The Mortdecai Trilogy (43 page)

‘Mooo?’ she asked hopefully.

‘Oh, very well.’

His speech is a burning fire;
With his lips he travaileth;
In his heart is a blind desire,
In his eyes foreknowledge of death;
He weaves, and is clothed with derision;
Sows, and he shall not reap;
His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.

 

Atlanta

 

‘Jock,’ I said to Jock as I sipped the blessed second cup of the true Earl Grey’s Blend on the morning of Easter Wednesday. (I suppose there
is
an Easter Wednesday? For my part the only moveable feast which has any charms is the saddle-of-mutton trolley at Simpson’s.)

‘Jock,’ I said, ‘although you are but a rough, untutored fellow I have observed in you certain qualities which I prize. For once I do not refer to your heaven-sent gifts with the teapot and the frying-pan but to another, rarer talent.’

He moved his head slightly, so that his glass eye could give me a non-committal look.

‘I refer, on this occasion, to your innate ability to get into conversations, eternal friendships and fights with chaps in pubs.’

‘Hunh. You gave me a right bad time when I had me last little punch-up, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, well, but that was because you
killed
the chap, wasn’t it, and I’ve told you and told you not to, and you know what it does to my digestion, and I had to tell
fibs
to the police about you having been with me all evening watching Molière on the television and they didn’t believe a word of it, did they?’

He gave me his juiciest smile, the one that still frightens even me, the one which exposes a single, long, yellow fang nestling on his liver-hued nether lip.

Be that as it may,’ I went on, ‘this gift or knack of yours shall now be usefully employed. Here are ten pounds, the finest that the Bailiwick of Jersey can print. You are to lay them out on beer, cider, rum or whatever pleases your actual rebarbative Jerseyman. Do not buy drinks for any but true-born Jerseymen. They are the ones who will know.’

‘Know what, Mr Charlie?’

‘Know who was where on Easter Monday. Know who is the sort of chap who would climb up a perilous wistaria to slake his lawless lust; know who still takes part in very old-fashioned and naughty revels – and know, perhaps, who keeps a china toad on his, ah, mantelpiece.’

He thought for a minute or two, or at any rate, he frowned and chewed his lip as he has seen other people do when they were thinking.

‘I can’t ask these Jerseys that sort of stuff. They’d shut up like bloody clams.’

‘Don’t ask them. Tell them. Tell them what
you
think it’s all about. Talk rubbish while you fill their ale-pots. Then watch: see who smiles. Listen: and see who calls you an idiot. Do not hit them; play the mug, let them pull your plonker. Someone will walk into the trap.’

‘You mean, do a Les Kellet?’

‘Exactly.’

(Les Kellet is a superb wrestler and consummate clown: he seems to stumble about in a happy daze but his stumbles usually occur just when his opponent leaps on him for the
coup de grâce
. He is puzzled and sorry when the opponent shoots through the ropes and lands on his bonce outside the ring. Sometimes he helps the other chap back into the ring, dusts him down, then administers a fearsome forearm smash and the winning pinfall. Sometimes, too, he picks
up the referee absent-mindedly and hits the other chap with him. He is very brave and strong and amusing.)

I briefed Jock a little more from the depths of my ignorance and waved him away in the general direction of the tavern doors.

Soon I heard his great motor-bike start up and burble down the lane. I say ‘burble’ because it’s one of those lovely old pre-war Ariel 1,000c.c. machines with four cylinders and Brooklands fishtail exhausts. It is Jock’s pride and joy and I find it utterly terrifying.

The pubs would be open and thronged already, they never seem to close in Jersey. (There are frequent flights from Heathrow; book now to avoid disappointment.) I went back to sleep, secure in the knowledge that the matter of liquoring-up the peasantry was in the hands of a mastercraftsman. Going back to sleep is infinitely sweeter than going to sleep in the first place.

I had scarcely closed my eyes, it seemed, before Johanna aroused me – and I use the word ‘aroused’ with precision. I opened an eye.

‘Have you brought tea?’ I asked.

‘Of course not. You
are
funny, Charlie.’

‘In that case, NO, and let me remind you of Uncle Fred and Auntie Mabel who fainted at the breakfast-table.’

