They took Godfrey to Bethnal Green Hospital and put eight stitches in his cheek and two in his eyebrow, and they set his broken nose. He was dazed for some hours after the fight, and the next morning they took an encephalograph. They also X-rayed his ribs where they were so badly bruised, just to be on the safe side. The doctor said he could go home at the end of the week but would have to come back as an out-patient through the following week.
Godfrey did not make a good patient. His nose was still plugged and his body ached, and he lay simmering, thinking over the defeat, the double-cross, the humiliation, the terrible destruction of the last two rounds, glaring down the long ward, expecting more attention than he got. In the afternoon they let him have a mirror and a safety razor and he glowered at this bruised and bandaged freak and wanted to know what the hell he’d look like when the bandages came off. The doctor said he’d be all right, except that he might need plastic treatment for his nose which had had a nasty fracture, and they hadn’t the facilities for a lengthy treatment here.
Later in the afternoon Pat Prince came to see him, bringing the press cuttings about the fight and a bottle of Pol Roger from Jude Davis. Godfrey hadn’t a wide vocabulary but he used it all in telling Prince what Jude Davis could do with the Pol Roger. Prince snuffled and blinked uneasily.
‘Hey, boy, it isn’t no good getting sore. The fight was made for you. You agreed for it, O.K.? If you didn’t expect to be beat you was a blamed fool. You haven’t got no complaint against Jude.’
‘Got no complaint?’ Godfrey snarled through his bruised mouth. ‘You can tell Jude that the next time he wants to cross somebody it won’t be me.’
‘Get off it, boy, there wasn’t no crossing.’
‘So you say. Well, you can tell Jude I’ve finished with him and his management, see. Tell the filthy little crud that dogs that mess in their own kennels ought to be destroyed. One day – maybe soon – somebody’ll do for him!’
Pat Prince rubbed the scar tissue around his eyes. ‘Look, boy, let me give you a word of advice, see. It won’t be no good taking your beating that way. You were beat in a fair fight, as any bloody fool knowed you’d be, taking on the Jap champion – and if you’re too big-headed to take a beating you’ll be no good in the ring, not to Jude nor me, nor any other manager who’s fool enough to take you on!’
Godfrey tried to sit up, but his nose throbbed. All his head throbbed for a minute, and he could hardly concentrate on what the old pug was saying.
‘When the fight was made,’ Prince said, ‘when it was made I knew you’d be out-matched and I said so to Jude, but he said it was a great chance for you and you’d get more glory going down to Kio than in a dozen ordinary matches he could make for you. And be-God, I believe he’s right if you read these press boys. You ain’t read your press yet. It’s a rave. Go on, read your cuttings!’
Godfrey screwed up his eyes to read his cuttings. They all praised him: from the local papers up to three national dailies that thought fit to mention it. ‘Brave Showing by London Boy.’ ‘Crowd-raising fight in Bethnal Green.’ ‘Jap Champion nearly meets his match.’ While he was reading them he was half listening to what Prince was saying, his still not lucid brain tackling the problem of diplomacy and cunning self-interest, considerations which never came easy to him at the best of times.
‘So when I go back, boy, I’m not going to say not a word to Jude about what you’ve just said to me. I’m just going to pretend I haven’t never heard a word of it. See. Because – even if he made a mistake this time – and I’m not saying he did, mind, I’m not saying he did – he’s still your manager and you’d be hard put to find another if you gets on the wrong side of him. And if you stays with him you’re in the money, soon as you mend. Soon as you mend you’re in the big money, boy. That’s where you want to be, isn’t it?’
‘Tell Jude I want to see him,’ said Godfrey. ‘And see him quick. Tell him to bring his ’flu along – and his bed. Maybe he’ll need it.’
‘I’ll tell him you want to see him – won’t say nothing more. If you want him to cut you off where you hang that’s your concern, boy, not any of mine!’
