Angell, Pearl and Little God

  Then the feeling quite passed, leaving only normal terror again. In one sense she was quite right: the flight was over for all of them. In two minutes they would all be unbuckling their seat-belts and reaching for their coats, or else they would all be dead, twisted and broken and burnt-out corpses, deprived of life, sensation, future, by the gravitational pull of the earth, insects attempting presumptuously to move out of their proper element – and failing.

  They dipped and Angell saw a light. Then the murmur of the engines changed to a roar, one had a sudden sensation of swishing past something that was very near either in the sky or on the ground, and then the nose of the plane lifted and they began to climb again.

  ‘I told you we’d never get down,’ said the man in front. ‘See the way he brought her nose up! He damned near stalled her then! Here, miss, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said the stewardess unconvincingly as she brushed past.

  Angell took out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his forehead. They were gently banking, the worst of the turbulence gone. Were there high mountains round Zurich? He said with sudden friendliness: ‘I once had a superb meal here, at a hotel overlooking the lake. Some of the best food in Europe. Caviare, a poached sole with Normandie sauce, croustade of snipe with truffles, a soft French cheese whose name I – I forget …’ Why was he chattering like this? It was not in his character to prattle to a friend, let alone to a stranger. He had never spoken to a stranger in a train in his life.

  The girl was talking too, pleasantly animated, smiling. Angell’s pencil fell to the floor and they both bent unsteadily to pick it up, heads almost bumping. He thanked her. They were coming in for their second run, wings swaying gently, the lurching ended. But could the pilot see anything at all? ‘… cooking,’ the girl was saying, ‘but at the end of the day I’m glad to get what’s given me. You don’t feel like making an extra effort, do you.’

  Down. A perfectly sickening lurch. The wheels touched, lost touch, touched again, they were racing, running far too fast towards the end of the tarmac. The jet engines roared in reverse; seat-belts tightened; they began to slow. Too slow. The intercom crackled. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we regret any inconvenience you may be caused by this landing. Refreshments will be served in the transit passengers’ lounge. We hope to be able to continue our flight to Geneva in about an hour. Kindly remain seated until the aircraft has come to a standstill and the engines have been switched off.’

  ‘Epoisses,’ said Angell.

  ‘Pardon?’ said the girl.

  ‘The name of the cheese,’ he explained, but as they were safely down he said this only to himself. Nothing would have induced him to speak to her again.

  Chapter Two

  Angell had first met Claude Vosper in a dispute over a painting five years ago. He had been called in because of his expert knowledge of the art world, and he had acted for him then, and they had had brief correspondence once since. The impression he got was that the fourth viscount had withdrawn just as much as he possibly could from the English scene and had no financial interests there except what existed through his father’s will and by virtue of their being in a trust that could not be realized.

  Vosper was a tall bony man of fifty-nine, and his new wife, Charmian, whom Angell had not met, was a pretty dark girl of twenty-eight, Jewish and vivacious. He had done well for himself, Angell thought, and Vosper himself confirmed this view later in the day when he said: ‘Best of the quiver so far. Excellent organizer. Since I married her I’ve had twice the service at half the cost. And never a hard word. Compared with Pamela, my God, or even Sue …’ He brayed with laughter.

  This of course long after the ice had been broken. The unannounced arrival had been attended by constraint. Angell might have been calling about the insurance. He had explained that he was having a few days holiday in Switzerland and had taken the opportunity to drop in with a proposition. Money, sums of money, had then come to be mentioned, and this had quietly cleared the air.

  So lunch – delightful but frugal – Vosper was on some ludicrous régime – of turtle soup with sherry, a sole véronique and a soufflé; and afterwards his wife and youngest daughter left them and they sat in the glass-enclosed verandah overlooking the lake, smoking Lonsdales and sipping port, and Angell went into more details of the proposition he brought.

  Vosper’s expression did not change while he listened. His was an actor’s face, the features larger than life but lopsided with wear. These and the mane of grey hair worn too long, the green velvet suit, the flowing tie, all suggested the artistic and the bohemian, where they should have implied the self-indulgent and the indeterminate.

  He said: ‘I did hear of the first offer through Flora. Not that we ever write – we’re not on those terms – but the trustees felt they ought to let me know. Anyway I’d have refused even if she hadn’t.’

  ‘Why, may I ask?’

  ‘Well, cui bono? Not I. If we sold the place for £60,000 the money would have to be re-invested by the trustees and she’d get the income for life. Money may lose in value, but property never. My son Harry’s the one who’ll get the best of it.’

  ‘But this new proposition …’

  ‘Ah, yes, it sounds attractive. But what’s at the back of it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, let’s start at square one. Why were you interested in the property in the first place?’

  ‘My company takes a long-term view of its—’

  ‘Your company. You mean this what-you-may-call-it—’

  ‘Land Increments Limited, yes. Sir Francis Hone, M. P., is the chairman. I am a director as well as being their legal adviser.’

  ‘Right, we’ve got that fixed. Go on.’

