Ten Word Game

  The Ten Word Game

  JONATHAN GASH

  Acknowledgements

  The QE2, P&O Line, and the Curators of the

  Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia

  Thanks: Ta, Susan

  Jackie with love

  They are like strawberry wives, that laid two or three great strawberries at the mouth of their pot, and all the rest are little ones.

  Queen Elizabeth the First (1533-1603)

  Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  About the Author

  AVAILABLE FROM ALLISON & BUSBY

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  The woman beside me slept. I thought, is she the one?

  Years ago, I invented the Ten Word Game. It’s simple: put any problem into ten words. No extras. You can describe the Olympics, America, or the entire universe in ten words. Try it.

  You can also describe a woman. I’m not saying it’s easy, just that it teaches you.

  Like this: A young engaged couple met as usual. “I’ve found another,” she told him. “He’s a go-getter so I’m leaving you. Goodbye.”

  He said, “I’ve just won the lottery. I’m a multi-millionaire. Bye!”

  True story, thank God. Nobody would believe you if you made that up.

  In the ten words, though? Here goes: Two lovers; she dumps him; he scoops lottery.

  See? It’s all there, so you’ve won the Ten Word Game. I looked along the pillow at the lovely woman. She was so tired after her journey.

  We’d come together when I was forced to rob the Hermitage Museum in beautiful St Petersburg, Russia. Ever since I’d arrived back, astonished to find her in my lonely cottage, I’d been trying to express her in ten words. But women and antiques are the Ten Word Game I can never win.

  I didn’t even know how she’d got there. Course, I was relieved, delighted, thrilled. Worn out after everything we’d been through, I gave up, pulled her close and slept.

  * * *

  The great ocean liner’s funnel was just visible. I’d been staring at the thing ever since it hoved in (note the nautical term) at eight o’clock that morning.

  “Work!” Benjo boomed. “No idlings!”

  “Right, boss.”

  “No staring at ships.” He gave me a glare. “Work! Make this place no mess!”

  “Right, boss.”

  Meanwhile, his gorgeous wife Gloria was making her entrance, the minute I arrived. It was a performance. First, down the steep stairs her high-heeled white shoes would appear. Then her lovely legs. Then the trim skirt, the exquisite shape, the frilly blouse, the voluptuous figure and the dazzling bracelets, emerald-littered watch, the eight-tiered necklace that dulled the vision, the looped diamond earrings, and the blinding blonde hair adorned with diamond slides.

  Finally reaching land, Gloria examined her reflection in a phoney antique cheval mirror. This needed tutted exclamations and a handbag bulging with cosmetics. She applied lipstick thickly to a lurid scarlet mouth, plastered her cheeks with layers of creams, rouge, did her eyes with those gruesome black brushes, layered on more unguents, preened her hair – a gleaming array – and smoothed her hands down her hips. After more posturing, she did a slick pivot and said, “Well, I’ll just have to do!” The galaxy could relax.

  Gloria was hypnotic. I admire beauty.

  Her labour consisted of lighting a cigarette while perched on her stool at the shop counter. For an hour she would sit there, dealing with no customers and repeatedly checking her face in a diamond hand mirror. Tennish, she would sigh and say, “God, it’s been one of those mornings!” and depart for coffee in the Barter Mart.

  This busy schedule called for an absence of three hours, after which she would return laden with boxes from Bright Flight or Hex Pecks, shops famed for expensive designer apparel, and announce, eyes fluttering, “I think I deserve a lie down. Call me if there’s a rush.” And upstairs she would go. Not a single one of us – me especially not – ever noticed her exquisite legs receding step by seductive step upstairs to her well-deserved slumber. Thoughts of Gloria reclining in abandon didn’t cross anyone’s mind. I mean that most sincerely.

  Benjo was her husband, a squat man of enormous girth, sweating continually in a string singlet. Black hair fungated above his straining belt. Think of a wheezing mattress coming unstuffed, and you have Benjo. He bawled continually into two or three cell phones at a time, breathing garlic fumes through a mat of stubble and giving out abuse in sundry Middle-Eastern languages interspersed with threatening phrases from American gangster films. “I keel you bizniz total!” was one favourite, with “I mek offer no refuse!” his ultimate screamed menace. Our importers seemed unfazed and always sent their goods in days late.

  There were three employees. One was Frollie, an indispensable lady who hated Gloria, and a van driver called Tez who’d once worked the Cunard Ocean Liners as a steward. Frollie had a husband who operated Southampton’s football turnstiles. Tez had a wife who did school dinners. Each lunch-hour Frollie and Tez retired to a store-room, locking the door until their silent withdrawal, so to speak, was up. They emerged never to look at each other for the rest of the day. They had been at Benjo’s fifteen years. Benjo and his missus Gloria lived above the Emporium.

  Then there was me. I’d joined three days before.

  By way of introduction Frollie shot me the usual woman’s questions whenever Benjo was screeching into his phones and no massive throngs were queuing for our desirable tatty produce. She had a habit of answering her own questions. Like, “You don’t live local,” or “Divorce, I’ll bet.” And, “It was women who ruined you. I can always tell.” Tez made me help with the loading. I asked him about ships.

