The Collected Short Stories (61 page)

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Authors: Jeffrey Archer

BOOK: The Collected Short Stories
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“Had many other members worked out what had really happened that night?”
“No, I don't think so,” said Eric. “And certainly Harry Newman hadn't. The talk afterwards was that Harry had never played a better game in his life, and what a worthy champion he was, all the more for the difficulties he laboured under.”
“Did Edward have anything to say?”
“Toughest match he'd been in since Monte Carlo, and only hoped he would be given the chance to avenge the defeat next year.”
“But he wasn't,” I said, looking up again at the board. “He never won the club championship.”
“That's right. After Roosevelt had insisted we help you guys out in England, the club didn't hold the competition
again until 1946, and by then Edward had been to war and had lost all interest in the game.”
“And Harry?”
“Oh, Harry. Harry never looked back after that; must have made a dozen deals in the club that night. Within a year he was on top again, even found himself another cute little blond.”
“What does Edward say about the result now, thirty years later?”
“Do you know, that remains a mystery to this day. I have never heard him mention the game once in all that time.”
Eric's cigar had come to the end of its working life and he stubbed the remains out in an ashless ashtray. It obviously acted as a signal to remind him that it was time to go home. He rose a little unsteadily, and I walked down with him to the front door.
“Good-bye, my boy,” he said. “Do give Edward my best wishes when you have lunch with him tomorrow. And remember not to play him at backgammon. He'd still kill you.”
The next day I arrived in the front hall a few minutes before our appointed time, not sure if Edward Shrimpton would fall into the category of early or late Americans. As the clock struck one, he walked through the door: There has to be an exception to every rule. We agreed to go straight up to lunch since he had to be back in Wall Street for a two-thirty appointment. We stepped into the packed lift, and I pressed the No. 3 button. The doors closed like a tired concertina and the slowest lift in America made its way toward the second floor.
As we entered the dining room, I was amused to see Harry Newman was already there, attacking another steak, while the little blond lady was nibbling a salad. He waved expansively at Edward Shrimpton, who returned the gesture with a friendly nod. We sat down at a table in the center of the room and studied the menu. Steak-and-kidney pie was the dish of the day, which was probably the case in half the men's clubs in the world. Edward wrote down our orders in
a neat and legible hand on the little white slip provided by the waiter.
Edward asked me about the author I was chasing and made some penetrating comments about her earlier work, to which I responded as best I could while trying to think of a plot to make him discuss the pre-war backgammon championship, which I considered would make a far better story than anything she had ever written. But he never talked about himself once during the meal, so I despaired. Finally, staring up at the plaque on the wall, I said clumsily:
“I see you were runner-up in the club backgammon championship just before the war. You must have been a fine player.”
“No, not really,” he replied. “Not many people bothered about the game in those days. There is a different attitude today with all the youngsters taking it so seriously.”
“What about the champion?” I said, pushing my luck.
“Harry Newman? He was an outstanding player, and particularly good under pressure. He's the gentleman who greeted us when we came in. That's him sitting over there in the corner with his wife.”
I looked obediently toward Mr. Newman's table but my host added nothing more so I gave up. We ordered coffee, and that would have been the end of Edward's story if Harry Newman and his wife had not headed straight for us after they had finished their lunch. Edward was on his feet long before I was, despite my twenty-year advantage. Harry Newman looked even bigger standing up, and his little blond wife looked more like the dessert than his spouse.
“Ed,” he boomed, “how are you?”
“I'm well, thank you, Harry,” Edward replied. “May I introduce my guest?”
“Nice to know you,” he said. “Rusty, I've always wanted you to meet Ed Shrimpton, because I've talked to you about him so often in the past.”
“Have you, Harry?” she squeaked.
“Of course. You remember, honey. Ed is up there on the backgammon honors board,” he said, pointing a stubby finger
toward the plaque. “With only one name in front of him, and that's mine. And Ed was the world champion at the time. Isn't that right, Ed?”
“That's right, Harry.”
