Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon: A Novel (11 page)

‘Certainly, certainly.’ The old man was nervously absorbed in some adjustment to his camera.

Moon knocked on the bedroom door and then furious at such humility, threw it open so that it banged against the wall. Jane was sitting at her dressing-table in the act of piling up her hair, wearing a trouser suit of Paisley silk, flared at the ankles and high-collared round the neck. She turned round petulantly.

‘Now we’re not going to have
that
again. Once a night is quite enough.’

‘The photographer is here,’ said Moon.

‘What photographer?’

‘He wants to take a picture of you.’

‘Not at all, old man,’ came the brittle voice behind him. There’s a slight misunderstanding. Good evening, gentle lady.’

‘Marie’s dead,’ Moon said to Jane.

‘So I understand, old man. Where exactly is she?’

Jane stood up, coiffed, and came towards them shaking a bottle of nail varnish.

‘What are you all talking about?’

‘Marie’s dead,’ Moon said.

Jane asked the old man, ‘Did you have an appointment, General?’

‘No, I’m afraid not, I just—’

‘You had no right to come round without an appointment,’ she scolded him. ‘I thought that was understood.’

‘Marie’s dead,’ Moon said.

The bathroom door opened and closed, and Lord Malquist was heard humming his way down the corridor. He entered fully and perfectly dressed once more, humming loudly, and assumed a pose in the doorway, feet turned outward in ballet position, left arm by his side, right elbow pressed against his hip, wrist upturned at right-angles.

‘Malquist! What the devil are
you
doing here, you old rascal?’

‘Bathing, General,’ said the ninth earl. ‘I come here of an occasional evening expressly to bathe.’

‘Splendid! And this delectable creature, no doubt she scratched your back with her scarlet nails?’

‘No, with her toe. And you?’

‘Photography,’ said the General. ‘Care to see some snaps? They’re extraordinarily detailed.’

‘No thank you. I try to avoid detail.’

‘Marie’s dead,’ Moon said.

The General beamed round at them all.

‘I haven’t seen Malquist since – when was it?’

‘Please,’ admonished the ninth earl. ‘I make it a rule to have no past.’

‘Went right through the old Jerry fracas with him,’ said the General.

‘Why Falcon!’ said Jane. ‘You never told me you were a warrior. Were you frightfully brave?’

‘I don’t care to recall, dear Jane. But I suppose I must have been to bear up against the unimaginable discomfort. Jamaica is a tiresome place at the best of times.’

Jane breathed on to her painted fingernails and waved them about.

‘Nearly ready. Falcon is taking me for a drive, darling. Don’t wait up, I shan’t be long.’

Moon took two purposeful steps towards her and cut his foot on a piece of mirror on the floor. He sat down on the bed and wrapped the wound in the hem of his towel.

Lord Malquist tapped Moon with his stick.

‘Well Mr Moon, I think we may congratulate each other on our first day’s collaboration. I look forward to reading your journal. Come round to my house in the morning, would you, and bring the Saviour with you. Perhaps you would let him have a bath first. If he objects baptise him by total immersion in hot soapy water. Come along, Jane.’

Moon mopped blood from his foot and rocked himself in his towel. Jane patted him on the head and he saw that Lord Malquist and the General had gone.

‘Jane … don’t go now. Let’s leave them.’

‘Now cheer up, darling, and don’t mope. I shan’t be long.’

‘Why can’t I come then?’

‘Darling, are you
jealous?’

‘Yes,’ Moon said.

‘Why darling, how perfectly sweet.’

She kissed him on his head.

‘I do love you, Jane. It’s so awful.’

‘I know, darling, I know.’

‘Stay … I’ll be gentle with you.’

‘Not yet, darling. Not now. Soon.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise. And darling—?’

‘Yes?’ said Moon.

‘Would you do something for me?’ She crouched against him, scented and warm.

‘I’d do anything for you, Jane.’

‘Sack Marie.’

Moon said carefully: ‘Sack her?’

‘Get rid of her. Before I come back, will you, darling? I find it all so distressing. She won’t be here when I come back, will she?’

Moon hugged himself and rocked his body into a nod.

‘You are a sweet, you’re such a dear.’

The scented warmth went away from him.

‘Jane – what was it about her modelling and giving French lessons and everything – I didn’t know anything about it.’

‘Well, you’re always at the library all day, aren’t you? – you’re never here… Marie had many friends who visited her and I never interfered with what she did in her own time.’

‘There was a man on the phone,’ Moon said. ‘He seemed to think that you – Jane you don’t know any French, do you?’

‘Oh darling, don’t be so stuffy. I didn’t do anything, you know me. I only watched.’

She kissed him again and went out. Moon sat quite still watching the blood leak out of his foot. He tried to lick it but couldn’t reach. He heard the front door slam and shortly afterwards the coach creaked and shook itself along the mews.

When everything was quiet Moon got up and found a clean handkerchief. He took it to the bathroom and soaked it under the tap and tied it round his foot. The bathroom walls ran with sweat but the surfaces had no life in them now that could touch him. The foam had reduced itself to a frothy scum on the dead water. He went out and limped to Marie’s room and went in. It was dark and the switch by
the door clicked up and down and up without result. Moon went forward slowly until he fell across the bed, and lay there until the dark paled enough for him to see the lamp beside him. He turned it on and sat up.

