The brief object of Loopy’s discomfort bumped into Mattie in Dr Farnsworth’s surgery the following Monday. Mattie was very poorly, with a streaming cold that had turned into something with all the hallmarks of the influenza that had broken out generally in the region, albeit somewhat earlier than was usually expected.
‘You got the flu as well?’ she asked Meggie. ‘Because if you have, you have my sympathy.’
‘No,’ Meggie said, edging slightly away from Mattie and wishing she hadn’t chosen to sit down next to her in the crowded surgery. ‘I had some sort of bug in the summer, and it hasn’t cleared up. Left me with a rather unattractive cough.’
‘Cigarettes probably,’ Mattie said, sounding muffled as she held a handkerchief to her face. ‘I don’t care what anyone says, I don’t think they do us any good at all, except of course reduce our appetites.’
‘I can’t smoke at all at the moment,’ Meggie said regretfully. ‘All it does is make me cough.’
‘I’ve cut right down,’ Mattie said, stuffing her hankie back up the sleeve of her dress. ‘Down to ten a day now.’
‘Bully,’ Meggie said, tossing back her head. ‘That’s about what I’m used to getting through before breakfast – until this damn’ cough.’
When Meggie finally got in to see Dr Farnsworth he himself was just stubbing out a cigarette in an ashtray, which Meggie recognised at once as having been purloined from the Three Tuns.
‘Good,’ the doctor said, indicating the chair opposite his desk. ‘Sit. Sit you down. Good. And how are we today?’
‘Absolutely top hole,’ Meggie drawled. ‘Hence my visit.’
Dr Farnsworth looked up, surprised. ‘I was merely being conversational, Miss Gore-Stewart. Obviously if you were feeling altogether well I dare say you wouldn’t be here. So what is wrong with us today? Feeling a bit—’
‘I have this cough,’ Meggie interrupted. ‘I’ve had it since the summer – since early summer in fact – and it’s making me feel rather washed out.’
Dr Farnsworth duly listened to her chest, felt the glands in her throat, looked at her tonsils and took the opportunity of listening to her chest once more, a part of the examination over which he seemed to linger unduly.
‘You’re making a bit of a meal of this, aren’t you?’ Meggie said, sitting up and pulling her sweater back down over her breasts. ‘It’s only a throaty cough.’
‘You’ve been feeling tired, you say?’ Farnsworth stood back, having pulled his stethoscope out of his ears. ‘A bit washed out.’
‘I haven’t been sleeping well, not me at all, actually. I learned to sleep anywhere during the war, haystacks, trains, backs of lorries, but now with this cough I’m awake half the night and nothing brings relief.’
‘You’re a smoker, aren’t you?’
‘So are you.’
‘I’m not the one being examined for a bad cough, Miss Gore-Stewart.’
‘Are you saying I should stop smoking? Because if so I promise you I am taking in half my usual amount, due to this graveyard cough.’
‘How many are you in the habit of smoking a day, normally, Miss Gore-Stewart?’
‘Normally?’ Meggie paused, thinking. ‘Normally I smoke too many, Dr Farnsworth. Now I am smoking far less than too many, but still I suppose too many.’
‘Then cut down. That’s all you need to do – cut down. You don’t have to cut it out altogether, just cut down, if you’re a heavy smoker. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with tobacco – in fact there’s a school of thought that holds that it clears the mind and helps concentration. I certainly find that. It’s also considerably helped my daughter’s asthma, so you don’t have to think oh I must stop smoking altogether. It’s the same with anything done to excess. Excess is what’s harmful, not necessarily the ingredient. Same goes with alcohol, aspirin, and food of course. You’re coughing because you’re really not giving your lungs a chance to recover, that’s all. A little respite between cigarettes and you’d be surprised. The body is a remarkable piece of machinery, Miss Gore-Stewart, with quite remarkable powers not only of recovery but of self-restoration. How many do you smoke a day?’
‘I don’t count. I told you. Sometimes more, when I’m a bit – you know. During the war I smoked two or three packets – when I could get them.’
‘If I were you, I’d cut it down to one packet a day. You’ve been overdoing it, that’s all. Simply a case of overdoing it. You won’t believe the difference if you can cut back to about twenty a day. You really don’t need more than that. I find I don’t. Anything more than twenty a day is just – well. Overdoing it.’
Meggie returned to the outside world armed with a large bottle of cough linctus and a supply of Fisherman’s Friend to keep her cough at bay. Relieved that there was nothing wrong with her other than a bad dose of excess, she was determined to take Dr Farnsworth’s advice and do her best to cut back to one packet of Players a day, a target she believed was well within her capabilities, if – for instance, as she confided to Mattie as she left the surgery – she gave up smoking in bed, and particularly before she got up in the morning. She vowed to herself that those were cigarettes she would now do without.
Feeling better for her visit to the surgery, she lengthened her stride and walked with increased confidence back to Cucklington House, only to find a letter from her lawyers advising her that the matter she had tried to put out of her mind in the hope of some miracle’s occurring had come to a head, and the sale of her grandmother’s beloved seaside home was no longer a consideration, but an absolute necessity.
