Angell, Pearl and Little God

  The offices of Carey, Angell & Kingston are on the north side of the Fields, and they are neither hygienic nor ornamental. But Angell owned the freehold, which was worth a lot of money, and he was waiting the right opportunity to sell and move west as a number of his more fashionable colleagues had done. Owen Angell had virtually taken over the firm when the last Kingston died in 1944, and Wilfred Angell had come to a more responsible position than he had ever expected in his early thirties by the sudden death of each of the three partners within a few years, his father of a coronary, Mr Gomme of tuberculosis, and Mr Hunter of a mental aberration which led him into his potting shed with a length of rope. Solicitors are known to choose this way out sometimes when fearing an investigation of the Law Society, but Mr Hunter’s rectitude was a model for all. One could only assume that in his early fifties he had faced up to life and found himself going nowhere.

  At least this was a question Wilfred had never yet had to ask himself. Under his energetic leadership the firm had moved steadily forward, both increasing its business and being more selective in the choice of business it took on, so that the work it did was angled towards the more profitable sides of law. There were now two new senior partners in addition to himself, Mumford and Esslin, and three junior partners, each one specializing in one subject or a group of allied subjects. Angell’s speciality was property, and Company Law.

  As soon as he got in he rang Sir Francis Hone at his office and said he wanted to see him on an urgent matter.

  Hone said: ‘I’m frightfully tied up. If you could give me some idea …’

  ‘Well, I’d prefer not to say too much on the telephone but it’s to do with Handley Merrick and the Vospers. Circumstances have changed and I think we could make a new approach.’

  ‘And this is urgent?’

  ‘It could well be. If you agree when you hear the facts I’d like to act on them immediately.’

  ‘I could make it ten o’clock, if that’s not too late. I have a dinner but I can get away.’

  They agreed this, and Angell called Miss Lock and asked her to get him a flight to Geneva. She said: ‘First class or Tourist, sir?’

  ‘Neither. There’s a cheap night flight at this time of the year. See if you can get me on it. It’s about £13 cheaper than the ordinary tourist fare. I’m not sure of the time but last year it left about three in the morning.’

  She went out and he riffled through the afternoon post. Old Mrs Montague was still haggling about the size of her bill. He dictated on to a tape a letter offering to reduce it by 15 per cent provided she withdrew the word ‘extortionate’. Parkinson & Parkinson were hinting at a settlement in the John Haig case. They still did not seem to realize – and it would have to be brought home to them – what little room they had for manoeuvre. Another number of the magazine Health For All had been delivered. He made a note to cancel it.

  Miss Lock buzzed to say she had got the last seat, and take-off time was 3.20 a.m., so he asked her to bring him the Vosper file and he studied it for a few minutes and made some notes. It was a thin file but he hoped it would thicken now.

  He saw both Mumford and Esslin before he left. Mumford was a heavy dark untidy man of fifty, clumsy in his movements, with long strands of hair streaked across his head like a pedestrian crossing. Esslin, a Czech, ten years younger, Angell had taken into partnership only three years ago, recognizing the acuteness of his mind and the value of an intellect not inhibited by his English legal training. Mumford was slow and solid, Esslin ambitious and volatile: a good pair in harness but they needed the coachman.

  Angell did not mention Lady Vosper to Mumford because it was in fact none of his business. He had used Mumford’s name to lend impersonality to his inquiries from Matthewson. If he had given Matthewson the impression that his firm acted for the Vospers as family solicitors it was in the circumstances, he thought, an excusable tactic.

  When he left he took a tube from Holborn to Bond Street, but it was too early for dinner at his club so he went into Claridge’s Causerie, where one can get several helpings of smorgasbord at a single fixed price. He had three helpings this evening, and a pint of beer – since there was no point in paying fancy hotel prices for wine. By the time he had finished this, dinner was on at his club so he strolled up to Hanover Square and had a simple meal of smoked trout, saddle of lamb, and Stilton, with a bottle of 1959 Bel Air.

