What's Better Than Money

II

All this I’m telling you about took place a year after Hitler’s war. Pearl Harbour seems a long way in the past now, but at that time I was twenty-one and at college, working hard to qualify as a Consulting Engineer. I was in grabbing distance of my degree when the pace of war hotted up and I couldn’t resist the call to arms. My father nearly hit the ceiling when I told him I was going to volunteer. He tried to persuade me to get my degree before joining up but the thought of another six months in college while there was fighting to be done was something I couldn’t face up to.

Four months later at the age of twenty-two I was one of the first to land on the beaches of Okinawa. I got an inch of red hot shrapnel in my face as I started towards the swaying palm trees that hid the Japanese guns, and that was the end of the war so far as I was concerned.

For the next six months I lay in a hospital bed while the plastic experts remodelled my face.

They made a reasonably good job of it except they left me with a slight droop in my right eyelid and a scar like a silver thread along the right side of my jaw. They told me they could fix that if I cared to stay with them for another three months, but I had had enough. The horrors I had seen in that hospital ward remain with me even now. I couldn’t get out fast enough.

I went home.

My father was a manager of a bank. He hadn’t much money, but he was more than ready to finance me until I had completed my studies as a consulting engineer.

To please him I went back to college, but those months in the battle unit and the months in hospital had done something to me. I found I hadn’t any more interest in Engineering. I just couldn’t concentrate.

After a week’s work, I quit. I told my father how it was. He listened, and he was sympathetic.

‘So what will you do?’

I said I didn’t know, but I did know I couldn’t settle to book work anyway for some time.

His eyes moved from my drooping right eyelid to the scar on my jaw and then he smiled at me.

‘All right, Jeff. You’re still young. Why don’t you go off somewhere and take a look around? I can spare you two hundred dollars. Take a vacation, then come back and settle to work.’

I took the money. I wasn’t proud of taking it because I knew he couldn’t spare it, but right then I was in such a rotten mental state I felt I had to get away or I would crack up.

I arrived in Los Angeles with the vague idea that I might get a job on the movies. That came unstuck pretty fast.

I didn’t care. I didn’t want to work anyway. I hung around the waterfront for a month doing nothing and drinking too much. At that time there were a lot of guys in reserved occupations with uneasy consciences because they hadn’t done any fighting, who were ready to buy drinks for guys in return for battle stories, but this didn’t last long. Pretty soon my money began to run out and I began to wonder what I was going to do for the next meal.

I had got into the habit of going every night to Rusty Mac-Gowan’s bar. It was a bar with a certain amount of character and it faced the bay where the gambling ships are moored. Rusty had got the place up to look like a ship’s cabin with port holes for windows and a lot of brasswork that drove Sam, the negro waiter, crazy to keep polished.

Rusty had been a top sergeant and he had fought the Japs. He knew what I had been up against, and he took an interest in me. He was a very good guy. He was tough and as hard as teak, but there was nothing he wouldn’t have done for me. When he heard I was out of a job, he said he was planning to buy a piano if he could find someone to play it, then he grinned at me.

He had come to the right man. The only thing I could do reasonably well was to play the piano. I told him to go ahead and buy the piano and he bought it.

I played the piano in his bar from eight o’clock in the evening to midnight for thirty bucks a week. It suited me all right. The money paid for my room, my cigarettes and my food. Rusty kept me in liquor.

Every so often he would ask me how much longer I was going to stay with him. He said with my education I should be doing something a lot better than thumping a piano night after night. I told him if it suited me, it was none of his business what I did. Every so often he would ask me again, and I would give him the same answer.

Well, that was the setup when Rima walked in out of the storm. That’s the background. I was twenty-three and no good to anyone. When she walked in, trouble for me walked in with her. I didn’t know it then, but I found out fast enough.

A little after ten o’clock the following morning, Mrs. Millard who ran the rooming-house where I lived, yelled up the stairs that I was wanted on the telephone.

I was trying to shave around the claw marks on my face which had puffed up in the night and now looked terrible. I cursed under my breath as I wiped off the soap.

I went down the three flights of stairs to the booth in the hall and picked up the receiver.

It was Sergeant Hammond.

‘We won’t be wanting you in court, Gordon,’ he said. ‘We’re not going ahead with the assault rap against Wilbur.’

I was surprised.

‘You’re not?’

‘No. That silver wig is certainly the kiss of death. She’s fingered him into a twenty year rap.’

‘What was that?’

‘A fact. We contacted the New York police. They welcomed the news that we had him like a mother finding her long lost child. They have enough on him to put him away for twenty years.’

I whistled.

‘That’s quite a stretch.’

‘Isn’t it?’ He paused. I could hear his heavy slow breathing over the line. ‘She wanted your address.’

‘She did? Well, it’s no secret. Did you give it to her?’

‘No, in spite of the fact she said she just wanted to thank you for saving her life. Take my tip, Gordon, keep out of her way. I have an idea she would be poison to any man.’

That annoyed me. I didn’t take any advice easily.

‘I’ll judge that,’ I said.

‘I expect you will. So long,’ and he hung up.

That evening, around nine o’clock, Rima came into the bar. She was wearing a black sweater and a grey skirt. The black sweater set off her silver hair pretty well.

The bar was crowded. Rusty was so busy he didn’t notice her come in.

She sat at a table right by my side. I was playing an etude by Chopin. No one was listening. I was playing to please myself.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘How’s the arm?’

‘It’s all right.’ She opened her shabby little bag and took out a pack of cigarettes. ‘Thanks for the rescue act last night.’

‘Think nothing of it. I’ve always been a hero.’ I slid my hands off the keys and turned so I faced her.

‘I know I look terrible, but it won’t last long.’

She cocked her head on one side as she stared at me.

‘From the look of you, you seem to make a habit of getting your face into trouble.’

‘That’s a fact.’ I turned and began to pick out the melody of It Had To Be You. Remarks about my face embarrassed me. ‘I hear Wilbur is going away for twenty years.’

‘Good riddance!’ She wrinkled her nose, grimacing. ‘I hope I’ve lost him for good now. He stabbed two policemen in New York. He was lucky they didn’t die. He’s a great little stabber.’

‘He certainly must be.’

Sam, the waiter, came up and looked enquiringly at her.

‘You’d better order something,’ I said to her, ‘or you’ll get thrown out.’

‘Is that an invitation?’ she asked, lifting her eyebrows at me.

‘No. If you can’t buy your own drinks you shouldn’t come in here.’

She told Sam to bring her a coke.