Plender E-Book

Ted Lewis

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 361

Beschreibung

'Ted Lewis is one of England's finest, but still most neglected post-war writers' Two men share a common history. Growing up together in the small town of Barton-Upon-Humber in Lincolnshire, England, Peter Knott is everything that Brian Plender wishes he were. Knott is suave, good-looking, an exemplary student and popular. The friendship they maintain is as important to Plender as it is forgettable to Knott, and eventually leads to a lasting humiliation for Brian. Years later Brian Plender is a dangerous man; a private investigator who specializes in extortion, blackmail, and intimidation. Knott meanwhile is a family man adrift, beholden to his wife for money. When, at a bar he uses to set up marks, Plender spots Knott with a girl way too young to be his wife he decides to follow the pair and see what happens. What follows is an edge-of-your-seat trip into a nightmare story that manages to be both incredibly creepy and eerily profound.

Leseprobe

Praise for Ted Lewis

A Washington Post Notable Fiction Book of 2015

‘Lewis is major’ – Max Allan Collins, author of The Road to Perdition

‘Ted Lewis cuts to the bone’ – James Sallis, author of Drive

‘GBHis a novel as direct as it is stunning… I reckon he knew a good deal of what he was writing about from very close – perhaps dangerously so. That leaps out of the work immediately’ – Derek Raymond, author of the Factory novels

‘A pulp-fiction triumph worthy of Jim Thompson or James Ellroy. I can’t remember the last time I turned pages so eagerly… his work cuts to the bone, both literally and metaphysically’ – John Powers, NPR’s Fresh Air

‘One of the most coldly brilliant crime novels you will ever read… a mesmerizing story of power, love, hubris and betrayal – but, above all, the portrait of what one might call a tragic villain… Complicated in plot, propulsive in its narrative pace, beautifully structured, it is a book you’ll want to read’ – Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

‘GBH shows Lewis stayed true to his unnerving vision and voice to the end, even while pushing it into farther-out places. This hitherto-obscure book’s resurrection should further enhance the Lewis legend’ – Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal

‘Ted Lewis wrote brilliantly about ruthless men clinging to their humanity with mordant wit and misguided but powerful senses of honor. That these quintessentially British novels are finally available in the US is real cause for celebration’– Scott Phillips, New York Times bestselling author of The Ice Harvest

‘Ted Lewis is one of the most influential crime novelists Britain has ever produced, and his shadow falls on all noir fiction, whether on page or screen’– Stuart Neville, author of The Ghosts of Belfast

‘A must-read for all noir fans’ – The Strand Magazine

‘His final novel and masterpiece… you won’t find many nice guys upon these pages’ – Dayton Daily News

‘Aristotle when he defined tragedy mandated that a tragic hero must fall from a great height… but he never imagined the kind of roadside motels of James M. Cain or saw the smokestacks rise in the Northern English industrial hell of Ted Lewis’s Get Carter’ – Denis Lehane

‘Lewis remains a sharp social anatomist of the hopelessness and soul-sucking dinginess of his era. Starting with [Get Carter], Lewis sketched the horror of a Britain where home was the kitchen sink, the sodden bar towel, the decrepit industrial landscape’ – Barnes & Noble Review

‘Lewis gives new meaning to suspense with this masterly tale of a man’s downfall and the bloody trail he leaves behind’
– Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

‘Lewis is universally recognized as the author of the book on which the classic movie Get Carter was based, but he was more than a one-book author. Seize the opportunity to read this prime example of Brit Grit that present-day practitioners such as J.J. Connolly and Jake Arnott have imitated but never bettered’ – Library Journal, Starred Review

‘That bleak tale[Get Carter]of revenge became an influential crime-fiction classic, and deservedly so – but for some fans, his swan song [GBH] was an even bigger literary achievement’– Booklist, Starred Review

‘The dark storyline is punctuated by Lewis’s bleak narrative and crackling dialogue, the plot full of foreboding, the climax an orgy of violence. And when you finally put the book down, you’ll need a breather. They simply don’t get any better than that’ – Jim Napier, Reviewing the Evidence

‘While [Get Carter] will likely always be the most noted of Ted Lewis’s nine novels, GBH, the final book Lewis published, is his masterwork’ – The Life Sentence

‘It is like a sip of absinthe on a three-day empty stomach, a book that will chill you and ricochet your thought process at least temporarily, if not permanently’ – Bookreporter.com

‘Lewis’ masterpiece’ – BookPage

‘An impeccable sociologist of the gutter’ – Kirkus Reviews

‘When it comes to dealing with your actual hard man, no one does it better than the late, great Ted Lewis’ – John Williams

‘The year’s big event in international noir is the republication of the Jack Carter Trilogy by England’s Ted Lewis. Few crime writers could inject menace and desperation into small talk the way Lewis did, and he had a fine eye for period detail’ – The Philadelphia Inquirer

INTRODUCTION

by Nick Triplow

An unnamed hitman takes aim. Squeezes the trigger. A rifle shot echoes across the black sand. ‘He lies on the beach. The waves lap around his head. A small trickle of blood pours out of the hole in his temple. He’s dead.’

