Players at the Game of People Page 8

  Appealing, Gorse turned her eyes to Godwin, who summoned his remaining forces and donned a smile.

  "What did you suggest?" he said in a conciliating tone.

  "He wants to call me Gorse Plenty!" Gorse said before Ambrose could rush to his own defense. "And it's not a name I ever heard of and I don't like it anyway!"

  "It's right for you! It's perfect!" Ambrose barked. He was on his feet by now, grossly offended.

  "It was Ambrose who gave me my name," Godwin said placatingly, also rising. "And I've never regretted taking his advice."

  "Precisely, and thank you! Any more than Cineraria Howe regretted it -- and doesn't everybody know her name from the television series she's been in? As for County Barbarian, if it weren't for me, even his gimmick of being a millionaire's son wouldn't have got his bunch of second-rate slags into the Top Twenty with the sort of material they were using! And I could multiply this list indefinitely ! Didn't you know CB's original name was Edgar Bernard Brown? Heaven help us! If I wanted to write a five-syllable curse, I'd be hard put to it to improve on that one!"

  "Curse?" Gorse parried faintly.

  "What else do you call it when your initials spell 'ebb'? That's a downer -- as my contacts among the youth generation inform me." This with a sudden shy, almost boyish smile. "But you've struck lucky, I promise. Your friends at school must have had a clearer overall perception of your potential than you did yourself, let alone the teachers -- or so-called teachers -- you were forced to suffer under. As for your mother . . . !" This ended in an elaborate shudder. "Nonetheless, a counteragent to the harshness of the name you enjoy wearing will stand you in good stead in the long run. Apart from anything else, it will be memorable, and all the people who bear interchangeable names will envy you. True?"

  "Ambrose bestows good names," Godwin said hastily. "His is the other name of Merlin, the magician."

  "Right!" Ambrose crowed, clapping Godwin on the shoulder. "So when I say 'Plenty' is correct, you must remember: 'Gorse' is a sparse, repugnant plant, symbolic of deprivation. You want that? Of course not!"

  He switched out lights without moving, and all of a sudden the sanctum was dank and unbearable. Gorse moved toward where the stairs had been, her teeth audibly chattering.

  " This way," Ambrose murmured. "We shall drink a glass of firewine to your acceptable appellation."

  And indeed the steps were yards away, beyond the dried bat and immediately below. The stove had brewed its ichor and the alembic was dull gray; the odor of incense had given way to something vaguely putrid, as of cow-guts cast aside by a butcher, and overlooked.

  In a gracious room above Anders made them welcome, clad now in blue jeans and rope-soled sandals. From a crystal decanter he poured into crystal glasses four measures of something which fumed and glowed, neither red nor green but partway between.

  Ambrose gave a formal toast.

  "Long may it, soon may it, and may we live to enjoy it!"

  They drank in unison. Gorse had meant to sip, not gulp, but Anders was well trained -- as Ragnar had been, and Per and Horst and Lam and all those others who bore echt-Aryan cognomems -- and at precisely the right moment he contrived to jog her elbow and she swallowed the lot, even as Ambrose was stating didactically, "This so-called firewine is of course no more than a distillate of certain significant herbs whose governing planets relate to the subject, but you would have to travel far -- you note my name, Farr? -- before you found a match as regards appropriateness for this particular brew. Young lady, I wish you vast success from your identity, but I must withdraw because tomorrow I am to be consulted by an official of the United Nations whose wife disapproves -- stupid bitch! -- of his interest in my work, and to be absolutely and utterly frank, your mere presence as a female distorts the aura I am attempting to create in this house. Honestly, God, can you not choose your times better?"

  That was so absurd, ridiculous, and pointless a question, Godwin was shaken by it. He thought for a while, and at last ventured, "You mean Anders is nursing a hard-on."

  "If his psychic energy were to be wasted on the air -- !" protested Ambrose, making a gesture to encompass the collapse of universes.

  "I don't choose my times," Godwin said, and set his glass on the nearest table. "Gorse didn't choose. Think about it. Thanks for the wine. But I think 'Gorse Plenty' will work out fine.

  "In case you were still worried."

  There was a long pause during which Anders shrugged and turned to leave. Ambrose checked him with an affectionate arm linked about his neck.

  "What now, God? I promise, I am interested. But for the fact which you know about. I wish Aleister were here to speak on my behalf."

  "You always wish that. It's your way . . . But FYI: there are material considerations. Come on, Gorse, let's get out of here. You haven't even met Bill yet, and you must. After all, he's going to be your landlord."

  In the taxi which naturally they picked up within a few yards of Ambrose's door she said to him fretfully, "I don't understand."

  "That doesn't surprise me."

  "But I don't!" -- in a near wail. "You seem to know all these people, but who are they?"

  "People I've known for a long time."

  "Oh, for God's sake !" She hunched away from him. "What are you all? Some kind of group?"

  "Yes, in a sense, I suppose."

  "Like the Rosicrucians?"

  Godwin stifled a laugh. In his gravest tone he said, "No, not in the least."

  "Well, then . . ." She was biting her lower lip so hard it might bleed. "I wish I understood what was going on!"