Having absorbed the contents of the letter, Meggie lit a fresh cigarette and went to the drinks tray for a gin. The unimaginable had happened. She was about to lose the last thing in her life that she truly loved.
Waldo used his trip to London bearing Loopy’s precious paintings carefully wrapped up in the back of his Buick to introduce Lionel to the city’s fashionably active bridge circuit. After delivering the paintings to the gallery in Cork Street and instructing one of the assistants to unwrap but not to begin hanging the pictures until he returned the following day, he drove on to an address in Mayfair where he met Lionel, and they both changed into black tie for the evening’s play.
Admiring the elegant surroundings in which he found himself, Lionel could not help wondering to whom the apartment might belong, only to be told by Waldo that it didn’t belong to anyone as such, at least not to anyone that he knew personally since it was a rental.
‘It has quite an art collection for what you call “a rental”,’ Lionel observed shrewdly, sitting on one of the twin beds in the bedroom and carefully tying the shoelaces of his patent leather shoes.
‘That’s because it’s a very expensive rental, Lionel,’ Waldo replied. ‘And because the guy who rents it has very good taste.’
‘Might we have a bracer before we leave?’ Lionel enquired, as Waldo stood checking his bow tie in the mirror above the drawing room fireplace.
‘Most certainly not, Lionel,’ Waldo reprimanded him. ‘No alcohol either before or during the game. Afterwards you may get as smashed as you wish, your only consideration being that if we lose, you pay.’
They took a taxicab to the venue, a large private house in a very large garden somewhere in Hampstead. This was a part of London that was largely unknown to Lionel, so he had absolutely no bearing on where exactly he was, or the status of the house – at least not until he entered and saw the furnishings and the art collection. It was obviously the home of a very rich person, in the shape of a small rotund and entirely bald middle-aged man introducing himself as George Beck Hampton, their host for the evening. There were six tables in all, each one of them supervised by a white-gloved referee positioned behind the chair to be occupied by North. Lionel was duly introduced only to those people at whose table he and Waldo would first be playing, their opponents being foreign while happily speaking, to Lionel’s particular relief, impeccable English. There was no real emphasis placed upon the size of the stakes other than that they were to be of the usual order and that all debts must be cleared before leaving either by cash or by guaranteed banker’s cheque.
Lionel looked immediately discomfited by this, even though Waldo had put him entirely in the picture, and glanced across the table at his partner. Waldo ignored the look. Instead he started to engage in small talk with the man on his left playing East, as the pre-prepared hands in sealed envelopes were put on the table in front of each person seated North. Five minutes later play was allowed to commence.
There was no real reason for Lionel to be nervous yet he nevertheless found that the hands that held his cards were quite definitely sweating. He knew he was an excellent player and that – more importantly – Waldo had underwritten the entire evening, as a consequence of which he personally had nothing to lose. No, what he feared was making a complete ass of himself, which was why it seemed to him that he was half dead with fright.
Because of his catatonic state he opened the first hand Two No Trumps instead of One, ended up in a contract of six hearts and went four light, doubled. Waldo did not even bother to exchange a look. The next hand their opponents contracted to make a modest Two No Trumps, Lionel doubled on the strength of a long line of clubs headed by the king, led the fourth of the suit to a void in Waldo’s hand and his opponents made their contract with ease, plus three overtricks. Again, Waldo did not do so much as look even vaguely in Lionel’s direction, preferring instead to study at length the magnificent chandelier under which they were all seated.
Twenty minutes later the two of them left their first table the losers, scoring nothing to their opponents’ two thousand eight hundred points.
‘Which is?’ Lionel muttered at Waldo as they headed for the next table.
‘Which is what?’
‘How much are we down, Waldo?’
‘Two thousand eight hundred. You should know. You had the scorecard.’
‘How much money is that?’
‘You really wouldn’t want to know, Lionel. You might play even more incompetently.’
‘I did not play incompetently!’ Lionel insisted, a little too vociferously. ‘Nervously, perhaps – I was a little nervous, no doubt, but incompetence at the card table is not in my repertoire.’
‘Your repertoire was loaded with it in that rubber, my friend. Now forget about the score, forget about the money, forget about these no-hopers, because believe me, Lionel, there isn’t one guy here who can hold a candle to you let alone to us – all except that Egyptian over there who is about the best player in the world – so settle down, and enjoy yourself. Play some cards. And stop looking like a constipated crocodile.’
‘That’s what I look like?’
‘The spit darned image, my dear fellow, the spit darned image. You should be in a Florida swamp, not on the London circuit.’
Far from upsetting him, somehow Waldo’s utterly raffish and devil-may-care attitude actually settled Lionel, so that the moment bidding started at their second table he began to play with his old flair and skill, imagining himself to be back in Gloria Bishop’s modest little drawing room, playing as usual with Waldo against Gloria and the vicar. From that moment on Waldo and Lionel could not lose, or at least only when Waldo wanted them to do so in order to lure their opponents into a false sense of security. Knowing Waldo’s game as well as he did now, Lionel suffered no blue fit when he heard his partner wildly overbid, or just as rashly double a contract their opponents were practically certain to make, and simply played his part to perfection. The result was that at eleven o’clock precisely, when game was called, not only were Waldo and he the evening’s overall winners, but their final tally of points was five and a half thousand points clear of the next pair. For their prize they received a cash payment of two hundred and fifty pounds each. Naturally Lionel accepted the money as if it was an everyday occurrence, as he did the banker’s cheque for the sum of five hundred and fifty pounds, to be split between the partners fifty-fifty.