So ends Get Carter, the landmark British gangster film adapted and directed by Mike Hodges from Ted Lewis’s 1970 crime debut, Jack’s Return Home.

Lewis’s post-Carter novel, Plender, published in November 1971, is a story of murder, pornography, blackmail and retribution set in the dockside streets of Hull and suburban Humberside. Lewis twists autobiography into fiction, scratching the surface of respectability, breaking apart the cosy expectations of conventional crime fiction. In the process, he enhanced his reputation as a writer who wrote graphically and believably about characters at society’s squalid margins.

Mike Hodges remembers receiving an early proof of Plender with a view to a second adaptation. He turned it down, rejecting provincial grime for the clean air and blue skies of Malta to shoot the black comedy, Pulp. (French director Eric Barbier would film a largely faithful version of Plenderas Le Serpent in 2007.)

In five further books between 1973 and 1977, including two Carter prequels – the claustrophobic Jack Carter’s Law and the disappointing Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon – Lewis continued his pursuit of the Black Novel. He wrote for the long-running BBC police drama, Z-Cars, which led to a commission to write for Doctor Who. But his scripts were rejected, considered too dark for the programme’s early evening audience. Unable to repeat the commercial success of Get Carter and with his personal life descending into chaos, Lewis turned increasingly to drink.

In failing health and seemingly with little left to lose, Lewis exploited his own deepening sense of dislocation and alcoholic paranoia for what would be his final novel, GBH, in 1980. A fractured narrative reflects the psyche of porn trade gangster, George Fowler, on the run, hiding out in isolation on the Lincolnshire coast. In a brutal climax, Fowler comes to represent that part of Lewis which, in the decade since Jack’s Return Home, had been personally and professionally driven to the brink. GBH shows him staring into the abyss. It is Ted Lewis’s masterpiece.

For too long it seemed Lewis had been denied a place in the roll of influential British crime writers. Get Carter aside, his books were out of print. Yet these novels redefined the possibilities of British noir fiction. Unflinching violence, evocative connections with landscape, and the reek of the authentically domestic; the brutal and banal trading with the dark, sexual, weak-minded and obsessive.

To have Plender and GBH back in print in his home country feels like justice served. As Lewis’s literary hero Raymond Chandler wrote, ‘The test of a writer is whether you want to read him again years after he should by the rules be dated.’ Alongside Get Carter, Plender and GBH provide the definitive answer.

Nick Triplow is the author of Getting Carter: Ted Lewis and the Birth of Brit Noir.

PLENDER

The double glazing shuddered.

A grey wet wind screamed up the estuary and into the city centre, rocked trolley buses and swept old cabbage leaves along the cobbled docksides. Dirty barges shifted surlily on the greasy swell. Windows of workmen’s cafés were blank with inside steam. Raindrops flicked spitefully into the faces of the Saturday afternoon shoppers. Icy neon exaggerated the chilly faces of the shuffling crowds in the teatime indigo.

But where I was, behind the double-glazing, twelve storeys up, it was warm and cosy and nice. I stood in front of the plate-glass and looked down at the crowds and thought how nice it was to be twelve storeys up, in the warm, out of the wet.

I turned away from the window and walked over to my beautifully plain, beautifully Swedish desk and took a cigarette out of the rosewood box and lit it with the table lighter. I smiled as I clicked the mechanism; the trick was that down one side it was wooden, carved in the shape of a woman, except for the tits, they were in silver and you pressed them to operate the lighter and the flame would spurt out from between the figure’s legs. I smiled out of habit, the habit of smiling along with people who reacted to the gadget for the first time.

I put the lighter back and sat down behind my desk and carried on staring out of the big window. Speckled with rain the window twinkled darkly with the city’s afternoon lights and the wet warped images of cranes flowed down the glass. Beyond the cranes I could see the broad river the colour of stone and across on the other, rural, bank three miles away, sparse lights winked fitfully, delineating the flatness of the neighbouring county. Through the blue gloom I could just make out the faint lights of the opposite pier; and at the end of the pier a concentrated cluster of lights that began to move very slowly out into the river. I stared at the moving lights as they grew in size, as the ferry got closer to the northern bank. Any moment, I thought, he’ll ring. He always does. Too soon, every time.

