The Paper Men (23 page)

“He’s not wealthy, Gabriel. He’s a poor white like the rest of us.”

“This man thinks he’s poor, Rick. He’s kept himself, to say nothing of his chums, for a third of a century in booze and travel if nothing else. He’s only got to tell them there’s something for sale and the presses roll, banks gape, reviewers sharpen their pencils—”

“Knives. For God’s sake, leave me alone. This is a business visit. Rick and I have things to discuss after dinner.”

“Well, dear, you can’t discuss business in the Random because it’s against the house rules, as well you know. Seduction is on, drag, drugs, my dears, bottomry, barratry, the occasional gang bang—”

“Don’t be an oaf, Johnny.”

“—besides, ‘after dinner’ is hours away. Personally I’ve never known a time when drink didn’t expedite business—if, that is, it’s really business and not some euphemistical employment—oh of course, it should be the business that’s euphem—”

“Johnny, you’re high. Let’s dispose of these bottles at once. It’s very, very kind of you, Wilf.”

I felt tired and said so but it had no effect on them. Rick, I noted, began to do what I had never seen him do before. He was drinking, not as heavily as Gabriel but feverishly. At last we wandered up to dinner, Rick now talking a bit wildly. His speech had reverted to toneless Middle-West or wherever it came from originally. They all three got higher and higher. Some of the talk was good, particularly Gabriel’s. I was dull. It was odd to find myself the only sober one of the four! The turning point came when I explained to Rick that if he got any drunker he wouldn’t understand what I had to say to him. Well, Rick, with a touch of the whimpers rather than belligerence, gave us all to understand that he wasn’t interested in explanations. He just wanted the agreement. I said, to break things gently and as it were lead him towards the truth before revealing it, that the agreement had never been more than a gentleman’s agreement which made Johnny laugh and laugh. I got a bit angry. Gabriel, with his capacity for stirring things up suggested that he and Johnny should be witnesses to the signing. Before I had gathered my wits together, Rick was explaining the whole thing to them, Mary Lou and all.

So I had to break in brutally.

“There isn’t going to be an agreement.”

Rick’s mouth opened and shut without anything coming out of it but a dribble of the wine he had been drinking.

“I’m sorry, Rick, but that’s how it is.”

“You kay-ant—” He took a gulp of wine, shook himself and reverted to the mid-Atlantic ridge. “You can’t not. You, you promised me there in Weisswald after I’d. Not even you. You can’t.’

“Listen, Rick, old friend—”

“I say you can’t. You don’t know what it means. I put down every chip I got. You don’t mean it, sir, Wilf. I can take a joke—”

“I’m not joking.”

“I warn you, Wilf Barclay. I’ll write it whether— Look, sir. It means sheer beggary. I gave up everything. Mr St John John, Mr Clayton, you’re witnesses—”

“Tell us more, Rick, after all we’re his old chums.”

“I gave up my career like I said. I saved his neck—”

“You did not!”

“I did so! There, in the fog—”

“You threw your wife at me, you followed and spied on me. Don’t make me too angry.”

“You angry? God Almighty. You know what he made me do, sir, gentlemen? I never followed you—or if I did, why not? It’s a free country and you had your fun, jumping into a cab that time, a taxi, and being on the other Rhine boat and to cap it all, jeering at me in Marrakesh. If you go on like this—I’d meant to respect your wishes—”

“Will you listen?”

“I warn you. I’m not helpless!”

“Oh for God’s sake!”

“I’ll use the material Mrs Barclay gave me. And Miss Barclay!’

“What material?”

“They told me things.”

“Oh my dears! A positive dénouement!”

“Listen carefully, Rick. You’re a bit drunk and perhaps—anyway, listen. You’re not going to write that particular biography. I’m going to write it myself—”

Rick gave a kind of howl. I’ve never heard anything like it. Perhaps it’s how a wolf howls or a coyote or something strange and wild. Things got very confused after that. I mean he also kneeled down or rather flung himself down on his knees.

