She said in a low voice: ‘I don’t want to talk to you. Please leave me alone.’
‘Oh, come on. Maybe I was a bit pressing that night. But you got in a panic. I’d never have hurt you. Honest. That’s not my way.’
‘It’s not my way either.’
‘Well, I’m sorry about that night. I told you. I’m sorry. It just was a misunderstanding, see?’
The man opposite folded his Daily Telegraph and glanced over at them.
Godfrey said: ‘You fair had me on toast that night. How did you get home?’
She did not answer.
‘Is it because I’m just a chauffeur?’ he said. ‘Does that make the diff? Friendly with a big wheel, not with a little one? Well, it’s only temporary, just to keep me going. All boxers take jobs till they hit the big time. And that’s mine for sure soon. I got a match with Bob Sanders next month.’
‘Will you please go away,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how you’ve the cheek – the impertinence to come and—’
‘Why? We got our lines crossed that night, that’s all. I said I’m sorry. It’s a gas when you’ve been fighting like I was that night, you don’t relax all of a sudden. You don’t relax. But going out with a girl helps you relax. It gets in your blood, like. So things weren’t right between us that night. But another night it’ll be different. You can stand on me!’
The train rattled along. His arm was touching hers. It felt like iron, but iron with some sort of magnetism in it. She felt suffocated, pursued. Suppose she said, this man is bothering me! Will you ask him to leave me alone? The Telegraph and the Mirror opposite would be embarrassed, disapproving. What else do you accuse him of, bruises and scratches long since gone?
‘I got all today off,’ he said. ‘ First for weeks. We could hit the town. Slap up supper. And I’ll not lay a glove on you. Honest. Little God’s honour.’
Clapham Junction. What when they got to Victoria?
‘You’re different from other chicks – other girls. It’s something. You really got me on toast. Never happened before, I promise you. I keep thinking about you. Don’t you ever think about me?’
She looked at him then, met his gaze. ‘No.’
‘No? Honest?’
She had been looked at most ways in her fairly short life, from gentlemanly admiration to plain lechery, but she had never been looked at like this before. A small black leopard waiting to climb on its mate.
She said: ‘When we get to Victoria, Godfrey, if you follow me, I’ll go to the first policeman and complain. That’s the truth. I mean it. I just can’t bear the sight of you, so please go away and leave me alone!’
It took an effort to say, and she leaned back out of breath and feeling sick. He said nothing more until they were crossing the river. Then he said: ‘O.K., little Oyster, you’re paddling this time. But you haven’t done with me. And that’s honest too. I’ve got you in my system. And I think maybe you’ve got me even though you won’t admit it. Deep down in your guts. Think about it. I’ll be around.’
That morning she sold the wrong lipstick and broke an expensive bottle of toilet water and missed a sale because she couldn’t take an interest in the woman wanting advice. But he didn’t show again all that week, and she began to hope that in spite of his threats she had choked him off for good.
Thursday and the dinner in Cadogan Mews. Because she was nervous and afraid of being late she arrived early, but the four other guests were already there as if they had been invited for an earlier time. It was a super house, but the furniture was weird, much of it that bright brown highly polished walnut with masses of curves and gold ornamentations and marble tops. A bit too much like being in one of those furniture shops in Knightsbridge. And it was over-furnished so that you could hardly move freely for risk of bumping into something. And the walls were fuller of pictures than the National Gallery. He even had five in the toilet.
The other guests were a Mr and Mrs Brian Attwell; he was something in television and the theatre, and a Mr and Mrs Simon Portugal, in their late twenties, very smart and sophisticated; he was an estate agent, which didn’t quite match with the estate agents Pearl had met before. She had some nervous moments during dinner, fear of using the wrong fork, etc., but it passed off fairly well. Fortunately everybody talked non-stop so she didn’t have to say much. They were waited on by a butler, but Pearl did not think much of him and she noticed Mr Angell looked annoyed once or twice at the way things went.
