The Man Whose Dream Came True (4 page)

‘These letters came back to us with the rest of my son’s papers when he was killed. We had no idea that he was homosexual. It came as a great shock. I don’t know why Miriam did not destroy them, but I shall burn them as you suggest.’ He put the letters back into the envelope. ‘Your assumption was wrong, these letters would have been useless for blackmailing purposes. In a way I wish you had tried. You are a scoundrel, Scott-Williams. I want you out of here at once.’

He could think of nothing to say except that he would have to pack. Now at last the General’s voice was raised, raised in the kind of shout that must long ago have frightened subordinates.

‘Get out, sir. Out of my sight.’ The voice dropped again to its contemptuous monotone, as though a brief gale had spent itself. ‘You may take a taxi to the station and charge it to my account.’

When he left the room the old man had his hands on the envelope, and was staring at the wall.

On that Wednesday night he stayed at a hotel off Shaftesbury Avenue. By midday on Thursday he had found several reasons for cheerfulness. After withdrawing the money he had more than three hundred pounds in his wallet. The possession of actual cash always gave him a sense of well-being which he never had when reading a credit balance on a pass sheet. He had got away from Leathersley House showing a profit, and he was rid for ever of that boring old General. Now that he had left, it seemed to him that he could not have stood it for another week. The feeling of freedom was delightful, the knowledge that he could do exactly what he liked, walk through the West End, have lunch and take as long as he wished over it, go to the cinema, without any need to look at his watch and think that he ought to get back to play billiards or do this, that or the other. Leathersley House had seemed a cushy billet at the time, but in retrospect his duties appeared intolerably onerous.

And there was another reason for cheerfulness. The Fiona prospect.

What was the prospect exactly? You were a good-looking young man and a millionaire’s daughter had shown that she was powerfully attracted by you. Putting it crudely, how did you get your hands on some of the cash? The first thing would be to find out whether she had a private income settled on her, enough to maintain them both. If she had, marriage without Papa’s consent would be indicated. If she had only an allowance that might be cut off, then he would have to meet Mallory. He imagined the scene, Mallory saying that he was a fine young Englishman, offering him a job in the organisation, Fiona in ecstasies, marriage in church with half London society there. But this was unhappily not probable, tycoons were notoriously tough and suspicious, his background might be investigated. Look at it another way then. Mallory saying this man’s a fortune hunter, Fiona in tears, I’m going to marry him anyway, Mallory threatening to cut off her allowance – but behind the scenes taking out his cheque book and saying ‘How much?’ What would he settle for? Ten thousand pounds seemed a reasonable amount.

He rang up the house that evening, asked for Miss Mallory. A man’s voice said, ‘Who is that speaking?’

‘Tony Scott-Williams.’

A pause. Then her voice, rather subdued. ‘Hallo.’

‘Fiona. Remember me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was that your father?’

‘No, the butler.’

The butler. Certainly some people knew how to live. ‘I want to see you.’

‘Yes.’

‘Fiona, I have to see you.’

Her voice, guarded, low, said, ‘I want to see you too. Are you at your uncle’s?’

‘In London. Can you come up? This weekend.’

‘My father–’

With what he hoped was powerful urgency he said, ‘I
have
to see you.’

There was a pause, so long that he thought the connection had been broken. Then her voice again. ‘All right. I’ll manage somehow. But I can’t come till Saturday.’

Before she could ask the address of his flat he said quickly, ‘Let’s meet in the Ritz Bar. Can you come up for lunch?’

‘Not till the evening. About six.’

‘Six o’clock, the Ritz Bar, I’ll be waiting.’

‘Yes.’

‘Darling, I long for it.’

‘I do too. I have to go now.’

‘Goodbye, darling.’

‘Goodbye.’

She was well and truly hooked. Play your cards right, he told himself, and you’ve landed the fish.

He had no friend from whom he could borrow a flat, so he had to rent one. It cost him forty pounds to take a furnished flat for a week. It was high up in a modern block near Marble Arch, a marvellous position, and he regarded the money as an investment. He told the agents that he was staying over in London for only a few days and wanted to do some entertaining that couldn’t be done in a hotel. Whether or not they believed him, they took the eight fivers he gave them and let him move in immediately. He got in a stock of drink – there was a cocktail cabinet, something that he’d always wanted – hung up his clothes and settled down with the feeling that he was there for ever.

