I recognised such a spiel as a fairly realistic assessment of Bill’s personality, but only because it was so close to Moggerhanger’s own, who may in any case have had a secret den with a blow-up of himself on the wall to ponder on. “I’ve always found him to be as true as steel,” I said, “though in some ways you may be right, because he’s not the sort to get on the wrong side of, or suffer fools gladly.”
He gave the kind of laugh I didn’t like. “I’m happy to hear you say so. It says much for a man who sticks up for a pal. Myself, I never care enough about people to quarrel with them. I’m so easygoing, so don’t need to. But I didn’t altogether take to the way he knocked Parkhurst about as soon as he had the upper hand at Spleen Manor. He should have left the job to me.”
“We were all a bit excited.”
“That’s when you have to curb yourself. Now, that tuppeny-ha’penny novelist Gilbert Blaskin I can trust, because he doesn’t stop talking. He gives himself away with every word. You know what’s in his mind, and what he’s up to. You may not like it, but at least he knows himself and isn’t afraid to let everybody in on it. Not that I’d ever have any use for the likes of him in my business, because he’d only write about it afterwards, but I know that if I asked him to dinner I’d certainly be entertained. He’s strictly officer class, and that’s something I can handle. And because you’re his son, Michael, or so I understand, you’ve got a bit of the same class, though without the big mouth, and that’s why I always have a use for you. Another good thing is that you don’t boast, not like that superannuated retread Bill Straw.”
I thanked him, but felt like the eternal victim of people who talked too much, so hoped he would get on and tell me what I’d been called in for.
“You don’t thank anybody for the truth, Michael.” He lit a cigar. “I won’t offer you one. You’ve filched too many already, and I don’t encourage pilfering. You’re just a little too light-fingered at times.
“I only took them in an emergency.”
“That’s why I see it in myself to forgive you. But next time take something else, and make sure it’s not mine.” He pushed a hand forward, his splayed fingers showing a line of ridge-like scars. “See these marks? That’s where my father hit me with a steel poker when I was fourteen, for half inching one of his Woodbines. I couldn’t use the hand for three months. But I could hardly hold it against him, could I? Anyway, you want to know why I asked you here today. The fact is that in this last year I’ve been thinking of retiring from active life.”
“Oh no, sir, don’t say that.” It’s about time, I thought, but where’s the catch? “What will all of us do if you go? You’ve been a factor in all our lives for so long.”
He sighed. “I know I shall be surely missed, but I’ve had a long talk about it with Agnes, and my daughter Polly, and they agreed it was time I let go of the reins, and took a well-earned rest. In fact Agnes suggested it a long time ago, God bless her.”
“The world won’t be the same without you,” I said.
He did the inconceivable, in sighing a second time, with a deeper reach than the first. “Michael, I’m not getting any younger, however much I pray to be before going to sleep at night. I shan’t see sixty again, not by a long chalk.”
He was silent while I took this in and stared at the six-foot bottle of whisky on wheels. “Of course,” he went on, “I don’t want to go out like a cloth-footed mouse so that no one will know I’ve gone, or that they won’t miss me when I have. You know me. I want to go out with a bang, and a big one at that. I’ll still have my seat in the House of Lords, which will keep me amused, though the thought of it doesn’t stop me wanting to mark my retirement with an event which will be remembered by my main business rivals, should they be in a state to remember anything at all afterwards.”
I knew we were now getting down to what he wanted to see me about. He handed over a tubed cigar, and poured us both a goodly splash of whisky from the wheeled bottle. “And that — chin-chin — is where you come in.”
He took up some papers from his large deep-dyed Harrod’s desk with a rectangle of blood red in the centre. “First of all, I owe you, and I hope you will accept this as a mark of appreciation for your effort at Spleen Manor.”
I looked at the amount on the cheque. If I didn’t he’d be chagrined, and embark on another futile homily, perhaps much to my detriment. “Thank you very much. Seven hundred pounds is more than generous.”
“Straw got five hundred. I don’t want him getting above himself. He was, however, more than satisfied.”
Delphick hadn’t been too far wrong in claiming that ‘class’ still thrived in England. Moggerhanger, having come from the bottom, would never let it die. “I’m sure Bill appreciated his payment.”
“Just don’t tell him what you got, that’s all.”
“I don’t think he’d mind.”
“I’d take the cheque back if you believed that, except I see it as another indication of how you value friendship, which I’ll never be one to complain about, especially if I get the benefit of it now and again.”
The whisky was top malt, and encouraged me to say: “I find it hard to believe your seat in the House of Lords will keep you busy enough when you retired, sir.”
“I know, Michael, but I shall hang on to a scrapyard or two, for old times’ sake, so that I can motor over and see the lads at work once a week, and feast my eyes on how I got my start in life. I had my first scrapyard when I was eighteen, so I was a pioneer at recycling waste. Greenpeace owes me a medal. In those days, though, anything was game, especially lead. I couldn’t afford to ask questions as to where the men got it when they wheeled it in by the barrow load, but I suspect a good many devout people had to unfurl their umbrellas when they prayed in church on Sunday. I made enough money at it to move on to motors, and the rest, as you might say, is history.”
I had no option but to keep quiet, and let him have the last word, or at least the next one, which was easy with seven hundred smackers keeping my wallet warm. He buffed up a thumbnail with an ivory-handled file. “The fact is, I’m retiring from my work because times are changing. The riff-raff are taking over, foreigners who think nothing of killing each other on the streets, to the detriment, I might say, of innocent passersby. Your English criminal has never put the man in the street at risk, any of whom might be his father, or even cousins and in-laws. The homegrown criminal knew and knows that there are limits as to how far you can go, established by tradition, and one thing out of bounds was that you never used a shooter. Oh, I know there’ve been exceptions, but whoever employed a gun was either sick in the head, or a newcomer from up North, and if the law didn’t deal with them, and hang them, the fraternity soon found a way to put them on the straight and narrow. Everybody knew the rules. Number one was that you mustn’t endanger women and children, and number two was that if a bobby pulled you up you didn’t resist. A fair cop was a fair cop, and that’s all there was to it. And let me tell you this, Michael, the English criminal who abided by the rules was as close to being a gentleman as a man of his class could get.