I told him, quick as a flash of lightning at a garden party. My best thoughts always came without thought. ‘We’ll get a taxi to my father’s flat in Knightsbridge. I can’t think of a better place for you to hole up in for a while.’
‘Not so loud. Even walls have ears.’
‘Not this one. It’s crawling with bugs.’
He snatched his hand away, as one bit the end of his finger. ‘Bloody hell, so it is.’
‘We’ll hide you in Blaskin’s flat, just behind Harrods. Very good for shopping. Their Chelsea buns are second to none. Not to mention the sausages. You can even buy a dressing gown if you want to go for a walk.’
He was impatient. ‘Will your old man mind?’
‘If he does though, you’re made. He’s an eminent novelist.’
‘I know. I’ve met him, though I don’t suppose he’ll remember the occasion. It was in the railway station at Upper Mayhem the first time he came to see you there. He nearly went mad with pleasure when he climbed the iron ladder to get at the railway signal. He set it to derail the London express because he thought his publisher was on it, then burst into tears when you told him the line had been closed two years. I’ve never heard such language about poor old Beeching. It was all your fault though that he was so upset. I don’t think I’ve known anybody as callous as you. The things you’ve done.’
‘He wasn’t upset. He’s a novelist, don’t forget. He was just dying with chagrin, but he wasn’t by any means upset. If he got upset he wouldn’t be able to describe the situation in a novel. He’s far too canny to get so upset that he couldn’t write about it.’
Bill looked worried. ‘I hope he doesn’t write about me if he catches me hiding in his flat.’
I squashed a bug on the table. Bill dropped one in his vodka and it died immediately. ‘He may write about the situation in ten years. But he won’t know you’re there. He’s got the top flat these days, and there’s an attic he never goes to. With a bed and a pisspot, you can hide there for as long as you like.’
He gripped my elbow as though to break it. ‘Michael, I know that some poor Jews had to hide like that in the war from the Germans, but I couldn’t take it.’ He pointed to his temple. ‘I’ve seen that house in Amsterdam where Anne Frank lived. I’m not that strong. I’d go ga-ga after half an hour.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Die. I suppose I’ll be sorry if you do, but I’ll have done my best, so you won’t be on my conscience when I read about them fishing ossobuco from Battersea pond, Peking duck from Putney Reach, and searching vainly for the plain roast beef.’ I stood up to go. ‘I know Blaskin’s loft isn’t Claridge’s, but at least it’s central and you can almost stand up in it. Try it for a few days. What have you got to lose?’
I was bored with the situation and wanted to get back to Upper Mayhem to see if there was any sign of Bridgitte and the children. I was missing my pall of misery, because I thought, in my superstitious fashion, that being steeped in agony for lack of her might bring her back quicker than if I stayed to have a good time in Soho.
He squashed another bug, then pulled me back into my chair. ‘All right. I’ll do it. And I appreciate it. But I’ve got a request to make, and I hope you’ll say yes.’
‘The answer’s no.’
‘You haven’t heard it yet.’
‘You’ve got several score of the most ruthless mobsters in London after you, and you’re making conditions.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m finding you a job. I heard a couple of blokes say yesterday that Moggerhanger wanted another chauffeur. Why don’t you apply for the post? He’s good to his employees. You worked for him before, didn’t you? No, don’t take it like that. Sit down, old son.’
I did, before I fell. ‘That was ten years ago, and I ended up in prison.’
‘Didn’t we all? You got mixed up with Jack Leningrad. And you shagged Moggerhanger’s daughter. I don’t know which was worse in his eyes. But Polly’s married now, and Jack Leningrad’s moved to Lichtenstein.’
My head spun, yet I was tempted to work again for Moggerhanger because I would get behind the wheel of a Rolls-Royce. Secondly, I would earn some money, and thirdly, I might have another go at Polly, married or not.
‘What’s in it for you?’
‘The reason is,’ he said, ‘that if you’re working for Moggerhanger — who as well as the Green Toe Gang is after my guts — you might pick up bits of information as to whether or not he’s on my trail. I’ll have a friend in the enemy camp, and feel safer with my own intelligence and security system.’
I was silent for a while. So was he. I didn’t mind thinking myself at the turning-point of a long life, because I sometimes imagined it as much as twenty times a day, but what sent shivers up my backbone was to have Bill think it as well. I was horrified at having no say in whether things happened to me or not, so gave him my view on the matter as gently as I could. ‘Drop dead. Get cut to bits. Count me out.’
‘I can’t fathom it,’ he said after a minute or two. ‘Here I am, telling you that if I’m alive six weeks from now I promise on the sacred memory of my dead mother to share with you — and to share equally — the hundred thousand pounds I’ve got stashed away. If that’s not making it worth your while, nothing is. I know loyalty and friendship are precious commodities, Michael, but even they should have a price. I’m nothing if not realistic and generous.’
I was as greedy as the next man, and thought of all I could do with fifty thousand pounds. Corn in Egypt and the Promised Land rolled into one. I would turn the railway station into a fitted carpet palace. I’d repave the platforms, repair the footbridge, lay ornamental gardens on my stretch of line, as well as put in a new stove for Bridgitte and buy her a vacuum cleaner. I’d also give a flashing-light chess set to Smog, and if he failed to get into Oxford or Cambridge I’d buy him a degree from an American university, so that if he wanted a job he could become a secret member of the communist party and join the Foreign Office. Then, in our old age, after he’d become a colonel in the Red Army, we could spend our holidays in his nice cosy flat in Samarkand — or even Moscow, in the summer. Oh, the best laid plans of mice and men.
He grinned. ‘Is it on?’
‘You superannuated clapped-out Sherwood Forester,’ I said, ‘I suppose so.’
‘You leave my old regiment alone. Sometimes I quite like your gift of the gab, but not when you insult the Sherwood Foresters. Best regiment in the British Army. We had four battalions wiped out on the Somme, and God knows how many in the last lot.’
I apologised. What else could I do? ‘I don’t stand a chance of getting a job with Moggerhanger.’
‘Who knows? He’s allus got a soft spot for a reformed rake. Nothing’s guaranteed in this life, but you might just land it. You allus was game, I will say that for you. You don’t get anything in this life unless you try.’
I was irritated by him. ‘I’ll just be able to stand you for as long as it takes to install you at my old man’s flat. Let’s get out of here.’
‘Don’t forget your umbrella,’ he said when we were halfway up the stairs, and daylight struck my eyes like ball-bearings from a catapult. ‘It might start raining.’
Four
The first new thing I saw while snooping around Gilbert’s study — as he called it: he’d never studied anything in his life, except women — was a large coloured chart on the wall above his typewriter, showing the ages at which every well-known home, foreign and colonial novelist had died. His own name had a question mark by the side in brackets, at which I didn’t know whether to laugh, or dab my eyes with his clean white blotting paper. He might be nudging sixty, but I didn’t realise he was afraid to die.