It got to me, the simple, blind command, trampling on the wounded, rough-riding over the lower ranks. I was coiled up tight and my temper snapped.
‘Listen to me,’ I snarled into the phone. ‘He’s been out in the real world doing dirty things with some dirty people. He’s hurt and he needs help. I’ll tell you this, he’s more like Henry Brain than a Chatterton right now.’
The silence again; I could imagine her struggling against the impulse to strike down a subordinate, knowing that she was a crippled old lady locked up in a big house and that what she most wanted in the world couldn’t quite be bought, not outright.
‘Could you be more specific, Mr Hardy, about my grandson’s condition,’ she said at last, ‘and about your plans?’
I wanted to say, he’s simple-minded from Mogadon and liquor and he looks like a Sumo wrestler, but what good would it have done? She could probably have summoned up enough doctors and lawyers to get her hands on Baudin there and then if she had a mind to. It was probably then that I admitted to myself that I was interested in the problem of renovating Warwick Baudin. In my business I saw so many people putting themselves into his sort of nose-dive, I even gave them a nudge when I had to. It would be interesting to try to pull someone out of it. Gently, gently was the way with her ladyship.
‘There is a drug problem, Lady Catherine,’ I said quietly, ‘and the question of rebuilding his self-confidence.’ I thought that’d reach her. No Chatterton ever liked to be without a full measure of that.
‘You can provide this care, Mr Hardy? Surely a doctor…’
Why didn’t I just turn him over to her? What did I care how he handled it or what she thought of him? Maybe it was that first picture, with the record-breaking 440 just behind him and the whole world ahead. Maybe it was the wish to do a good, neat job and tie the package with ribbon. Maybe it was something else…
‘I’ll have a doctor helping me,’ I said. ‘He needs close attention from someone expert in watching people. A wrong move and he might take off and we’d have the same sorry business all over again.’
She didn’t like it but she came around. She gave me a month and agreed to meet expenses and pay me a salary. We didn’t discuss the bonus but I had the impression that it was still in the offing. Towards the end of the conversation she started to lose faith and seemed about to exercise her God-given right to change her mind. She was subtle about it though, referring to her health and suggesting that she didn’t have long to go. I thought she probably had a month and told her so.
‘You are impertinent, Mr Hardy,’ she said. ‘You have your month and not a day more. It will be almost Christmas.’
It was hard to think of the snoring slob upstairs as a present but, if that was how she wanted it, it was okay with me.
‘How do you get on with Mrs McMahon?’
‘Oh, a charming person, quite marvellous. But I suppose Verna will be back soon.’
‘She won’t be back,’ I said. ‘She was part of the nastiness. She was part of a plan to keep your grandson’s identity hidden.’
This was enough to consign her to the fourth circle of outer darkness. ‘I see,’ she said icily; like all autocrats she valued loyalty.
‘How’re the memoirs going?’ I asked, to needle her.
‘Oh, quite well.’
This would be the end of them I thought, and I’d probably done the public a service there. Since I had her on the defensive I gave her one last thrust.
‘You might care to contact your daughter, Lady Catherine.’
‘Bettina?’ Her voice was sharp and anxious. ‘What has she got to do with this?’
‘She can vouch for what I say. She’s met her son.’
I left her to think that one over, spoke to Mrs McMahon again about money matters, and rang off. I was tired and not as drunk as I intended to be. While I changed that I thought about Warwick Baudin and Lady C and wondered whether I’d done either of them a favour. He could prove as big a headache for her as he had for his wise old foster father. On the other hand, despite her protestations, she could keep him waiting for his money for a long while yet. Maybe they deserved each other.
25
It started badly early the next morning. I came up slowly out of a foggy, boozy sleep to hear something crashing on the stairs. When I got out there he was lying at the bottom of the stairs with his limbs at all angles like a crashed hang-glider. He was unconscious but breathing steadily. I propped him up a bit and made coffee. His eyes were flickering open when I came back.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he said in that same, thickened, tongue-tied voice.
‘The name’s Hardy. Have some coffee.’ I handed him the mug and he looked at it indifferently.
‘Shit, I’ve got a head,’ he mumbled. ‘Got anything stronger?’
‘Not for you boy. You’re on the wagon.’
He sneered at me and drank some of the scalding coffee without seeming to notice how hot it was. All he had on was a pair of underpants and I looked him over appraisingly. The remnants of his athlete’s physique were still there, buried under the fat. There were signs that his muscles weren’t too far gone and he’d scrub up fairly well with the fat sweated off. His face was ghastly though, heavy bearded, scummy and bluish pale. I was glad I hadn’t yielded to Lady Catherine’s wish to see him. I doubt she’d have accepted him as the genuine article. He saw me assessing him and sneered some more.
‘Hardy means fuck-all to me,’ he growled. ‘I never heard of you. I’m going.’ He started to struggle up and I pushed him down easily using my left hand.
‘Finish your coffee,’ I said, ‘I’ve got a few things to tell you.’
It took a while to get the message through to him and I had to push him around a few times to keep him listening. He was getting jumpier as the time passed. But eventually he got the picture. I got him a dressing gown and after a whole pot of coffee and my refusal to lace it with anything he was a quivering mess but very, very interested in his prospects. He told me about his long road to perdition and I was willing to listen. He’d had European and South-East Asian adventures and was deep in trouble with the narcs and the drug heavies when he’d run into Russell James and Selby. After that it was a bit of a blur. He’d been blackmailing his foster brother for years over a sexual matter and he put one last bite on him to finance a big buy. That came unstuck and so did he. I got pieces of the story over the next few days but it boiled down to a total dependence on James and the drugs he supplied.
I put his clothes in the wash and turned the bathroom and my shaving gear over to him. Then I took all the grog in the house — wine and beer in the fridge, scotch and brandy in a cupboard — and emptied it down the sink. My tobacco was lying around and I threw it in the rubbish. It was going to be tough all round and there was no sense in taking half-measures.
Tough is what it was. He was keen enough to become one of the pampered rich and he took my word that his best move was to present himself to the old lady in tip-top shape. It was easier to say than do; his dependence on the drugs and the booze was deep and the withdrawal was like a slow roasting over a fire. I’ll say this for him, he tried. He fought the screaming pains and the chills and the black despair until he wept with the effort. Sangster was right, I had to watch him. After a week, in a phase of confidence, he slipped away from me and got a bottle. When I found him in the park he’d drunk the lot and was sleeping peacefully under a tree. I over-reacted: I took him to a Turkish bath and sweated him unmercifully, then I walked him and then I ran him. I was suffering myself; I hadn’t had a drink or a cigarette for a week and I’d lost a lot of sleep and I was mean.
Strangely, it turned out to be the right thing to do. He was losing weight fast after the first ten days and his jeans were getting loose around his waist. We went to get some clothes which I could charge to Lady C and his eye was taken by some jogging gear. The shoes and shorts lay around the house for a few days while we drank coffee and watched television and screamed silently at each other. I could feel the resistance building in him; it was partly a false confidence based on a few days’ clean living, partly an attraction to the degraded addict’s life where there are no responsibilities and a thousand excuses. The novelty of rehabilitation was wearing off when he read a