The taxi ride home to Mayfair was a silent affair, Lionel saying not a word, and Waldo preferring to puff contentedly away on his Havana. After a while he did, however, start to shake with silent laughter, as Lionel merely stared ahead of him at the cab driver’s back, dumbstruck. Following Waldo’s short attack of glee, as the taxi was turning off Park Lane into Mount Street, Lionel seemed to wake from his shock, and demanded to know what Waldo had been finding so funny.
‘Why, my dear chap!’ Waldo exclaimed. ‘Why, your face, of course! Your dear face! You should see it! Why, you look as though you are sitting on something very sharp and extremely upright! Never have I seen such a face! It is too perfect for words!’
Seeing the point, Lionel also started at last to laugh. Bexham might beckon, but just at that moment he was in heaven, and he knew it, and that was where he planned on staying.
The next morning Waldo went to the gallery to help hang Loopy’s exhibition. Loopy had already arrived and with the help of two of the gallery’s young assistants had already begun the task, only for Waldo to take command and order everything to be taken down and hung again. By late afternoon it was done, and even the increasingly nervous artist herself had to admit to being pleased with the arrangement of her pictures on the walls. Waldo wondered what she was going to do with herself that evening and was surprised to learn that she intended to catch the 6.10 home from Waterloo.
‘Would it not be wiser for you to stay up in town now?’ he asked. ‘There are all sorts of incidental details still to be looked after – interviews, photographs, further preparatory work and all that stuff. You have a flat in town, don’t you? Surely it would be altogether wiser for you to stay up here with your husband?’
‘That’s the whole point, Waldo,’ Loopy explained, checking her watch. ‘Hugh isn’t in town. I had a telephone call just after lunch to say he was returning home because he wasn’t feeling at all well. So I really must get back to him.’
‘Nothing serious, I hope? This influenza bug’s running riot.’
‘He said something about pains in his chest. He sounded rather worried – at least for Hugh he did. He normally stiffens that already pretty starched British upper lip at times of distress. So I really think I ought to go home.’
‘Very well.’ Waldo nodded. ‘I’d offer to drive you home, but firstly I have an unbreakable engagement this evening and secondly I don’t see as I’d be a whole lot of use at Hugh’s bedside.’
‘I think that’s my job, Waldo.’ Loopy smiled, kissing him goodbye on the cheek. ‘You’ve done your job,’ she added, indicating the hung paintings. ‘And a good job, too.’
Waldo would have liked to run Loopy back down to Sussex, thereby both helping her and being in her company, but as he and Lionel changed for the evening he knew that it was quite out of the question. This was the only chance they were going to have of a match with the great Egyptian card player who also happened to be one of the game’s heaviest gamblers.
For the first time in his life as far as bridge went Waldo felt a sudden attack of nerves. Looking round at his playing partner as they both stood tying their bow ties he wondered whether they really were quite up to the challenge. Peter Bottros’s regular playing partner, Estelle Van der Beek, was an extremely rich South African widow who was also considered one of the very best contract bridge players on the circuit. As a duo they were rarely beaten at the level at which they would be playing this evening, a single-table challenge of the best of seven rubbers, naturally dealt. As an added incentive the stakes were to be even higher than the preceding night’s, although Waldo was wise enough not to inform Lionel of this point. Even though Lionel stood at no financial risk whatsoever, Waldo appreciated the fact that he suffered nerves on behalf of Waldo’s wallet, and made absolutely no mention of the upping of the ante.
The game was held in Mr Bottros’s suite of rooms at the top of the Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane. Waldo and Lionel ate a light meal of chicken and salad in the restaurant downstairs before proceeding up to the arena, where Waldo formally introduced Lionel to their opponents since they had not met or played against each other during the previous evening’s entertainment. A number of spectators were present, including James Banks, the British film star, and two members of the Shadow Cabinet. Lionel, having already been lectured by Waldo about distraction, to his surprise found the strength not to be overawed by the distinguished audience nor sidelined by any small talk. Instead – again as advised – he kept himself to himself and remained very much on the sidelines, drinking fresh fruit juice and eating small pieces of dark chocolate from his pocket in order to keep up his energy while Waldo, as ever apparently at his ease, coped with the social niceties until it was time to play.
For the first two rubbers the cards simply ran against them. In fact as Lionel found himself with the third hand in succession in which he held less than six points and was thus unable to respond to Waldo’s opening bid he got that feeling familiar to any bridge player that it was going to be one of those nights when he would never be dealt a decent hand.
