One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters (Macmillan 1979)

 

Cadfael had persuaded every man of the guard to view his unknown, but none of them could identify him. Courcelle had frowned down at the body long  and sombrely, and shaken his head.

“I never saw him before, to my knowledge. What can there possibly have been about a mere young squire like this, to make someone hate him enough to kill?”

“There can be murders without hate,” said Cadfael grimly. “Footpads and forest robbers take their victims as they come, without any feeling of liking or disliking.”

“Why, what can such a youth have had to make him worth killing for gain?”

“Friend,” said Cadfael, “there are those in the world would kill for the few coins a beggar has begged during the day. When they see kings cut down more than ninety in one sweep, whose fault was only to be in arms on the other side, is it much wonder rogues take that for justification? Or at least for licence!” He saw the colour burn high in Courcelle’s face, and a momentary spark of anger in his eye, but the young man made no protest. “Oh, I know you had your orders, and no choice but to obey them. I have been a soldier in my time, and borne the same discipline and done things I would be glad now to think I had not done. That’s one reason I’ve accepted, in the end, another discipline.”

“I doubt,” said Courcelle drily, “if I shall ever come to that.”

“So would I have doubted it, then. But here I am, and would not change again to your calling. Well, we do the best we can with our lives!” And the worst, he thought, viewing the long lines of motionless forms laid out along the ward, with other men’s lives, if we have power.

Leighton Rees On Darts edited by Dave Lanning (Atheneum 1979)

But darts, like so many Sports, is a question of pacing, of reaching a peak at the exact right moment. Now, on reflection, I realize I had peaked just a game too soon. That semifinal was the high-spot and, without any disrespect to George Champion, I believe I could still have beaten him had I played more steadily than spectacularly. I needed the peak form I had just enjoyed for the final because only the very best would have contained my opponent, the computerishly consistent Billy Lennard.

Maybe I simply "peaked" too soon, or maybe it was the circumstances that affected me, because there was a very long interval before the Grand Final, the most momentous match of my life. The competition was ahead of schedule for the television boys who were broadcasting live at 3:35 P.M. Lennard and I were ready to go at about 3:00 P.M. Timings were further complicated by an objection to the winner of the 3:30 P.M. horse race that the TV network was also covering. Thus, the TV boys came in for a fair hit of criticism over that long wait, which thousands of Welshmen believed was my undoing. It was not until much later that it was established that it was the organizers, the News of the World, who had specifically requested live coverage. The TV people would have been perfectly satisfied to record the final as scheduled (which now, in fact, is the practice) and replay the tape later.

I have no clear recollection of that “long wait.” It remains one of those moments in life which are like suspended animation—floating in space as the astronauts do must produce a similar sensation. At the time it was all high octane, but now I have no standout memory of that delay.

American freelance writer Jack McClintock, who has contributed to Esquire, Playboy, the New York Times and the Washington Post, was among the ten thousand at Alexandra Palace that day, and his account, colorful and so typically American, is much more graphic than anything I can outline:

  When Leighton Rees was introduced it triggered something like a primal scream from thousands of highly charged Welshmen, a quality of uninhibited bedlam I don’t think I've ever witnessed before. The Great Hall was suddenly like a vast pinball machine in which every ball and bumper had a mouth and a can of beer. The Welsh enthusiasts sung a song containing no apparent vowels . . .

  . . . the final match for the championship would be played between Rees and Lennard and it was not only for the sake of suspense that there had to be an interval then. Foe the first time the crowd seemed almost a rabble Their noise was stupendous. Two shirtless young men reeled and lurched down the center aisle, hugging and screaming with joy and Welsh pride, bashing into chairs along the way.

  A dozen more clambered onto the stage carrying banners emblazoned with their favorites name— Leighton Rees, of course. They screamed. They waved their banners. They waved cans of pale ale. They waved pork pies. They waved, and munched, fat green leeks by the stems. They emitted almost visible exhalations. They stumbled, bellowed, grinned, pranced, belched, stomped, hollered, roared. One bounded to the brink and flexed a muscle-man pose for the TV cameras. Down front a young man held a five-pint beer can to his face with both hands and drank from it like a fat. thirsty baby.

  At the pillars the cans piled higher, rolled across the floor, more beer cans than I have ever seen. One rolled farther and a man descending from the bleachers stepped on it. The can rolled and he fell with a great noise. He got up, rubbed his eyes. absently kicked the can and tottered to the gents. . . .

 . . . Leonard and Rees were on the stage but the television people were not yet ready. Lennard stood smiling with his darts in his hand, his flights brightly emblazoned with the Union Jack. Rees stood beside him. portly in his red shirt, his dart flights a quiet, respectable, eminently restrained and tasteful white. The two men seemed to float on sound, ignoring each other, ignoring the crowd. two men alone and self-constrained, concentrating. The throng had moved up close like fans at a rock concert.

  A dignified announcement came from the ringmaster: the television problem would be solved in a moment. Ten feet away a young man with a beer in each fist shouted into one of those inexplicable sileces: “Stuff the television up your arsehole and let's get on with the game!” I glanced at Leighton Rees. He looked pained and embarrassed. Lennard smiled gallantly.

Billy won the toss for strike and after a third throw of 125 was always in command of the first leg. He produced another 120 at exactly the right moment to leave double eighteen, which he hit with his second dart. I had not managed to return a ton and still needed seventy-four when Billy checked out. In the second leg. it was a dour, tense struggle until Billy again produced a big score at the most telling time-a 137 (20-60-57} to leave himself two sixteens, the tactic of a true champion.

