“In excellent shape, thank you,” said Brotherhood.
Without warning Syd sat himself abruptly on a high-backed chair, then leaned cautiously forward on his stick like a tiny dowager until he had the angle that cost him least discomfort. Brotherhood saw dark shadows under his eyes and a film of sweat on his forehead.
“You’ll have to do the honours for us today, squire, I’m not myself,” he said. “It’s in the corner. Lift the lid. I’ll take a drop of the scotch one for my health and you’ll please yourself.”
A thick maroon carpet ran wall to wall. A lurid painting of a Swiss scene hung above the tiled fireplace, to one side of which stood a fine burr-walnut cocktail cabinet. As Brotherhood lifted the lid, a music box began playing a tune, which was what Syd had been waiting for it to do.
“Know that one, do you?” said Syd. “Listen to it. Put the lid down again — that’s right — now pull it up. There we go.”
“It’s ‘Underneath the Arches,’” Brotherhood said with a smile.
“Course it is. His dad give it me. ‘Syd,’ he says. ‘I can’t afford a gold watch just now, and I’m afraid there’s a temporary problem of liquidity about your pension. But there’s an article of furniture I possess which has given us a lot of fun down the corridor of years which is worth a bob or two and I’d like you to have it as a small token.’ So we run the van up, me and Meg, before the repossession artists got their hands on it. Five years ago that was. He’d bought six of them from Harrods to see his contacts right. There was this one left. He never asked for it back, not once. ‘Still playing, is she, Syd?’ he’d say. ‘Many a good tune played on an old fiddle, you know. I can still surprise them myself.’ He could too. The bloody keyholes wasn’t safe when he was around. Right till the end. I couldn’t get to the funeral. I was indisposed. How was it?”
“I’m told it was beautiful,” said Brotherhood.
“Well it would be. He’d made his mark. They weren’t burying just anybody, you know. That man had shaken hands with some of the Highest in the Land. He called the Duke of Edinburgh ‘Philip.’ Did they write about him when he died? I looked in a few papers but I didn’t see a lot. Then I thought, Well they’re probably saving it up for the Sundays. Of course you can never tell with Fleet Street. I’d have slipped up there if I’d been well, offered them a few bob to make sure. Are you a bogey, sir?”
Brotherhood laughed.
“You look like a bogey. I did time for him, you know. A lot of us did as a matter of fact. ‘Lemon,’ he says — always called me by my surname when he wanted something very badly, I never knew why—‘Lemon, they’ll get me on my signature on those documents. Now if I was to deny it was my signature, and you was to say you’d forged it, nobody would be the wiser, would they?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I would. I’d do a lot of time for it,’ I said to him. ‘If doing time makes you wise, I’m going to be as wise as Methuselah,’ I said. I still did it, mind. I don’t know why. He said I’d have fifty grand when I come out. I knew I wouldn’t. I suppose you could call it friendship really. A cocktail cabinet like that, you couldn’t get one to save your life these days. Here’s to him. Mud in your eye.”
“Cheers,” said Brotherhood and drank while Syd looked on approvingly.
“So what are you if you’re not a bogey? Are you one of his airy-fairy Foreign Office friends? You don’t look like an airy-fairy. More like a boxer to me, if you’re not a bogey. Ever do that at all, did you, the fight game? Ringside seats we used to have, every time. We was there the night Joe Baksi said goodbye to poor old Bruce Woodcock. We had to have a bath afterwards, get the blood off. Then round to the Albany Club and there was Joe standing at the bar without a mark on him, a couple of Lovelies beside him there, and Rickie says to him, ‘Why didn’t you finish him off, Joe? Why did you spin it out like that, round after round?’ Wonderful way with words he had. ‘Rickie,’ says Joe, ‘I couldn’t do it. I hadn’t got the heart and that’s a fact. Every time I hit him he was going “oooh — oooh”—like that — I couldn’t put the finisher in and that’s a fact.’”
While he continued to listen, Brotherhood allowed his eye to fall idly upon the imprint of an absent piece of furniture in a corner of the room. The shape of it was square, perhaps two foot by two, and it had cut through the carpet pile to the canvas backing underneath. “Did Magnus come along that night as well?” he enquired jovially, turning the conversation delicately back upon the purpose of his visit.
“He was too young, sir,” Syd replied stoutly. “Too tender he was. Rickie would have took him but Meg she said no. ‘You leave him with me,’ she said. ‘You boys can go out, you can have your fun. But Titch stays here with me and we’ll go to a flick and have a nice evening and that’s it.’ Well, you didn’t quarrel with Meg when she said a thing like that, not twice you didn’t. I’d be broke today without her. I’d have given him every penny I had. But Meg, she put a bit away. She knew her Syd. Knew her Rickie too — a bit too well, I thought sometimes. Still you can’t blame her. He was bent, you see. We was all bent, but Titch’s dad was very bent indeed. Took me a long time to realise that. Still, if he came back, I suppose we’d all do the same.” He laughed though it hurt him to do so. “We’d do the same and more, I’ll bet we would. Is Titch in trouble, then?”
“Why should he be?” said Brotherhood, lifting his gaze away from the corner of the room.
“You tell me. You’re the bogey, not me. You could run a prison with a face like that. I shouldn’t be talking to you. I can feel it. I’d walk into the office one day. Audley Street. Mount Street. Chester Street. Old Burlington. Conduit. Park Lane. Always the best addresses. Nothing altered. Everything nice and tidy. Receptionist there, sitting at her desk like the Mona Lisa. ‘Morning, Mr. Lemon.’ ‘Morning, sweetheart.’ But I’d know. I’d see it in her face. I’d hear the quiet. Hullo, I’d say to myself. It’s the bogies. They’ve been having a word with Rickie. Off you go, Syd, it’s out the back door fast. I was never wrong. Not once. Even if it was another twelve months without the option when they nicked me, I always had the nose for when the trouble started.”
“When did you last see him then?”
“Couple of years ago. Maybe more. He stayed away after Meg went, I don’t know why. I’d have thought he’d come more but he didn’t like it. Didn’t like people dying on him, I suppose. Didn’t like people being poor, or no-hopers. He stood for Parliament once, you know. He’d have got in too if we’d started a week earlier. Same as his horses. Always leaving it too late at the finish. He’d ring up of course. Loved the telephone, always did. Never happy if the blower wasn’t ringing.”
“I was meaning Magnus,” said Brotherhood patiently. “Titch.”
“I thought you might be,” said Syd. He began coughing. His whisky stood on the table in front of him but he hadn’t touched it although it was in reach. He doesn’t drink any more, thought Brotherhood. It’s there for the decorum. The coughing ended and left him breathless.
“Magnus came and saw you,” said Brotherhood.
“Did he? I didn’t notice. When was that?”
“On his way to see Tom. After the funeral.”
“How did he do that then?”
“Drove out here. Sat with you. Chatted about old times. He was pleased he came. He told young Tom afterwards. ‘I had a lovely talk with Syd,’ he said. ‘It was just like old times.’ He wanted everyone to know.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“He told Tom.”
“Didn’t tell you though. Or you wouldn’t need to come here. I always reasoned that. I was never wrong. ‘If the bogies ask, it’s because they don’t know. So don’t tell them. If they ask and they do know, they’re trying to catch you out. So don’t tell’em either.’ I used to say the same to Rickie but he wouldn’t listen. It was being a Mason partly. It made him feel immune if he talked enough. That’s how they got him, nine times out of ten. He talked himself into it.” He barely paused. “Listen, squire. I’ll do a deal with you. You tell me what you want and I’ll tell you to piss off. How’s that?”