The Green Flash (21 page)

Derek had been away, but when I rang him and told him what had happened at Shona's he sounded amused.

‘Well, we've made a few thou, whether or not. Shall you keep the company in being?'

‘Shona suggested we might become jobbers in a big way. If she spreads the word – as she's pretty sure to – there won't be any more pickings in the perfumery industry; but there are other things. Fancy, mooching round junkyards?'

‘Not much. But I'll keep an eye open. Shall you keep your flat and your flash car?'

‘What?'

‘I suppose it's essential for a conman to have a good front, isn't it?'

‘Don't worry about me,' I said.

‘But I do, darling – I know how irresponsible you are.'

A couple of days after this I went to Bexhill and took Essie Morris out. She was an odd old girl – very ingenuous, considering that her late husband had done time for armed robbery and her son a three-year stretch for opening safes that didn't belong to him. You wondered how she had kept her illusions through it all. But she had. Men and women, in her eyes, were always better-intentioned than ordinary people gave them credit for. Even screws, she thought, were human; and the police force had some ‘nice boys' in it. I took her to Herstmonceux to the Observatory, and to Bodiam Castle. Another day I picked her up and drove her to a matinee of a musical at Drury Lane and then took her back.

It wasn't until then that I explained to her why I had so much time to spare. She was genuinely upset, seeing, to my annoyance, Shona's point of view as well as my own. Even more annoyingly she thought it might still be patched up.

‘My dear Essie, you just don't know human nature. Or you only know your own (which is very kinky, peculiar, odd, eccentric and romantic) and judge other people by it. Shona's too hard. I'm too hard. There's simply no meeting ground any more. I wouldn't
want
there to be. Change the subject.'

‘Of course, love. Anything you say. But how will it affect Arthur?'

‘Not at all, I hope. I asked him last weekend if he had had any word, but no, just his pay packet as usual. So it looks as if Madame is only venting her spleen on the one who deserves it.'

‘I'm glad for Crack,' Essie said. ‘But I'm scared if your influence isn't there any more. You know what he's like, love, a little teeny bit weak. Easy led. It's risky. Especially without you.'

‘My dear Ma,' I said, ‘if you can't lose any other illusions, please try to lose this one about me. The last thing I ever expect to be in anyone's life is a
good
influence! Everybody who knows me – except you – would rattle with laughter at the thought. Please laugh too, so that I can know you're not serious.'

‘What he needs,' Essie said after a moment, ‘what Arthur needs is a good wife. It would make all the difference. As you do, love. Don't you think?'

IV

Several times Marks and Leo rang me during the second and third week, obviously in trouble, not knowing what to do about orders and deliveries and an advertising campaign we'd been about to launch. They hadn't seen much of Shona either, and when they did see her she looked so thunderous they didn't go near. The rumour was she was advertising for my successor; but I reckoned that would take several weeks, even if she was lucky. Considering how choosy she was, it might take six months. Her best bet was to poach a top man from some rival firm. Otherwise, I wasn't flattering myself to suppose, the newly blooming expansion was likely to turn yellow.

My affair with Erica went pretty well. There was no consuming passion on either side, but often that can be a good thing. Sex on a limited-liability basis was what I'd always favoured before, and it has a lot to recommend it. I was right about the sultry eyes; they didn't mean a thing, and that was a relief too. But we got along, laughing together often enough (which is rare for me) and parting and going our separate ways and coming together again without more prior notice than a telephone call. She was zesty with appetite and go, sometimes temperamental but never tired, full of fun and practical jokes. Yet under it she had a laid-back, cool, down-to-earth streak. Money she'd always had – she knew how to use it to get what she wanted in terms of enjoyment. At the moment the thing she wanted most was to be the top woman fencer in England, and that was something she couldn't buy. So she went for it level-headed and hard-headed, and that meant keeping to a rigid regime. Nothing was allowed to get in the way of that, though sometimes she had such vitality she was able to burn the candle at both ends.

In the fourth week she went off to Rome for a six-day tourney, but she said she didn't want me with her, so I stayed at home.