He also bit my ankle. For a turbulent moment or two I thought that I was about to experience that massive male strength again but then he was more or less in my lap and his hands went to my head. He got them on my right ear and left cheek and I think he was trying for my eyes with any fingers and thumbs he had to spare. Johnny tried to come between us and Gabriel, trying—I deduce—to pull the table away because of all the glass, got involved with two men from another table who rashly intervened. From what I’ve gathered since a wave of hysteria swept over the roomful of diners and those sober-suited professional men for the most part joined in. Tables went over, there were tears, people fell about, menus, wine lists, bills, order books, bits of manuscript flew up into the air and seemed to float like snow. People were cut by glass but in general we didn’t get much hurt. Even when we try, we chaps aren’t very good at that sort of thing. Like Mary Lou, if in no other way, we aren’t physical. I dare say there was some scratching and the odd bite, but little more. I lost a little of my beard and one ear was glowing, that was all. I didn’t even see what had happened to my “guest”. I slept very well.

When I got downstairs next morning the club secretary was standing in the hall. He was looking severe as I suppose was natural. He marked me off on the list he had ready in his hand.

“Mr Barclay, I must ask for your account of what happened last night in the dining-room.”

“I can’t be bothered. Sorry.”

“I have to report to the committee.”

“If they want me to resign, tell them I’ll go quietly.”

“I simply don’t know yet how much it’ll cost to repair our Psyche.”

“Very aptly put, colonel, oh very apt.”

The colonel’s frown deepened.

“Are you admitting responsibility? If so—”

“Oh what the hell. In a way I suppose. Yes.”

I went into the coffee room which was empty except for a waitress and Mrs Stoney who was sitting at the receipt of custom and looking like her name. I had nothing but coffee. When I went to pay the bill, Mrs Stoney swelled a bit.

“Well, Mrs Stoney, what did you think of it?”

“It’s not my place to comment, sir.”

“Oh come. We shan’t see each other again for I dare say they’ll sling me out. Come now, sound off, Mrs Stoney, what did you think of it?”

“Your change, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Boys will be boys, Mrs Stoney. Goodbye.”

So away I went. I had, I thought, a new shadow behind me, another bit of past to avoid. For even I, with all my quiet happiness, felt a bit humiliated by the ineffectual pothouse brawl. In books they make far too much of what can be read in a face—exaggerate wildly. But I did not care to remember Mrs Stoney. There are some expressions that can be read like large print, most prominent among them, contempt and dislike.

I wondered if I could bear to go home but the road unwound just as if things were normal. That was ironical as I soon found. I had been thinking of the roughing up poor Liz had given me. After all, in law she had no claim and Emmy was long past her twenty-firster. What really took me “home” was this MS you’re reading, the job I had to do, to make some use, it might be, of the mass of boxed-up papers before I finished with them. Even so I braced myself for it.

And then Emmy met me at the door, red-eyed.

“She’s gone.”

“Who?”

“Mummy.”

“Gone where?”

“You—you—she’s bloody dead, that’s where.”

“When?”

“Just now. This morning. Just your luck. You’d skipped.”

Large tears trickled into the drawn-down corners of her mouth.

“It’s been years and years, Emily.”

“Oh God.”

I suppose a father would have put an arm round her, better still offered her a shoulder to wet. But I wasn’t a father, only a stranger who was repelled by what fell from her eyes and nose. She was trying to say something but got little of it out.

“I—I—can’t—”

Her mouth opened and nature performed a yelling cry there before me in the human face and body. Then I did hold out a hand but she didn’t see it or didn’t want it. She turned and stumbled away, a plain, heavy young woman and she went down to the river where she used to go and hide as a child when the world was too much for her. I went into the hall, put down my single bag and climbed the stairs.

“Our” bedroom door was opened and the window. The curtains moved a little and a faint sweetness came from the bowl of primroses and seemed a token of universal indifference. Blessed be indifference! Henry moved out of a corner, his cheerfulness if anything less subdued than usual, less subdued than his voice, however, which was little more than a whisper.

“She had no pain. The liver, you see.”

Lucky, lucky Elizabeth! Of numberless exits to have been awarded that one!

All the appropriate things had been done. The nurse or Henry or both had worked fast and well. Her watch and her mother’s ring lay on the occasional table by the bed. She was monumental under the white sheet. Henry moved forward towards the bed. He turned and invited me silently. Thus enslaved by what was evidently one of the rituals of death I moved forward and stood beside him. He drew the sheet down to her breast and held it there.

