The Wind Off the Sea

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘We might not know each other that well,’ Waldo said after a pause. ‘But we see quite a lot of each other.’

  ‘I don’t see how.’

  ‘Confidential, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You’re not a mason, surely?’

  Waldo stared at her then threw back his head and laughed. ‘No, Loopy – I most certainly am not a Mason.’

  ‘Then how can it be confidential? What could you possibly have between you that should give you confidentiality – unless … my God, you’re not?’ Loopy stared at Waldo with a mixture of dismay and amazement. ‘You’re not one of Hugh’s bogeys, are you?’

  ‘Hugh’s bogeys?’

  ‘That’s what John calls his— the people who work for him. His bogeys. My God, you’re not one of them, surely?’

  Waldo gave her the look that he knew always made her smile, half tilting his head at her and slightly widening his eyes.

  ‘Wonderful view from here, don’t you think?’ he remarked, taking her arm and continuing to walk her along the cliff path. Loopy sighed and shook her head sadly, knowing that by the rules that bound them this conversation was at an end.

  ‘I should hate you, really, but I don’t.’

  ‘So what do you do for me?’

  ‘I like you, Waldo, that’s what I do. You’re a friend. As a matter of fact I consider you to be a really good friend.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I want to be to you.’

  ‘Then that’s good. Now let’s just enjoy our walk, shall we?’

  For a moment as they ambled in friendly silence along the clifftop path Loopy’s thoughts turned to Meggie, and to her husband, but as those thoughts began to make her feel uncomfortable she took hold of the arm that was linked to hers, at the same time deciding to banish all further contemplation of the unknown, preferring instead to enjoy both the sea views and the present company.

  All of a sudden she felt oddly independent, and she relished the moment, embracing the new found feeling as strongly as she was embracing the arm that held her, knowing that somehow this newly discovered independence was something that was long overdue.

  Chapter Eleven

  The brief object of Loopy’s discomfort bumped into Mattie in Dr Farnsworth’s surgery the following Monday. Mattie was very poorly, with a streaming cold that had turned into something with all the hallmarks of the influenza that had broken out generally in the region, albeit somewhat earlier than was usually expected.

  ‘You got the flu as well?’ she asked Meggie. ‘Because if you have, you have my sympathy.’

  ‘No,’ Meggie said, edging slightly away from Mattie and wishing she hadn’t chosen to sit down next to her in the crowded surgery. ‘I had some sort of bug in the summer, and it hasn’t cleared up. Left me with a rather unattractive cough.’

  ‘Cigarettes probably,’ Mattie said, sounding muffled as she held a handkerchief to her face. ‘I don’t care what anyone says, I don’t think they do us any good at all, except of course reduce our appetites.’

  ‘I can’t smoke at all at the moment,’ Meggie said regretfully. ‘All it does is make me cough.’

  ‘I’ve cut right down,’ Mattie said, stuffing her hankie back up the sleeve of her dress. ‘Down to ten a day now.’

  ‘Bully,’ Meggie said, tossing back her head. ‘That’s about what I’m used to getting through before breakfast – until this damn’ cough.’

  When Meggie finally got in to see Dr Farnsworth he himself was just stubbing out a cigarette in an ashtray, which Meggie recognised at once as having been purloined from the Three Tuns.

  ‘Good,’ the doctor said, indicating the chair opposite his desk. ‘Sit. Sit you down. Good. And how are we today?’

  ‘Absolutely top hole,’ Meggie drawled. ‘Hence my visit.’

  Dr Farnsworth looked up, surprised. ‘I was merely being conversational, Miss Gore-Stewart. Obviously if you were feeling altogether well I dare say you wouldn’t be here. So what is wrong with us today? Feeling a bit—’

  ‘I have this cough,’ Meggie interrupted. ‘I’ve had it since the summer – since early summer in fact – and it’s making me feel rather washed out.’

  Dr Farnsworth duly listened to her chest, felt the glands in her throat, looked at her tonsils and took the opportunity of listening to her chest once more, a part of the examination over which he seemed to linger unduly.

