A Crooked Sixpence Read online

  ‘Oh, the usual things, wash the smalls and so on. No church.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to suggest it. In fact, I don’t have anything very thrilling to suggest. But I thought you might like to show me a bit of the town.’

  ‘Let’s go for a walk in the park. That’s the thing to do on Sunday afternoons.’

  ‘Which park?’

  ‘Kensington Gardens. From your place, it’s straight up Queen’s Gate. I’ll meet you by the Round Pond.’

  ‘It will take me an hour or so to have breakfast, so we’ll make it about an hour and a half.’

  ‘That will be just right. When you get to the pond, start walking round it. I’ll be somewhere round the edge.’

  ‘You walk clockwise and I’ll walk anti-clockwise.’

  The girl laughed. ‘Sounds like a military operation. But this is the age of science, isn’t it? Don’t be late. ‘Bye.’

  O’Toole shaved. The face of Mr. Green’s betrayer looked sickly in the mirror. Or Mrs. Green’s avenger, or the conscience of the public, or some nosey bastard with no business in the Greens’ lives at all, but no great physical specimen this particular morning, at any price.

  Walking up Queen’s Gate, O’Toole peeped into the barred windows of the basements, but saw nothing more rewarding than a rumpled bed or an odd piece of underwear hanging on a chair.

  There has to be some sense behind these basements, he thought. Why dig a hole in the ground and start building from there? You still have to have foundations, so you don’t save anything, and you condemn a good section of the population to living down in Jenolan Caves. But of course, you save the gentlefolks who live up higher a flight of stairs. And you have a visible proof that some people are way up and others are way down, just in case anyone hasn’t noticed it already. People will pay more to live on the ground floor if they think someone else is living in the cellar, and that covers more fields of study than architecture.

  The rising ground of Kensington Gardens showed bare trees on the skyline, indistinct in the soft, moist light, which flattened the colours of women’s coats. The men and children out walking with them were nicely camouflaged in various shades of grey. People and trees close to hand seemed unnaturally real, because the world dissolved into grey soup a few yards behind them. The Round Pond looked as big as the North Sea, the other side on the horizon.

  O’Toole joined the procession walking round the pond, going anticlockwise as promised. The people passing had the strange sameness of an English crowd, the emotionless faces, the products of chain tailors, chain chemists, chain bootmakers, chain restaurants and mass newspapers.

  Elizabeth came up, waving, then smiling. She was carrying a copy of the Sunday Sun. Apart from that, she wore the black skirt, an open topcoat and a transparent blouse showing receding planes of misty lace. Her shoes, thought O’Toole, are a touch too sensible for the rig, like all these women’s.

  ‘You don’t look all that sick to me,’ she said, and sounded relieved.

  ‘I’m not sick,’ said O’Toole. ‘My landlord was entertaining about thirty head of the upper orders. They were being devils and smoking reefers, and the stuff stank the house out, I lay writhing in bed full of hate, hate, hate. No one gets a good night’s rest on that.’

  ‘I see there’s an article of yours in the paper,’ said the girl. ‘That ought to cheer you up.’

  ‘I know. Mr. Green. I really do work for the Sun, but I suppose you’re entitled to your doubts.’

  ‘It seems very suspicious to me,’ said the girl. ‘Not about your job, but about this person, Green. He makes such a fuss about his alibi, doesn’t he? What was he like? Do you think he was telling you the truth?’

  ‘You suspect he might have been tricking me-not coming clean?’

  O’Toole enjoyed these questions and was ready to smile at the next one, if the standard kept up.

  ‘Yes, rather like that,’ said the girl. ‘There seems to be something very insincere about what he says. If he said it that way, of course.’

  ‘Ah, the worm has crept in,’ said O’Toole smiling. ‘Yes, he said it, all right. What’s more, he signed every page.’

  ‘Talkative chap.’

  ‘Let’s be fair to him,’ said O’Toole, ‘I wrung every word out of him by posing as a bosom friend. He thought he was using me for some dirty little game he’s up to, and I thought I was using him. The big difference is, this was his first murder case, and about my thousandth newspaper story.’