To compound his growing anxiety Waldo began to bid against his opponents’ obviously strong hands, trying to force them into a higher contract than they wanted, but Bottros and the beautiful Mrs Van der Beek were not to be bullied and twice left Waldo doubled in contracts he had no possible chance of making.
At first Lionel believed this to be part of Waldo’s tactics, but when he found himself and his partner three rubbers down without a point on their score-cards, he realised it was not part of any game plan and that they were, in fact, in serious trouble. Their opponents only needed one more rubber to win the challenge and the purse, the current rubber standing at one game each with their opponents sixty points below the line and now looking the odds on favourites. Lionel tried to catch Waldo’s eye just for some sign of encouragement, but Waldo refused to look up from the hand of cards that had been freshly dealt to him. Worse, for the first time since Lionel had known him he saw him scowling, his mouth turned deeply down at the corners, his forehead lined with concern and his normally big bright eyes small and darkly glittering. If the cards at which Waldo was staring were as bad as the temper shown on his face, then Lionel thought all chance was gone.
Except he had been dealt eight hearts headed by the ace and knave, the singleton ace of clubs, the queen, knave, ten and seven of spades and a void in diamonds, eighteen points if he allowed three for the void and certainly a hand both of strength and of peculiar enough distribution to more than justify an opening bid. But it wasn’t him to open. It was the person on his right, East, Peter Bottros, who opened Two Diamonds, a bid given the conventions being employed that demanded a response from his partner, however weak her hand. Lionel’s logical bid should have been to open Two Hearts, to show his long suit and sufficiency of points to overcall such a big opener, but, knowing that if he did so Mrs Van der Beek would be excused a response, in a moment of what was to turn out to be inspiration he passed. He passed on what was undoubtedly an extremely strong hand, one strong enough to go to game and secure the vital rubber.
‘No bid,’ he said.
Mrs Van der Beek playing West now had to respond, even though she held a hand containing precisely five points, the queen of diamonds and a void in hearts, her only possible bid being the minimum raise.
‘Three Diamonds,’ she called, which could be taken to show minimum support in her partner’s suit, or absolutely nothing. It would all depend on Waldo’s bid. Should he have enough points to open then Bottros could read his partner’s call as zero support and either back out, or bid on, depending entirely on the strength of his own call and the meaning of any opening bid by North.
But Waldo, sitting North, also in a moment of sheer inspiration – or perhaps simply of genius – passed.
‘No bid,’ he said evenly – and the trap was sprung.
Unable to resist the plunge with three rubbers in the bag and more than halfway to the winning game, Bottros reviewed his hand, a hand that contained eight diamonds to the ace, king, knave and ten, the king and queen of clubs, the queen and ten of hearts and the singleton king of spades – and gambled. After all, in a way, he had nothing to lose if they went down on this contract since they were so far ahead, and since his opponents obviously had nothing, to judge from their lack of bids, then his partner’s bid was perhaps intended to show him support in his chosen suit. Ideally he knew she should have bid another suit if her hand was strong enough to encourage him to go to game, or jump to Three Diamonds, but instead of reading the bid correctly he allowed for an error, thus forcing himself into one – and a far greater one than his partner’s simple minimum raise.
‘Five Diamonds,’ he called, reckoning on finding at least the queen of trumps in his partner’s hand plus either the ace of spades, or failing that a void in the suit.
Now it was Lionel’s turn, and of course everyone watching as well as his two opponents expected Lionel to pass, but he didn’t. This was the moment to strike, and strike he did with a deadly precision, a move and a bid that was to remain with him for the rest of his days.
‘Five Hearts,’ he called, his eyes correctly fixed on his cards so that he could not catch sight of either his partner’s reaction or that of his opponents, even though he knew it was a bid to drive the opposition to distraction. They must either call what they must perceive as his bluff or raise their level to a Small Slam, a contract Lionel knew to be outside their reach.
Mrs Van der Beek did not bid because she could not, but she most certainly did call and not unnaturally she doubled.
Waldo passed.
On the strength of the double and the belief that Lionel’s bid was motivated by desperation, Bottros went to Six Diamonds.
Whereupon Lionel calmly proceeded to bid a Grand Slam.
‘Seven Hearts,’ he called, hoping against hope that his so far silent partner could fill the dangerously glaring gaps in his hand. Their opponents obviously had possibly every Diamond between them, and – Lionel imagined given the odd distribution – one of them must have a void in another suit, the odds being that the suit in which they would be critically short would be hearts. So Seven Hearts it was, and if they were to go down then it would be with all guns blazing.
‘Double,’ said Mrs Van der Beek, again not unnaturally.
‘Redouble,’ said Waldo, much to Lionel’s private and utter delight, because he knew at such a crucial stage in the game Waldo would not risk the chance of such an expensive calamity unless he had realised that his own hand must contain the ingredients missing in his partner’s.
Now their opponents had no place to go. Seven Spades was clearly impossible, seeing Lionel had four spades headed by the queen and the jack and a singleton ace of clubs which surely must score since the odds were one thousand to one against either of their opponents having a void in clubs, and Seven No Trumps on the strength of Lionel’s ace of clubs alone was a non-starter.