  “Don’t work the cruises,” he told me. “Run you ragged.” And the grimmest warning of all, “More intrigue on board than anywhere.” The third time I asked him about getting a job aboard he appraised me, fag smoke wrinkling his eyes.

  “You on the run, mate?”

  “Me?” I was indignant.

  “You’re edgy as a frog in a pot, mate. Eyes everywhere, and you jump a mile when a customer comes in. Don’t worry. Me and Frollie never says nothing to nobody not nohow.”

  “Not me, Tez,” I said, innocently.

  “Half the crews are illicit. Trouble is, there’s the parade – that’s the shipping union, see?”

  “Oh.”

  My heart sank. No escape on there, then.

  The shop was untidy with unlabelled boxes and goods stacked between grimy windows. Nobody knew what they contained except Tez, and he only guessed. Our shop front proclaime
d to the waiting world “Benjo Diamond’s Mail Order Emporium”. On show were indescribable heaps of frocks – packed or unpacked made no difference – fake jewellery, dolls, toys, dud cameras (I’d tried one) and plastic anythings. There was also Today’s Great Free Gift Prize for the next lucky shopper. The one customer who dared to ask if she’d won the Great Free Gift after buying a tenpenny packet of elastic bands received a tirade of invective. Benjo threw her out, raising his hands and saying people wanted blood. He actually sobbed.

  He paid me half the official minimum wage, though I was logged for over fifty hours a week. The previous Monday I’d spotted a postcard in his window saying JOB VACANCY GOOD PAY. I went in, ready with a pack of lies to explain how a postal strike in East Anglia delayed my employment cards, the usual claptrap. Benjo looked me up and down. A knowing smile lit his eye. He said, “Start now.” He paid me cash at five-thirty, deducting whatever he wanted. He knew I’d not complain. Frollie and Tez took me in their stride, and Gloria didn’t even notice I was there.

  Tez’s news about the ships was grim. I’d have to scarper some other way. Cruise ships had seemed so easy – go aboard, and the engines would do the rest, whisk you off somewhere untraceable. Hunters don’t think of luxury liners as a bolt-hole. I wondered about being a bus driver, but you’re stuck behind a wheel for everyone to see. They’d catch me in an hour. Still, I was safe in Benjo’s.

  Until Thursday, when the world changed.

  * * *

  It rained Thursday worse than anything. I was early. Tez said there was a new cruise liner coming in at noon and I wanted to see it. She would berth in the great passenger terminal opposite. Even as I entered by the loading door – Benjo left a key under a brick, secret as the TV News – motor cars of passengers and dignitaries were thronging the dock gates. Camera crews were getting background footage. Some personage was going to reenact the commissioning ceremony of the brand new white Melissa, so deserving of a rich clientele. I did my envious gape, longing to embark to safety.

  “It’s only me,” I bawled up the stairs. “Good morning.”

  “Oke-kay, Lovejoy,” Benjo called down. “Start end bay.”

  “Right, boss.”

  The rule was, first in got free coffee. Benjo kept a tin for money, the prices marked on the wall by the kettle. Six leaning stacks of cardboard containers blocked the loading bay. Tez wasn’t in yet, so I’d have to move them to the exit bay. I switched the kettle on and stepped to the window, wistfully eyeing the passenger terminal, when two luscious arms extended round my middle and clasped tight.

  “Isn’t it time you saw to me?” a husky voice said in my ear.

  “Gloria?” She’d never spoken to me before. She hadn’t yet made her glamorous entrance.

  “Benjo does his bank today. Come upstairs at five-past twelve. Tez and Frollie will be doing their thing.”

  And she was gone. I looked round, but this time I didn’t even see her disappearing heels. No Gloria, just a faint perfume.

  I swallowed. In the two months I’d been on the lam I’d had a score of jobs, all of them neff, all underpaid and some frighteningly risky. Like this. I knew Benjo would marmalise me if I so much as looked at Gloria. Women can be highly worrying. Time to leave?

  If I scorned Gloria she might bubble me to Benjo, and that would be that. If I didn’t, she might scream blue murder, yell I was Jack the Ripper. It’s hard being a bloke, because you’ve nobody to call on if things go ballistic, and the only safety is miles away.

  How people start courting these days I’ll never know.

  “Work! No starings!”

  Sharply I came to. “Right, boss.”

  Benjo had come down. Hurriedly I started shifting the boxes of heavy toys, allegedly from Taiwan. Benjo composed labels for this crud on some machine he kept in his office. It was always a two-cigar job, fumes enveloping him as he tapped, yakking into sundry phones. I was sure he made the labels up, putting any old guesswork on each. It was Tez’s task to drive them to Benjo’s discerning customers.

  Tez arrived, thin and cachectic, hanging up his jacket, flat cap on his peg and spitting on his hands. The van was in the loading bay. As I carried the boxes, I wondered about the nature of true love. Passion is strange stuff. I mean, Tez looked like a dried prune, face of a walnut and spindly limbs. Fifty, fifty-fivish? Decent bloke, but still something out of a cartoon. Frollie was a florid matronly figure, quite dumpy and getting on a bit, though age doesn’t matter with women simply because they are what matters. Life can’t go on without them. Every woman is interesting and has appeal, though women don’t know this. They think that being young is everything, when in fact it’s hardly anything to do with anything.

