Authors: Jim Powell
Upstairs, there were two bedrooms, one with a single bed, barely more than a box room. The bathroom was tiny too, with signs of damp and cheap toiletries crammed everywhere. A lived-in bathroom,
one could say. Anna’s bedroom revealed nothing. It was neat and sparse and uninformative. There were no photographs, and none elsewhere in the cottage. This was disappointing, also
surprising. Surely everyone has at least one photograph on display. I suppose I couldn’t quite say that this was the house of someone who wished to erase her past. Not quite. Books do tell a
story. There were a few paintings. This was the home of someone educated, someone frugal and with good taste, but not someone keen to be reminded of her past, or to delve too deeply into it.
I looked at her note once more. ‘If you’re still around tomorrow.’ That seemed an encouraging remark. It sounded as though Anna might actually want to see me. It also made her
excuse for today more credible. She thought I had come down for a meeting in Dorset on Friday. As she had suggested when we met in London, Somerset is next door to Dorset, but where she lived was
almost in Devon, miles from where I would have been, had I been there at all. The fact that I had come to see her nevertheless was proof of serious intent. If I hung around another day, would it
look like desperation?
After the shock of losing Anna in 1967, I had set up a royal commission in my head. It soberly assessed the circumstances of that event. It took evidence from assorted parts of my body, my heart
and my memory, my gut and my cock, and produced, many months later, a twelve-volume report for me to ignore. One of the conclusions was that I had been too keen, too unsubtle. Was I now about to
make the same mistake? Should I play a waiting game?
Waiting for what? That was the question. I might be playing a waiting game until I died, without ever knowing if what I was waiting for was even a possibility. Sometimes it is better to act, to
strike out for what one wants, to achieve it or to move on. No one has yet resolved the argument between the soldier and the philosopher. Yet at every turn in life a choice has to be made between
them. A British Prime Minister, Balfour I think, wrote an essay called ‘In Defence of Philosophic Doubt’. I tried to imagine Thatcher reading it. No one thought Balfour was a great
Prime Minister. No one hated him either.
I felt unable to make a decision, so I decided not to make one. I decided not to write a reply to Anna’s note. I decided to sleep on it and hope that things would seem clearer in the
morning.
At the back of my mind was the thought that if Anna could play hard to get, in fact bloody impossible to get, all those years ago, so could I. If I pinned the note back on her door, exactly as
it had been, using the same hole for the drawing pin, Anna would have no idea whether I had been to the cottage, no idea whether I had read her note, no idea whether I would be coming back the next
day. If she did want to see me, that pang of uncertainty would surely strengthen the feeling. If she didn’t, my pursuit of her was a waste of time whatever I did.
So that was my decision. And I would have the evening ahead, and the night and whatever subconscious inspiration it might bring, to decide whether to return the next day, or to go home and hope
to make her want me all the more. And if I still couldn’t decide, I would take a coin from my pocket and toss for it.
It was about six in the evening when I left the cottage. I needed to find somewhere to stay. I could have returned to the previous night’s establishment, but I didn’t want to. It
felt too poncey, not earthy enough for where I was now. I meandered round the lanes and villages, came to a place called Churchinford and booked into the York Inn. I showered and changed and went
down to the bar.
When the new puritanism has extinguished almost all our pubs, when the last landlord has pulled his last allegedly unhygienic pint, the York Inn in Churchinford will surely be one of the few
left standing. Alcohol will have been proscribed as injurious to the public health and the place will be serving betel or coca leaves or ganja, tolerated because they belong to cultures not our
own. It will still serve cider, from under the counter, the landlord swearing to the magistrates that it had arrived as apple juice and fermented by accident. It will serve a ploughman’s
lunch, and visitors from London and other foreign countries will ask what a ploughman was.