When Prince had gone Godfrey lay back on his pillow and dozed till supper came. He swallowed it with a sore mouth and took his sleeping pill and fell asleep with the problem not resolved. It was against all his temperament to stay with Davis. It was against his temperament even to pretend to stay with him while looking around. His natural instincts were to wait outside his gym until Davis came out alone and there go about disfiguring him for life. (He knew that if he did this, with his record, it would finish his boxing career.) His second alternative was to go to the B.B.B. of C. and lay a formal complaint, hoping Davis would lose his licence. (But where it was simply one man’s suspicion against another’s word, it was an unlikely outcome that he would be believed and a fairly prominent and esteemed manager called a liar. There was no proof, not an atom – only guesswork. Pat Prince had known nothing, he was sure.) If Prince kept his promise and passed on nothing of what had been said, there was the third alternative of meeting guile with guile and deceit with deceit. Next morning when his head was beginning to clear he decided to let the thing run on and see if Davis came.
Davis came, but not until the afternoon. Thursday was visiting day. He came down the long ward, looking thin and dark and distinctive in his own peculiar way. Godfrey had always thought him a natty dresser, in his invariable dark suit and white shirt with its prominent cuffs, and the diamond tie pin and the opal cuff-links. But today, looking at him with different eyes, Godfrey saw an air of shabbiness about the gentility, a shaky seediness in his walk; his eyes were evasive behind their glasses as he said: ‘Well, well, how is it? Not too badly, I hope?’
‘I’ll live to get my own back,’ said Godfrey through his swollen lips.
‘Ah, I doubt if I’ll match you again with Kio, the bastard. I only hope he gets what he deserves in Hamburg.’
‘He fought fair enough,’ said Godfrey. ‘Which is more’n you can say for some filthy Micks.’
Davis bent and opened a bag he was carrying. For the moment he was prepared to misunderstand Godfrey’s replies. ‘Another bottle of champagne. Thought you might like it. Did you know Kio’s fight with Heist has been postponed three weeks?’
‘So what?’
‘It was your doing. You opened up his eyebrow. I wish I’d been well enough to see the fight. All the writers are raving about you.’
‘I was raving about it too,’ said Godfrey.
‘No wonder. No wonder.’ Davis coolly put the champagne on the table, then some dirt in the nail of his index finger attracted his attention and he cleaned it with the nail of his other thumb. ‘Kio and his manager let me down. I was annoyed when I heard, when Pat came over later that night. But Kio I couldn’t talk to. I’ve seen his manager since and we’ve had a row but his manager says it was Kio’s doing, breaking the arrangement. He thought we’d insulted him by not putting him on in a bigger hall, so it was a question of “face”. So all the original plan went overboard and he was out for your blood. If I’d been there on the night I could maybe have intervened. But as it was you had to face it out yourself. And a red hot job you made of it. A red hot job. It’s going to do you a power of good, you can stand on me for that.’
‘It’s done me a flaming lot of good,’ said Godfrey.
‘Reputation wise it has. Reputation wise it’s as good as a gold brick. Now you’re a name. Soon as you get over these bruises we can talk big for your next fight. That’s going to mean a lot to you, Godfrey. You’re a big wheel now. Oh, by the bye, I’ve got the cheque here for the fight. Six hundred less commission.’
‘Thanks for nothing,’ said Godfrey taking the cheque and sneering at it.
Jude Davis leaned on his umbrella and put the handle against his teeth. This was the turning point. He had gone as far as he could to paper over the cracks. Whether Godfrey believed him or not he didn’t much care. What he did care was whether Godfrey appeared to believe him. If he made no effort to do so they couldn’t go on. That would be a pity, because if Godfrey survived this beating, he would now be a valuable property. If Godfrey survived the beating and took it right, everybody would profit.
‘Well, it’s not nothing, Godfrey. You carry it to a bank and see. But I’ve got something more for you here. It’s a hundred pounds in tenners. When you get out of hospital I want you to go away and have a good holiday before we consider your next fight, see. This is a bit of extra to take care of the expense and because I wasn’t there on Tuesday to see it worked to plan. I want you to take this and have a good time. Have a good time on me and come back fighting fit.’
Godfrey hesitated and then put out his hand for the envelope. ‘Thanks.’
Davis did not put the envelope in it.
‘No hard feelings. That’s what we have to be sure of. No hard feelings, see. Manager and fighter can’t ever get on if there’s hard feelings between them.’
There was another pause. Then Godfrey tried to move his lips into a smile. ‘No hard feelings,’ he lied. You bastard, you muck face, you jerk, you punk.
He took the money and put it under his pillow. ‘Thanks Jude,’ he said. ‘I’ll remember this.’