Rain rattled and wind gusted and the phone rang. I let it ring twelve times before I picked up the receiver.

‘Plender speaking,’ I said.

‘Is she there yet?’ said the voice at the other end.

‘Not yet, Mr Froy,’ I said. ‘The ferry’ll be docking in about ten minutes and then it’ll take them –’

‘Yes, yes, all right. How did it go at the other end?’

‘Fine.’

‘No press?’

‘No press.’

‘How did she behave?’

‘I’ll put it in my report. But you needn’t worry. It was in our favour that she was in love with the herbert. She won’t say a dicky bird.’

‘Let us hope not.’ Froy’s cold fishy voice seemed to recede down the phone. ‘Phone me the minute they arrive.’

‘Yes, Mr Froy,’ I said.

The line went dead. I put the phone back on its cradle. You old fart, Froy. You terrible old fart. You think you can trust me. If you only knew.

I looked at my watch. There was plenty of time yet. So I opened a drawer in my desk and took out a large stiff backed notebook. I flipped through the pages of names and numbers. Some of the names had ticks by them, some of them were underlined in red. I ran my finger down a column of names until I came to one which was underlined in red. Then I reached for the phone and dialled the number that went with the name and waited until the receiver was lifted at the other end.

‘Hopper speaking,’ a voice said; a voice short, sharp, and to the point.

‘It’s Saturday,’ I said.

The voice at the other end altered its tone.

‘You said you wouldn’t call me here. You promised.’

‘We did say Friday, and then when I didn’t hear from you, well, I thought, what’s a day. I can wait a day, but then…’

‘It’s been difficult. I can’t explain now. But I can let you have it on Monday.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid that won’t do. I’d like it tomorrow. Tomorrow morning.’

‘That’s out of the question. I’ve…’

I sighed. It was quite incredible how exactly alike they all sounded. I said:

‘The usual place, Mr Hopper. Between ten and five past.’

There was a silence, then a sound that told me he’d be there. Then the line went dead.

I dialled another number. The receiver was lifted.

‘Yes?’

‘Plender here.’

‘Mr Plender. What a time to ring. I was just watching me rugby.’

‘Never mind that.’

‘Never mind that, he says. Gawd, a girl’s got to have some little pleasures in life!’

‘I need you tonight.’

‘What for?’

‘Don’t come that. You know what for.’

‘Yes, but what for?’

‘A new one. I’m meeting him at nine in Peggy’s bar.’

‘So?’

‘So I’ll be introducing him to you, won’t I.’

‘Oh, no. No. Not tonight you won’t. I’ve got this date.’

‘That’s right. In Peggy’s bar. About nine-thirty.’

‘Now look. I’m telling you –’

‘Don’t be silly, Derek, eh? It just gets a little bit tedious, you know?’

‘Camille, Mr Plender. Please. It’s Camille.’

‘All right, all right. So you’ve got the time?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the place?’

‘Where else?’

‘Good.’

‘It’s just that I don’t like being called… the other.’

‘Gurney’ll be round your place at eight to set the gear up. Right?’

‘Gurney! That pig!’

‘And you’d better not get saucy with him, either. I’d get him to break your back for you. Tonight, at any rate.’

‘You’re horrible.’

‘And no drag.’

‘We’re going to Peggy’s, aren’t we?’

‘No drag.’

‘Not even when we get home?’

‘That’s for you to decide. Personally, I think he’s relatively straight. By your standards, that is.’

I put the phone down before I could hear his inevitable whining. I pulled a face. They made me want to vomit, those.

The yellow light on my desk began to flash on and off. I pressed a button and the flashing stopped. A minute or so later another light flashed on and off above the door opposite my desk. I pressed another button. The door opened. A man and a girl came into the room.

‘Hello, Colin,’ I said. ‘How was the journey?’

‘The journey was fine, Mr Plender. We got snarled up just below Doncaster but apart from that it was fine.’

Colin Gurney was six feet three inches tall and thirty-four years old. He was going thin on top and the sheepskin and the twills he was wearing had seen better days, but his public-school manner was in just as good nick as ever. Nothing would ever fade that, and he knew it. He also knew how I felt about him, but he had to put up with that. And he knew I enjoyed his putting up with it. I relaxed in my chair. I enjoyed playing out this kind of scene: the indulgent employer, patting the head of the faithful servant in acknowledgement of a job well done. Expansively patronising. Gurney hated it because in his book, it was all the wrong way round. Well, he was right. And that made it all the sweeter.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘I’m glad the journey was fine.’