It irritates me when I start thinking like this, and for the most part I don’t. Or haven’t. Perhaps I do now. I have no desire to become one of those ageing men who grumble about the
world and claim that everything used to be better. For the most part, everything was not better; lots of things were worse. From the position of things being worse, we wanted to make them better in
a particular way. I’m not sure that I should complain if some of them have now got better in a different way. I’m not sure what I do think any more. I’m not sure if my thoughts
even make sense any more.
I looked around the pub and saw a species of Englishman I had forgotten still existed: rough, natural, uncomplicated. I didn’t see people like that in Barnet, let alone in the City. Judy
and I didn’t go to places like this at weekends, or at any other time. When we went abroad, we went to France. I would sit in bars in small French villages having much the same thoughts as I
was having now, forgetful of the fact that I could also have them in my own country. Manufacturing has been outsourced to China, culture to Italy, efficiency to Germany, optimism to America. Now
nostalgia has been outsourced to France. There must be something we’ve kept for ourselves. In the EU’s brave new world of the day after tomorrow, I expect everyone will be born in
Greece, grow up in France, have sex in Italy, work in Germany, holiday in Spain and retire to England. We will die in Belgium, as before.
At the next table, five young men were playing a game with coins. It wasn’t a game I knew: one traditional in the West Country, perhaps. Their forebears had probably played the same game
with groats. I watched them and tried to work out the rules.
After several rounds, I reckoned I’d cracked it. Each player concealed a number of coins in his right hand, anything from zero to three, and then put his closed fist over the table. When
all five fists were extended, each player in turn guessed the total number of coins concealed, something between zero and fifteen. Then the hands were opened, and if any player had guessed the
correct total, he was the winner.
I considered the available strategies. The maximum number of coins was fifteen, so the safe bet was to call eight, the median. But each player knew the number of coins in his own hand and,
unless he had three, he would know that the maximum was less, and therefore the median also. If the first player to call had one coin, he would know that the maximum was thirteen, the median seven.
But if he called seven, the other four players might surmise he had only one coin and adjust their own guesses accordingly, and more accurately. So the first player could call eight or nine, to
bluff the others into thinking he had more than one coin, to encourage the others into bidding higher still. Or he could call seven, or lower, and leave the others to guess whether he was bluffing
or not. It was a deliciously subtle game.
I assumed that the last player to call would have an advantage, but he didn’t. It seemed to be against the rules to call a number that had already been called. The last player needed to
choose a number as yet uncalled, which usually meant going one higher or one lower than the range in play, unless there was a gap in the range. Even if he made the correct choice between the two,
it was often still too high or too low, because the correct number had already been called. So the last player did not have an advantage. Neither did any of the others. It was a game of pure skill,
or of pure chance, depending on how you looked at it.
I made notes of what calls each player made and what was later revealed to have been in their hands. One of the five men won significantly more rounds than the others and he was the only one
with a consistent strategy. If he had three coins in his hand, he always called the next available total that was higher than what the last player had called. If he had one coin, he called the next
available total that was lower. If he had two, he varied the call. If he had started the bidding, he always called eight, whatever coins he had himself.
This was a strategy reduced to two known facts: what the last player had called, and what he had in his own hand. It disregarded any calculation of bluff or double bluff. It sometimes
disregarded what seemed to be the probabilities. It had nothing to do with guesswork, other than accepting the previous player’s guesswork as a starting point.
It dawned on me that this was what I’d been doing for forty years. Insights and instincts, my arse. I had played the percentages in exactly the same way. The only difference was that I had
been allowed to call a number that had already been called. Oh yes, and I’d earned several million pounds for doing it.
The rounds didn’t take long. When a player had chalked up five victories, the others bought him a pint. The master strategist had already downed several, and two more were lined up for
him. Progressive inebriation didn’t seem to inhibit his success. He could stick to a simple strategy through any number of pints. That appealed to me too.
Do people like this have any idea of their options in life? He must have been in his mid-twenties, rough-handed, perhaps a farm labourer, I don’t know. Did he have any idea that he was
perfectly equipped for a career in the City, in some parts of the City, and could be earning millions of pounds from it? Because he could. He could do my job for a start. Yes, all right, Rupert
Loxley, fuck you. What used to be my job. Of course, it could have been luck. On another night, he might have won fewer rounds than the others. I doubted it, but this didn’t affect the point.
