A Crooked Sixpence Page 11

  ‘No, thank you’ said Sweeney, ‘I’ve still got the greater part of your paper’s money left—I’ve been desperately trying not to spend it, hoping that I might be allowed to give it back.’

  ‘There’s no point in giving it back,’ said O’Toole. ‘None at all.’

  ‘I was afraid so,’ said Sweeney. ‘I don’t want money, Mr. Towel. All I want is a chance to remove this dreadful brand—you’ve made me a whining, sponging, hypocritical good-for-nothing.’

  ‘You’ll have to find some other way, I’m afraid,’ said O’Toole, ‘I don’t think this paper can do anything for you.’

  The priest bowed his head, then rose hopelessly.

  ‘Thank you, anyway, Mr. Towel, for your courtesy,’ he said, slowly.

  ‘It’s part of my job,’ said O’Toole. ‘I wish I could do more.’

  O’Toole’s hands were damp as he left the waiting-room. Starsh, ferret eager, was coming toward him.

  ‘Nice work, dear boy,’ he said. ‘Cam loved the story. Did this golfing chappie ask for money?’

  ‘I told him we’d consider his expenses.’

  ‘For doing his old lady in? He must be crazy.’

  ‘The way he explained it sounded reasonable. He’s not very bright, but I think he has a dim suspicion he’s helping us to sell papers.’

  ‘Rubbish. We’re fighting for justice on his behalf. The murderous sod. I hope you didn’t sign anything promising payment.’

  ‘No, he did all the signing. I had to talk fairly fast at that.’

  ‘It always amazes me how you fellows do it. Norman Knight will be proud of you.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, Nick, I’m feeling a bit uneasy.’

  ‘What about? Mr. Green?’

  ‘No, the priest. Sweeney. I feel I ought to put his case to someone.’

  ‘Bring your problems of conscience to me,’ said Starsh. ‘Let me tidy Mr. Green up and we’ll go out and have a bite to eat.’

  O’Toole ordered a beer and a ham sandwich. Starsh had egg and tomato, and a whisky with water. ‘Molotov’s favourite tipple,’ he explained to O’Toole. ‘Now, what’s the problem about the Reverend Father?’

  ‘I need hardly to tell you that the piece we published over my signature was hardly to his liking,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘That’s why we paid him,’ said Starsh, almost mechanically, like a chess-player who is trying to see three moves ahead. ‘Quite a whack, too, as I remember. What then?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to explain to him that he’s had his shame and embarrassment money, that a deal is a deal, that it’s no use crying over spilt milk of Christian charity, and that the publicity will be great for his novel. In short, I’ve done my best to fend him off, as we learn to do in our trade.’

  ‘Good boy,’ said Starsh. ‘Then what?’

  ‘His Reverence is a trier,’ said O’Toole. ‘It seems that his superiors in the Church are prepared to have him back, but they want to see some action from him to correct the public scandal which he’s caused. All he wants is a line to the effect that he was incorrectly reported, and when he shows it to his boss, he’s back in like Flynn. As I was explaining to him for the umpteenth time that we couldn’t help him, it suddenly occurred to me: why can’t we? Would it really wreck the paper if we played along? We could camouflage it, of course: something like “Priest Sees Light, Come Back, All Forgiven Wires Archbishop”. You’d have to polish it up, of course, but something like that?’

  ‘I’m sure you know why it’s out of the question,’ said Starsh. ‘It would undermine the whole foundations of our operation. You could never convince Cam you’d done the fellow any harm, to begin with. Nor our readers, for that matter. They’ve welcomed him back to big-hearted Britain, and that’s that. By the way, why are you so concerned? Think of the Inquisition and what they did to Galileo.’

  ‘I’m just putting this to you as a matter of form,’ said O’Toole. ‘I’m the last man to be catty, Nick, but I must say your disinclination to face the anointed Sweeney yourself was a bit marked.’

  ‘Very true,’ said Starsh. ‘You’ve just stumbled on a fundamental social principle.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a lot easier to give the orders if you don’t have to do the dirty work yourself. Conversely, the unpleasant jobs are easier if someone else takes the responsibility. I’m thinking of you, dear boy: you’ll be happier in your work if you leave the moral decisions to higher authority, until the day comes when you have to make them, and, of course, draw a commensurate salary.’