“So I suppose I really should have been the world champion that year, wouldn't you say?”
“I couldn't quarrel with that conclusion,” replied Edward.
“On the big day, Rusty, when it really mattered, and the pressure was on, I beat him fair and square.”
I stood in silent disbelief as Edward Shrimpton still volunteered no disagreement.
“We must play again for old times' sake, Ed,” the fat man continued. “It would be fun to see if you could beat me now. Mind you, I'm a bit rusty nowadays, Rusty.” He laughed loudly at his own joke, but his spouse's face remained blank. I wondered how long it would be before there was a fifth Mrs. Newman.
“It's been great to see you again, Ed. Take care of yourself.”
“Thank you, Harry,” said Edward.
We both sat down again as Newman and his wife left the dining room. Our coffee was now cold so we ordered a fresh pot. The room was almost empty and when I had poured two cups for us Edward leaned over to me conspiratorially and whispered: “Now there's a hell of a story for a publisher like you,” he said. “I mean the real truth about Harry Newman.”
My ears pricked up as I anticipated his version of the story of what had actually happened on the night of that pre-war backgammon championship over thirty years before.
“Really?” I said, innocently.
“Oh, yes,” said Edward. “It was not as simple as you might think. Just before the war Harry was let down very badly by his business partner, who not only stole his money, but for good measure his wife as well. The very week that he was at his lowest he won the club backgammon championship, put all his troubles behind him and, against the odds, made a brilliant comeback. You know, he's worth a fortune today. Now, wouldn't you agree that that would make one hell of a story?”
Arthur Hapgood was demobilized on November 3, 1946. Within a month he was back at his old workplace on the shop floor of the Triumph factory on the outskirts of Coventry.
The five years spent in the Sherwood Foresters, four of them as a quartermaster seconded to a tank regiment, only underlined Arthur's likely postwar fate, despite his having hoped to find more rewarding work once the war was over. However, on returning to England he quickly discovered that in a “land fit for heroes” jobs were not that easy to come by, and although he did not want to go back to the work he had done for five years before war had been declared, that of fitting wheels on cars, he reluctantly, after four weeks on welfare, went to see his former factory manager at Triumph.
“The job's yours if you want it, Arthur,” the factory manager assured him.
“And the future?”
“The car's no longer a toy for the eccentric rich or even just a necessity for the businessman,” the factory manager replied. “In fact,” he continued, “management is preparing for the ‘two-car family.'”
“So they'll need even more wheels to be put on cars,” said Arthur forlornly.
“That's the ticket.”
Arthur signed on within the hour, and it was only a matter
of days before he was back into his old routine. After all, he often reminded his wife, it didn't take a degree in engineering to screw four knobs on to a wheel a hundred times a shift.
Arthur soon accepted the fact that he would have to settle for second best. However, second best was not what he planned for his son.
Mark had celebrated his fifth birthday before his father had even set eyes on him, but from the moment Arthur returned home he lavished everything he could on the boy.
Arthur was determined that Mark was not going to end up working on the shop floor of a car factory for the rest of his life. He put in hours of overtime to earn enough money to ensure that the boy could have extra tuition in math, general science, and English. He felt well rewarded when the boy passed his eleven-plus and won a place at King Henry VIII Grammar School, and that pride did not falter when Mark went on to pass five O-levels and two years later added two A-levels.
Arthur tried not to show his disappointment when, on Mark's eighteenth birthday, the boy informed him that he did not want to go to a university.
“What kind of career
are
you hoping to take up then, lad?” Arthur enquired.
“I've filled out an application form to join you on the shop floor just as soon as I leave school.”
“But why would you—”
“Why not? Most of my friends who're leaving this term have already been accepted by Triumph, and they can't wait to get started.”
“You must be out of your mind.”
“Come off it, Dad. The pay's good, and you've shown that there's always plenty of extra money to be picked up with overtime. And I don't mind hard work.”
“Do you think I spent all those years making sure you got a first-class education just to let you end up like me, putting wheels on cars for the rest of your life?” Arthur shouted.
