly concerned. ‘Jean’s uncle will raise hell. I mean, that you were landed on his office doorstep like this.’ Moore paused. Phil saw that he was being surveyed by one consulting all the social experience he had. ‘I say,’ Moore asked, ‘do you belong to a gang, or something?’
Phil found this so funny that he laughed. It was about the rashest thing he’d done yet, for the result was as if somebody was passing a knife through his ribs.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m a lawful citizen.’ He paused, anxious to give an honest account of himself. ‘And enormously rich,’ he added.
‘Oh—I see.’ Sir Aubrey Moore looked at him a bit anxiously, clearly supposing that he’d turned delirious. ‘Better keep quiet,’ he added ‘Jean will have that doctor here in no time.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll keep quiet, all right.’ Phil managed another puff at his cigarette. ‘Leastwise, I won’t exactly get up and start another vulgar brawl.’
He grinned at Moore, although it was a painful thing to do. ‘But what I say is true,’ he continued deliberately. ‘Except that you may have a different notion of what’s enormous.’ He paused, because talking was no easier than grinning. But he was determined to get things clear between Moore and himself. ‘I come from Oxford same as you do,’ he said. ‘Only I’m what you’d call an artisan, see? And there’s nothing special about me, except that I’ve just won some money on the pools.’
‘Really?’ Moore was nervous now. ‘I do congratulate you on that. And it’s quite a lot?’
‘Well, that’s comparative, like I say. Call it about twelve thousand a year.’ Phil paused again as he saw the young man’s eyes narrow on him. ‘It’s along of being a big winner that I got to know Mr. Prendick personal. And Jean – Miss Canaway.’
‘Ah, yes. What fun Miss Canaway’s job must be. It brings her into contact with all sorts, doesn’t it?’
‘Just that,’ Phil said. ‘Shows her a new world, like, from time to time. And she likes it.’
There was again a short silence. Phil had actually got himself up and into a chair. He had no fancy for any more Is-the-poor-beggar-bad stuff from Moore.
But Moore had made a movement to assist him that was honest and spontaneous enough. And now he’d taken a walk across the room before turning to look at Phil again in real perplexity. That about contact with all sorts had been a nasty one – but then Phil had asked for it. Phil didn’t like Moore.
In fact he hated him. But Moore had some sort of arrogant code that meant at least he’d never tell a lie – or only when they made him a cabinet minister or an ambassador or something like that. He’d always have a kind of bloody-minded straightness.
‘Look,’ Moore said, ‘they’ve probably hit you on the head, among other places. But don’t let that – or coming into a fortune – start you imagining things.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ Phil said. Since he knew very well there was something he hadn’t imagined he didn’t think he need much bother his head about Moore.
‘Yes,’ Moore said. ‘Miss Canaway’s job is quite a jolly one.
But she does often work fearfully hard. Late hours at the office. That’s what’s happened this evening. She changed here at the last moment, and I came to pick her up. Dinner-dance affair.’
‘Yes, I see,’ Phil said. He still wasn’t much caring. Sir Aubrey Moore, he was thinking, was two things. There was a lot behind him that made him pretty formidable. At the same time, he was no more than the kid who could be outpointed by that crawling little shopkeeper to the gentry, old Melchizedek. ‘I shan’t keep you,’ Phil said. ‘Nice of Jean—’ he paused on this— ‘to think of a doctor. But you two can be getting along.’
‘We shall, if you don’t mind. After—that’s to say—we’ve put you in safe hands, Mr—?’
‘Name’s Tombs,’ Phil said. ‘Phil Tombs.’ He waited.
‘Mr. Tombs,’ Moore said – and Phil realised his kind wouldn’t make the cemetery joke anyway. ‘May I tell you something in confidence?’ Young Moore was now perfectly grave. ‘We do want – Jean and I – to make this a bit of an occasion tonight. Because, you see, we’ve just got engaged.’
‘Engaged?’ Phil said. For a moment the word just didn’t register. He’d got it in a context like it was something about getting a job. Then he took hold of the idea. ‘No kidding?’ he said.
Sir Aubrey Moore – him they called Dolly because he had a face like that – frowned. There was in him, among other things, just this anxious kid. And he was looking troubled again, as if he kind of knew something. Could he – Phil wondered – have seen Jean doing what she’d done? But it couldn’t be that, or he’d be different. It was just that he had an instinct that Phil – discovered kicked, belted, and bloody in that lift – was in Jean’s picture like he couldn’t see how. That was why he’d come out with this about their engagement.
‘Honest?’ Phil asked.
‘I give you my word of honour on it.’
That rocked Phil. He didn’t know people said such things – except only in books.
‘You got engaged to marry Jean, just minutes before you found me?’
‘Just that. Odd, wasn’t it?’ Moore was probably trying to tell himself he was looking at Phil coolly. ‘In the circumstances, you were quite a shock.’
‘I’m kind of engaged, too,’ Phil said. ‘Nothing very definite in the way of diamond rings and The Times, you know. In my class it doesn’t happen like that, it doesn’t.’ Remarkably, he’d managed to get to his feet. ‘Still, I’d say it was shaping that way. So we can congratulate each other, like.’ He was getting unsteadily across the room. ‘I’ll be moving. Tell her – tell Miss Canaway – I don’t need that doctor. I quite often get beaten up like this, I do.’ He’d got to the door, but with very little idea of what he was saying. ‘It’s just them things you read about. Sadism. Masochism. What you lot get out of yourselves with canes and that at school. We’re backward.’ His hand was – blessedly – on the door handle. ‘Seeing you,’ he said, and turned it.
‘Oh, I say!’ Sir Aubrey Moore had stepped indecisively forward. ‘You can’t go off like this. You’re not fit. Jean will be furious if—’ He was trying to put a hand on Phil’s arm.
‘Do you mind?’ Phil had never got it out more arrogant. Moore fell back. A minute, and Phil was in that lift.
He braced himself in a corner of it as it went down. He wondered about the little porter. He wondered if he had the strength to clout him one as he went past. But he’d be off duty by now. Or more likely he’d have cleared out for good. Come to think of it, his game was up the minute Phil had refused to play ball with Hannay and his crowd. As for that lot, Phil could have them all in gaol, all right. They could plead self-defence for the beginning of the beating up. But not for McLeod’s bleeding joke of dumping him in Prendick’s lift. They wouldn’t get away with that one. They’d be put inside, for certain.
He knew all this didn’t mean a thing. Hannay and all were no more than a bit of rotten past he’d never think of again - not unless he woke up bad in the night. Sooner or later they’d be jugged, sure as sure, and bad luck to them. But he’d done his job. In getting away that girl called herself Beryl he’d done his job. What he’d better be doing now, he wasn’t clear about. Get back to his auntie’s, perhaps. That prosperous provincial’s twenty-four hours in London was over. Put it like that.
He had two shocks when he got outside. The first was that it was dark, or nearly dark, and that he’d no kind of idea where he was. There was a great street, and traffic roaring by, and he couldn’t really tell himself anything about it. Something must have happened in his head. There were these neon signs, but they didn’t say the names of streets or towns or anything. They just said about whisky and soft drinks and cigarettes. Only there was one kept saying what looked something more connected, and he stood looking at it for a long time before he got the idea that it was giving you the news. There was something about a pit disaster and something about cricket. It came to him that if you wanted to play the pools now – and he had an idea he sometimes played the pools – you had to do it about what was happening in Australia. And then he saw Artie Coutts kind of swimming in front of him and saying something about suburbs in Sydney. And then his mind came perfectly clear, so that he knew that for some reason he was walking round and round London.
The second shock was when he had a good idea. He could stop walking and hail a taxi and say ‘Paddington’ and it would all be as good as over. For if you could say ‘Paddington’ on the pavement here you could say ‘Oxford’ at a booking office and it wasn’t easy to see how, after that, things could go wrong. Or not more wrong than they’d gone. Only Phil was accustomed to being not all that flush – it was less than a year ago that he’d come out of apprentice school and started making big money – and he usually consulted his pockets before a decisive move in the financial line. It’s what he’d failed to do, being kind of worked up, that evening before he’d
gone into the Pompadour. But he did it now. He decided he’d count his money. It was a bit of a joke that, really – because he knew that he had more than fifty nicker on him. Even if he didn’t know why, he knew that. So he felt in his pockets. And he discovered he had nothing at all.
It was a filthy trick to have played him, he thought. To have knocked out a tooth and cut his scalp open and bunged up an eye and tried to spoil his matrimonial chances was one thing. But to have gone through his pockets afterwards was another. It would be Hotchkiss did that – he decided with a clear flash of knowledge. Rather compassionate, Hotchkiss had been. And felt entitled to cash down.
And somehow it took the use out of him, this being alone in London without a penny. In fact it put panic in him. He wasn’t thinking how the skies had fallen, the unbelievable gate had closed again. He was just thinking he was without money. Something deep in his training – his nurture, you might say – made a horrible fear out of it. It would have meant nothing to Sir Sodding Aubrey Moore. If Moore found himself in the middle of Detroit or Tokyo without a bean, he’d do no more than feel annoyed. And he’d do some commonplace thing about it. Phil, although he hardly remembered who Moore was, knew that. You went to the police, he supposed. And when they were clear you weren’t tight, or on the run, they gave you a cup of tea and some blankets, and fixed you up good-humoured, like you were their long-lost moron nephew. Panic, all the same.
The Man Who Won the Pools Page 16