  ‘Do you make and draw accordingly?’

  ‘No, I’m but a humble labourer in the vineyard myself. There has to be a captain on the bridge to bring the ship safely home.’

  ‘And we’re all going where he’s going. Do you get a turn at the wheel, for instance?’

  ‘Cam reposes a great confidence in me. He consults me about many things.’

  ‘That’s nice to hear,’ said O’Toole. ‘I take it you’ll worry about the priest as long as I see him. Or, if pushed, you’ll pass the worry higher up.’

  ‘I’ll do the same for any of your little problems of conscience,’ said Starsh. ‘I used to have them myself, once. Now drink up, dear boy, we really must be getting back.’

  ‘Don’t let my conscience worry you, Nick,’ said O’Toole cheerfully. ‘It’s just a hooked, half-drowned conscience flap-flopping on the deck. Go on, hit it on the head. It wants to die, anyway.’

  ‘I’ll use that as a letter to the editor,’ said Starsh.

  They had given O’Toole’s story a heart-warming run on the front page, with a six column streamer head and boxed by-line. It really looked convincing.

  GOSSIPS DRIVING HIM TO THE GALLOWS

  They whisper: ‘He killed His Wife’

  GOLFING HUSBAND’S GRIPPING PLEA

  by James O’Toole

  Yesterday, his eyes filled with tears and the Bible held to his heart, Henry Green said to me: ‘I swear I am innocent.’

  ‘I know what they are whispering—that I brutally murdered my wife. But I swear by everything I hold dear that what they are whispering is lies.

  ‘I DID NOT sneak away from my job. I DID NOT hurry home through the darkened streets of Liverpool.

  ‘I DID NOT BATTER MY LOVELY WIFE TO DEATH WITH A GOLF CLUB!’

  ‘Here is my alibi—the alibi which proves my innocence to the hilt, which must bring the BLUSH OF SHAME to the heartless gossips who are ruining my life, already blighted with tragedy...’

  O’Toole glanced up from his fascinated reading to find Jacobs reading over his shoulder.

  ‘Nice work, Aussie,’ he said. ‘You’ve certainly got this boy set to rights. If anyone hasn’t thought of hubby already they’ll certainly think of him now.’

  ‘There’s just a slim chance he didn’t do it, Tom,’ said O’Toole, warmed by the praise just the same.

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Jacobs. ‘They’ll top him for sure after he comes out with this ridiculous alibi.’

  ‘I helped him compose it.’

  ‘Good for you. Well, it looks quiet. What time are you on till, eleven?’

  ‘Unless I’m doing the late trick.’

  ‘No, I think you’ve had enough for today. Get on with your mill-girl confession piece, and you can quietly offpiss about ten-thirty or so.’

  O’Toole read the rest of the first edition, savouring as always the smudgy ink and paraffin aroma of newspapers five minutes off the press. The astrologer said things would soon begin to look up for him, which might be right at that.

  He carried a typewriter to the monastic calm of the waiting-room, wound a sheet of paper into it and searched for the mental state of the star-crossed mill-girl. It came quicker than usual:

  ‘It was the word “model” which drew me to the advertisement in a London newspaper (not the Sunday Sun).

  ‘I copied down the address, that of a wholesale dress warehouse in the East End.

  ‘Little did I guess
that the proprietor of this establishment was a MONSTER IN HUMAN FORM who used the word “model” to lure young girls into the MOST SHAMEFUL EXPERIENCE a woman can endure!’

  I really must go easy on these capital letters, thought O’Toole. I’ll start to talk like that if I don’t watch it. Now, what, for publication, is the most shameful experience that a woman can endure?

  Wrenching himself back from the recollection of shameful experiences he had helped women endure, he typed on:

  Hopefully I put on my best dress and my little lacy gloves. I found the address in the ad, and my spirits sank. It was sleazy and decrepit, and the windows had not been cleaned FOR AGES!