‘Charlie, it is not the morning, it is past one o’clock. And you don’t eat breakfast, you know you don’t.’

I fled to the shower but I was too slow, she got in as well. We re-enacted the battle of Custer’s Last Stand. Later, I found that it had been only half-past eleven in the morning after all; it’s a poor thing if a chap’s own wife lies to him, don’t you think?

Then she drove us over to Gorey in the East of the Island for a surprise luncheon at ‘The Moorings’ where the shellfish are very good. Johanna kept on looking at me anxiously as though she feared I might faint at table. On the way home, for some obscure, American reason, she stopped to buy me a huge bottle of multi-vitamin pills.

Jock was still out. Johanna and I sat on the lawn in the sun and drank hock and seltzer. She will not usually drink in the afternoons but I explained that it was Oscar Wilde’s birthday and, who knows, it may well have been.

In the evening we went to a dinner-party on the Isle of Alderney, which has been aptly described as 1,500 alcoholics clinging to a
rock. It was a delicious dinner but the flight home in Sam’s little Piper was terrifying: he smelled of
drink
.

Jock was in the kitchen when we returned. He was by no means drunk by his standards but there was a betraying woodenness about his face and gait which suggested that his Jersey chums had not drunk the ten pounds unassisted.

Johanna, who was ‘excused games’ as we used to say at Roedean, went to bed.

‘Well, Jock, any news?’

‘Not really Mr Charlie, but I got a few night-lines laid, you might say. Wasted a bit of time on a bloke who turned out to be a Guernsey: well, I didn’t know, did I?’

‘I believe they wear a different sort of pullover.’

‘Well I’m not a bloody milliner, am I?’

‘No, Jock. Press on.’

‘Well, some of the Jerseys seemed sort of interested and I reckon one or two of them would have opened up a bit if their mates hadn’t bin there. Anyway, I got one of them coming here tomorrow night to play dominoes; I pretended I’d pinched a bottle of your Scotch.’

‘Pretended?’

‘Yeah. Oh, and I took on an old geezer to come and help out in the garden a few hours a week, hope that’s all right. He seemed a right old character, met ’im in the pub at Carrefour Selous, the governor there says the old geezer knows every inch of Jersey and never had a bath in ’is life.’

‘What a splendid chap he must be, I long to meet him. What is that you are eating?’

‘Cormbeef samwidge.’

‘With lots of mustard?’

‘ ’Course.’

‘And thickly-sliced onions, I daresay?’

‘Right.’

‘The bread sounds fresh and crusty.’

‘Oh, all right, let me finish this and I’ll make you one.’

‘How you read my mind!’ I marvelled.

‘Mr Charlie?’

‘Yes, Jock?’

‘What’s a crappo?’

‘I’ve no idea. Why?’

‘Well this Guernsey said it was a matey thing to say to the Jerseys and he put me on to saying it to one of them and the Jersey tried to hit me.’

‘
Tried?
Jock, have you been fighting?’

‘Nah. I caught his fist and sort of squeezed till he said it was all a mistake and the landlord told him I didn’t mean no harm, but when I asked what it meant they got nasty again so I left it alone and bought another round and there was no hard feelings except I think they kicked the Guernsey man up the bum when they got him outside. Funny you don’t know what crappo means, I’ve heard you talk French lovely.’

‘
Crapaud
!’ I cried.

‘Yeah, that’s it. Crappo.’

‘It’s a French word; it means a toad.’

‘A toad, eh?’

‘Yes. And you say the Jerseys don’t like it?’

‘They ’
ate
it. They reckon it’s a diabolical liberty.’

‘And “diabolical” may be a better word than you think.’

‘Eh?’

‘Never mind. Where’s that sandwich?’

‘Coming. Oh, one other thing I nearly forgot. When I was going on about this raper bloke having a sword painted on his belly, one or two of them sort of nudged each other and the old geezer who’s coming to do the garden had a bit of a chuckle too. I didn’t ask, I could see they weren’t going to let on. Private joke, I reckon. Or p’raps it means something dirty.’

‘Perhaps both. I think I detect the distant clash of phallic cymbals.’

‘Eh?’

‘Yes. Ah, the sandwich. How delicious. I shall take it to bed with me. Good night, Jock.’

‘Goo’ night, Mr Charlie.’