It wasn’t really until near the end of the evening that she realized he was nervous himself. This was a surprise because, except in the aeroplane, he had always seemed so confident, more than confident; when he walked he fairly breasted the air like a sultan, and he always spoke as if he knew he’d be obeyed. And obviously he was much, much richer than she had had any idea of. He spoke of having loaned eight of his chairs to an exhibition at the Brighton Pavilion last year. He was involved in some big development company with Mr Portugal. He had acted recently for Mr Attwell in a case involving Equity, and famous names were mentioned.
There was not much of this talk Pearl could join in, although Mr Angell with courteous good manners did not allow her to feel neglected. She sat on his right, and as her own nervousness went off she noticed his little habits. He was always rubbing his left thumb and forefinger together as if crumbling a piece of bread, and he would take up his wine glass to drink and then think of something to say and say it, quite long, so that you might think he was proposing a toast. And he blinked too much. He had good lashes for an old man, and they kept covering his pale eyes.
It was a long meal, and good food, all sorts of good food, things she hadn’t tasted before, and wine, and liqueurs afterwards. But the evening was over at last, and this time she found Mr Angell had engaged the hire car to take her back to Pat Chailey’s flat, so again she returned in style, a trifle drunk, satisfied with the sort of luxury evening that absolutely suited her, impressed by the money, the culture, the conversation, but still puzzled by it all. Of course Mr Wilfred Angell had taken a fancy to her, and had made these gestures of ‘ taking her up’. She was accordingly flattered and rather grateful, but she couldn’t really see where it would lead.
She thanked him nicely when she left, and the following day, having looked it up in a book on etiquette, wrote him to say thank you over again. The next three weeks passed, and almost daily she expected a letter back from him suggesting another meeting. Daily too for a time in spite of telling herself it was ridiculous she expected to find Little God waiting round some dark and lonely corner.
But at last she began to think she would not hear from either of them again, that they had each dropped her as quickly as in their peculiar ways they had taken her up.
Chapter Five
Godfrey was annoyed. He did not like ever to admit fault in himself, but now he realized that he had made a real mess out of this one. The only time a girl had ever got under his skin and this had to happen. There are hundreds of women with good looks and he had to pick on her.
That was the way it was right from the bell, and the second round did all the damage. He was not a raper from choice: he didn’t have to be. Girls told him he was no worse looking than a film star, and if that was a bit of flannel it was not all flannel. Normally he had more traffic than he could handle.
But he had to pick on the one who played hard to get. Right from the beginning he had known she was different, and he had handled it very cool at the start. This often paid because they didn’t know whether you were attracted or not, but it hadn’t paid this time, at least not with his follow-up.
That time in the train he had tried hard to explain to her, but he wasn’t very good at explaining. It was after a fight: it gets in your system: it’s something to do with the bip-bip-bip of blood and muscle. Perhaps in a way like in the old days you killed a man and had his girl. So he’d not paid enough attention to the fact that she was different, and a bit superior and a bit haughty, and he’d hurt her feelings and maybe fri
ghtened her – though privately he thought that part put on; what girl is really scared of what all girls want?
But he’d gone on too long, shouting after her in the wood, using a few hard words. Because he always had had what he wanted – which comes surprising from an orphanage product, but true enough of the important things. What Little God wants Little God gets. So he’d been pretty mad. First he’d been done out of finishing off Hertz and then he was done out of her. He surely would have leaned on her if he could have found her. But he was sorry afterwards, sorry he’d got so snotty, and he’d tried to make it up. Still wanted to. Badly. Had to. He kept thinking about her. What Little God wants Little God gets. Even if what he wants doesn’t want him. But he couldn’t really believe that.
‘Aggressive’ was the word they used about him at the orphanage. ‘Aggressive.’ He always fancied that. It summed him up. But he didn’t like to feel he hadn’t a smooth line where women were concerned, no subtlety, that irked.
The visit to the Trad Hall had been a coincidence in the first place, all stemming from his ‘aggressiveness’ of twelve months ago. Because it was in the middle of his suspension that he was in Newmarket with a mate for the Cesarewitch – there’s always extra work and pickings of some sort at a time like that – and he got a job driving a van for Sir George Wayland – or his stable anyhow, his steward – ferrying things from his place which was about twenty miles away. And Sir George himself seemed to take a fancy to Godfrey – not unusual, people often did – and Sir George had done some boxing when he was a lad, he said; so when the meeting was over Godfrey stayed on at his place where there was a house party, helping around the house with odd jobs of this and that.
