Under the Net (12 page)

This was worse than anything. ‘Confound you,' I said, ‘why didn't you do what I told you about Little Grange? Now we're forty pounds down and we haven't even won anything on Saint Cross.'

‘That just makes it better sport,' said Sammy. ‘Believe you me, today's your lucky day. What's today? Wednesday? Well, Wed nesday's your lucky day. It's years since I've really gambled,' said Sammy, ‘I'd quite forgotten the feeling!' He was rubbing his hands with hideous zest.

‘You know, boy,' he said, ‘it does me good to meet someone like you now and then. Makes me realize the value of money!'

When the four o‘clock race at Nottingham was won by Hal Adair, cool channels of sweat ran down my back and sides. I didn't feet it was my lucky day, and even Sammy was showing signs of strain. He drank what remained of the whisky and told me that the trouble with me was that I didn't take a thing like this in the right spirit.

‘Getting cash is like taming a lion,' said Sammy. ‘Never let it see that you care.'

My head, after describing gentle circles, subsided on to the carpet, carrying the rest of my trunk with it. I turned my face under the sofa. ‘Filthy lucre! Filthy lucre!' I could hear Sammy saying, with the voice of a man cursing the woman he has ruined. When 4.30 approached, the atmosphere was electric. Sammy was on the phone before the race was even started, but I hardly listened, I was too busy wondering how I would raise the money to pay him back. I decided that if I gave him the radiogram we'd be approximately quits.

I could hear Sammy saying, ‘Come on, Andy, look sharp. I've got a friend here who's biting the furniture.'

Then I heard Sammy swearing. ‘What is it?' I asked languidly.

‘Elaine's Choice didn't run,' said Sammy, ‘and Dagenham was fourth.'

‘What about Nottingham?' I asked without interest.

‘Wait,' said Sammy, who was glued to the phone again. I began to roll gently under the sofa.

Then I heard him shout, ‘By God, we've done it! I said you had a lucky face!' I rolled out again and my torso regained the vertical.

‘Peter of Alex at nine to two!' shouted Sammy. ‘Quick, open another bottle!'

We both struggled with the bottle, broke a glass, and sat on the floor laughing like mad things and toasting each other. The room was beginning to undulate gently about me and I wasn't sure that I knew what was happening. Sammy was shouting, ‘Well done the old firm!' and ‘Can I pick them or can I pick them!' and checking his sums.

‘Look,' he said, ‘Saint Cross was at seven to two, that makes ninety pounds on Hal Adair at two to one on, that makes a hundred and thirty-five pounds on Peter of Alex at nine to two, that makes seven hundred and twenty-two pounds ten. Considering the meetings, it's decent odds. What did I tell you? Better than scribbling, what?' Sammy waved the bottle in the air.

‘Wait a moment,' I said. ‘There's the forty pounds that went down on Queen's Rook and there's the each way bet at Salisbury.'

‘Oh, forget it!' said Sammy. ‘Remember the bookie wins every day. That's why I've enjoyed this so much.'

‘No, you damn well stick to the agreement!' I shouted. What was left of my honour was at stake.

After some more shouting Sammy agreed to the deduction. ‘All right, Donaghue,' he said. ‘That makes six hundred and thirty-three pounds ten. I'll write the cheque now. The money'll go into my account.' He produced his cheque-book again.

This sobered me up. I had a curious sense of being back at the beginning, only now Sammy was offering me three times as much. I couldn't credit it, now that the excitement was over, that Sammy could really have won so much cash just by saying things into the telephone.

I told Sammy this and he laughed at me. ‘Your trouble is,' he said, ‘you're too used to sweating blood for money. But that's not the way to get it. Just lie on your back and whistle and it'll come.' Eventually we agreed that Sammy should wait to send me the cheque until he had received the account showing his winnings. That would convince me that the transaction was real. He exclaimed a lot about how decent it was of me to trust him, and I gave him Dave's address and staggered up to go. Sammy ordered me a taxi. He was so far from disputing my claim to the radiogram that I think he would have let me take away the whole flat and helped me to carry it down the stairs. We stowed the radiogram beside the taxi-driver and then took leave of each other with many exclamations of regard. ‘That was good sport!' said Sammy. ‘We must do it another day!'

The taxi took me to the Goldhawk Road, and the taxi-driver conveyed both me and the radiogram up the stairs. I burst in on Dave and Finn, laughing like a lunatic. When they asked me what was so funny I told them I was going to take a job as Sadie's bodyguard — and this when I explained it certainly seemed funny enough. I said nothing about either Hugo or Sammy. Finn and Dave received my project, the latter with sarcasm, the former with expectant interest. I think I am a constant source of entertainment to Finn. After that I went to bed and fell into a drunken sleep.

