A Crooked Sixpence Read online

  ‘Very decent of you,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘You’ve given me an idea, though,’ said Macedon. ‘I do a bit of scribbling myself now and again. I had some interesting war experiences—I don’t mean hero stuff, of course, but some rather funny things happened in the prison-camp I was in. The Germans had some very peculiar ideas about who was important and who wasn’t, and they picked some of us out for special treatment. Had some notion about bartering us off. Perhaps your paper might be interested in some articles? Strictly cash basis, of course.’

  ‘Let me see some of it and I could give you some sort of verdict myself,’ said O’Toole. ‘Not much sex, eh, but some big names?’

  ‘There were some quite well-known people there,’ said Macedon.

  ‘Give me a week or two until your strangling exploits blow over,’ said O’Toole. ‘Could I have another cup?’

  Elizabeth phoned later in the day and told O’Toole she knew about a party in Hampstead, and they met in the coffee-house with the string and the pot-plants, and then bought a bottle of Spanish Beaujolais and went along.

  It was a furnished-flat type of flat, yellow paint and Portobello Road furniture, with amusing slogans like MUST YOU? drawn on pieces of paper stuck on the walls. The guests were men who had gone to school with Dylan Thomas and Stephen Spender, with woollen neckties and one wing of the collars of their woollen shirts turned up to prove it.

  A girl in red stockings and a black dress was dancing with British abandon, a heavy frown creasing her round, chubby and pretty-when-young face, the kind you see behind a tea-urn at the WVS. Her partner, improbably, was a pale young man in a waistcoat. Because she looked a little like Elizabeth, O’Toole turned quickly away and spoke to a blond man with a creased face who turned out to be a South African.

  O’Toole had hardly opened his mouth when the South African challenged him on the White Australia Policy. O’Toole tried to explain that it was not racialist, but had actually begun with the determination of the infant Australian working-class movement to prevent Australia becoming a race-exploitation society like South Africa, the explanation he had learnt at school but had never quite accepted. He said to the South African that you had to understand the historical preconditions, and the South African began to say that if you took a sympathetic enough view of the historical pre-conditions you could defend anything, when a woman in a sari who had been leaning forward in a chair with glazed eyes suddenly vomited on the South African’s suede shoes.

  As the South African was stamping about the room like a man just come in out of the snow, an Indian hurried up with a towel and said to O’Toole in passing: ‘She isn’t an Indian, you know, she’s a German in a sari.’

  ‘Whatever she is she probably got interested in what was going on and missed the inner signal,’ said O’Toole to Elizabeth. ‘It could happen to anyone.’

  But the South African seemed to hold O’Toole responsible, and it was hardly the sort of thing you could argue about, so O’Toole and Elizabeth finished their drinks and left. There seemed nothing else to do but go back to O’Toole’s room.

  Elizabeth made tea and they sat down.

  ‘Well?’ said O’Toole. ‘Where do we go from here?’

  ‘Don’t be so restless, James,’ said Elizabeth. ‘What happened at the party was a pity, but they’d had a lot to drink and it was just one of those things.’

  ‘They were a pretty crummy bunch, taken all in all,’ said O’Toole.

  ‘Now really,’ said the girl with a tolerant smile, ‘look who’s talking.’

  ‘I know,’ said O’Toole, ‘I go round tricking people like a door-to-door salesman, or worse, and here’s a new development—I’ve just taken to double-crossing my employers, even according to their tilted lights.’

  ‘I’ve asked you this before,’ said the girl. ‘Why do you do it?’

  ‘It’s my trade,’ said O’Toole, ‘I’m too old to start ballet-dancing, heavyweight wrestling or lyric poetry. It’s my only chance to make the grade.’

  ‘But surely, James, you’re too intelligent to regard this dreadful paper business as making the grade, aren’t you?’

  ‘I might get a column of my own,’ said O’Toole. ‘I might even get to be top vice man.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘No “and” about it. Naturally I’d prefer to get into the big time in a light, clean, interesting line of work, but this is better than nothing. At least there’s no heavy lifting.’