He had not been in the room since Marie had moved into it. He knew it slightly as a maid’s room which belonged at various times to various girls none of whom had much to do with him. They were called Christine and Mabel and Joan, and some others before them. Marie’s room, however, enchanted him. It was untidy but decorated by its untidiness – there were colours tossed around everywhere, pink and blue wisps of nylon, two blue shoes and a white one on the bed, gaudy books scattered about, a scarlet silk cord hanging over a chair, clothes of all kinds half in and out of drawers and cupboards. A cane-handled butterfly net and a white fur-trimmed slipper lay together mismatched on the dressing-table amid coloured bottles. Moon picked up the slipper and rubbed the fur over his face. It came away tinged with blood, and all at once he started to cry.

He looked at himself in the mirror and his compassion for his image was reflected back into himself but it did not comfort him. When he leaned forward between the hinged mirror-leaves he caught the reflection of his reflection and the reflection of that, and of that, and he saw himself multiplied and diminished between the mirrors, himself aghast in the exact centre of a line that stretched to the edges of a flat earth. He closed his eyes and got up and fell over the dressing-stool. He went back to the bedroom.

Still undecided he picked up his bomb and looked around and then hobbled downstairs with it, leading with his good foot. In the drawing-room the General was crouching over Marie with his camera to his eye. Marie’s legs were bare and Moon realised that the General had disarranged her clothing. The room ignited for a flashlit instant and the General straightened up and saw Moon and nodded cheerily at him.
Moon limped over to the cupboard in the corner and picked up one of the bottles by the neck and limped back to the General who watched him with the same eager curiosity, and Moon hit him on the head with the bottle and kept on until the bottle broke. The bottle burst as violently as plate glass shattering in a train window but it didn’t help. On his way out of the room he tripped over the Risen Christ who lay as though killed in action, one hand outstretched still holding his glass.

Moon went into the kitchen and turned the light off and on again. He lit all the burners on the stove and turned on all the taps. The hot-water geyser went
whoopf
and shook and settled down to its soft roar of gas-jets. The sound and force of it clutched Moon’s nerves as always but it didn’t explode, as always. When he had gone round the house switching on every light, tap and electric and gas fire, he returned to the drawing-room and switched on the radio and the record-player.

He could hear water rushing around the house and the geyser roaring on the edge of eruption, and the music swelled and fought under the lights. He felt all the power stations throb, strain against their rivets and begin to glow and beat like hearts, compressing matter into energy that escaped at once, pumping through the body of the world which was an infinite permutation of bodies trapped in an octagon of mirrors. He tried to think himself loose from all the rest but the barriers knocked each other over; the key to the equation between himself and the world was now beyond reason, comfort beyond ritual. He had no answers any more, only a bomb which correctly placed might blow a hole for him to fall through.

Moon stood still in the bright vibrating box of the house, too tense to weep, and after some while the combined pressure of all his old multiplying fears reached the very centre of his mind and began to expand outwards, and filled it and still
expanded without relief until he couldn’t hold it any more and he pressed the little plunger into the bomb and heard the snap of the safety seal inside. The bomb began to tick very quietly.

When Moon looked around he saw his notebook curling parchmented on the electric fire with one page hanging down against the filament, and he caught the first lick of light that jumped the gap and fed itself into a flame. The notebook burned away into a black replica of itself, reduced to its brittle essence.

Chronicler of the Time

JANUARY
29
TH. AWOKE
late as is my custom, and since my wife Jane had been up betimes, breakfasted alone on a cup of coffee and two slices of toast prepared by the new girl, Marie. There was no office correspondence today. It is seldom that I receive a letter nowadays, and seldom that I write one. This is a pity for Jane has little with which to occupy herself and I have thought more than once how pleasant it would be if she were to help me with the secretarial chores of my business. She herself is the frequent recipient of letters, although she appears to write very few, preferring to rely on the telephone. It is seldom that I receive a telephone call nowadays.

I spoke briefly with Jane who seemed in somewhat low spirits. The poor girl is often bored, though she is gay by nature and indeed it was her gaiety that I wooed in our halcyon days. I suggested to her that we might do worse than go for a short stroll in the park but the weather being inclement she preferred not to leave the house. She inquired why I had not gone to the library – I usually spend the day at the Library of Historical Studies in Kensington Road, taking with me some cheese sandwiches and working there until late – and I explained to her that since I had a business appointment later on in the afternoon, I intended to devote my free time today to collating my preliminary notes for my book.

Marie had a visitor not long afterwards, an uncle who had lived in England for many years (I forgot to mention that Marie was French – Parisian, I believe). He seemed to cheer Jane up considerably, for which I was grateful, and I suggested that the four of us might play a game I know in which two people act out a proverb or the title of a book, etc., the
object being that the two onlookers have to guess what it is. Marie’s uncle seemed quite intrigued by the idea but the two girls shortly took him upstairs to show him round the house.

Meanwhile I retired to my desk to work on my book, ‘The History of the World.’ Today I toyed with one or two openings but at once felt uneasy about committing myself to the narrative before I was in full possession of all the elements that will go into it. When the time comes perhaps Jane will help me with the typing. It will be quite pleasant I feel.