  Even so, this hard-working couple ensconced in the locked storeroom every noon, presumably for supportive psychotherapy or other activities. I was glad for them, and so were they.

  While hefting the boxes a queer thing happened. I fell over. Now, I gave up serious drink after Cissie left – she lived on doughnuts and olive oil and kept squirrels – so it couldn’t be that, and I’d felt well until I picked up a box and humped it to the van’s tail-board. Tez, with the extraordinary power of the wiry, picked

  me up.

  “You okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “He’s shaking,” Frollie said. “Hot sweet tea and a lie down.”

  “I’m fine.” I stared at the box. It hadn’t been heavy, just a wooden crated thing. The instant I stepped near it, I went dizzy. Only one sort of thing ever does that, so I knew it contained some genuine antique. “What’s in these, Tez?”

  He shrugged. “Just toys.” He squinted at the label, invented seconds before by Benjo, and read it like gospel. “Father Christmas devices.”

  “You’d better lift that one. I’ll bring the rest.”

  The van got loaded without any more ado.

  Benjo announced he was going to the bank. I served a few customers. Benjo left. Tez drove the van away, brought it back empty. A woman came in asking for a set of toy Easter bunnies. I served her. She was pleasant, chatty, didn’t want to go. Youngish, smart in a yellowish suit, hem expensively cut, specs and bright hair, she kept on saying, “I’ll just have another glance round. Might find something. Have you worked here long?” I felt she was phoney. And I didn’t like the look of a bloke hanging about outside. He’d parked his car in an illegal spot, and a strolling policeman simply got the nod and walked on. I gulped. Had they caught up with me? I judged the distance to the rear exit.

  “You all right, mate?” Tez asked me.

  “Women,” Frollie said comfortably. “That’s his trouble.”

  No such luck. It wasn’t yet noon, when Gloria’s tryst was due. I wondered even more about scarpering.

  “Where do most of your imports come from?” the customer asked, smiling. “West Africa?”

  “Dunno, miss,” I said, uneasy. “The boss is out.”

  “Shall I wait? I’d like a talk with him.”

  Now, I’d already wrapped up her set of Nodding Easter Rabbits In Dazzling Colours (Batteries Not Provided). If she was so interested, she could read our brochure. I offered her one. She declined. Maybe its misspellings offended her aesthetic sensibility. (“You will enoff satisfy with our ranje and varietis!” and so on).

  “We close at twelve,” I promised her, “and reopen at one. He’ll be here then.” But would I? “Can I say who asked for him?”

  “My card. He’s expecting us.”

  Us? She was alone. The bad feeling returned treble strength. I remembered the box that had felt so odd, and grew nervous. She looked directly into my eyes.

  “I’ll be back,” she said, smiling in threat. Beautiful lady, spoke like a gun. I thought, you’re Customs and Excise, love, that’s who you are.

  “Wait!” I called as she reached the door. Frollie gasped. Tez froze. I hurried after, carrying her Easter Rabbits. “You forgot these.”

  She actually laughed.

  “Thank you. Mustn�
�t forget those. Not at the prices you charge.”

  Her card said Miss Lacy Trimble, Advisor. I closed the door so it didn’t clonk. The front entrance’s Chiming Cowbell – another bargain line – really annoyed Gloria when she was having her lie down. She was always thumping on the floor for us to stop it.

  Frollie and Tez looked over my shoulder to read the card.

  “What does she advise on?” Frollie asked.

  “Law,” Tez and me said together.

  “Advise who?”

  We both stayed silent. The police, that’s who.

  “Tez? There’s a bloke out there.”

  Tez went to the window, but the man and his motor had vanished as Miss Trimble left. Tez looked worried. Frollie looked worse.

  “Just shift that last box, mate.” There was one by the loading bay. “Stick it in the van. We’ll shut early.”

  He and Frollie locked the front door and went into the store-room. Alone, I went to lift the box. My chest went thick and hurting, my breathing slowed and damned near stopped altogether. I recoiled a few paces, and instantly felt right as rain. My giddiness ended, the shop straightened. I felt normal. It was the box. Same one, or different? I turned. Tez was standing watching.

  “You okay, pal?”

  “Fine, Tez, ta.”

  He went back in and I heard the lock go. They went quiet. Well, it was only a partition wall.

  For a second I hesitated, then drew breath and rushed the box, lifted it and almost hurled it in the van. As if in a dream, I saw my knuckles whiten as they gripped one of Tez’s crowbars from the van’s rack, and prised the wood. I’d done it often enough. The rule is, never disturb the slats, then they look untouched after you shove them back in place. I lifted one slat then another, and moved the packing. Sweat started pouring off me. My hands shook like an old man’s and my vision swam. I stared at the single object inside. It took only half a second for me to know.

  Trembling and aching, dizzy as a bat, my legs shaking as if my malaria was back, I pressed the slats down, risked one thump of the nails with the crowbar, and went back inside.