I know I meant to go and say good night to Johanna, for I realize how much these little civilities mean to the frailer sex, but I dare say I forgot. Even men aren’t perfect.

Yea, he is strong, thou say’st,
A mystery many-faced,
The wild beasts know him and the wild birds flee;
The blind night sees him, death
Shrinks beaten at his breath,
And his right hand is heavy on the sea:
We know he hath made us, and is king;
We know not if he care for anything.

 

To Victor Hugo

 

Nothing really happened the following day except that, in the morning, my liver and I could by no means seem to get along together. I drank Milk of Magnesia, Alka-Seltzer and Eno’s Fruit Salts, in that order, until my stomach was a mere cave of the winds and the waters, but to no avail.

‘You need a drink, Mr Charlie,’ said Jock, with rough compassion.

‘Do you really think that might help?’

‘Bloody sure it would.’

I had one, just to please Jock and, do you know, he was perfectly right. He
knows
, you see.

Nothing really had happened in the newspapers that day, either, except that some Arabs had murdered some Jews, some Jews had retaliated on some Arabs, some Indians had perfected an atomic bomb for dropping on Pakistanis and various assorted Irishmen had
murdered each other in unpleasant ways. You really have to hand it to God, you know, he has terrific staying-power. Jehovah against Mohammed, Brahma against Allah, Catholic against Protestant: religion really keeps the fun going, doesn’t it. If God didn’t exist the professional soldiers would have to invent him, wouldn’t they?

Nothing nearly so warlike had happened in Jersey, except that an old lady had found a neighbour lifting potatoes which he had inadvertently planted in land which had since been adjudged hers, so she had raised the ancient
Clameur de Haro
, which dates back to Rollo, the first Norman Lord of the Island. What you have to do to raise the
Clameur
is to collect a witness or two, drop on your knees and shout ‘
Haro! Haro! Haro! A l’aide, mon prince! On me fait tort!
’ Whereupon the wrongdoer has to stop whatever wrong he is doing and the whole situation freezes until it can be sorted out at a high level. You have to be pretty sure of yourself to raise the
Clameur
, they take it seriously in Jersey and, even if you are technically in the right, you can find yourself ‘amerced’ for a good round fine if you have been wasting the court’s time on spite or trivialities – or if your plea doesn’t fit the conditions for proper clamouring.

Nothing happened chez Mortdecai, either, except that the new gardener appeared. His name may well have been something like Henri Le Pieton Gastineau, but his native wood-notes wild were blemished by a complete absence of teeth and, even when he took them out of his pocket and burnished them on the seat of his trousers before popping them into his mouth, it was hard to achieve a real communion of souls. What I did establish was that he wanted ‘
quat’ louis les sept heures
’ which my razor-like brain converted into 57 pence per hour – a fair rate if he happened to be capable of toil. As it turned out he was a positive dynamo. ‘Flash’, our tame slug, tried playing head-gardener and bullying him, but got nowhere: he then played his last card and offered his notice – which to his intense chagrin we accepted.

Nothing was new except that it was the First of May, which was Pinch-Bum Day when I was at my dame-school but is now known as Labour Day, when portly, well-paid Trades Union officials persuade lean, ill-paid Trades Union dues-payers to march about the streets saying ‘hooray’ for excellent reasons of their own. They carry beautiful woven banners each of which would keep a starving docker’s wife in Bingo cards for a week. But I digress.

Nothing happened personally to me except that a funny thing happened to me at the Pistol and Rifle Club which I always attend on the first Thursday of the month.

I had decided to give my old and beautiful .455 Smith and Wesson Military and Police Model of 1902 an airing. The men there teased me about it as ever; most of them have amazing small-bore weapons with tailored handles and changeable sights, but they know that I can still make the pop-up man-sized target look pretty sick at standard Olympic range. Although I say it as shouldn’t. It weighs 2¾ pounds fully loaded and the barrel is 6 inches long; using the high-load, nickel-jacketed military ammunition it can punch holes in a brick wall and it makes a deafening and highly satisfying noise. Everyone with an organ-inferiority should have one. (Like, say, Bach?)

A nice police-sergeant made his usual joke about it, saying that if I bought it a pair of wheels I could get a commission in the Royal Artillery, and then the funny thing that happened to me was that he asked me if I had my bullets specially cast.