Godfrey’s third guest missed Jude Davis by only ten minutes. She was as much in white as Davis had been in black, and he recognized her tall figure coming down the ward. He swallowed a mouthful of venom and lust as he saw her. She hesitated and licked her lips and smiled, then came on and held out her hand.
‘Godfrey, how are you? I was so sorry. I thought I’d come and see.’
Even her voice had changed since her marriage, he thought. How are you? So sorry. He looked her up and down with bruised bloodshot eyes but did not take her hand.
‘Sorry I can’t touch me forelock. That’s what you expect when you visit the peasants, isn’t it?’ Deliberately he pitched his own voice at its worst.
She sat on the stool beside the bed. Kid shoes and nylon legs and fine wool skirt under the white straight-cut coat. ‘I didn’t come to quarrel – to go on with our quarrel. I came to see how you were.’
‘Well, you can see now, can’t you. Labelled pug at last. I said this’d never happen, didn’t I. Little God with his looks rubbed out. That’s what. Pig-Face wanted it, didn’t he? That’s why Pig-Face fixed my wagon.’
She was startled at this; the things she had intended to say were stopped. She licked her lips again. ‘Wilfred took me to watch the fight, but … I don’t know if you were – I’m only sorry the fight ever happened.’
‘So’ll your fat pig of a husband be when I get around to him. You can tell him that from me.’
She began to say something and then checked herself again.
‘Have some champagne,’ he said sarcastically. ‘It’s just come. Compliments of the management.’
‘Godfrey,’ she said. ‘I was so upset on Tuesday; I don’t know how we got home. I – felt so sick, so sorry. When that Jap – it was horrible. I never want to see another boxing match … Your face will heal, won’t it? You put up a wonderful fight. It must make your reputation.’
He turned over and grunted; his ribs were now at their most painful. ‘I’ll still be able to lay you if that’s what’s fretting you.’
She flushed. ‘Do you hate me all that much?’
He grunted again and sighed. ‘Who knows? Who cares?’
He was bitter at her for coming and seeing him like this.
It rasped at his vanity, his manhood. And this girl, this girl was married to … ‘What d’you expect? I’m not a mud pie. When somebody treads on my face I tread back.’
Shrinking into herself but still seeking some reassurance, she said: ‘Are you like this with me just because of Wilfred or is there some other reason?’
‘Just because of Wilfred,’ he mimicked. ‘ Isn’t that good enough?’
‘It may be good enough, but I want to know.’
With clumsy fingers he touched his cheek, and the sharp ends of the stitches brushed his hand. ‘Oh, what’s the odds? What does it matter?’
‘It matters to me. I still don’t understand.’
‘How could you?’
‘Well, then d’you want me to go now? To leave you alone?’
‘Please yourself.’
She sat there hesitantly, with the drone of other people’s voices around her.
He said: ‘ Go on. Have some champagne.’
‘Godfrey, are you trying to say Wilfred had some hand in arranging what happened on Tuesday? How could he? You’ve got a manager—’
‘He fixed me up with Davis – remember that? So he—’
‘Because you asked him. Or asked me to ask him—’
‘So he fixed me up with Davis. So he fixed this too.’
She glanced round the big ward, at the old people and the sick people in the beds, at the visitors, some genuinely concerned, others here out of duty, exchanging platitudes, waiting for the time to go.
‘When will you be able to leave hospital?’
‘Next Monday, the body-slicer says.’
‘Where will you go – back to that room in Lavender Hill?’
‘To begin.’
‘If you tell me the time you expect to be home I’ll be there. I’ll try to make it a bit more comfortable for you.’
‘Slum visitor. That’ll be smashing.’
She shrugged helplessly. ‘Do you want me to leave Wilfred?’
‘Jees, I don’t know how you stay with the old crud!’
‘And you want me to come and live with you?’
‘How can you? You’re too much in love with Mayfair and posh restaurants.’
‘That isn’t the point.’
‘Isn’t it? I thought it was.’
After a minute she said: ‘ Do you love me, Godfrey?’
He fiddled with the bandage on his nose and grimaced with pain. It was the last thing to ask him now, when his nature was bunched up, muscle-bound with resentment. He knew she was watching him and that he looked like something out of a leper colony.
‘I mean truly,’ she persisted. ‘Apart from sex. Enough to marry me.’
