Completely Unexpected Tales Read online

  ‘We’ve done it!’ George gasped. He was excited and out of breath. ‘I hit him good! Did you see how good I hit him!’

  It was snowing hard now and I drove fast and made many sudden turnings and I knew no one would catch us in this snowstorm. ‘Son of a bitch almost went through the wall I hit him so hard.’ ‘Well done, George,’ I said. ‘Nice work, George.’ ‘And did you see him lift? Did you see him lift right up off the ground?’

  ‘Womberg will be pleased,’ I said. ‘And Gollogly, and the Hines woman.’ ‘They’ll all be pleased,’ I said. ‘Watch the money coming in.’ ‘There’s a car behind us!’ George shouted. ‘It’s following us! It’s right on our tail! Drive like mad!’

  ‘Impossible!’ I said. ‘They couldn’t have picked us up already. It’s just another car going somewhere.’ I turned sharply to the right. ‘He’s still with us,’ George said. ‘Keep turning. We’ll lose him soon.’

  ‘How the hell can we lose a police-car in a nineteen thirty-four Chev,’ I said. ‘I’m going to stop.’ ‘Keep going!’ George shouted. ‘You’re doing fine.’ ‘I’m going to stop,’ I said. ‘It’ll only make them mad if we go on.’ George protested fiercely but I knew it was no good and I pulled in to the side of the road. The other car swerved out and went past us and skidded to a standstill in front of us.

  ‘Quick,’ George said. ‘Let’s beat it.’ He had the door open and he was ready to run.

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ I said. ‘Stay where you are. You can’t get away now.’

  A voice from outside said, ‘All right boys, what’s the hurry?’

  ‘No hurry,’ I answered. ‘We’re just going home.’

  ‘Yea?’

  ‘Oh yes, we’re just on our way home now.’

  The man poked his head in through the window on my side, and he looked at me, then at George, then at me again.

  ‘It’s a nasty night,’ George said. ‘We’re just trying to reach home before the streets get all snowed up.’

  ‘Well,’ the man said, ‘you can take it easy. I just thought I’d like to give you this right away.’ He dropped a wad of banknotes on to my lap. ‘I’m Gollogly,’ he added, ‘Wilbur H. Gollogly,’ and he stood out there in the snow grinning at us, stamping his feet and rubbing his hands to keep them warm. ‘I got your wire and I watched the whole thing from across the street. You did a fine job. I’m paying you double. It was worth it. Funniest thing I ever seen. Goodbye boys. Watch your steps. They’ll be after you now. Get out of town if I were you. Goodbye.’ And before we could say anything, he was gone.

  When finally we got back to our room I started packing at once.

  ‘You crazy?’ George said. ‘We’ve only got to wait a few hours and we receive five hundred dollars each from Womberg and the Hines woman. Then we’ll have two thousand altogether and we can go anywhere we want.’

  So we spent the next day waiting in our room and reading the papers, one of which had a whole column on the front page headed, ‘Brutal assault on famous columnist’. But sure enough the late afternoon post brought us two letters and there was five hundred dollars in each.

  And right now, at this moment, we are sitting in a Pullman car, drinking Scotch whisky and heading south for a place where there is always sunshine and where the horses are running every day. We are immensely wealthy and George keeps saying that if we put the whole of our two thousand dollars on a horse at ten to one we shall make another twenty thousand and we will be able to retire. ‘We will have a house at Palm Beach,’ he says, ‘and we will entertain upon a lavish scale. Beautiful socialites will loll around the edge of our swimming pool sipping cool drinks, and after a while we will perhaps put another large sum of money upon another horse and we shall become wealthier still. Possibly we will become tired of Palm Beach and then we will move around in a leisurely manner among the playgrounds of the rich. Monte Carlo and places like that. Like the Ali Khan and the Duke of Windsor. We will become prominent members of the international set and film stars will smile at us and head-waiters will bow to us and perhaps, in time to come, perhaps we might even get ourselves mentioned in Lionel Pantaloon’s column.’

  ‘That would be something,’ I said.

  ‘Wouldn’t it just,’ he answered happily. ‘Wouldn’t that just be something.’

  The Butler

  As soon as George Cleaver had made his first million, he and Mrs Cleaver moved out of their small suburban villa into an elegant London house. They acquired a French chef called Monsieur Estragon and an English butler called Tibbs, both wildly expensive. With the help of these two experts, the Cleavers set out to climb the social ladder and began to give dinner parties several times a week on a lavish scale.

  But these dinners never seemed quite to come off. There was no animation, no spark to set the conversation alight, no style at all. Yet the food was superb and the service faultless.

  ‘What the heck’s wrong with our parties, Tibbs?’ Mr Cleaver said to the butler. ‘Why don’t nobody never loosen up and let themselves go?’

  Tibbs inclined his head to one side and looked at the ceiling. ‘I hope, sir, you will not be offended if I offer a small suggestion.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s the wine, sir.’

  ‘What about the wine?’

  ‘Well, sir, Monsieur Estragon serves superb food. Superb food should be accompanied by superb wine. But you serve them a cheap and very odious Spanish red.’

  ‘Then why in heaven’s name didn’t you say so before, you twit?’ cried Mr Cleaver. ‘I’m not short of money. I’ll give them the best flipping wine in the world if that’s what they want! What is the best wine in the world?’

  ‘Claret, sir,’ the butler replied, ‘from the greatest châteaux in Bordeaux–Lafite, Labour, Haut-Brion, Margaux, Mouton-Roth-schild and Cheval Blanc. And from only the very greatest vintage years, which are, in my opinion, 1906,1914,1929 and 1945. Cheval Blanc was also magnificent in 1895 and 1921, and Haut-Brion in 1906.’

  ‘Buy them all!’ said Mr Cleaver. ‘Fill the flipping cellar from top to bottom!’

  ‘I can try, sir,’ the butler said. ‘But wines like these are extremely rare and cost a fortune.’

  ‘I don’t give a hoot what they cost!’ said Mr Cleaver. ‘Just go out and get them!’

  That was easier said than done. Nowhere in England or in France could Tibbs find any wine from 1895, 1906, 1914 or 1921. But he did manage to get hold of some twenty-nines and forty-fives. The bills for these wines were astronomical. They were in fact so huge that even Mr Cleaver began to sit up and take notice. And his interest quickly turned into outright enthusiasm when the butler suggested to him that a knowledge of wine was a very considerable social asset. Mr Cleaver bought books on the subject and read them from cover to cover. He also learned a great deal from Tibbs himself, who taught him, among other things, just how wine should properly be tasted. ‘First, sir, you sniff it long and deep, with your nose right inside the top of the glass, like this. Then you take a mouthful and you open your lips a tiny bit and suck in air, letting the air bubble through the wine. Watch me do it. Then you roll it vigorously around your mouth. And finally you swallow it.’

  In due course, Mr Cleaver came to regard himself as an expert on wine, and inevitably he turned into a colossal bore. ‘Ladies and i gentlemen,’ he would announce at dinner, holding up his glass, ‘this is a Margaux ’29! The greatest year of the century! Fantastic bouquet! Smells of cowslips! And notice especially the after taste and how the tiny trace of tannin gives it that glorious astringent quality! Terrific, ain’t it?’

  The guests would nod and sip and mumble a few praises, but that was all.

  ‘What’s the matter with the silly twerps?’ Mr Cleaver said to Tibbs after this had gone on for some time. ‘Don’t none of them appreciate a great wine?’

  The butler laid his head to one side and gazed upward. ‘I think they would appreciate it, sir,’ he said, ‘if they were able to taste it. But they can’t.’