I looked at Derry’s calendar. Ten days to the seventeenth.
‘All right.’
‘And when you’ve thought out how you’d like to present it, send us an outline.’
‘Will do,’ I said: but I wouldn’t. Outlines were asking for trouble in the shape of editorial alterations. Shankerton could, and would, chop at the finished article to his heart’s content, but I was against him getting his scissors into the embryo.
Luke-John skimmed the letter back and Derry picked it up and read it.
‘In depth,’ he said, sardonically. ‘You’re used to the deep end. You’ll feel quite at home.’
‘Yeah,’ I agreed absentmindedly. Just what was depth, a hundred and fifty guineas worth of it?
I made a snap decision that depth in this case would be the background people, not the stars.
The stars hogged the headlines week by week. The background people had no news value. For once, I would switch them over.
Snap decisions had got me into trouble once or twice in the past. All the same, I made this one. It proved to be the most trouble-filled of the lot.
Derry, Luke-John and I knocked off soon after one and walked down the street in fine drizzle to elbow our way into the bar of the ‘The Devereux’ in Devereux Court opposite the Law Courts.
Bert Checkov was there, trying to light his stinking old pipe and burning his fingers on the matches. The shapeless tweed which swathed his bulk was as usual scattered with ash and as usual his toecaps were scuffed and grey. There was more glaze in the washy blue eyes than one-thirty normally found there: an hour too much, at a rough guess. He’d started early.
Luke-John spoke to him and he stared vaguely back. Derry bought us a half-pint each and politely asked Bert to have one, though he’d never liked him.
‘Double scotch,’ Bert mumbled, and Derry thought of his mortgages and scowled.
‘How’s things?’ I asked, knowing that this too was a mistake. The Checkov grumbles were inexhaustible.
For once, however, the stream was dammed. The watery eyes focussed on me with an effort and another match sizzled on his skin. He appeared not to notice.
‘Gi’ you a piesh o’ advish,’ he said, but the words stopped there. The advice stayed in his head.
‘What is it?’
‘Piesh o’ advish.’ He nodded solemnly.
Luke-John raised his eyes to the ceiling in an exasperation that wasn’t genuine. For old-time journalists like Bert he had an unlimited regard which no amount of drink could quench.
‘Give him the advice, then,’ Luke-John suggested. ‘He can always do with it.’
The Checkov gaze lurched from me to my boss. The Checkov mouth belched uninhibitedly. Derry’s pale face twisted squeamishly, and Checkov saw him. As a gay lunch, hardly a gas. Just any Friday, I thought: but I was wrong. Bert Checkov was less than an hour from death.
Luke-John, Derry and I sat on stools round the bar counter and ate cold meat and pickled onions, and Bert Checkov stood swaying behind us, breathing pipe smoke and whisky fumes down our necks. Instead of the usual steady rambling flow of grousing to which we were accustomed, we received only a series of grunts, the audible punctuation of the inner Checkov thoughts.
Something on his mind. I wasn’t interested enough to find out what. I had enough on my own.
Luke-John gave him a look of compassion and another whisky and the alcohol washed into the pale blue eyes like a tide, resulting in pin-point pupils and a look of blank stupidity.
‘I’ll walk him back to his office,’ I said abruptly. ‘He’ll fall under a bus if he goes on his own.’
‘Serve him right,’ Derry said under his breath, but carefully so that Luke-John shouldn’t hear.
We finished lunch with cheese and another half-pint. Checkov lurched sideways and spilt my glass over Derry’s knee and the pub carpet. The carpet soaked it up good-temperedly, which was more than could be said for Derry. Luke-John shrugged resignedly, half laughing, and I finished what was left of my beer with one swallow, and steered Bert Checkov through the crowd and into the street.
‘Not closing time yet,’ he said distinctly.
‘For you it is, old chum.’
He rolled against the wall, waving the pipe vaguely in his chubby fist. ‘Never leave a pub before closing. Never leave a story while it’s hot. Never leave a woman on her doorstep. Paragraphs and skirts should be short and pheasants and breasts should be high.’
‘Sure,’ I said sighing. Some advice.
I took his arm and he came easily enough out on to the Fleet Street pavement. His tottering progress up towards the City end produced several stares but no actual collisions. Linked together we crossed during a lull in the traffic and continued eastwards under the knowing frontages of the Telegraph and the black glass Express. Fleet Street had seen the lot: no news value in an elderly racing correspondent being helped back from lunch with a skinful.
‘A bit of advice,’ he said suddenly, stopping in his tracks. ‘A bit of advice.’
‘Yes?’ I said patiently.
He squinted in my general direction.
‘We’ve come past the Blaze.’
‘Yeah.’
He tried to turn me round to retrace our steps.
‘I’ve business down at Ludgate Circus. I’m going your way today,’ I said.
‘Zat so?’ He nodded vaguely and we shambled on. Ten more paces. He stopped again.
‘Piece of advice.’
He was looking straight ahead. I’m certain that he saw nothing at all. No bustling street. Nothing but what was going on inside his head.
I was tired of waiting for the advice which showed no signs of materialising. It had begun to drizzle again. I took his arm to try and get him moving along the last fifty yards to his paper’s florid front door. He wouldn’t move.
‘Famous last words,’ he said.
‘Whose?’
‘Mine. Naturally. Famous last words. Bit of advice.’
‘Oh sure,’ I sighed. ‘We’re getting wet.’
‘I’m not drunk.’
‘No.’
‘I could write my column any time. This minute.’
‘Sure.’
He lurched off suddenly, and we made it to his door. Three steps and he’d be home and dry.
He stood in the entrance and rocked unsteadily. The pale blue eyes made a great effort towards sobering up, but the odds were against it.
‘If anyone asks you,’ he said finally, ‘don’t do it.’
‘Don’t do what?’
An anxious expression flitted across his pallid fleshy face. There were big pores all over his nose, and his beard was growing out in stiff black millimetres. He pushed one hand into his jacket pocket, and the anxiety turned to relief as he drew it out again with a half-bottle of scotch attached.
‘’Fraid I’d forgotten it,’ he mumbled.
‘See you then, Bert.’
‘Don’t forget,’ he said. ‘That advice.’
‘Right.’ I began to turn away.
‘Ty?’
I was tired of him. ‘What?’
‘You wouldn’t let it happen to you, I know that... but sometimes it’s the strong ones get the worst clobbering... in the ring, I mean... they never know when they’ve taken enough...’
He suddenly leaned forward and grasped my coat. Whisky fumes seeped up my nose and I could feel his hot breath across the damp air.
‘You’re always broke, with that wife of yours. Luke-John told me. Always bloody stony. So don’t do it... don’t sell your sodding soul...’
‘Try not to,’ I said wearily, but he wasn’t listening.
He said, with the desperate intensity of the very drunk, ‘They buy you first and blackmail after...’
‘Who?’
‘Don’t know... Don’t sell... don’t sell your column.’