I looked at the girl. She was dressed exactly the way a first year university student taking liberal studies should be dressed. Apart from that she wasn’t bad at all.

‘Sit down, Miss Gorton,’ I said.

The girl didn’t move. I ignored the gesture and lit a cigarette.

‘Now then,’ I said. ‘Let me tell you what will happen if you ever try and get in touch with Mr Nboro again.’ I looked into her face. ‘A file compiled by this office will be sent to the Police Drugs’ Squad. The file contains tapes and photographs made during the course of a party given by Mr Nboro for students and staff of the university. Mr Nboro is heavily featured. Smoking, offering, and talking about pot. Plus airing certain views about student revolution and student participation in the university’s administration that would, to say the least, rather unsettle his superiors, not to mention a few of our more crusading national dailies. And it’s no good warning him so that he’ll keep himself clean just in case I send the lads the file: they’d hate to balls up a chance like this. They wouldn’t go empty handed. If you understand me.’

Gurney smiled.

‘So there it is. You write to him, phone him, send a go-between, that’s it. The file goes and if you think you could get in touch with him without us knowing, ask yourself a question. How did we get the tapes and the pictures?’

The girl just stayed stock still, where she was, just looking at me. I leant back in my chair.

‘He might get away with a fine,’ I said, ‘but then he’s not Mick Jagger. He’s a Black Power militant in charge of a load of kids. The main thing would be that his career would be busted. And that would damage his ability to function usefully for his party. Which is his principal concern. Above anything else.’

Even that didn’t get a reaction.

‘Does Nboro know what’s happened?’ I asked Gurney.

‘No, he doesn’t know, Mr Plender,’ said Gurney, careful to let the irony drip through the surface of necessary politeness. ‘I was particularly careful to observe your instructions in that regard.’

‘As I hope you were in every regard,’ I said.

Gurney reddened slightly.

‘Yes, Mr Plender.’

‘Did she write the letter herself?’

‘Yes.’

‘Exactly as instructed?’

‘Yes.’

I looked at the girl again.

‘So that’s that,’ I said. ‘Now it’s home to Daddy.’

‘You bastards,’ said the girl. ‘You bloody bloody bastards.’

Her voice carried the soft accents of school fees but they hadn’t been heavy enough. The Yorkshire was still in her voice. She wasn’t the real thing, not like Gurney.

‘Don’t blame us, blame Daddy,’ I said. ‘We’re just businessmen. You’re just cargo to us.’

Very quickly the girl stretched forward and scrabbled the table-lighter off the top of my desk and threw it at me. It hit me on the edge of my jawbone, just below my ear. I didn’t move. I just sat there and gritted my teeth and felt the aching pain flow into my face and continued to stare at the girl who had been prevented from flying at me by Gurney. At first she tried to struggle against Gurney, but Gurney had gripped her by the muscles in her upper arm and the numb pain very quickly became too much for her.

Eventually she burst into tears.

I got up and walked round the desk and stood in front of her. I lifted her chin with my forefinger and looked into her eyes. Little grammar school girl, I thought. Daddy’s little grammar school girl. Never had to worry about anything. Gets her O levels and her A levels with no trouble because she hasn’t the imagination to do otherwise. Then she falls in love with her second Black Beauty and bingo! Suddenly she’s committed. The first stiff prick that comes along and she not only screws it, she votes for it. She made me sick, this daddy’s little whore. But I had to leave it at that. There were bigger things at stake. Perhaps I’d have the pleasure later, when her old man was no longer of any political value to Froy and his mob.

‘Lucky girl,’ I said. ‘Lucky little girl.’

I sank back on to the edge of my desk. Gurney released his grip on her arms.

‘Take her home to Daddy,’ I said to Gurney.

‘Yes, Mr Plender.’

‘And Gurney.’

‘Yes, Mr Plender?’

‘That shirt. Is it clean on today?’

That threw him. He even had to clear his throat.

‘No, Mr Plender. You see –’

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘Don’t explain.’

Gurney and the girl stood frozen in the middle of the room like two people playing statues while I walked round the back of my desk and sat down again. I looked at them both. Then Gurney jerked back to life and opened the door and ushered the girl out.

‘I want you back here in an hour,’ I said to Gurney just as he was going through the door. ‘Something else has come up.’