And the day the party was breaking up, Godfrey was getting ready to go when Sir George sent for him and said: ‘Lady Vosper’s chauffeur has had a stroke and has gone off to hospital. Have you ever driven a Jensen?’ He said no, he hadn’t, but he could drive anything on four wheels; and this woman got up from her chair and came across and looked at him as if he was a piece of pre-wrapped sirloin in a supermarket. She was a middle-aged woman who walked like a man and had skirts too short for her age and he hated her on sight. He thought, I’ll tell her where she can stuff her lousy car, but just then she said: ‘You’re a boxer, are you, Brown? Warned off the course, eh? Suspended. Drunk in the ring or something?’
‘Don’t drink,’ he said and gave her a look that should have dried up anyone.
But all she said was: ‘I’m a driver, Brown. But I’ve been warned off the course. Suspended. Drunk in charge. So we’re both more or less in the same mess.’ And she snorted with laughter.
He stood there wooden, not knowing what to make of this, whether to walk away or answer something rude, when Sir George said: ‘Lady Vosper is not permitted to drive her own car, Brown, and would like you to drive her to her home in Suffolk. It’s about fifty miles. I imagine you can do this. It’s more or less on your way to London, if you’re going to London.’
‘It’s worth a fiver,’ said this Vosper woman. ‘If you get me there safe. I’m otter hunting in the morning. Can you drive, boy? Speak up.’
So he spoke up. Try anything once. But when he got in the car she came and sat beside him and watched closely how he handled it, especially the automatic change which took getting used to, having nothing to do with your left foot. But after a few ghastly jerks when he tried to de-clutch with the brake, he mastered it.
She talked nearly all the way to this place, Handley Merrick, this village where she lived. After a bit you had to hand it to her, she was a game old bird. She knew more about cars than Godfrey thought there was to know. She had raced, actually raced, she claimed, at Silverstone, and after his first sneering disbelief he began to wonder if it might be true. She knew the inside of an Aston Martin like most women know the inside of their dressing table. She knew nothing about boxing, but hunting, racing, shooting, climbing, all that, she’d done the lot.
So he got more at ease as they went on, and was soon telling her about his life, how he had moved from fighting in a fairground to the A.B.A. for a couple of years while he did odd jobs at a garage touching up hot cars, working on a building site shovelling hard core, bookie’s runner, looking after the dogs. She asked him, so he told her how a man called Regan paid him £100 to turn pro and had put him in a few fly-weight contests. It was small time, but he had begun as Godfrey Brown of Birmingham and later he had moved up to the feathers.
Then there was a spot of trouble that had really been Regan’s fault, but Godfrey carried the can for it, and he had been warned by the British Boxing Board of Control. After that things didn’t go so well between him and Regan, and one night, the only night he’d been stopped, when he’d been matched against a light-weight called Carmel, Regan came in the dressing room before he’d had time to cool off and started ranting at him for boxing so badly. And somehow in a flash things got out of hand and Regan had a black eye and a bleeding nose. So the next day he was out on his ear, and the B.B. B.C. had him up before them again and this time it was a fine of £20 and a twelve months’ suspension.
All this the Vosper woman seemed to find very funny, and the fact that she found it funny helped Godfrey to see his grievance in a better light. She told him how she had been driving home fast one night, back to London, and near Chelmsford had skidded on an icy road and run into a van. Not too much damage but the police came and tested her and found she’d had too much so she was fined £100 and disqualified for a year – nine months still to go.
‘Drunk?’ she said. ‘Of course I wasn’t drunk. Damned fools! But I’d had a lot to drink. When haven’t I? It doesn’t make any difference to the way I drive, except to make me more careful. When I was a gel, used to have to drive my father home, big four-and-a-half litre Bentley, big as a steam engine. I used to drink much more then, so that I couldn’t walk straight. But drive straight – that was second nature. I used to get in, shove the lever in first gear, and stay there all the way home. It was heavy on the petrol but safe as could be. Fools and their drink tests! It’s intelligence tests people should take!’
