The Man Whose Dream Came True (3 page)

On the following morning he woke feeling shagged, and more than shagged, depressed. He had got only fifty pounds instead of a hundred, had spent several on Fiona when no doubt he could have had her for nothing, and in addition – this crowned his depression when the post came – there was a letter from the Golden Sovereign phrased in what could only be called threatening terms. It mentioned taking further steps regarding settlement of his debt to them of nearly a hundred pounds, including ‘getting in touch with your employer, if this regrettable necessity should be forced on us.’ If they got in touch with the General they might not get their money, but he would almost certainly lose his job.

Gambling was his one weakness, or that was the way he sometimes thought of it. More often it seemed to him to be the way in which he would eventually make his fortune. The club, where he had played roulette with reasonable fortune until two unlucky sessions saw him nearly a hundred pounds down, had allowed him to give cheques for his chips because he had played there so often. After he had been cleaned out he had explained to the manager, a man named Armitage, that it was no use presenting his last two cheques because he was temporarily out of funds. Similar things had happened before in other gambling houses but then he had always moved on quickly, changing his job and his address. He took his usual line, that the amount was trivial and that he had no doubt they could accommodate him. Armitage had shaken his head and said that he would have to speak to Mr Cotton.

‘Who’s Mr Cotton?’

‘He’s Number One. Up in London.’ He asked a switchboard girl to see if Mr Cotton was free and then shook his head again. ‘Mr Cotton won’t like it.’

‘You’ll get your money,’ Tony said easily.

He was startled when a voice in the room said, ‘What is it, Armitage?’

The voice came from a box on the desk. When Armitage leaned forward to speak into it his voice was that of a supplicant.

‘You should have known better.’ The voice was mild, but Armitage flinched. ‘But forget it. I told you, no trouble. What’s the name again?’

‘Scott-Williams.’

‘I don’t want him in my clubs. Tell him that.’

Tony had been greatly impressed by this casual demonstration of power. Impressed and relieved, so that the letter upset him more than it would otherwise have done. He telephoned the Golden Sovereign, but found only the cleaner there.

The morning did not recover from this unhappy beginning. At breakfast his bacon was underdone and the toast burnt, and when he spoke to Mrs Causley she said insolently that perhaps he would like to cook it himself. The General was up early, in splendid spirits and eager to get back to the Western Desert. He began to comb through the mass of notes about his tank operations there, so that he could refute Ted Hasty. It was on the third mention of Hasty’s name that the faint twinges Tony had felt on the previous day turned into the pain of realising the truth. He had met Colonel Hasty, and their meeting had had unhappy consequences. It was at a time when he had been working as a salesman for AtoZed Motors, a firm which specialised in buying cars written off after involvement in crashes and putting them back on the market when they had been resprayed and reconditioned. He had sold Hasty a ruined Peugeot which contained several parts grafted on from some quite different car. Within a month the semi-Peugeot’s steering had got out of control and the Colonel had driven it into a brick wall. AtoZed had professed their good faith, the Colonel had got most of his money back, and the affair had ended short of the Law Courts, but he had been indignant about Tony’s selling methods and was not likely to have forgotten him. It was in total despair that he helped the General to sort out papers.

‘Tank training, where the devil are those statistics about tank training?’ The General looked at him. ‘What’s the matter, my boy, you’re looking pale.’

‘I’m all right.’

‘You don’t look it. Leave it to me, I’ll sort through this stuff and we’ll see what Ted Hasty’s got to say.’

He lay down in the bedroom, stared at the Morris wallpaper and felt no better. He could stay in his room, refuse lunch and avoid meeting Hasty but if, as had happened before when the General met old army friends, the discussion went on for hours and he stayed the night, a meeting was inevitable. And what was he to do about that letter? He walked gloomily round the room and then went into the little study where he kept the estate papers and accounts. On the desk lay the cheque book in which yesterday he had written out with pleasure the cheque for Clinker.