Gurney managed to nod and then the door closed behind him. I put my hand to the telephone receiver and squeezed it, hard. With my other hand I stroked my cheek. Bloody bitch. Bloody clever little whore. If it wasn’t for daddy’s shady money she’d be behind the counter at Littlewood’s instead of pissing her time away at university. I expect she thought we fancied her, Gurney and me. (Why should we? Only daddy’s money makes her any different from the rest. And that isn’t a big enough difference.) Still, it’s back to reality now. Daddy’s money turns out to be double-edged. She won’t be straying too far from home for a while.

I picked up the phone and dialled. The receiver at the other end was lifted almost at once.

‘Yes?’ said Froy.

‘She’s on her way home now,’ I said.

‘Have you seen her?’

Jesus Christ.

‘Yes, I’ve seen her.’

‘And?’

‘Everything perfect. No problems.’

‘The press?’

‘I told you.’

There was a slight pause.

‘Good. I’ll be in touch.’

‘Mr Froy?’

‘Yes?’

‘I was right.’

‘Right? About what?’

‘He is a power militant. One we didn’t have on file. Gurney sniffed it.’

‘Interesting,’ said Froy. ‘At that level, I mean.’

‘There’s not much of it, but most of what there is we have. Except for the occasional surprise. I’ll send you the breakdown we did if you like.’

‘Yes, I’d like to read it, but don’t send it. I’ll pick it up when next I see you.’

‘Actually, it’s a bit of a pity really. If she hadn’t been Gorton’s daughter, I mean. We could have used the situation to benefit the Movement far better.’

‘I realise that.’

‘I mean, it was tailor made. If she’d been somebody else’s brat, one of our titled opponents, say, we could have tipped the Drugs’ Squad and made sure the Power stuff came out as well. A nice bit of negative PR: peer’s daughter in drugs swoop on black power party; African lecturer charged. And etcetera and etcetera.’

‘No situation ever remains constant. If Gorton were ever to slip, we might reconsider what we have along the lines you mention.’

‘I can’t see that happening,’ I said. ‘Gorton’s a dedicated man. There are no blemishes on his record as far as the press are concerned.’

‘And you should know,’ said Froy.

Now what did that mean? I let it pass.

‘Still,’ I said, ‘the by-election should run smoothly enough now. Thanks to us there’s still flesh on the skeleton in Gorton’s cupboard.’

‘Yes. By the way, what do you propose should Nboro try and contact the girl? If he doesn’t accept her departure as it stands?’

‘Luckily for us she was more interested in him than he was in her. Basically, he was just screwing Whitey. In any case, we have some more letters prepared.’

Froy didn’t say anything to that.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ said Froy.

The line went dead.

I put the receiver back and stared at it. I wondered what Froy’s silence had meant. Probably nothing. Just his usual gamesmanship to keep his minions toeing the line. But I wasn’t a minion. I was his Number One and he knew it. But he didn’t like it. I was almost too good. I hadn’t slipped up yet. I hadn’t made even the smallest error. That was the kind of performance the Movement wanted, therefore so did Froy. But it irritated him to think that someone else could provide it besides himself. But it would irritate him even more to know that I’d got recordings of every conversation he’d made over the last twelve months; that I had a complete history of his fifty-one-year-old life; that I knew every movement he was going to make during the next twenty-four hours, and the twenty-four hours after that and so on and so on; that I knew his brother was in deep trouble with a certain finance company; that the dog Froy’s neighbour had been looking for all over their neighbourhood during the last four days had a bullet in its forehead and was buried behind Norman Froy’s tomato plants; that Froy had a frogman’s rubber suit hung up in his wardrobe; in fact everything. Which gave me a great deal of pleasure. Especially as Froy didn’t suspect a dicky bird.

But you had to give the old sod his due. He was bloody careful, whether he suspected anything or not. He kept himself well-covered. His superior had no worries on that score. He’d not been an easy man to tag. He never went direct from A to B. He never used names on the phone. He never sent or received mail to do with the Movement. He never met with any of the superiors, only with people at his own level, or beneath it. All of which meant that my efforts to find out the real power behind the Movement had so far come to nothing. But I would find out and when I did I’d have them over a barrel. The lot of them. They wouldn’t know which arse to disappear up first and I’d have a nice little organisation all of my own, instead of just maintaining the set-up for their benefit.

Not that the set-up wasn’t sweet. It was. I was provided with this office, half-a-dozen full time men in this city alone, (plus the funds to call on as much muscle as I needed), all the latest equipment to run the business, agents under my direct control in every major city in England, plus permanent offices in Manchester and Birmingham, besides the one in London and the one here. No, it was fine and I’d access to a small private army. A lot to thank the Movement for.

