The nudists, p.18
The Nudists, page 18
All the shops in Oxford Street seemed to be selling jeans, a strange concentration of products in one of the country’s busiest shopping centres. He pushed on through the crowds and suddenly spotted, amidst the sea of denim, a small sandwich bar. He immediately realised where he should be. He had decided weeks ago to drop in on Wendy at Morsels one day. Today was the day. He found a Tube and headed west and south.
When he emerged among the gaunt, white buildings of Wimbledon half an hour later, the sun had emerged, too. The street looked like a 1930s sepia photograph and he was glad that he lived in the freshness of the country. He looked up and down the street, in search of Morsels, and discovered a flower stall outside Wimbledon station. This was the sort of day when he should arrive brandishing a red rose, he decided. He bought one, and asked a driver on the taxi rank where Morsels was.
“It’s up the hill in the village,” the man said, not looking up from his evening paper.
“Right,” said Nick, getting in.
“It’s not very far,” said the driver.
“Drive on,” said Nick. A taxi had been a luxury for years.
Travelling up Wimbledon Hill Road he was taken into a quite different world. Instead of card shops, estate agents, TV rentals and supermarkets, Wimbledon Village, as the locals called their posh end, had art galleries, beauty salons, classy boutiques, antique shops and wine bars. In the middle of them, in green and white, was Morsels.
The lunch rush over, Wendy was sitting on a stool drinking a cup of tea. She was wearing a green tee-shirt with “Morsels” written across her chest.
“Hallo, darling,” he said, handing her the rose. “I’ve come to take you away from all this.”
“Nick! What on earth are you doing here?” she said, standing up.
“I’ve come to take you away from the squalor you live in to the squalor I live in.”
She took the rose and laughed. “Tea or coffee?”
“Coffee. I’ve been meaning to drop in on your business empire so I’ve come along today to show you my cheque. Do you get many famous authors in here?”
“Hardly any. That’s a nice cheque. Shouldn’t you put it in the bank before you lose it?”
“I thought I’d flash it around a bit first. I like the decor. Bright and cheerful. Do you make money?”
“You’re not the tax man, are you?” She gave him his coffee and he took it to one of the glass-topped tables.
“What are the books?”
“Just a little present from my grateful publisher. This one is about a rogue monk who catches herpes. What we literary chaps call picaresque. Would you like to borrow it?”
“I don’t think monks and herpes are my – what’s the expression?”
“Bag of nails? Can of worms?”
“Kettle of fish. Are you drunk?”
“Mildly exuberated.”
“There’s no such word,” said Wendy, joining him at the table. “A literary chap like you should know that.”
Nick looked round the room. “Get many mapsers in here?” he asked.
“There’s no such word as ‘mapser’, either.”
“Where do you think words come from? We literary chaps make them up. Now a mapser is a noisy eater, and I’ve always thought restaurants should have special areas set aside for mapsing. ‘Are you a mapser, sir?’ the waiter would ask. ‘No, but my wife is.’ In the mapsing area you’d have louder music.”
She looked at his pale, round face, and the smart grey suit that she had never seen before, and asked: “Why haven’t you got married, Nick?”
“You married Simon,” he replied with a shrug. “Where is he, by the way?”
“Fixing a new curtain rail, I hope. I’m the devil who finds work for idle hands.”
“Somebody like you, small, pretty, shapely, efficient. They’re not easy to find, but most people don’t find the partner they really want, do they? They settle for something less.”
“Are you being serious, or is this part of your cabaret act?”
“In vino veritas. I brought you a red rose.”
“I expect when your book comes out you won’t be short of offers.”
“I can imagine,” he said, nodding. “Myopic nymphomaniacs lunging at my trousers. Greedy for the flower of my wisdom, the vigour of my body, the use of my chain of credit cards.”
“Is life going to be fun for you, Nick?”
He looked serious for a moment. “It’s my turn,” he said. “I’ve tried poverty. It doesn’t work.”
She picked up the red rose that lay between them at the moment that the door of Morsels opened and Venables came in carrying a red rose. He stared at Nick and at the red rose that Wendy held and then moved to the table in a fish-tail dancing step.
“He’s been drinking,” explained Wendy.
“It’s lugubrious Nick Bannerman,” Venables said. “Is that the red rose of love?”
“It’s the red rose of French Socialism,” said Nick defensively. “I’m canvassing for Mitterand.”
“Everything’s coming up roses,” said Wendy. “Do you want a coffee, Simon? You look as if you do.”
“Please, Mrs Venables. What brings you to SW19, Nick? Are you chatting up my wife?”
“Somebody’s got to,” said Wendy. “Have you fixed the curtain rail?”
“She’s a slave-driver,” Venables said, waving his finger at Nick. “I must warn you.”
“She’s a lovely lady and you’re a lucky man,” Nick replied. “I came down here to show her this.” He put his hand in his trouser pocket.
“Are you sure she wants to see it in here?”
“My first royalty cheque.” He handed it to Venables who read it with interest. “That’s the biggest cheque I’ve ever been paid.”
