A Crooked Sixpence Read online

  ‘I won’t,’ said O’Toole. ‘Thanks for being frank.’

  Barr said nothing, but began reading another proof. O’Toole, staring straight ahead, walked uncomprehending through the clatter of the newsroom to his desk and sat down.

  A moment later Jacobs came up and, leaning his bare hairy forearms on the desk, pulled an anguished face at O’Toole from uncomfortably close range.

  ‘Did Cam smack, Aussie?’ he asked. ‘There, there.’

  O’Toole smiled. ‘Not really, Tom,’ he said. ‘Just suggested I should be more democratic, that’s all. And he’s given me a top-level assignment to get on with.’

  ‘More whores?’

  ‘Not this time. He’s dreamed up a suspect as a follow-up for the society strangling. He wants the usual denial of the vicious rumours.’

  ‘Who’s the lucky man?’

  ‘Michael Macedon.’

  Jacobs nodded appreciatively.

  ‘Not bad at all,’ he said. ‘Just a minute, isn’t Macedon some sort of pal of yours?’

  ‘I know him quite well,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘That’s a lucky break,’ said Jacobs. ‘You’ve got the ice broken before you start. Nice contact to have.’

  ‘1 won’t have him long after this,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Jacobs. ‘I exposed my uncle once for black-marketing whisky. He’s still my uncle. Anyway, who cares if he isn’t? The only point about having contacts is to use them when the time comes. I didn’t take you for the squeamish type.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said O’Toole. ‘I’m off on the job now. I expect I’ll be about an hour and a half.’

  ‘Mind, no expensive drinks,’ said Jacobs. ‘Beer and sincerity.’

  O’Toole walked along Fleet Street and turned up Kingsway to get out of range of the office. Near Holborn Tube he found a coffee-house and sat in a far corner with his back to the door. Over a coffee he wondered what to do.

  The time to refuse the assignment had passed: he’d never refused one before, and he couldn’t afford to convict himself of snobbery straight after the warning.

  On the other hand, he thought, you have to live somewhere.

  Finally he saw a phone by the counter and rang his own number. Macedon answered.

  ‘You know who this is,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘I do, lodger,’ said Macedon. ‘Are you giving notice?’

  ‘No fear,’ said O’Toole. ‘Look, Michael, I’ll explain what this is about later. I just want you to answer a question. You didn’t know this floosie who was strangled in Park Lane last night, did you?’

  ‘Not as far as I know,’ said Macedon. ‘Should I?’

  ‘It’s just a crazy idea, and not mine,’ said O’Toole. ‘Will you be in tonight?’

  ‘I’m going out in a few minutes.’

  ‘Don’t answer the phone before you go.’

  ‘This is pretty exciting stuff,’ said Macedon. ‘Who’s after me?’

  ‘I am,’ said O’Toole. ‘Just go out and forget about it. I’ll fill you in later.’

  ‘If it’s that good, I’ll wait up,’ said Macedon.

  O’Toole paid for the coffee, caught a bus up Oxford Street and slipped into a newsreel. On the screen, a man with a beard said he was going to give the news behind the news, but it turned out to be the ski-jumpers and floods in Japan, just like it always was. When the programme came round to the baby crocodiles in Florida again, O’Toole left and caught a bus back to the office.

  Barr and Starsh were talking together near the subs’ table.

  ‘Did you get it, O’Toole?’ asked Barr.

  ‘I’m afraid Macedon just wouldn’t play at all,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘I couldn’t even get him to admit that it was possible rumours were going round about him. He was quite ready to talk to me, but I’m afraid he’s a bit too bright to fall for this particular pitch. Perhaps he saw our story about Mr. Green the other week.’

  ‘Well, never mind,’ said Barr, it was worth a try, anyway. We still need a strong lead story. Nick, could you whip me up one of your Court Correspondent pieces?’

  ‘What about the Queen does the football pools every week?’ suggested Starsh. ‘Doesn’t gamble, of course, just marks a coupon and then checks the results for fun. It’ll never be denied.’

  ‘Thursday night at Buckingham Palace is just like your home, with pools and telly,’ said Barr. ‘It’ll do. A close friend of the Royal Family told us, eh? Perhaps we could have a crown drawn with ones twos and x’s.’

  ‘Home and away with Royalty,’ suggested Starsh.

