Paper Money (19 page)

behind the counter Il of Bardays Bank in Cardiff, passed a rubber check.

Until today." He emptied his glass and stared at it gloomily. "Have

another?"

"No. You shouldn't, either. Will you resign?"

"Must do." He shook his head from side to side. "Thirty years. Come on,

have another."

"No," Arny said firmly. "You should go home."

He stood up and took Evan's elbow.

"All right."

The two men walked out of the wine bar and into the street. The sun was

high and hot. Lunch-hour lines were beginning to form at cafes and

sandwich shops. A couple of pretty secretaries walked by eating

ice-cream cones.

Arny said: "Lovely weather, for the time of year."

"Beautiful," Evan said lugubriously.

Arny stepped off the curb and hailed a taxi. The black cab swerved

across and pulled up with a squeal.

Evan said: "Where are you going?"

"Not me. You." Arny opened the door and said to the driver: "Waterloo

Station."

Evan stumbled in and sat down on the backseat.

"Go home before you get too drunk to walk," Arny said. He shut the door.

Evan opened the window. "Thanks," he said.

"Home's the best place."

Evan nodded. "I wish I knew what I'm going to tell My family."

Arny watched the cab disappear, then walked toward his office, thinking

about his friend. Evan was finished as a banker. A reputation for

honesty was made slowly and lost quickly in the City.

Evan would lose his as surely as if he had tried to pick the pocket of

the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He might get a decent pension out' of

it, but he would never get another job.

Arny was secure, if hard up: quite the opposite of Evan's plight He

earned a respectable salary, but he had borrowed money to build an

extension to his lounge, and he was having difficulty with the payments.

He could see a way to earn out of Evan's misfortune. It felt disloyal.

However, he reasoned, Evan could suffer no more.

He went into a phone booth and dialed a number.

The pips went and he thumbed in a coin. "Evening Post?"

"Which department?"

"City Editor."

There was a pause, then a new voice said: "City desk."

"Mervyn?"

"Speaking."

"This is Arnold Matthews."

"Hello, Arny. What goes on?"

Arny took a deep breath. "The Cotton Bank of Jamaica is in trouble."

DOREEN, the wife of Deaf Willie, sat stiffly upright in the front of

Jacko's car, clutching a handbag in her lap. Her face was pale, and her

lips were twisted into a strange expression compounded of fury and

dread. She was a large-boned woman, very tall with broad hips, and

tending to plumpness because of Willie's liking for chips. She was also

poorly dressed, and this was because of Willie's liking for brown ale.

She stared straight ahead, and spoke to Jacko out of the side of her

mouth.

"Who've took him up the hospital, then?"

"I don't know, Doreen," Jacko lied. "Perhaps it was a job, and they

didn't want to let on who, you know. All I know is, I get a phone call,

Deaf Willie's up the hospital, tell his missus, bang." He made a

slamming-the-phone-down gesture.

"Liar," Doreen said evenly.

Jacko fell silent.

In the back of the car, Willie's son, Billy, stared vacantly out of the

window. With his long, awkward body he was cramped in the small space.

Normally he enjoyed traveling in cars, but today his mother was very

tense, and he knew something bad had happened. Just what it was, he was

not sure: things were confusing. Ma seemed to be cross with Jacko, but

Jacko was a friend. Jacko had said that Dad was up the hospital, but not

that he was ill; and indeed, how could he be? For he had been well when

he left the house early this morning.

The hospital was a large brick building, faintly Gothic, which had once

been the residence of the Mayor of Southwark. Several flat-roofed

extensions had been built in the grounds, and tarmacadamed car parks had

obliterated the rest of the lawns.

Jacko stopped near the entrance to Casualty.

No one spoke as they got out of the car and went across to the door.

They passed an ambulance man with a pipe in his mouth, leaning against

an antismoking poster on the side of his vehicle.

They went from the heat of the car park into the cool of the hospital.

The familiar antiseptic smell caused a nauseous surge of fear in

Doreen's stomach. Green plastic chairs were ranged around the walls, and

a desk was placed centrally, opposite the entrance. Doreen noticed a

small boy nursing a glass cut, a young man with his arm in an improvised

sling, and a girl with her head in her hands. Somewhere nearby a woman

moaned. Doreen felt panicky.

The West Indian nurse at the desk was speaking into a telephone. They

waited for her to finish, then Doreen said: "Have you had a William

Johnson brought in here this morning?"

The nurse did not look at her. "Just a minute, please." She made a note

on a scribbling pad, then glanced up as an ambulance arrived outside.

She said: "Would you sit down, please?" She came around the desk and

walked past them to the door.

Jacko moved away, as if to sit down, and Doreen snatched at his sleeve.

"Stay here!" she commanded. "I'm not waiting bloody hours-I'm stopping

here until she tells me."

They watched as a stretcher was brought in.

The prone figure was wrapped in a bloody blanket. The nurse escorted the

bearers through a pair of swing doors.

A plump white woman in sister's uniform arrived through another door,

and Doreen waylaid her. "Why can't I find out whether my husband's

here?" she said shrilly.

The sister stopped, and took the three of them in at a glance. The black

nurse came back in.

Doreen said: "I asked her and she wouldn't tell me."

