The unforgettable - No Snakes in Ireland - and other equally good ones one has come to expect from Forsyth.
No snakes in Ireland especially remains in memory due to its twists and turns on a story of a person ridiculed and humiliated beyond endurance planning and executing a scheme to frighten and humiliate someone much larger, stronger and a bully in his own land, with a surprise and a fright; the surprise however is an element that weaves its own course what with a live snake being involved, and while the scheme goes out of hand the outcome is beyond all expectation.
Friday, July 16, 2010.
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No Comebacks:-
The collection opens with the title story, No Comebacks, about a man who has made his own fortune by his own wits and brains and is bored with all the pleasures other than money making, and is desperate for a partner of real sort - a woman not impressed by his wealth, one who can see him for what and who he is and love him and be an equal. He meets one, but unfortunately she is not only married, she explains why she won't give up her marriage until death parts her from her husband. He needs her, she tells the man who could give her everything and more, and this is what a woman needs, much as she desires to be desired and loves to be loved and adores to be adored.
It is not so easy no matter how much money one has and what one can buy, as this man is about to discover - he finds a man to take a contract to get rid of the husband, and as usual the details of the plan are interesting what with Forsyth giving detailed research. But the most perfect plans can go awry, and this one does in a way that the one who gave the order and contract rather than the one who carried it out will repent for ever - "don't worry, there will be no comebacks" the killer assures him.
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Emperor:-
Then there is Murgatroyd from Midland, in Emperor, who is on vacation in Mauritius with his wife and a young colleague, due to the bank he has worked all his life for appreciating his initiative in a whole lot of accounts being opened at the branch - he has suggested the new factory pay the workers in cheques the way they do executives, so the salary shall be safe from theft and pubs. Mauritius would be wasted in spite of the beauty and the infinite ocean he appreciates while his wife does her best to ignore it all and be as unpleasant as in ever rainy and cold Bognor they live in, but for one accidental cancellation of a fishing trip the younger man discovers he can go on for half the usual price, and gets the older one to go on with him - "don't tell your wife" is the most practical suggestion he gives.
The older man comes to appreciate the power of the ocean and the helplessness of man no matter what the vessel he is on, and more. There is the twelve hundred pound blue marlin - the Emperor, the locals call this particular one - that follows them and then the fight is on, with this one being Murgatroyd's turn. And the middle aged man with no physically great strength or shape won't give up, struggling with the emperor for hours through the day. When finally the fish gives up, suddenly he shouts "no" as the guide is about to kill him, and undoing the line from the hook lets it go. He has no clue the whole village now reveres him, for letting the emperor go more than for bringing him in without losing a hook as two others have before him, and he is a legend in the hotel too. And for a finale, he tells off his wife when she shouts at him as he returns tired and hurt and bandaged - to hell with Bognor, to hell with the bank and to hell with her, he tells her in the very public setting she has accosted him about what he thought he was doing. One really loves this anticlimax of the mild much harried man being free even as he explains to her how she shall be well provided for, with the house and the division of money he has in mind, while he takes over the boat and trains to take on the role of the fisherman under the previous owner whose grandson can then be educated in a good place.
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There Are Some Days:-
A large truck with a trailer and a cab off a ferry from the continent to the isles - how boring, mundane, everyday could it be? But when it comes to Ireland in a Frederick Forsyth story, its ramifications, no, anything can happen. There Are Some Days -
First the truck spills oil, which is fortunately spotted in the customs shed, so the driver has to notify the company and wait for repairs. While those are being finished, there is another one coming off the ferry the day after, and the man watching from top of a hill does not know about the first one, so his plan to rob a truck full of Cognac goes awry in a spectacular way, and his intended customers the IRA related north Ireland men let him go alive only with threat of never ever contacting them or else, having discovered the brandy is missing and his truck is full of manure for roses rejected in Belgium as even the papers declare which he never looked at.
He now has to deal with the driver, the comrades in theft and the truck - he takes the truck, and not being used to drive one with a trailer has an accident compounded by a police car driving up right at the time he was planning to get away from the angry farmer he was unfortunate enough to collide with. As if this is not enough, he is in store for a more shocking surprise, what with some bags having torn open in the accident. So he thinks it might be safer after all to confess he is not the driver, only the thief - one can only imagine what the law shall do with him!
Friday, March 21, 2014.
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Money With Menace:-
Money With Menace is nothing like it sounds - there is embarrassment in the beginning with a middle aged little clerk coming upon a sleazy porn advert publication in the train he has taken every day to and from his home for his work in a city office in London, and after much trepidation - what if he is caught in an accident with that stuff on him, to be known to everyone? - he dares to take a step to satisfy some need. It goes all right until the week after when the photographs appear in his mail and the muffled male voice on the telephone threatens to expose him to his wife, his club, his workplace. The demand is a thousand pounds sterling and he is no where near in the class that can do this nonchalantly.
And as usual the reader is in for a major surprise.
Saturday, March 22, 2014.
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Used in Evidence:-
This one, the story had barely progressed a couple of pages before I could recall having read it nearly two decades ago and the double or triple twist surprise it brings by the time it is over. It begins with eviction of an old man from the last house of the slum being cleared for the parking lot for the mall coming up opposite, and no promises have moved him until now - better flat, more money, even a house. Everyone else in the neighbourhood is now settled in the towering block provided by the council, and the old man finally brought out carried bodily like a baby by the evicting police before they take him to a cafe for some warm food, and then the surprises begin - there is a body in the fireplace!