‘What’s love?’ he said. ‘Never heard of it. I’m a pug. Maybe you haven’t noticed.’
‘You never let me forget it,’ she said.
‘Why should you want to?’
‘Why should I? Maybe because I’m a woman. I don’t mind you being a fighter, but I don’t want you to be only a fighter.’
‘So what sort of a set-up is that? Some love nest.’
‘I can work. I always used to work. I can perhaps get my old job back.’
‘You’d love that, wouldn’t you.’
‘It was an easy enough job. I didn’t like the travelling before.’
They seemed to have nothing more to say. His sarcasm, his mimicry had wrong-footed her, dried her up. She had said all the wrong things in all the wrong ways. His first words had made her feel self-conscious, over-formal, priggish. Now she sat beside him like a paid sick-visitor. But how else should she have come? Run up to the bed, arms round him. ‘Godfrey!’ Sobs. You couldn’t have. Not with him. Anyway a public ward was not the right place to meet. (And the last time they had met in private she had bitten him.)
A spark was lacking, his crudeness offended her. He wanted her, you could see that, but did he want her more than he did a lot of other women? If only he had been different this afternoon, if he had been receptive to sympathy. Instead he snarled like a maimed wolf, ready to fight to the last.
So the talk dropped between them. She stayed to the very last minute, wanting more resolution that she could not find, needing him but resenting within herself the existence of the need. She tried to encourage him to talk about his boxing future, but that led quickly back to the old hate. Soon as he was out of here he’d take a rest to get fit again. Then he had a job to do.
‘A job to do?’
‘Yes, I’ve been fixed. Remember that? By your Pig-Face. Next time I see him I’m going to lean on him. I’m going to knock the stuff out of his guts.’
‘Oh, Godfrey, that’s hopeless. Can’t you realize it? How can you prove anything?’
‘Prove? Who wants proof? Last time I called on him – your old man – at his office, that time I called at his office, I could tell then that he knew about us. Just the way he sat there – sweating his guts out with hate. He’d have give me poison if he could. There was a bloke called Birman there that day – in the office, in the outside office. You can stand on it: he did the fixing for Angell, he did the dirty work. I’ll settle with him one day. But it’s Pig-Face first. Then Jude …’
She hesitated, on the edge of indiscretion, wanting to talk but fearing to talk.
‘Even if something was arranged – and really I can’t believe —’
‘I’m dead sure, so save your breath.’
‘But it’s your future you’ve got to start thinking of – not what’s over, done with. What about your reputation? For Heaven’s sake. You’re a name for the first time! Someone who stood up to the champion of Japan for six wonderful rounds—’
‘You try it. You try six wonderful flaming rounds with three teeth knocked out and a broken nose and eight stitches and ribs like they’ve been beaten in with hammers. You try it, Oyster, and see how it feels!’
She said miserably: ‘ Everything I say you turn against me. If I didn’t feel for you, why should I have come? All I am trying to say is—’
‘All you’re trying to say is, let your old man off.’
‘Not because I admire him. Not because I care anything for him at all any more. You know that. But if you try some – some sort of revenge it can only get you in trouble. You can’t box Wilfred – he’s old and unfit. You can’t even box this man Davis. So why ruin your own life, your own prospects now, when you’ve got a big chance to succeed?’
The second bell had gone while she was speaking. He was eyeing her up and down.
‘It sounds all right the way you say it. You might even be thinking of me.’
She picked up her bag.
He said: ‘Anyway you’ll be there on Monday when I get back to my room?’
She said without hesitation: ‘If you want me to.’
‘That’s a date. Here, you take the key of the room. I expect I’ll be home about twelve. Eleven’s the time they jet people out of here. So I should be there by twelve. I got a spare key if I’m early. You can cook me dinner.’
Their eyes clashed. ‘All right,’ she said.
They had stayed together through Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in a silent arid desert of enmity. After a lot of hesitation she had decided not to make the final break until after she had seen Godfrey, then when she saw him he had never given her the sort of encouragement she wanted. She so much wanted to be able to say to Wilfred: ‘I am going to Godfrey,’ instead of ‘I am going home.’ So again the break was postponed, this time until Monday.
