Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon: A Novel (23 page)

Moon looked at him and limped across the room. The door to the bathroom was open and he went in. The water in both tubs was dirty and flecked with suds. Lord Malquist’s clothes were draped over the towel rail. Jane’s clothes were on the floor. He tried the door to the dressing-room but it was locked so he went out again into Laura’s room and tried the other door, and then knocked. There was a pause.

‘Who is it?’ Jane called.

‘Me,’ said Moon.

‘What do you want?’ Her voice puzzled him.

‘My shoes. And my coat.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s raining,’ he said. ‘I want to go home.’

‘Well, you can’t come in. Go
away.’

He stood listening.

‘T’was the devil testing me,’ said the Risen Christ. ‘Faith, I’m being tested all the time. That’s right, sir.’

Moon ignored him. He wobbled back to the stairs.

‘All I need is the multitude!’ cried the Risen Christ. ‘I can get started then!’

Moon took the stairs slowly. As he got to the first landing the two valuers came out of the drawing-room and nodded as they went up the stairs past him. The banisters were sticky
and he realised that the cuts on his hands had opened again. When he got to the bottom the belt was flapping loose round his foot which was wet with blood. He sat on the last step and tied it up again. The handkerchief on his other foot was stained piebald: the feet of a refugee from a battlefield.

Moon found it difficult to stand up again but managed it and staggered to the hat-stand and clung to that, knocking a hat off it. He watched the rain pouring down. There were several walking sticks ringed by the base of the stand. He took one with a silver knob, and leaning on it he unhooked the cloak and got it round his shoulders, and for good measure put the tall hat on his head. He reached the door and heard O’Hara shout something, and was surprised to find himself lying at the bottom of the steps. He put the hat back on his head and sat up.

‘Here,’ O’Hara said, dragging Moon upright.

‘Hello, O’Hara. It’s quite all right.’

O’Hara pulled him across the pavement to the coach and opened the door and pushed him up. Moon fell into the coach and hauled himself up on to the seat.

‘Damned decent of you, O’Hara. I hope I didn’t offend you – was it you? Yes, I’m told Dublin is a lovely city.’

The door slammed shut and the coach rocked and then creaked slowly up the road. When it got to the corner of Birdcage Walk the man with the bowler hat and the long sad moustache jumped out from under a tree and threw something which smashed the glass in the coach window and landed heavily on Moon’s lap. Moon got his hands round it and was obscurely comforted by the familiarity of its smooth shell. He turned his head at the window and he and Mr Cuttle recognised each other, and Moon caught the look of apologetic concern on Mr Cuttle’s face just before the coach blew up. The horses bolted again, dispersing Moon and O’Hara and bits of pink and yellow wreckage at various points along the road between the Palace and Parliament Square.
Tom Stoppard’s other work includes
Enter a Free Man, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Real Inspector Hound, Jumpers, Travesties, Night and Day, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
(with Andre Previn),
After Magritte, Dirty Linen, The Real Thing, Hapgood, Arcadia, Indian Ink, The Invention of Love,
and the trilogy
The Coast of Utopia – Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage.
His radio plays include
If You’re Glad, I’ll be Frank, Albert’s Bridge, Where Are They Now?, Artist Descending a Staircase, The Dog It Was That Died
and
In the Native State.
Work for television includes
Professional Foul
and
Squaring the Circle.
His film credits include
Empire of the Sun, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,
which he also directed,
Shakespeare in Love
(with Marc Norman) and
Enigma.

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Available from Grove Press

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There was a Panther paperback (1968) as well as the two Faber paperbacks (1980 and 1992) which followed my play publisher’s gallant assumption of responsibility with a new edition in 1972.