  ‘Did you try to get him to confess?’

  ‘Not a bit of it. I wanted him to deny it, and the harder, the better.’

  ‘Why? Didn’t he do it?’

  ‘I’ve got no idea. I saw some signs indicating he might have, but I dismissed them as irrelevant.’

  ‘Well, what’s the idea of the article? I know I must sound dreadfully naive.’

  ‘I was there after a story,’ explained O’Toole. ‘We’re not in an area of truth or falsity here. He had a role to play and I stage-managed him, that’s all. Not too badly, either, if I say so myself.’

  ‘Ah, it’s show business again.’

  ‘That’s it. This was supposed to be entertainment. Once you’ve read it, that’s all there is. I’ll never see him again and nothing will happen. In fact, I hope everyone forgets the whole thing by tomorrow. Except my name, of course.’

  ‘But Mr. Green mightn’t be able to forget it. He might have the police after him, for instance.’

  ‘He might. The trouble with the newspaper game is, you don’t get the choice of who you’re making trouble for. It’s a game of chance. Blind-man’s-buff played with straight razors.’

  They had reached the far side of the Round Pond. O’Toole, liking his phrase, noticed they were walking anti-clockwise. His direction. Then he saw a middle-aged clerkly man in wading boots fending off a model sailing-boat with a stick. Beyond was a scattered squadron of model boats.

  ‘No son about,’ he said to Elizabeth.

  ‘He’s sailing it for himself,’ said the girl. ‘He’s probably been here every Sunday since he was a boy.’

  ‘Ah, more tradition,’ said O’Toole. ‘Now, there’s a thing that really makes me feel like a foreigner. What possible bang can a grown man get out of toy boats?’

  ‘He likes them,’ said the girl.

  ‘Now, just a minute,’ said O’Toole. ‘This is the twentieth century. You can’t just say a man likes something. How does sailing these boats make him feel more loved or sexually potent or one up on his mother?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask him?’

  ‘I would for the paper,’ said O’Toole. ‘Not for me. I got human feelings, too, on Sundays.’

  ‘Well, talking about getting a bang out of things, as you put it, what sort of a bang do you get out of seeing your name in the paper?’

  ‘It’s not a fresh, virgin bang,’ said O’Toole, it’s happened before. I suppose I think it helps me get what I want.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Mainprize,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘Main what?’

  ‘It’s the secret of the universe. Everyone’s after it. Without being certain what it is. I’m not ready to swear it’s the same for everybody, of course.’

  ‘How are you going to get it by going round making trouble for people you don’t know, so as to entertain a lot of other people you don’t know either?’

  ‘Like a drunken knife-thrower,’ said O’Toole. ‘Once a week we hit the fat lady in the belly-button by mistake, but the show must go on. Don’t forget I’m not a solo act. I can always say to the victim, or to myself, “the gang sent me.” I need regular money, I have no application, no purpose, nothing to say and I hate to get up in the mornings. In view of all that I think I’m in a very suitable line of work.’

  ‘You know, I don’t believe a lot of this,’ said the girl. ‘Every time I ask you about your job, we get this rush of words and your big tough pose mixed up with something that sounds a lot like whining self-pity. You co
uld easily get a job in a bank or something if it’s the money you’re worried about.’

  ‘A man’s job,’ said O’Toole. ‘Funny thing, a man said that to me just the other day. But you’ve got me wrong. Perhaps we’re not quite sure of our values, but I could say the same about your employers down at the War Office.’

  ‘It’s not that I mean,’ said the girl. ‘There seems to be something gnawing at you. As if you’re trying to get even with the world.’

  O’Toole contemplated this, and looking around saw another man in gumboots with a boat in his hand. This was a model speedboat, and the owner was tugging at a string coming out of its navel. After a couple of tugs a tiny motor started with a bee-like whine. The owner, a younger man than the sailboat enthusiast but still old enough to have convincing thinning hair, put the boat in the pond and it curved away, throwing a light grey wake off the dark grey water.

  ‘At least this one is mechanised,’ said O’Toole. ‘He’s probably a Communist.’

  The girl laughed.

