Lynda Plante - The Talisman

Dora sipped her iced water, thinking what an oddball he was. ‘Alex, do you mind if I ask you something personal?’

He didn’t even look up from the books, just lifted his pen towards her and carried on writing.

‘You got a girl hidden at your place?’

Alex laughed and said there were enough around the club without having one at home. She knew he occasionally took girls up to the old flat, but never twice, or if he had she didn’t know about it. Sometimes the girls talked to her, asked about him.

‘That your personal question, is it?’

She clinked the ice in her glass and perched her bum on the edge of the desk. ‘Nope... You’re not gay, are you? I mean, really gay, sort of a closet queen?’

He jabbed the pen into her side then dropped it on the desk. ‘No, I am not a closet poofter, what’s all this leading to? What d’you really want, Dora, come on, out wiv it.’

Dora saw him grimace. He tried so hard to speak correctly, but still he used words like ‘wiv’ and ‘somefink’ when he wasn’t concentrating. She found the way he tried to copy the toffs’ accent endearing. She herself had taken elocution lessons for years, and had suggested Alex do the same. Her voice now had little or no trace of her own East End origins.

Alex tapped the books and asked again what she wanted. She sighed, chewed her lips. ‘Is this all you want out of life, Alex? This place, your little sidelines — don’t you want a family, kids — you know, the things most people want?’

He picked up her hand, her left hand, and looked at the ring. He laughed, but didn’t let go. ‘What’s this? Don’t tell me that Texan wants to make an honest woman of you? That what all this is leading up to? Well, don’t ask me to walk down the bleedin’ aisle.’

Dora snatched her hand back. ‘Do me a favour! You think I’d get married here, with all these apes looking on? Oh, he knows all about me, don’t get me wrong, but we’d get a quickie licence in Nevada, or some place like that. What you think of him, Alex?’

Alex shrugged and picked up his pen. ‘I’m not marryin’ him, you are. Seems an all right enough bloke.’

Dora paced up and down for a moment, then sat on the edge of the desk again. ‘It’s my chance, Alex. I can make a new life for myself, no worry about running into some “john” I had God knows how many years ago... He lives in Houston, don’t think I ever laid anybody from there.’

Alex stared at her, knew she was serious, and he rubbed his nose. ‘So how much do you want? I’ll buy you out.’

Just like that, no arguments, no recriminations, no sarcastic remarks. She wanted to cry.

‘What’s the matter, I said the wrong fing?’

‘No, no, you great big idiot, you said just the right thing and I love you for it, I really love you, Alex.’ She hugged him, but he gently pulled his arms away and opened up the safe.

‘I saw Johnny Mask tonight — he looked like a dosser, thieving out of a wastebin. It must have been fate, sort of helped me make up my mind.’

‘You’d never end up like that. Here you go, let’s sort through the contracts.’

Watching him laying out the documents on the desk, taking out the chequebooks and cashbox, Dora thought to herself that he wasn’t wasting a minute. ‘You think I’ll make a good wife?’

‘No, lousy. Yer can’t cook, can’t do nothing ordinary — but then, you never could... Yeah, I’d say you’ll make ‘im a great wife. Now put yer name on the dotted line.’

‘Alex, if you asked me, I’d stay. But you don’t need me here any more, do you? Place runs itself, more or less.’

Alex twisted the pen, then suddenly held out his hand to her. He fingered her tiny white hands with the long, blood-red nails. She knew he was the best friend she would ever have, and began to get tearful. She really cared for him. ‘You know, Alex, you should take a break. Everybody has to at some time. He won’t come down here now. I know why you’re always here. But Eddie’s not coming back, not here.’

His hand tightened on hers and his grip began to hurt her. His voice was quiet and cold. ‘One day he’ll come back — if not for you, he’ll be looking for me. An’ I’ll be ready, waiting. I’ll surprise him. Now sign these contracts if that’s what you want.’

In his clean, neat flat Alex sat with his arms folded behind his head. He owned Masks outright, plus Dora’s Notting Hill Gate property, and he began to calculate just how much he was worth. He grinned to himself, he was doing all right — more than all right, he was making it and he was going to go even further. He had to admit the buy-out had almost cleaned him out of ready cash, but he would soon be flush again. He began to think about buying the year’s new model Jaguar XK120, the sports model, he’d have it custom made.

Going to the bathroom, he picked up his toothbrush and squeezed some paste on to it. He stared at his muscular body in the mirror, then began to brush his teeth. He was always very selfconscious about an ill-fitting plate he had to use after losing two front teeth at the hands of his prison guards. He kept it by his bed at night in a small cup. He splashed cold water over his face and patted it dry.

He would have liked to celebrate his success, but there was no one he particularly wanted to see. He pulled on his freshly laundered pyjamas and turned back the bed. From habit, he always made it as he had been forced to in prison. The small flat was bare, only his precious, worn books were on display. The cleanliness and neatness of the two white-walled rooms verged on the obsessive. A kitchen table and two chairs were the only other pieces of furniture. He had painted them white, and often a vase of fresh flowers stood on the table. His writing paper, pens and sharp pencils stood in groups in a small holder. Every garment had its hanger, socks and shirts had their space. Each drawer was lined with paper.

At night Alex would spend his time reading, always aware of the limits of his education. He liked routine, and every night when he returned from the club he would put in two hours’ work. He was taking several university courses by post. He never intended to take any of the exams, it was purely for his own enjoyment, and these hours were precious to him.

He sat at the table, his exercise books in front of him, but he couldn’t concentrate, so he lay down on his bed instead. There was someone he would dearly have liked to show off his success to, and that person was Edward. He whispered to the white walls, ‘I can wait, Eddie, I can wait, and I’m going to get rich waiting.’

While Alex climbed to success in England, Edward’s preparations for the ‘big scam’ in South Africa were moving towards their conclusion. Skye Duval worked at the press releases for the reopening of the mines, all due to the assurance of a young scientist carrying out experiments on their owners’ land. The mines were mostly fictitious and so far afield the reports would take some time to verify.

BB was deliberately getting himself deeper and deeper into debt with the banks. Mortgaging the house was the last move. All his defunct mines were now open, and to all intents and purposes active.

Rumours began to spread like a small bush fire, continually fuelled. The De Veer Corporation placed a notice in the newspapers disassociating themselves from the ‘new chemical method of assessing mining areas’. Edward was unobtainable, supposedly travelling across Africa. A group of technicians were put into Edward’s laboratory to take over his experiments. Hundreds of thousands of phials took time to assimilate, none could be taken at face value. They had to begin taking their own samples from the same areas, but they had Edward’s notes and positive samples, all linked directly to the reopening of the mines.