  ‘Let me see it,’ said Barr.

  Turning to O’Toole, Barr dismissed him with ‘Better luck next time, laddie,’ and went back into his office.

  The rest of the night was quiet. When the first edition came up and was distributed, a copy to each man present, by an evil-looking copy-boy, O’Toole flipped through the paper and found the spurious life-story of Ricky Rogers on the first feature-page.

  Sure enough, there was no reference to Ricky’s loving father, but the piece was now boldly by-lined ‘by Ricky Rogers’. The tiny eye-straining line, ‘as told to James O’Toole’, had disappeared too. No doubt, thought O’Toole, Mary Lou had given Barr the green light to use Ricky’s byline, as a sort of tip. Or perhaps Barr had just picked up the small change.

  On the front page the Sun Court Correspondent broke the news about Thursday nights at the Palace. It appeared that ‘a trusted Royal servant’ wrote off for the pools coupons.

  By eleven o’clock the subs’ table was down to one late-stop subeditor who was settling down with a Western for the long haul to four a.m. Jacobs was playing dice with a group of Saturday-casual reporters. Barring the Second Coming, the only changes likely to be made in the paper for the four million copies still to be printed were late darts tournament results from pubs in outlying parts of the country.

  Starsh came up, wearing an overcoat and scarf.

  ‘I believe you live near me, James,’ he said. ‘Like to share a cab?’

  ‘Good idea,’ said O’Toole.

  Starsh gave the driver an address in Knightsbridge. It turned out to be a small block of, evidently, big flats.

  ‘You can walk from here, James,’ he said. ‘I usually have a nightcap after the big rush on Saturday. Care to join me?’

  ‘Very cosy,’ said O’Toole.

  Starsh led him through a vestibule along a carpeted corridor lined with orange-toned mirrors with engraved nymphs and waterfalls and up a broad stair to the first floor. He let them in with a key. The light was on inside.

  The room was furnished with dark wooden table and chairs and some glass-fronted cupboards, all in phoney Elizabethan style. It didn’t look as if Starsh, or anyone else, lived there.

  A neat, dark, early middle-aged woman came through another door. She was wearing a housegown, slippers and a bright lipstick.

  ‘Oh!’ she said, seeing O’Toole.

  ‘Dear, this is Mr. O’Toole from the office,’ said Starsh. ‘I’ve brought him in for a nightcap.’ Turning to O’Toole, he added, ‘This is Mrs. Starsh.’

  ‘I’ve heard so much about you, Mr. O’Toole,’ said the woman, offering a cold hand. ‘Nick’s often talked about you.’

  O’Toole mumbled a polite greeting.

  ‘I’ll leave you men to it,’ she said, smiling brightly.

  ‘Won’t be long, dear,’ said Starsh.

  He took off his overcoat, unlocked one of the glass-fronted cupboards and brought out a bottle of whisky and glasses.

  ‘Could I have one of your cigarettes, dear boy?’ he asked O’Toole, pouring out drinks.

  ‘I thought you were tapering off,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘Weakness,’ said Starsh, lighting the cigarette and puffing it timidly, as if he was learning to smoke.

  ‘Now,’ he said, after sipping his drink. ‘You’re angry with us.’

  ‘Storm in a teacup,’ said O’Toole. ‘You know how we are i
n this business, like greyhounds on the leash. As soon as I got out after Macedon I was all right. That was an odd idea of Cain’s, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I suggested it,’ said Starsh, with a wicked grin. ‘Aren’t you living with Macedon?’

  ‘Does Barr know that?’ asked O’Toole.

  ‘Not as far as I know. Tell me, just how hard did you try to get his denial?’

  ‘Hard enough,’ said O’Toole, feeling guilty.

  ‘This is completely off the record, of course,’ said Starsh. I’m only mentioning this because of the little ethical problems we’ve discussed. And, of course, I’m not saying for a moment that anyone could have got Macedon to deny the murder. But equally, you’ve got to admit, this could be a case of a man who’s not prepared to do to a friend something which he’ll do to a stranger without a moment’s compunction—and do very competently, too. I thought you’d enjoy the possible paradox involved here.’

  ‘Obviously, I can make no comment,’ said O’Toole. ‘You wouldn’t have suggested it to Barr in the first place to make some sort of point, would you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Starsh, grinning again. ‘Purely on its merits as a news story, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said O’Toole. ‘Now that we’re talking so close to home, Nick, is it true you used to be a Communist?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Starsh.