When we’re married, he told himself, we’ll always live in places like this, places where every room is warm and you can pad about naked, and people live their own lives next door to each other without knowing the names of their neighbours, and you can get almost anything you want by lifting a telephone. He looked at London sparkling beneath him and thought, this is my world, it belongs to me and I’m going to have it. The temptation was strong to go out, find in a bar the kind of middle-aged woman who responded to his smile as if she was a fire waiting for a match, and bring her back here. But he resisted it. Anyway, the setting was wrong. Women of that sort liked to give you things, to feel that they owned you, and they would be disconcerted to find him installed in such style and at such an address. He stayed in the flat from Thursday evening until Saturday morning, having meals sent up to him.

Just after six o’clock she came into the Ritz Bar, looking slightly nervous, carrying a small suitcase, and wearing a rather unsuitable hat. He was pleased to see that she had abandoned the dark glasses. He commented on that. ‘I feel I’m seeing you properly.’

She ordered gin and tonic and drank it in sips. ‘Was it a job to get away?’

‘Not too bad. Daddy hadn’t got anyone coming down this weekend. He wanted to know where I was going. I told him I was staying with a girl-friend. I fixed it with her too.’

‘Clever girl.’ He patted her hand. ‘For a minute on the phone I thought you didn’t want to see me.’

‘Tracey was there – the butler. I had to be careful.’

After a second drink her manner was perceptibly easier. ‘It’s wonderful to get up to London. I feel so cooped up down there.’

‘I’m your good angel. I just wave my magic wand and say “Come up to London”, and it’s done.’

She looked round. ‘It’s rather quiet here.’

‘Kind of traditional.’ He was worried that she might have preferred to meet somewhere else, Claridge’s or Hatchetts which he knew only as names. ‘I often use this as a meeting place because it’s so convenient.’

‘Of course.’ She fiddled with her handbag.

‘But let’s get out. Harry, my bill.’ He had taken the precaution of learning the waiter’s name. It was time to be masterful. He steered her up the stairs, got a taxi and kissed her ardently as soon as they were inside.

‘Are we going to your flat?’

‘Where else? I’m repaying hospitality.’ He laughed.

She disengaged herself. ‘Tony, I don’t want you to think I do this with everybody.’

‘Darling Fiona.’

‘It’s because I like you. Very much. I don’t just want an affair for a weekend.’

What do you know, he thought, I believe
she’s
going to propose to
me.
But the time wasn’t right for anything of that sort. He took her hand and kissed it, which seemed to cover the case.

He watched when they crossed the entrance hall and went up in the lift to see if she was impressed, and there could be no doubt that she was although she tried not to show it. He was apologetic when he unlocked the door. ‘It’s not much like home, I’m afraid, but then I’m not here all the time.’

Inside she exclaimed with pleasure, particularly at the view. They were on the fourteenth floor and quite a lot of London was spread out beneath them.

‘Yes, I do think it’s something rather special myself,’ he said with perfect truthfulness. ‘But of course you’ve got your own flat in Chelsea.’

‘My father has. I’m hardly ever there. Anyway, it hasn’t got a view like this.’

He came up behind her, put his hands on her breasts. She turned round and her blue eyes questioned him. ‘I meant what I said, Tony. I’m playing for keeps.’

Wonderful words. ‘So do I, darling. I’m playing for keeps too.’ In the bedroom later he asked with attempted casualness whether she had really meant it.

‘You know I did.’

‘Then what about meeting your father?’

Silence. Her fingers traced a pattern on his thigh. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea. Not yet anyway. He doesn’t want me to get married. I told you.’

‘That’s just damned selfish.’

‘It would be no good talking to him. You don’t know what he’s like. I’ve got my own money, but he won’t let me use it to take a flat in town or anything like that. Most of it just stays in the bank.’

He wanted to say that she was over twenty-one and a free agent, but refrained.

‘And when I do marry he wants it to be some ghastly local. There’s a boy he keeps talking about, the son of one of his friends. Marriage to him would be good for business, might even mean a merger.’ She said it without irony and repeated, ‘I’ve got my own money.’

Again he refrained from speaking, this time from asking how much. She went on, looking up at the ceiling, speaking in a singsong voice.

‘You don’t understand about Daddy. I can’t explain it myself, but if he told me I was to have nothing to do with you I should have to do what he said. Do you know what I dream sometimes? I dream I’m a princess and shut up in a castle where I’ve got everything anybody could want except freedom. People come and try to free me, to let me out because they’re in love with me, but there’s an invisible barrier round the castle and as soon as they pass over it their view of me changes and they see me as an old hag, toothless and dirty, so they go away. And in the dream nobody ever gets past the barrier and at the end of the dream I look in the glass and I’ve become what they believed me to be, filthy and dressed in rags and old.’

