‘Arcturus is the favourite for the two thirty,’ he murmured, almost to himself. ‘Going firm to hard.’
Where his wife favoured horoscopes, he studied the turf.
‘Something, Ant,’ insisted his wife, still reading aloud, ‘connected with you is going to happen today that will change someone’s life.’
He nodded at that, too, similarly unsurprised. What he did frequently changed someone’s life. At the very least, it made them more careful afterwards. For ever afterwards.
He went back to the racing page. Time was when he and his wife had tried to combine their separate interests but horosocopes had proved an even more uncertain way to racing success than the study of form and now by tacit consent they each pursued their own separate avocations.
‘Aquarius,’ she said, running her fat finger further down the page. ‘It says here that today’ll be a day to remember.’
‘Arcturus nearly won the Almstone Cup last week at Calleford,’ he said, shoving the tub of margarine off the sports pages and on to the newspaper’s gossip column. He reached for the marmalade jar. Madge would continue, he knew, without any encouragement from him until she had taken in every aspect of the day’s horoscope.
‘You’ll have to be ever so careful,’ she said, ‘until midnight.’
‘I’m always careful, aren’t I?’ He piled the marmalade on to the bread with the absent-minded amplitude of a thin man. ‘Harry’s Dive is the favourite, though.’
‘Funny name for a horse,’ said Madge who took Sagittarius and Capricorn in her stride every morning.
‘Out of Cellar by Night Life.’ If he, Ant, were ever to own a race-horse he would call it Wallet out of Back Pocket by Sleight of Hand. A real traditionalist, Ant deeply regretted the new fashion of visitors to this country wearing a purse strung round their waists like a kangaroo-pouch. He was, he felt, a little too set in his ways to learn new methods of being what Chaucer would have called a ‘cut-purse’.
‘What do you think she means?’ she pondered.
‘Who?’
She tapped the newspaper. ‘This woman here. Madame Whatyoucallit.’
‘Dunno.’
‘She’s very clever.’ For years Madge had followed the daily horoscope of a man whose improbably good-looking features, including a neatly trimmed beard, had adorned the top of his newspaper piece. Of late though she—or, rather, the newspaper proprietor—had switched her allegiance to the astrological prognostications of a woman whose gypsy-like appearance was underlined by a headscarf and dangling ear-rings.
Ant suspected the column was still being written by the same hand. Madge, however, had a touching faith in the predictions of the unknown writer and no faith at all in anything or anyone else—but especially not in her husband, Anthony.
‘Someone, Ant,’ she quoted, ‘will this day owe you an immense debt of gratitude.’
He grunted at the sheer unlikeliness of that. Most of the people from whom he made his living had good cause to regret their brief encounter with him rather than the other way round. And the briefer the encounter, the better, from Ant’s point of view. The length of their exchange wasn’t so important to his victims since he was not a violent man and never had been. And he certainly wasn’t in the habit of getting caught.
This last may have had something to do with the fact that he wasn’t greedy. He never did more than one job a day—after which he would make straight for the betting shop. Most of the evidence disappeared over the counter there long before the police became involved. He himself attributed his relative freedom from prosecution to luck—and to his practice of always addressing such policemen as came his way as ‘Mister’. In spite of this act of pietas he had been arraigned from time to time and therefore took as keen an interest in the workings of the law as the Lord Chancellor himself.
He tucked into more bread and margarine now since he wasn’t a drinking man either and wouldn’t be having his lunch in a pub even though his working day would be spent in the city. This abstinence was not a matter of choice but the result of an innate weakness in his constitution. He couldn’t take drink without his digestion being thoroughly upset.
In fact, Ant figured altogether rather low down life’s totem pole. Even the name of Anthony assigned to him by a rather deaf clergyman had been a mistake. His mother—the daughter of a pig-man and brought up on a farm deep in rural Calleshire—had actually wanted him called Tantony. This had been in much the same spirit as other people called their son Benjamin in the pious hope that he would be the last of the tribe: a tantony being the last or runt of the sow’s litter.