“That's not the whole job, and you know it, Dead.”
“You go there over my dead body,” said his father. “I don't care what your friends end up doing, I only care about you. You could be a solicitor, an accountant, an army officer, even a schoolmaster. Why should you want to end up at a car factory?”
“It's better paid than teaching, for a start,” said Mark. “My French teacher once told me that he wasn't as well off as you.”
“That's not the point, lad—”
“The point is, Dad, I can't be expected to spend the rest of my life doing a job I don't enjoy just to satisfy one of your fantasies.”
“Well, I'm not going to allow you to waste the rest of your life,” said Arthur, getting up from the breakfast table. “The first thing I'm going to do when I get in to work this morning is see that your application is turned down.”
“That isn't fair, Dad. I have the right to—”
But his father had already left the room, and did not utter another word to the boy before leaving for the factory.
For over a week father and son didn't speak to each other. It was Mark's mother who was left to come up with the compromise. Mark could apply for any job that met with his father's approval, and as long as he completed a year at that job he could, if he still wanted to, reapply to work at the factory. His father for his part would not then put any obstacle in his son's way.
Arthur nodded. Mark also reluctantly agreed to the solution.
“But only if you complete the full year,” Arthur warned solemnly.
During those last days of the summer vacation Arthur came up with several suggestions for Mark to consider, but the boy showed no enthusiasm for any of them. Mark's mother became quite anxious that her son would end up with no job at all until, while helping her slice potatoes for dinner one night, Mark confided that he thought hotel management seemed the least unattractive proposition he had considered so far.
“At least you'd have a roof over your head and be regularly fed,” his mother said.
“Bet they don't cook as well as you, Mom,” said Mark as he placed the sliced potatoes on the top of the Lancashire hotpot. “Still, it's only a year.”
During the next month Mark attended several interviews at hotels around the country without success. It was then that his father discovered that his old company sergeant was head porter at the Savoy: Immediately Arthur started to pull a few strings.
“If the boy's any good,” Arthur's old comrade-in-arms assured him over a pint, “he could end up as a head porter, even a hotel manager.” Arthur seemed well satisfied, even though Mark was still assuring his friends that he would be joining them in a year to the day.
On September 1, 1959, Arthur and Mark Hapgood traveled together by bus to Coventry station. Arthur shook hands with the boy and promised him, “Your mother and I will make sure it's a special Christmas this year when they give you your first leave. And don't worry—you'll be in good hands with ‘Sarge.' He'll teach you a thing or two. Just remember to keep your nose clean.”
Mark said nothing and returned a thin smile as he boarded the train. “You'll never regret it …” were the last words Mark heard his father say as the train pulled out of the station.
Mark regretted it from the moment he set foot in the hotel.
As a junior porter he started his day at six in the morning and ended at six in the evening. He was entitled to a fifteen-minute midmorning break, a forty-five-minute lunch break, and another fifteen-minute break around midafternoon. After the first month had passed he could not recall when he had been granted all three breaks on the same day, and he quickly learned that there was no one to whom he could protest. His duties consisted of carrying guests' suitcases up to their rooms, then lugging them back down again the moment
they wanted to leave. With an average of three hundred people staying in the hotel each night, the process was endless. The pay turned out to be half what his friends were getting back home, and, since he had to hand over all his tips to the head porter, however much overtime Mark put in, he never saw an extra penny. On the only occasion he dared to mention it to the head porter, he was met with the words, “Your time will come, lad.”
It did not worry Mark that his uniform didn't fit or that his room was six feet by six feet and overlooked Charing Cross Station, or even that he didn't get a share of the tips; but it did worry him that there was nothing he could do to please the head porter—however clean he kept his nose.
Sergeant Crann, who considered the Savoy nothing more than an extension of his old platoon, didn't have a lot of time for young men under his command who hadn't done their national service.
“But I wasn't
eligible
to do national service,” insisted Mark. “No one born after 1939 was called up.”
“Don't make excuses, lad.”
“It's not an excuse, Sarge. It's the truth.”
