Читать книгу A Charlie Salter Omnibus - Eric Wright - Страница 13

I he next morning Salter woke with the thought that one of his many enemies had finally caught up with him in an alley. As well as having two broken legs, he had obviously been worked over from the neck down. So this is what it feels like, he thought. Then he remembered the cause and began to enjoy his pain, the product of his first serious exercise in ten years. He had slept like an athlete, too, and he lay there, thinking of the day before, and watching the stirrings of his wife who slept high on her pillow, her waist almost level with his.face. It was seven o’clock and Salter watched her dig deeper into the pillow for a few extra minutes. He waited until she was still again, then he peeled the duvet back, lifted up her nightdress, and bit her gently on the bottom.

She didn’t move. ‘What’s this?’ she asked.

‘Bum-biting,’ he said. ‘A traditional arousal technique. I thought I’d try it.’

‘Like it?’

‘Not much.’

‘Good.’

‘Want me to try something else?’

She turned and lay on her back. ‘I’m not terrifically in the mood,’ she said. ‘But you are. So how about a Victorian quickie.’ She pulled her nightdress up around her waist.

‘Right,’ he said and rolled towards her. ‘Aaaargh, Holy Christ. I can’t move. Aaaargh. I played squash yesterday. I can’t move.’

‘What a vicious circle,’ she said. ‘You play squash to get fit to improve your sex life, and now you can’t move. OK. When you are convalescent, let me know.’ She stepped out of bed and into the bathroom.

He lay back among his aches. ‘You’ll pay for this,’ he shouted. I’ll walk again, you’ll see.’ After a while he clambered slowly out of bed and edged into his dressing-gown. Downstairs, some minutes later, he met the wondering stare of his two sons, who had heard him shouting and now watched him limping about the kitchen. The hell with them, he thought. Let them wonder.

He forgot his pain the instant the pro hit the ball to start his second lesson later that morning. This time he hit the ball nearly every time, even essaying some rudimentary placing and shot-making. ‘Wow!’ the pro said, between looking at his watch. This time the lesson cost him ten dollars for half an hour.

‘Found a motive, yet, Charlie?’ Harry Wycke stood in the door of Salter’s office as he got ready to leave for Montreal.

‘You want to hear about it, Harry? I’ve got a few minutes before I leave.’

‘Sure.’ Wycke sat down on the hard little visitor’s chair and looked around the office. ‘Not exactly top-of-line here, is it?’ he said.

‘It’s what they had left over.’ Was Wycke about to patronize him?

But the detective just shrugged, and waited for him to speak.

Salter summarized the story so far, and Wycke listened carefully.

‘What next?’ he asked, when Salter had finished.

‘I’m going down to Montreal this afternoon to have a look round. You have any advice?’

Wycke shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t look for anything complicated. Sex. Money. Both.’ He stood up. ‘Want me to check out the bookies here? See if he was known to be over his head?’

‘Yes, thanks, Harry. But I can’t see it.’

‘Nor can I. But it’s an obvious one, so we’ll cover your ass on it.’ He winked and left.

The afternoon train from Toronto to Montreal takes a little less than five hours. Salter carried along Summers’s journal to pass the time, hoping, in spite of Mrs Summers, to find it interesting as well as useful. He treated himself to the first-class section so that he could drink beer and read in comfort, and was assigned a seat by the window; ideal, because, although there is nothing worth looking at on the Montreal-Toronto journey, staring out the window, or appearing to, was the easiest way of avoiding conversation with the other passengers.

The first few pages of the journal depressed him. It was declared immediately that this was Summers’s first exercise in journal-keeping, and the early pages consisted of a long, rambling, ‘literary’ account of the author’s condition—mental, physical, psychological, sexual (too coy to be interesting), social, paternal, marital, fraternal, spiritual (’I know, finally, that I must die;’ for Christ’s sake, thought Salter), and professional. Salter thumbed through the first hundred pages. About thirty pages in, Summers had written: ‘Joyce feeling larky today, and we had a nice time before we got up this morning.’ This was more like it. Salter ordered a beer and settled back with page one.

Gradually as he read on, Summers’s life emerged from his literary concern with the writing of the journal. The entries grew shorter—soon a page was a long entry—and the journal came alive as it became a record of what was happening to Summers rather than a collection of pensées. It began with an enquiry into the writer’s depressed state. He was sleeping badly, waking up anxious, and savouring little, it seemed. Salter recognized the condition as his own and reflected that it was probably widespread, normal, and boring. What was more interesting was the upward movement of the journal, marked by the disappearance of introspection, and Salter read more closely to see how Summers had come out of it. The appearance of his new hobby, squash, was the first sign that Summers had gone beyond his fascination with his own melancholy to doing something about it. After about two months, Summers began to mention his games regularly, especially those with Cranmer and Bailey. Soon Cranmer faded, but the games with Bailey were regularly recorded, together with comments. Once Summers wrote: ‘Exhausted. Played Bailey today—beat him—he wanted to play again—beat him again. Almost felt sorry for him, and offered to buy the beer. He got very snotty about it. Said I would be buying the beer soon enough. Ho. Ho. I look forward to it all day. We are dead even, but I am feeling up this week. Sometimes I feel a bit embarrassed about this new obsession, but there’s a distinguished professor over at the U. of T. who doesn’t give a shit for anything except his horse.’ A later entry read: ‘Lost to Bailey today. My eye still black from last week. I think he’s been taking lessons, too.’ During a squash tournament, apparently among the ‘D’ players at the club, the journal stopped for ten days, and Salter reflected that this kind of journal was probably only kept up when the writer felt sad.

Sometimes Summers reprimanded himself for not keeping it conscientiously. The first entry of this kind occurred about a third of the way through, and was the result of Summers himself having read the first six months of his journal and having found it fascinating. Food appeared occasionally as Summers described the meals he had eaten in restaurants, along with the prices. Here, too, he was beginning to see the interest such information might have for him in the future. Sometimes he recorded the movies and plays he had seen and included a considered, literary reaction. More to Salter’s taste was: ‘Saw a lot of frauds farting around the stage of the St Lawrence Centre last night’, and ‘Fell asleep during concert yesterday. Drooled a bit, but no one noticed.’