So the contract was Seven Hearts doubled and redoubled by South, a contract that had been greeted with the odd not so quiet gasp from certain members of the distinguished audience. Mrs Van der Beek quite correctly led a diamond to her partner’s as yet undisclosed but obviously held ace, Waldo as Dummy placed his hand down on the table, and the other three players studied it. Waldo quietly asked if he might be excused, his opponents agreed, and he left the room, leaving behind him face up on the table the king of hearts and two low ones, five low clubs to the knave, the ace of spades heading three lower spades and a singleton diamond.
As soon as dummy was disclosed Lionel knew he would need a finesse to win – he would need to bluff out the king of spades. The queen of trumps was bound to fall, even if Bottros held both the outstanding trump cards, since ace, king of trumps played would bring about her demise. But while the queen of hearts presented no problem, the king of spades did if it lay to the right of Dummy’s Ace. Should it do so he would go down by one trick which while not being a disaster would not constitute a victory either – and at this point of the match a victory was the only thing of any use to them. Should they lose this hand, and the next, then the match was gone.
So Lionel had to gamble, but instead of playing for a finesse he took a major risk. From the distribution of the cards that were visible to him, Lionel knew his only chance of real salvation lay in assuming that Bottros was holding the king of spades as a singleton. So having drawn trumps he played the ace of spades from dummy and to his well concealed delight saw the singleton king fall to it. The rest of the hand was a lay-down, a concession he now politely requested and which was immediately granted.
Against all odds the crucial rubber was won and not only were Waldo and Lionel back in the game, they were back in the money, to the tune of four and a half thousand points.
‘Top of the world,’ he muttered to himself as he marked up the scorecard. ‘Top of the world – top of the world, and if that’s not, what is?’
Which indeed at that moment he truly was.
‘That indeed was the turning point, my dear chap,’ Waldo told Lionel as they were reviewing the evening’s play on their way back to Waldo’s borrowed apartment. ‘A truly inspired passage of play, of which I have to say I knew you to be capable.’
‘I have to confess I didn’t,’ Lionel replied, filling his pipe carefully, anxious not to spill any of his precious tobacco, an accident that had every likelihood of happening due to the speed at which the cabbie was driving. ‘And I forgot to mention your particular notable act – your moment of true sangfroid. Getting up from the table when you had laid down Dummy and asking to be excused. That I have to say showed real aplomb.’
‘Aplomb,’ Waldo mused. ‘I like the word aplomb. And I like to think that’s what you thought I was showing. Actually I was so nervous I had to remove myself to the gentlemen’s to be quietly sick.’
Lionel turned to look at his friend in amazement.
‘You? Sick?’ he asked, noticing of a sudden that Waldo did have dark shadows under his eyes. ‘I never would have thought it of you, my dear fellow, not ever.’
‘Sick with nerves. I don’t think I have ever been so near the brink before. You completely wrong-footed me with your eleventh-hour bid – and then when I looked at my hand and realised we might have a perfect fit suddenly I found my stomach rushing upwards to my throat.’ Waldo gave a laugh of great enjoyment then relit his cigar. ‘It was a shoo-in from then, old chap, wouldn’t you say?’ he continued. ‘Took the wind completely out of their sails.’
‘I wouldn’t say a four-three victory which was finally achieved after one game all in the final rubber was exactly what you call a shoo-in, Waldo.’
‘We were never under pressure from the moment of that slam, dear fellow. We had them on the back foot, rocked by indecision, with their confidence completely evaporated. We could have won when we liked, as we liked.’
‘You do have to have the cards, Waldo.’
‘You have to have some cards – but more than anything, my dear fellow, you have to have great skill – in bidding, in defence, and in attack. They were all over the shop after your magnificent coup – while we were invincible in every sphere. We could have picked them off when we liked – and in fact if you remember how the play went, that is exactly what we did.’
While Waldo sat back and enjoyed the rest of his cigar, Lionel reviewed the last hands and realised his friend was absolutely right. They had been sitting in what Waldo described as the Catbird seat, a term derived it appeared from baseball, which meant that they were in total control of every aspect of the game from that historic and dramatic moment – and the more he thought about it the more Lionel glowed with pride. In all his life he had never been as excited as he was now. In his heightened state of euphoria he saw that his life had been dull and orderly not by accident but by design, and with the advent of Waldo with his insistence of dropping Lionel right in the deep end of the bridge world, he had at last come of age. He had ceased to be the little grey man that since Gloria Bishop’s youthful rejection of him he felt he had become. The only thing that made him sad at this moment of triumph was that his wife Maude was not there to share his excitement and pride.
If only things had been different, he thought to himself as he puffed at his pipe, if only he had appreciated his wife more and allowed her the proper room in his life, if he had created a proper marriage for them both instead of excluding her, she might not have been compelled to take an active part in the wretched war, might not have got herself killed and might this very moment be waiting at home for his return. They would celebrate together, raiding his cellar for a bottle of the champagnes he kept but never drank, and then they would dance. They would dance just as they used to when they first met. They might even dance Maude’s favourite – what was it? Yes. The Black Bottom. Dee dum dee dee. Whatever that meant.
