The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More (13 page)

"
Ow's
that, eh?" Ernie said, stepping back
and surveying his work.

"Now the other one," Raymond said, catching on to what Ernie was
doing. "You can't expect '
im
to go
flyin
' round the sky with only one wing, can you?"

"Second wing
comin
' up," Ernie said. He
knelt down again and tied six more lengths of string to the top bones of the
second wing. Then he stood up again. "Let's '
ave
the other arm," he said. Peter, feeling sick and ridiculous, held out his
other arm. Ernie strapped the wing tightly along the length of it.

"Now!"
Ernie cried, clapping his hands and
dancing a little jig on the grass. "Now we got ourselves a real live swan
all over again! Didn't I tell you I was a magic
man ?
Didn't I tell you I was
goin
' to do a magic trick and
make this dead swan come alive and go
flyin
' all over
the sky? Didn't I tell you that?"

Peter stood there in the sunshine beside the lake on this beautiful May
morning, the enormous, limp and slightly bloodied wings dangling grotesquely at
his sides. "Have you finished?" he said.

"Swans don't talk," Ernie said. "Keep your
flippin
'
beak shut! And save your energy,
laddie
, because
you're
goin
' to need all the strength and energy you
got when it comes to
flyin
' round in the sky."
Ernie picked up his gun from the ground,
then
he
grabbed Peter by the back of the neck with his free hand and said,
"March!"

They marched along the bank of the lake until they came to a tall and graceful
willow tree. There they halted. The tree was a weeping willow, and the long
branches hung down from a great height and almost touched the surface of the
lake.

"And now the magic swan is
goin
' to show us a
bit of magic
flyin
'," Ernie announced. "So
what you're
goin
' to do, Mister Swan, is to climb up
to the very top of this tree, and when you get there you're
goin
'
to spread out your wings like a clever little
swannee
-swan-swan
and you're
goin
' to take off!"

"Fantastic!" cried Raymond. "Terrific! I like it very much!"

"So do
I
," Ernie said. "Because now
we're
goin
' to find out just exactly '
ow
clever this clever little
swannee
-swan-swan
really is. He's terribly clever at school, we all know that, and '
ee's
top of the class and everything else that's lovely,
but let's see just exactly '
ow
clever '
ee
is when '
ee's
at the top of
the tree! Right, Mister Swan?" He gave Peter a push towards the tree.

How much further could this madness go? Peter wondered. He was beginning to
feel a little mad himself, as though nothing was real any more and none of it
was actually happening. But the thought of being high up in the tree and out of
reach of these hooligans at last was something that appealed to him greatly.
When he was up there, he could stay up there. He doubted very much if they
would bother to come up after him. And even if they did, he could surely climb
away from them along a thin limb that would not take the weight of two people.

The tree was a fairly easy one to climb, with several low branches to give him
a start up. He began climbing. The huge white wings dangling from his arms kept
getting in the way, but it didn't matter. What mattered now to Peter was that
every inch upward was another inch away from his tormentors below. He had never
been a great one for tree-climbing and he wasn't especially good at it, but
nothing in the world was going to stop him from getting to the top of this one.
And once he was there, he thought it unlikely they would even be able to see
him because of the leaves.

"Higher!" shouted Ernie's voice. "Keep
goin
'!"

Peter kept going, and eventually he arrived at a point where it was impossible
to go higher. His feet were now standing on a branch that was about as thick as
a person's wrist, and this particular branch reached far out over the lake and
then curved gracefully downward. All the branches above him were very thin and
whippy, but the one he was holding on to with his hands was quite strong enough
for the purpose. He stood there, resting after the climb. He looked down for
the first time. He was very high up, at least fifty feet. But he couldn't see
the two boys. They were no longer standing at the base of the tree. Was it
possible they had gone away at last?

"All right, Mister Swan!" came the dreaded voice of Ernie. "Now
listen carefully!"

The two of them had walked some distance away from the tree to a point where
they had a clear view of the small boy at the top. Looking down at them now,
Peter realized how very sparse and slender the leaves of a willow tree were.
They gave him almost no cover at all.

"Listen carefully. Mister Swan!" the voice was shouting. "Start
walking out along that branch
you're
standin
' on! Keep
goin
' till
you're right over the nice muddy water! Then you take off!"

Peter didn't move. He was fifty feet above them now and they weren't ever going
to reach him again. From down below, there was a long silence. It lasted maybe
half a minute. He kept his eyes on the two distant figures in the field. They
were standing quite still, looking up at him.

"All right then, Mister Swan!" came Ernie's voice again. "I'm
gonna
count to ten, right? And if you
ain't
spread
them
wings and flown away by then, I'm
gonna
shoot you down instead with this little gun! And
that'll make two swans I've knocked off today instead of one! So here we go,
Mister Swan! One
!. . .
Two
!. . .
Three
!. . .
Four
!. . .
Five
!. . .
Six
!. . .
"

Peter remained still. Nothing would make him move from now on.

"Seven. . . Eight
!. . .
Nine
!.
. .
Ten!"

Peter saw the gun coming up to the shoulder. It was pointing straight at him.
Then he heard the
crack
of the rifle
and the
zip
of the bullet as it
whistled past his head. It was a frightening thing. But he still didn't move.
He could see Ernie loading the gun with another bullet.

"Last chance!" yelled Ernie. "The next one's
gonna
get you!"

Peter stayed put. He waited. He watched the boy who was standing among the
buttercups in the meadow far below with the other boy beside him. The gun came
up once again to the shoulder.