  ‘You’re making a bit of a meal of this, aren’t you?’ Meggie said, sitting up and pulling her sweater back down over her breasts. ‘It’s only a throaty cough.’

  ‘You’ve been feeling tired, you say?’ Farnsworth stood back, having pulled his stethoscope out of his ears. ‘A bit washed out.’

  ‘I haven’t been sleeping well, not me at all, actually. I learned to sleep anywhere during the war, haystacks, trains, backs of lorries, but now with this cough I’m awake half the night and nothing brings relief.’

  ‘You’re a smoker, aren’t you?’

  ‘So are you.’

  ‘I’m not the one being examined for a bad cough, Miss Gore-Stewart.’

  ‘Are you saying I should stop smoking? Because if so I promise you I am taking in half my usual amount, due to this graveyard cough.’

  ‘How many are you in the habit of smoking a day, normally, Miss Gore-Stewart?’

  ‘Normally?’ Meggie paused, thinking. ‘Normally I smoke too many, Dr Farnsworth. Now I am smoking far less than too many, but still I suppose too many.’

  ‘Then cut down. That’s all you need to do – cut down. You don’t have to cut it out altogether, just cut down, if you’re a heavy smoker. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with tobacco – in fact there’s a school of thought that holds that it clears the mind and helps concentration. I certainly find that. It’s also considerably helped my daughter’s asthma, so you don’t have to think oh I must stop smoking altogether. It’s the same with anything done to excess. Excess is what’s harmful, not necessarily the ingredient. Same goes with alcohol, aspirin, and food of course. You’re coughing because you’re really not giving your lungs a chance to recover, that’s all. A little respite between cigarettes and you’d be surprised. The body is a remarkable piece of machinery, Miss Gore-Stewart, with quite remarkable powers not only of recovery but of self-restoration. How many do you smoke a day?’

  ‘I don’t count. I told you. Sometimes more, when I’m a bit – you know. During the war I smoked two or three packets – when I could get them.’

  ‘If I were you, I’d cut it down to one packet a day. You’ve been overdoing it, that’s all. Simply a case of overdoing it. You won’t believe the difference if you can cut back to about twenty a day. You really don’t need more than that. I find I don’t. Anything more than twenty a day is just – well. Overdoing it.’

  Meggie returned to the outside world armed with a large bottle of cough linctus and a supply of Fisherman’s Friend to keep her cough at bay. Relieved that there was nothing wrong with her other than a bad dose of excess, she was determined to take Dr Farnsworth’s advice and do her best to cut back to one packet of Players a day, a target she believed was well within her capabilities, if – for instance, as she confided to Mattie as she left the surgery – she gave up smoking in bed, and particularly before she got up in the morning. She vowed to herself that those were cigarettes she would now do without.

  Feeling better for her visit to the surgery, she lengthened her stride and walked with increased confidence back to Cucklington House, only to find a letter from her lawyers advising her that the matter she had tried to put out of her mind in the hope of some miracle’s occurring had come to a head, and the sale of her grandmother’s beloved seaside home was no longer a consideration, but an absolute necessity.

  Having absorbed the contents of the letter, Meggie lit a fresh cigarette and went to the drinks tray for a gin. The unimaginable had happened. She was about to lose the last thing in her life that she truly loved.

  Waldo used his trip to London bearing Loopy’s precious
paintings carefully wrapped up in the back of his Buick to introduce Lionel to the city’s fashionably active bridge circuit. After delivering the paintings to the gallery in Cork Street and instructing one of the assistants to unwrap but not to begin hanging the pictures until he returned the following day, he drove on to an address in Mayfair where he met Lionel, and they both changed into black tie for the evening’s play.

  Admiring the elegant surroundings in which he found himself, Lionel could not help wondering to whom the apartment might belong, only to be told by Waldo that it didn’t belong to anyone as such, at least not to anyone that he knew personally since it was a rental.

  ‘It has quite an art collection for what you call “a rental”,’ Lionel observed shrewdly, sitting on one of the twin beds in the bedroom and carefully tying the shoelaces of his patent leather shoes.

