Forfeit

7

Thanks to having left before the last race I had a chance in the still empty and waiting train of a forward facing window-seat in a non-smoker. I turned the heating to ‘hottest’, and opened the newspaper to see what Spyglass had come up with in the late editions.

‘Tiddely Pom will run, trainer says. But is your money really safe?’

Amused, I read to the end. He’d cribbed most of my points and rehashed them. Complimentary. Plagiary is the sincerest form of flattery.

The closed door to the corridor slid open and four bookmakers’ clerks lumbered in, stamping their feet with cold and discussing some luckless punter who had lost an argument over a betting slip.

‘I told him to come right off it, who did he think he was kidding? We may not be archangels, but we’re not the ruddy mugs he takes us for.’

They all wore navy blue overcoats which after a while they shed on to the luggage racks. Two of them shared a large packet of stodgy looking sandwiches and the other two smoked. They were all in the intermediate thirty-forties, with London-Jewish accents in which they next discussed their taxi drive to the station in strictly non Sabbath day terms.

‘Evening,’ they said to me, acknowledging I existed, and one of them gestured with his cigarette to the non-smoking notice on the window and said, ‘O.K. with you, chum?’

I nodded, hardly taking them in. The train rocked off southwards, the misty day turned to foggy night, and five pairs of eyeballs fell gently shut.

The door to the corridor opened with a crash. Reluctantly I opened one eye a fraction, expecting the ticket collector. Two men filled the opening, looking far from bureaucratic. Their effect on my four fellow travellers was a spine-straightening mouth-opening state of shock. The larger of the newcomers stretched out a hand and pulled the blinds down on the insides of the corridor-facing windows. Then he gave the four clerks a contemptuous comprehensive glance, jerked his head towards the corridor and said with simplicity, ‘Out.’

I still didn’t connect any of this as being my business, not even when the four men meekly took down their navy blue overcoats and filed out into the train. Only when the large man pulled out a copy of the Blaze and pointed to my article did I have the faintest prickle on the spine.

‘This is unpopular in certain quarters,’ remarked the larger man. Thick sarcastic Birmingham accent. He pursed his lips, admiring his own heavy irony. ‘Unpopular.’

He wore grubby overalls from shoes to throat, with above that a thick neck, puffy cheeks, a small wet mouth and slicked down hair. His companion, also in overalls, was hard and stocky with wide eyes and a flat topped head.

‘You shouldn’t do it, you shouldn’t really,’ the large man said. ‘Interfering and that.’

He put his right hand into his pocket and it reappeared with a brass ridge across the knuckles. I glanced at the other man. Same thing.

I came up with a rush, grabbing for the communication cord. Penalty for improper use, twenty-five pounds. The large man moved his arm in a professional short jab and made havoc of my intention.

They had both learned their trade in the ring, that much was clear. Not much else was. They mostly left my head alone, but they knew where and how to hit to hurt on the body, and if I tried to fight off one of them, the other had a go. The most I achieved was a solid kick on the smaller man’s ankle which drew from him four letters and a frightening kidney punch. I collapsed on to the seat. They leant over me and broke the Queensberry Rules.

It crossed my mind that they were going to kill me, that maybe they weren’t meaning to, but they were killing me. I even tried to tell them so, but if any sound came out, they took no notice. The larger one hauled me bodily to my feet and the small one broke my ribs.

When they let go I crumpled slowly on to the floor and lay with my face against cigarette butts and the screwed up wrappings of sandwiches. Stayed quite motionless, praying to a God I had no faith in not to let them start again.

The larger one stooped over me.

‘Will he cough it?’ the smaller one said.

‘How can he? We ain’t ruptured nothing, have we? Careful, aren’t I? Look out the door, time we was off.’

The door slid open and presently shut, but not for a long time was I reassured that they had completely gone. I lay on the floor breathing in coughs and jerky shallow breaths, feeling sick. For some short time it seemed in a weird transferred way that I had earned such a beating not for writing a newspaper article but because of Gail; and to have deserved it, to have sinned and deserved it, turned it into some sort of expurgation. Pain flowed through me in a hot red tide, and only my guilt made it bearable.

Sense returned, as sense does. I set about the slow task of picking myself up and assessing the damage. Maybe they had ruptured nothing: I had only the big man’s word for it. At the receiving end it felt as though they had ruptured pretty well everything, including self respect.

I made it up to the seat, and sat vaguely watching the lights flash past, fuzzy and yellow from fog. Eyes half shut, throat closing with nausea, hands nerveless and weak. No one focus of pain, just too much. Wait, I thought, and it will pass.

I waited a long time.

The lights outside thickened and the train slowed down. London. All change. I would have to move from where I sat. Dismal prospect. Moving would hurt.

The train crept into St. Pancras and stopped with a jerk. I stayed where I was, trying to make the effort to stand up and not succeeding, telling myself that if I didn’t get up and go I could be shunted into a siding for a cold uncomfortable night, and still not raking up the necessary propulsion.

Again the door slid open with a crash. I glanced up, stifling the beginnings of panic. No man with heavy overalls and knuckleduster. The guard.

Only when I felt the relief wash through me did I realise the extent of my fear, and I was furious with myself for being so craven.

‘The end of the line,’ the guard was saying.

‘Yeah,’ I said.

He came into the compartment and peered at me. ‘Been celebrating, have you sir?’ He thought I was drunk.

‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘Celebrating.’

I made the long delayed effort and stood up. I’d been quite right about it. It hurt.

‘Look mate, do us a favour and don’t throw up in here,’ said the guard urgently.

I shook my head. Reached the door. Rocked into the corridor. The guard anxiously took my arm and helped me down on to the platform and as I walked carefully away I heard him behind me say to a bunch of porters, half laughing, ‘Did you see that one? Greeny grey and sweating like a pig. Must have been knocking it back solid all afternoon.’

I went home by taxi and took my time up the stairs to the flat. Mrs Woodward for once was in a hurry for me to come, as she was wanting to get home in case the fog thickened. I apologised. ‘Quite all right, Mr Tyrone, you know I’m usually glad to stay...’ The door closed behind her and I fought down a strong inclination to lie on my bed and groan.

Elizabeth said, ‘Ty, you look terribly pale,’ when I kissed her. Impossible to hide it from her completely.

‘I fell,’ I said. ‘Tripped. Knocked the breath out of myself, for a minute or two.’

She was instantly concerned; with the special extra anxiety for herself apparent in her eyes.

‘Don’t worry,’ I comforted her. ‘No harm done.’

I went into the kitchen and held on to the table. After a minute or two I remembered Elizabeth’s pain killing tablets and took the bottle out of the cupboard. Only two left. There would be. I swallowed one of them, tying a mental knot to remind me to ring the doctor for another prescription. One wasn’t quite enough, but better than nothing. I went back into the big room and with a fair stab at normality poured our evening drinks.

By the time I had done the supper and the jobs for Elizabeth and got myself undressed and into bed, the main damage had resolved itself into two or possibly three cracked ribs low down on my left side. The rest slowly subsided into a blanketing ache. Nothing had ruptured, like the man said.

I lay in the dark breathing shallowly and trying not to cough, and at last took time off from simply existing to consider the who and why of such a drastic roughing up, along with the pros and cons of telling Luke-John. He’d make copy of it, put it on the front page, plug it for more than it was worth, write the headlines himself. My feelings would naturally be utterly disregarded as being of no importance compared with selling papers. Luke-John had no pity. If I didn’t tell him and he found out later, there would be frost and fury and a permanent atmosphere of distrust. I couldn’t afford that. My predecessor had been squeezed off the paper entirely as a direct result of having concealed from Luke-John a red hot scandal in which he was involved. A rival paper got hold of it and scooped the Blaze. Luke-John never forgave, never forgot.

I sighed deeply. A grave mistake. The cracked ribs stabbed back with unnecessary vigour. I spent what could not be called a restful, comfortable, sleep-filled night, and in the morning could hardly move. Elizabeth watched me get up and the raw anxiety twisted her face.

‘Ty!’

‘Only a bruise or two, honey. I told you, I fell over.’

‘You look... hurt.’

I shook my head. ‘I’ll get the coffee...’

I got the coffee. I also looked with longing at Elizabeth’s last pill, which I had no right to take. She still suffered sometimes from terrible cramp, and on these occasions had to have the pills in a hurry. I didn’t need any mental knots to remind me to get some more. When Mrs Woodward came, I went.

Doctor Antonio Perelli wrote the prescription without hesitation and handed it across.

‘How is she?’

‘Fine. Same as usual.’

‘It’s time I went to see her.’

‘She’d love it,’ I said truthfully. Perelli’s visits acted on her like champagne. I’d met him casually at a party three years earlier, a young Italian doctor in private practice in Welbeck Street. Too handsome, I’d thought at once. Too feminine, with those dark, sparkling, long lashed eyes. All bedside manner and huge fees, with droves of neurotic women patients paying to have their hands held.

Then just before the party broke up someone told me he specialised in chest complaints, and not to be put off by his youth and beauty, he was brilliant: and by coincidence we found ourselves outside on the pavement together, hailing the same taxi, and going the same way.

At the time I had been worried about Elizabeth. She had to return to hospital for intensive nursing every time she was ill, and with a virtual stamping out of polio, the hospitals geared to care for patients on artificial respiration were becoming fewer and fewer. We had just been told she could not expect to go back any more to the hospital that had always looked after her.

I shared the taxi with Perelli and asked him if he knew of anywhere I could send her quickly if she ever needed it. Instead of answering directly he invited me into his tiny bachelor flat for another drink, and before I left he had acquired another patient. Elizabeth’s general health had improved instantly under his care and I paid his moderate fees without a wince.

I thanked him for the prescription and put it in my pocket.

‘Ty... are the pills for Elizabeth, or for you?’

I looked at him, startled. ‘Why?’

‘My dear fellow, I have eyes. What I see in your face is... severe.’

I smiled wryly. ‘All right. I was going to ask you. Could you put a bit of strapping on a couple of ribs?’

He stuck me up firmly and handed me a small medicine glass containing, he said, disprins dissolved in nepenthe, which worked like a vanishing trick: now you feel it, now you don’t.

‘You haven’t told Elizabeth?’ he said anxiously.

‘Only that I fell and winded myself.’

He relaxed, moving his head in a gesture of approval. ‘Good.’

It had been his idea to shield her from worries which ordinary women could cope with in their stride. I had thought him unduly fussy at first, but the strict screening he had urged had worked wonders. She had become far less nervous, much happier, and had even put on some badly needed weight.

‘And the police? Have you told the police?’

I shook my head and explained about Luke-John.

‘Difficult. Um. Suppose you tell this Luke-John simply that those men threatened you? You’ll not be taking your shirt off in the office.’ He smiled in the way that made Elizabeth’s eyes shine. ‘These two men, they will not go about saying they inflicted so much damage.’

‘They might.’ I frowned, considering. ‘It could be a good idea if I turned up in perfect health at the races today and gave them the lie.’

With an assenting gesture he mixed me a small bottle full of the disprin and nepenthe. ‘Don’t eat much,’ he said, handing it over. ‘And only drink coffee.’

‘O.K.’

‘And do nothing that would get you another beating like this.’

I was silent.

He looked at me with sad understanding. ‘That is too much to give up for Elizabeth?’

‘I can’t just... crawl away,’ I protested. ‘Even for Elizabeth.’

He shook his head. ‘It would be best for her. But...’ He shrugged, and held out his hand in goodbye. ‘Stay out of trains, then.’

I stayed out of trains. For ninety-four minutes. Then I caught the race train to Plumpton and travelled down safely with two harmless strangers and a man I knew slightly from the B.B.C.

Thanks to Tonio’s mixture I walked about all day and talked and laughed much the same as usual. Once I coughed. Even that caused only an echo of a stab. For maximum effect I spent a good deal of my time walking about the bookmakers’ stalls, inspecting both their prices and their clerks. The fraternity knew something had happened. Their heads swivelled as I passed and they were talking behind my back, nudging each other. When I put ten shillings on a semi-outsider with one of them he said, ‘You feeling all right, chum?’

‘Why not?’ I said in surprise. ‘It’s a nice enough day.’

He looked perplexed for a second, and then shrugged. I walked on, looking at faces, searching for a familiar one. The trouble was I’d paid the four clerks in the compartment so little attention that I wasn’t sure I’d recognise any one of them again, and I wouldn’t have done, if he hadn’t given himself away. When he saw me looking at him, he jerked, stepped down off his stand, and bolted.

Running was outside my repertoire. I walked quietly up behind him an hour later when he had judged it safe to go back to his job.

‘A word in your ear,’ I said at his elbow.

He jumped six inches. ‘It was nothing to do with me.’

‘I know that. Just tell me who the two men were. Those two in overalls.’

‘Do me a favour. Do I want to end up in hospital?’

‘Twenty quid?’ I suggested.

‘I dunno about that... How come you’re here today?’

‘Why not?’

‘When those two’ve seen to someone... they stay seen to.’

‘Is that so? They seemed pretty harmless.’

‘No, straight up,’ he said curiously, ‘didn’t they touch you?’

‘No.’

He was puzzled.

‘A pony. Twenty-five quid,’ I said. ‘For their names, or who they work for.’

He hesitated. ‘Not here, mate. On the train.’

‘Not on the train.’ I was positive. ‘In the Press Box. And now.’

He got five minutes off from his grumbling employer and went in front of me up the stairs to the eyrie allotted to newspapers. I gave a shove-off sign to the only press man up there, and he obligingly disappeared.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Who were they?’

‘They’re Brummies,’ he said cautiously.

‘I know that. You could cut their accents.’

‘Bruisers,’ he ventured.

I stopped myself just in time from telling him I knew that too.

‘They’re Charlie Boston’s boys.’ It came out in a nervous rush.

‘That’s better. Who’s Charlie Boston?’

‘So who hasn’t heard of Charlie Boston? Got some betting shops, hasn’t he, in Birmingham and Wolverhampton and such like.’

‘And some boys on race trains?’

He looked more puzzled than ever. ‘Don’t you owe Charlie no money? So what did they want, then? It’s usually bad debts they’re after.’

‘I’ve never heard of Charlie Boston before, let alone had a bet with him.’ I took out my wallet and gave him five fivers. He took them with a practised flick and stowed them away in a pocket like Fort Knox under his left armpit. ‘Dirty thieves,’ he explained. ‘Taking precautions, aren’t I?’

He scuttled off down the stairs, and I stayed up in the press box and took another swig at my useful little bottle, reflecting that when Charlie Boston unleashed his boys on me he had been very foolish indeed.

Luke-John reacted predictably with a bridling ‘They can’t do that to the Blaze’ attitude.

Wednesday morning. Not much doing in the office. Derry with his feet up on the blotter, Luke-John elbow deep in the Dailies’ sports pages, the telephone silent, and every desk in the place exhibiting the same feverish inactivity.

Into this calm I dropped the pebble of news that two men, adopting a threatening attitude, had told me not to interfere in the non-starters racket. Luke-John sat up erect like a belligerent bull frog, quivering with satisfaction that the article had produced tangible results. With a claw hand he pounced on the telephone.

‘Manchester office? Give me the Sports Desk... That you, Andy? Luke Morton. What can you tell me about a bookmaker called Charlie Boston? Has a string of betting shops around Birmingham.’

He listened to a lengthy reply with growing intensity.

‘That adds up. Yes. Yes. Fine. Ask around and let me know.’

He put down the receiver and rubbed his larynx. ‘Charlie Boston changed his spots about a year ago. Before that he was apparently an ordinary Birmingham bookmaker with about six shops and a reasonable reputation. Now, Andy says he’s expanded a lot and become a bully. He says he’s been hearing too much about Charlie Boston lately. Seems he hires two ex-boxers to collect unpaid debts from his credit customers, and as a result of all this he’s coining it.’

I thought it over. Charlie Boston of Birmingham with his betting shops and bruisers didn’t gel at all with the description Dembley had given me of a quiet gentleman in a Rolls with a chauffeur and a Greek, Dutch or Scandinavian accent. They even seemed an unlikely pair as shoulder to shoulder partners. There might of course be two separate rackets going on, and if so, what happened if they clashed? And by which of them had Bert Checkov been seduced? But if they were all one outfit, I’d settle for the Rolls gent as the brains and Charlie Boston the muscles. Setting his dogs on me had been classic muscle-bound thinking.

Luke-John’s telephone rang and he reached out a hand. As he listened his eyes narrowed and he turned his head to look straight at me.

‘What do you mean, he was pulped? He certainly was not. He’s here in the office at this moment and he went to Plumpton races yesterday. What your paper needs is a little less imagination... If you don’t believe me, talk to him yourself.’ He handed me the receiver, saying with a grimace ‘Connersley. Bloody man.’

‘I heard,’ said the precise malicious voice on the phone, ‘that some Birmingham heavies took you to pieces on the Leicester race train.’

‘A rumour,’ I said with boredom. ‘I heard it myself yesterday at Plumpton.’

‘According to my informant you couldn’t have gone to Plumpton.’

‘Your informant is unreliable. Scrap him.’

A small pause. Then he said ‘I can check if you were there.’

‘Check away.’ I put the receiver down with a brusque crash and thanked my stars I had reached Luke-John with my version first.

‘Are you planning a follow-up on Sunday?’ he was asking. Connersley had planted no suspicions: was already forgotten. ‘Hammer the point home. Urge the racing authorities to act. Agitate. You know the drill.’

I nodded. I knew the drill. My bruises gave me a protesting nudge. No more, they said urgently. Write a nice mild piece on an entirely different, totally innocuous subject.

‘Get some quotes,’ Luke-John said.

‘O.K.’

‘Give with some ideas,’ he said impatiently. ‘I’m doing all your ruddy work.’

I sighed. Shallowly and carefully. ‘How about us making sure Tiddely Pom starts in the Lamplighter? Maybe I’ll go fix it with the Ronceys...’

Luke-John interrupted, his eyes sharp. ‘The Blaze will see to it that Tiddely Pom runs. Ty, that’s genius. Start your piece with that. The Blaze will see to it... Splendid. Splendid.’

Oh God, I thought. I’m the world’s greatest bloody fool. Stay out of race trains, Tonio Perelli had said. Nothing about lying down on the tracks.