IT was about 9.15, on the appointed morning, when I reached Welbeck Street, as I had to go first to Mrs Tinckham's to collect my manuscripts. I found the door open and Sadie fretting and fuming about the hall.

‘My dear creature,' she said, ‘thank heavens you've come. When I say dawn to dusk I mean dawn to dusk. You've made me madly late. Never mind, don't look like that, come in. I see you've brought enough scribbling-paper to last a year. That's just as well. Listen, I want you, just for today and tomorrow, to stay here
all
day. Do you mind? I'll feel better if I know someone's here all the time. There's oceans to drink and the fridge is just full of salmon and raspberries and things. Don't invite your friends in though, there's an angel. If Belfounder or anybody telephones just say in a stern masculine voice that I'm out indefinitely. There's an utter darling. Now I must absolutely run.'

‘When'll you be back?' I asked, rather overwhelmed by these instructions.

‘Oh, late tonight,' said Sadie. ‘Don't wait up. Just choose yourself one of the spare rooms. The beds are all made.' Then she kissed me with considerable enthusiasm and went away.

When the door had closed and there was silence in the large sunlit flat except for distant street noises, I stretched out my arms luxuriously and set out to survey the domain. Rugs from Kazakstan and Afghanistan and the Caucasus shifted softly underfoot on the parquet flooring. Rosewood and satinwood and mahogany curved and splayed and tapered in surfaces which glowered with care and quality. Tiny jade objects squatted on white mantel-shelves. Damask curtains stirred gently in the summer breeze. Sadie had come a long way since the days of the Quentin sisters. Here and there, under china animals or French paper-weights, were neat piles of letters or press cuttings or thousand-franc notes. I prowled quietly around, whistling to myself. Several Georgian cut-glass decanters, with enamel labels round their necks, stood on a low table; and in a cupboard I found a vast number of half-empty bottles of sherry, port, vermouth, pernod, gin, whisky and brandy. In the kitchen there was a good deal of hock and claret in one of the cupboards, and the larder was filled with various
pâtés,
small sausages, and crab and jellied chicken in tins. I found about twelve kinds of biscuits, but no sign of any bread. In the fridge was salmon, raspberries, and considerable quantities of butter, milk, and cheese.

I went back to the sitting-room and poured myself out a long drink of Italian vermouth and soda water, to which I added some ice from the fridge. I took a cigarette from a little Sèvres casket that perched on gilded feet. Then I sank gently into a deep armchair and let my sense of time be stilled into a long regular undulation which seemed to pass through my body like a sigh. It was a hot day. The windows opened upon the distant intermittent murmur of London. My head was empty and my limbs were leaden with content. After a long time I reached out for some of my manuscripts and began to sort them. As I was looking at them all thought of Sadie and of the recent tumult was already far away. It diminished to a pinpoint and disappeared. I stretched out my legs, crumpling an exquisitely golden yellow and midnight blue striped Kazak rug into folds at my feet. If sleep could have come to me now it would have been one deep cascade of refreshment and peace. But I lay wakeful and soon ceased to turn over the typed and scribbled pages. I let them slide to the floor.

It was some time later again, and my eye was wandering along a low white bookshelf on the other side of the room. On top of this at intervals were Worcester and Dresden figures. I surveyed these, and my glance came lazily back along the top row of books. Then suddenly I stiffened and leapt up as if I'd been stabbed, scattered foolscap and typing-paper to the right and left. I strode to the bookcase. There, right in the centre, was a copy of The Silencer. I hadn't seen one for years. It even had its paper cover on. I looked at it with repulsion and fascination. Then I pulled it out, telling myself how foolish I was to be so moved at seeing the paltry work again; and as I held it in my hand I began to feel suddenly no longer repulsed but affectionate and protective towards it, and curious. I sat down cross-legged on the floor beside the bookshelves and opened it.

It's always a strange experience to read one's own writings again after an interval. They so rarely fail to impress. As I turned the pages of this curious journal I felt that the years which separated me from the moment of its creation had given it a strange independence. It was like meeting as an adult someone whom one knew long ago as a child. It wasn't that I liked the thing any better, but that now it somehow stood alone; and the idea crossed my mind that now at last it might be possible to make peace with it. I started to read at random.

I read this thoughtfully. I had quite forgotten that I had managed to put up even as good a show as that against Hugo. I now found Hugo's arguments very much less impressive, and there occurred to me instantly a variety of ways in which the position of Tamarus might be strengthened. When I had written the dialogue I had obviously been far too bemused by Hugo. I decided then and there that I would confiscate the book for my own use and read the whole of it with great care, and revise my views. The possibility even occurred to me of a sequel. But I shook my head over it at once. There remained the fact that Annandine was but a broken-down caricature of Hugo. Hugo would never even have used words such as ‘theory' or ‘generality'. I had not achieved more than the most shadowy expression of Hugo's point of view.