  ‘I suppose I have a sore spot,’ said O’Toole, as they resumed their anti-clockwise walk. ‘Let’s try this for size. Have you ever had a broken rib? Football, boxing, anything like that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, if you ever do, you’ll find you don’t notice it if you keep perfectly still. You can even flex it about a bit, experimentally. It’s when you’ve forgotten all about it a sudden twist will stab you with it and you’ll realise it was there all the time, waiting for your attention to wander. Not bad, eh?’

  ‘You’d rather be here with someone else, you mean. Why not say so?’

  ‘Now you’re really stabbing me,’ said O’Toole, it’s not as easy as that. I’m a professional word-spinner who has had an armchair ride through life, more or less. I suspect something real has happened to me. For once, I’m the victim whispering his name, address and measurements to the reporters. But I’m not sure. I mean, it seems such a corny, ridiculous thing. You can buy those syndicated short stories for a guinea a thousand words if you’ve got a hole to fill up on the women’s page. What could be a weaker lead than “Discarded Swain Spills It to Sympathetic Girl round Round Pond”? We’d have to break the line between those two “Rounds”, but even then we’d get it back to write it more brightly.’

  ‘You’re just making it all sound ridiculous to give the knife another twist.’

  ‘That’s me. Masochist, picks his nose on the quiet, tries to get away with dirty socks. I’m guilty, guilty, guilty.’

  ‘There’s no need to wallow in it.’

  ‘You’re right. Dignity. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of aspects of this I can’t figure out myself. It always seemed to me that nothing much could go wrong with people if they were kind and decent to one another and knew when to make the unobtrusive exit. Bondage and possession and that sort of thing seemed to me to cause most of the trouble in the world.’

  ‘And doesn’t it?’

  ‘I’m not sure any more. How does a rational individual like me get himself involved in a slushy woman’s supplement situation? The obvious answer is, because he likes it, just like these microscopic Nelsons here with their boats. But we have to look deeper, don’t we, seeing this is the middle of the twentieth century? When you cover your first passionate axe murder you get a suspicion you’re dealing with emotions which go deeper than “I was an innocent mill-girl”. But you’ve got to get back to the office and write your story. When it happens to you, however, you don’t have to write it, and you don’t quite know how to handle it. You ask the questions you never have to ask on the job, like: How did I get involved in this in the first place?’

  ‘Well, how do you?’

  ‘The same way anyone else does, of course. I’m starting to see it as a camouflage for the feelings those kind, decent people never allow themselves to have. You know, meanness, joy in personal property, class and race pride, going one better than everyone else, private and exclusive possessions and clubs marked Members Only. No decent person can permit these feelings. But if you wrap them all up in a bundle called Sue or Sid or whatever the name of the illusion happens to be, you can have a licensed wallow in them. Then the bubble bursts, or graduation day arrives as a friend of mine says. The victim is left with his principles, which he now sees were a lot of balls all along. He gets mean, or rather he sees how mean he always was. He lashes out. The bystanders get it across the chops.’

  ‘That’s a very complicated explanation for a simple situation,’ said the girl. She’s really very pretty when she frowns, thought O’Toole. Frowning is really man’s work. The attractive thing about women frowning is that they do it differently, like wearing trousers.

  ‘That’s as far as I’ve got with it,’ said O’Toole. ‘Another interesting symptom is that you figure several new explanations every day, depending on what books you happen to be reading. Would you like to see another essay on the subject?’

  The girl nodded, and O’Toole handed over the blue air-letter.

  ‘Go ahead, read it,’ he said, it’s in English.’

  The girl read, smiling once or twice and exhibiting a pointedly blank expression through the rest.

  ‘He’s very free with his advice,’ she said, is his name really Jowls?’ it’s another of those functional names, like Crapper,’ said O’Toole. ‘Jowls is a heavily built thinker who has shared a lot of easy living with me in the past, and looks to share some more in the future.’

  ‘He’s a journalist, too?’

  ‘Naturally. We’re a pretty clanny crowd, you know. Like hangmen. After a while no one else will talk to us. You’ll notice Jowls somewhat misinterprets how I’m getting along here.’