This time he heard the
crack
at the
same instant the bullet hit him in the thigh. There was no pain, but the force
of it was devastating. It was as though someone had whacked him on the leg with
a sledgehammer, and it knocked both feet off the branch he was standing on. He
scrabbled with his hands to hang on. The small branch he was holding on to bent
over and split.

Some people, when they have taken too much and have been driven beyond the
point of endurance, simply crumble and give up. There are others, though they
are not many, who will for some reason always be unconquerable. You meet them
in time of war and also in time of peace. They have an indomitable spirit and
nothing, neither pain nor torture nor threat of death, will cause them to give
up.

Little Peter Watson was one of these. And as he fought and scrabbled to prevent
himself from falling out of the top of that tree, it came to him suddenly that
he was going to win. He looked up and he saw a light shining over the waters of
the lake that was of such brilliance and beauty he was unable to look away from
it. The light was beckoning him, drawing him on, and he dived towards the light
and spread his wings.

Three different people reported seeing a great white swan circling over the
village that morning, a schoolteacher called Emily Mead, a man who was
replacing some tiles on the roof of the chemist's shop whose name was William
Eyles
, and a boy called John Underwood who was flying his
model
aeroplane
in a nearby field.

And that morning,
Mrs
Watson, who was washing up some
dishes in her kitchen sink, happened to glance up through the window at the
exact moment when something huge and white came flopping down on to the lawn in
her back garden. She rushed outside. She went down on her knees beside the
small crumpled figure of her only son. "Oh, my darling!" she cried,
near to hysterics and hardly believing what she saw.
"My
darling boy!
What happened to you?"

"My leg hurts," Peter said, opening his eyes. Then he fainted.

"It's bleeding!" she cried and she picked him up and carried him
inside. Quickly she phoned for the doctor and the ambulance. And while she was
waiting for help to come, she fetched a pair of scissors and began cutting the
string that held the two great wings of the swan to her son's arms.

Henry Sugar was forty-one years old and unmarried. He was also wealthy. He was
wealthy because he had had a rich father who was now dead. He was unmarried
because he was too selfish to share any of his money with a wife.

He was six feet two inches tall, but he wasn't really as good-looking as he
thought he was.

He paid a great deal of attention to his clothes. He went to an expensive
tailor for his suits, to a
shirtmaker
for his shirts,
and to a
bootmaker
for his shoes.

He used a costly aftershave lotion on his face, and he kept his hands soft with
a cream that contained turtle oil.

His hairdresser trimmed his hair once every ten days, and he always took a
manicure at the same time.

His upper front teeth had been capped at incredible expense because the
originals had had a rather nasty yellowish tinge. A small mole had been removed
from his left cheek by a plastic surgeon.

He drove a Ferrari car which must have cost him about the same as a country
cottage.

He lived in London in the summer, but as soon as the first frosts appeared in
October, he was off to the West Indies or the South of France, where he stayed
with friends. All his friends were wealthy from inherited money.

Henry had never done a day's work in his life, and his personal motto, which he
had invented himself, was this:
It is
better to incur a mild rebuke than to perform an onerous task.
His friends
thought this was hilarious.

Men like Henry Sugar are to be found drifting like seaweed all over the world.
They can be seen especially in London, New York, Paris, Nassau,
Montego
Bay, Cannes and St Tropez. They are not
particularly bad men. But they are not good men either. They are of no real
importance. They are simply a part of the decoration.

All of them, all wealthy people of this type, have one peculiarity in common:
they have a terrific urge to make themselves still wealthier than they already
are. The million is never enough.
Nor is the two million.
Always, they have this insatiable longing to get more money. And that is
because they live in constant terror of waking up one morning and finding
there's nothing in the bank.

These people all employ the same methods for trying to increase their fortunes.
They buy stocks and shares, and watch them going up and down. They play
roulette and blackjack for high stakes in casinos. They bet on horses. They bet
on just about everything. Henry Sugar had once staked a thousand pounds on the
result of a tortoise race on Lord Liverpool's tennis lawn. And he had wagered
double that sum with a man called
Esmond
Hanbury
on an even sillier bet, which was as follows: they
let Henry's dog out into the garden and they watched it through the window. But
before the dog was let out, each man had to guess beforehand what would be the
first object the dog would lift its leg against. Would it be a wall, a post, a
bush or a tree?
Esmond
chose a wall. Henry, who had
been studying his dog's habits for days with a view to making this particular
bet, chose a tree, and he won the money.

With ridiculous games such as these did Henry and his friends try to conquer
the deadly boredom of being both idle and
wealthy.

Henry himself, as you may have noticed, was not above cheating a little on
these friends of his if he saw the chance. The bet with the dog was definitely
not honest. Nor, if you want to know, was the bet on the tortoise race. Henry
cheated on that one by secretly forcing a little sleeping-pill powder into the
mouth of his opponent's tortoise an hour before the race.

And now that you've got a rough idea of the sort of person Henry Sugar was, I
can begin my story.

One summer week-end, Henry drove down from London to Guildford to stay with Sir
William Wyndham. The house was magnificent, and so were the grounds, but when
Henry arrived on that Saturday afternoon, it was already pelting with rain.
Tennis was out, croquet was out. So was swimming in Sir William's outdoor pool.
The host and his guests sat glumly in the drawing-room, staring at the rain
splashing against the windows. The very rich are enormously resentful of bad
weather. It is the one discomfort that their money cannot do anything about.