The Green Flash (6 page)

I went to her flat in November.

It was in a block, with the conventional lift approach to the two-bedroomed apartment, long living-room and tiny kitchen. Inside were pink-striped wallpapers and Aubusson carpets with lots of small drawings and pictures. And gilded wood caryatids and cherubs straining thek infant muscles to support bookshelves and ornate console tables. Plenty of books, and colour in cushions and chairs. And a baby grand. All a bit over-lush.

She said: ‘There's a lot about you I still don't know, David, and a lot I do not understand. Some day perhaps you will tell me what is this chip on your shoulder, what it is all about. You are educated, so good-looking, intelligent, enterprising; but there is a worm in the bud. All right, that is your affair so long as it does not affect your work. I think you may be good for this firm, that you may have strong new ideas – what John, my husband, lacks. You will meet him soon. We are the best of friends. But he has come to the limit of his ideas; and I do not think firms such as ours can stand still. I do not think so.'

I rubbed my chin, looked at her ankles in their pale stockings and black mules. ‘ I'm replacing no one?'

Alice Huntington will look after you. She's an outstanding woman, and if you are tactful she will not resent this.'

‘You mean you want me to do her work?'

‘That will depend on you.'

‘No, surely on you, Mme Shona.'

‘Well, let us see in three months. If you are still doing Alice's work in three months I shall know my hunch has been wrong.'

II

I found a small flat in Fulham. It wasn't much to write home about but it was the move I needed. All my life I've been against having people too close to me. I put on this front of being a good mixer – have a reputation for it – but when you've finished with your day it's good to end up by yourself. That shrink I went to once might have said it came from an inverted sense of superiority. Me, I just think that if you depend only on yourself there's no one else to let you down. Even as a boy I remember thinking that there's no one to care any more so there's no one to let you down.

Derek, when I told him, was sulky and waspish by turns. I explained to him it was nothing personal, and that made it worse. If he had been able to look on it as a lover's tiff he would have understood better. ‘Of course, David was
too
difficult, so we went our separate ways.' This just walking out from a preference for being
alone
.

‘Believe me,' I said, ‘I do appreciate the way you made room at short notice, took me in when I was in a crummy state, made things better. But I've been in your hair long enough. And I'm OK now, standing without support, don't need a crutch. We can still meet at times. Any objection to that?'

‘Is it because of my friendship with Roger Manpole?' he asked. ‘You've not the least need to resent it, I assure you. Anyway, as you know, he's strictly machismo …'

‘My dear old fink,' I said, ‘stop trying to see it in those terms.'

‘Fink yourself. But you don't like Roger, do you?'

‘I don't trust him. I've a feeling in my lower guts that he helped to put the finger on me in the Tom Martin case.'

‘How could he? That's ridiculous.'

‘I don't know. Does he have an interest in the Cellini Club?'

‘Not to my knowledge. Anyway if it's choosing betwixt the twain I'll choose my old buddy boy, Abden.'

‘Don't do anything of the sort,' I said. ‘Stick with us both. See us through to the end. Be thou our link and guide.'

‘Go to hell.'

Instead I went to Fulham.

At first it had amused me when people, seeing me with Derek, automatically assumed I had the same tastes as he had; but then I'd begun to get uptight. It was good for me to move for that reason. All the same, with considerable perception, Derek had seen through to the deeper cause.

III

It was the Saturday following the move that I played golf with Jerry Dawson. We went down to Cooden and played in a foursome he'd arranged with two friends of his. At that time I owned a clapped-out Mini, so Jerry drove us in his Jaguar.

On the way down I broke the news that I was leaving his company in the New Year.

He smiled. ‘Are you going to Shona's?'

‘Is that obvious?'

‘I know you better than most … It was on the cards, wasn't it?'

‘Suppose so. Anyway I'm just going to try it for size.'

‘The firm won't be pleased; don't tell them until the last minute; otherwise you'll be out on your ear … Pronto. In a way I'
m
pleased.'