Runt really described Ant rather well. Where he was thin and had a look of permanent undernourishment about him, his wife was the reverse. She had Queen Anne legs—it would have been a kindness to call them cabriolet—but there was no understating her size. And the larger she grew, the smaller her husband seemed.
‘I’ve got to be careful today,’ she said, ‘because of Uranus and Neptune.’
‘Credenza’s running in the three o’clock,’ he countered, keeping his own end up. ‘Odds on.’
‘And the Sun is challenged by Mars,’ she read on. ‘That sounds dangerous.’
‘You watch those kitchen steps …’ he said. ‘They’re definitely dangerous.’
‘And you watch your step, Ant … one day a cony’ll get you instead of you getting him.’
‘Never worry,’ he said, draining his tea-cup. He put it down on the table without consulting the leaves. Once upon a time, when they had first married, Madge had been quite keen on reading the tea-leaves but he hadn’t liked it and had said so. He wasn’t a sensitive man but even so, it didn’t seem quite nice: not when everyone knew that the cockney rhyming slang for ‘thief’ was ‘tea-leaf’.
He left Madge sitting at the kitchen table still pondering on what it was that was going to happen today to make him, Ant, important in the scheme of things. ‘Back teatime,’ he said over his shoulder by way of farewell.
As usual, he took himself into the city centre by bus. Bus passengers were incurious fellow travellers at the best of times and Ant’s total unmemorability made it even less likely that anyone would remember having seen him that or any other morning.
He slipped away from the bus stop—he was not a man who ever strode anywhere anyway—with his customary inconspicuousness and made his way to the concourse in front of the cathedral where the fountain played. This spot invariably attracted the tourists on whom Ant preyed.
Those who congegrated there usually spent their time throwing coins into the fountain’s basin—an action which Ant thought was definitely wasteful and probably pagan in origin but for which he was grateful as it showed him just where his victims kept their small change if not their big money.
He watched the little crowd while he selected his victim. His first choice was a man hung about with expensive cameras and he was just trying to identify which of the bulges in his pocket was wallet and which new film when a woman waved at the man and he moved away. Ant could have followed for the kill but he didn’t. Like a tiger he preferred his prey to be solitary—and with no likelihood of having anyone keeping a weather eye on him or her.
His next choice was a younger man but more obviously from overseas. That was a plus point in Ant’s book. Those unfamiliar with the British scene were less likely to lead a hue and cry or to know their way about the complex pattern of medieval streets round the old cathedral.
This fellow was trying to photograph the famous view of the cathedral’s ancient west front edged by the curve of the fountain and he was making a thorough job of it. Twice he adjusted his stance just as Ant was equally carefully judging his own distance from the chap’s back pocket.
Ant waited until a little gaggle of other tourists turned in his own direction and then walked towards them. As they drew level with the photographer Ant stepped behind him, as if to let the others proceed and with consummate skill—just as they had passed him but were still sheltering him fro
m the view of anyone on their side—he lifted the man’s wallet from his pocket.
It was very skilfully done indeed and he doubted whether the man had felt a thing. Ant did not move away in undue haste—that would have lacked artistry. Instead, he carried on past his victim, in the direction it would have seemed he had always been planning to proceed. He crossed the cathedral concourse, palming his prize into one of his own especially capacious ‘poacher’s’ pockets, and to all intents and purposes making for the old coaching inn at the corner.
He did indeed enter the bar there but left immediately by another door. Within a minute he was back in the street—a much busier one than before—and heading straight for his favourite betting establishment.
While it would have been true to say that his ear was cocked for any sound of a chase, it was equally fair to record that he was not worried about it—and that he had, too, completely forgotten the gypsy’s warning so carefully spelled out for him by Madge that morning.
Whether it would have made any difference if he had been more careful at that point or whether predestination really did have a part to play in the eternal scheme of things Ant never did know.
All he knew was that the shout of warning from the pavement came too late to save him from being in the direct path of the lorry which came hurtling down the road, careering all over the carriageway, its driver slumped down unconscious over the wheel.
