Read Online The Man Whose Dream Came True by Julian Symons - Free Book Online
Authors: Julian Symons
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have known. Look at this last report, doesn’t try. Doesn’t try. Why don’t you try, eh? You’ll come to a bad end. He’ll come to a bad end, Sheila, I’ll tell you that.’ A quick switch of attack. ‘And you know whose fault it’ll be. Yours.’
His wife put a hand to her wide bosom. ‘Mine?’
‘Too much freedom. If you hadn’t given him so much freedom–’
‘I must see to the potatoes.’ She elevated slowly from the chair in which she had been sitting and floated out of the room.
The Creighton affair marked another turning point. In a way Tony had been terrified by the serious way in which everybody treated something so simple, something as you might say that everybody did, but what was chiefly borne in on him was the difference between practice and precept. He had often jumped off a bus with his father before the conductor had got round to collecting the fares. His father had winked and said, ‘Freeman’s ride, Tony, that’s the best.’ At Christmas time they had more than once gone to a brewery where one of the men would come out in a van and stop round a corner. Bottles of whisky would be exchanged for money, and after the van had driven away Mr Jones would chortle. ‘Half price, less than half price. Makes it taste better.’ How was the man able to sell them whisky at less than half price? Another wink. ‘Don’t ask, son. It fell off the back of the van.’ When he understood what this meant he wondered: what was the difference between whisky falling off the back of the van and things disappearing from a store counter?
At fifteen he got his first job, as an insurance company clerk. He had been working for three months when he came home one evening to find supper in the oven. There was no sign of his mother. He ate supper and waited for her to come home. At eleven o’clock he went upstairs and found her lying fully dressed on the bed, with an empty bottle that had contained sleeping tablets by her side. She must have taken them immediately after putting his supper into the oven. She left no message, but there were a number of letters on the dressing-table, written to her husband by a woman who signed herself Nora. These letters, left carelessly in an old overcoat, were thought to provide the reason for her death. Tony wondered – but this was much later – whether the loss of love or of respectability had been the decisive stroke. Or had she simply wanted to move over into the spirit world about which she was so curious?
Three months after his wife’s death Mr Jones married Nora, a brawny peroxide blonde with a flat Midlands voice, and soon after that Tony left the insurance company and went down to Widgey. He never returned to Eltham and never wrote to his father. He had had many jobs since then, but had held none for more than a few months before going to Leathersley House. He had sold insurance, had acted as debt collector for some bookmakers, and had worked as a salesman on commission for several firms. In all of these occupations he had practised a little fiddle, something had dropped off the back of the van as it were. He had kept back some of the insurance premiums, put a percentage of the collected debts into his own pocket, and with the co-operation of somebody in the office of a firm of vacuum cleaner manufacturers had sold a number of cleaners which never passed through the company books.
Such activities meant that you could never stay in one place for long, and Tony would have accepted if he had known it the philosophical idea that life itself implies movement, a permanent flow. Every so often, when he was in the money, he would play roulette, but he had never possessed enough capital to give any system the financial backing it needed, and the result almost always showed itself on the losing side. After leaving Eltham he abandoned the undesirable Jones, and since then had called himself Scott-Williams, Lees-Partridge and Bain-Truscott. He usually placed his origin in the
His wife put a hand to her wide bosom. ‘Mine?’
‘Too much freedom. If you hadn’t given him so much freedom–’
‘I must see to the potatoes.’ She elevated slowly from the chair in which she had been sitting and floated out of the room.
The Creighton affair marked another turning point. In a way Tony had been terrified by the serious way in which everybody treated something so simple, something as you might say that everybody did, but what was chiefly borne in on him was the difference between practice and precept. He had often jumped off a bus with his father before the conductor had got round to collecting the fares. His father had winked and said, ‘Freeman’s ride, Tony, that’s the best.’ At Christmas time they had more than once gone to a brewery where one of the men would come out in a van and stop round a corner. Bottles of whisky would be exchanged for money, and after the van had driven away Mr Jones would chortle. ‘Half price, less than half price. Makes it taste better.’ How was the man able to sell them whisky at less than half price? Another wink. ‘Don’t ask, son. It fell off the back of the van.’ When he understood what this meant he wondered: what was the difference between whisky falling off the back of the van and things disappearing from a store counter?
At fifteen he got his first job, as an insurance company clerk. He had been working for three months when he came home one evening to find supper in the oven. There was no sign of his mother. He ate supper and waited for her to come home. At eleven o’clock he went upstairs and found her lying fully dressed on the bed, with an empty bottle that had contained sleeping tablets by her side. She must have taken them immediately after putting his supper into the oven. She left no message, but there were a number of letters on the dressing-table, written to her husband by a woman who signed herself Nora. These letters, left carelessly in an old overcoat, were thought to provide the reason for her death. Tony wondered – but this was much later – whether the loss of love or of respectability had been the decisive stroke. Or had she simply wanted to move over into the spirit world about which she was so curious?
Three months after his wife’s death Mr Jones married Nora, a brawny peroxide blonde with a flat Midlands voice, and soon after that Tony left the insurance company and went down to Widgey. He never returned to Eltham and never wrote to his father. He had had many jobs since then, but had held none for more than a few months before going to Leathersley House. He had sold insurance, had acted as debt collector for some bookmakers, and had worked as a salesman on commission for several firms. In all of these occupations he had practised a little fiddle, something had dropped off the back of the van as it were. He had kept back some of the insurance premiums, put a percentage of the collected debts into his own pocket, and with the co-operation of somebody in the office of a firm of vacuum cleaner manufacturers had sold a number of cleaners which never passed through the company books.
Such activities meant that you could never stay in one place for long, and Tony would have accepted if he had known it the philosophical idea that life itself implies movement, a permanent flow. Every so often, when he was in the money, he would play roulette, but he had never possessed enough capital to give any system the financial backing it needed, and the result almost always showed itself on the losing side. After leaving Eltham he abandoned the undesirable Jones, and since then had called himself Scott-Williams, Lees-Partridge and Bain-Truscott. He usually placed his origin in the
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