I said:
She tried to kill herself once and was stopped. She thinks it might have been better if she had succeeded—she thinks it when people are very banal and boring. Now she can’t because of me.
He laughed, showing his gold-capped teeth.
Are you afraid she will try again?
I wish she were happier. I can’t see why things make her unhappy. But if they do would it not be rational to prefer a short miserable life to a long one?
Perhaps, I said, she would be better dead.
He took out another cigarette. I saw now that when he did not want to answer immediately he became even more collected. He lit it and inhaled and exhaled.
He said:
When you play bridge with beginners—when you try to help them out—you give them some general rules to go by. Then they follow the rule and something goes wrong. But if you’d had their hand you wouldn’t have played the thing you told them to play, because you’d have seen all the reasons the rule did not apply.
He said:
People who generalise about people are dismissed as superficial. It’s only when you’ve known large numbers of people that you can spot the unusual ones—when you look at each one as if you’d never seen one before, they all look alike.
He said:
Do you really want me to pronounce on someone you’ve known for 11 years and I’ve never met, on the basis of a lot of other people I have met?
He said:
Do you seriously expect me to argue with you?
He said:
Look here, I’m not likely to be much good to you on this one. If you need a friend one day give me a shout. In the meantime I’ll give you an arrow against misfortune—I’ll teach you to play piquet.
He took me into another room where there was a little table with a chessboard inlaid into it. He took two packs of cards from a drawer and began explaining the rules of piquet.
He taught me to play piquet.
He won most of the games, but I won some. I got better as we played. He said I picked it up quickly and did not play badly.
At last he said
I must dress. I’ve a two o’clock appointment and it’s nearly four—I mustn’t be too late.
He said
I wish you well. I hope you find what you’re looking for. Look me up in ten years or so. If you’ve learnt bridge and are halfway decent I’ll take you to the Jockey Club.
I went out into the street again. I walked to Sloane Square and I took the Circle Line.
5
A good samurai will parry the blow
I asked Sibylla whether she had seen Seven Samurai at Oxford. She said she had. I asked whether she had gone with someone. She said she couldn’t remember. I said I’d met a man who’d seen it at Oxford with a girl whose name wasn’t definitely not Sibylla.
Maybe I did, said Sib. Yes, now I think of it, I wished I hadn’t. It wasn’t really his kind of thing, and he wanted to hold hands. In Seven Samurai! I ask you!
Was he good looking?
He must have been, said Sib. I made him go home afterward because I wanted to be alone. You can’t do that with a plain man—they look so pathetic and uncertain. The best thing is to go to mediocre films with plain boring people, and to brilliant films with beautiful, dazzlingly witty people—in a way it’s a waste when your attention is otherwise engaged, but at least you can ignore them with a clear conscience.
Was he witty?
For heaven’s sake, Ludo, I was watching one of the masterpieces of modern cinema. How should I know whether the silent person sitting beside me was witty?
She seemed to have made a recovery from Carpworld. The project had sent her International Cricketer which she said was not too bad. I taught her to play piquet. I taught everyone at Bermondsey Boys Junior Judo to play piquet and soon everyone was turning up half an hour early to play piquet before class. I beat Sibylla 2 times out of 3 and everyone else 9 times out of 10. I would probably have won 10 times out of 10, but as Szegeti had said there is quite a high element of chance in the game.
I looked for chances to proclaim myself the son of the Danish ambassador, but none presented itself.
Or I could be the son of a Belgian attaché.
I am ze son of ze Belgian attaché, I murmured. Release this man! My father is the Swedish DCM.
I got a book on bridge out of the library. Szegeti said he would take me to the Jockey Club when I was 21, but I thought if I got really good at the game he might settle for a mature 12. There is a Jockey Club in England, but the Jockey Club is in Paris; I am hoping he meant the French one. I found out what a revolving discard is: when you can’t follow suit & want to tell your partner which suit to lead if he wins the trick, you play a low card in the suit above the desired suit, or a high card in the suit below it, so a low diamond means clubs a high diamond means hearts a low heart means diamonds a high heart means spades and so on. Now that everyone at judo knows piquet I am going to teach them bridge and get some practice.
I thought that I was beginning to get the hang of this. I had started by picking the wrong kind of father, but now I knew what to look for I could build up a collection of 20 or so. I felt ashamed, really ashamed of all the years I’d spent trying to identify the father who happened to be mine, instead of simply claiming the best on offer.
Today as I was riding the Circle Line a man came running down the stairs at Embankment. He ran into the car followed by three men. He ran along the car, dodging poles, and at the last moment dashed out again. The doors closed on the three men, who swore.
Hate to do it to him, in a way, said 1.
Still, he’s not being exactly cooperative, said 2.
I had recognised his face. It was Red Devlin.
Red Devlin had reported on atrocities in Lebanon, and then he had been transferred to Azerbaijan and kidnapped the first day. He had been held captive for five years and then he had taught one of his captors to play chess, and then he had escaped over mountains and desert. Then he had come back to Britain and gone into hiding and he had come out of hiding to publish a book six months later. It had only just come out in hardback, so I didn’t know whether it talked about ragged urchins.
It doesn’t matter really, said 3. We’ll catch him at his house.
Right you are, said 1.
They got off after four or five stops and I followed them to a street with semi-detached houses. A small crowd of people were standing outside one. The three men joined them.
At the other end of the street a man hurtled around the corner and stopped dead. Then he began to walk forward, very slowly. He stopped in front of the house and said something I couldn’t hear. The men crowded round. I thought of going forward and saying This man is a Norwegian citizen! or My father is the Polish vice-consul! but I could not see that it would help. Even a real Danish consul could not have helped him now.
He opened a gate in a hedge and disappeared inside.
Most of the crowd dispersed. A few stayed behind.
I threw Lee and Brian at judo today. Lee is 14, and Brian is 13 but taller and heavier.
I told Sibylla & she asked what my teacher had said. I said he had said it was very good.
Sibylla said that didn’t sound very character-building. I said most authorities on child psychology said a child should be given encouragement and reinforcement. Sib said Bandura and who else? I said everybody else. I didn’t say that the authorities also said a parent had to be able to set limits because I was afraid she might suddenly decide to make up for lost time and set a lot of limits.
Sibylla said: Well just remember Richie, becoming the great judo champion is not the end of the story.