The day Froy had first turned up at my London office pretending he wanted to hire my services to recover a missing wife had been a very lucky day indeed. But that had been two years ago and I didn’t have to be grateful any more. I had been given the power and I wanted to know where it came from. And when I had that knowledge I would be able to use it. To bargain. Their secrecy was their strength and their weakness. They’d have no choice when I presented them with what I was going to find out. They’d have to give me what I wanted: a seat on the executive. Whatever and wherever the executive was. With Froy working for me. A bigger army. More power. More independence. More political involvement. But in the meantime what I had would do. It really was very nice. The Movement had supplied me with the facilities to expand my previous operation in a way which wouldn’t have been possible before. As a Private Investigator I’d managed to build up extensive files on individuals who could afford to pay for discretion. But with the Movement employing me among other things to dig up the muck, my little bit of private enterprise had expanded into big business. I could afford to be clever. Whereas most blackmailers were greedy and demanded too much too often, I had so many clients that individually their payments must have seemed to them to be quite reasonable, like, say, additional HP commitments. Of course if Froy ever found out about it I’d be finished. But he wasn’t likely to find out. Not in the near future, at any rate. And later, when I’d found out who I was working for, then it would be difficult for Froy to say anything at all without finding himself out on his ear.

Wind buffeted the window and slapped rain against the glass. I looked at my watch. Quarter to six. Mrs Fourness was expecting me back for supper. I’d give her a ring: there was hardly time to get there and back into town again. Besides, it was too nice here, where I was, cosy and snug behind the double glazing.

KNOTT

The car jerked to a halt. Rain raced across the car park and rattled on the roof.

‘We’ll have to make a dash for it,’ I said.

‘Can I borrow your scarf?’ said Eileen. ‘I don’t want me hair getting all ruined.’

‘Yes, sure,’ I said.

I handed her the scarf.

‘Cost me two pound ten this little lot did,’ she said, weaving the rayon round the rinse. ‘Shocking, they are, these days.’

I nodded. Come on, come on.

‘If they get any dearer I may as well start going to Madame Gretas’. It’d still cost more but not enough to make any difference. And at least there they don’t behave as if they were in a race.’

She tied the scarf in a bow beneath her chin. Her head looked like a wrapped cabbage.

She squeezed my leg and grinned up into my face.

‘I expect your wife goes there, doesn’t she?’

I smiled a sort of smile and nodded.

‘Funny if we were ever sitting next to each other under the driers.’

‘Hilarious,’ I said. ‘Look, I think the rain’s easing off a bit. Let’s go now.’

We got out of the Mercedes and rushed across the car park and into the alley that led into Jackson Street. I swore. The neon that said Peggy’s Bar was unlit. That meant that the alley entrance was locked. I tried it just in case.

‘Aren’t they open yet?’ said Eileen.

‘They’re open,’ I said. ‘But it means we’ll have to go in via the hotel lobby.’

‘So?’

The silly cow. That was one of the reasons I’d chosen Peggy’s Bar, because of where the entrance was.

‘Come on then,’ I said.

We walked through to Jackson Street and into the lobby of the Royal Hotel. I ushered Eileen quickly over to the winding staircase that led down to the basement and into the soft lights of Peggy’s bar.

The bar was empty. Except for Peggy himself, setting up his bar with his usual fussy, meticulous care.

I sat Eileen in one of the booths. The waiter service didn’t begin this early so I went over to the bar.

‘So what’s all this then?’ said Peggy, coming the arch bit. ‘Bringing Auntie Peggy some competition, are we?’

‘Give over,’ I said. ‘You know you love it. Gives you a chance to show off.’

‘Well, I hope she’s broadminded, that’s all I can say.’

‘So do I or else I’m on a wasted evening,’ I said.

‘You married men,’ said Peggy. ‘You’re the worst of the lot.’

‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I’ll have a gin and bitter lemon for the lady and a large Scotch for myself, and what are you going to have?’

‘Well, if you don’t mind,’ he said, ‘I’ll have the same as the lady’s having.’

‘You won’t, you know,’ I said. ‘You’ll have a gin and bitter lemon and like it.’

‘Well,’ he said coyly, ‘it was worth a try.’