He duly wrapped up the title in nineteen darts and, in what should have been the fulfillment of a dream, I had not managed one score of a hundred, nor had had one poke at a double out. I had been well and truly beaten by a much better man of the moment.

Just for the record, here are the scores in that 1976 Grand Final, from the official News of the World sheet that is among my souvenirs;

First leg

Lennard: 55-45-125-60-60-120-36 

Rees: 85-45-85-55-60-97 

Second leg

Lennard: 62-60-40-85-85-137-32 

Rees: 60-40-83-41-60-55-60

The Howard Hughes Affair by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Mysterious Press 1979)

“Don’t you want to hear what Hughes wants?” I said.

“I want to hear,” she said softly, “but I don’t want to pay the price for it. Your price is always too high, Toby. You can make a person live a century in fifteen minutes.”

“And you used to love it,” I tried.

She shook her head.

“I never loved it. I accepted it. We’ve been all through it, Toby. I’m almost 40 years old. I have no family, no kids. I’ve got a career and some hope. You don’t cheer me up when you come around. You just remind me of everything I’ve missed.”

“You sent me a perfumed letter,” I said, getting up and moving toward her.

“I pay my gas bill with perfumed letters,” she said. “I buy it by the box. Come on, Toby, I’ve had a bad day. My feet hurt and I have to look in the mirror soon.”

“You’re beautiful, Annie.”

She shook her head and smiled sadly.

“I’m holding on, Toby,” she said. “I heard someone in the office describe me as a handsome woman today. That depressed me almost as much as this visit is. Please take your needs someplace else. I’m not an emotional gas station that can keep pumping it out.”

While My Guitar Gently Weeps by Paul Breeze (Futura Books 1979)

It all ended for me just when it should have begun. And if that sounds dramatic it’s because that’s how it’s supposed to sound. I feel sick inside every time I think about it, so sick that I feel like crying, and in the end often do. But it gets me nowhere, there’s no relief afterwards, not even a long time afterwards, when the tears have dried on my blotchy cheeks and there’s not a drop of salt solution left in my body. It’s always there, this sickness, always drying the back of my throat so that I can hardly speak at times, and tying great big knots inside my guts as though some runny-nosed boy scout were in there practising on me, tugging and pulling at my intestines like nobody’s business. Why me? I sometimes think, only just being able to stop myself screaming it out the window. Why the fucking hell did it have to be me? Of all the bands I’ve known, all the guitarists, drummers (though a drummer could have coped, I suppose), why me? But what’s the use in asking pathetic questions, questions with no answers — no answers that I know of at any rate. That’s what I feel like half the time: a walking question-mark. No future, no present, just a past that I can’t forget, that haunts me, leaves me lying awake at nights, staring into blackness until the dazzling headlights of nightshift lorry drivers flash across the ceiling to break my morbid reminiscences, reminding me that I need sleep to face another tomorrow that might bring — what? Hope? Don’t make me laugh. I had hope once, ambition even. No, more than ambition, more than confidence. It was certainty: we all shared it, even in the bad times. I knew we’d make it, had to come one day. It was like evolution, if you like, followed on from one thing to another — naturally. 

Too Many Crooks Spoil the Caper by Frank Norman (St. Martin's Press 1979)

'That Ed Nelson?' a rough and ready cockney voice wanted to know when I snatched up the phone.

'He's emigrated to Constantinople,' I returned, cheerfully casual.

'Don't muck me about, yuh burk,' the voice snarled savagely. 'This is Ray Williams an' I bleedin' well know that's you.'

'No it isn't,' I shrieked at him. 'I've gone away and I'm never coming back.'

'Awright, Ed.' He chuckled menacingly. 'I enjoy a giggle same as the next bloke - 'ave yuh little joke, lark about all yuh soddin' well like. Go on the telly for all I care, butcha ain't gonna get all that far up the ladder to stardom, ole son. An' I'll tell yuh for why - a stand-up comedian wiv busted kneecaps ain't no good at standin' up no more, geddit?'

I got it but decided to go on playing it dumb. 'What the hell are you on about.' I gulped a lungful of air. 'I don't know any Ray Williams. I reckon you must've dialled the wrong number, sir. There are fourteen other Ed Nelsons in the London telephone directory to my certain knowledge . . .'

'Cut the cackle,' he interrupted. 'Me'ounds are on their way over to see yuh. I've told 'em to batter yuh double-jointed an' slam yuh all over the bloody West End till there ain't nuffink left a yuh boat race 'cept a soggy pulp a crushed strawberries.'

The graphic description got my bottle going two bob, half a crown.

'Leave off, Ray,' I bleated, 'you know you don't mean that.'

'Me, meself personally,' he confided. 'I don't reckon all that punchin' flash gits like you up in the air. But me bruvva Pete's a right terror when 'e's roused, know what I mean? Ain't no reasoning wiv 'im when 'e's got the dead needle like.'

'Any way of calling the hounds off? I inquired meekly. I knew there had to be, otherwise he wouldn't have bothered to phone.

'Jest one.'

'What?'

' 'And over the bird and the Jodhpur diamond,' he replied earnestly. 'Otherwise it's curtains, goddit?'

'I'll do it. I'll do it,' I squealed. 'Give me twenty-four hours, that's all I ask.'