As for Wilfred, each time he came home and found her still there he breathed a sigh of relief, though he was careful not to show it. His supplications of Tuesday evening humiliated him to remember and he tried to forget they had ever happened. If she told him she was leaving him now, he persuaded himself he would be able to bear it, and each hour that passed without an announcement gave him a fraction more confidence. In a month he would be persuading himself that his abject surrender of Tuesday had hardly happened. Also the light of day, of several days, had convinced him that she had out-manoeuvred him on the night by pressing her accusations and disregarding his own. A woman caught in adultery is not a particularly admirable sight even in these permissive days. He had every right to divorce her and turn her off without a penny. His own retaliatory act was the merest justice, a fit retribution. He was bitterly angry with himself and with her that a woman half his age should have been able, by sheer nerve, to get the better in open conflict of a man like himself.
All these thoughts he thought more convincingly when in his office surrounded by his pink- and green-taped documents. When confronted by her, the sight of her weighted the scales of justice alarmingly by reminding him of what he might lose. Those beautiful legs, of which she showed so much, those long elegant arms, the fine skin of brow and cheek and neck and breast, the glinting blue eyes and the long fair hair. It was utterly unfair that she should be so capable of undermining the rational process.
Since Tuesday he had not dined at home, but on the Friday he came back and clearly expected something, so she cooked him a shoulder of pork, and they had a selection of cheeses to follow. Like all the breakfasts, it was a silent meal, punctuated only by the clink of knife and fork and the sound of his breathing. Afterwards he sat in front of the fire with a cigar and a glass of port while she cleared away. When she came back into the drawing room she saw he was reading the Boxing News she had bought that day. He glanced up and saw her look and rashly spoke.
‘Well, they speak highly of Brown – or Vosper – they speak highly of him in this boxing paper that you have. It cannot have done him all that much harm, this defeat. He should be grateful for having had the chance to shine.’
Echoing Godfrey, she said: ‘A broken nose, eight stitches in his cheek, two in his eyebrow, concussion. I’m sure that’s something to be grateful for.’
He dropped the paper on the floor and sipped his port. He should have known that the longer the subject was avoided the better. Keep off it. Talk of anything else. Compliment her on her frock, her cooking, her hair. He must not gamble with his future. But now the subject, like a vein, was irrevocably opened. Now his frail cause might bleed to death.
‘I saw him yesterday,’ she said.
He nursed his fear and his enmity, keeping them close, trying not to let them show.
‘He’s in Bethnal Green Hospital,’ she said.
‘I suppose I should have expected it.’
‘Expected what?’
‘That you would go to see him.’
She poured herself a glass of his port. She didn’t like it, it was over-sweet, cloying, like a moneyed existence.
‘He knows all about it. All about the arrangement between yourself and Jude Davis.’
It was so quiet that you could hear the 18th-century French Ormolu clock in the bathroom striking ten.
‘I don’t understand. You are imagining things. What have you been telling him?’
‘I told him nothing. I pretended I didn’t understand. But he knew all about it – or he’d guessed – as I did. He said he was going to get even with you both.’
Angell put his port down. His cigar smouldered in the ashtray. ‘I’ve never even met Davis, wouldn’t know what he looks like. It’s a persecution complex Brown’s got. Anyway, how could he possibly – get even, as you call it?’
‘I think he means in the way you arranged it for him,’ Pearl said with malice.
Angell’s face quite noticeably paled. It was as if the blood had suddenly remembered another appointment and gone elsewhere. He stayed quite still.
‘I’ve never heard anything so absurd,’ he said boldly. ‘This is a law-abiding society.’
‘Is it?’
‘Why, a man can be convicted merely for uttering threats. In some cases he can be sent to prison for uttering threats. Brown had better be careful.’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘You told him to be careful?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He wouldn’t take any notice of me. No notice at all.’
A further silence endured, until the clock in here also struck ten. Angell wanted to ask her if she were seeing Godfrey again, but this other sudden danger which had arisen impeded his tongue. Physical danger to his body, not just danger to his possessions. Inconceivable.
‘Of course it means nothing,’ he said with conviction. ‘Just empty words.’
‘Yes. I expect so.’
‘But empty words that show his vicious nature.’
‘Aren’t we all vicious?’ said Pearl.
