‘Can he do hands,’ said Spider. ‘He did my hand last week and told me all about you two coming back here tonight.’ Spider gave a short sardonic laugh. ‘Can he do hands,’ he said.

  ‘What did he say about us tonight?’ Marlene asked.

  ‘Brief moment of happiness,’ said Spider sadly. ‘Snatched from a life of toil and torment.’

  ‘What else?’ Marlene asked me. She held her hand out to me.

  I took her hand gently and sat her down on the bed. ‘A vibrant spirit,’ I read from her palm. ‘A passionate will, longing to be free.’

  ‘Free of what?’

  ‘Free of the bourgeois restrictions of society.’

  ‘I ran away from home,’ she said. ‘I ran away from Liverpool.’ I ran my fingers across the palm of her hand. It was a sad little hand devoid of much character.

  ‘You rejected the conventions and would risk all, to gain one brief moment of bliss.’

  ‘Leave orf,’ said Marlene, she laughed but left her hand in mine.

  From the sitting room I could hear Spider and the other girl giggling and struggling. ‘Do mine,’ called Meg or Peg.

  ‘Spider will do yours,’ I called back. ‘Spider’s just as good as me at it.’

  ‘But you’ll do me later?’ shouted Meg or Peg. I turned my attentions to Marlene’s knitted top.

  ‘Yes,’ I promised. ‘I’ll do you later.’

  I don’t remember the two girls leaving. I suppose Spider led them away in the early hours of the morning. I remember them having no eyebrow pencils and being short of hairpins. They were worrying about being late for work and complaining that I didn’t have an alarm clock. ‘I’m never alarmed.’ I said. ‘That’s why I don’t have an alarm clock.’ I turned over and went back to sleep.

  It was 11 o’clock when I finally staggered out of bed and ordered breakfast. I was sitting there in my dressing gown, working my way through orange juice, cornflakes and egg and bacon, when Liz came in. There was a connecting door between the suite that Silas and Liz were using and my suite. She tapped lightly on the door and came in. She looked very beautiful.

  ‘My God you look awful,’ she said.

  I didn’t answer. She pulled up a chair opposite me and using my clean cup poured herself some coffee. I tipped the sugar from the basin and used that as a coffee cup for myself.

  ‘Who were those terrible girls you were with?’

  ‘Marlene and Meg,’ I said. ‘Or it may have been Peg.’

  ‘They were pretty tarty.’

  ‘They were,’ I agreed.

  Liz was wearing a simple woollen dress and she must have spent half the morning fixing her hair. She took a piece of toast, buttered it and dipped it into the yolk of my last fried egg.

  I said, ‘I was saving that.’

  ‘I could see you were.’

  ‘Haven’t you had breakfast?’

  ‘I had breakfast at 7.30 a.m., before Silas went to Winchester.’

  ‘What’s he gone to Winchester for?’

  ‘He’s got a client for the scrap metal. After that he’s going to see someone about the lease on the mews cottage. He’ll be out all day.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go?’

  ‘He wouldn’t let me. He might need me as a second string to get rid of the scrap metal. He doesn’t want us to be seen together.’

  ‘That’s too bad,’ I said. ‘That’s good marmalade, try some.’

  She took more toast, and coffee too. ‘I didn’t want to go with him really,’ she said. ‘He was in a bad mood.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’m getting real fed up with him.’

  ‘It’s your fault. Why did you needle him last night in the lift?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘You snap at each other all the time.’

  ‘Yeah, sibling rivalry.’

  ‘Silas has been good to both of us,’ said Liz.

  ‘Maybe he has, but how long do we have to go on touching our forelock to him, and not answering back, and letting him have his bad moods? What’s more I’m fed up with always being the chauffeur, or the stupid little feller who’s just found these old documents in this attic and can’t understand them, or Silas’s butler or the Security Guard or the officer’s batman. Why can’t I play the big shot once in a while?’

  ‘You’re always saying that,’ said Liz. ‘Why don’t you speak to Silas about it?’

  ‘I’m going to,’ I said. ‘It’s time I made a few decisions around here.’

  ‘What would be the first decision?’