The House Surgeon at the hospital was young and still idealistic. Confronted by one dead man and one dying one, he promptly instituted a search for organ donor cards. The lorry driver hadn’t been carrying one but inside the wallet in Ant’s pocket there was a signed card giving very clear permission for any tissue to be removed after death. That the name was not Ant’s name but that of another—a visitor from a younger country—was not apparent to the hands at the hospital which dispatched the battered form—already beyond aid, as the House Physician duly recorded—to what is euphemistically known as the non-recovery theatre.
Tissue typing was set in motion even as someone sought the Coroner’s permission to do so. Attempts were made, too, to get in touch with a remote homestead on the edge of the Nullarbor Plain.
No one, however, made any effort to take the sad news to Ant’s wife, Madge, nowhere near as far away and still sitting over Ant’s horoscope trying to figure out exactly how her husband—nondescript to a fault—could ever be the life and soul of the day’s events.
Or for it to be a day to remember.
THE MISJUDGEMENT OF PARIS
Henry Molland gave his wife the news during dinner. He chose the moment with his customary care, since he did not want her mind deflected in any way from her cooking. Waiting until they’d finished their first course of steak with a perfectly judged béarnaise sauce and after Mary had placed some home-made apple pie before him, he told her that the final interviews for the post of the firm’s general manager, UK, were to be held this week in Paris.
‘Paris!’ she exclaimed, adding urgently, ‘When?’
‘Thursday.’
‘Thursday? That means …’ Mary began to look extremely thoughtful. ‘Do you know, Henry, I think if I really concentrate, I could finish Lucy’s birthday present for you to take over with you.’
Henry nodded. ‘I thought that was what you would say.’
Mary Molland was an expert at the almost lost craft of smocking and had been working on the most beautiful of nightdresses for weeks. ‘Lucy’ll just have to put the hem up herself that’s all.’
Since Lucy’s doting father considered Lucy capable of absolutely everything, he did not feel this to be a worry.
‘Why Paris?’ asked Mary presently. ‘Do you mind just clearing the table, dear. I think I’ll do a little more stitching before the light goes …’
‘Well, we are an international firm after all, and the Board are meeting in Paris anyway. There’s a big trade exhibition on this week.’
‘M’m …’
‘And anyway I think they want to see how the candidates get on without support staff—secretaries and so forth …’
‘Wives, you mean.’
‘Them too.’ Henry stacked the dishes from their meal methodically on to a tray, challenging himself to take them to the kitchen in one journey.
‘And who else is being interviewed?’ enquired Mary, adding loyally: ‘Not that they’ll stand a chance against you.’
Henry laughed. ‘Don’t you believe it. There’s Smeaton and Carmichael and Bullock. Mustn’t underestimate Bullock, he’s a clever lad even though he’s still a bit wet behind the ears.’
‘And who will get the job, then, dear?’ She added hastily, ‘If you don’t, I mean.’
‘One of the young Turks, I expect. Not me, anyway. Much too long in the tooth.’
‘You’ve been with the company longest.’
‘That’s the trouble, old age.’
‘Well,’ said Mary briskly, ignoring this last like the good wife she was, ‘at least Lucy’ll get her birthday present in good time. You never know with these foreign posts, do you? Give her my love.’
In the event, the actual delivery of his daughter’s birthday present turned out to be a little more problematical than Henry had expected. It transpired that Lucy, while working in Paris during the day, had her evenings bespoken by a young man called Jules.
‘You’ll love him, Daddy, when you meet him.’
‘Good,’ said Lucy’s father, who had met a great many of Lucy’s admirers in his time. It emerged, though, that his meeting with Jules was not to be quite yet.
‘Your birthday present …’ said Henry firmly, ‘on which your mother has been labouring for weeks, is here at my hotel and I am going home on Thursday evening.’
‘Daddy, what about my coming to your hotel for breakfast? I’m not busy at breakfast time.’