  ‘You mean you used to believe all that stuff?’ asked O’Toole. ‘About the thesis being negated by the antithesis and the bread turning into flesh and the wine coming out as blood and all that?’

  ‘At least I never believed that,’ said Starsh, smiling again. ‘You’re thinking of Norman Knight.’

  ‘Nothing to be ashamed of,’ said O’Toole. ‘Everyone has some scruffy little belief in the background he doesn’t want people to know about. Look at me, for instance. I used to believe in cub’s honour.’ He raised two fingers to the side of his head.

  ‘Sometimes I think you still do,’ said Starsh.

  ‘This is turning into a hate session,’ said O’Toole. ‘What are you trying to do—give me notice?’

  ‘Not a bit of it, dear boy,’ said Starsh. ‘We can certainly use you, or at any rate someone with your peculiar combination of talents. But I wonder whether you need us.’

  ‘I have to eat,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘Come, come,’ said Starsh. ‘You’re young and unmarried, and there are a thousand other things you could do for a living. You don’t strike me as a vagabond, so I suppose there was some serious purpose which brought you all the way over here. I am just wondering whether you are going to achieve it with us. You have the necessary ability to hold the job you have now, certainly. Your attack and aggressiveness might even qualify you for an editor’s chair one day, on the right kind of paper. But, to be quite frank with you, I doubt that you have the suppleness to slip under the barriers which lie between.’

  ‘Not slippery enough?’ asked O’Toole, uncertain if he was being flattered or asked for his resignation.

  ‘That’s not my choice of word,’ said Starsh. ‘Perhaps it’s a kind of sensitivity I have in mind. Your puritanical outbursts, for example. Strictly speaking, it’s not your place to have them at all, or at least show them. But ours is not an authoritarian organisation, and we are prepared to overlook a great deal in a promising man settling in. However, beyond a certain point, they impose an unwanted strain on those who are unlucky enough to be your superiors. A man who is going to succeed must sense these tensions, and desist before it is too late.’

  ‘Or not have puritanical outbursts at all,’ suggested O’Toole.

  ‘Not in the least,’ said Starsh. ‘Simply to do what you are told will never qualify you to give orders to others. That is the outlook of the hack, and the place for hacks is on the bottom rung. They must be changed frequently, too, before they have a chance to make themselves indispensable—rather as barnacles are periodically scraped off ships.’

  ‘You can’t win,’ said O’Toole. ‘You mustn’t do what you’re told, and you mustn’t annoy the boss by objecting to what you’re told to do.’

  ‘There is a narrow path between,’ said Starsh. ‘Those who want power in an organisation like ours must pass along it.’

  ‘What sort of work do you suggest I should take up?’ asked O’Toole.

  ‘Now don’t misunderstand me, James,’ said Starsh. ‘This is in no sense an ultimatum. If you’re happy where you are, by all means stay with us for as long as you need to find your feet. Perhaps your future is with us: I do not mean to be dogmatic either way. But, since you ask me, I rather see you with a pile of yellowing manuscript. Perhaps you may be able to resolve some of your problems that way. Certainly, you will first have to accept the way we do things before you can hope to impose your own ideas on us, and you don’t seem to me to show any signs of doing so.’

  O’Toole took a long sip of his drink. ‘There’s a funny thing, Nick,’ he said at length. ‘Just the other day I was telling someone that you don’t have to be sincere in the newspaper game.’

  ‘Not sincere about the day-to-day stories, of course not,’ said Starsh. ‘But ours is a small organisation, and we cannot function without teamwork. On that level we must have sincerity, or at least mutual loyalty. If one of us has secret reservations about the others, the organisation will soon begin to suffer. Every man we have is valuable to us, but none is invaluable.’

  O’Toole finished his drink saying nothing. Starsh rose. ‘Now, dear boy,’ he said, yawning, ‘we have had a wearing day.

  ‘Of course,’ said O’Toole. ‘Thanks for the drink, Nick. I enjoyed the straight-from-the-shoulder stuff, and there’s really only one thing I can add to it: I still think Ricky Rogers is a bastard.’

  ‘Now you’re being sincere,’ said Starsh, laughing and helping him into his coat.

