He looked at me as if I was crackers. ‘What gang?’
‘Green Toe Gang.’ He thought I’d walked on the ship straight out of an Essex loony bin.
‘Was it on telly?’
‘It could have been, I suppose.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t know, then, would I? I work shifts.’
‘The Green Toe Gang,’ I said. ‘It’s written all over the place. You can’t fool me. I can read. Where’s the boss of it?’
Something occurred to him, and he laughed. ‘Oh! Ah! Green Toe Gang! That’s a good ’un, mate. And to think — I never thought of it! There ain’t no boss, though, except the skipper, and Green Toe Gang don’t bother him.’
‘Doesn’t it? Why not?’
‘Well, you see, Green Toe Gang’s Dutch for NO ENTRY. See? It’s in English underneath.’
He walked off, laughing, while I stood white-faced at the bar, thanking God for my narrow escape. Maybe the situation wasn’t as bad as I thought. I’d have another brandy, then go to my cabin and sleep so as to arrive in the Netherlands as fresh as a tulip. On landing I would drive to a lovely small town in the south, and put up at a hotel for a couple of days, where I could feed myself silly. But I had reckoned without fate, a mistake I had made too often in my life.
‘Get me one, will you, Michael, my owd duck? A double, if you don’t mind. And a nice black coffee for Maria. She’s feeling a bit queasy with the rocking of this superannuated troopship.’
I tried to stop myself sliding into a dead faint. ‘You must be joking.’
‘I’m not,’ he said blandly.
‘How did you get on board?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘we didn’t come on hidden in a crate of oranges. Bill Straw travels like a gentleman — you ought to know that by now.’
Maria wore a fur coat and a hat. She looked at me with her large, beautifully liquid eyes. Bill was impeccably got up, a Burberry on his arm and a large holdall by his feet. ‘Aren’t you glad to see us?’
‘I’m stunned out of my mind with the shock’ — which must have been true, because I ordered the brandies and coffee, and we took them to a table.
‘Perfectly understandable,’ he said. ‘You’ve been through hell in the last three days.’
‘It was my impression that you had, as well.’
He leaned across Maria, who stroked the back of his neck. ‘The only thing wrong with these boats is that they don’t sell them little custard pies I like so much. And the tea-bag tea’s rotten.’
‘If you’d told ’em you was coming, they’d have mashed a real Worksop pot.’
He lifted his brandy. ‘You’re as sarky as ever, aren’t you, Michael? Here’s to a lovely trip abroad for all of us.’
‘I didn’t know you fancied a threesome.’
Maria slapped my hand, spilling some of the brandy.
‘What I’d like to know,’ I said, ‘is how you came to be on this boat. I thought Moggerhanger had you in Durrance Vile up to a couple of hours ago.’
He took such a while over lighting his cigar that I knew he was about to tell me a pack of lies. ‘You’ll never believe me — but what do I care? He let us go last night.’
‘Why?’
‘He saw no point in holding us. It was you he wanted to frighten. He knew the three of us were like one happy family, and that the mere idea that he had got us at his mercy would make you cough up the doings. Claud’s a reasonable man, though he did make it a condition of our release that I wouldn’t phone Upper Mayhem and tell you about it. You can understand that, can’t you, Michael?’
‘Go on.’
‘There’s nothing to go on about. We had a talk with Lord Moggerhanger before he let us go. He and Lady Moggerhanger had us in for tea. They’re not a bad couple, Michael. And the cakes were delicious.’
‘I’ll bet they were. On your grave they can write: “He sold his best pal for a Nelson Square”.’
‘Hey, steady on — a cream bun, at least!’
‘It’ll be in the Guinness Book of Epitaphs. You fucked up my plan.’
‘Michael, be realistic. You would never have got on this boat with Claud’s three million quids’ worth of kay-li. It wasn’t on, and you know it. Or you ought to.’
‘It’s a bitter pill to swallow,’ I said.
‘Most pills are, Michael.’
‘Fuck off,’ I told him.
‘That’s more like the old Mike Cullen.’
‘So how did you get here?’
‘I’ll tell you. When Lord Moggerhanger let us go, we went to my room in Somers Town. I wasn’t followed, and the Green Toe Gang — I say, have you seen them notices all over the place? In’t it a bloody scream? Green Toe Gang everywhere! So that’s where they got their name? Makes you wonder, don’t it?’
‘Get on with your yarn.’
‘Let’s have another brandy first. And a pot of camomile tea for Maria. She’s getting worse, aren’t you, darling?’
She only stopped kneading her hands together when they went over her bosom, or against her mouth, or were drawn across her glistening forehead. She nodded, but wouldn’t say anything in case the effort made her sick. She was obviously on the verge.
‘Make ’em doubles, Michaeclass="underline" there’ll be a queue soon.’ His sponging was a tidal wave, a wall of water stretching from the horizon that you couldn’t avoid. I got the drinks. ‘You see,’ he went on, ‘I pulled the money out of the mattress, fifty thousand pounds of it, and this morning we took the boat train from Liverpool Street. The money’s in this holdall at my feet, so go easy with your cigar ash.’
‘You mean to say you’ve cadged two rounds of drinks off me, and you got fifty thousand shekels in that bag?’
He was offended. ‘I didn’t want to arouse your cupidity, or your suspicion. But now I’ve told you. I never had any secrets from you, did I, Michael?’
‘If you don’t stop calling me Michael every few seconds I’ll clock you one.’
‘That’s the ticket, duck. But don’t worry. I’ll buy the next round.’
‘What else did you talk about with Claud?’
‘Oh, it was just a general, wide-ranging sort of conversation.’
‘What, though?’
‘Travel. Things like that. We jabbered about holidays abroad, and I said I preferred the Dover-Calais run because it was the shortest and because there was a lovely little cake and coffee shop I could stoke up at. It had to be admitted, though, that some people liked longer crossings, for all sorts of reasons. I knew what he was getting at, mind you, and he fell right into my trap. “Michael allus goes to Holland to see his everloving wife on the Harwich to Hook run,” I said, as if you’d told it me only a few days ago, and I’d believed it hook line and sinker. I told him because I knew that in the next few days you would take any other crossing but this.’
He was living proof, if proof was needed, that one Nottingham man can think for another, and more or less get it right. In that sense his treachery had little meaning. He understood my look.
‘I can see I was wrong, but Michael, what bloody crazy thought led you to take this crossing today?’
‘I’m safe on board, aren’t I? Though I only just made it.’
‘I suppose that’s all right, then. Eh, Maria?’
She tried to laugh, but looked awful, her eyes opening wider at each wilful flip of the boat. I felt as if I could drink fifty more brandies and not get drunk. My brain was iced up, and I had hardly any contact with it.