Completely Unexpected Tales Read online

  ‘A tremendous performance, Miss Darlington. Allow me to congratulate you.’

  ‘But what a concerto, Mr Botibol! What a superb concerto!’

  ‘You played it perfectly, Miss Darlington. You have a real feeling for my music’ He was wiping the sweat from his face with a handkerchief. ‘And tomorrow we perform my Second Concerto.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Of course. Had you forgotten, Miss Darlington? We are booked to appear together for a whole week.’

  ‘Oh… oh yes… I’m afraid I had forgotten that.’

  ‘But it’s all right, isn’t it?’ he asked anxiously. ‘After hearing you tonight I could not bear to have anyone else play my music’

  ‘I think it’s all right,’ she said. ‘Yes, I think that’ll be all right.’ She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘My heavens, it’s late! I must go! I’ll never get up in the morning to get to work!’

  ‘To work?’ Mr Botibol said. ‘To work?’ Then slowly, reluctantly, he forced himself back to reality. ‘Ah yes, to work. Of course, you have to get to work.’

  ‘I certainly do.’

  ‘Where do you work, Miss Darlington?’

  ‘Me? Well,’ and now she hesitated a moment, looking at Mr Botibol. ‘As a matter of fact I work at the old Academy.’

  ‘I hope it is pleasant work,’ he said. ‘What Academy is that?’

  ‘I teach the piano.’

  Mr Botibol jumped as though someone had stuck him from behind with a hatpin. His mouth opened very wide.

  ‘It’s quite all right,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’ve always wanted to be Horowitz. And could I, do you think could I please be Schnabel tomorrow?’

  Vengeance is Mine Inc.

  It was snowing when I woke up.

  I could tell that it was snowing because there was a kind of brightness in the room and it was quiet outside with no footstep-noises coming up from the street and no tyre-noises but only the engines of the cars. I looked up and I saw George over by the window in his green dressing-gown, bending over the paraffin-stove, making the coffee.

  ‘Snowing,’ I said.

  ‘It’s cold,’ George answered. ‘It’s really cold.’

  I got out of bed and fetched the morning paper from outside the door. It was cold all right and I ran back quickly and jumped into bed and lay still for a while under the bedclothes, holding my hands tight between my legs for warmth.

  ‘No letters?’ George said.

  ‘No. No letters.’

  ‘Doesn’t look as if the old man’s going to cough up.’

  ‘Maybe he thinks four hundred and fifty is enough for one month,’ I said.

  ‘He’s never been to New York. He doesn’t know the cost of living here.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have spent it all in one week.’

  George stood up and looked at me.’ We shouldn’t have spent it, you mean.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘We.’ I began reading the paper.

  The coffee was ready now and George brought the pot over and put it on the table between our beds. ‘A person can’t live without money,’ he said. “The old man ought to know that.’ He got back into his bed without taking off his green dressing-gown. I went on reading. I finished the racing page and the football page and then I started on Lionel Pantaloon, the great political and society columnist. I always read Pantaloon – same as the other twenty or thirty million people in the country. He’s a habit with me; he’s more than a habit; he’s a part of my morning, like three cups of coffee, or shaving.

  ‘This fellow’s got a nerve,’ I said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘This Lionel Pantaloon.’

  ‘What’s he saying now?’

  ‘Same sort of thing he’s always saying. Same sort of scandal. Always about the rich. Listen to this: “… seen at the Penguin Club… banker William S. Womberg with beauteous starlet Theresa Williams… three nights running… Mrs Womberg at home with a headache… which is something anyone’s wife would have if hubby was out squiring Miss Williams of an evening…” ’

  ‘That fixes Womberg,’ George said.

  ‘I think it’s a shame,’ I said. ‘That sort of thing could cause a divorce. How can this Pantaloon get away with stuff like that?’

  ‘He always does, they’re all scared of him. But if I was William S. Womberg,’ George said, ‘you know what I’d do? I’d go right out and punch this Lionel Pantaloon right on the nose. Why, that’s the only way to handle those guys.’

  ‘Mr Womberg couldn’t do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he’s an old man,’ I said. ‘Mr Womberg is a dignified and respectable old man. He’s a very prominent banker in the town. He couldn’t possibly…’

  And then it happened. Suddenly, from nowhere, the idea came. It came to me right in the middle of what I was saying to George and I stopped short and I could feel the idea itself kind of flowing into my brain and I kept very quiet and let it come and it kept on coming and almost before I knew what had happened I had it all, the whole plan, the whole brilliant magnificent plan worked out clearly in my head; and right then I knew it was a beauty.

  I turned and I saw George staring at me with a look of wonder on his face. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said. ‘What’s the matter?’

  I kept quite calm. I reached out and got some more coffee before I allowed myself to speak.

  ‘George,’ I said, and I still kept calm. ‘I have an idea. Now listen very carefully because I have an idea which will make us both very rich. We are broke, are we not?’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘And this William S. Womberg,’ I said; ‘would you consider that he is angry with Lionel Pantaloon this morning?’

  ‘Angry!’ George shouted. ‘Angry! Why, he’ll be madder than hell!’

  ‘Quite so. And do you think that he would like to see Lionel Pantaloon receive a good hard punch on the nose?’

  ‘Damn right he would!’

  ‘And now tell me, is it not possible that Mr Womberg would be prepared to pay a sum of money to someone who would undertake to perform this nose-punching operation efficiently and discreetly on his behalf?’

  George turned and looked at me, and gently, carefully, he put down his coffee-cup on the table. A slowly widening smile began to spread across his face. ‘I get you,’ he said. ‘I get the idea.’

  ‘That’s just a little part of the idea. If you read Pantaloon’s column here you will see that there is another person who has been insulted today.’ I picked up the paper. “There is a Mrs Ella Gimple, a prominent socialite who has perhaps a million dollars in the bank…’

  ‘What does Pantaloon say about her?’

  I looked at the paper again. ‘He hints,’ I answered, ‘at how she makes a stack of money out of her own friends by throwing roulette parties and acting as the bank.’

  ‘That fixes Gimple,’ George said. ‘And Womberg. Gimple and Womberg.’ He was sitting up straight in bed waiting for me to go on.

  ‘Now,’ I said, ‘we have two different people both loathing Lionel Pantaloon’s guts this morning, both wanting desperately to go out and punch him on the nose, and neither of them daring to do it. You understand that?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘So much then,’ I said, ‘for Lionel Pantaloon. But don’t forget that there are others like him. There are dozens of other columnists who spend their time insulting wealthy and important people.

  There’s Harry Weyman, Claude Taylor, Jacob Swinski, Walter Kennedy, and all the rest of them.’

  ‘That’s right,’ George said. “That’s absolutely right.’

  ‘I’m telling you, there’s nothing that makes the rich so furious as being mocked and insulted in the newspapers.’

  ‘Go on,’ George said. ‘Go on.’

  ‘All right. Now this is the plan.’ I was getting rather excited myself. I was leaning over the side of the bed, resting one hand on the little table, waving the other about in the air as I spoke. �€