‘Glad to be rid of me, eh?'

‘Not really, no. Though at times you have been rather the square marble, haven't you. A firm like ours has its set ways, its go-ahead but conservative approach. At Shona's you'll probably fit in like – like the missing piece of a jigsaw … But that wasn't mainly what I meant. I meant that if this really takes your fancy it'll keep you out of mischief.'

‘Don't rely on it.'

‘Oh, I'd never rely on anything with you. But if you're working for Shona – and she'll make you work, believe me – you're bound to have less time for your other nonsense particularly for taking it out on your fellow Scotsmen.' I didn't speak, so he added: ‘And if she pays you well – as she probably will – there'll be less
need for
it.'

I said: ‘ It wasn't really ever that sort of need.'

He glanced at me a bit uneasily, took a firmer grip of the steering-wheel. ‘ I suppose not. Or if you tell me not I have to believe you … well, good luck, that's all I say.'

‘Thanks … But why not tell the firm? They've treated me well. It's proper to give them fair notice.'

‘Not in this business, it isn't. We don't operate that way. It wouldn't matter so much if you were going off to sell motor cars or something, but you're moving to a rival firm and taking some of our expertise and knowledge with you.'

‘Precious little.'

‘Well, you've been making rapid strides. We'll be sorry to lose you for that reason too.'

I grunted. ‘ I don't
feel
this is my mission in life. It's just selling smells, for God's sake.'

‘Not for God's sake – our own. And, incidentally, keep a lookout for John Carreros.'

‘Why?'

‘They say he's a difficult man.'

‘In what way?'

‘You'll find out.'

It was a fine day and for once at Cooden the southeaster was not blowing.

I've an 18 handicap at golf, and even that is flattering. I never have had any organized approach to the game, and never much cared about winning. The nearer the play gets to the hole the less interested I become, so that my short irons and putter chronically let me down. My chief pleasure is squaring up on the tee and trying to blast the bloody little white ball into the next county. The result is when I do connect properly a drive of over 300 yards is not uncommon; when I don't connect properly the ball goes droning off at an angle of forty-five degrees into the neighbouring churchyard or the local housing estate.

Jerry's friends were called Armitage and Foster. I hadn't met them before, and I took a dislike to Armitage. He was shaped like a hyacinth bulb, and was hair-scanty, self-satisfied and middle-aged. He had just bought his first smart car, a BMW, and he talked about it too much, and smirked his pleasure whenever anyone mentioned it. In spite of his waistline, he also thought highly of his golf, and I suppose he was reasonably good in a steady, dependable, rhythmic, flat-footed, cautious kind of way. So, to annoy him, I buckled down and tried my hardest. I was able to cheat once by dabbing my ball out of a rut when the others weren't looking, but otherwise we won fair and square. Two and one.

‘Well done,' said Jerry with a grin, ‘such restraint must have cost you dear.'

This character Armitage was a property developer by profession, and you could imagine all the shopping precincts and the ghastly urban sprawl that he and his like were responsible for.

After the game was over we had drinks and then lunch together, but I turned down the opportunity of a second round; another chap was waiting to mix in, and I told Jerry there was a girl I wanted to see in Bexhill, which is only a couple of miles away. If he could take my gear home I could telephone for a taxi, and later on get the train back to London. He grinned understandingly.

‘The old dark horse as usual. Where did you meet her?'

‘In Bexhill.'

‘You don't say. Well, good luck with her too.'

‘She's always welcoming,' I said.

Before I telephoned for a taxi I carried my things out to Jerry's car. A couple of places away was a splendid new BMW. Armitage had left the keys in the car. I suppose he thought it was a private park and no one would touch it.

I put my clubs and bag in Jerry's car and then got into the BMW. It started easily and I drove it slowly out of the park.

I must say it handled well – you have to hand it to the Germans; they make a good machine. I drove through St Leonards and Hastings and then turned up to Battle before making a circuit back to Bexhill. Of course there was too much traffic to try the car out properly. I've inherited my family's consuming passion for good fast cars, and I parted from it with regret. I parked it in a busy street on a double yellow line, and thought it would be nice to see what happened.