  He was well known in his club, which he used a great deal, and if not exactly a popular man was prized by the other members as an eccentric. Angell would have been startled to know this. He thought himself a quiet senior member – senior at least as to membership – with the distinction only of eminence. This evening he had time after dinner for only one rubber of bridge; then he walked down to the Hones’ flat in St James’s Street and spent an hour with Sir Francis. After that he took a taxi home.

  Eight years ago some property near Cadogan Square had come up for sale at a very reasonable price: numbers 24 and 26 Cadogan Mews, and Angell had bought them before they came on the open market. No. 26 is on the corner of Milner Street, and here he now lived, having let off No. 24 at a rental that more than paid for the outgoings on No. 26. They were both small Georgian houses, on two floors only, with spacious well-proportioned rooms. Occasionally when delusions of grandeur came over him he thought of having them both for himself and knocking them into one, not to provide more space for living but to house his collection of furniture and pictures.

  Alex was not there when Angell got in: he had forgotten about the half day. He looked with displeasure at a thin film of dust on some of the furniture, at two pictures awry, unwashed plates in the kitchen and cigarette ash and a cork tip floating in a Coalport saucer. Alex was more and more trading on a belief that he was indispensable, his service increasingly halfhearted and careless. Angell bore his shortcomings from a dislike of change, after five years, and because when the boy felt like it he could cook like an angel. Less and less did he feel like it. Alex was thirty-three and a homosexual.

  Angell rang the exchange and asked for a call at 1.00 a. m., and set the alarm for 1.10 as an extra precaution. As he undressed and climbed into his crimson curtained French bed his heart was as steady as a rock, everything he had eaten and drunk, including two brandies at the Hones’, having been perfectly assimilated. He mused on the strangeness of the human mind which could allow fear and apprehension to grow so large that all else was blocked out, yet twelve hours later the fear, having been adjudged groundless, was so far shrunken as to be hard to re-imagine. One couldn’t quite believe it was being correctly remembered. Was I so upset? Did I believe those pains were an early coronary? Am I not now recalling it as worse than it truly was?

  … The waking telephone call came in the middle of a dream. He took off the receiver, answering it from a dinner party at which the long-dead Anna was his wife, and Alex and his boy friend and Lady Vosper and Sir Francis Hone were guests. It is always bad being wakened in the middle of the night from a short sleep. One feels terribly alone. The sound of distant traffic had almost stopped, and he lay between the cool sheets with a curious sense of desolation as if he would never again have communication with the outside world. It was as if the loneliness were so intense that it became claustrophobic. One fought for movement and air. One was buried alive in loneliness, tied down by the silence, struggling to have someone to speak to, to confide in, to care.

  Perhaps it was the dream: Anna, the charming hostess, yet a conviction that the dinner party would end in death and disaster. At times like this one did lack companionship, the confidant, the friend …

  He fought his way out of bed, rang for a taxi for 1.45, dressed, made coffee, put a few things in a briefcase and was waiting at the door when the taxi came.

  Drive through a half-silent London, check in at the soulless, sleep-walking, de-hydrated, hygienic, impersonalized air-terminal, wait in the bar, buy sandwiches for the journey, follow the crowd to the bus, elbow someone aside to get the seat by the door, jog
through the night, half yawning, half afraid, debouch at the other end, passports, flight cards, wait in the departure lounge, edging towards the most likely door; British European Airways announces the departure of Flight B.E. 562 for Geneva; another bus; then out on to the tarmac; again hurrying while not appearing to hurry, contriving to reach the steps first to get a back seat (supposed to be safer). A motley crowd, he thought; cheap clothes, shabby hand luggage, the ineffable air of lower middle class and upper working class, people without quality of any kind, except perhaps the quality of respectability. He despised them all. They herded, they scraped their feet, they self-consciously took off coats and hats, and the stewardess stowed them away. Many, he thought from their clothes, were going for a ski-ing holiday – one of the numerous sports he had never tried. This was what you got, travelling in March.