  ‘Jenny, I suppose, is...‘

  ‘Exactly. Another name for the human predicament.’

  ‘I don’t know whether that’s praise for her or not,’ said the girl. ‘I see we’re going to have Jowls over here shortly as well. What does he want?’

  ‘Same as me,’ said O’Toole. ‘The big time.’

  ‘Why does he have to come here for success and money? Can’t he find them in Australia?’

  ‘Success and money are only the outward and visible signs,’ said O’Toole. Of course Jowls and I want to be surrounded by rich, sincere men and generous, beautiful women, just like anyone else, but what we’re really after is more of a mystical experience. I’ll have to tell you a parable to make it clear.’

  ‘No more blasphemy, please.’

  ‘This is really on God’s side, if you grasp the message. Once upon a time I had to go along to the BBC. I was holding the coat of someone Who was doing a turn—who, doesn’t matter in this connection. Well, after the broadcast we were milling around in a big room, the technicians, the BBC people and the odds and sods who had been trying to turn an honest guinea by saying something bright into the camera.’

  ‘Like “In Town Tonight”.’

  ‘That’s it. We were all in town that night. Well, suddenly a seedy little somebody appeared out of a closet and dived into the crowd like a sheepdog, sorting us all out into a big group and a smaller group. The big group he steered towards tea and buns set out on trestle tables. The others present he steered towards an inner room, where I could see white-jacketed waiters serving ham sandwiches and Scotch on the rocks. You know what principle he was using?’

  ‘To separate them, you mean?’

  ‘Exactly. It took me a little while to work it out. He was acknowledging VIP status. The people being steered to the Scotch included an individual who said he was the king of the London underworld, a crummy person in a midnight-blue dinner jacket who does TV research, whatever that is, and a whole lot of horrible people. The tea-drinkers, I should say, were hard-working, noble, industrious, generous and sweet-tempered. In fact, the salt of the earth. Wonderful people, lapping down the free tea and the buns made out of some new kind of waterproof plastic and really enjoying themselves.’

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I saw the
sheepdog coming at me, his muzzle aimed at the tea. I stood my ground. He stopped and stared. I started off on my own accord toward the Scotch and as I passed I whispered the word “Press”. I was out of work at the time, but I meant my personality, not my job. Slowly, deliberately, I kept going, expecting a row of sharp little teeth in my heel any minute. I couldn’t relax until I had a glass tinkling in my hand. Then I spotted a door leading into an even more inner room. I never got in there, but I suspect there was inner room beyond inner room, with God sitting alone in the final room drinking Scotch straight out of the bottle. But I don’t suppose I’ll ever make it.’

  ‘I had no idea you were so obsessed with drink, James.’

  ‘Actually, I like a dish of tea,’ said O’Toole. ‘At home. Not in the outer room.’

  ‘It sounds horribly snobbish and class-conscious,’ said the girl, I thought you were all for equality.’

  ‘I know it,’ said O’Toole. ‘But a man has to live for something. Mind you, I don’t hold with people being born in the inner room with their mouths glued to the bottle. Gets too crowded in there in no time. It’s not really a class matter, anyway, because God knows the muzzles I saw thrust into the Scotch weren’t out of the top drawer. The point is, they’d passed through the closed door; through and beyond, room after room, with the carpets getting thicker all the time so you think you’re walking uphill. Don’t ask me what happens when you get to the real holy of holies, because I’ve never been there, and neither has anyone else. You can go far enough you can’t hear the spoons rattling in the teacups, though.’

  ‘You just want to be famous, James, and by the sound of it all you need is your picture in the paper often enough.’

  ‘But how do you get them there? Don’t give me that stuff about hard work: that’s just a vulgar commercial transaction that takes all the exhilaration away. What I want is VIP status the easy way, just for being myself, just for being around. That’s the only magical kind. The trouble is, ever since you could get somewhere by your own efforts—how long would that be, a hundred years perhaps?—all the bright kids with an IQ of 120 or better have caught the disease. Most of us don’t want to do anything about it, though, we just want a handwritten note from God to all doormen saying: Let him in. He’s got what it takes.’