Peggy turned away to make the drinks and I took out a cigarette and thought about the evening ahead. This was the best part, really. The thinking about it, the excitement generated by the expectation, the mind’s-eye two-way mirror, clear as crystal, the clarity of the mental images blurring the physical reality which could never be so good. But even knowing that whatever happened, knowing that the let-down would come, the excitement was still real, undeniable, unmanageable, whatever the rationalisation before or after the fact. It didn’t make any difference. I always jumped in feet first and ended up hoping for better luck next time.

But this girl seemed the best better-luck-next-time for ages. The type. The looks told me. A real Top of the Popper. She should know. But would she want? Would she even if what I wanted didn’t turn her on? Some girls were insulted. A frontal attack on their pre-conditioned sexual patterns usually evoked the source; memories of mum beating out her great respectability riff squashing and squeezing the imagination of the kiddies’ games, preventing me from acting out my own stifled pre-adolescent frustrated fantasies. Not that they didn’t want to; they did. They’d probably seen the games, heard the hot-flushing little stories in the cloakrooms and even if they hadn’t they’d occurred in their minds, like it or not, admitted or otherwise. ‘But that wasn’t the same,’ they’d say, ‘that was at school. You couldn’t behave like that now.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Well, you couldn’t, if you did you’d feel…’ ‘Guilty?’ ‘Well, yes. Ashamed.’ ‘Precisely. Couldn’t have put it better myself.’ Shame. Guilt. The Protestant ethic. Hand in hand with hard work and self-restraint and self-respect and well-kept-up appearances goes the wrongness of semi-detached enjoyment, the antidote of repression.

But this girl might be the one. She’d got the right kind of potential.

I’d met her over at the agency. She’d been the switchboard girl but, as the switchboard was in reception, that made her the receptionist as well.

The minute I’d seen her I’d thought how right she was. I’d known what she was going to sound like before she opened her mouth, trying to disguise the Yorkshire in her voice by affecting the accent according to the new aristocracy; the classless aristocracy with not only the vowels but the emotions flattened, the way the telly told them. A face without a trace of make-up proved it. And there she’d been before me, no make-up, that was true, but her hair was dyed and the way it was dyed gave everything away. She had the right functional clothes, the right non-functional detached look but the dyed hair gleefully spoiled the lot: she didn’t come off. And the beauty of it was, she thought she did; and the whole set-up, the exciting I’m-a-receptionist-in-an-advertising-agency thing would help her to pretend. And so would I.

But I’d played it very carefully at first. I hadn’t given her too much of a rush. I’d just phoned her a few days later.

‘Priestley and Squires. Good morning?’ she’d said.

‘Hello,’ I’d said in my best nervous voice. ‘Am I speaking to the receptionist?’

‘Priestley and Squires, Advertising Agents. Can I help you?’

‘Look, I’m sorry, but are you the receptionist? The one with the blonde hair?’

Her manner had changed.

‘That’s right. Why?’

‘Oh, good. Well, it’s –’

‘Who’s that calling?’

‘… it’s a bit difficult, actually…’

‘Is that you, Eric?’

‘… but the thing is…’

‘If that’s you Eric I shan’t half be mad. I’ve told you about…’

‘… I was wondering if I could use you.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘For my catalogue.’

‘Who is that?’

I gave a laugh.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I seem to have made a complete hash-up of this. Let me start again.’

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Peter Knott. I was in the agency the other day. I’m a photographer. If you remember at all, I was the chap with Mr Farlcrest. I’m taking the pictures for the Premier Boilers’ Account.’

Her manner had changed again.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘I think I do remember you.’

Oh, good, I’d thought.

‘Oh, good,’ I’d said. ‘At least that proves I’m not some kind of telephone nut.’

‘Well?’ she’d said, in a voice that was meant to be charmingly coy.

‘Well, the thing is, when I saw you the other day, it struck me how right you were for shots I have to do.’

‘Shots? You mean photos?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Do you know Saxby and Hassell’s?’

‘Oh yes, you mean the mail order people.’

‘That’s right. Well, I do their catalogue; I mean, I take all the pictures, the whole lot. So, the point is, as you know, they do an enormous fashion range, all ages, and when I saw you I thought you’d be just right for their teenage range, the Junior Miss.’

‘Junior Miss?’

‘Of course, I realise you’d have to make yourself look a bit younger, but I’d make the main adjustment photographically.’

I’d known she was only seventeen anyway but I’d had to use the flannel a little bit.

‘What made you think I’d be right?’ she said.

‘Oh I don’t really know. You can’t really put your finger on it, it’s just something you sort of automatically know. I suppose it’s my job to know,’ I’d said, wincing, ‘otherwise, I suppose, I wouldn’t be any good if I didn’t know just like that.’