  "You only need to understand the consequences."

  "All the time you say things like that! This guy -- what's his name? -- this Ambrose: he was full of double-talk, wasn't he?"

  "You don't have to take Ambrose too seriously."

  "But a while ago you were saying I must!" She turned to him with her large eyes full of tears. "Or is it that you're trying to brainwash me?"

  "Brainwashing is done by deprivation and lack of sleep and repetition of some kind of ideological message until the defences of the mind give way under the overload. They used it in Korean prisoner-of-war camps. They use it nowadays in Ulster police stations. The essential element is monotony. What, pray , is either monotonous or even predictable about what we've been doing? And I can testify that when I got through with you last night, you enjoyed several hours' deep sleep. Did you know you snore?"

  "I don't!"

  "Oh yes you do. Not very loudly, but with a kind of bubbly noise. You probably have a post-nasal drip that needs attention."

  "You're trying to make me follow a red herring! That isn't what I'm talking about! I've read The Golden Ass , you know. A certain kind of shock can be just as efficacious as a prolonged period of deprivation in converting someone, and that's what you're trying to do, isn't it? You're trying to convert me to some sort of belief which -- Golly! Excuse me!" Her words were dissolving into a colossal yawn.

  This soon? Even before arriving at Bill's place? Well, perhaps it was all for the best. Godwin had no faintest notion what she was going on about, but he had spinal tremors which indicated bad news, and while it was unprecedented for the owners to be in such a hurry, it might well be for the best if she underwent a chastening experience right away. At least it would be better from his point of view than suffering through the usual load of crap -- "Oh, all my life I've dreamed of guidance from on high!" or "Isn't it fantastic to think that someone actually understands and can put to use the astral forces which surround us?" or, perhaps worst of the lot, "Doesn't it just prove that when it's properly attuned, the miracle which is the human mind is capable of concretizing anything our imagination has ever conceived of?"

  But all this making with the mouth was boring his balls off, and he earnestly looked forward to dumping Gorse and getting on with something he cared about. However, by this time she was not only yawning, but threatening to doze off, and with all possible respect to whoever was calling her
, he had no wish to carry her bodily into the house when they reached their destination. So he talked rapidly and loudly.

  "I think you'll get on well with Bill Harvey -- your temporary landlord, you know, the guy whose house you're going to live in until you find your feet and get a place of your own. An interesting bloke. Used to be a jockey, and then a flyweight boxer, and still has the broken nose to prove it. A bit like dueling scars in his circle, having a broken nose. I remember he once told me that when he was a kid the big man in his personal world was the landlord, whose agent kept coming around to dun his mother for the rent, so he decided one day he was going to be a landlord himself, and now be owns houses all over South London -- Catford, Lee Green, New Cross, Peckham . . . He prides himself on being a good landlord; he swears he never hires anyone to do anything he can't do himself, from painting and rewiring down to drains and concrete floors."

  Was he going to have to go on and talk about Bill's one visible shortcoming? Gorse's head was nodding and her eyelids kept drifting down, but -- thank goodness -- they were now rounding the corner of the street where Bill lived. Godwin thrust a fiver at the cabby and told him to keep the change, and just as he opened the door Bill appeared to lend him a hand.

  "She looks as if she's being called already!" he whispered as he caught the drowsy girl under the arms with all the expertise due to helping fellow boxers away from the ring after a catastrophic defeat.

  "Yes, I think so. Better get her inside as fast as possible," Godwin answered.

  But Gorse was able to stand and walk by herself as she was led into the house, even though she kept casting glances to either side, for this was a decaying street, down on its luck, and the frontages and roofs were even more in need of repair than those where Godwin lived, while the curbs were lined with abandoned cars, some of which had been set on fire and burned to discolored metal skeletons.

  "I have to live here?" she said in faint horror.

  "You won't find a better 'ouse in London that takes in lodgers on the spur of the moment," Bill declared. "Not since the Rent Acts you won't!"

  He was a remarkable figure, and people were looking at him from across the street as hard as Gorse was staring at his disreputable-seeming home, with its unpainted woodwork and rusty guttering, all in accordance with his ingrained principle that one should do nothing to attract the attention of the tax collectors. He affected clothing that two or three generations ago would have been considered flash: a brown check suit with brilliantly polished brown boots, a yellow shirt, a green silk tie with a pearl sticker in it, and -- even for this brief excursion into the open air -- the same brown bowler hat he would have worn on a trip to Epsom for the Derby.

  "All the gear you're getting from Hugo & Diana is being sent here," Godwin improvised. "And remember, this is only temporary -- and of course once you're settled in, you'll find it's much nicer than it looks from the outside. Remember how you felt about my place!"

  Had she not been so sleepy by now, though, it was plain she would have resisted their attempts to steer her along the hallway and into a room on the right. From the rear of the house came faint noises: a running commentary on a horse race, growing momently more frenzied.