  The proprietor was a fat, oily individual. I glanced at his fingers, and they were podgy, and glittering with REAL DIAMONDS! But while I looked at them, HE was coarsely ogling my curves (I’m 39-21-32). I sensed that this OGRE wanted me for more than just showing off his scruffy sun-frocks to bored buyers from provincial department stores.

  O’Toole reread the page critically. The HE seemed to have a theological touch quite out of place in the text, so he marked it for lower-case letters. In the margin he made a note to ask Starsh for an expert opinion on whether there was a hint of anti-Semitism about the anonymous villain, considering he was in the rag trade. It might be safer to say straight out he was a Greek, now Cyprus had quietened down.

  Then it was ten-thirty and a decent time to go home. Barr had come out of his office and was holding his customary Saturday night court in the big office, the hour or so every week when he was a newsman reminiscing among newsmen and whatever happened to Fred Paperback who used to be on the old Bristol Morning Star before it sank in the West? Barr beamed in answer to O’Toole’s nod, and he felt he was being praised behind his back.

  Arrived home, O’Toole found the party in full swing, but strangely quiet to his notion of a party. The flat was still naked of furniture, except for the bus seats: a half-dozen people sat on them and the rest, about a score, stood about.

  The women were all skinny, with tubular calves and no perceptible ankles. Many wore cocktail dresses vaguely out of date: all their lipsticks seemed creased and too orange, or perhaps O’Toole was just tired.

  The men wore either dress-suits tight over the chest and shiny at the seat, or roll-neck sweaters, horse-riding twill trousers and plimsolls.

  Although there was no drink in sight, they were all talking fast, using a razor-sharp short ‘a’. There was a strong smell of burning grass, or incense; stale old incense that might have gone bad on the incense-dealer’s shelf.

  Macedon was glad, but not too glad, to see him.

  ‘Glad you could come along, James,’ he said. ‘I can’t afford gin at thirty-five bob a bottle, for reasons well-known to you, so we’re smoking reefers. Do have one. They’re a great success, really. Cleaner, tidier, and less like work. You smoke them like this.’

  He showed O’Toole, holding the cigarette between his little and ring fingers and dragging the air, whistling, through his clenched fist.

  ‘I think I’ve seen the Lascars smoking that way on the P and O boats,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘We have to break away from our hidebound European point of view, you know. Come and meet some people.’

  O’Toole lit his cigarette as he followed Macedon. It tasted like a mildewed Weight. He coughed, and didn’t catch the name of the pair in front of him.

  The girl had lank hair and a horsey face and wore a white dress with a cesspool-green sash. The man with her was pimpled, with a prominent Adam’s apple which dived and surfaced from his roll-neck sweater as he spoke.

  ‘You’re the friend Michael has told us about,’ said the girl. ‘From Owstralia.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘That’s a long way, isn’t it?’ asked the girl brightly.

  ‘Yes,’ said O’Toole, it’s out Japan way. We use standard Tokyo time.’

  ‘Well, that’s interesting, isn’t it, Rafe?’ the girl asked the man.

  ‘Very interesting,’ he said.

  ‘What are you doing over here?’ asked the girl, smiling as one does to a child if one doesn’t like children. ‘Studying?’

  O’Toole couldn’t feel that the girl’s looks rated the patronising tone. What else entitles women to be superior these days? In England, a lot of things. But a fast answer was called for, or he’d be stupid as well as whatever else was wrong with him.

  ‘I know enough already to make a living,’ said O’Toole. ‘I work for a newspaper.’

  He was stupid, on that showing. The girl pounced for the kill.

  ‘I have a friend on the Guardian,’ she said. ‘He does field sports now and again. Perhaps you know him.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said O’Toole. ‘I work a different line of territory.’

  ‘Which paper do you write for?’ asked the man.

  ‘The Sunday Sun,’ said O’Toole.

  The man tried to catch someone’s eye on the other side of the room.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t read it,’ said the girl.

  ‘Our readers live under stones in Liverpool,’ said O’Toole. ‘You only see them very early in the morning, on their way to work.’

  The girl pretended not to understand. Perhaps she didn’t.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t follow you,’ she said, with a brass-tasting little laugh.

