‘The only thing is,’ I remarked, ‘I used to work in a lawyer’s office.’
I heard his breathing change. In the dark of the taxi he laboured to hide the murder on his face.
‘I say!’ he said at last. ‘You should have told me. It’s not fair. That’s taking advantage. You can’t call it anything else.’
‘Well, it’s not bad,’ I conceded. ‘Take quite a lot of people in, that document, I should think.’
‘Now, if you’d done the decent thing and told me you worked for a lawyer, you’d have saved me a lot of trouble, wouldn’t you?’
‘Collusion, wouldn’t it be? Of course, the Law’s different here, but it’s probably collusion for the purposes of hand. And you could have blackmailed me for years and years.’
‘Well, how was I to know you knew about the Law, if you didn’t tell me?’
‘Your trouble is, you haven’t yet learned what people you can double-cross and who you can’t.’
‘Nobody’s using words like that to Andrew MacNamara. You’d better be careful.’ He thought a while. ‘Besides, look at it one way — I was doing you a good turn. After all, there is a lot of money to be made out of the libel law. That’s a fact. Of course that stuff’s not really in my class any longer, but a couple of years back I made a few hundred nicker out of writers.’
‘It all helps.’
‘You’re coming on,’ he said at last, after a long silence. ‘I must say that you — you’re coming along fast. Well, I like that. You might turn out to have a real head for business. We could work together yet, if you just learned to trust me.’
‘It’s a terrible thing, lack of trust between friends.’
‘Yes. And loses money in the long run. Well, Mr Haigh will be disappointed. He’s not been doing too well recently, and he could do with a hand-up. I tell you what. I’ve a proposition. We’ll sign a real document, fair and above board, I don’t want any money for myself, but you and Mr Haigh split between you. I’d like to do him a good turn, and you, too. And that would show you I’m on your side.’
‘I don’t think my head for business is highly enough developed yet.’
‘Not yet, I grant you. But it comes with practice. Mind you, I’ll tell you this, when I first met you. I’d never have believed you’d come on like this, but you just let me know when you’re ready, and I’m your man.’ He left me at the door and took the taxi on, saying: ‘No hard feelings, mind you!’
‘None at all, I assure you.’
‘That’s right.’
I did not see him again: he left the Bolts’ house that night. Dan and Flo were worried about the loss of rent but not, as I thought they should be, about their capital.
Dan said it had all been done through a lawyer. Who chose the lawyer? Bobby Brent, said Dan, but a lawyer is a lawyer, when all is said and done.
Two years later their partnership broke up, in violence. They had filled their two houses with West Indians; but Bobby Brent was making off with more than his share of the rents. Dan got to hear of this, and challenged him, Bobby Brent denied it, Dan lost his temper and assaulted him. Within a few seconds he found himself lying on his back, under the ex-Commando, the ju-jitsu expert; helpless, the knife that he had in his hand pointing at his own throat.
They made a deal, in that position. They would each take one of the houses, Dan would sell out his share in the night-club, now doing nicely, to Bobby Brent. He would say nothing more about the fact he had never been paid for the work he did decorating the place.
Dan lost a good deal of money in this settlement, but not so much that he could not immediately afford to buy a third house for himself.
But this glory was still well in the future; they were occupied now with getting in enough money to keep up the hire-purchase instalments and pay for food.
The campaign against me began when Dan came up to demand a month’s rent in advance. I paid in advance weekly. There was no proof, because we had agreed that rent-books were not necessary between friends. I refused; and Dan stamped out, saying that there were marks on the table that had not been there before, and I was going to have to pay him for the damage.
I told Rose, and she said: ‘They’re cross. They want you to take the rooms on the ground-floor when they’re ready, and I said you wouldn’t want to. They’re charging five pounds a week. You wouldn’t want to pay that, would you? And I said that no one who’d seen that place so filthy and smelly would live in it, no matter how nice Dan does it up.’
‘I wouldn’t be able to.’
‘No. Nor me. They might see that for themselves, but they don’t. Just hang on tight, their tempers’ll improve. Flo’s got a scheme on to get Jack back. He came into my shop yesterday and sent a message. I told Flo, but she daren’t tell Dan. She’s written out an advertisement to lie on the table for Dan to see: Come back. Jack. All is forgiven. But Dan pretends not to see it. Well, they’d better be quick, because Jack’s thinking of going to Australia. He says there’s no room in this country for a lad of enterprise. He can say that, looking at Dan. He makes me laugh, he does really.’
She said ‘he makes me laugh’ in a sad heavy voice I had not heard for some weeks. Three evenings she spent in my room, one after another, saying that she wasn’t going to let Dickie take her for granted. In other words, he was standing her up again. Also she was troubled about her brother, now due out of Borstal. War Damage had finished with the attic, and she wanted him to live there. Flo and Dan refused; they were prepared to let Len sleep where Jack had, in the kitchen, rent-free, provided he helped Dan with the decorating.
‘But it’s not nice,’ said Rose. ‘He’ll want a little comforting and petting after that place, and all he’ll get will be work, work. And no money for it. So what can I do? My mother’s married that fancy man and he’s already started to treat her bad. I could have told her. But she’s got a real weakness for bad ones, the way I told you.’
‘Like someone else I know,’ I said.
She was distressed. ‘Don’t say that,’ she pleaded. ‘Don’t say it. Not yet, any rate. Perhaps things’ll come right. I mean, I know he loves me and that’s what counts, isn’t it?’
‘Perhaps Flo’s right,’ I said.
‘But I couldn’t be happy, knowing I’d got a man that way. It stands to reason, you’d always be thinking — you’d remember you tricked him and you wouldn’t feel good. Mind you, it doesn’t trouble Flo, she’s happy enough.’
‘Not at the moment.’
‘No. But they’ll make it up.’
Downstairs. Flo had been reduced by Dan’s persistent bad temper into a state of permanent near-tears. When he entered the basement he was confronted by Flo and Aurora, sitting in each other’s arms, staring at him in helpless pathos.
He swore and blustered, but Flo replied through Aurora, thus: ‘Ah, my Lord, your daddy’s cross with us, Oar, he doesn’t love us no more, he just wishes we were both dead.’ At which Aurora wept, and Flo with her, genuinely and copiously.
Soon he counter-attacked. He was waking very early these days. He sneaked Aurora out of her bed while Flo slept, and took her into the kitchen. There he built up a great fire, and ate his breakfast with the child on his knee, feeding her bits of fried bread and egg. One morning the builders had blocked the front door with their gear and I had to go out through the basement, Dan forgot his ill-humour with me, and gave me a smile, pushing forward a chair, and setting a cup of tea. There was a great red fire. Aurora sat sleepy and smiling in her white nightgown with her arm round her father’s neck. ‘Look,’ said Dan. ‘she’s eating. She eats for me, if she won’t for her mother.’ He was cheerful and at ease there in his hot kitchen. He cooked more bacon, more egg, for me and for my son, and Aurora ate everything put in front of her.
‘You see?’ he kepi saying, awed by this miracle. ‘It’s just that stupid cow her mother that stops her eating.’
Dan kept this up every day, and when we went up to work in the flat, took the child with him. But it was all too much for Aurora, who spent half the day as Dan’s ally, and the other half as Flo’s. She became silent; all the obedient clown went out of her nature, and she sucked at her bottle hour after hour.
‘No. I don’t love you. I don’t love you, I don’t love,’ she murmured automatically whenever either parent came near her. If she was picked up she went rigid and shrieked.