‘Yes, a nice chap in London,’ I said.

‘Lead?’ he asked. I was puzzled.

‘Of course, lead, what else?’

‘No, nothing, just asking. There’s a bloke here on the Island who’ll cast them in
anything
, if ever you need it.’

‘Well, thanks,’ I said, still puzzled.

That was the funny thing that happened.

I didn’t give it any more thought. I was too preoccupied with what always preoccupies me on the First of May: the essential
swindle
of all English months and May in particular. Why have we let the poets and, no doubt, politicians, sell us all this rubbish about the months? I mean, May conjures up the vision of happy, sun-burned maidens prancing on the village green and retiring at dusk to the nearest hedgerow to be turned into happy, sunburned, unmarried mothers-to-be; but the truth is that the pallid and pimply village maiden of today is waving her lumpish hips in a discotheque in the nearby town, munching a contraceptive pill while the rain roars down outside and the Babycham fizzes in its glass. Anyone braving a hedgerow in an English May, even in full oilskins, courts both pneumonia and insecticide-poisoning. Perhaps the only month which one can depend on is January, when the cold is always as
promised and one can still sometimes hear the ring of skates on the frozen tarn and, if one is lucky, the shriek of a drowning skater.

When I say that nothing happened that day, I did not mean to suggest that nothing happened that night. Much did.

Johanna was watching lovingly as I mopped up the gravy of one of the finest coq-au-vins (coqs au vin?) of my life with a huge crust of crusty bread when the telephone rang.

‘Tell them I’m out,’ I snarled, ‘or dead, or bankrupt, I don’t care; but I’m not answering that machine, tell the Post Office to take it away in the morning, we’ll be better without it.’

‘It’s for you, Mr Charlie,’ said Jock a moment later.

‘Look, are you incapable of …’ I started, but then I saw Jock’s expression. I went to the telephone, wiping my lips. Sam was on the line. It was a Sam I had never heard.

‘Get round here, Charlie, fast. It’s Violet.’

‘You mean … ?’

‘Yes. Get here.’

I got. To be exact, I told Jock to get there on his motor-bike, carrying his low friend (perhaps glad to be free from the domino-lesson) on the pillion; while I bundled Johanna into the Mini. I knew she was probably safe from rapists (they rarely have the stamina to strike twice in one night) but I knew, too, that all women love to comfort their frailer sisters in adversity.

At La Gouluterie, Sam was in the courtyard, giving Jock and his domino-friend orders in the ugliest voice I have ever heard. He sent them off and turned to me.

‘Charlie, send Johanna up to Violet; the doctor and police are coming. Jock is patrolling on his motor-bike towards Belle Etoile Bay and back via Wutherings; his friend is working the fields – don’t shoot him by accident. You will drive me to Sion and I’ll work back from there. Then you will drive like hell to St John’s Church and come slowly back without lights. Are you armed?’

‘Naturally.’

‘Then grab anyone in trousers; if they can’t give a wholly satisfactory account of themselves force them into the car. I’ll pay any fines for wrongful arrest. Got all that? Then let’s go.’

‘What’s George doing?’

‘Nothing. They’re out.’

With that he opened a gun-case and assembled his beautiful Churchill XXV shotgun with a brutality which made me wince. Off we sped. We saw no one. I left him at Sion, drove fast to St John’s, crawled back, stopping to look and listen from time to time. One party of drunks arguing bitterly about football. One burly she-hitch-hiker from Wigan: she hadn’t seen anyone. One sinister chap who was a rapist if ever I saw one but he already had a local maiden with him: the dirty look she gave me indicated that she was actually
hoping
to lose her maiden status even if it meant braving a hedgerow and that I was delaying things. Her swain claimed to have heard, ten minutes earlier, a large motor-bike driving towards the
Route Militaire
very fast, then stopping. A few minutes later it had started up again and gone North, much more slowly. That had evidently been Jock: this lad, for all his saucy looks, was a good witness. His restless sacrifice was tugging at his sleeve, saying –

‘Ow, come on Norman, it’s none of our business,’ and so forth, so I attracted his interest by taking out the fat little Banker’s Special revolver and spinning the cylinder, as though to check the load. This fascinated him, it was the Wild West come true.