  Walking home by Cromwell Road and the locked-up South Kensington Tube, O’Toole wondered about Starsh. The oblique, intricate reprimand—if it was a reprimand—sounded like the higher grades of the Civil Service, ludicrously out of place in relation to an enterprise like the Sunday Sun. It sounded even more ludicrous delivered in Starsh’s voice, with its ample tint of Lancashire. The only other person O’Toole had ever heard speak that way was Stanley Holloway, on a comical gramophone record, but Starsh was evidently making some sort of serious point. There was no one up at the flat as he crept to bed.

  XIX

  ‘Quite by accident, the name of Michael Macedon was tossed into a very complicated situation which really had nothing to do with you,’ O’Toole explained. ‘Mind if I fry myself one of your eggs?’

  The pair were breakfasting in the kitchen of Macedon’s flat: O’Toole in a turtle-necked sweater and crushed trousers in which he had taken to sleeping, Macedon in a frayed but once magnificent silk dressing-gown. The inhabitants and assorted itinerants who lived in the flat with any permanence each had a personal stock of food in an agreed nook or corner of the pantry, but O’Toole was down to a piece of salami and a mouldy packet of pre-sliced bread, neither of which he fancied for breakfast.

  ‘We’ll have to make a note of it,’ said Macedon. ‘This is Liberty Hall, of course, old boy, but we’re not exactly all mucking in together, you know. We have to cling to a minimal landlord and lodger relationship to preserve our dignity, yours as well as mine. On second thoughts, let’s say I’m inviting you to breakfast, to cut down on the bookkeeping.’

  ‘This is the old civilisation of Europe,’ said O’Toole, cracking an egg into the frying-pan. ‘People who have lived together a long time, and all that stuff.’

  ‘Let’s get back to the mystery phone call,’ said Macedon, munching a slice of toast with honey. ‘Did this involve another of your attractive cash offers? It may have been rather presumptuous of you to turn it down on my behalf, James. At the moment I would be prepared to go quite some distance for a little ready money to buy the furniture back, as you well know.’

  ‘No money had
been mentioned at the point where I rang you,’ said O’Toole. ‘The management of my paper live pretty sheltered lives, and they believe what they read in the other papers. This wretched girl who was strangled is supposed to be straight out of Debrett, and so are you. As a matter of fact you are, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m somebody’s issue living, if you call this living,’ said Macedon. ‘You know, one s, one d, I’m an s. But go on.’

  ‘Well the big boss got the idea of getting me to get you to deny you strangled her.’

  ‘Willingly,’ said Macedon. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘There’s a bit more to it than that,’ said O’Toole. ‘You were supposed to deny it with plenty of picturesque detail, if possible with your hand on the Bible, so as to convey the impression you did it.’

  ‘Great fun,’ said Macedon. ‘Why me?’

  ‘Your name was actually suggested by an organisation man from Manchester we have round the office,’ said O’Toole. ‘He doesn’t know you, any more than he knows any of the other unfortunates who get written up in our paper. But he does seem to know that I know you, and he was giving me my Boy Scout fire-lighting test. It’s not easy to explain this to anyone who’s not in the business.’

  ‘Did you pass?’ asked Macedon. ‘I hope you’re in no danger of unemployment. Can’t afford that now.’

  ‘I failed,’ said O’Toole. ‘They failed, too, in a way. I think I can ride out the storm by good work and sincerity, so the rent is safe for the time being.’

  ‘That’s the main thing,’ said Macedon. ‘Tea?’

  ‘Just the way it comes,’ said O’Toole, pushing his teacup over, I must say you’re taking this very calmly, Michael. You were nearly branded as the society strangler.’

  Macedon laughed.

  ‘Really, old boy, no one takes your paper seriously, do they? I’m sure no one I know does.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ said O’Toole. ‘Why didn’t you take the money for your love-life, the first time I came round here?’

  ‘That was different,’ said Macedon. ‘Getting mixed up with Czech actresses isn’t really the thing, is it? Beside, it would have led to complications with my authentic love-life at the time. On the other hand, I’m sure no one I know would really think I was the society strangler, and I don’t think they’d care, either. I mean, we all know what sort of tricks you chaps get up to on Sundays. Still, if my not denying I’m the culprit scores some sort of victory for you, I’m prepared to overlook the cash I’ve missed.’