  "I picked Shahanshah yesterday at twenty to one -- did you 'ave anything on 'im?" Bill inquired as he opened the door of the room so that Godwin could steer Gorse through it. By now she was again stumbling with her eyes shut, fighting and failing to stay awake. The room had been repapered with a hideous design of huge orange and pink roses on a sky-blue ground, but otherwise it was precisely as Godwin remembered: the narrow bed, the second-hand armchair, the rickety table and upright chair, the curtained alcove in the corner for hanging clothes, the chest of drawers with a mismatched handle on the left of the bottom drawer, the washbasin with the exposed plumbing, the electric shower in a tin cabinet with a torn plastic curtain across the front, even the battered tin wastebasket with a design of daffodils.

  Of course, it wasn't yet activated. It would take a while for Gorse to learn how to do that, but she would. And then it might well be quite some time before she decided to move elsewhere.

  They laid her on the bed and within seconds she had rolled on one side and begun to utter that trace of a snore which Godwin had rebuked her for: a tiny bubbling sound on every intake of breath, and a pop-and-wheeze on every exhalation. Nervously Bill said, "I think we better get out of 'ere and shut the door, don't you?"

  "Yes. She's very close. I wouldn't put it more than half an hour away."

  They retreated to the hallway, where Bill retrieved a tankard half full of bitter which he had left on an occasional table. Raising it significantly, he said, "Want to pop in the parlor for a minute, sink a jar? I missed the end of the race but I can rerun it. After that I got a terrific cup-tie -- everybody said Rovers 'ad it made, but I said United and I was right! Even though that was before I got my new amulet. You know what an amulet is? Truly? Ah, might've known you'd 'ave 'eard of 'em before. Smart aleck! Puts all my other gear in the shade, though. Swear it does!"

  He made an all-encompassing gesture. On the occasional table stood a vase; it contained white heather. Over the front door a horseshoe was nailed, open end down; Godwin recalled what agonies Bill had been through, wondering which view was correct -- whether if it were upside down all the luck would run out, or whether it should be mounted so that luck would fall on those who passed beneath. The latter had prevailed, but he had one the other way up at the back door, just in case. It was his conviction that charms and cantrips had brought him his good fortune, and he had made his home into a kind of museum of superstitions.

  Wearily and not without malice Godwin said, "Did you have anything on Shahanshah?"

  "Me? Not bleedin' likely! Won't let me in the bettin' shop any more, the buggers won't! Won't let me do the pools neither! Just 'cause all the time I'm right an' they're wrong! But you're 'avin' me on, aren't you? I could swear I told you what they done to me down the bettin' shop!"

  "Maybe you ought to turn in your amulets and try your luck all by yourself for a change," Godwin suggested dryly.

  "Thought of that," Bill answered with a lugubrious scowl. "But the way I look at it, you're better off bein' lucky than unlucky, right?"

  "Right."

  "Sure you won't stop off for a jar?" Bill went on, having drained his tankard. "I got the place done over real nice now. You couldn't tell it from Frinton-on-Sea, I'd take my oath on that. And I got barrels and barrels of beer -- lager, bitter, stout, whatever you fancy!"

  Godwin was spared the need to refuse by a sudden racket emanating from Gorse's room: great clumsy stamping sounds, then the noise of something being knocked over -- probably the chair -- and curses in a deep, unfeminine voice.

  "Either come on in, or scarper toot sweet!" Bill whispered. "I never fancy meetin' any of me lodgers when they're -- well, you know!"

  Nodding, Godwin repressed a shudder. Indeed, it must be eerie to meet a stranger in a familiar body.

  Something tinny: the wastebasket being kicked or hurled at the wall.

  "Gawblimey, I'll 'ave to paper the room again . . . Well?"

  "I'm going to scarper. Sorry. Next time with luck. You fix the luck, okay?"

  "Okay."

  But it was a sickly grin he gave Godwin as he shook hands and he couldn't refrain from glancing at the door of the room to see whether it was bulging yet under an attack from the other side. Often it took quite some while for the owner to get adjusted.

  "Funny . . ." Bill said as he turned away. He spoke in a musing tone. "Sometimes I'd give anything . . . You been called lately, 'ave you?"

  "What do you think I'm doing here?" And, impelled by the same need which had caused him to speak up at Irma's, and knowing what he had to say would register on Bill if anyone, he suddenly produced from his pocket the press cutting which included him in a list of heroes decorated at Buckingham Palace. "I got the George Medal for it," he muttered. "See?"

  "Crikey!" Bill said, his eyes wid
ening. "The George Medal, eh? Wish I 'ad 'arf your imagination! I thought I was pitchin' it a bit strong when I backed Lovely Cottage for the National!"

  He studied the press cutting avidly. But before he could make a further comment, they were interrupted by a real crash from Gorse's room: probably the hand-basin shattering. Godwin hastily retrieved the slip of paper and made for the door.

  "See yourself out!" Bill invited ironically, and turned back to the kitchen. Struck by a thought, however, he checked.

  "Show me that again!"

  "Uh . . . Well, if you like." Godwin complied, feeling for some unaccountable reason extremely nervous -- not because of the renewed noises from the room, but because there was a frown on Bill's usually cheerful face.

  "September the twentieth," Bill said at last, tapping the paper with a blunt forefinger.

  "Yes!"

  "1940?"