Fortune Is a Woman

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  Contents

  Winston Graham

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Winston Graham

  Fortune is a Woman

  Winston Mawdsley Graham OBE was an English novelist, best known for the series of historical novels about the Poldarks. Graham was born in Manchester in 1908, but moved to Perranporth, Cornwall when he was seventeen. His first novel, The House with the Stained Glass Windows was published in 1933. His first ‘Poldark’ novel, Ross Poldark, was published in 1945, and was followed by eleven further titles, the last of which, Bella Poldark, came out in 2002. The novels were set in Cornwall, especially in and around Perranporth, where Graham spent much of his life, and were made into a BBC television series in the 1970s. It was so successful that vicars moved or cancelled church services rather than try to hold them when Poldark was showing.

  Aside from the Poldark series, Graham’s most successful work was Marnie, a thriller which was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1964. Hitchcock had originally hoped that Grace Kelly would return to films to play the lead and she had agreed in principle, but the plan failed when the principality of Monaco realised that the heroine was a thief and sexually repressed. The leads were eventually taken by Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery. Five of Graham’s other books were filmed, including The Walking Stick, Night Without Stars and Take My Life. Graham wrote a history of the Spanish Armadas and an historical novel, The Grove of Eagles, based in that period. He was also an accomplished writer of suspense novels. His autobiography, Memoirs of a Private Man, was published by Macmillan in 2003. He had completed work on it just weeks before he died. Graham was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 1983 was honoured with the OBE.

  Chapter One

  You might think that that first time I met her hadn’t really a lot of significance. Everything has changed so much since, that sometimes it doesn’t seem any longer to have happened to her and to me. Yet the more I think of it the more important it seems to begin there, if anyone is to understand the rest.

  I remember I’d been on the move since early morning, slipping out of a shed where they kept the empties behind a country pub, getting away before the maids woke, and making more or less direct south for Salisbury. I’d hoped to see it before the evening; but I’d only picked up one lift all day, a lorry driver with neuralgia who put me on about ten miles. Even that wasn’t direct; and when the drizzle started I was sorry I hadn’t gone on with him to Andover. I didn’t want a night under a hedge.

  The car was a bit off the road and she was changing a wheel. At least, she was going through some half-hearted motions with a jack, but when she heard the footsteps she straightened up and looked round. She was only a kid, and there was no one else in the car. I asked her if she’d got a puncture and she said, yes, and murmured something about a broken milk-bottle, so I said, did she want any help, and she said: ‘‘ Thanks, Thank you so much. I was afraid I might not be able to move the screws.”

  The car was a Daimler with some sort of a sports body. She’d been travelling fast, and it was lucky there was a wide verge. I got the jack under and worked the car up on it. She stood and watched for a bit, and then fetched a torch, because darkness was falling, and held it for me in a black-gloved hand. We didn’t talk much, because there wasn’t much to say, but once or twice I thought the torch wavered over to include me.

  After I’d put the other wheel on I started tightening it, and the brace slipped on the nut. I straightened up and looked at her properly for the first time.

  ‘‘You’ve hurt your hand?’’ she said.

  ‘‘Look, will you get in and put the brake on?’’

  ‘‘What for?’’

  ‘‘The wheel turns instead of the nut.”

  ‘‘Oh, I see.” She handed me the torch and slipped into the car. When the screws were a bit tighter I let the car down and finished the job. I put the hub-cap back. She hadn’t come out again. I pushed the punctured tyre into the boot with the tools and shut it. Not another car had passed all the time. I wiped my hands on a rag and went round to the door of the car.

  ‘‘It’s O.K. You can drive on now.”

  She said: ‘‘Thank you very much. Can I give you a lift somewhere?’’

  ‘‘I was going to Salisbury.”

  ‘‘I live a mile from there.”

  I walked round the car and opened the other door. She had switched on the interior light.

  I said: ‘‘ I’ll muck your car up.”

  ‘‘Oh, no, it’s all right. Get in.”

  I slid in and she pressed the starter. The car bumped off the verge and accelerated away with a well-bred hum. Nothing coarse or effortful about it. They were both thoroughbreds, she and the car, and I’d no place in either of their lives.

  She wasn’t more than eighteen, I guessed; tallish and fairly plump, the way some young girls are at that age. She drove very fast. At the time I thought perhaps it was just because she was late or because she wanted to get rid of me as soon as possible.

  After a bit, perhaps more to break the silence than from any real interest, she asked me if I lived in Salisbury, and I said I’d never been there before. Then it came out that I was looking for work, and she said, had I been out of work long, and I said, long enough. I think she glanced at me then, maybe wondering how old I was, under the dirt.