‘That’s just a dream. There aren’t any barriers. You can do what you like.’

‘Oh, but I can’t. Someone else has to do it, someone has to help me.’ She turned and clung to him, pressed her naked body to his. ‘Help me, Tony.’

With everything arranging itself better than he could have hoped, he knew the importance of not saying a wrong word. It seemed best to say the serious thing he had to say lightly. ‘Here’s some news, Princess. Prince Charming’s arrived, and guess how he got past that invisible barrier? With a special licence.’

‘A special licence,’ she echoed wonderingly.

‘I’ll get one on Monday. You come up to London and, hey presto, the deed’s done, the princess is free.’ He bounced off the bed, went into the bathroom. Her voice followed him. He put his head round the door. ‘What’s that?’

‘It won’t make any difference to you? I mean, to your job and all that.’

‘Everyone will be delighted.’

‘Shall we live here?’

‘Or take a bigger flat,’ he said recklessly. ‘Come on, let’s celebrate, go out on the town.’ He felt an overwhelming euphoria at having pulled it off, a debt of gratitude towards the girl who was going to provide him with a permanent income.

They went on the town. He told her that he hardly ever used the Jag in London, driving was such hell, so they took taxis. Over dinner he learned that fifteen hundred a year was settled on her through a trust, although she couldn’t touch the capital. There was quite a bit of money in her bank account, she didn’t know exactly how much. He confided a few vague details of his stockbroking job, saying that it paid well but he was bored with it and thought of striking out on his own, starting a gambling club perhaps, which was a surefire way of making money. It seemed premature to mention that she would be providing the capital. He suggested that it would be fun to take a look at a club and they ended up in the Here’s Sport Club in Soho. Her eyes were wide as he bought a hundred pounds’ worth of chips and gave half of them to her. She asked if he could afford it.

‘This is celebration night, Princess.’ He had called her Princess the whole evening. ‘There’s plenty more. Anyway, we’re going to win. We’re playing my system, and it works best with a partner.’

‘Was that why you lost down in Landford?’

‘It could be,’ he said shortly. He did not care for jokes about roulette. He explained to her the Prudential system which they would be playing. You made two bets at each spin of the wheel, a ten pound bet on passe covering the high numbers, and a five pound bet on the numbers from one to six. If a high number came up you won ten pounds and lost five, if a number from one to six turned up you were paid at odds of five to one so that you won twenty-five pounds and lost ten.

‘And if it’s one of the other numbers?’

‘If it’s seven to eighteen or zero we lose, but the odds are two to one in our favour. We’ll stop when we’ve won a hundred.’

They very nearly did it, too. She sat on the opposite side of the table from him playing the six number transversal, and the first time she won she gave a small scream of pleasure. At one time they were seventy pounds up. Then the bank had a run in which the numbers between seven and eighteen came up half a dozen times running followed by zero. They were losing a little, Fiona was looking slightly bored, and to amuse her he committed a roulette player’s cardinal sin. He changed systems, and began to play a modified version of the Capitalist’s system, which involves covering every number on the board except zero and three. When zero turned up he bought another hundred pounds’ worth of chips. They lost these when three came up twice in eight spins.

‘Two hundred pounds,’ she said, and repeated it. ‘Just think, if we’d stopped when we were winning–’

‘You make rules and you have to keep them,’ he said sharply, although he had failed to do so. The exhilaration of gambling was so great for him that it remained for an hour or two afterwards, like the effect of drink, and he had the true gambler’s dislike of complaints about losing. ‘Better luck next time.’

‘Next time?’

‘When we’re on the other side of the fence, running the club.’

‘It was a lovely evening,’ she said when they were back at the flat. ‘But I wish we hadn’t lost that money.’

Euphoria had worn off and he now wished it too, but he controlled his irritation. ‘Part of the ceremony of freeing the princess. Let’s have a nightcap. We’re still celebrating.’

The celebration ended abruptly on Sunday morning.

He woke at half past nine. The princess was still asleep. He went into the living-room, picked up the papers from the hall – he had ordered them with the feeling that the daily delivery of newspapers gave an air of permanency – and carried them into the kitchen to look at while he made breakfast. Turning the pages idly he saw a picture and a story in the gossip column of one paper, passed it by and returned to it, looking incredulously at picture and story.