On the Tuesday I couldn't be bothered to go to the Sloane gymnasium, not wanting to run the risk of confronting Shona, so, at a loose end again, I drifted into the Cellini Club in St George Street.

It was upwards of three years since I'd been in the place; but I'd always held a sort of honorary membership because of the people I'd introduced there in the past. Obviously the warranty still ran because I was welcomed like an old friend. The years might never have passed; it all looked the same, and there were the same crowd there – I mean, so far as attendants went: Mario and Frederick and Kurt, and Angelina and Lucie and Maud. The men still looked as if their five o'clock shave hadn't been close enough and the girls as if they were too big for their frocks. It was a luxurious joint, full of gilt and red velvet plush. Early yet and only one of the tables was busy.

Cellini himself came out of his office to say hello.

‘Ah, David, how are you? Long time no see. I observe you have your carnation still. When is it going to be green?'

The club had been going for forty years, and this Cellini, they said, came from Alexandria. Whether he had changed his name or was a son of the first owner no one knew. He was a small man with the sort of nose you used to see on pharaohs, and he always wore a crimson linen evening suit. He was fond of diamonds, and someone had once mentioned the name Liberace in his presence. That someone was not admitted again.

Yet he wasn't a bad fellow, and honest enough after his lights. Maybe sometimes his lights were not quite bright enough, but his world isn't renowned for its integrity.

‘Roger is here,' he said. ‘Playing bridge. With three Americans. This is their first visit, so I don't know how they play. We shall be starting a table of Black Jack very soon.'

‘Thanks, Val,' I said. ‘But I'm over twenty-one already.'

The one person I really didn't want to see was Roger Manpole. Maybe, feeling like that, I should have taken off while the runway was clear. It was just that I was not in the mood to leave. Because where did I go?

Happiness, I'd said to Essie Morris once, was something I saw only through a dark window. Content – or self-forgetfulness – or a state of non-unhappiness – came sometimes, rarely, but was not in the charts just now. Even my pleasant little affair with Erica, seen from a distance, did not stir me, even though she was young, pretty, vivacious, eager, flippant, everything printed on the bottle. Why not? I didn't know. I was a new man, responsible to no one. I felt like returning to a life of crime. What could be better, given the right opportunity? I ought to be seeking out Roger, not avoiding him.

At that moment, dead on cue, he came into the room, smooth and Savile-Rowed and self-assured. Handsome house in St John's Wood, a yacht, now a third wife mink-lined, a son at Eton. Since before the decline and fall of the Roman Empire such men have ruled the middle ground that exists between law-abiding respectability and the underworld.

With him was a tall thin chap who looked like Abraham Lincoln's younger brother.

‘My dear David.' We might have met only last week. ‘Just the man I wanted to see. Care for a rubber? My partner has to go.'

‘Thanks,' I said. ‘I was just leaving myself.'

‘Stay an hour. It's quite a while since we've played together. Thank you, Jeff,' he said to Abraham Lincoln Jnr, and they shook hands. ‘It was a great pleasure.'

‘My pleasure too,' said the American.

‘I'm far too rusty to play with you,' I said to Roger.

‘This will give you an opportunity to polish up. The opposition, I must say' – he lowered his voice – ‘is not what you would call tournament class.'

He was one of those men who ask you to do something politely enough but confidently expect you to do it. They've become so used to being obeyed that the thought of anything else scarcely enters their heads.

As I hesitated he said: ‘I hear you've left the Shona organization.'

‘You hear correctly.'

‘Stood not upon the order of your going, eh? I always say it's a mistake to work for a woman. Fundamentally they're all unreasonable. After all, it was a very small flutter on the side that you had, wasn't it?'

I cursed Derek. Not that it mattered twopence that this man knew. Only that he made it his business to know.

‘Actually,' he said, ‘ I never thought it was quite your scene, David. Petticoats and all that.'

‘I enjoyed it.'

‘But I expect you're glad it's over. She's a purposeful woman, but I've always thought her rather ghastly. What age is she – sixty?'