  ‘Someone has to entertain those scruffy old workers,’ said O’Toole. ‘I like it. We’re not as dangerous as people think. Less harm is caused by Jack believing the Sunday Sun than by his master believing The Times. Assuming The Times was ever wrong, of course.’

  ‘You’ve got some sort of peculiar chip on your shoulder,’ said the man. ‘I don’t imagine your newspaper makes much difference, one way or another. If you like working for it, that’s your business.’

  Macedon came up.

  ‘We’re discussing my employer,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘Great fun, writing the old tittle-tattle,’ said Macedon.

  ‘Look, I think I’ll go off to bed,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘Someone’s sitting on it,’ said Macedon.

  A protesting couple rose from the bus seat against the wall. O’Toole, as he shouldered it, felt unkempt and noticed his fingernails were dirty. He muttered ‘Good night’ to no one in particular and no one answered.

  His room was still empty. He took off his shoes, found a sweater among the heaped clothes and put his feet in the sleeves. Mouldy smoke and a thin dribble of chatter came under the door.

  He was quickly asleep, lone, old, unattractive, hating everybody.

  XIV

  O’TOOLE woke stiff and cramped, a dull pain in his knee where it jammed against the wall, a cold contour where he extended over the edges of the bus seat. A soft autumn morning shone without malice through the naked window. A striped blue air-letter, with the familiar brown and white aboriginal art stamp had come under the door. O’Toole reasoned it must have arrived the day before, and been kept for him by Macedon. His knee creaked as he fumbled it open.

  Dear Shoulders:

  So you made it into the aristocratic set. I’m not surprised. It’s hard to keep a good man down the social scale, and as I remember you hardly ever belched at table. Your mate Macedon doesn’t look too bad in Debrett, apart from a bit of second son of second son stuff a few centuries ago. We can overlook that as long as the family dough is intact, which your new address certainly indicates.

  You wondering how I get this news so quickly? I can only report that London is alive with gossip-peddlers and professional no-hopers with nothing better to do than send wildly inaccurate stories home. At least, I assume they’re inaccurate, in particular some unspeakable versions now going the rounds of how you came into flat-sharing range of Macedon. Anyway, you’d never pass for a Guardsman, with or without the fairy at the bottom of. Stories which are also getting round that he has hired you as a domestic servant I am denying whenever I hear them.

  I now have independent confir
mation of the rumour that you and Jenny have split up. With the additional information that you’re taking it hard. If you’ll forgive me leaving a few finger-prints on your personal affairs, the trick in a case like this is to distinguish illusion from reality. Of course this is not easy, particularly if you yourself figure as a big hero in the illusion. The reality makes you a prize chump, and this is hard to swallow. I don’t recommend indiscriminate tail-chasing, but a nibble now and again will convince you that the difference between the various brands is largely a matter of advertising. This is my experience, anyhow, and as you know I’ve tried ‘em all. Of course, a mass clean-out of all your illusions is going to leave you pretty shaken, so be sure to stop in time. You’re still going to write for posterity, for instance. A bit of healthy hatred helps, too.

  Nothing much is happening here. At a party at Short Cummings’ the other night John Neville’s girl-friend disappeared into a bedroom with some bloke not identified in the gossip. Neville found the door locked. Just then Willy Armstrong minced by and made a full-of-hidden-meaning remark. Neville grabbed a walking-stick from a convenient hat-stand and beat him until his arm was tired. It was like a man killing a snake. Armstrong of course felt that honour was fully satisfied. There’s illusions for you!

  I’m still waiting for that letter describing how the big-time newsmen operate. If Jean-Paul Sartre happens to visit London, detain him on some pretext until I get there.

  Won’t be long now.

  Your old cobber,

  Jowls.

  O’Toole tottered to the kitchen and made a cup of tea. There was no sign of the bailiff: evidently they didn’t estreat the chattels on the Sabbath. Macedon’s phone, in the hall, was a public four-pennies model. O’Toole found the coins and dialled.

  ‘Elizabeth?’

  ‘It’s James, isn’t it?’

  ‘These trick accents have some uses.’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Shaken. Hangover from work. I was just wondering what you do on Sundays.’