Chapter 26 My Enemy’s Enemy Is My Friend #2
Fresh drink in hand, Saul followed Mr. White to the back of the room. Like Moses’s parting of the Red Sea, his approach caused a cluster of tables and chairs to empty of their occupants.
“Please,” said Mr. White, “take a pew. Tell me how I can be of assistance.”
“This is very obliging,” said Saul. “I hope that young man didn’t drag you away from anything important.”
“You mean do I come running for any stranger who asks for me?” Mr. White grinned.
Saul was startled; that was precisely what he’d wondered.
“I do not is the answer. Little Barnaby told me that a well-mannered chap of the Hebrew persuasion wanted to see me or Terry. Well, those may not have been his exact words, but that was the gist. I thought you might work for Chaim Levy.”
Saul was intrigued, but he knew he mustn’t be sidetracked. “No, I’m actually not from around here. I’m trying to identify this boy, who is now a man of around thirty years of age.”
Mr. White took the photograph, holding it carefully by its edges. He had beautifully manicured fingernails and a gold wedding ring. “It’s Jack Shaughnessy. He was in my brother’s year at secondary school.” He handed back the photograph. “What do you want with him, then?”
“As you may know, he was in prison for a long time.”
“Yeah, I heard he’d got out.”
“Do you know why he got out?”
“I might do.” Mr. White’s sanguine demeanor altered a fraction; he was clamming up. Not that it mattered. Saul had what he’d come for. Yet his curiosity wouldn’t let him leave.
“You’re familiar, I’m sure, Mr. White, with the saying my enemy’s enemy is my friend?”
“Jack’s your enemy, is he?”
“More than I can put into words.”
“You want to track him down? You’re not the only one, from what I’ve heard.”
“No, no,” said Saul. “I know exactly where he is. But I had to ascertain he is indeed who I suspected. So thank you, thank you kindly.”
Mr. White gave an it’s nothing salute and said, “D’you need to be somewhere? Why don’t you come for another at a place around the corner?” He finished his drink and stood up. “I got a feeling your enemy’s enemy will be pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Saul’s third venue of the evening was a private drinking club occupying the top two floors of a Georgian terraced house.
A warren of interconnected spaces with crystal chandeliers, Persian rugs, and red flock wallpaper, it brought to mind an Arab souk.
A gramophone record was playing one of those affecting black American singers, her voice equal parts brash and mournful.
Unlike at the billiards hall, a male sanctum, here there were as many women as men.
Saul had the impression, however, that the female patrons were of the companionate rather than wifely type.
Indeed, a matriarchal older lady, apparently the establishment’s hostess, was heard briskly admonishing a teenage girl in a spangly gold costume for some moral infraction.
“You think this is a knocking shop, do you? Learn how to behave, Shirley, or you can get lost.”
Mr. White conducted Saul into a small upper room with an uncurtained window overlooking a streetlamp. Its peach glimmer, sickly and artificial, supplemented the scattered pools of yellow light inside.
With the door shut behind them, it was quiet, the music from downstairs but a faint hum.
Around a square card table sat four or five men, smoking and talking.
A game had recently been completed, it seemed, and a pile of cash still sat in the center of the green baize.
Saul wondered why the winner hadn’t pocketed his gains.
But it was a show of might, he realized, to assume no one would dare steal what wasn’t theirs.
“All right, Billy,” said one of the men.
“You missed me get taken to the bloody cleaner’s.
Does your pal want a game?” Gravel-voiced and suntanned, perhaps fifty-five, he wore a diamond tie clip and a crocodile wristwatch.
This wasn’t mere prosperity, thought Saul, but a headier, more assertive quality.
He was flashy, that was it. Saul had heard the word used, but he’d never seen it so conspicuously embodied.
With three shillings and ninepence in his pocket, he was relieved when Mr. White said they weren’t playing poker but that he ought to talk to Mr. Reznikov, as they had something in common. He then bent down and whispered to the flashy man, who glanced at Saul while listening and nodding.
He beckoned Saul to sit. “And get our new friend a drink,” he said to no one in particular.
The rest of the group melted away.
“Albert Cooper, a pleasure.” Saul’s right hand was grasped and imprisoned within Mr. Cooper’s large, hot, and profusely hairy pair. “So,” he said tenderly, “talk to me.”
“Well, I…” Saul longed to extract his hand; he was about to do so when Mr. Cooper released him to pick up a half-smoked cigar.