  ‘Whenever the subject of your job comes up, you get into this funny, bitter mood,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I don’t like you because of what you do, you know.’

  ‘I don’t know what you can make of me,’ said O’Toole. ‘For that matter, I can never really get the hang of people like you. I used to think once the world was split up into successes and people who’d like to be, but it’s slowly coming through to me that most of the faces in the crowd don’t even know they’re faces in the crowd—they just want to stay alive, and be happy, and not get into too much trouble, and so the world goes on from one dull day to another.’

  ‘I suppose I’m a face in the crowd,’ said Elizabeth. Ί never really thought of it. At least I’m not a face in the paper.’

  ‘I can recognise it intellectually,’ said O’Toole. Of course there’s a clean, decent world outside the rat-race. The ordinary world isn’t a mouse-race, either, it just isn’t any race at all. Now and again I meet normal members of the public in the line of duty, you know. The trouble with me is, I can’t recognise it emotionally. Unless people want to fight me, or put me down, they just seem dull.’

  ‘Women, too?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. I keep hankering after an edge of ambition in a woman, and if there isn’t one there already I try to sharpen her up. Before we know where we are, we’re at it with straight razors, cutting each other down to size.’

  ‘That isn’t love, it isn’t even friendliness.’

  ‘I know it,’ said O’Toole. ‘Ultimately it is completely destructive. But while it lasts, it has an excitement about it which is difficult to explain if you haven’t felt it yourself.’

  ‘It’s terrifying,’ said the girl.

  ‘So is being a face in the crowd,’ said O’Toole.

  There was a pause, and then O’Toole put his arm round the girl, ‘I’m sorry, I was mostly talking to myself,’ he said. ‘I suspect all this is some sort of national thing I’m trying to shake off. I’m really envious of you under all the bluster.’

  The girl turned toward O’Toole, smiling through mist.

  ‘Good girl,’ said O’Toole. ‘You’re better than the British Council.’

  Later on they made love, fiercely, but on O’Toole’s side with certain reservations. If you make love unless you absolutely want to, you’re really making something else and you wind up hating the whole human race, he thought.

  Later, full of guilt and gratitude, he slept.

  XX

  NEXT morning the air-letter from Australia O’Toole had been expecting arrived. The first few lines confirmed his guess:

  Dear Shoulders:

  Just a few more weeks and we’ll be rolling in luxury together, mate.

  I’ve thrown in the job and I’ve got a booking by P & O for the 21st, which is a bit over a fortnight. They’re giving me a cut rate on a single cabin for writing a couple of publicity handouts.

  I don’t want my old cobbers to be ashamed of me so I’m getting a new suit made. It will cost sixty quid, but they tell me it’s the only way to get a decent job in London. I don’t want to get so desperate I have to take yours.

  I guess I’ll be putting up with you in your West End luxury flat, for the first few weeks, months or years. I’m scared of the cold, so lay in a few extra bags of coal. There’s hardly anybody left in Sydney now—I’ll be lucky if I can raise a dozen to see me off. Even that unemployed lurkman Don Clarke left for Lunnon last week, taking the knock on most of the bookmakers in town in the process. I dare say he’ll be on your back befo
re I get a chance to, so brush him off like a man.

  If you can think of anything I need bring, this is your last chance to let me know. You can get enough to eat over there, can’t you? Someone told me to take a case of soap and razor blades, but the war’s been over for fifteen years, hasn’t it?

  Jennifer’s getting a big play in the papers here on the local girl makes good theme. Don’t be bitter.

  Won’t be long now, Cobber,

  Jowls.

  On the way to the office O’Toole wondered how Jowls would react to the bus seats, and how he would react to Jowls’ reaction, and how many people would live to a ripe old age if you had to do some positive thing every night when you went to sleep to make sure you woke up in the morning.

  Norman Knight, pipe, blazer, handkerchief up the sleeve, didn’t look like that at all.