  ‘That’s because it’s a very expensive rental, Lionel,’ Waldo replied. ‘And because the guy who rents it has very good taste.’

  ‘Might we have a bracer before we leave?’ Lionel enquired, as Waldo stood checking his bow tie in the mirror above the drawing room fireplace.

  ‘Most certainly not, Lionel,’ Waldo reprimanded him. ‘No alcohol either before or during the game. Afterwards you may get as smashed as you wish, your only consideration being that if we lose, you pay.’

  They took a taxicab to the venue, a large private house in a very large garden somewhere in Hampstead. This was a part of London that was largely unknown to Lionel, so he had absolutely no bearing on where exactly he was, or the status of the house – at least not until he entered and saw the furnishings and the art collection. It was obviously the home of a very rich person, in the shape of a small rotund and entirely bald middle-aged man introducing himself as George Beck Hampton, their host for the evening. There were six tables in all, each one of them supervised by a white-gloved referee positioned behind the chair to be occupied by North. Lionel was duly introduced only to those people at whose table he and Waldo would first be playing, their opponents being foreign while happily speaking, to Lionel’s particular relief, impeccable English. There was no real emphasis placed upon the size of the stakes other than that they were to be of the usual order and that all debts must be cleared before leaving either by cash or by guaranteed banker’s cheque.

  Lionel looked immediately discomfited by this, even though Waldo had put him entirely in the picture, and glanced across the table at his partner. Waldo ignored the look. Instead he started to engage in small talk with the man on his left playing East, as the pre-prepared hands in sealed envelopes were put on the table in front of each person seated North. Five minutes later play was allowed to commence.

  There was no real reason for Lionel to be nervous yet he nevertheless found that the hands that held his cards were quite definitely sweating. He knew he was an excellent player and that – more importantly – Waldo had underwritten the entire evening, as a consequence of which he personally had nothing to lose. No, what he feared was making a complete ass of himself, which was why it seemed to him that he was half dead with fright.

  Because of his catatonic state he opened the first hand Two No Trumps instead of One, ended up in a contract of six hearts and went four light, doubled. Waldo did not even bother to exchange a look. The next hand their opponents contracted to make a modest Two No Trumps, Lionel doubled on the strength of a long line of clubs headed by the king, led the fourth of the suit to a void in Waldo’s hand and his opponents made their contract with ease, plus three overtricks. Again, Waldo did not do so much as look even vaguely in Lionel’s direction, preferring instead to study at length the magnificent chandelier under which they were all seated.

  Twenty minutes later the two of them left their first table the losers, scoring nothing to their opponents’ two thousand eight hundred points.

  ‘Which is?’ Lionel muttered at Waldo as they headed for the next table.

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘How much are we down, Waldo?’

  ‘Two thousand eight hundred. You should know. You had the scorecard.’

  ‘How much money is that?’

  ‘You really wouldn’t want to know, Lionel. You might play even more incompetently.’

  ‘I did not play incompetently!’ Lionel insisted, a little too vociferously. ‘Nervously, perhaps – I was a little nervous, no doubt, but incompetence at the card table is not in my repertoire.’

  ‘Your repertoire was loaded with it in that rubber, my friend. Now forget about the score, forget about the money, forget about these no-hopers, because believe me, Lionel, there isn’t one guy here who can hold a candle to you let alone to us – all except that Egyptian over there who is about the best player in the world – so settle down, and enjoy yourself. Play some cards. And stop looking like a constipated crocodile.’

  ‘That’s what I look like?’

  ‘The spit darned image, my dear fellow, the spit darned image. You should be in a Florida swamp, not on the London circuit.’

