Felix in the Underworld (24 page)

‘The melon was good,' Brenda reassured her. ‘Was that in
Grand Slam
?'

‘No,
In off the Red.
What's the matter, girl? Don't you
read
my books?'

‘Of course I read them! Terrifically good yams. Unputdownable. Compulsive page-turners.' Brenda, who had read none of the Tantamount oeuvre, remembered the quotes from the
Croydon Advertiser.

‘Well, then, you'll know it's not for me. Henry never troubles me in that sort of way. It's for the work!' Brenda remembered Sandra's husband, Henry, a silent older man who wore tweeds and seemed emotionally concerned with the growing of vegetables. Seated next to Henry at a launch dinner, Brenda had learned much she had now forgotten about the cultivation of prize-winning runner beans (‘similar length is what they're looking for') and cucumbers (‘difficult little buggers to get straight'). She said, ‘What do you mean “for the work”?'

‘All those bonking sportsmen of various kinds and their managers and mistresses. Isn't that what Llama's going to make its money on? Well, where's it coming from now?'

‘I rather imagined it came from life.'

‘Really, girl! What do you think I am? It was Hilary McCrindle who used to tell me about sex.'

‘She was a woman of some experience?'

‘In the Sixties, yes. She had a number of friends in the BBC. And some on the Coal Board.'

‘Well, I suppose that accounts for it.'

‘Of course she settled down and married the vicar.'

‘Which vicar?'

‘Our vicar.' Brenda was silent, turning all this information over in her mind. Sandra said, ‘I mean the vicar where Henry and I live. Near Haslemere.'

‘Oh, I see.
That
vicar.'

‘But Hilary took it into her head to die on me. So where do I get my material? Tell me that, will you, girl?'

‘I think . . .' Brenda looked at her watch. They were going to be late for West London Radio. Then she smiled and said, ‘I might be able to come up with someone.'

‘Someone?'

‘Who could possibly help with some research.'

‘Really?' Sandra sat up on the sofa, awake and interested.

‘Who?'

‘I'll let you know tomorrow. In the meantime . . .'

‘What?'

‘The radio. It's live.'

‘Has the spot gone?' Sandra was still anxious. ‘I daren't look in the mirror myself. Come on, girl. You've got to tell me!'

‘Totally cured!' Brenda said. She was delighted to still see the pimple, plain as a pikestaff and flourishing.

‘What did I tell you? The relaxation did it. Now then, girl. Get moving or we'll be late for “Teatime Rap”.'

It was first thing – about dawn – Brenda thought – in the park. An early frost powdered the grass; the leaves had turned and were falling. A party of soldiers rode chattering under the trees and the traffic was a distant and muted roar. A white-haired couple, a man and his wife in bathing-suits, walked, shivering, towards the icy water of the Serpentine as though they were parties to a suicide pact. Brenda, in a thick sweater and shorts, was running to keep up with her Australian lover, a pursuit she was beginning to think unnecessary.

‘I was talking about you,' she panted, ‘to one of my authors.

I was telling her about your prose style.'

‘Lucid and yet poetic. That's what I try for.' Paul slowed up a little, anxious to discuss a favourite subject. ‘Whatever you may think about
Wagga Wagga,
it's beautifully written.'

‘
Just
what I told her.' When she and Paul first got together she'd driven him to the park with enthusiasm for their morning jog, delighting in what the early sunshine did for the golden hairs on his legs, laughing as she struggled to keep up. Now, all she wanted was to sit down with a cup of coffee, a cigarette and the
Meteor.
However, she struggled on gamely. ‘What this author needs is a sort of master class.'

‘A what?'

‘A class with a master, such as yourself. She has problems with repetition, her chapter endings can be terribly weak and she has absolutely no idea what to do with the semi-colon. Quite honestly, Paul, she needs help.'

‘She? Who is this she?'

‘Sandra Tantamount.'

‘Isn't she a huge bestseller?'

‘Mega.'

‘And you say she needs help?'

‘Quite honestly she's got into a bit of a rut. And with your teaching experience . . .'

‘Is it writer's block?'

‘I suppose you could call it that.'