‘You the police, then, eh?’

I chuckled fatly.

‘No, no. It’s a little more important than that,’ I said, in what he may well have taken for a Secret Service voice. ‘Have you seen or heard anyone else – on foot perhaps?’

‘No.’

‘Would you have noticed, do you think?’

‘Bloody right. I’m keeping me ear open for the young lady’s dad, ain’t I?’

‘Yes, of course. Quite right. Well, thanks for your help.’

I was almost at the car when he made a chirruping noise and beckoned me. I went back to him.

‘Funny you should ask that, mister. There’s a bugger in the field of taters behind us, just come in through the hedge. I can’t see him but I can hear him.’

‘Ow, Norman, it’s none of our business, etc.’

‘Belt up, daft cow.’ (How courtship has changed since our days, has it not?)

Norman and I stole into the field and, sure enough, a bugger was, indeed, tip-toeing through the taters. When the time and place were
ripe I swept his feet from under him and Norman dived. The man squealed, cursed foully, kicked and clawed. When we had subdued him he proved to be Jock’s domino-pupil, much chagrined: about five pounds’ worth as it turned out. I gave Norman a sweetener too, and he eagerly proffered his name and address in case I ever needed any more deeds of derring-do.

The domino-man and I arrived at La Gouluterie at the very moment when George’s Rover arrived with George and Sam, who had been picked up on the
Route Militaire
. Jock swept up on his Ariel before we had entered the house. Nothing to report, from anyone.

Except the doctor. He didn’t like any part of this; he was a measles-and-mumps man and his mask of professional confidence was slipping. Much of what he said was for Sam’s ear alone but we others could see Sam’s face twist and darken as he listened. The professional murmuring went on, while Sam ground his teeth. George looked detachedly into space and I fidgeted. It was not, as the children say nowadays, my scene at all.

The situation was so fraught that Sam almost forgot to give the doctor his ritual glass of brown sherry before speeding him off on some other errand of mercy. (He was probably an excellent chap, a credit to Apothecaries’ Hall, but I find it hard to trust doctors with large, unhygienic moustaches. ‘He that sinneth, let him fall into the hands of the Physician’, I always say.)

Johanna came downstairs looking troubled: Violet had at last succumbed to the massive dose of sedative that the doctor had hosed into her (would you believe 15 millilitres of paraldehyde?) but she was in a pretty sorry state. We all went into conference and the story-until-now emerged as follows.

The assailant had apparently entered the house through the pantry window. Violet had been in her bedroom, taking off her make-up before showering. She had been clad only in those sensible woolly knickers which girls like Violet always wear. Suddenly a hideous shape had appeared in her dressing-table mirror – only for a second, because the light went out an instant later.

Sam had been in his study, which is lined with books, even the doors, which make it virtually sound-proof; but in any case Johanna doesn’t think Violet would have screamed, she would have been petrified with terror.

The rapist had been rough, to put it mildly, and had savaged Violet both here and there. The Marquis de Sade could have taken his correspondence course profitably. He seemed to have been motivated more by hatred than lust. Violet had babbled incoherently to Johanna for a few minutes before lapsing into a clenched sort of silence and the few cogent bits which Johanna could remember were:

‘He stank horridly, like a goat.’

‘He smelt of grease, but nasty.’

‘He was wearing a horrid mask, it smelt of rubber.’

‘He hated me.’

‘He had a sword painted on his tummy.’ (In Violet’s Noddy-world, even mad rapists have tummies, not bellies. Enid Blyton, Enid Blyton, how much we all owe you!)

‘He had spikes on his arms.’ (George and I looked at each other, this was straight from the Beast of Jersey case-book.) ‘He kept on saying beastly things, they were in a weird language – no, not patois – but I could tell they were beastly things.’

‘His hands were all covered with earth, they
hurt
me.’

The really nasty thing, however, the thing that had made her at last scream, was that, after the fiend had slid out of the window, she had felt something cold and wet, high up between her thighs.

It had wriggled.

‘It was a frog, for Christ’s sake,’ said Sam disgustedly, ‘the man is clearly insane.’

‘A
frog?
’ I asked.

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Sam, was it sort of greeny yellow with long hind-legs?’