  It was easier really to sit quiet than to talk; it was queer to sink back in this luxury knowing that in a few minutes it would have wafted on, leaving you to the darkness and the rain and the ‘‘no hawkers’’ notices. Now and then a reflected light would show up her face. It caught the gleam of her stockings sometimes, and a sort of paler opalescence to her wrist when her coat sleeve slid back. She’d a lot of dark hair, tied loosely back somehow at the nape of her neck and quite long, and very pale skin, so smooth that her face seemed a bit unreal, like a cameo, except that her mouth was human enough. The fine bones of her face suggested how she might look in a year or two’s time.

  Somewhere along the road she had to brake because of a convoy of half a dozen army trucks; and, after she had gone past them like a torpedo, she made some sort of remark about the prospect of war. It was everybody’s small-change topic at the time, like the weather, so I didn’t answer, feeling the way I did. After a second or two she glanced at me.

  ??
?‘Do you think there’ll be a war?’’

  I said: ‘‘If it is, it’ll not be my war.”

  ‘‘How do you mean?’’

  ‘‘Well, I think those can do the fighting who’ve got something to fight for.”

  She said after a minute: ‘‘Do you think a dictatorship would give it you?’’

  ‘‘It couldn’t give me less.”

  ‘‘That’s, something I can’t argue about.”

  I rubbed a streak of blood off my hand. ‘‘Perhaps it’s easy and straightforward for you, because people like you feel you’re fighting for something that belongs to you. I’ve nothing like that to believe in. The only privilege I’ve ever had is the privilege of being kicked around.” I could see her expression but I couldn’t read it. ‘‘ So if there’s a war I’m getting out of the country. And if I did happen to be caught in England I should try and get by as a pacifist, or a four square gospeller, or a second adventist. Just so I can keep my hands clean and let other people make heroes of themselves.”

  I don’t know what particularly made me say all that just then. Even in those days, however I felt, I wasn’t much of a one for shooting a line. Something in her, I suppose. Anyway, when I’d said it I think perhaps I half expected her to stop and tell me to get out; if she had I should have taken it as the familiar, natural thing, what I was used to; I should have gone, satisfied to walk, knowing I’d asked no favour. But she didn’t. Instead after a minute she said:

  ‘‘I haven’t met anyone like you before.”

  ‘‘I expect it’s a bad exchange for a mended puncture.”

  ‘‘I didn’t say that.”

  We were coming among houses.

  ‘‘Is this Salisbury?’’

  ‘‘Not quite.”

  ‘‘You know,’’ I said, ‘‘you and me shouldn’t talk the same language. That’s the trouble.”

  She said quietly: ‘‘I don’t think we do.”

  We cut through the single street and were out in the country again. If I could have seen her foot I think it would have been hard down on the accelerator pedal. Between us we’d summed it all up, and there wasn’t anything more to say.

  ‘‘And what will you do if there’s a war?’’ I asked.

  ‘‘Give up my work and take another job. I suppose.”

  ‘‘Oh, you—work?’’

  ‘‘Does that surprise you?’’

  ‘‘A bit.”

  ‘‘I thought it might.”

  ‘‘Well, that’s all right. I don’t mind.”

  After a minute I said: ‘‘Are you training for something?’’

  ‘‘I’m studying ballet. I’m taking it up as a profession.” After a second she added, a bit defensively: ‘‘Perhaps that doesn’t sound like work to you—but it is.”

  ‘‘I don’t know anything about it,’’ I said. ‘‘It doesn’t belong where I come from.”

  ‘‘And where do you come from?’’

  ‘‘Does it matter?’’

  ‘‘No …”

  ‘‘I’m English.”

  ‘‘Oh, I never had the slightest doubt about that.”

  I wanted to ask her what she meant, but the car was slowing up.

  ‘‘This is where I live,’’ she said. ‘‘You go straight on for the centre of the town—if you want the centre.”

  ‘‘Thanks.”

  ‘‘But if you’ve hurt your hand I can have it dressed for you first.”

  We were turning towards some double gates, and there were lights in a house well back. ‘‘No, it’s nothing. I’ll get down here.”

  As she stopped, I remember, the headlights whitened all the drive until it curved away towards the house.

  I opened the door. ‘‘Well, thanks for the lift.”

  She didn’t say anything, but groped about in her bag, and as I got out she put two coins into my hand. I pulled my hand back quickly, and one of the coins rolled on the floor of the car. She began to say something and I began to say something, both at the same time; but before we could get it clear a man came up out of the darkness.

  ‘‘Is that you, Sarah? Where have you been? Who is this?’’

  He was about my own height, thin and probably iron grey.

  ‘‘I was kept late with Valerie, Daddy. I had a puncture. This man changed the wheel for me, so I gave him a lift.”

  ‘‘O. K.,’’ I said; ‘‘It wasn’t much trouble, and I got a lift.”

  Her father looked me up and down, from my two-day beard to somebody else’s shoes.

  ‘‘Oh … I see,’’ he said stiffly. ‘‘Very well. I’m much obliged to you. Good night.”

  The girl said good night to me a bit more graciously, and they moved off. She was explaining about Valerie. I could see she was going to get a talking to for risking herself with a tough like me.

  I stood there for a second looking after them. They’d already almost forgotten me, I was out of their little world—a man with no name who’d served a purpose and passed on. I was a stray bit of a larger world that was expendable for their convenience and comfort. Of course I was used to that sort of thing, but I didn’t like it. I began to walk off down the road. I heard the car move into the drive. It was minutes before I knew I was still holding one of the coins she had given me. It was half a crown.

  I found a bed at a hostel that had just been opened, and the next day I went to see the man whose name I’d been given; but he was on his holidays so I was back where I started. It was haymaking time but the weather was against it. Perhaps I was against it too. I’ve thought since that people sheered off not so much from the ragged clothes but from something in my eyes. I couldn’t make it easy for them to feel sorry for me. All I collected all morning was ninepence and a pamphlet headed ‘‘Thy Word is a Lamp unto my Feet’’.

  In the afternoon I got a job chopping wood. At least it wasn’t much of a job because the old woman I did it for couldn’t afford to pay me anything, but I thought I might as well do that as nothing. In the middle of it a policeman came up and asked me what my name was and how long I’d been in the town.

  I told him and he said: ‘‘Were you the man who changed the wheel of Dr. Darnley’s car and was given a lift in it afterwards?’’

  When you’re living like I was living you don’t look on a policeman as your friend and protector the way comfortable people do. There’s a sort of cold war goes on, even when you’ve done nothing: ‘‘Move along there, please,’’ ‘‘ Now then, can’t bed down here, you know.” And even when they don’t speak they look at you, taking a mental note in case there’s a petty theft; and you look back at them, maybe showing what you’d like to say.

  This was a very young policeman. I said: ‘‘ I changed the wheel of a car.”

  He said: ‘‘I’ll have to ask you to come along to the station. There’s one or two questions we want to ask you.”

  ‘‘What’s the game?’’

  ‘‘Miss Darnley has lost her bracelet. We’re just checking up. You don’t want to make trouble here, do you?’’

  The old woman I was doing the job for was sticking her head out from one of her upper windows. I guessed she’d suspected all along there was a catch in it somewhere, and now it was going to turn out I was a child murderer in disguise.

  ‘‘So they think I took it, eh?’’

  ‘‘We’ve just got to check up,’’ the policeman said pacifically. ‘‘You don’t want to make trouble here. We can talk it over quietly, like, at the station.”

  He was bluffing, I knew that much, because he hadn’t made a charge, but I’d nothing to hide, so I chucked the axe down and went with him. I was pretty mad about it, and I thought, perhaps she’ll be at the station waiting to accuse me.

  But when I got there there was nobody but a big sergeant with a bald head and another policeman sitting in a corner by the door—and of course the usual smell of disinfectant.

  They asked me my name and where I came from and how I’d been given the lift last night and whether I?
??d seen anything of a diamond bracelet and where I’d spent the night and who I’d called on this morning. Then they asked me if I was willing to be searched. I said, why should I be? Were they arresting me, and if so, what for?

  The sergeant looked at me with a suspicious eye, because I’d shown that I knew the ropes.

  ‘‘Ever been charged before?’’

  ‘‘Yes.”

  ‘‘What for?’’

  ‘‘Knocking a policeman down.”

  You could feel the temperature cooling off.

  ‘‘What did you get?’’

  ‘‘Seven days.”

  The sergeant got up and walked round his desk and bit the end of his thumb.

  He said: ‘‘ Look, son, we know your kind and we’re used to dealing with ’ em. If you want trouble you can have it, and believe you me, no one will blame us for arresting you on suspicion. But if you’ll answer questions and submit to a search without a charge we’ll do the fair thing by you. It’s up to you to choose.”

  I thought it over. But the smell of germ killer was too strong.

  ‘‘O.K.,’’ I said. ‘‘ If it makes you feel better …”

  They searched me. The police aren’t very imaginative, but the way they search you shows the imagination of all the crooks who’ve cheated them in the past.

  ‘‘Satisfied?’’ I asked when they’d done.

  I must say the sergeant was trying to be fair. He rubbed his bald head and looked at me pretty distastefully and then went back to the outer office to telephone. While he was doing this a policeman came through, and by the snatch of talk that passed while the door was open I could tell that it was a call to Dr. Darnley. As it happened Darnley was one of their local J.P.’s.

  When the sergeant came back he said: ‘‘All right, son, you can go. We’re not going to make a charge.”

  I said: ‘‘ Thanks. Shall I leave a forwarding address?’’

  ‘‘If you’ll take my tip,’’ said the sergeant, ‘‘you’ll keep your tongue a bit quieter, or one of these days it’ll lead you into trouble.”

  I didn’t answer. There was no point in going on being kiddish and pert. Besides I was too fed up about things. If I’d spoken again I should have done just what he thought. I went down the steps of the police station, shaking the half crown she’d given me up and down in my hand. I thought with the arrogance of a young man: someday … maybe … But of course I never seriously believed it would happen.