‘Forty-two,' I said.

‘Go on.' He laughed and patted my shoulder. ‘Somebody's been having you on … Never mind. You're well out of it, one way and another … By the way, it occurred to me, is she one of the Chosen Race?'

‘I have no idea.'

‘Well, well. You're keeping your little company?'

‘What company?'

‘This one you floated with Derek and some other man.'

‘For the time being, yes.'

‘If it's undercapitalized, I have a friend who might be interested in putting up a bit of money.'

‘Thanks,' I said.

‘Shall we go now, then? Ben and Cliff are waiting.'

I said: ‘I haven't dealt a card in anger for upwards of two years.'

We went into the card-room. These Americans were two big men, both in their early fifties, well-heeled you could see, a bit flushed with malt but not over the top. Until the end I never knew what they were called, except Ben and Cliff. They greeted me with hearty good-nature, and we sat down. Roger was an above-average performer but thought himself better. Come to that, you hardly ever meet a bridge player who doesn't think he's better than he really is.

‘What's the ante?' I asked.

‘We've been playing ten pounds a hundred,' said Roger.

‘Suits me.'

We kicked off. I soon got our opponents on beam: honest decent players, less good than Roger, and quite happy to lose a bit if they had to in these exotic surroundings, just for the satisfaction of being here. The first three hands were very so-so. They made two no trumps and then were two down twice on the trot. On the fourth hand I picked up nine hearts with four honours, a bare king of clubs, a singleton diamond and two small spades. It's always been a habit of mine to open high on unbalanced hands, so I bid four hearts. Cliff on my left chewed the skin round his forefinger and then said four spades. Roger said five hearts and Ben five spades. I went six hearts and Cliff went six spades. I went seven hearts and Ben doubled.

I had a feeling in my nuts it might all depend on the lead. And it did. Cliff led the ace of spades. He probably thought he might find a nasty little singleton in both our hands, but in fact Roger had none and I had two. Roger put down a doubleton queen of hearts, seven diamonds to the knave, and four clubs to the ace. Of course if Cliff had led his bare king of diamonds – as a top player probably would – I was sunk before the ship was launched. As it was, I took the ace of spades with a trump in dummy, led up to the bare king of clubs in my own hand, and then led my second spade, trumping with the queen in dummy. Then I led dummy's ace of clubs and discarded my one losing diamond. After that it was all trumps.

‘Nice,' said Roger, jotting down the figures. ‘ You don't seem too rusty to me. Of course, I gave you a good hand.'

It was a fair score. 1360 points in all. Or £140 if you looked at it that way.

Another couple of dull hands, both played by them. They got three spades, and were one down on a four-diamond trip. Then Roger opened with a two-club call. I had nothing, and put him up three times. He ended up in five diamonds and was four down, doubled and vulnerable. That evened things out a bit. Eleven hundred to them. Roger was just a trifle irritable. Going down gracefully was not one of his strong points.

‘I had twenty-four points,' he kept saying. ‘I don't know what got into you, partner. Three to the queen of diamonds! A couple of knaves!'

‘I was pushing them,' I said. ‘I thought they'd go one more.'

After that they won an easy three-no-trump call and an even easier four spades, on which, if they had played it properly, they could have made a small slam. So they were well up on the rubber after all.

‘One more?' said Ben. ‘ Just to see how the cookie crumbles?'

‘I can't resist you,' I said.

The second rubber was sensational. Roger was three down on the first hand and five down on the second, both undoubled. Cliff, who had massive diamonds in the second hand (Roger's was a diamond call), said he hadn't doubled because he was afraid we'd switch suits. I explained mildly that they probably had a game call in hearts each time, and a mere four hundred points was a cheap way out. But even with the best of us it's a skinny business being five down when you're playing the hand, especially when your partner has put you up twice; and by now his systolic pressure was too high for safety.

The next hand as second bidder he opened one no trump and all passed. We got four.

Ben said: ‘Missed the boat there, I'll say.'