On the Sunday they had booked for a concert at the Albert Hall, but she would not go with him. He went along half an hour before the performance and tried to sell the tickets. He failed in this so went to the concert by himself in order that only one ticket should be wasted. When he came out it was dark and he took a taxi home. He was not sure what day Godfrey came out of hospital. He realized that for quite a long time perhaps he would have to take taxis home.
He was an hour late reaching his office on Monday morning, but as soon as he got in he rang Vincent Birman. Birman was out but rang back at twelve and they arranged to have lunch.
When he heard what was on Birman said: ‘Well, I’ve been as tight as a clam. You know me. I don’t spill. And the only other feller in the know is Jude Davis, and you can bet he wouldn’t say. He’s got a licence to lose. Brown can only guess, and how he has guessed is your problem not mine. How d’you know he blames you?’
‘I happen to know. And he’s threatening some sort of reprisal.’
‘On you? Or on your client?’
Angell bit his lip. ‘On me apparently. Though I have only been the go-between.’
‘Like me. I believe he did see me in your office one day. Maybe that’s the link. But you surely don’t take it seriously. A little broken-down pug. He’s got no influence, no money. And no vestige of proof. What could he do?’
Angell said to the waiter: ‘More soup. And bring the grated cheese.’ Because he was paying for this meal they were eating at an inexpensive luncheon café in Fleet Street. ‘One does not know what a vicious little prizefighter like that might attempt if he brooded on his grievance … Did you say “broken-down” pug?’
‘No, thanks,’ said Birman to the waiter, and watched Angell swallowing the soup. ‘Well, he did take a terrific beating, didn’t he?’
‘You were there?’ Wilfred was startled.
‘Yes, I went along, old man. I’d agreed to hand over the other thousand pounds that evening. It was part of the bargain.’
To hide his pain Wilfred broke a roll and stuffed a piece of it in his mouth.
‘Davis wasn’t there,’ Birman said. ‘He was ill, or pretended to be, so I had to go to his house. That’s another ten shillings for a taxi on your expenses.’
Angell said: ‘My client must have been out of his mind to spend so much. Brown was certainly well beaten, but one wonders … Beyond some temporary disfigurement … Beyond that …’ He spooned up the last of the soup and looked at Birman hopefully.
‘Beyond that is anybody’s guess. Boxing’s a funny game, as I’ve told you before. Boxers come into the ring with their tails up. It’s a psychological thing. When they get stopped the way your man got stopped last Tuesday something happens to them. Their bodies have got to recover – and that can take a time: that Kio had one of the most vicious right hooks I’ve ever seen. That’s a physical thing. But their minds have got to recover too. Before this they’ve always gone into the ring knowing they’re going to win. They always have won – or if they lose on a cut eye it’s just bad luck, or a points decision they can con themselves the ref was wrong. They never admit they’re beaten: there’s always some excuse: it’s the way they go on fighting. But when you get beaten all over the guts and brains like your man on Tuesday, there’s no excuse they can dream up for that. They know there’s stronger, cleverer fists in the world than theirs, and it may be they’ll never quite go into a fight with the same zest again. That’s mental. Then they’re over the hill. Even at twenty-one you can be over the hill. So it’s just a matter of luck with Godfrey Vosper. We’ll just have to wait and see.’
‘In the meantime …’
‘In the meantime I hope your client’s satisfied.’
‘In the meantime I am considering these threats …’
‘Oh, those. Forget ’em, old man. That’ll be his excuse, no doubt. He was framed, it wasn’t a fair fight. That’ll help him to recover. But as for reprisals. If he was one of the big boys who could pay to have a couple of thugs look after you, there might be a bit of danger. But not from a little down-at-heel feather-weight.’
This was much in line with Angell’s reasonable thinking: but reasoning is not all. ‘Nevertheless I’d like to know something of his movements. I’d like you to keep an eye on him for a few weeks.’
Birman sighed. ‘I’ll assign one of my men if you like, but it will cost you more than it will be worth. I’ll forecast Brown’s movements for you. He’ll have made a nice little packet out of this fight and he’ll probably take it easy for a while – even go for a holiday to Brighton or somewhere where he can pick up a girl or two and play the slot machines. But as soon as ever he feels fit he’ll tire of that and come back to the gyms and start hanging around waiting to pick up a few pounds sparring until his manager arranges the next fight. He’ll be far too busy thinking about himself to think of taking it out on you.’