There’d been a silence at her end, so I’d gone on:

‘Anyway, the point is, would you be interested? I mean, you’d be paid obviously, the proper rates. And it wouldn’t interfere with your job: you could work evenings. A lot of girls do, the professionals, they have to if they’ve got other work on that involves daytime shooting.’

‘Well, I don’t know whether I could…’ she’d said, and that had been that. Except for one thing.

‘There’s only one thing,’ I’d said. ‘I do quite a bit of work for your agency, and the point is, I don’t think Mr Farlcrest would like it if he knew I’d been offering what he’d consider to be another job to one of his staff, so I wonder if you’d mind not mentioning it to anyone at Priestley and Squires. Word could get back to him.’

Her name was Eileen Yarwood.

We’d arranged to meet at lunchtime the next day. She’d been all done up in gear appropriate to her new rôle as a famous model. She’d been full of excitement which she’d done her best to try and hide.

I discovered that she was from Leeds. She’d left school a year ago and home three months previously. Her father had died the day after she’d left school. Since then the dislike she and her mother had always felt for each other had come out into the open; her mother was only thirty-six and she’d liked the gay life but she hadn’t liked the looks the fellers she’d brought home had given Eileen. So Eileen had packed up and come here. Here because a girl friend of hers from school had moved to the district a couple of years ago; but when Eileen’d turned up on the doorstep her friend’s parents hadn’t been too pleased to see her, so she’d spent the following day flat-hunting. She’d got what she’d called a nice place on Hebden Road where she’d lived on her own ever since. I’d asked her if she didn’t find it lonely. She’d given me a look and said that after living with her mother’s routine she’d never feel lonely again. And besides, the agency had a thriving social life. She’d implied she was never short of boyfriends.

I’d let her know just enough; that business was good, that I’d lived in London before coming back up north, that I’d been brought up in a small town on the other side of the river and gone to Art School here, that I wasn’t short of a few bob, and that I was happily married. And I’d done right to tell her judging by the flicker on her face and the friendly relaxing after I’d mentioned it; another little girl with a conquest complex excited by the prospect of scoring by seducing a married man. And by laying it on about my house and the things I had in it it made the contemplation of her victory even sweeter. After all, I had so much to lose.

And, of course, she’d thought she’d known what was on from the start. Her reasoning must have gone like this: he finds me attractive enough to photograph for his catalogue, so if he finds me attractive he must want to make a pass at me and if he makes a pass at me he must want to carry on with me but he might pretend he doesn’t because he’s married so I’ll do my best to make it easy for him or difficult which ever way you care to look at it.

Which was exactly the way I wanted her to behave. Let her think she was steering things along her way. So that she’d behave with the kind of confidence she’d got tonight, feeling sure that she knew the way things were going to go. So that when they didn’t she’d be confused. And her confusion would lead her where I wanted her led.

I walked over to the booth and put the drinks down on the table. I spilt a little of her tonic as I set the bottle down.

‘I always like a drink before I work,’ I said, sitting down. ‘It relaxes me. Makes the ideas flow easier.’

I poured the tonic into the gin and rattled the bottle on the edge of her glass.

‘Looks as though you need it,’ she said.

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.

‘Relaxing,’ she said. ‘You seem all tensed up.’

PLENDER

I plugged in the percolator and walked over to the filing system and took out the file that contained the latest correspondence to the magazine. I’d had a busy week. I hadn’t had time to sort through the letters. It’d give me something to do until Gurney got back.

It didn’t take long to discard the male and female pro’ stuff, or the stuff from the nutters. Just as long as it took for the percolator to boil. I got up and switched it off and poured myself a cup and sat down again and began to sift the mail for answers to the ads I’d put in myself. There’d been two of them: attractive Yorkshire miss (20) would like to hear from mature male disciplinarian for the fun of it: all gear needed for bizarre fun. my place or yours. genuine first ad. non-professional. no remuneration required; discipline has its own reward.

The other one was: good looking blonde young man (23) needs older gentleman to discipline him. correction will be needed as i am completely inexperienced. my submissive nature, shyness, etc., can be yours for correcting. yorks. anon.

There were twenty-four replies for the first ad and seven for the second. Of these six were from Leeds, six from Doncaster, three from Halifax, two from Barnsley, two from Scunthorpe, two from Grimsby, one from Scarborough, and one from Harrogate. The remainder were from towns or small villages, mainly places I’d never heard of. I made a list of the names and addresses which they’d so trustingly supplied and put them in my secretary’s in-tray for her to begin on when she came in on Monday.