I’d let her know just enough; that business was good, that I’d lived in London before coming back up north, that I’d been brought up in a small town on the other side of the river and gone to Art School here, that I wasn’t short of a few bob, and that I was happily married. And I’d done right to tell her judging by the flicker on her face and the friendly relaxing after I’d mentioned it; another little girl with a conquest complex excited by the prospect of scoring by seducing a married man. And by laying it on about my house and the things I had in it, it made the contemplation of her victory even sweeter. After all, I had so much to lose.
And, of course, she’d thought she’d known what was on from the start. Her reasoning must have gone like this—he finds me attractive enough to photograph for his catalogue, so if he finds me attractive he must want to make a pass at me and if he makes a pass at me he must want to carry on with me but he might pretend he doesn’t because he’s married so I’ll do my best to make it easy for him or difficult whichever way you care to look at it.
Which was exactly the way I wanted her to behave. Let her think she was steering things along her way. So that she’d behave with the kind of confidence she’d got tonight, feeling sure that she knew the way things were going to go. So that when they didn’t she’d be confused. And her confusion would lead her where I wanted her led.
I walked over to the booth and put the drinks down on the table. I spilt a little of her tonic as I set the bottle down.
“I always like a drink before I work,” I said, sitting down. “It relaxes me. Makes the ideas flow easier.”
I poured the tonic into the gin and rattled the bottle on the edge of her glass.
“Looks as though you need it,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?” I said.
“Relaxing,” she said. “You seem all tensed up.”
PLENDER
I plugged in the percolator and walked over to the filing system and took out the file that contained the latest correspondence to the magazine. I’d had a busy week. I hadn’t had time to sort through the letters. It’d give me something to do until Gurney got back.
It didn’t take long to discard the male and female pro stuff, or the stuff from the nutters. Just as long as it took for the percolator to boil. I got up and switched it off and poured myself a cup and sat down again and began to sift the mail for answers to the ads. I’d put in myself. There’d been two of them: ATTRACTIVE YORKSHIRE MISS (20) WOULD LIKE TO HEAR FROM MATURE MALE DISCIPLINARIAN FOR THE FUN OF IT: ALL GEAR NEEDED FOR BIZARRE FUN. MY PLACE OR YOURS. GENUINE FIRST AD. NON-PROFESSIONAL. NO REMUNERATION REQUIRED; DISCIPLINE HAS ITS OWN REWARD.
The other one was: GOOD LOOKING BLOND YOUNG MAN (23) NEEDS OLDER GENTLEMAN TO DISCIPLINE HIM. CORRECTION WILL BE NEEDED AS I AM COMPLETELY INEXPERIENCED. MY SUBMISSIVE NATURE, SHYNESS, ETC., CAN BE YOURS FOR CORRECTING. YORKS. ANON.
There were twenty-four replies for the first ad and seven for the second. Of these, six were from Leeds, six from Doncaster, three from Halifax, two from Barnsley, two from Scunthorpe, two from Grimsby, one from Scarborough, and one from Harrogate. The remainder were from towns or small villages, mainly places I’d never heard of. I made a list of the names and addresses which they’d so trustingly supplied and put them in my secretary’s in-tray for her to begin on when she came in on Monday.
Her job was to find out who they were by checking electoral roles, credit files, company lists, business directories, street directories, etc. All she thought she was doing was finding out their credit-worthiness for H.P. companies. Well, in a sense, she was. Except that the H.P. company was me. When she’d told me what I wanted to know, the few names that remained from the original list would go on file and a few days later these select correspondents would receive replies to their letters suggesting dates and times and places. Then I would sit back and wait for the braver of the remaining correspondents to commit themselves to action.
After I’d made out the list of names I went through the remaining unsolicited letters, the ones I hadn’t slung out, the ones containing drafts of ads to be placed in the magazine. There was one that might bear checking out: WEALTHY EDUCATED EXECUTIVE, 50, UNDERSTANDING, EASY MANNER, SENSE OF HUMOUR, SEEKS INVITATION TO VIEW ENTHUSIASTIC AMATEUR FRIENDLY COUPLE/S. HIS VISIT WOULD COMBINE DISCRETION WITH CHAMPAGNE AND COULD MEAN USEFUL WEEKLY INCOME. PHOTO WITH DETAILS APPRECIATED. DISTANCE UP TO TWO HUNDRED MILES ROTHERHAM. (YORKS).
