harder, so she stopped. ‘Now go,’ he said to her again. ‘And see that your evening’s profitable.’
She disappeared out with a high-heel clatter. I slipped away from among the two bad boys and took Mr Billy by the arm.
‘Billy Whispers,’ I said, ‘do you want a scene with me too here in your bedroom?’
He looked at my eyes and through beyond them, adding up, I suppose, what damage I’d do to any life, limb or furniture, before I was myself destroyed.
‘Is not necessary,’ he said, ‘unless you think it is.’
‘By nature I’m peaceable. I like my life.’
‘Then shoot off, Mr Fortune, now …’
The two started muttering and limbering, but he frowned at them only, and they heaved away from me.
‘Goodbye, Mr Whispers,’ I said. ‘I dare say we’ll meet soon once again, when I’ll offer you some hospitality of mine at that future time.’
‘Is always possible, man,’ he answered, ‘that you and I might cross our paths some more in this big city.’
6
Montgomery sallies forth
My flat (two odd rooms and a ‘kitchenette’, most miscellaneously furnished) is perched on the top floor of a high, narrow house near Regent’s Park with a view on the Zoological Gardens, so that lions, or seals, it may be, awake me sometimes in the dawn. Beneath me are echoing layers of floor and corridors, empty now except for Theodora Pace.
When the house used to be filled with tenants, I rarely spoke to Theodora. Such a rude, hard, determined girl, packed with ability and innocent of charm, repelled me: so clearly was she my superior in the struggle for life, so plainly did she let me see she knew it. She made it so cruelly clear she thought the world would not have been in any way a different place if I had not been born.
But circumstances threw us together.
A year ago, the property changed hands, and notices to quit were served on all the tenants. All flew to their lawyers, who thought, but weren’t quite sure (they never are, until the court gives judgement), that the Rent Acts protected us. A cold war began. The new landlord refused to accept our rents, some tenants lost heart and departed, and others removed themselves, enriched by sumptuous bribes. When only Theodora and I remained, the landlords sued us for trespass. We prepared for battle but, before the case came into court, the landlords withdrew the charge, paid costs, left us like twin birds in an abandoned dovecote, and sat waiting, I suppose, in their fur-lined Mayfair offices, for our deaths – or for some gross indiscretion by which they could eject us.
Throughout this crisis, Theodora behaved with Roman resolution. Uncertain how to manoeuvre against anyone so powerful as a landlord, I clung steadfastly to her chariot wheels, and she dragged me with her to victory. Small wonder that the BBC should pay so talented a woman a large salary for doing I never could discover what.
Thenceforth, Theodora became my counsellor: sternly offering me advice in the manner always of one casting precious pearls before some pig. (Her advice was so useful that I overcame a strong inclination to insult her.) It was through Theodora, as a matter of fact, that I’d got the job in the Colonial Department.
So on the evening of my first encounter with Johnny Fortune, I returned to my eyrie, washed off the pretences of the Welfare Office in cool water, and went down to knock on Theodora’s door. She shouted, ‘Come in,’ but went on typing for several minutes before raising her rimless eyes and saying, ‘Well? How did it go? Are you going to hold down the job this time?’
‘I don’t see why not, Theodora …’
‘It’s pretty well your last chance. If you don’t make good there, you’d better emigrate.’
‘Don’t turn the knife in the wound. I know I was a failure at the British Council, but I did quite well there before the unfortunate happening.’
‘You were never the British Council type.’
‘Perhaps, after all, that’s just as well.’
‘And until you learn to control yourself in such matters as drink, sex and extravagance, you’ll never get yourself anywhere.’
‘I’m learning fast, Theodora. Be merciful.’
‘Let’s hope so. Would you care for a gin?’
Though she’d rebuke me for tippling, Theodora was herself a considerable boozer. But liquor only made her mind more diamond sharp.
‘Cheerio. What you need, Montgomery, is a wife.’
‘So you have often told me.’
‘You should look around.’
‘I shall.’
‘Meanwhile, what is it you have to do in that place?’
I told her about the Welfare dossiers.
‘It