“And don't call me ‘Sarge.' I'm ‘Sergeant Crann' to you, and don't you forget it.”
“Yes, Sergeant Crann.”
At the end of each day Mark would return to his little box-room with its small bed, small chair, and tiny chest of drawers, and collapse exhausted. The only picture in the room—Hals's
The Laughing Cavalier
—was on the calendar that hung above Mark's bed. The date of September 1, 1960, was circled in red to remind him when he would be allowed to rejoin his friends at the factory back home. Each night before falling asleep he would cross out the offending day like a prisoner making scratch marks on a wall.
At Christmas, Mark returned home for a four-day break, and when his mother saw the general state of the boy she tried to talk his father into allowing Mark to give up the job early, but Arthur remained implacable.
“We made an agreement. I can't be expected to get him a job at the factory if he isn't responsible enough to keep to his part of a bargain.”
During the break Mark waited for his friends outside the factory gate until their shift had ended and listened to their stories of weekends spent watching football, drinking at the pub, and dancing to the Everly Brothers. They all sympathized with his problem and looked forward to his joining them in September. “It's only a few more months,” one of them reminded him cheerfully.
Far too quickly, Mark was on the journey back to London, where he continued unwillingly to cart cases up and down the hotel corridors for month after month.
Once the English rain had subsided, the usual influx of American tourists began. Mark liked the Americans, who treated him as an equal and often tipped him a shilling when others would have given him only sixpence. But whatever the amount Mark received, Sergeant Crann would still pocket it with the inevitable, “Your time will come, lad.”
One such American for whom Mark ran around diligently every day during his two-week stay ended up presenting the boy with a ten-shilling note as he left the front entrance of the hotel.
Mark said, “Thank you, sir,” and turned around to see Sergeant Crann standing in his path.
“Hand it over,” said Crann as soon as the American visitor was well out of earshot.
“I was going to the moment I saw you,” said Mark, passing the note to his superior.
. “Not thinking of pocketing what's rightfully mine, were you?”
“No, I wasn't,” said Mark. “Though God knows I earned it.”
“Your time will come, lad,” said Sergeant Crann without much thought.
“Not while someone as mean as you is in charge,” replied Mark sharply.
“What was that you said?” asked the head porter, veering around.
“You heard me the first time, Sarge.”
The clip across the ear took Mark by surprise.
“You, lad, have just lost your job. Nobody, but nobody, talks to me like that.” Sergeant Crann turned and set off smartly in the direction of the manager's office.
The hotel manager, Gerald Drummond, listened to the head porter's version of events before asking Mark to report to his office immediately. “You realize I have been left with no choice but to fire you,” were his first words once the door was closed.
Mark looked up at the tall, elegant man in his long, black coat, white collar, and black tie. “Am I allowed to tell you what actually happened, sir?” he asked.
Mr. Drummond nodded, then listened without interruption as Mark gave his version of what had taken place that morning, and also disclosed the agreement he had entered into with his father. “Please let me complete my final ten weeks,” Mark ended, “or my father will only say I haven't kept my end of our bargain.”
“I haven't got another job vacant at the moment,” protested the manager. “Unless you're willing to peel potatoes for ten weeks.”
“Anything,” said Mark.
“Then report to the kitchen at six tomorrow morning. I'll tell the third chef to expect you. Only if you think the head porter is a martinet, just wait until you meet Jacques, our
maître chef de cuisine
. He won't clip your ear, he'll cut it off.”
Mark didn't care. He felt confident that for just ten weeks he could face anything, and at five-thirty the following morning he exchanged his dark blue uniform for a white top and blue and white check trousers before reporting for his new duties. To his surprise the kitchen took up almost the entire basement of the hotel, and was even more of a bustle than the lobby had been.
The third chef put him in the corner of the kitchen, next
to a mountain of potatoes, a bowl of cold water, and a sharp knife. Mark peeled through breakfast, lunch, and dinner and fell asleep on his bed that night without even enough energy left to cross a day off his calendar.

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