Jerusalem Inn (34 page)

Clive stood staring at the empty table as if surely some of those balls would roll back again.

Melrose became, not surprisingly, excessively popular as
the back-room big-spender. Now the rest of the crowd came in, and everyone wanted a try.

“They must be crazy,” said Tommy, who'd taken his pint and was hanging back in the shadows.

“Why? They're playing with Plant's money.”

“Then he must be crazy. Don't you know who that is?”

Within the space of half an hour, Alex had played three frames, running up incredible breaks of 90 and 110, and because there wasn't a hope in hell that any of these pool-players would ever beat him, he finished off Tattoo with a few exhibition shots.

“Who the hell is he?” Jury asked Plant.

“Don't you ever read anything but police files?” Plant shoved the
Guardian's
sports page at Jury, who looked at the picture, back at Alex and said, “Good Lord.”

Nutter was drunk enough to have a go. He intended to smash the pack but got such a top on the cue ball he sent the red over the edge.

Everyone applauded this less-than-brilliant stratagem except Alex, who must have thought it would be unsportsmanlike.

“Ain't no pocket on the floor, lad,” said Dickie, who nearly got Nutter's cue stick over the head for that, before Alex flattened his own against Nutter's chest.

Another fifty quid exchanged hands. “Look,” said Melrose, “why don't I just give you a thousand and I could stop getting out the money clip?”

Alex smiled. “Well, I wouldn't mind except I'd like to earn it. Now, who's the young fellow — you wouldn't be him, would you? — they've been on about in here just won the local match?” He had, somehow, picked Tommy out of the crowd.

“As a matter of fact,” said Tommy straightening up and, for the first time since Melrose had known him, looking down his handsome nose, “I am.”

“You're pretty young to be so good. What are you, twenty?”

Tommy shrugged, “About that.”

Melrose said, “You see how it is, Whittaker: you're going to have to live for the rest of your life like Gary Cooper in
High Noon.
Remember to sit facing the door.”

Alex laughed. Melrose laughed. Tommy didn't.

Tommy won the toss and punched up a break of 23, potting the black three times in succession with the reds, but leaving the rest of the reds bunched together like grapes. He potted the blue, put the cue ball behind the balk line, and now had to try a long shot, intended to smash the pack. He miscued.

A low moan went round the room. Dickie held out both arms: “Thank you, ladies and gen'men — quiet, thank you.”

From the expressions on the faces of both players they wouldn't have heard a pack of camels. Alex came up to the table. The white ball was at the other end of the table now but hugging the cushions. It looked like an impossible angle. Alex chipped the red away from the black and sent it in the side pocket, at the same time placing the white in position for the green. He pocketed that and sent the cue ball off three cushions to get down the table to the remaining reds.

Dickie delicately replaced the green on spot.

“Clean the cue ball,” said Alex to Dickie.

Dickie leaned over the table, looked at the white ball and shook his head. “Don't look darty t'me, lad.”

Alex stared at him. “Doesn't have to look it, man. There was a kick on that last shot. That could cost a lot in money and nerves.”

“The marker, Dickie, for God's sake,” said Tommy.

Dickie searched round for the little black marker, found nothing, and thumped the leek down where the cue ball had been. Then he went about the delicate business of polishing the cue ball. “Clean as a whistle, it be.”

Alex glared and hit the leek off the table.

“Sorry, man.” Dickie grinned and once again demanded quiet.

Alex must have had diagrams drawn in his mind as clearly as if they'd been drawn on the table. He potted red, black, red, black so fast that Dickie barely had time to get the black back on spot.

Alex sent the cue ball off four cushions straight back behind the balk colors for a clean shot now at the green. He potted that, leaving the blue a bare inch from the cushion. He didn't seem to put any thought at all into a cannon shot that sent the blue off the far cushion into the open and brought the cue ball off the other three cushions to land up behind the balk line breathing on the pink.

It was a snooker Tommy couldn't get out of. He tried a safety play, but from an impossible distance, especially on a table like this one that didn't run smoothly.

Alex potted the brown with a stun shot and cleared the table then in two minutes.

Nobody so much as breathed.

“Another frame?” asked Alex, chalking his cue tip.

Tommy opened his mouth but shut it when nothing came out. He merely nodded.

Melrose slapped him on the shoulder — a gesture meant to be appreciative of his courage, but which sent the boy, now a bit limp, merely scudding into the table. He chalked his cue. And his features froze into the determined look of a Parmenger whose paintbrushes had just been tossed out of a window.

He lost.

The screw shots, the stun shots, the cannons, the escape plays — the works: Alex was not only a champion player, he was faster than Tommy. Between the two of them they stirred up a wind like a BritRail express blasting through Stevenage.