Venables could see that although it was only an eighteenth the size of the cheque that he had just received, it was at least equal in the satisfaction it gave to its owner. This annoyed him, and added to a mild irritation he felt at Nick Bannerman coming round to show off to his wife. That, and the wine he had drunk in the Gay Hussar, made him pull out his own wallet and throw the paying-in slip from the bank on the table.
“I got a cheque today myself,” he said. “But I paid it into the bank.”
As Nick picked it up, Wendy, arriving with Simon’s coffee, read it over his shoulder.
“My God, what’s that for?” she asked. “Have you sold the flat?”
Venables sat back smiling, with his eyes closed. Wendy put his coffee down, and picked up the slip herself.
“Simon! Where did this come from?” she demanded.
“A husband provides, darling,” he said. “Nick’s cheque is only two and a half thousand, but he doesn’t have a wife to support.”
“There is more coming, Simon,” Nick said.
Venables smiled at him and stretched across for his coffee. “I’m sure there is, Nick. I don’t want you to feel inferior in any way.”
“I never feel inferior,” Nick said. “Just misjudged.”
“Simon!” Wendy repeated. “Where did it come from?”
“Are you following this, Nick? The peremptory tone, the demand for private information that is purely my business? I hope you’ve dealt with this stuff in your book?”
“She may have a right to know,” Nick said mildly.
“A husband earns it, a wife spends it. That’s the way our society works. He doesn’t have to go through a bloody inquisition as well, does he?”
“Her curiosity seems perfectly natural to me.”
“I thought you were the genius who had written a book that was going to drag men off their knees? You’re beginning to sound like one of those Greenham Common dykes who rub used sanitary towels in policemen’s faces.”
“If Wendy came home one day with forty-five thousand notes, I imagine you would ask how she came by them,” said Nick. “You would have a right to know.”
“I certainly would.”
“She has that right.”
“Is this what your book’s preaching?”
“My book is not an attempt to reduce women’s rights,” Nick explained. He felt a surge of enthusiasm on this subject – he was rehearsing a future chat show. “It’s a plea for equal rights, for an equal deal. At the moment, without question, men get the short straw.”
“Okay,” said Venables, holding up both hands in surrender. “I’ve never been against equal rights, equal pay, or anything else. God knows, a few days ago my wife was keeping me, although how she did it on the customers I’ve seen in here today I’ll never know.”
“I’ve usually closed by now,” Wendy said. “The rush is over.”
“Okay. The cheque was from Jack Carlton.”
“Who’s Jack Carlton?”
“A bookmaker,” said Nick.
“Precisely,” said Venables.
“You’ve been gambling?” asked Wendy, mystified. “You don’t gamble.”
“A small investment with my redundancy money.”
“What on?”
“A horse called Auburn Hill. It won yesterday at fifty to one. You can check it in today’s papers.”
“Does Morsels have a licence to sell alcohol?” Nick asked. “This doesn’t seem to be a coffee occasion.”
“Fortunately, no,” Wendy said. “We break the law once a year to sell champagne to the tennis crowd. We hide it in a picnic box. But I don’t think my husband taking up gambling is a cause for celebration.”
“Oh, come on,” said Venables. “It was just one little bet.”
“Little? Forty-five thousand pounds from a fifty-to-one winner? I did maths at school, Simon.”
“You see what happens,” Venables said, “when you tell your wife things? Now you know why wise husbands keep their mouths shut.”
“I recognise this slippery slope,” Wendy said. “My grandfather gambled.”
“I bet he never won forty-five thousand pounds,” said Venables. He already believed that he had won the money on a horse.
“No, he didn’t. And he ended up selling my father’s toys to pay off the bookmaker.”
“I’ve never seen your father playing with toys,” Venables said.
“His dad flogged them all,” Nick explained.
“He was seven at the time,” said Wendy. “You men always stick together, don’t you?”
Nick, chastened, said: “I could never resist a joke, Wendy.”
But she rounded on him now. “You think this is a joke?”
“Suppose I donated a grand to impotent, bald, one-eyed chimpanzees,” Venables suggested. “Would that salve our uneasy consciences?”
“Suppose you took the whole lot back and told them that gambling was the pastime of an idiot?”
“I don’t believe this,” Venables said. “It’s not natural. Any other wife in Britain would be trying on mink coats by now.”
“Do you really think I need that sort of show-off prop? You’re insulting me by mentioning it.”
Nick, embarrassed socially, eclipsed financially, and deflated now instead of elated, sucked noisily at an empty coffee cup. Wendy removed it, refilled it, and slid it in front of him.
“I was going to say that you don’t know the first thing about your own wife,” she said. “But perhaps it’s mutual.”
Venables threw his arms in the air. “What have I done? I walk in here with forty-five thousand pounds for the family funds and she treats me as if I had murdered the cat. Well, bollocks to it.”
He stood up quickly and walked out of the shop.
In the street he felt better. The sun was shining, the money was in his bank account and soon he would be on a Mediterranean island with Pym. She appreciated money.
He started to whistle.
⋆
Among the unsolicited verbiage which reached him in the mail almost every morning – the by-product, he imagined, of a long-lapsed postal subscription to a magazine that bolstered its sagging revenue by selling lists of addresses of proven suckers – Venables now retained that high percentage of it which seemed anxious to tell him what to do with his money.