  It was going to be full, but he hoped if he kept his briefcase on the next seat, and there was an empty seat, that this would be it. He had taken the right hand window, next from the end. He was always nervous in flying, but constant usage had dulled the edge of apprehension. He called to one of the stewardesses and ordered a double brandy; she did not like this, being still busy with passengers arriving, but he prevailed on her to keep the order in mind.

  ‘Excuse me, is this seat taken?’

  A woman’s voice. Pretend not to hear, take notebook from pocket, jot down some figures for Viscount Vosper’s attention.

  ‘You’ll pardon me, sir,’ said the stewardess, ‘this seat is free, isn’t it. Can I move your briefcase?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ He took the case onto his lap and glanced briefly up at the person who was forcing herself upon him.

  It was quite a shock to him, quite sudden, quite a little shock. Because the young woman standing there bore a marked resemblance to the Anna he had been in love with twenty-five years ago.

  Of course it was a casual resemblance, no more, and even if it had been a speaking likeness, it would have been of no great importance. But all the same there was this trifling sense of shock. For a moment it was just as if a quarter of a century had slipped out of sight, with all its experience, its wear and tear, its hazards, its achievements, its formulation and change and consolidation of character, and he was a callow youth again (even after several years in the army), not yet through his finals, under his father’s severe observation, groping at life, not knowing what it was all about, pretending to be adult, pretending to be sophisticated, fascinated by Anna but perhaps more interested in the sensation of being in love than really in love.

  Then as this young woman sat down he lowered his eyes to the notebook and paid no further attention to her.

  The plane took off, wobbling in that disconcerting manner planes have before they clear the clouds, then settled to its steady flight; they unfastened their belts and the stewardess brought him his brandy. In an hour and a half they would be there. He briefly rehearsed his approach to Claude Vosper. Then his thoughts went back to his interview with Matthewson yesterday.

  Only one tiny irritant remained, pricking when one thought of it. Reading between Matthewson’s comments and his questions, one got the impression he still seriously doubted that a man – a strong vigorous man in his forties at the very height of his powers – could really live without sex. So – reading from the denial that women were of interest – what was left?

  Of course it was not the first time Angell had sensed such an implication in people’s talk. Living alone with a man like Alex – and before him Paul – was clearly reason enough for tongues to wag. As if I care, thought Angell. It’s only that one is irritated to be taken for one when one is not. Alex had his boy friends, whom one sometimes met when not supposed to; but his life was entirely his own to lead so long as it did not interfere with his work. That he meant anything more than a servant was perfectly absurd.

  Angell finished his brandy and the stewardess bore it away. In the fashion of the time the girl sitting next to him was showing quite six inches of her legs above the knees, and he stared at them for some time, expecting to make her self-conscious. She was not self-conscious. Perhaps she did not even notice. They were excellent legs and would have been an asset to her in any beauty contest, but he noticed with satisfaction that he could stare at them with complete detachment; he could appreciate them in exactly the same way as he could appreciate the carving of two Louis XIV acanthus leaves, but with noticeably less wish to possess them. She was quite a bit bigger than Anna, a shade statuesque, and less blonde. Her clothes were inexpensive but in fair taste. Her voice when she spoke to the stewardess was of a good timbre but with a trace of accent, south London probably.

  Anna, of course, had lived in one of the fine houses of Regent’s Park. A rich architect’s child, she had really been too good for him socially, and the match from his point of view could hardly have been bettered. (Not that he thought of such things in those days: common sense had hardly activated him.)

  But it was not to be …

  The lights in the plane had been lowered and many of the people were dozing, but his earlier sleep had refreshed Angell, and he ate the sandwiches he had brought, disposing of them carefully one by one like houses in a property deal. The girl in the next seat continued to read magazines all through the flight. Only once she raised her eyes to his to apologize when a magazine slipped off her lap onto his feet.

  Presently the note of the engines changed. They were coming down. Angell’s ears crackled but there was no safety-belt sign so he went on with some last minute notes. It occurred to him to wonder whether Claude Vosper would resent this uninvited call. One thought not. Yet one wished one knew him better.

  They had flattened out again and were climbing. Angell rang the bell.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘We’re ten minutes late! What is the delay?’