  ‘Get that exes sheet in as quick as you can, Digger,’ he said. ‘I’ve got you for the morning, and we’ve just got one little angle to clear up.’

  ‘No writs yet?’

  ‘Touch wood, nothing,’ said Knight. ‘The series starts on Sunday, and Starsh wants copy for the first three instalments by Thursday latest. That’s to give him a day to rewrite the whole thing, on his usual form.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Soho. We’re going to get to the bottom of these cards.’

  O’Toole typed up his expense claim, not forgetting twenty-five shillings he had not spent on drinks for Macedon. The office was in the normal Tuesday morning doldrum and there was no sign of Jacobs, Barr or Starsh, so he left his sheet on Jacobs’ desk. Then he walked with Knight up the Strand to Soho and the dubious bookseller-cum-stationer’s from which the vice inquiry had begun.

  ‘You’ll notice they’ve changed around a bit,’ said Knight, consulting notes. ‘Miss Maria is now giving relaxing treatment and Miss Raymonde appears to have moved to the other side of town and got into the corrective game. Notice anything else about them?’

  ‘Handwriting,’ suggested O’Toole.

  ‘All the same,’ said Knight. ‘Mastermind of vice at work, eh?’

  ‘Could be,’ said O’Toole. ‘Maybe they all went to the same school.’

  ‘Let’s find out,’ said Knight. ‘Here’s the drill. This Charley is bound to sell dirty books and pictures-they all do. You go in and ask him for something special. Get him to spread the gear out, and I’ll come in and jump him.’

  ‘How long do I get?’

  ‘Five minutes will be plenty,’ said Knight. On your way.’

  O’Toole took a deep breath and walked into the shop. For a bookshop, there were hardly any books in it. Tattered American magazines dealing with body-building, gun collecting and similar Freudian topics hung by bulldog clips from hooks on the wall. The one bookcase, a shoulder-high affair full of paperbacks, formed a defensive screen for the door at the back. O’Toole was studying the titles when a middle-aged man with rimless glasses and a printed hand-painted tie came out behind the counter.

  ‘Got any interesting books?’ O’Toole asked him.

  ‘You mean...interesting?’ the man asked.

  ‘That’s it. Interesting,’ said O’Toole. ‘You know what I mean?’

  ‘I might,’ said the man. ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘Doubt it,’ said O’Toole. ‘Straight off the boat. I’m in wool.’

  ‘I suppose you’re all right,’ said the man.

  ‘Safe as the bank,’ said O’Toole. ‘I’m interested in pictures, too.’

  ‘Come inside,’ said the man. I’m getting bloody good at this, thought O’Toole.

  The inner room had nothing in it at all except a trestle table and some filing cabinets. O’Toole sat down.

  The man went through another door and came back with some books, green and white paperbacks. ‘The Whip’, ‘White Thighs’, ‘The Enormous Bed’, O’Toole read off the titles. The man stood watching him as he flipped the pages. By the look of the fat paragraphs and sparse dialogue someone had been dirtying up John Galsworthy.

  ‘I’m not much of a reader, mate, if you know what I mean,’ he told the man. ‘Have you got something different?’

  The man went out again and came back with an armload of comic books. O’Toole opened one. It was badly-drawn and poorly-printed, but good enough to see that it was an obscene space-age comic-strip. Males in space helmets and oxygen cylinders, with subtly streamlined phalluses, were engaged in metallic soixante-neuf with Martian maids dressed mostly in zip-fasteners. In the distance there was flagellation by atomic power. O’Toole fought down a smile.

  ‘We have to move with the times,’ he said.

  The man smiled faintly.

  ‘I’ll take a dozen,’ said O’Toole. ‘How about some pictures?’

  The man went out again and came back with a shoe-box. O’Toole dipped in it and brought out a packet of photographs fastened by a rubber band.