  ‘Stop taking the mickey out of me,’ I said. But she persisted in asking the same question again. ‘Look,’ I said finally. ‘I don’t even like this business. I don’t even like Silas if you really want to know.’

  ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘You two adore each other. I’ve never known two idiots to understand each other so well.’

  ‘He’s everything I don’t like,’ I protested. ‘And I don’t like the Establishment, old school-tie and the officer’s mess type of fiddles he does. He’s so old-fashioned. That’s nearly disappeared, that sort of world. People like Silas have been running things too long. Now it’s for blokes like me to take over. This is the age of the technocrat.’

  Liz laughed. ‘That’s what you are, is it; a technocrat?’ She laughed again. ‘You are going to be the first of the technocrat con men.’

  ‘I don’t want to be a con man. Can’t you understand what I keep on telling you? It’s for useless, inefficient ponces, this game. I don’t need to fiddle to make a living. I’m just as bright as those people out there in the street. I don’t need no swindles, or lies, to make my living.’ Liz smiled. She could be very snotty when she felt like it. ‘Nor do you, Liz,’ I said.

  She leaned forward. ‘Well, perhaps I don’t, my love,’ she said. ‘But I’m not complaining, you are.’ She looked so beautiful at that moment, that it was hard not to tell her that I was madly in love with her and ask her to run away with me, but I was frightened she would laugh and say it was another sign of my immaturity. She was determined to talk about Silas.

  ‘Perhaps you are wanting to take over our trio,’ she accused me. ‘Personally I’m prepared to take orders from him, no matter if he is a bad-tempered old bully sometimes. He’s got all the worries on his shoulders, you must remember that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind having a few of the worries, if he’d give me more money and a say in what we are doing,’ I said.

  ‘I’d just as soon things remained as they are,’ she said. ‘He’s quite brilliant in his way, and even if he does throw his weight around he’s been very kind to us in the past. I’ll admit it, even if you won’t.’

  ‘You’re just trying to convince yourself,’ I said. ‘When was Silas ever kind to you?’

  ‘Silas had been a friend of my father for years before I met him. I was a hotel receptionist in a crummy hotel in Frankfurt when one day he came up to the desk and said, “You’re Elizabeth Mason, aren’t you?”

  ‘I said I was and remained very suspicious, but he just asked me to remember him to my mother next time I wrote home. He was always kind and considerate to me, and I needed some kindness at that time. I was only a kid. You don’t know how awful it was working for that German hotel. The managers were like Gestapo men and the visitors weren’t any better. Those tourists would treat me like dirt, until one day they lose their camera in a restaurant, or their little boy had been sick in the bedroom, or they must find a dentist at two o’clock in the morning, or, there was this German girl see, and she’s making a bit of a row back up in the room and perhaps I could get her out of there, and here was a little cash to smooth things over. Well I hated those bastards and I’ll always be very happy to con them like they were happy to con me. What did they care for my troubles, when I was earning five quid per week and eating potatoes and sauerkraut for a week to get enough money to have my shoes mended? They cared nothing. Silas cared.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He cared, I can picture it.’

  ‘Well, you could be wrong. I saw Silas every day, for weeks, before he ever asked me for a date. He was kind and generous. He’d take messages to my mother when he came to London, and once he brought an iced birthday cake all the way back from my mother’s, balancing it on his knees in the ’plane so that it wouldn’t damage the icing that said, “Happy Returns to Liz from Mummy”. He didn’t have to do that and he didn’t take advantage either.’

  I could see all the signs of Liz getting sentimental.

  ‘What was he doing in Frankfurt?’ I said.

  ‘He had been there after the war as a civilian with the left-over bits of the Allied Military Government. He has lots of contacts there even now. He was younger at that time and he laughed more than he does now. He was funny and active and reckless and rich.’

  ‘How rich?’

  ‘Oh not rich as we understand it now. But he had half a dozen really good suits and a Bentley. It was a two year old Bentley, but it was still a Bentley, and I adored it. He had accounts with a couple of restaurants, and the idea of eating and signing afterwards was so impressive that I couldn’t get over it. One day he said that I could sign the bill on his account if I ever wanted to go there. I was so thrilled that I used to detour to walk past it, so that I could casually mention to my friends that I was authorised to sign the bill there. But I never went there without Silas.’