I read it again. Sounded as though it might be right up Andrea’s street. Her and Les would be ideal to follow that one up. I filed the letter and got up and walked over to the window again. The rain was still belting down but the sparse lights across the river were still visible. I turned my head slightly and looked farther down the river, farther inland my eyes searching the blackness for the small collection of lights that mapped out my home town. They were so far away and so faint that at first I couldn’t see them: it was always the same when the weather was bad. Then I saw them and I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t been able to see them before. I wondered what was going on over there right at this minute, what it was like right now. I hadn’t been back in ten years. I hadn’t wanted to. But just occasionally I wondered. Sometimes I thought I’d like to go back there and splash the cash and let them all see how well I’d done, give them something to chew on, something that they wouldn’t like swallowing, the fact that Brian Plender, against all prediction, had made it.
I saw the reflection of the light on my desk wink on in the black window before me so I stopped thinking about all that and went back to my desk and pressed the button. Eventually the green light above the door came on and I pressed the other button and Gurney came into the room.
“Well, that’s that,” he said.
“What happened?”
“Nothing. I dropped her off and that was it.”
“Did you see her into the house?”
“I saw her to the door. Nice place Gorton has.”
“Ought to be. The money came from his percentage for the Rotham by-pass contract. Did you see Gorton?”
“Briefly. He fluttered about a bit at the door. He couldn’t wait to get inside.”
I lit a cigarette.
“Anyway,” I said, “I know you’ve had a busy week, but I’m afraid there’s something come up.”
“What?”
“Camille has a client. I want you to supervise the cine and the rest of the gear.”
Gurney’s face twitched a little bit, which was his way of throwing a tantrum.
“Oh, I mean to say, sir—” he began, but I didn’t let him get any farther.
“I’d do it myself only Mr. Froy wants me to do something special for him. And Froy is keen to get the goodies on Camille’s Playmate of the Month. He doesn’t want any slip-ups.”
That shut him up. Gurney was Froy’s man. He was the only person who worked for me who knew about Froy and the Movement. Apart from the muscle and the informers and the queers and the brasses and the con men, the other politically motivated gentlemen who worked for me were from such scramble-headed groups as the N.F. or the Union with Europe mob. The two things my little helpers had in common was their dedication to the job and the fact that they all had records. They knew I had political links with something they could only guess at and that was good enough for them. They were well pleased to find themselves so gainfully employed. But Gurney was different. Gurney had been Froy’s man from way back. He’d been a condition of my employment. Not that I didn’t want him: I did. But he hated my guts. He felt he should be sitting where I was. But Froy hadn’t thought him good enough. So he had to put up with the ride I gave him. The only satisfaction he got was his reporting back to Froy, letting Froy know what I was up to, because that was a part of his duties, too. But so far he’d had nothing of any consequence to report. He knew nothing of my extra-curricular activities; he knew nothing of my file on Froy. So he was just waiting his time out, waiting for me to slip. But he’d have a long wait. I’d no intentions of getting my feet wet.
“So there you are, Gurney, old boy,” I said. “Looks like another working weekend.”
Gurney smiled one of his smiles.
“Looks like it, Mr. Plender,” he said.
KNOTT
I looked at my watch.
“Here, look at the time,” I said. “It’s twenty to eight.”
Eileen knocked back the dregs of her fourth gin and bitter lemon.
“Time flies when you’re enjoying yourself,” she said, giving me the knowing look she’d given me at least fifty times in the last hour. “Still, we’ve got plenty of time. The night’s young.”
“Well, we’d better get a move on. It’ll take an hour or two to get through.”
I got up and gave Eileen a hand and she levered herself out of her seat.
“I hope I can stand up straight,” she said. “I’d hate to make a muck of your pictures.”
PLENDER
I hated Peggy’s Bar. It made my skin crawl. All that perfume and shrieking and prancing about. But I’d thought I’d better wander over just to check on Camille. Make sure he turned up. It would’ve been typical of him not to—he even behaved like a woman in that department, too.
I walked into the bar. Thank God. It was almost deserted. The rain must have kept most of them in.
I sat down on a stool at the bar.
“Good
evening
, Mr. Plender,” Peggy said. “To what do we owe this rare pleasure?”
Peggy was the exception to the rule. Peggy I could stand. I don’t know, but he was the only one that didn’t make me feel creepy. Perhaps because he was getting on a bit and he was a bit cynical about the whole scene.
“Thirst,” I said.
Peggy smiled.
“I was afraid so,” he said. He poured me a vodka with ice and a twist of lemon. “On me.”
“Thanks,” I said. I took a sip. “Business good?”
“You must be joking. It’s wicked.”
“That bad eh?”
“Use your eyes. It’s been like this since Wednesday. Appalling.”
“I thought it was tonight. The weather, like.”