Elizabeth looked quite astonishingly and unnervingly like herself. Someone had wiped off the scarlet slash of lipstick and her unadorned face was minatory. I found myself wondering why I had braced myself for changes. It was nothing, the fall of a leaf.

Her eyes snapped open and they stared up at me. The whole world swam round me for a moment and was covered in mist.

Henry was tut-tutting. He was bending over her and doing something, a trick of the trade. He drew the sheet up again.

I found my voice.

“Pennies. Drachmas. Obols.”

Henry put his hand under my elbow and turned me. We marched away together and downstairs. I went to the appropriate cupboard and got not wine for us but whisky. I offered some to Henry without thinking, but he smiled and shook his head. I took a pull at the whisky which went the wrong way. What with shock and coughing I was nearly sick. Henry patted my back. The resources of science.

Presently I straightened up and he beamed at me.

“Better?”

I examined myself. There wasn’t any question of being “better”.

“I suppose so. Yes.”

Henry smiled delightedly.

“I’ll take care of everything, er, Wilf.”

“Yes. I suppose so. Thank you, Henry.”

“Well. I’ll be going, then.”

Still beaming he withdrew.

I went into the garden and pushed through the bushes. Emmy was sitting on the stone seat and peering into the woods across the river. I stood behind her.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“I don’t know. You’ve left it a bit late, haven’t you? No. I don’t think so.”

“People will have to be told. Relatives.”

“And the vicar. She was C. of E. every now and then.”

“Is he the young chap in jeans, a sweater with a hole in it and an eighth of an inch of clerical collar?”

“That’s him, Douglas. He’s all right. Last week she was sounding off about me in front of some people. Later he murmured to me, ‘Suffering doesn’t always improve people.’ Down to earth.”

“Is there anything, I mean, that I can do for you?”

“As you said just now. It’s been a long time.”

“For me too. So. If it’s any comfort there’s rather a lot of money coming your way. From her first, then me.”

As Rick once said, we laughed a lot, Liz and I. Now he could have included Emmy.

Everything went off OK. A crowd of relatives turned up to the funeral but tended to group round Emmy and leave me alone. It wasn’t shyness either. Rick came to the service which Emmy insisted on having and to the cremation afterwards. He sat at the back, crying noisily, and rushed away before the ceremony was over. Later, in the house, I was left alone even more pointedly as people scrummed politely for the smoked salmon and Moselle. Only once a man broke free, one of her relatives I suppose, though I don’t know. He may have been a chum of Capstone Bowers sent to depute for he had army written all over him, large, stout, red-faced. I was ready for conversation or even the offer of a drink but he glared down at me for a few seconds, opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish. Then he changed his mind and went back into the mob. I thought of my Italian connection and the come-uppance she gave me. This was an English Home Counties come-uppance. It went far towards confirming me in my rediscovered belief that there are better places.

“Home thoughts from abroad, forsooth!” It made me feel angry.

The young man, Douglas, emerged from the mob hastily as if to pour oil and repair some social damage. He had a black silk front and rather more clerical collar showing than usual. He came to me with the sort of ducking earnestness which reminded me of Rick Tucker in the days when he was really diffident. I was still angry.

“Ah—Douglas, isn’t it?—how’s the Church these days?”

“Struggling, Mr Barclay. In need of help.”

“Money, of course.”

He shook his head with decision.

“No. Or not—primarily.”

“If it’s spiritual assistance you need, you’ve come to the right person.”

“Really?”

“You will find this difficult to believe but I suffer with the stigmata. Yes. Four of the five wounds of Christ. Four down and one to go. No. You can’t see the wounds, unlike with poor old Padre Pio. But I assure you my hands and feet hurt like hell—or should I say heaven?”

“I don’t think—”

“You don’t think people like me should claim such distinctions?”

He was looking round in a worried manner as if, I thought, to find a really good shrink to recommend. Perhaps he would give me the name and address of his own.

“Come, vicar. Don’t you find it remarkable?”

“You are serious?”