  ‘My company takes a long-term view of its property dealings, and we’ve been buying land in both Hampshire and Suffolk as an investment for the future. Property companies do buy land from time to time, you know. Much of the stuff we buy will lie fallow for a generation, but it’s necessary to have it in stock, as it were, for the future. Of course it’s a gamble. But we reason these two counties are both too near London to escape.’

  ‘Why Merrick House though? You’re very much in rural England there.’

  ‘It’s a possibility for the future. And two hundred acres of land go with it.’

  ‘Farm land. Agricultural. A few cottages.’

  ‘Yes. We think it a reasonable speculation.’

  ‘Reasonable enough to come to me with an increased bid, eh? Why did you first go to Flora?’

  ‘We thought she owned the property, Lord Vosper. But she told us it was left in trust for you at her death. Of course it could have been sold to us even then, without your consent, but since her consent was lacking there was no point in proceeding further.’

  ‘She refused?’

  ‘She refused.’

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘Sentimental grounds, I gather.’

  Vosper grunted. ‘I’d find it difficult to be sentimental about a monstrosity like Merrick House. I was always glad to get away from it.’

  Angell nodded approval and waited.

  Vosper blew smoke in a thin stream towards the alps on the far side of the lake. This morning Mont Blanc and all the other snowy peaks had been hidden in cloud; now they were as clear cut as cardboard scenery.

  He said: ‘You’re now offering to pay me £10,000 – outright, in cash, is that it? – for an option to buy Merrick House for a fixed sum of £80,000 if or when the property becomes mine to dispose of. That’s well enough. But you must know that the probabilities are I shall never inherit. I’m eleven years older than Flora, so by any actuarial reckoning she’s likely to survive me. Then it would all go straight to Harry. I couldn’t pledge for him.’

  ‘No, of course, that’s not possible.’ Angell finished the last of his glass of indifferent port. How could a viscount permit himself to drink it? ‘But do you see much of your step-mother?’

  ‘No. We don
’t get on. Never have. Why?’

  ‘I meet her now and then. She lives a fairly – how shall I put it? …’

  ‘Randy life?’

  ‘Well, of that nature. She rides very recklessly to hounds. She used to race cars, and I believe still drives very fast. Not to put too fine a point on it, she drinks a lot; and she – er – has had a variety of lovers …’

  ‘Sex doesn’t kill women,’ said Vosper, ‘it kills men.’ He laughed his great braying laugh.

  ‘But it all adds up. I think your actuary – if he were called in – would take these things into account.’

  ‘Which your company has done.’

  ‘Which my company has done.’

  Vosper swung a bony leg over the arm of his chair and dangled it there, showing inches of scarlet sock. ‘You know, I don’t live in cotton wool. It still seems to me your crew are taking an unjustifiable risk.’

  ‘We prosper by taking risks. I don’t think you should consider us but only yourself.’

  ‘Oh, quite, I agree. But when you get propositions like this, you can only see it plainly if you see what the other fellow has to gain.’

  Angell began to wonder if this proposal was too generous. A meaner one might have been swallowed with less caution.

  ‘I’m a cynic, Angell. Life peels off the layers of fluff we’re born with and eventually leaves us starko. You tell me you’re an honest man who has come to me with an honest proposition, and I’m inclined to believe you – maybe because I want to believe you: it’ll pay me to. In the ordinary course of events I should never expect to see a penny benefit from what the old man left in trust for me. It’ll all go to Harry – whom I never see from one year’s end to the next unless he’s in a scrape. But just because it looks a good proposition I’ve got to look at it all round.’

  ‘Of course. By all means. Why not put it in the hands of your solicitor?’

  Vosper glanced up in slight surprise, as if he hadn’t expected this suggestion. ‘Well, fine … I’ve a man in Geneva called Cornavin. He does for me out here—’

  ‘Much better to employ someone in England, if I might advise. My firm clearly cannot act for you in this, but is there a family firm? …’

  ‘Hollis did most of my legal work when I lived over there.’

  This was what Angell had hoped. Hollis & Hollis. Alfred Hollis was old, could be obstinate and conventional; but he wasn’t smart-alec and he had no finger in development pies. ‘By all means. Would you like me to get in touch with him direct?’

  The cypresses in the garden were beginning to throw long pencils of shadow. Lunch had been late.

  ‘No, send the proposition to me first, Angell, and I’ll forward it to him.’

  It looked as if the fish was beginning to bite. But he was a wary old fish and had a reputation for being slow to make up his mind. ‘You haven’t asked,’ Angell said, ‘ but perhaps I should explain that the option we propose should run for one year only. That is, we would be entitled to exercise it for one year after you had inherited the property. It would be unfair to you to make this of longer duration because you would have to be free to sell elsewhere if it didn’t suit us to take up the option when the time comes.’

  ‘Very fair. I still don’t see the joy for your company in risking £10,000 on an outside chance.’

  ‘As I’ve said, that’s our problem. Frankly, at the moment, my company has a lot of ready cash that it wishes to re-invest. Your problem is whether you want £10,000 as soon as our agreement is signed.’

  Vosper finished his cigar and got up. He had a strong, shambling walk. He emptied the ashtray into a wastepaper basket, closed the window against the afternoon air.