“I wish it was. I wish it was.” Peggy looked at me. “And just as a matter of interest, what brings you in here on a night like this? It must be business or else you wouldn’t be in here in the first place.”
“Well, in a way, yes.”
“In a way,” said Peggy. “Anyway I don’t want to know what it is. You keep it to yourself. The less Auntie Peggy knows about what
you
get up to the better it is for Auntie Peggy.”
“Don’t worry, Peggy,” I said. “I’d never shit in your bar.”
“I know damn well you wouldn’t,” said Peggy. “Otherwise you’d never get past that doorway.”
I smiled.
“Give me another drink,” I said. “And have one yourself.”
“Ta,” said Peggy. “I’ll have a gin and bitter lemon, if you don’t mind.”
Peggy made the drinks and I gave him the money.
“And if you don’t mind,” I said, “I’m going to sit in one of your cozy little booths.”
“Get a better view that way, do you?”
I smiled and said nothing.
“Sometimes, Mr. Plender,” said Peggy, “you really give me the fucking creeps.”
I smiled and turned and walked away from the bar. Peggy knew I used the place from time to time to put the drop on clients but he didn’t care so long as none of his regulars were involved or one of the clients brought the law back with him. Well, there was no danger of that. Not with the people I arranged to visit Peggy’s with.
I sat down in one of the booths and looked round the bar. It was a depressing place at the best of times, all faded plush and lime green paintwork, but it was worse when it was deserted because you could see all of the décor, all of the lime, in spite of the almost non-existent lighting.
There were only four other people in the bar; an early evening creeper in clerical grey with his fawn trilby set at its weekend angle; a blank looking Greek sailor obviously in port for the first time; and in the booth opposite the one I was in a man and a girl drinking themselves into an early bed. It wasn’t an uncommon sight in Peggy’s, that. Some blokes thought it turned a bird on, bringing them in to mingle with the gingers. Maybe it did. Maybe underneath all the giggling and the staring the birds cottoned on to the fact that maybe their blokes weren’t so straight after all to want to bring them to Peggy’s; maybe the reasons went deeper. And maybe some sick bitches liked that. It wouldn’t have surprised me.
I watched the couple for a while. The bird was very young, and she was well away. Not reeling or glazed or anything like that, just giggly in the knowledge that she was all set for the evening’s later coming events. The bloke was sitting with his back to me but even from that angle he was so obviously putting on the Mr. Sincere bit it was painful. There was no need. He’d been home and dry yards back. All I could think, though, was how hard up he must be. Christ, she couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen. What was the point? He may as well have stayed in bed and had a J. Arthur. Because she wouldn’t be worth much more, that was certain. And from what I could see of him it wasn’t that he was a bad looking bloke. He had the gear and the hair. He could have done all right for himself a bit farther up the market. Maybe he was kinky for kids. But he seemed too young to fancy the young stuff. Anyway what was certain was that he was ready for the all off. He’d been drunk up and shuffling ever since I’d come in. Couldn’t wait to get down to it. But she was stretching it out a bit. The cat with the mouse. Playing the sophisticated flirt, or thought she was. She’d decided he was going to get it but she wanted to keep him guessing. It was pathetic, it really was. I went back to my drinking before I threw up.
I made motions to Peggy. He brought me another large one and I took my time with the first mouthful. I made it last long enough for it to make my eyes water and my chest burn. I didn’t drink a lot but I drank regularly so I made sure that what I drank was clean and relatively harmless. That’s why I stuck to vodka: no hangovers to stop me wanting to get out of bed and do my daily workout. And that was something I never missed. Christ, at school the only athletics I’d ever concentrated on was keeping one step in front of the teachers. I’d thought physical fitness was for thick idiots. But it was like a lot of attitudes you had at school; they were the other way round once you’d left. Like in this case. I’d started doing judo classes when I was seventeen. And funnily enough the classes had been in the gym at my old school, the same place I’d skived off everything that had been shoved at me for the previous five years. And nowadays it wasn’t just judo, thanks to the Palestine police, it was armed hand-to-hand combat as well, plus the daily workouts, twice a day, in the evenings and in the mornings. The difference being of course, that nowadays, there was a reason for everything. A purpose. A purpose that had come with the respect for myself that I’d discovered, the discovery of the
importance
of respect for self, the power it engendered through the discipline of self. Since I’d discovered I’d become someone new. Whole. Everything worked, instead of just bits of me. And because I functioned properly, my success was effortless, like my body. I couldn’t fail because my mind and my body were tuned to succeed. It was simple. Literally, the healthy mind in the healthy body. The disciplined mind in the disciplined body. I smiled. If the P.T. master could see me now.