Godfrey thought once of telling her that he had never bothered to get a driving licence, but he thought better not. And this was lucky because when they got to the house where she lived she said would he like to stay on as temporary driver until her own chauffeur came back. He said yes he would and thought it’s not going to be so temporary if I know anything, seeing that chauffeur carried out of the house by a couple of body snatchers to an ambulance and him unconscious and snoring. He’d only seen one before like that, in the ring, and he died on the way to hospital.
So he stayed on and he was right, her chauffeur never came back, so the temporary became sort of permanent and the permanent sort of indispensable.
Lady Vosper had a handsome flat in London as well as Merrick House and she spent more time in London than in the country, but he seemed to slide into both pretty well. She had hardly any staff at either place, just a man and wife in the great place in Suffolk and a daily woman in Wilton Crescent – and Godfrey. Godfrey always because he drove her wherever she went.
Merrick House in Suffolk was in Godfrey’s opinion as big as the orphanage where he’d been reared and about as beautiful. All the Vospers, Lady V said, had been army men, except the one that built it, who was a merchant and made a fortune in Victorian times and pulled down the original house and put this up in its place. But if he had built it, it was the army men who had left their ticket. The place was cluttered with souvenirs of this battle and that war, somebody’s standard at Malplaquet, muskets from Waterloo, cannons from Sebastopol. Half the time you fell over the things. But there had been another war since then and the house had been used as a paratroop training school, and no one had spent much money on it since, so it was a fair shambles in parts. The small wing where Lady Vosper lived was cosy enough, but the main part was as draughty as a building site, and at night it reminded Godfrey of something out of Son of Dracula.
r /> Being chauffeur was a good enough job while he was still serving his suspension, and he tried to keep in with Lady Vosper, because it occurred to him that she knew practically everybody, and when the time came a word from her might give him a leg up the ladder. So it was more than two months before he realized the way things were really drifting. It had not occurred to Rudolph Valentino Brown that Flora Vosper was fancying him for more than the way he drove a car. Modest Little God.
But she was not above dropping a hint, and after a little hesitation and a pause for inspection he was not above taking it. He reckoned from what she said that she was around forty-six, but he was not all that particular where there was good for Godfrey to be got out of it. And of course it was something to lay a real Viscountess. The first and only time in his life that he was nervous. Because this wasn’t just merely having it off with a woman old enough to be your mother. It was something else again.
And of course she was not that bad to look at if the light wasn’t too bright, and he had to confess she learned him a thing or two. And he pleased her. He’d plenty of go, and there was no training to think about. And there was one thing he specially liked about her, she never got sloppy. A lot of women get sloppy after and chat you up about love. They get clinging and cloying. Even just after it’s over and you want a fag and a change of thought, they’ll wrap their moist arms round you and want to talk about how wonderful it all is. She did not. She never did. When she wanted it she wanted it, and when it was over it was over.
So it was surprising and yet not surprising that their relationship changed so little. In the bedroom she called him Godfrey, but out of it it was Brown. And for a long time he never called her Flora to her face. It’s hard for a woman to be bossy when she’s looking at the ceiling, but she was always the one in charge at other times.
The only fly in the ointment, the only real nasty difficulty in all this was Miriam, Lady Vosper’s sour-faced pimply daughter of twenty-six or so. She was married to someone on the stage, and it seemed to Godfrey that Lady V kept them both. So in a manner of speaking there was enmity between rival claimants on Lady V’s generosity. It did not take long for Miriam to spot what was going on between mother and chauffeur, and she did her best to cramp Godfrey every way she could. Once Godfrey listened at the door and heard Miriam rowing with her Mum over all the expensive shirts and ties and jackets he had. Lady Vosper just laughed and said she didn’t buy them, he did what he liked with his money, and Miriam said, then you must wildly over-pay him, and Lady V said, on the contrary, and she’d never had such a good chauffeur before.