‘I'd like to meet her.'

‘She'd love to meet you. She's in the Galaxy Hotel.'

Paul whistled as he ran. ‘Sounds fine by me. Is she there with some geezer? I mean a husband or something?'

‘Oh, no. She's quite alone.' Brenda thought of adding, alone with a pimple, but decided not to mention it. Instead she told Paul she had run quite far enough and she'd meet him back at the car. As she trailed her trainers through the brittle, frosted leaves she thought about the problem which concerned her most. How on earth had Gavin's friend Miriam acquired a ring from Terry, the rep, whom she'd never met?

When he was a boy at school Felix had never minded the work, he had just found playtime terribly hard going. Now he was growing used to his cell and he looked forward to the hour of watching television. What he dreaded was exercise. He stood in the comer of a cold yard, which was wired in like a fruit-cage with weeds growing in the cracked concrete, and tried to keep out of the way of a flying ball. Looking up to a clear blue sky he saw the white cottonwool trail of a jet off to . . . Where he wondered? Istanbul? Rome? Athens?

Would he ever see such places again? Or only when he was old, aching, stiff-jointed, and remembered not as a writer but as a murderer? Morsom, the Bayswater killer. If his name was on the back of another book, it would be in the series of Notable British Trials.

A cluster of young prisoners ran past him, shouting. Over their heads he saw Dumbarton towering, his arms stretched up to the sky, his fingers tipping a ball into a tom net. The young lads were cheering but Dumbarton didn't smile. Felix couldn't remember ever having seen him smiling. Dumbarton, the ex-soldier, who marched down the Embankment to Temple Station and killed someone, some innocent man, running down the steps to get back to his wife, his girlfriend, perhaps his children. Someone had to die, anyone would do, to avenge Esmond's death. Had Dumbarton been at large the night Gavin died, Felix wondered, and wandering round Bayswater? Had he taken it into his head, for some obscure reason, to batter a stranger to death in a van? Was London, perhaps, full of Dumbartons, gloomily intent on random murder?

It was then that a flying ball from the game hit him in the face. His glasses fell, turning the clear world into a soft, impressionist blur. He stooped to pick them up and found one lens shattered. But in that act of stooping, he remembered the great, the important thing, the single fact he had to check in the bundle of depositions. His hopes soared high as the vanishing aeroplane.

That morning Ian Bowker had woken early, as he always did, to be on time for school and saw a piece of paper fastened with a safety pin to his blanket. He put on his glasses and found that it was a note from his mother, scrawled in purple Biro in a hand which he complained was more illegible than he, in fact, found it.

My darling Ian (he read)

Mummy has to go away on business. I hope and pray it won't be long. I know you can get to school and manage on your own. Don't answer the door to anyone, particularly the police, or if they want to take more of your blood. I have left money under the telephone so you should be all right for suppers etc. I daren't say where my present address might be in case anyone else's eyes should pry. I love you and here's to when we shall be reunited. Keep your chin up.

Mum

The kisses filled the rest of the page – a line of crosses and one mouthful of smudged lipstick. Ian got up, washed, dressed and collected the money from under the telephone. He hadn't got time then but he thought, as he looked round what he considered a complete tip, that if his mum was away in the evening he'd have a really good tidy-up and throw away a load of rubbish.

He had been fast asleep in the middle of the night before when a Vauxhall Astra had driven up to the entrance of the flats. Mirry, who had been looking out for it, kissed her sleeping son and pinned the note to his blanket. Then she staggered down the stairs with a suitcase bulging with clothes and cosmetics, got into the car and was driven away to a destination she was afraid to divulge even to Ian whom she was leaving to fend for himself.

‘The Tantamount tour going well, is it?'

Tubal-Smith lay on his couch with his shoes off, one of his toes showing palely through a hole in his sock.

‘It's a huge success. I'm not with her all the time now. She prefers to travel with a friend.'

‘Really? What sort of a friend?'

‘Oh, a brilliant young novelist. He's from the southern hemisphere to be exact. I think she's well into a new story.'

‘About sport again?'

‘Oh, I think it's about that too!' Brenda told him.

‘I'll tell you why I wanted to see you. Fergus Campion. Bright young editor, isn't he, Fergus?'

‘Of course. He's Felix's editor.'

‘Well, that's the fortunate part of it. He's just had a novel in from a woman called Elizabeth Cowling. And would you believe it?'

‘Would I believe what?'

‘This Ms Cowling's a copper. A Detective Chief Inspector, nothing less. And can you guess . . . ?'

‘Yes,' Brenda told him.

‘She's the same copper that arrested Felix Morsom.'

‘I think he told me.'

‘Well, that's a bit of plum publicity dropped into our laps!

Don't you see it, Brenda? How often do we get one Llama author arresting another?'

‘Not very often, I suppose.'

‘I suppose never! Can you imagine what Lucasta Frisby would do with a story like that?'

‘Yes.' Brenda was seriously concerned. ‘I'm afraid I can.'

‘What I want you to do' – Tubal-Smith heaved himself and his stomach off the couch on to his slender legs and began to pace, excitedly shoeless, about the room – ‘is have a look at the book. Fergus says it's called something to do with molehills. All about people called things like Tarquin and Arabella who spend their time discussing philosophy in a ruined chapel. But that's not the point. The point is that it's by a copper who fingered the collar of Felix Morsom! If you think it's a good idea, have the woman in. Talk to her.'

‘I think,' Brenda told him, ‘I'd like to do that.'

At the door she said, ‘Millstream's shop in the Fulham Road is absolutely bursting with our books. I hope you noticed.'

‘I've noticed.' Tubal-Smith beamed. ‘You've done very well, Brenda.'

‘Not me. It's the reps. The reps have done really well.'

‘Have they indeed?' Tubal-Smith was puzzled. ‘I thought you said one of them had vanished. Off the face of the earth.'

‘Terry Whitlock? No. I've been in touch with him. Terry Whitlock's one of the best. In fact I thought you might have an idea.'

‘What about?'

‘A sort of prize. For Rep of the Year. Stimulate competition and give them all a bit of encouragement. Isn't that what you have in mind?'

Tubal-Smith asked himself the question and came up with the answer. ‘Yes,' he told her, ‘I believe it is.'

‘That's great! We can always rely on you to come up with new ideas.' Brenda smiled and left the presence.

Ian was on his way home from school. It was the end of the week and he'd nearly spent all the money Mirry had left under the telephone. In addition to food, he'd had to buy furniture polish, Fairy Liquid and something which turned the water in the lavatory bowl blue. The flat was clean, tidy and smelled gently of disinfectant. Each night he had cooked himself toast and spaghetti rings and, after he'd finished his homework, he allowed himself an hour of television before bed. Far from being lonely, he'd enjoyed the happiest days of his life. He was delighted to be without his mother's weeping and demands for affection. He could also do without the strange voice she'd put on when answering the telephone and the occasional rumpus of her making love.

All the same, he was running out of money. He could, perhaps, earn a little by going downstairs to Mrs Pugsley and offering to do her shopping, but her flat smelled like the World's End public Gents and Mrs Pugsley, who had a nose which set off downwards to meet her upturned chin and a black tangle of wiry hair, had gone completely off her trolley and had taken to bellowing through his letter-box, ‘Your mum's gone off and abandoned you, hasn't she? You're an abandoned child! Someone ought to tell the Council.' On such occasions he had turned the volume on the television up to its full extent and refrained from answering the door.

He walked now, in the early dusk, between the dark cliffs of the buildings, down alleys where the smell of Mrs Pugsley's quarters was echoed and re-echoed, aware of the dangers. He'd been twice set on by gangs of mixed sexes who had pushed him over, kicked him, opened his school-bag and scattered his geography projects in the wind. Dozens of times he had been offered drugs by school-age dealers to whom refusal was a personal affront. He had been groped and once held pinned to a wall by wandering paedophiles unable to find lonely children other than the solemn boy who stared at them through his glasses with a calm disapproval which finally put them off. So now he always walked through the shadows to his home having removed the compasses from his Geometry set, with the point out and sticking forward as a weapon of defence.