The street where Essie Morris lived was only three minutes away, and she was in. A great beam split her ugly face when she saw me.

‘Why, David! You should've told me! Isn't that grand!'

‘Put your bonnet on,' I said, ‘and we'll go out to tea.'

Essie Morris was the mother of Crack Morris, the chap I'd shared a cell with in Pentonville. He'd done me favours while I was a new boy, advising me what to do and what not to do, and generally restraining me from getting too much at cross with the screws. And from getting too much at cross with the bully boys inside. Though he never knew how near I was to some sort of scary break up, his company was what had got me through the worst patches. Since I came out I'd taken Essie Morris to tea once a month, because Crack was in for another year yet.

She loved to have tea at the Pavilion; I thought it dire, but it was her outing and she drank cup after cup of tea and ate hot buttered scones while she prattled away about this and that. Chiefly it was to do with Arthur and what a good lad he really was if he could only learn to go straight, and how she'd been to see him last week and what he'd said about full remission, and she hoped, she really hoped, when he came out I would still come to see them, and maybe my influence would be a help to him to start afresh.

I said yes and no, and don't be too damned sure about the good influence, and shall I order more scones, and no, I never take sugar; and I gazed around at all the people quietly guzzling tea at the other tables and thought, my God, they're
all
old, the women have all got short crimped hair like wigs, brown and grey and white stubble, and the men – but there aren't so many men because they usually pop off first – are small and tubby and white-pated, or tall and creak-jointed and bald, with. crumpled suits and scraggy pullovers; and I bet they wear long pants down to their ankles, and my God, they're all just sitting around waiting for Death.
All
of them. They've retired down here from Preston and Pontefract and Peterborough and Purley, living in their
little
quiet houses – often as not cut off from their old friends, never quite making enough new ones – nourishing their arthritis and their diabetes and their minor coronaries, and just waiting for It. And I thought, Christ, human beings are a sorry lot, a common lot, a job lot, a dull lot, and wouldn't a bomb do a bit of good around here – and yet, Christ, why've they any
reason
to be anything but sorry and common and dull: that's all life has ever had to
offer
them, any of them – the treadmill, the old one-two from cradle to grave. And who's to blame for getting off the treadmill?

‘What's the matter, love?' Essie said.

‘Nothing. What should be?'

‘You're looking grim, like.'

‘Sometimes I feel grim, like.'

‘I never understood, you've never told me, why a gent like you ever got into trouble.'

‘It's a long story, Ma. I wouldn't want to make you cry.'

‘Go on, I never know when you're teasing.'

‘I'm always teasing,' I said, ‘that's the only way you can get through life.'

‘I don't want to get through life,' she said. ‘I'm happy enough. Or will be when Arthur gets out.'

‘It's something special to be happy.'

‘Aren't you happy, love?'

‘I don't know what it means.'

‘Go on. You're teasing again.'

‘I know a state of non-unhappiness,' I said. ‘Maybe it's the same thing seen through a dark window.'

Afterwards I walked back with her but said there wasn't time to go in. By now dusk was falling, and when I left her I strolled back to the street where I'd parked the BMW. It was gone. I'd left the keys in the ignition so maybe the police had taken it away. Unless someone else had stolen it. That would be a joke.

There were a lot of cars parked in the side streets off the promenade. I walked along till I saw one with a quarter-light that looked easy to open. It was. The car was a Rover 2000, about a year old. I hadn't any string so I took off my tie and lowered it through the quarter-light in a loop till it caught on the door handle. The handle came up and I was in.

A few people were going past, but the important thing is not to look around in any surreptitious or apprehensive way. I tried the cubbyhole and the pockets and the ashtray just in case the ignition key – or a spare – should be to hand, but it was not. I got out and opened the bonnet in a casual way. I hadn't come prepared for anything like this, but my folding penknife did have sharp clippers which would cut wire.