Waldo was talking.
‘By the way, old chap, what about your new admirer? Mrs Estelle Van der Beek? My – after the game she could hardly keep her eyes off you, let alone those diamond-studded hands.’
‘Nonsense!’ Lionel reddened. ‘She was simply being polite. Sociable. Good-looking woman, though,’ he added, half to himself and half to Waldo.
Waldo laughed.
‘Now, don’t be shy. She has fallen for you hook, line and sinker, Lionel, believe you me. I saw it for myself. You have quite won the heart of one of South Africa’s richest widows. Just you wait and see – she will be driving down to Bexham to take tea with you at any moment, I predict it.’
‘I hardly think so,’ Lionel retorted. ‘Most particularly not when she finds out that I have a daughter and grandson living at home with me. Enough to put off any rich widow for life, I should imagine.’
Of course he had indeed found himself flattered by the close attention Mrs Van der Beek had paid him over the buffet supper after the titanic card game, but pleased as he was by the compliments she had paid him about his card play in front of the most distinguished members of their enthralled audience, Lionel considered her flirtation to be a will-o’-the-wisp. To his mind Mrs Van der Beek was simply going through the social motions, something at which she was undoubtedly expert coming from a background such as hers. And Lionel was too much of a realist not to know that by the next morning the memory of Lionel Eastcott would be consigned to oblivion as Mrs Van der Beek returned to her personal circle. Nevertheless, Lionel was flattered, and excited. He was, after all, still a man.
‘Penny for them,’ Waldo said, as the taxi drew up outside their destination. ‘Or might I guess?’
‘It really is none of your business,’ Lionel replied, preparing to alight. ‘You may read my thoughts at the bridge table as much as you like – but what goes on in my head at all other times is strictly out of bounds.’
Again Waldo laughed, and leaned forward to pay off the cabbie.
At Waldo’s suggestion they returned home to Bexham a little later in the day than Lionel would have wished, eventually driven there at great speed by Waldo in his magnificent Jaguar.
In contrast to his high spirits of the night before, Lionel found his companion for once oddly silent, and wondered whether this might be due to the telephone call he knew Waldo had received earlier that day. He didn’t wish to pry since he felt he didn’t know his friend quite well enough to enquire after what Lionel always called private grief, so he puffed away at his new pipe and watched the last of the summer landscape flash by his window in a blur of soft early autumn pastels.
Finally, as they motored across the Downs just to the north of Churchester, Waldo apologised for his silence and explained to Lionel that he was a little preoccupied with personal matters, which although nothing of a serious nature had given him cause for concern. The now seemingly permanently affable Lionel assured him that, as well as understanding, after the high excitement of the previous evening he himself was only too happy to enjoy the drive in relative quiet. Waldo thanked him for his forbearance, and lapsed once more into silence, only to break it moments later with a friendly slap on Lionel’s right knee.
‘I nearly forgot, old chap,’ he said. ‘There was a call for you as well – but you were still sound out, so I took the message. Mrs Van der Beek would be very grateful if you would telephone her at the Dorchester on your arrival home the first moment you find you have free.’
He glanced round at Lionel, raised his eyebrows, and then returned his concentration to his driving, leaving Lionel to pretend to frown out of the window as if he was shocked and displeased.
Loopy paced the carpet in the drawing room, walking up and down the same line in its pattern as she waited for the doctor to finish his examination of her husband and descend with his opinion.
She had gone home the previous evening to hear that although Hugh had taken to his bed feeling unwell he hadn’t called the doctor. It was typical of him and very worrying.
‘No need to call the doctor. It’s sure to be just indigestion,’ Hugh moaned, facing the bedroom wall, and looking of a sudden, to Loopy anyway, about ten years old.
‘What nonsense. If you have pains in your chest for God’s sake, Hugh, it could be something serious!’
‘They’re not really pains as such. Not any more. Please – you know me. I’d rather not make a fuss if it weren’t necessary. So why not wait until morning?’
Loopy nearly told Hugh that if there really was something wrong with him he could be dead by the morning, but the look in her husband’s eyes prevented her. It wasn’t a look of illness or fear, but rather one of fleeting guilt.
First thing in the morning, when she’d hardly had time to get herself properly dressed, a sudden urgent call from Hugh’s bedroom summoned her back to his bedside, where she found him lying propped up on his pillows with a frown on his face and a hand on his chest. Naturally she went straight to the telephone, only to be told by Dr Farnsworth that he had many other more serious calls to make.
‘But suppose my husband’s suffering from a heart attack, doctor?’
‘If he was, believe you me you’d soon know about it, Mrs Tate.’
Eventually, after a long morning alternating between anxiety over Hugh and anxiety over her exhibition, Loopy heard Gwen letting Dr Farnsworth into the house. She finally stopped her measured pacing of the carpet when he had finished his examination of her husband.
‘Well?’ Loopy asked at once, as Dr Farnsworth ambled into the room, black Gladstone bag in one hand, his other hand searching his pocket for his packet of cigarettes.