  The first one gave him the time-freezing shock you always get from a dirty picture, like a flashbulb fired in your face. It showed a man with a moustache who might have been a second-hand car salesman and a schoolgirl in dark tunic, white shirt, necktie, and black stockings. She even appeared to have navy-blue bloomers on or, rather, half-off. But on a second look at her face, she was no schoolgirl. Badly needing a rational approach, O’Toole decided for no particular reason that the pair were Germans: the room in the background put him in mind of a set he’d seen in a film: ‘The Blue Angel’, was it?

  The next photograph hit him, too, but less. It was the same pair, a different position and not so much on. He flipped through the set and by the time he’d reached the twelfth, he could feel the photographer getting desperate for a new angle. Saying nothing, he spread the first set out on the table and dipped into the shoebox for another.

  This was more familiar territory, French personnel on the job. A couple of women went through the permutations, the most memorable thing about them being the strange expressions on their faces, as if they were holding their breaths. O’Toole put that set down and took out another: he’d seen enough now to achieve a life-class, anatomy lecture detachment. This time the photographer used a very big, very black and by his looks very good-natured Negro to liven up his limited subject: a topical touch but it got tedious, too, after a few pictures. In the next set the man and woman shown copulating were each missing a leg, to cater, presumably, for some obscure specialised market. I myself have only used women as crutches, thought O’Toole, and he must have smiled.

  The shopkeeper took it for approval and said, ‘Nice little lot, eh?’

  ‘Very tasty,’ said O’Toole. ‘How much?’

  ‘Flat rate, five bob each, two quid the set,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘How many do you want?’

  O’Toole didn’t get a chance to answer, for at that point Norman Knight walked in, glanced quickly over the pictures scattered along the table, and turned on the petrified shopkeeper.

  ‘A disgusting collection of filth,’ said Knight in his most magisterial manner. ‘How long has this been going on, eh?’

  ‘This is Norman Knight of the Sunday Sun,’ O’Toole cut into the pause, ‘I’m James O’Toole from the Sun.’

  ‘It’s a frame-up,’ said the shopkeeper, getting an outraged tone functioning.

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Knight. ‘You’ve been caught red-handed. I interrupted you trying to sell my colleague a load of degenerate filth.’

  The shopkeeper, spurred, perhaps, by the words, made a dive at the table, got the shoe-box under his arm and began frenziedly clawing the photos together. Knight and O’Toole each grabbed the nearest handful, stuffed them into their coat pockets and stood back. The shopkeeper kept on gathering, slowing down and finally stopping like a switched-off gramophone. Then he turned toward them and said, in a new, tired voice: ‘All right. What do you want?’

  ‘That’s more like it,’ said Knight, pulling out his pipe. ‘We’re going to put you out of business.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Everything goes into the p
aper. Your picture, your name, your address, the sort of stuff you carry, everything.’

  ‘Might do me a lot of good.’

  ‘Maybe. You’ll be raided, of course, the day after the story comes out. Coppers have to cover themselves, even if they are on the take round here. Be nothing here, of course. Then we’ll send someone else in and do you again. Then they’ll raid you again. How long do you think your customers will run the risk of being pinched on the premises with the gear in their pockets?’

  ‘I paid three thousand for this business,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘Why pick on me? I’m not doing anyone any harm, am I? There’s hundreds of businesses like this. What’s so special about this stuff?’ He waved deprecatingly at his stock.

  ‘We’re cleaning up London and we’ve got to start somewhere,’ said Knight.

  ‘That’s a good one, cleaning up London,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘I’ll lose the little bit I’ve scraped up to put into this place and someone will open up next door. You couldn’t even clean up a public lavatory. You make me sick.’

  ‘There might be another way,’ said Knight. ‘You help us, we help you. As you say, you’re nothing special.’

  ‘I get it,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘How much?’

  Knight didn’t bristle in his usual style.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just some information.’

  ‘If it’s where I get the stuff, nothing doing,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘They’d have my blood.’

  ‘We might settle for less,’ said Knight. ‘I’ll have no mercy on ponces, but after all, this is not so bad. Tell us how those cards get in your window and we might be able to arrange something.’

  ‘People bring them in,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘Anyone can.’