Dark Wanton

1: Tango Thursday LADIES and gentlemen, I present to you Vincente Maria Jesu Callao. The business of a personal introduction seems necessary because he was the spring— however unconscious— that set in movement the rather peculiar actions of most of the people concerned in the business of the Dark Wanton. A relatively uninteresting person, he becomes interesting, not for what he was, but rather for what he was not. Callao was born in Andalusia in 1913. There appeared to be some doubt about his parentage— a matter which repercussed on his mother, who was adequately catered for by her husband with a seven-inch Spanish sailor's knife five days after the birth of the child. His education was nondescript, but with the passage of years he developed certain attributes, many of which made him attractive to women. He developed little else except perhaps the one sincere thing in his life— an honest love of music and the making of music. When he was sixteen he was playing the trap drums in a three-piece amateur syncopated orchestra. By the time he was eighteen he was a superb guitarist. At twenty-five he was an expert musician with a flair for controlling the unruly Latin temperaments of a small rumba band— a semi-professional affair which he directed. Four years later, financed by a woman who thought she knew what she wanted, he had a good rumba band in New York. At the beginning of 1948 he descended upon London with a ten-piece rumba band which was, to my mind, the best of its kind. Vincente was the type of man that all normal men consider in their secret hearts to be an utter bastard. Normal men thought about Vincente like that first of all because they were entirely unable to understand him and secondly because they thought he looked like that. He seemed to be— and probably was— everything that a normal Englishman or American— or any other man for that matter— dislikes. There was a certain sinuosity— a feminine grace— in his movements; a suggestion of leopard or puma in his walk and the way he put his feet on the ground. His wrists and ankles were slender and well shaped, although very strong. He was well made. He had slim buttocks, a thin waist, a deep chest and fine shoulders. Incongruously enough, his neck was inclined to shortness and thickness. His round, olive face was jowled but his nose was well shaped and sensitive. His mouth was one of those mouths which give women who are interested in men's mouths a good deal to think about, and the curved line of his short upper lip was accentuated by a pencil-line black moustache. His eyes were large; sometimes soft, sometimes very hard and cynical, and his hair of the sort you would expect to adorn such a type— black, patent-leather hair, very well-kept, with a decided, immaculate parting. Beyond these things there was little to him except his voice, and that deserves especial mention. Vincente possessed one of those strangely attractive voices which seem to thicken almost imperceptibly during talking or singing. A peculiar husky note dominated his vocal cords. At first you thought that this annoyed you, but after a little while you found yourself rather liking it. Most women began by being fascinated by his voice, which led them on to a consideration of his other qualities of appearance. Usually, when they arrived as far as that they were utterly lost. Because very few women escaped from Vincente without leaving something desirable in one form or another behind them. His attitude towards them was peculiar. At first, after he had made a small success in the United States, he was surprised and amused by the interest which they took in him. Afterwards, and by the time he arrived in England, he had become satiated, and almost bored with women ("choosy" he called it), but used to them in very much the same way as a brandy drinker goes on drinking brandy, not because he gets any of the original kick out of the business, but because he is used to the process of drinking brandy and because he thinks that one day, by some happy chance, he may discover a brandy that tastes better. Vincente always saw himself in an important light. But he was clever enough to conceal this attitude of mind. In speaking and in his general behaviour he usually produced an effect of humility and diffidence— almost of modesty— which was delightful and which made females believe that in no circumstances could he consider doing anything that was not correct and charming. The incongruity of the quiet sadism and more blatant physical toughness which he eventually showed them was possibly fascinating to ladies who, by the time they became aware of this part of his character, were usually too far gone to be able to do very much about it, even if they had been able to do anything about it. And in these days, because of the way things are, there are many women who are prepared to be fascinated too quickly by men like Callao. The experience of many young women in the war, their bravery, initiative, their heightened instinctiveness, the result of the part they played, has left its effect, I have been told, on their post-war mentalities. Because they were used to taking one sort of risk some of them seem prepared nowadays to take other chances. The idea appeals to them. As abnormal risks seldom come the way of women in peace time, those of them who are emotional, appreciative of male attraction, lonely or unhappy, often delude themselves into a belief that, in some extraordinary way, or because of some attribute peculiar to their character which they imagine themselves to possess, they may be able to excite and hold the passion of a man like Vincente Callao. Women, even if they are very intelligent in other things, are sometimes, in affairs of the heart, particularly stupid. After all, nobody can prevent an ostrich from burying its head in the sand, a process which everyone knows is quite stupid— everyone, that is, except the ostrich. Callao fascinated women. Even those who were sensitive enough to become aware of the danger of Vincente were often too intrigued or interested or curious to go whilst the going was good. He seldom lost his temper with them. If he had kept it during his quarrel with Kiernan he would, in all probability, be alive to-day, singing those attractive songs set to good rumba music and accompanied by the deadened tom-tom with which his expert trap drummer accentuated the perfect time of that delightful dance; looking with his soft brown eyes at the couples who danced on the small but crowded floor of the Cockatoo; allowing himself to be persuaded (he always allowed himself to be persuaded) to take some lady to his apartment in Clarges Street to see his Mexican art collection. In his own profession he was important. And, at this time, in the early part of 1948, his rumba band was engaged on a year's contract at the Cockatoo— probably the most fashionable night club in London. Perhaps I should also say that he had been co-respondent in no less than five divorce cases, in all of which he had really not the slightest interest in the unfortunate women, each of whom lost most of the things which women like to have for something which she thought she would like to have. I do not think an apology is necessary for this lengthy dissertation on the characteristics of the late Vincente Maria Jesu Callao. As I said, the introduction seemed necessary because the background of the man who was drawn into curious but very vital contact with such persons as Quayle, Frewin, Ernest Guelvada, Aurora Francis, Kiernan, Kospovic and the Practical Virgin, should be made plain from the start. So much for Vincente. Let us imagine him stepping on to the band platform at the Cockatoo on the evening of Thursday, the 29th January, smiling his own small, diffident, smile at the faces expectantly raised to greet his appearance, bowing with the quick, jerky inclination of the head peculiar to him. And let us think as well of him as we can. We know that he had not long to live, but to him death was a thing unknown and unthought of. Vincente did not like things to last too long. And death is so very permanent that the idea of it would not have appealed to him. It would have made him feel sick, as women who tried to be permanent made him feel sick. Friday IF Mr. Everard Peter Quayle presented the picture of a normal successful business man of fifty years of age, it is probably because he wished to present such a picture. He could look like other things. He could also be all sorts of things except a business man— which he was not. Quayle spent most of his time sitting in a large office in the International Export Trust Company, which existed purely for the purpose of providing him with a façade behind which he could carry out those rather peculiar activities which caused so much consternation to all sorts of people during the war years and which, it must be admitted, still continue to cause a certain amount of trouble to ladies and gentlemen who have decided inclinations to interfere with the peace of the world for sinister motives best known to themselves. Quayle was burly and bald. An active-minded person, his thoughts were continuously ahead of the matter he was considering at any given moment. Secretive— as was necessary— to a degree, it was said of him that he never let one hand know what the other was doing, and that, in his particular profession, was perhaps a good thing. At eleven o'clock on Friday morning he pressed a button on his desk. After a moment a woman secretary came in. Quayle asked for the files on Rumania. When they were brought he sat for an hour, turning over the pages, studying the papers in the folders, making mental notes. It was just after twelve when he sent for Frewin. Frewin came into the room, shut the door quietly behind him and stood leaning against the wall opposite Quayle's large mahogany desk. Quayle thought that Michael Frewin was an odd bird. He thought, simultaneously, that it would be strange if he were not. He thought too, with an interior grin, that anybody who rated as being his— Quayle's— principal assistant must, of necessity, be an odd bird. Frewin was tall, lithe, wavy-haired, very well dressed in a manner which was entirely his own, and apparently lazy. Looking at him, Quayle thought that Frewin spent a whole lot of his life thinking about clothes. He wondered why. Then he thought that after all a man must think about something. Clothes certainly appeared to take a decided part in the mental peregrinations of his assistant. There was a reason for it. Frewin, as Quayle knew, was a man intelligent enough to hide a direct and peculiarly vibrant and sensitive mentality behind a mask of appearances. These carefully calculated appearances deluded most people— as Frewin intended they should be deluded— into believing him a poseur, a dilettante, a well-dressed executive who did his work satisfactorily and spent his leisure hours in the most futile, tortuous or artistic pursuits possible. Quayle, however, who had seen Frewin kill four men in difficult circumstances with the utmost indifference, realised exactly what went on under the sometimes cool, sometimes apparently emotional exterior. Frewin must have known this. He had been working with Quayle too long not to know it. But it made no difference. Even when, in intimate and secret conversations with his chief, Frewin still maintained one or other of the many poses which had become second nature to him. Quayle was never for one moment deluded. Frewin wished people to think of him as being lazy, quasi-artistic and vaguely intelligent. Quayle knew him to be clever, quick-thinking, sensitive to every influence and, if occasion demanded, damned dangerous. One other person was to discover these attributes during the Dark Wanton business; Miss Antoinette Brown was to realise the efficacy of Frewin from quite a different angle and with quite different results.