  ‘Good thing you didn’t,’ I chuckled. ‘It was probably Silas conning you. They would have probably put you out on your ear if you’d tried to sign the bill.’

  ‘Why should he, he was rich. His flat was full of pictures and silk and …’

  ‘Vulgarity,’ I supplied.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Silk and vulgarity, and I loved it. I was just crazy about him. I was in love more deeply than I thought it was possible to be. Well he never exploited that fact. He could have gone around with a dozen girls and I would have put up with it. But he didn’t. He just had me. He always has.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Oh yes, there was Else, and that girl at the agency in Baltimore, but they were just furtive little affairs. Those girls were never any sort of threat to my position and they knew it. Those girls really did love him. I felt sorry for them, they were so miserable, they knew they would be too. Well Silas was powerful then, he had looks and the talent, the brains and the money. But he didn’t abuse that power. He loved me, and he looked after me, and tried not to give me a bad time, and that’s what I’m doing for him, I always will.’

  ‘But you don’t love him any more,’ I said. ‘That’s obvious.’

  ‘There has to be something beyond love, something that lasts, something stronger and yet more comforting too.’

  ‘There is,’ I said. ‘It’s called money.’

  ‘Is that all you ever think about?’ Liz said.

  ‘I never think about it,’ I said. ‘It’s you and Silas who need money all the time. Who spends money on clothes and cars and diamond rings? Not me, baby. I’m still wearing the sweater and jeans I bought in Macys last year. My only suit came from an East End tailor near my mum’s nearly six years ago. It’s you and Silas who delight in trying to make me look stupid because I spend a lot of time reading about archaeology and history, and trying to improve my mind, while you two are rolling around trying to look like royalty rubbing shoulders with the serfs. You want to know how much I spent last night? I spent six pounds eighteen shillings and fourpence. Spider spent ten quid. He was keen that he shouldn’t ponce on me, so I let him have his way. Right. Now how much did you two – who never think nothing about money – have slide through your hands?’

  ‘Silas gambled and won, so we came back eight hundred pounds up.’

  ‘O.K. you win,’ I said. I poured the last of the coffee for us both.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Liz. ‘You are right. I shouldn’t have said what I said. You don’t think about money all the time. There’s no one who manages to be so happy with so little of it. But you are wrong about Silas, because whatever you don’t like about him; he is clever. Really clever.’

  She looked at me for corroboration. ‘He’s clever,’ I agreed. ‘When I first introduced him to my mum – she only saw him once – she said, “He’s a real box of tricks, that bloke.” Every time I’ve seen her since then she has said, “And how’s the box of tricks doing? Is he still winning all the time?”’

  ‘So what’s wrong with winning all the time?’

  ‘Not a thing, if you are Silas. But for my mum, winning means that someone is losing, and it’s probably someone she knew. My old man was the world’s champion loser.’

  ‘Losers winners. It’s like hawks and doves, and U people and non-U people. Why was your old man a loser?’

  ‘He was a loser,’ I said. ‘He left school when he was twelve. He was still working on the day he died.’

  ‘Doing what?’ Liz said.

  ‘He worked in a tatty fountain pen factory. The boss made him promise not to join the union, before he would employ him. So he didn’t join the union. One night in the pub half a dozen union blokes picked a fight with him and knocked him half silly. He didn’t go in to any pub for two years after that. Then he joined the union and they went on strike, so that he lived on ten shillings a week, strike pay, for five months. The week they returned to work he broke his leg.

  ‘He went to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Naturally he fought on the losing side. He didn’t do anything glamorous. He got a bug from the drinking water. He came back to England hardly able to walk and couldn’t get a job anywhere. My mum went out cleaning to keep us. That’s the story of my old man. Do you know I can sometimes tell that story and have people in fits of laughter.’