  ‘I’m a bit out of touch with England at the moment. Maybe I should come over and see Hollis.’

  ‘Of course. But I’ll send you the propositions in detail here first. Talk it over with your wife. There’s no great hurry.’

  ‘You’ve increased your bid by 50 per cent since January. It suggests there’s a hurry somewhere.’

  Vosper was nobody’s fool.

  ‘When you’re buying something,’ Angell said, ‘it’s common practice to put in a low bid first. But even £60,000 was more than realistic. By all means get the property valued. I doubt if it would be put at more than £40,000. The house is in a very poor state of repair.’

  ‘And you’re offering more than double.’

  ‘Because we want it. Because it interests us. Because it’s in the area where we are buying land. Those are the reasons, Lord Vosper. And although, as I said, there’s no hurry, I think one has to bear in mind that Land Increments although it is a big company, only has so much money to sink in future development. Sir Francis Hone – whom I’d like you to meet sometime – is a very busy man with a lot of interests in the States. He’s interested in Merrick House, as we all are, at the moment. But this is the propitious moment, this spring. If it should hang on too long he might well give it up and turn his attentions elsewhere.’

  Vosper laughed. ‘That sounds like a sales talk.’

  ‘Well, of course. That’s what it is. We would like the property; that’s why we’re making such a generous offer. But of course it’s entirely up to you. We shall certainly not bother you further if you decide against it. Do think it over and let us know.’

  Knowing he could catch the cheap flight home at nine – the inconvenience of such flights often operates only one way – he refused a half-hearted invitation to stay to dinner and caught the bus back to Geneva. The tempting offer was already in Vosper’s bloodstream; one had only to allow time for it to work.

  He ate a hearty meal at the station restaurant, pleasantly conscious that he felt no fatigue after his broken night, and the better for knowing that he could charge Land Increments first class return fare to Geneva. He did not feel he was cheating them, since the task had been as well performed as if the higher fare had been paid, and at greater speed.

  On the flight home, which was quite uneventful, his companion was a brutish young man who slept with his mouth open all the way to London Airport. So his thoughts more than once strayed to the young woman who had shared the disagreeable journey out. When they had landed temporarily at Zurich he had avoided her. To do her justice she had behaved very properly, and when they resumed their seats for the journey to Geneva she made no attempt to make anything of their earlier familiarity. They flew on in silence, and as they separated in Geneva he had bowed to her and she had smiled and murmured ‘ good-bye’. That was all.

  So memory now of any talk they had had must derive from the first part of the flight. It was as if conversation between them came back to him which at the time he had been too worried to hear. She was fond of music – when had she said this? He could not remember – some instrument, some unusual one, not a saxophone, not an oboe; she went to concerts – Pop concerts and Symphony concerts, she said. Now there was a centre in Croydon she went more often, otherwise it meant getting back late. The train service from Victoria to East Croydon was very good, but her home was a bus journey of ten minutes, and after eight there weren’t many buses.

  Her hair curled rather the way Anna’s did in the one old photo he had: it was light hair, light in texture, that is to say, the sort that is always difficult to keep tidy. Anna used to complain at her own whenever there was a breeze; perhaps she complained more often so that he was given the opportunity to reassure her. This girl was quite three inches taller than Anna, and her eyes were darker and softer and more docile. Odd, that bruise on her neck.

  Of course one did not know her name, nor would one ever have asked it. Her vanity case had P.F. on it.

  Odd that one should think so much of Anna after all these years. If it had not been for that one photograph he believed he would have forgotten by now even what she looked like.

  Lady Vosper had a flat in Wilton Crescent, where she spent rather more than half of each year. Angell’s relationship with her was more than acquaintanceship, less than friendship. He ha
d met her two or three times at the bridge table of common friends, and had rather gone out of his way to earn her liking. Titled clients are always good for a firm. He had first of all mentioned to her his acquaintanceship with Viscount Vosper, and when this clearly earned him no good marks at all, he had ventured to advise her on some investments she was thinking of selling. This had led to two small professional commissions, both motoring offences: defending her against a charge of careless driving, in which he had succeeded, and against a breathalyser test, in which he had failed. Then had come the proposal that he had conveyed to her to buy Merrick House, which she had rejected. Since then they had only met once, casually in the street. But on the Thursday after his return, in spite of his horror of illness, his genuine dread of even observing it at secondhand, he called on her.

  She was a small woman, well built, dark and vigorous with a firm brisk walk and a tenor voice. Fifteen or twenty years ago she had been a beauty, but hers were the looks that harden quickly with the years. Her skin had become coarse, her fine black eyes seemed always to be narrowed with cigarette smoke, even when she wasn’t smoking, and her hair was dyed a dark auburn that convinced no one. In spite of a mannishness in her talk and walk and dress she was feminine enough, as her marriages and love affairs showed.

  Her little chauffeur-handyman showed him in, and he found her with her feet up reading The Field and just lighting one cigarette from the butt of the last.

  ‘My dear chap,’ she said, ‘ roses! Don’t say you’re courting me! No, maybe they’re the wrong red. But it’s very genteel of you all the same.’