“As Mr. White perhaps mentioned,” Saul continued, “I’ve recently seen Jack Shaughnessy.
It came as a shock, you understand. I’m a relation of the couple who suffered at his hands.
And I’d believed he would remain in prison for a good deal longer. ”
“I do understand.” Mr. Cooper tapped his ash. “And you know where he is, do you? At this moment, for instance?”
“I know where he lives.”
This elicited a broad smile. “Smashing. You write down that address for me, and—”
“Can I ask, what is your dispute with Mr. Shaughnessy?”
“Is your accent Russian or something? It’s charming. Isn’t it charming, Patsy?”
A heavyset blond girl had appeared and was placing two crystal tumblers on the table. She looked at Saul from beneath painted lashes and murmured agreement as she removed the dirty glasses and put them on a tray.
Mr. Cooper patted her bottom by way of a dismissal and said, “It’s my son-in-law.
He was inside with Shaughnessy but was meant to be getting out soon.
Now… now he’s looking at another ten stretch, with Shaughnessy’s testimony.
It’s not fair, is it? It’s not right. My daughter Kathy’s at home with two kiddies who need their father. ”
Saul sipped his drink, a delicious single malt scotch. “What will you do?”
Mr. Cooper released a dense plume of cigar smoke. “I’ll have to see, won’t I?”
“If I give you the address,” said Saul, “can I have your assurance that no other resident of the house will be harmed? Women live there. So does an entirely blameless young man of about Mr. Shaughnessy’s age. I’d hate there to be any—”
“Foul-ups. Course. You have my word.” Mr. Cooper picked up his glass. “Cheers.”
Saul got into bed sometime after two o’clock in the morning. There was no possibility of sleep. Each cell in his body squirmed with tension, his thoughts swimming from one alcohol-blurred rumination to the next. When dawn broke, soon after five, he washed and dressed. Then he waited.
He heard people coming and going as usual.
Each time the doorbell rang, he stood at the front left of the room, under the porch, where he could hear the caller’s voice.
At around five thirty in the evening, a woman asked for Jack.
“Do you mean Jimmy?” inquired Greta, and went to look for him before telling the woman he was out.
Saul peered out from behind the curtain to glimpse her as she walked away.
She was young and beautiful, with a sharp profile and a noble bearing.
Her dark hair was tucked under a fur hat, and she carried a toffee-colored handbag shaped like an envelope, its gold clasp glinting in the gas-lit street.
Surely, thought Saul, her manifestation was not a consequence—or rather the consequence—of the previous evening?
For the next several hours, the house remained quiet. At some point, despite sitting upright on the sofa, Saul sank into a deep sleep.
Jimmy came downstairs, regretting his spat with George.
Stupid of him to threaten her like that, not to mention pointless.
Posh girls weren’t scared of getting nicked.
They thought it only happened to proles.
But it was true, what he’d said about Honor.
She’d do anything George asked. Jimmy didn’t understand it, personally.
Then again, there never was any understanding his sister.
Nor women in general, frankly. Last night, George was all over him like a rash.
Now she was treating him like something on the sole of her shoe. What changed?
He hadn’t even wanted to get her involved.
Honor’s bigamy was meant to be his trump card.
But she threw it back in his face. Maybe she didn’t believe he’d make good on his threat.
And he wouldn’t, so long as she didn’t kick him out on the street tonight.
Something prideful in him was unwilling to let that happen, as though it might prove the final, fatal blow to his dignity.
Jimmy was all right for money; of the four hundred pounds Honor had deigned to part with, most was left.
Renting some nice rooms, or even his own flat, shouldn’t be a problem.
Except he didn’t want to live alone. He kept picturing it.
Eating out of tins and staring at the walls.
Coming home to an empty house, no one asking how his day had been.
He’d go round the twist, he knew he would.
Other people were loved and cared for—couldn’t it be his turn?
If he told Robbie they ought to get a place of their own, would he laugh in his face?
Or be appalled at the recklessness of the proposal?
Jimmy wasn’t sure he could work up the nerve to come out with it.
Ought he first insist that Robbie talk to George?
But if he agreed to—admittedly a big if—would George bad-mouth Jimmy?
Almost certainly she would, and something rotten, too.
I just need time to think, he thought desperately. He couldn’t banish the fear that if he left Tregunter Road before making things up with Robbie, they’d never see each other again.