In ten ecstatic minutes he burnt his boats. After half a dozen trials on a sheet of paper that he tore up at once he produced the signature itself on the cheque, done with the bold characteristic flourish the General gave to the tail of the ‘y’ in ‘Geoffrey’. He made out the cheque for two hundred and fifty pounds. If the thing was to be done it might as well be done properly. The General saw his pass sheet only quarterly. By the time it arrived, no doubt he would have paid back the money. And if he had not – well, he kept at the back of his mind like an insurance policy the thought of the Bobo letters. Later, when he drove in to town and presented the cheque across the counter a part of him admired his outward coolness. He felt a surge of self-congratulatory pleasure when the clerk cancelled the signature without question and asked how he would like the money. This was the first really criminal act he had ever committed. How simple it was, how calm he felt. The thick wad of money in his pocket gave him such a warm feeling that he decided to wait a day or two before paying the club.

He had forgotten all about Colonel Hasty, but as he drove the old Morris back into the garage he saw a car in the drive. He avoided the front door, but just as he was about to go up into his room the General’s head popped out of the drawing-room.

‘Feeling better?’

There was nothing for it but to say that he did.

‘Come in, join the party. Ted, this is Tony Scott-Williams.’

A sharp bird-like look at his face, a quick bird-like peck at his hand. He felt recklessly confident, even when the man said he thought they had met.

‘I’ve got that feeling too, but I can’t remember where.’

‘Too young for the war. Were you out in Kenya in the fifties?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ he said truthfully. ‘I was secretary to Sir Archibald Graveney for some time. If you ever came to Throgmorton Hall–’

‘Never did. Dead now.’

The remark threw him for a moment. The
Who’s Who
he had looked up was three years old. It was bad luck to have picked a man who had died since then. ‘Yes, of course. I left a few months before his death.’

‘Used to see him in London sometimes, at the club. Never knew he had a secretary.’

‘I hardly ever came down to London with him.’

‘Yes yes.’ The General had been waiting with obvious impatience for this exchange to end. ‘As I was saying, Ted, the whole question of preparation goes back to GHQ. More than that, it goes back to the Government. We were landed with these Crusaders straight out of the factory. If we’d had time to train–’

‘It’s a matter of logistics.’

‘If you mean they had more tanks than we had and better ones, you’re damn well right.’

The Colonel said something, but his mind did not seem to be on the argument. Throughout lunch, which was served by plumply attractive Doris, Tony was uneasily aware of the bird eye swivelling round to examine him. Occasionally Hasty seemed about to say something decisive. Suppose it was, ‘I remember you, you’re the man who sold me that dud car,’ what would he say? Perhaps an outright denial would be the best thing. But lunch passed without the decisive word being spoken, and over coffee he saw a chance and took it. Hasty had been talking about spending some time in Edinburgh, and Tony repeated the name of the city.

‘What’s that?’ The bird eye swivelled.

‘It’s where we met. You say you were up there on the Commonwealth Research Board. I was working with a group collecting funds and goods for the underdeveloped countries.’ It was true that he had worked in Scotland for eighteen months as local representative of an insurance company that had gone suddenly into liquidation.

‘Maybe.’ Hasty did not sound enthusiastic. ‘Some of those crackpot committees did more harm than good. No use coddling these chaps. Got to tell ’em, not ask ’em.’

‘Just what I thought. That’s why I gave it up.’

‘Finished your coffee?’ The General was fretting. ‘Come on then, Ted. I’ve got something here that’s going to shake your ideas up. Not logistics, just plain common sense. I’ve got some letters that will surprise you.’

They went to the library. The General was exhilarated by such discussions, and today his back was straight and his manner commanding, as they must have been twenty-five years ago. Tony excused himself, saying that he wanted to go round the farms. Before doing so he rang the Golden Sovereign again, spoke to Armitage, and learned that the letter had been sent by mistake.

‘You can tear it up, though I wouldn’t say that if it had been left to me.’ Armitage sounded venomous. ‘Cotton makes us pay five per cent of bad debts.’

‘I didn’t like the tone of it,’ Tony said boldly. ‘If I had a word with Mr Cotton he might not like it either.’