‘That coffee still hot?’ he wondered, nodding at the pot on a tray by the window. Loopy shook her head in return and lit one of her own cigarettes. ‘Then I wouldn’t say no to a sherry. It’s been one of those mornings.’
Loopy eyed the untidy bear of a man who was now lighting an untipped cigarette with a cheap nickel lighter, and with an inward sigh poured a small glass of Dry Fly from the decanter.
‘So how is my husband?’ she asked, handing over the drink. ‘Is it his heart?’
‘Hard to say really,’ Dr Farnsworth replied, sinking into an armchair. ‘I mean I don’t think for one moment it is – but then I can’t be sure without a fuller examination.’
‘Then shouldn’t you perhaps be arranging that?’
‘If the patient shows any sign of worsening, I certainly shall, Mrs Tate. Fear not. Fear thee not.’
The doctor drank half the glass of sherry in one, and tapped his ash into the fireplace.
‘Yes, it really has been one of those mornings. Two strangulated hernias – not one but two, mind you – and a prolapsed womb. Not the ideal end to a busy week. As for this flu bug—’
‘What do you suggest we do about my husband?’ Loopy interrupted. ‘He said he thought it was just indigestion.’
‘You know, sometimes I wonder why I bothered to study medicine, Mrs Tate. I take it you know how many years it takes to become a doctor? Yet the number of patients one has who think they can diagnose what’s wrong with them.’ Doctor Farnsworth shook his head and finished his sherry. ‘It could well be indigestion – but then I would rather be the one who decided that, not the patient. I’ll look in again on Monday.’
He rose to his feet, brushed off some ash he had carelessly spilt down the front of his grubby yellow waistcoat and picked up his bag.
‘In the meantime?’ Loopy stopped him by the door. ‘What am I supposed to do in the meantime, please?’
‘What any good wife should do, I imagine, Mrs Tate,’ Dr Farnsworth replied with ill concealed irritation. ‘Keep a weather eye on him and see to his needs. And give me a call if your husband worsens. I’ll see myself out.’
‘Oh!’ Loopy cried in exasperation after the doctor had departed. ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’
To her amazement she found herself actually stamping her foot, and her amazement was entirely genuine since Loopy Tate most certainly was not a foot-stamper. But then as far as she was concerned, the man in the room immediately above her head was most certainly not suffering from any heart problems, at least not ones that could be solved by either medicine or surgery. Out of her frustration she was just about to pour herself a glass of sherry when on the floor above her she heard the banging of the stick she had left by her husband’s bed for emergency calling.
‘What is it? Darling?’ she enquired, after hurrying upstairs to find Hugh propped up against his pillows reading a newspaper which he at once put down with a sigh, just in time to assume his best sickly smile.
‘A little broth, I think, Loopy dear,’ he said weakly. ‘A little thin chicken broth with some pearl barley in it, and some toast, would be very welcome. Oh – and a lightly boiled egg perhaps.’
‘Did the doctor say you could eat?’
‘He said I must eat to keep up my strength.’
‘I’ll see what Gwen can rustle up.’
‘I’d rather you yourself did any rustling up that had to be done, Loopy darling. Gwen always overboils my eggs. And burns the toast.’
‘I have things to do—’
‘I’m really very sorry about this,’ Hugh said, his fingers playing at the edges of the newspaper’s pages. ‘It couldn’t have happened at a worse time; and I’m really so sorry.’
‘For yourself? Or what, Hugh? I don’t understand what you’re sorry about, really I don’t. No-one can help being ill, after all. No-one designs when they are ill, do they?’
‘I’m sorry about your exhibition, of course, darling.’ He looked at her with clear, strong and very bright eyes. ‘You having to miss the opening and all that, because of me. That was the last thing I would have wanted, to be ill just before your opening.’
‘I don’t remember anyone saying I was going to miss the opening, Hugh.’
‘I know,’ Hugh continued, staring sadly out of the window with a faraway look in his eyes, not having heard, ‘I know just how much this exhibition means to you.’
‘No, you don’t, Hugh. You couldn’t possibly know how much this exhibition means to me. No-one could know that. Not even I know it, yet.’
‘I think I do,’ Hugh clasped his hands together now, like a cleric. ‘And I’m just so sorry.’
‘Tell you what, let’s take it day by day, shall we, Hugh? See how you are tomorrow, and so on, yes? And if you’re feeling better Sunday night or Monday morning – always provided you are on the mend – then I’ll take myself up to town for the opening and then come right back down again. How does that sound to you?’
‘Absolutely fine. Provided I’m all right, of course. But honestly, Loopy, the way I’m feeling now – the pains keep coming and going, you know – the way I’m feeling now I doubt very much if I’m going to be much better by Monday.’
‘I sort of doubt that too, Hugh. But we’ll see, won’t we? We’ll just wait and see.’
As Loopy was overseeing Hugh’s precious egg and toast, Waldo arrived. Refusing Loopy’s offer of some refreshment, Waldo asked her to stay out of the way while he took himself upstairs to see Hugh. Loopy protested weakly that her husband really shouldn’t have visitors, but Waldo took no notice because he didn’t believe it and neither did Loopy. With a small smile she took herself off back to the kitchen while Waldo vaulted up the stairs two at a time and bounded into Hugh’s room, catching him by surprise in the middle of the act of lighting a cigarette.