‘He’s a very peculiar man,’ said Wilfred. ‘What little I’ve seen of him …’ He knew that if he insisted, the results of this order to Birman would be likely to be double-edged and would probably expose his wife’s perfidy to another’s gaze. He did not like this, but he saw no way out. For the moment fear was the dominant emotion, over-riding all the others. Fear and hunger. Fear and hunger. They seemed to have a common frontier. Fear and hunger, worry and hunger, jealousy and hunger. They met in a psychosomatic no-man’s-land between the countries of the body and the mind.
‘I want him watched,’ Wilfred said, and waited impatiently for the steak and kidney pie.
Pearl left her house at 11.30 and took a taxi to Lavender Hill. No one answered the door so she went in, climbed the two floors without meeting anyone and let herself into Godfrey’s room. She had brought food for a midday meal, and she prepared this before setting about clearing up the mess. There was only a gas-ring and tiny oven, and the grease on them suggested they hadn’t been wiped over for a month. The bed was roughly made, but the imprint of his body still marked the tattered counterpane, and comic papers were strewn on the floor. As she picked up the papers and glanced through them she shivered slightly: they emphasized the paradox of her passion, which all through her maturing mind, her ambition, her fastidiousness, had fought against.
An old pair of boxing boots were under the bed along with two pairs of hand-made brogues and two other pairs of expensive shoes. She rubbed these over and put them in the wardrobe, which she was startled to find stacked with almost new clothes: sweaters, jackets, suits, silk shirts. All from Lady Vosper, no doubt. She shivered again. It was as if she again detected something parallel in her life and Godfrey’s. They had both lived with older people, who doted on them, and from this association were loaded down with the small profits of their servitude. She had married Wilfred. Was that the only difference?
By one o’clock the flat was looking a different place. (The outside of the window was still filthy but she did not fancy leaning out and trying to clean it.) The furniture was free of dust, the threadbare rug reversed so that the worn end hardly showed. She had waited to put the steak in, but the potatoes and cauliflower were nearly ready and she thought he was sure to be here any minute now. (It was strange to be cooking for someone who only cared for food as a secondary consideration.) She had brought a bottle of Wilfred’s best wine, and although there was no decanter it was at the right temperature. The deal table was covered with a check cloth, and the old bone-handled knives and the drunken-pronged forks were laid. There was nothing more for her to do, so she washed her hands again and rinsed her face and powdered it and re-fixed her lips. She knew he didn’t like her hair too tidy, so she did not comb it. He preferred his steak rare, so she took his out and allowed hers to sizzle for another few minutes. When that was done she turned down the gas and left the dish on the top of the oven and hoped it would not spoil.
She sat by the window and began to watch the traffic. She had only seen his grey Velox once but she fancied she would recognize it again. Every three or four minutes she got up and went to examine her meal, which clearly was not going to improve if it were left much longer. At one-thirty she felt angry, at two she grew anxious. She left the food where it was and went downstairs and out. There was a telephone box down the next street, but it was occupied and a man was waiting. She walked back to the door of his place and ran up to see if he had come while she was away. Then she went down again and back to the telephone. After a five-minute wait she was able to use it.
The hospital was not helpful and seemed to know nothing about him. Eventually they told her that G. Vosper had been discharged this morning and had left about eleven.
Back to the flat. The food was drying and cooling. She tried to eat something but had no appetite. She drank two glasses of wine. At three-thirty she threw all the food in the waste bin and washed up. At four-thirty she went home, wondering if there would be some message left there.
There was no message and he did not come.
Having heard nothing at all from the Law Society, Angell rang up the secretary, who had forwarded Lord Vosper’s complaint to him. The secretary said that he had written to Lord Vosper informing him that the matter he had raised was not one on which the Law Society could take any action. In relief at this – though perhaps he should have known better than to feel anxiety – Angell reluctantly admitted Jonathan Whittaker, thirty-two years old and a bright young man of law, to an extra 5 per cent of the profits of the firm, such percentage to be debited from the senior partner’s share.
The deal for the purchase of Merrick House and its accompanying lands finally went through. The Minister of Housing at Question Time stated that every consideration should be given to objectors and objections raised against the South Suffolk Development Scheme. Replying to a supplementary question he assured his questioner that every possible care would be taken to preserve the beauty and the country amenities of the villages involved.