The sister said: "Nurse, why were these people not attended to?" "I

thought the road-accident case with two severed limbs looked sicker than

this lady."

"You did the right thing, but there's no need for witticism." The plump

sister turned to Doreen. "What is your husband's name?"

"William Johnson."

The sister looked in a register. "That name isn't here."

She paused. "But we do have an unidentified patient. Male, white, medium

build, middle-aged, with gunshot wounds to the head."

Jacko said: "That's him." Doreen said: "Oh, my God!"

The sister picked up the phone. "You'd better see him, to find out

whether he is your husband."

She dialed a single number and waited for a moment. "Oh, Doctor, this is

Sister Rowe in Casualty. I have a woman here who may be the wife of the

gunshot patient. Yes. I will ... we'll meet you there." She hung up and

said: "Please follow me.

Doreen fought back despair as they trod the linoleum corridor floors

through the hospital. She had dreaded this ever since the day, fifteen

or more years ago, when she had discovered she had married a villain.

She had always suspected it; Willie had told her he was in business, and

she asked no more questions because in the days when they were courting

a girl who wanted a husband learned not to come on strong. But it was

never easy to keep secrets in marriage. There had been a knock at the

door, when little Billy was still in nappies, and Willie had looked out

the front window and seen a copper. Before answering the door he said to

Doreen: "Last night, there was a poker game here: me, and Scotch Harry,

and Tom Webster, and old Gordon. It started at ten, and went on till

four in the morning." Doreen, who had been up half the night in an empty

house, trying to get Billy to sleep, had nodded dumbly; and when the Old

Bill asked her, she said what Willie had told her to say. Since then she

had worried.

When it's only a suspicion, you can tell yourself not to worry; but when

you know your husband is out there somewhere breaking into a factory or

a shop or even a bank, you can't help wondering if he'll ever come home.

She was not sure why she was so full of rage and fear. She did not love

Willie, not in any familiar sense of the word. He was a pretty lousy

husband: always out at night, bad with money, and a poor lover.

The marriage had varied from tolerable to miserable. Doreen had two

miscarriages, then Billy; after that they stopped trying. They stuck

together because of Billy, and she did not suppose they were the only

couple to do that.

Not that Willie shouldered much of the burden of bringing up a

handicapped child, but it seemed to make him just guilty enough to stay

married. The boy loved his father.

No, Willie, I don't love you, she thought. But I want you and I need

you; I like to have you there in bed, and sitting next to me watching

television, and doing your pools at the table; and if that was called

love, I'd say I love you.

They had stopped walking, and the sister was speaking. "I'll call you in

when Doctor's ready," she said. She disappeared into a ward, closing the

door behind her.

Doreen stared hard at the blank, cream-painted wall, trying not to

wonder what was behind it.

She had done this once before, after the Componiparts payroll job. But

then it had been different: they had come to the house saying

"Willie's up the hospital, but he's all right-just stunned." He had put

too much gelignite on the safe door, and had lost all hearing in one

ear. She had gone to the hospital--a different one--and waited; but she

had known he was okay.

After that job she had tried, for the first and only time, to make him

go straight. He had seemed willing, until he got out of the hospital and

was faced with the prospect of actually doing something about it.

He sat around the house for a few days, then when he ran out of money he

did another job. Later he let it slip that Tony Cox had taken him on the

firm. He was proud, and Doreen was furious.

She hated Tony Cox ever afterward. Tony knew it, too. He had been at

their home, once, eating a plate of chips and talking to Willie about

boxing, when suddenly he looked up at Doreen and said:

"What you got against me, girl?" Willie looked worried and said: "Go

easy, Tone." Doreen tossed her head and said: "You're a villain."

Tony laughed at that, showing a mouthful of half-chewed chips. Then he

said: "So's your husband--didn't you know?" After that they went back to

talking about boxing.

Doreen never had quick answers for clever people like Tony, so she said

no more. Her opinion made no difference to anything, anyway. It would

never occur to Willie that the fact that she disliked someone was a

reason for not bringing him to the house. It was Willie's house, even if

Doreen had to pay the rent out of her income from the mail order catalog

every other week.

It was a Tony Cox job that Willie had been on today. Doreen had got that

from Jacko's wife Willie wouldn't tell her. If Willie dies, she thought,

I swear to God I'll swing for that Tony Cox. Oh, God let him be all

right The door opened and the sister put her head out. "Would you like

to come in, please?"

Doreen went first. A short, dark-skinned doctor with thick black hair

stood near the door. She ignored him and went straight to the bedside.

At first she was confused. The figure on the high, metal-framed bed was

covered to the neck in a sheet, and from the chin to the top of the head

in bandages. She had been expecting to see a face, and know instantly

whether it was Willie. For a moment she did not know what to do. Then

she knelt down and gently pulled back the sheet.

The doctor said: "Mrs. Johnson, is this your husband?" She said: "Oh,

God, Willie, what have they done?" Her head fell slowly forward until

her brow rested on her husband's bare shoulder.

Distantly, she heard Jacko say: "That's him.

William Johnson." He went on to give Willie's age and address. Doreen

became aware that Billy was standing close to her. After a few moments

the boy put his hand on her shoulder. His presence forced her to deny

grief, or at least postpone it.

She composed her features and stood up.