And that is only the beginning!
Saturday, March 22, 2014.
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Privilege:-
What do you do when someone gossips and spreads false accusations and insinuations about you in public? Precious little unless the said person is honest and likely to correct his or her mistake with a public retraction to begin with, and possibly an apology. Most people have experienced some form of this what with gossip and false bad news being quite so spicy most people who hear such things would like to do so and further spread it about with a virtuous air of protecting others.
All that is bad enough, but it can get worse when it is not private gossip spoken of with some guilt combined with concealed joy in misery of others, whispered amongst colleagues or neighbours or relatives or general society, in drawing rooms or around lunch tables or water coolers in offices. What if it is published in a newspaper, and worse, one with large circulation and some credibility amongst readers generally?
Lawsuits can be expensive and most people cannot afford them while an establishment such as a rich corporation that a newspaper with a large circulation very well can. What is more things said in court might not be liable for further suits, so if you go to court for libel they can say anything whatsoever and question anything you claim, while you need to prove they were wrong in the first place, and even then come off much worse after years of litigation while they merely get more circulation generally.
Here Chadwick, the guy sinned against by Courier and its news reporter Brent, thinks it over and decides on a course of action that would clear his name and side while costing him the least possible. He attempts to meet the editor - after the letter sent through the legal channels has met only with a response to the effect that if he sends a letter from himself as a reader they might publish it with editing, and the solicitor has counselled against litigation - with proof of his innocence, and is turned out without any possible hope of a meeting of the sort he sought; he then tries to meet the reporter and the same reply is given at the reception by the same assistant with a "they are busy" generic reply. He then finds the home of the reporter and tries to reason with him and is rudely refused with an aggressive outrage about him having disturbed the reporter at home.
Now the fun part. He then bops one on the nose of the reporter, goes off to find a policeman and reports the assault, and points out that it is not up to the assaulted to press charges unlike US law - in UK police must do it, and further if they choose not to he declares his intention of repeating the offence until they do.
And so he gets his court hearing where he can declare his innocence while saying whatever he likes about the reporter - and since he speaks from the dock, it is not liable to action from the reporter or the newspaper. He has taken care to inform all other major newspapers that they can expect something sensational, so his words are taken down verbatim and are likely to spread around widely, even published verbatim. And when the outraged reporter tells him he cannot do this, he says - "Why not? You did!"
Perhaps this could have been the subtitle for the story.
Sunday, March 23, 2014.
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Duty:-
This one, Forsyth explains later, really does not fit with others of the collection, only - it happens to be real, and it happened to a friend who assured him it was real; hence the first person narration.
One assumes a lot about history generally by the way it is taught, and particularly about revolutions, not realising people are complex and hence so is the turn of events in any part, including revolutions. Not all people of Ireland opposed the British rule, even in south, including Dublin - and what is not taught is that the first act of uprising (which failed) had people of Dublin, particularly Catholics, and poor, throw garbage at the revolutionaries as they were being taken away after arrest, out of anger for having made the life of poor subjects more difficult by the act of what can be called war or terrorism depending on which side one is on.
The British ruling however failed to assess the people's hearts and had some of the men executed in Dublin instead of transporting them to Liverpool, and this turned the tide, and south with Dublin was free in two years.
The story relates accidental discovery of a simple soldier with not much mental acuity, born poor and in the British army because it was one way to survive and earn at a very young age, and his life and accidental discovery of him by a couple travelling from Ireland. Horror for one, complete unawareness for another, and comprehension of both for third, while yet another not even able to understand much of English.
Monday, March 24, 2014.
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A Careful Man:-
Entirely delightful, and this in spite of the story beginning with the main character receiving the news of his being left with just about six months to live. He is self made, immensely wealthy and actively so in his many businesses, and left alone after his wife died leaving no children. She was an only child, and he is far from looking forward to leaving it all to his one sister and her husband and son, a very greedy bunch without grace as we are about to discover independently with their behaviour after his death, at a primary will reading and at the funeral and subsequent discoveries.
How the dying man deprived this greedy bunch out of every cent of his, while not letting the tax authorities take any either, is the story, and at the risk of repetition, delightful. They abuse him and his solicitor who has discovered it with them is astounded as well after a lifetime of knowing the deceased closely. He literally took it with him, the solicitor muses.
There is the second twist even more delightful, of course, as usual with Forsyth and especially so in this collection. While he has very carefully made the elaborate charade to make everyone discover what he intended them to think, the nun who runs an orphanage is stunned at the delivery of the envelope and slowly breathing takes it all in, and recalls an advertisement she had seen of a mansion in Kent with its own twenty acre parkland, for sale. She can now afford to buy it and shift her orphanage there, she realises. Fitting too - it was the home of the beneficiary who enabled her to do this, albeit the decision and dream is hers, not known to him.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014.
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Sharp Practice:-
A judge in Ireland travelling on the train in first class hopes to have some peace to do his work, and his only fault is his naivete in judging his fellow men. A couple of strangers join, a casual game of cards proposed after a trying time of helping someone completely inept in patience, and a third needed because two cannot play poker. Matchsticks and then money, a priest wins, ...
If it were not for the fact that not only the accused in one case in his court was the inept man accused of cheating in cards, and yet he is a fair man as a judge as much as he is naive as a man. Only, there was a third man in the case too, a stranger who took it all, but he was a farmer.
Or was he?
Tuesday, March 25, 2014.
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