The furniture and all the furnishings of Merrick House still belonged to Lord Vosper, and through Hollis a suggestion came that it would be more convenient to auction the contents on the premises than to have them brought to London. Land Increments Ltd could afford to be magnanimous and agreed that all facilities should be provided to enable the sale to take place provided this occurred before the 31st March. The sale was fixed for the 21st and 22nd March and was to be widely advertised.
Pearl daily expected some note or letter or even a visit from Godfrey. On the following Monday she went again to his room and let herself in. Some of the things had gone from his wardrobe but there was no sign of his having slept there. The half-used bottle of wine was where she had left it, the tea towel folded on the chair back, the dustpan and brush unmoved, the salt and pepper on the table. When she got home she looked up Jude Davis’s telephone number and rang him. She gave her name as Hazel Boynton.
‘Godfrey’s out of town, Miss Boynton. I can’t tell you where he is because he didn’t leave an address, but I did suggest he should take a holiday after him being beaten by the Japanese champion, like. I expect he’ll be back in a week or so and looking us up.’
‘He was supposed to go back to the hospital to have his stitches out, and also for attention to his nose. Did he do that?’
‘I would think so, but I expect you could check with the hospital. I haven’t seen him since the Thursday after the fight. I’ve been very busy and rather poorly myself – so I have left it to him to look after these things.’
‘I thought you might have been concerned about his health and whether he was recovering after the fight.’
There was a pause, and the voice at the other end hardened. ‘We do what we can, Miss – er – Boynton. Godfrey Vosper is not the easiest person to control, as perhaps you know. Even a manager can only advise.’
‘And make money out of getting him beaten,’ said Pearl, and hung up, breathing hard. It was a foolish thing to say, but it had come out.
Birman made his weekly report to Angell over the telephone.
‘He’s definitely not in London. He left hospital last Monday morning, picked up his car off a parking lot and drove to his room in Battersea. He was there only about ten minutes and then he left again. He came back a couple of days later and stayed about two hours; but he hasn’t been back since then. A young woman called on the Monday after he left and stayed four hours. Part of the time she was in his room because my man saw her at the window. But we don’t know who she was. Quite obviously my prediction about Brown has come true. He’s off for a holiday, or maybe visiting his family, if he’s got one. We also checked with the Davis gym, but no one has seen him there. No one was expecting him there – yet.’
Angell grunted. ‘Couldn’t your man have followed him? For all we know he may be staying round the corner.’
‘He could have followed him but I didn’t know you wanted that sort of coverage. And think it out, old man. If Brown is in London he isn’t paying to hire somewhere else and letting his own bed-sitter go to waste. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Ah,’ said Angell. ‘ Perhaps you are right. But tell your man to continue to check, will you, and let me know as soon as he returns.’
After two weeks Pearl tried his room again and then went to find the gym Godfrey had often spoken of off Cranbourne Street. She found Pat Prince there and, stared at curiously by rough young men in track suits or boxing shorts, she put her questions. Prince was more forthcoming than Davis but the substance of his answers was the same.
It was lunch time and she ate at a restaurant in St Martin’s Lane. While she was having lunch a good-looking man of about thirty with an Italian accent came to sit at her table and tried to pick her up. She froze him off instantly, instinctively, and left as soon as she could, leaving him looking hurt.
She walked for quite a while, embarrassed and slightly angry and slightly amused. Of course she was not unaccustomed to approaches, and she was used to being able to brush them off and forget them in a couple of minutes. This time for some reason it went a little deeper, as if the protective varnish she had developed had for once been dented. She thought perhaps it was because he was a handsome man and, after his own lights, good-mannered. She allowed herself to speculate what would have happened if she had been a different sort of woman, and what it would be like to be a different sort of woman. Would she have ended the afternoon taking tea at the Ritz or in some bedsitter in Bayswater? And would it have given her pleasure and release or merely a fleeting satisfaction and a renewal of the empty need?
It was all speculation, which she would never allow to become reality because it was against her nature to do so. But it was a little surprising to herself that the speculation, with all its detailed and possible developments, should linger so long in her mind after she had tried to dismiss it.
Imagination for her now had so very much more factual experience to build on than it had in the past.