The telephone was slammed down without reply. He need not have drawn out the money, but there was no need to worry about that for some weeks. He drove round the farm and had a long talk with one of the farmers about repairs needed to one of his barns. Tony promised to look into it. Whatever builder was employed, it would not be Clinker.

When he got back Hasty’s car had gone. He met Doris in the hall and asked her if anything had happened.

‘Only one telephone call. For the master. He’s in the study, asking for you. Soon as you came in, he said.’

So Hasty had remembered. Well, he would simply deny it, that was all. It was one man’s word against another’s. He gave Doris a little pat on the bottom as she turned away.

In the library the General sat at the desk with some of the precious papers in front of him. His knotted hands rested on them. Against the light from the window his fine profile looked weary.

‘Sit down.’ Tony sat. The General did not look at him, did not speak.

He felt it necessary to break the silence. ‘I don’t know what Colonel Hasty has said–’

‘Hasty?’ Eyebrows were raised in surprise. ‘He thought you seemed a nice young chap.’

Everything was all right. As a gambler he knew that if you played your luck you couldn’t lose. But why was the old man so silent? ‘How did the discussion go?’

‘I’m an old fool.’ Was that a reply to what he had said? ‘Should have known better.’

What was he going on about? From the papers on the desk the knotted hand picked a piece of pink paper, held it out. He stared at it unbelievingly. It was the cheque he had cashed that morning.

‘The bank called me up. Couldn’t understand it. Then they sent this back.’ But why, he wanted to ask, but why? The knotted hand pointed to the signature. What was wrong with it? ‘Geoffrey’, he read, admiring again the tail at the end of the ‘y’. Then he looked again. ‘Geofrey’: he had missed out one ‘f’.

‘Well done but careless.’ The old voice spoke heavily. The piece of paper was torn across once, then again. The pieces fluttered on the floor. So he was not going to do anything about it. Tony tried to speak, found it impossible. The voice went inexorably on.

‘If you were in debt, why not come to me? I would have given you money. But I suppose you’ve done this before, it’s a usual thing. As I said it seems a good piece of work.’

‘I haven’t done it before.’

‘And you won’t do it again? But if you didn’t cheat me like this you’d do it in some other way. Through the accounts perhaps. Maybe you do that already, I don’t want to know. You can keep the money, but I can’t have you here. You must go.’

The face was still turned away from him, the voice was never raised a semi-tone above the even uninterested note in which you might talk about the weather. Suddenly all this was too much for him, the bloody condescension of the man saying he could keep the money, the refusal to look at him, the manner which implied that he was an inferior being. As if he hadn’t earned every penny of that money and much more, as if any money could have compensated for the year he had spent listening to that interminable drivel about the war, pretending to take an interest in the attempt to cancel out mistakes by rewriting history, losing games of billiards which he could easily have won. You think you’re giving me something, he wanted to say, but you aren’t, I’ve given you one of the years of my life. He got up and almost ran out of the room, up the stairs to his bedroom. When he came back he had the Bobo letters with him. He tore open the envelope and put the letters on the desk right under the nose disdainfully turned away from him as if he were a bad smell.

‘What about these, then?’ he asked in the shrill tone that overcame him under any stress of emotion. It upset him to see that his own hands were shaking while those that took the letters and turned them over were perfectly steady.

Now the old man did turn and look at him. ‘Where did they come from? Miriam said she had destroyed them.’

‘They were in the lumber room.’

‘And you kept them?’

‘Don’t you understand? If I’d been what you think I am I could have asked for money, I could have made you give me money.’

‘Blackmail,’ the quiet voice said meditatively.

He shook his head violently. ‘I never asked, did I, never said anything. There are your filthy letters, you can burn them, do what you like with them.’

‘They are not my letters. They were not sent to me.’ That took him aback. He did not believe it, but he was taken aback. ‘My own darling G. Your name’s Geoffrey. And some of them are to my darling Gee gee–’

‘My son’s name was Gordon. We called him Gee gee, and so did some of his friends.’

‘Your son,’ he repeated foolishly, and in a moment saw that he had been mistaken, that the letters had been written by one young man to another, not by a young man to a middle-aged one.