  ‘It’s a slight hold-up at the airport. We’ll be down in a few minutes.’

  Other people in the cabin were stirring. The girl began to make up her face.

  ‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Holford speaking. I must apologize for the delay, but I have to tell you that Geneva airport is at present closed because of fog, so we have been re-routed to Zurich. We are extremely sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you.’

  One of the most maddening things about air travel, Angell always felt, was that people on the flight deck could talk at will to the passengers in the cabin but the passengers could never answer back. This breeds a degree of frustration that makes the blood pressure mount. A buzz of conversation now broke out, partly humorous, partly nervous, and he found himself caught up in the common impulse and communicating his feelings to the young woman beside him.

  It was in repose that her face most reminded him of Anna. In talking she did not have Anna’s vivacity or quickness of thought: she seemed a gentle creature, rather placid. She had the beauty of a good piece of sculpture of the old school.

  She lived near Croydon, was off on a ski-ing holiday to Zermatt. She had been delayed two days because of a chill and was joining friends there. She knew she had several hours’ train journey from Geneva and had no idea how much further it would be from Zurich.

  By now they were circling again. There were minor air pockets and a good deal of unsteadiness, and Angell found himself becoming increasingly alarmed. There are few things more unsettling than to be several thousand feet up in the sky over mountainous country where the peaks can be just as high as you are, wobbling around in a 65-ton aircraft with a hundred other people, precariously preserved from death by a thin shell of alloy and steel and four infinitely complicated engines, and the skill of two men – and nowhere to land.

  The man in the seat in front said: ‘We’ll never get down in Zurich, I can tell you! They built the airport there in the one district where fog always settles.’ He had a loud, coarse, knowing voice.

  ‘Do you often travel this way?’ the girl asked. ‘Do you have a business in Switzerland?’

  ‘Not a b
usiness. Business,’ said Angell, with fear gripping his bowels. ‘I am a solicitor and have business overseas.’ Why had he decided to come at night, when there was so much less probability of fog during the day? This was false economy, Heaven knew, to jeopardize one’s very life for the sake of £20.

  They were climbing again. He wondered how much petrol the plane carried: did they always fill up the tanks for these short runs?

  She said: ‘I work at D. H. Evans. On the beauty counter. It’s quite nice really. Only the journey. It takes so much of the day.’

  ‘Please fasten safety-belts and extinguish cigarettes.’

  They were lurching about now in a completely drunken fashion. He had never known anything like it before. The landing wheels went bump-bump. The engines changed their note. It felt as if the plane would break up under the buffeting.

  He asked her about her family. He was not in the least interested in her family and made no attempt to listen to her replies. Words were just a means of keeping in touch with the normal when confronted by the grotesque. There were no lights visible through the window.

  She said: ‘It’ll be awful if I miss another whole day’s ski-ing. That’ll only leave me nine. You know what it’s like after you’ve been off it for a year. It takes about three days to find your legs again.’

  The stewardess came down the aisle unsteadily, clutching to each seat-back for support, doing her duty and making sure everyone was obeying orders. A man in the opposite seat was vomiting. Lurch, flop, lurch, flop. He could well have come by train, channel and train: the old way, the safe way, so simple and so safe. One tries to save perhaps twenty-four hours and so puts at hazard the last twenty-four years of one’s life.

  The girl took her light tulle scarf from round her neck and re-tied it. She put her magazines away. Clearly for her the flight was over. He felt annoyance at her calm. A total lack of imagination, docile, commonplace, ignorant, one of the crowd, cannon-fodder, just slightly but deceptively different because of her looks. A shop girl. Millions of such bred and lived and died unnoticed all over the world. As they deserved to. There was a bruise on her neck or a dirty mark. She looked otherwise very clean. For a brief and inappropriate moment the annoyance he felt for her changed to desire as he thought it would be nice to discover how clean she was all over. Something he had not felt for years; it was thrown up perhaps by his fear of sudden extinction, a purely primitive reaction just as an old tree will try to flower when its roots are endangered.