  ‘I’m sure you can,’ Liz said. ‘It’s awful.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said, and I was grateful that she understood how awful it was. ‘When I was a kid, I often told that story and I’d make everyone laugh. I’d tell it when they met my old man for the first time. One day the old man came in the room. He didn’t overhear much, just the last few words but he guessed the theme.’

  ‘What did he do?’ asked Liz.

  ‘He laughed too,’ I told her. ‘After that he’d relate his story for laughs.’

  ‘You worry too much, love,’ Liz said.

  ‘At the last stage of each of these capers I suddenly see the mark as my old man. I think “It’s someone’s old man we’re making a sucker out of”, and it gives me a pain in the gut.’

  ‘We all have that sort of feeling,’ Liz said. ‘That’s an occupational hazard. All jobs have dangers; leather workers get anthrax, steeplejacks fall off a roof, pilots break up in mid air …’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Well I prefer breaking up in mid air.’ I walked across the room and switched on the radio. The music was low and schmaltzy. I took Liz’s hand. The tune was an oldie and we danced close until, at the end of the music, there was tumultuous applause. We both took a curtain towards the radio. I grabbed the window curtains as though it was the end of our routine and I turned to Liz saying, ‘They loved you baby. Do you hear that applause?’ I grabbed the fresh flowers from my breakfast tray and presented them to her. ‘They are going crazy out front tonight. You’re a star baby, a big, big Broadway star just like I said you’d be when we were kids sitting beside the tracks in Schnooksville.’ Liz fluttered her eyelids. ‘Oh Mr Hardcastle, I’m so happy. So deliriously, foolishly happy.’

  ‘Don’t call me Mr Hardcastle, Linda baby, my name is Jimmy and this seems the moment to ask you if you couldn’t reach down, and let me ride up there on the stars along with you.’ I touched her arm and came close to her.

  Liz buried her head in the hotel flowers and said demurely, ‘Why Mr Har … Jimmy I mean. Whatever could you be talking about?’

  ‘Just this Linda baby,’ I said, and from my pocket I brought the Asprey jewellery box.

  ‘A jewel for little me?’ Liz said, holding the box at arm’s length. ‘But Jimmy you know that my heart is promised to another.’

  ‘Promised, but not given, Linda baby. Reach to the stars now and let us snatch this brief moment of happiness together,’ I said, smiling nervously.

  Liz held the box close to her face, for by now the soft focus would be doing the big, big C.U. and the jewel box had to be in frame or Cyrus P. Biggelhofer would never wear his cap back-to-front again. She opened the box – tipped slightly to cheat into the camera – and there, sparkling away merrily, was the fake diamond ring I had bought from the poor old con man in Soho. ‘What a marvellous ring Bob,’ she said. Her voice reverting back to normal with a jolt.

  ‘Try it on,’ I said. I was afraid she would be angry with me, really angry.

  ‘It won’t fit.’

  ‘Of course it will fit,’ I said. ‘It was made for you.’ She stared at me until I felt myself blushing and she looked away. She said nothing for a long time. Then she fitted the ring on to her finger, looked at it, and then suddenly snatched it off. When she spoke again it was in her Linda voice. ‘Oh Mr Hardcastle,’ she breathed passionately. ‘If only my heart was not given to another.’

  I kissed her. She was in no hurry to break it up, but eventually she said, ‘It will never work Mr Hardcastle, these things never do.’ But she kissed me again unhurriedly before running out of the room.

  ‘Slow dissolve,’ I shouted after her, but I didn’t follow. I called room service for more coffee, and sat down with my archaeology books.

  I was listening to the schools broadcasting, ‘Willi in der Krankenhaus,’ that afternoon, when Silas came storming into the sitting room of my suite. He said, ‘I want a word with you.’

  ‘Die Schule ist zu Ende,’ I repeated with the radio.

  ‘Switch that thing off,’ Silas said.

  ‘Wieviel Uhr ist es?’ asked the man on the radio.

  ‘Es ist ein halb vier,’ I said.

  ‘Es ist halb vier,’ said Silas fluently. ‘Have you been upsetting Liz?’

  ‘Wo steht der … said the radio, but Silas switched the volume down. ‘What have you been saying to upset Liz?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

 

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