‘Very bad for your ticker, old boy,’ Waldo said as he took the freshly lit Senior Service and tossed it out of the open window. ‘And what’s more, you’re very bad for mine.’
‘What the hell are you doing here, Waldo? I thought you were in Berlin.’
‘I postponed Berlin till next week, old bean.’
‘No, Waldo. You can’t just postpone things like the Berlin trip to suit you.’
‘I just have, old man. And I will continue to do so if and when I feel like it. I’m not working for you, you know – I’m working with you, remember? And there’s nothing that can’t wait for a day or two in Berlin.’
‘As I just said, no can do.’
‘Yes can do, and you’re a rogue, Hugh, and a spoilsport. Besides being a spoilt brat.’
‘You can’t just burst into my bedroom and talk to me like that!’ Hugh protested.
‘Really?’ Waldo smiled. ‘Didn’t you see me just do it? Want me to do it all over again?’
‘I am not very well, Waldo. I have had these pains in my chest—’
‘Sure you have – and I’m growing a tail. Now I have orders for you—’
‘I do not take orders from you, Waldo. Don’t be absurd.’
‘In this instance you’re going to. I don’t expect you to get better this instant – but in about five minutes, that will be fine. OK?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Hugh protested. ‘I can’t just get better when I feel like it.’
‘There’s to be a distinct improvement by tonight, so much so that by tomorrow morning you’re going to be amazed how well you are,’ Waldo continued. ‘And by evening – why, you are going to be just as right as rain.’
‘You’ve taken leave of your senses.’
‘No, no, you’re the one who’s done that – because if you don’t do what I say, I am going to spill the famous beans.’
‘I do not have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’
‘I’m going to tell your wife all about you and Miss Meggie Gore-Stewart.’
Hugh stared at him intently, his hands gripping the top of his crisp linen bed sheet.
‘There is nothing to tell about Meggie and me, and you damn well know it.’
‘Is there something wrong with you? Are you ill, well, or faking it? While we’re playing truth dare and promise—’
‘There is nothing whatsoever between Meggie and me and you know it, Waldo.’
‘Who’s your wife going to believe, Hugh? You or me? At the moment I am considerably more in her favour than you are, old bean.’
‘There is nothing whatsoever between Meggie— and do stop saying old bean.’
‘You keep saying there’s nothing between you and Meggie – and as I keep asking, who is going to believe you? Old boy? If you don’t pull yourself together, old sport, and allow your beautiful wife to enjoy one of the most exciting things that has happened to her, not only shall I refuse to go to Germany on behalf of your government and do what only I can do there – I’ll tell you what else I’m going to do.’
‘I’m all ears, Astley,’ Hugh said tightly. ‘But I can tell you this in advance – no deal.’
‘You’ll change your mind when you’ve listened to this,’ Waldo assured him. ‘If you don’t play ball – well, since you are too ill to move from your bed, and since you demand absolute first rate nursing care and attention during the next few days while they find out what exactly is wrong with you, at my expense I shall have you transported to the very best of nursing homes on the south coast, where not only will you receive much better care and attention than you would at home, they will also run exhaustive – and possibly some rather painful – tests to establish exactly what is causing these sudden pains in your chest.’
‘You wouldn’t dare.’ Hugh stared up at him in undisguised horror.
Waldo smiled and picked up the telephone by Hugh’s bed, dialling for the operator. Having given her the required number he held the receiver to Hugh’s ear.
‘The Pines Nursing Home and Clinic,’ a voice said. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Hello,’ Waldo said, taking the phone away from Hugh and placing it to his own ear. ‘The Pines Nursing Home? This is Mr Waldo Astley speaking. I telephoned you earlier today about a friend of mine who needs nursing and examination – that’s right – Captain Hugh Tate, Shelborne, Bexham on Sea – absolutely correct. I just want to make sure you still have a bed for him? Good. Thank you so much – I shall call you back in about an hour to confirm or cancel. Good day to you.’
Waldo smiled at Hugh who glowered back at him. ‘Feeling better yet?’
‘I feel worse by the minute,’ Hugh growled.
‘Excellent. And conscience doth make cowards of us all. Thanks to you I now have to make the return trip to London in order that the show will go on – which I assure you it most certainly will, Captain Tate. And so I bid you good day – and get well soon. Real soon.’
Hugh’s recovery was purely remarkable. That evening he was well enough to take a double whisky and a good helping of fish pie followed by rhubarb and custard, and the following day he was well enough to be up and dressed and down for a roast lunch. Having left him in the tender care of Judy while she went back up to London to put the finishing touches to the hanging of her pictures and give interviews to two less than half interested art critics, Loopy returned to Bexham in time to witness her husband’s return to full and glorious health.
‘I wonder what it might have been,’ she mused over lunch.
‘What I first thought, I imagine,’ Hugh replied. ‘A bad attack of indigestion.’
‘Oh, of course!’ Loopy said. ‘Acid indigestion. Of course!’