The City rewarded success. It was indifferent as to whether luck or skill produced it.
It had rewarded me for one or the other and, after all this time, it must have been skill, mustn’t it? And that was why I had gone on doing it, wasn’t it? Because I was good at it.
And perhaps I’d started in the first place because I’d thought I might be good at it, wanted to give it a try, much as Ten-Pint Charlie on the next table might do if I told him that the
option was open to him. I might have made that bet in the bar, but it wasn’t the reason, was it? That was my excuse. What I’d chosen to remember were those parts of the evidence that
supported the case I now made for myself.
Nothing goes in straight lines. If you’re a good farm labourer, it doesn’t mean you’ll be a good farm manager. If you’re a bad farm labourer, you can still be a
successful City bastard, just as you can if you’re a dedicated anti-capitalist. To make the transitions, you need imagination. And perhaps flexible principles, but let’s not talk about
that. Once upon a time, I must have had imagination.
And you need a horizon that stretches beyond the highest ridge of the Blackdown Hills. And you need the ability to recognize that millions of people can become adequate farm labourers or
teachers, but not many can consistently win at a game of three coins. So how can your skill be put to good use? That’s the question. This is not your relaxation after a day in the fields,
sunshine. This is your USP, your unique selling point. Instead of having pints of beer shoved into your hand, you could have wads of notes. I think I had known that. Did this poor sod know it?
Would he want it, if he did know it? What do any of us want? That’s a different matter altogether.
What did I want? What was I going to do the next day?
I’d had a few pints myself by this point, needless to say. I thought I’d let the coin-throwers make the decision for me. The trouble was that I didn’t want to have to accuse
myself of rigging the outcome. The odds needed to be even. The champion was winning about a third of the rounds that were won at all. I’d take the next nine rounds with a result, I told
myself. If Ten-Pint Charlie won three or more, I’d go back to Anna the next day. If he didn’t, I wouldn’t.
He won two.
I went to the bar for another pint. Obviously, this hadn’t been a satisfactory way of making such an important decision. Better to ignore it. Besides which, Ten-Pint Charlie was in fact
winning slightly fewer than a third of the rounds, so I had stacked the odds against Anna. And any statistician would say that nine rounds were too few to be significant. I would make it up to
twenty-seven rounds, that’s what I’d do, and if he won nine, I’d see Anna.
He won eight.
That wasn’t fair, because I’d included the original nine rounds in the twenty-seven, and I’d already decided they should be ignored. So I . . . Actually, I can’t remember
what I did. Something. At some point or other, I got the calculation right, got it to exactly 50:50. It was fair in the end. Barnet Fair, as we say in Barnet.
I sat on an old sofa covered with a throw, possibly from India. Anna brought coffee and biscuits and sat in an armchair. She was wearing another loose jumper, indigo this time,
over tan jeans. Irresistible.
‘I’m sorry about yesterday,’ she said.
‘That’s OK. Is everything all right now?’
‘Yes. For the moment.’ Further explanation was not provided. ‘Did you come here yesterday?’
‘Yes.’
‘And got my note?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. That’s all right. I was worried that you hadn’t. I suppose I thought you’d write something on the bottom of it.’
‘I didn’t know whether I’d be able to come back today. I’m sorry to take you by surprise.’
‘That’s quite all right. It couldn’t matter less. It’s just that I’d have tidied up if I’d known. I do hope yesterday wasn’t too boring for
you.’
‘Not at all. I went to Wellington and looked round the farmers’ market. Is that the one you usually go to?’
‘No. I go to Chard. Wellington’s closer, but it’s outside my bubble, what I refer to as my bubble. This immediate area. Wellington belongs to the outside world. You have to
cross the motorway to get there, and that changes everything. Chard belongs to here.’