“Incredible,” said Jury. “And to think he just happened to ‘pop round' to Jerusalem Inn. How much did it cost you?”

“Few quid.”

“A ‘few quid.' I'll bet. How much?”

Melrose didn't answer.

“This is your present?”

Alex had cleared the table again. Third frame.

“Some present.” Jury drank off his pint. “What've you got for me? A bucket of asps?”

Melrose laughed. “Oh, come on. Tommy loves it. It's taking everything he's got just to get to the table. At last an opponent deserving of him. And especially considering who it is.”

“But how'd you ever get him here on Christmas Eve? I mean, the man would surely prefer to be home with his wife and kids —”

Melrose looked at Jury with a pained expression. “Why don't you get married and settle down? He's Irish.”

“Oh,” said Jury, as if that explained everything. “Northern or Southern?”

“Don't split hairs.”

 • • • 

Tommy had left three reds at the balk line, making it virtually impossible for Alex to play safe. The best he could do was to send the cue ball down the table, forcing Tommy to make a long shot. The score was 29 to 30 — Alex one point ahead and looking very intense — with 59 points on the table.

“Poetry in quick-motion,” said Melrose, as the terrific spin Tommy put on the ball carried it into the far pocket and brought the cue ball in position for the blue. He pocketed that, then the three remaining reds, the green and the yellow.

There was that last, loose red, down at the other end with the black. He had to size up a position to leave himself on the black.

He overcut, and the onlookers sighed, a few expletives from Marie drawing a shout from Robbie for
quiet.

The cue ball had left the red at a terrible angle for Alex, who stubbed out his cigarette, moved to the table, and managed to screw the red off the cushion and put so much topspin on the blue that he sent the cue ball off three cushions and clipped the black into the side pocket as easily as if he'd dropped it in with his hand. It was a terrific pot. But he couldn't get back to the balk colors and played a safety.

A few cheers for Alex's playing, from the back of the room, and Nutter picked up a chair and went for the traitors until Clive caught him up.

Eyes shut like a choirmaster trying to order unruly boys, Dickie held out his arms: “Thank you, laidies an' gen'mun, thank you —”

Carefully he picked up the cue ball and went through the ritual of cleaning it and then passed out.

It was as much of a ritual for Dickie as cleaning the cue ball was for Alex.

“Take over, Robin,” said Tommy.

Robin Lyte looked confused until Tommy smiled in much the same encouraging way Jury and Plant had smiled at him. “Referee, Robbie. You know the rules.”

Robin certainly did, for when Tommy, with perhaps too much concentration, let the cue stick idle through his fingers that single, overlong second, Robbie called.

“Push shot!”

There was a wave of acrimony. Nutter shoved his face in Robbie's, but Robbie was only interested in the Rules of the Game now. He stuck his hand against Nutter's chest and shoved.

Robbie was right, and that left Tommy with a foul and Alex to clear up the colors.

There was a huge round of applause for both of them as they shook hands. Jury looked at Tommy's beaming face —
the truly good loser — and decided that Plant was right. But wrong in another way. Tommy Whittaker might not have been born into the peerage, but the kid was definitely what Plant had referred to earlier as the real thing, the right stuff.

Robin Lyte looked as happy as he he'd engineered the whole show.

The onlookers were all passing them pints, clapping them both on the shoulder, and asking for more.

Alex said, No, sorry, he had to leave.

“When I was your age, lad, I was never so good. I'm twice as old; I've got an edge, now, haven't I? You've just got to watch that temptation to hang on the butt of your cue. That's what happened that last shot. And don't go trickling up behind the ball the way you did once or twice.” Alex took out his packet of cigarettes, offered one to Tommy, and lit up.

“Will you be back again?”

Will you be back?
Jury thought it one of the saddest questions ever asked.

“Here? I kind of doubt that.” He smiled, but he was sizing up his opponent. “I'm sure I'll be meeting up with you again.” He got into his coat, turned up the collar, fastened his cue case. Looking at Melrose Plant, he held out his hand. “Pleasure.”

“Couldn't you hang around for just a bit?” Tommy's voice was plaintive.

“Wish I could. I've got a match tomorrow. I told you I had an edge. I'm a professional, you see.”

“I know,” said Tommy simply.

No kidding? thought Jury. Never guess.

“ . . . and I've got another edge,” said Alex, stopping on his way to the door, shouting over the raised voices of Nutter, Tattoo and the boy with the ring in his ear who were singing their boozy version of “Silent Night.” Alex laughed. “I'm Irish.”

Tommy, his cue resting against his shoulder, stared as Alex made his way through the crowd of Christmas celebrants.

“It was really him.”

Jury heard the capital on that “Him.”

And Alex waved and walked into the dark of whatever breaks good or bad lay on the other side of the door to Jerusalem Inn.