Henry said sternly that he was glad to hear it and would expect her at seven o’clock the next morning and not a moment later because he had a busy day ahead of him.
‘Alors, demain, à sept heures, Papa,’ said Lucy sweetly, and went to get ready for Jules.
Henry on his part also had the next day to prepare for. He and Smeaton, Carmichael and Bullock foregathered briefly in the hotel bar after getting their marching orders for the next day.
Bullock, anxious to maintain his standing as the youngest—and therefore the most vigorous—of the candidates and to demonstrate the qualities of leadership said to be sought by all appointments boards proposed they all had a night on the tiles together.
‘No use wasting a stag night in Paris, now is there?’
Smeaton, whose academic qualifications were impeccable and in his own view quite unassailable too, agreed to join him. ‘What about you two others?’
It was well known to them all that Henry Molland had started with the company as a grease monkey and thus had only ever had ‘hands on’ experience—moreover, he had no ‘alphabet soup’ after his name either. He was therefore no challenge to a high-flyer like Smeaton who could afford to be magnanimous.
‘You’d better count me out anyway,’ murmured Carmichael. ‘I thought I’d just run over a few figures for tomorrow over dinner in my room.’
Carmichael was the workaholic of the quartet and in any case thought zeal ought to be a prerequirement of the promotion fast lane.
‘What about you then, Molland?’ challenged Bullock. ‘Or do you want a quiet evening with a good balance sheet, too?’
‘A quiet evening with a good menu will suit me very well,’ returned Henry equably. He certainly wasn’t going to waste it working, belonging as he did to the school of thought that held that Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If’ had a lot to answer for and Dr Samuel Smiles’ books on ‘Self-Help’ even more.
Besides, the hotel had a stately dining-room that was a cross between the Palace of Versailles and the old Euston station, which he had every intention of exploring.
‘It’s no good your thinking the Board will be eating there, too, Molland,’
said Bullock maliciously. ‘They’ve all been invited to a reception at the British Embassy to do with this Trade Fair.’
‘I know that,’ said Henry. ‘I shouldn’t be dining here otherwise.’
He was glad, though, that he was. As well as being built on classical lines the hotel dining-room had a memorable carte to match it. He telephoned Mary, assured her of the safe arrival of himself and Lucy’s new nightdress, and then settled down to a good meal and an early night.
Seven o’clock the next morning found him rested, bathed, shaved and dressed—and waiting in the foyer of the hotel.
‘Daddy, darling …’
Suddenly he was being kissed by a very elegant young lady indeed. He squared his shoulders and led the way into the dining-room. They were, in fact, the first arrivals and were led to a window table.
‘I’ve got lots to tell you …’ began Lucy. And so she had although Henry noticed that nearly all of it seemed to include a mention of Jules’ name. Lovesick, though, Henry was happy to observe, Lucy wasn’t. Croissants were waved away in favour of a proper English breakfast.
‘The French don’t understand morning food,’ she declared, agreeing to the waiter’s offer of more toast. There was never any shortage of waiters when Lucy ate.
The dining-room filled up as they talked and talked. Out of the corner of his eye Henry saw the members of the selection board trickle in and then Carmichael—looking drawn. A long while after that Bullock came in—looking like a man who has had a night on the tiles—and addressed himself to a pot of coffee. He waved away a basket of croissants in quite a different manner from Lucy.
Of Smeaton there was no sign.
‘Darling, that was lovely but I must go or I’ll be late …’ Lucy started to push back her chair. At least three waiters decided she needed help with this operation and rushed forward. She thanked them with great charm and Henry got up to go with her to the door.
‘Your mother will never forgive either of us if we forget this,’ said Henry, handing over a parcel wrapped in tissue paper.
‘Oh, my goodness, no.’ Lucy stood still in the middle of the dining-room while she unwrapped it. As the tissue paper fell away the most exquisite of hand-smocked nightdresses was revealed to the entire dining-room. His daughter reached up and kissed Henry on the cheek and then swept out, nightdress and all.
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