The advice arrived from all over the world. From Arlington, Virginia, he learned that “the Dow will rise to 3000”. He discovered that copper prices would soar. He was told that the Cold War would get colder and profits would be made in “the metals of war”. Cellular radio was going to be the biggest profit-maker since the computer. There was going to be money in silver – and in sugar. He saved the post until one afternoon, and then read his way through it: antiques, foreign currencies, precious metals, stocks, property. He wrestled with investment cycles, commodity futures, taxflation.
He pored over the gratuitous advice, with its vaunted inside knowledge and its arcane references, in a mood of utter stupefaction. After two weeks, Mr Mackay got in on the act.
“Dear Mr Venables,” said his electric typewriter. “I notice that you have recently been keeping a substantial credit balance of around forty-eight thousand pounds on your current account which, of course, is earning you no interest. You may have plans for the use of this money, but should this not be the case, I thought I should write to let you know that there are various types of investment available on which you can get a much better return on your capital. Perhaps you would like to call and see me, and we can discuss the possibilities which would suit your situation. If you are not able to call do not hesitate to telephone me and I will be pleased to help you.”
The practice of refusing help when it was needed, and offering it when it was not, was what produced the bank’s huge profits, he concluded bitterly. He stamped across the room and flicked on the television to get his mind away from the mysterious world of high finance.
In the uneasy silences which now governed his domestic life he had come to regard his nest egg at the bank – spurned by his wife, concealed from the world – as his own private cache, not to be exposed to the arid arithmetic of economists or the meretricious charms of professional bankers. It had arrived there without their help, and he had yet to be convinced that their interference would do it any good.
The green hills of Sussex came up on the television screen, a panoramic sweep of the South Downs’ sunny expanse of gently rolling fields and distant trees with not a building or person in sight. But cutting suddenly to another camera nearly a mile away, the viewer was now alongside the starting stalls of a horse race, and burly men in helmets were pushing and shoving to get the animals into the stalls. The gates flew open as soon as the last horse was in and as they raced into a steep incline viewers were transported to another camera up the course which showed the field gradually approaching over the brow of the hill.
Venables jumped not merely out of his seat but into the air, as if cruelly assaulted from below.
“It’s Soba, well away, Soba by two lengths,” intoned an ice-cool commentator.
Venables had forgotten all about Soba in the Stewards’ Cup at Goodwood which, he now saw through a sub-title on the screen, this was.
Soba had taken a lead at the beginning of the race that it would never relinquish, but Venables watched in heart-pounding excitement until it had reached the winning post and the cheering crowds, and disappeared round an abrupt right-hand bend, turf flying.
There was just time for Venables to dance a complete circuit of the room before the phone rang.
“Congratulations,” said Johnny Fix-It.
“Congratulations yourself. It was your tip.”
“I had a small investment. The motor yacht moves ever nearer. What are you going to do with all this money?”
“Don’t you start. I’m snowed under with advice here.”
“Who from?”
“Bank managers, insurance companies, postal investment specialists.”
“Don’t listen to their crap, kid. If they knew how to make real money they wouldn’t be in those jobs, right?”
“I suppose not.”
“First you make your money, then your money works for you. That’s the system. If you ever want any advice, call me.”
The phone rang directly Venables put it down.
“Ben Brock,” said Ben Brock. “I have some air tickets here for Friday, August sixth.”
“Great!”
“I hope that in your current poverty-stricken joblessness this isn’t going to prove an embarrassment?”
“How much is the bill?”
“Two-twenty for the two.”
“I think I can manage that. Who’s the cheque to?”
“Ben Brock Advertising. We need the money. How’s Wendy?”
“Taciturn.”
“Which creep invented marriage, anyway?”
After getting rid of Ben, it took Venables several minutes to recapture the mood of joy which had been brutally interrupted by his busy phone. The idea that he had this afternoon made another £10,000 to push up his bank account to the unimagined figure of almost £60,000 seemed so unreal that he had to sit down to persuade himself it was true.
He had always regarded himself as one of that sad majority who had never found the right job for himself, never felt a pull in any significant direction. The jobs that he had drifted into had been accomplished with ease so that he was constantly reassuring himself that he could do much better if only he could discover at what. But his life had continued lazily, and he had paid for it with a loss of self-respect.
But now, at the age of thirty-three, he had been given the chance of a fresh start. His life would never be the same again – that much was certain.
He got out his chequebook and made one out to Ben Brock Advertising for the air tickets and then, seeing the stationery in the drawer, he decided that a swift dart in the direction of his bank manager would be appropriate to his present mood.
“Dear Mr Mackay,” he wrote. “Thank you for your letter. When I think that your bank can give me useful advice on how to make money I shall certainly ask for it.”
As he sealed the envelope he thought sadly that he would never be able to tell Wendy about these new thousands that had tumbled into his bank account. After all, this time he had won it on a horse.
Feeling no more than usually embattled, Ben Brock drew a red ring round 6 August on his desk calendar, and phoned Nick Bannerman.