  Far from upsetting him, somehow Waldo’s utterly raffish and devil-may-care attitude actually settled Lionel, so that the moment bidding started at their second table he began to play with his old flair and skill, imagining himself to be back in Gloria Bishop’s modest little drawing room, playing as usual with Waldo against Gloria and the vicar. From that moment on Waldo and Lionel could not lose, or at least only when Waldo wanted them to do so in order to lure their opponents into a false sense of security. Knowing Waldo’s game as well as he did now, Lionel suffered no blue fit when he heard his partner wildly overbid, or just as rashly double a contract their opponents were practically certain to make, and simply played his part to perfection. The result was that at eleven o’clock precisely, when game was called, not only were Waldo and he the evening’s overall winners, but their final tally of points was five and a half thousand points clear of the next pair. For their prize they received a cash payment of two hundred and fifty pounds each. Naturally Lionel accepted the money as if it was an everyday occurrence, as he did the banker’s cheque for the sum of five hundred and fifty pounds, to be split between the partners fifty-fifty.

  The taxi ride home to Mayfair was a silent affair, Lionel saying not a word, and Waldo preferring to puff contentedly away on his Havana. After a while he did, however, start to shake with silent laughter, as Lionel merely stared ahead of him at the cab driver’s back, dumbstruck. Following Waldo’s short attack of glee, as the taxi was turning off Park Lane into Mount Street, Lionel seemed to wake from his shock, and demanded to know what Waldo had been finding so funny.

  ‘Why, my dear chap!’ Waldo exclaimed. ‘Why, your face, of course! Your dear face! You should see it! Why, you look as though you are sitting on something very sharp and extremely upright! Never have I seen such a face! It is too perfect for words!’

  Seeing the point, Lionel also started at last to laugh. Bexham might beckon, but just at that moment he was in heaven, and he knew it, and that was where he planned on staying.

  The next morning Waldo went to the gallery to help hang Loopy’s exhibition. Loopy had already arrived and with the help of two of the gallery’s young assistants had already begun the task, only for Waldo to take command and order everything to be taken down and hung again. By late afternoon it was done, and even the increasingly nervous artist herself had to admit to being pleased with the arrangement of her pictures on the walls. Waldo wondered what she was going to do with herself that evening and was surprised to learn that she intended to catch the 6.10 home from Waterloo.

  ‘Would it not be wiser for you to stay up in town now?’ he asked. ‘There are all sorts of incidental details still to be looked after – interviews, photographs, further preparatory work and all that stuff. You have a flat in town, don’t you? Surely it would be altogether wiser for you to stay up here with your husband?’

  ‘That’s the whole point, Waldo,’ Loopy explained, checking her watch. ‘Hugh isn’t in town. I had a telephone call just after lun
ch to say he was returning home because he wasn’t feeling at all well. So I really must get back to him.’

  ‘Nothing serious, I hope? This influenza bug’s running riot.’

  ‘He said something about pains in his chest. He sounded rather worried – at least for Hugh he did. He normally stiffens that already pretty starched British upper lip at times of distress. So I really think I ought to go home.’

  ‘Very well.’ Waldo nodded. ‘I’d offer to drive you home, but firstly I have an unbreakable engagement this evening and secondly I don’t see as I’d be a whole lot of use at Hugh’s bedside.’

  ‘I think that’s my job, Waldo.’ Loopy smiled, kissing him goodbye on the cheek. ‘You’ve done your job,’ she added, indicating the hung paintings. ‘And a good job, too.’

  Waldo would have liked to run Loopy back down to Sussex, thereby both helping her and being in her company, but as he and Lionel changed for the evening he knew that it was quite out of the question. This was the only chance they were going to have of a match with the great Egyptian card player who also happened to be one of the game’s heaviest gamblers.

  For the first time in his life as far as bridge went Waldo felt a sudden attack of nerves. Looking round at his playing partner as they both stood tying their bow ties he wondered whether they really were quite up to the challenge. Peter Bottros’s regular playing partner, Estelle Van der Beek, was an extremely rich South African widow who was also considered one of the very best contract bridge players on the circuit. As a duo they were rarely beaten at the level at which they would be playing this evening, a single-table challenge of the best of seven rubbers, naturally dealt. As an added incentive the stakes were to be even higher than the preceding night’s, although Waldo was wise enough not to inform Lionel of this point. Even though Lionel stood at no financial risk whatsoever, Waldo appreciated the fact that he suffered nerves on behalf of Waldo’s wallet, and made absolutely no mention of the upping of the ante.