`So it's you, Viking,' Grimes said quite amiably. `Sorry about your disappointment, but you've got your dates wrong. Pretty
Polly here always has a queue and I booked her for tonight a fortnight since.'
'I…' Adam stammered. `I didn't know. I thought she was my girl. I… I love her.'
Grimes grinned. `So she led you up the garden path, eh? I get it. You're her fancy boy and have your fun for free. Well, you've been darned lucky. To the rest of us she's “Polly up the ladder and two pounds a go”.'
Polly gave a whimper, covered her face with her hands and, collapsing, buried it in the pillow.
For a moment Adam's temper boiled. He was seized with the impulse to grab Grimes by the neck, haul him out of bed and throw him naked out of the window. But the facts were all too terribly clear. Grimes was not to blame for being in Polly's bed end she made no attempt to deny that she was a whore. In that bed, where he had experienced such unalloyed delight, taking advantage of her father's deafness, night after night she gave herself to a succession of different men for money. Stifling a sob he turned away, stumbled to the window, got through it, reached, the yard and, half blinded by tears, staggered out into the alleyway. Twice unforeseen circumstances had robbed him of his prospects of advancement and now this new world of love had collapsed about his ears.
Adam went no more to the Saturday dances and shunned his friends, suspecting that any or all of them were Polly's `customers'. or a while his heartache was such that he could settle to nothing and was tortured nightly by visions of his ex divinity doing with other sailors the things she had done with him: tall, short, young or horny handed and hairy chested like Petty Officer Grimes. After a fortnight of this misanthropic existence he decided that he must either pull out of it or go mad; so he decided to divert his mind by writing a novel. Once he had forced himself to settle to his new occupation, he found it came easily. Soon he was immersed in his story and spent every free moment in the N.A.A.F.I. library, covering sheet after sheet of paper. The book was about he adventures of a Sea King whom he called Ord the Red handed, and the knowledge he had acquired through his dreams and the books he had read enabled him to describe the life of those days with uncanny verisimilitude. With feverish absorption he wrote one hundred thousand words in eleven weeks and his finishing the book coincided, within a few days, with his release from National Service.
Out of his meagre savings he paid for the manuscript to be typed, then sent it to a publisher who, from the advertisements in the Sunday Times, he judged to be the most likely to accept it. But he was now jobless and had, somehow, to support himself.
Now that he had his B.A., he had little doubt that his friends at Marlborough would be able to secure him a post as a master at a good private school; but he had never much fancied the idea of becoming a teacher and the more practice he could get at writing in any form the better for his ambitions as an author; so he made the rounds of the Portsmouth papers seeking an opening as a reporter.
The result was like a douche of cold water. Overworked and cynical editors told him that reporters were not just taken on because they had been members of the Literary Society of a snob public school; they had to graduate as copy boys who mixed the paste and ran errands for all and sundry, on a pay chit that would not keep a grown man in cigarettes and drink.
His head bloody but unbowed, Adam put his wits to work and his scruples aside. He telephoned an old friend of his, Mrs. Burroughs, the housekeeper at Loudly Hall, and, having learned that His Lordship was not in residence, said that he would come out there to spend a few nights. On Loudly Hall notepaper he then wrote to the editors of the two leading Southampton newspapers. To both he said that he aspired to a career in journalism and that Lord Ruffan had suggested that his connections might enable him to make a useful contribution to the paper's social column. His salary would be a secondary consideration, provided he was given reasonable expenses, as his main object was to gain experience. With both letters he enclosed the copies of Marlborough College Magazine in which his stories had appeared.
By return of post both editors said they would be pleased to give him an interview. Having talked with them he settled for a roving assignment on the Hampshire Post. His trouble then was that he knew no one in Hampshire and only a few families in Somerset and Wiltshire. In each case the `County' maintained its sublime exclusiveness. People `belonged' by right of birth and long owned estates, or they did not. Many of its members had abandoned their large houses for smaller ones in which they frequently did their own washing up. But that did not prevent their firmly rejecting the overtures of the nouveau riche who endeavoured to penetrate their circle. They were not intolerant and willingly accepted people who had distinguished themselves in government, science or the arts, whatever their origins, but they had an extreme dislike of publicity in any form, so, by becoming a newspaper man, Adam had automatically debarred himself from any participation in their activities.
It was not long before his editor realised that his contributions to the social column were limited to the doings of `cafe society', who had week end places in the country. But Adam's writing was definitely good and his editor was loath to get rid of him. As it happened, the chief crime reporter on the paper had to go into hospital for a serious operation; so the editor asked Adam if he would like to take over as understudy to the number two, who had stepped into the senior man's shoes.
Glad to be freed from the position he had obtained for himself on false pretences, and at this chance to gain experience in another branch of journalism, Adam readily agreed.
Apart from an occasional interesting assignment when his senior was otherwise occupied, he spent most of his time in magistrates' courts writing up cases that had any unusual features and, where many men would have found boring the long hours spent there listening to trivial misdemeanors, he felt that he was gaining valuable knowledge of human character and frailties which would later be useful for his books. Then, after he had been so employed for some months, he had a letter telling him that his novel Across the Green Seas had been accepted for publication.
The contract was not a very good one, as it had not even occurred to him to seek out a literary agent; so the publisher was taking twenty five per cent of all subsidiary rights: serialization, film, TV and foreign if any. But several people in the office assured him that he was very lucky to have had a first novel accepted anyhow, before it had been sent to a dozen or more publishers; so he went happily about his work, only at times a little frustrated by the knowledge that it must be many more months before the book appeared in print.
It was in the following winter that he was suddenly given cause to worry. He was on friendly terms with the police and by then, by having his ear well to the ground about crime in Southampton, had been able to give them a tip which led to the arrest and conviction of a scrap dealer who acted as a `fence' for a gang of youths who made a living by stealing lorry loads of old iron. After the trial he received a letter printed in capitals, which read:
'!Us boys know you shopped old Fred. We don't like your face and won't have it round these parts. Unless you want it carved you'll get out of So'ton and quick.'
He showed it to his editor and the police. Both said in effect,
'It's an occupational hazard, chum. But if you keep your eyes
skinned and don't go places late at night you ought to be all right.'
All went well for three weeks; then, at dusk one evening, as he
was coming out of a pub in which he had been trying to get the lowdown on a safe robbery, the gang set upon him.