The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(126)

‘You all right, Mr Charlie?’

‘I am in splendid form, Jock,’ I snarled, ‘capital, topping, never better. We cuckolds feel no pain, you know.’ He gaped as I delivered a truly mighty kick at the same fitment. This time my foot went through it and was trapped in the ruptured plastic and three-ply. Jock helped me get my shoe off with the aid of the kitchen scissors and I was able to free my foot and limp to the kitchen table.

‘Reckon that old kick done you a power of good, Mr Charlie, better than a week at the seaside. Anything else you fancy?’

‘How is the canary?’ I countered. ‘Still sulking?’

‘Nah, he’s back in lovely voice, a fair treat to listen to him, I had to put a clorth over his cage to shut the little bugger up. What I done was, I give him some hard-boiled egg, a pinch of cayenne in his hempseed and a sup of rum in his drinking water and now, bing-bong, he’s ready to take on all comers. Booking for smoking-concerts now.’

‘Give me that very cure, Jock,’ I said moodily, ‘but leaving out the hard-boiled egg, the cayenne, the hempseed and the drinking-water.’

‘Right, Mr Charlie; one large Navy rum coming up. Er, will Madam be wanting anythink?’

‘I could not say. She seems to be in close conference with Colonel Blucher.’

‘Yeah, well, she hasn’t seen him for munce, has she?’

‘I could not say.’

‘Well, he is her bruvver, inne?’

‘Jock, what the hell are you talking about?’

‘Well, I mean, Mrs M is his sister, isn’t she? Same thing, innit?’ Many things began to become clear; one of the clearest of these things was that for once in my life I had behaved like a twit.

‘Oh, ah?’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ said Jock. I re-assembled what I like to think of as my thoughts.

‘Jock,’ I said, ‘unswathe the said canary; I long to hear a few of its dulcet notes. But in doing so pray do not forget the large glass of Navy rum which I ordered quite ninety seconds ago.’ As the honest fellow clumped towards the pantry I recalled something which had been simmering in the back of my mind all the live-long day: the very crux or pivot of the whole situation, the pin upon which everything turned.

‘Jock!’ I cried anguishedly. He stopped in his tracks, span upon his heel.

‘Jock, please add one of your extra-special jam-sandwiches to that order, if you will be so kind.’

‘Right, Mr Charlie; that’s one large rum, one jem semwidge.’

‘And one canary.’

‘Right, Mr Charlie.’

‘Right, Jock,’ I said.





Something nasty in the woodshed





Et Amicorum




Because I do not expect to survive to write another novel about Jersey, I must ask, in alphabetical order, Alan, Angela, Barry, Betty, Bobbie, Dick, Gordon, Heather, Hugh, Jean, Joan, John, Mary, Nick, Olive, Paul, Peter, Rosemary, Stanley, Terry, Topper, Vera – and a hundred other kindly Jersey folk to accept this as a trifling repayment for all their kindness and tolerance. I hope, too, that they will not mind if I add the names of a black Labrador named Pompey and a canary called Bert. The epigraphs are all by Swinburne, except one which is a palpable forgery.





None of the people in this novel bears any intentional resemblance to any real person: real people are far too improbable for use in fiction.

The Honorary Police of Jersey are used to being teased: all those whom I have had the pleasure of meeting are just, honourable, intelligent and can take a joke.

I must not thank by name all the kindly Jersey folk who have answered my countless questions – that would be a poor recompense for their patience.

The fictional narrator is a nasty, waspish man: pray do not confuse him with the author, who is gentle and kind.

The Swinburne forgery is, in a way, signed.





1





Till the slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble,

Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink,

Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble

The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,

Here now in his triumph where all things falter,

Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread,

As a god self-slain on his own strange altar,

Death lies dead.





A Forsaken Garden





The Islands




Seven thousand years ago – give or take a few months – a great deal of water left the North Sea for good reasons of its own which I cannot recall off-hand and poured over the lower parts of North-West Europe, forming the English Channel and effectively separating England from France, to the mutual gratification of both parties (for if it had not happened, you see, we English would have been foreigners and the French would have had to eat bread sauce).

Not much later the sea scoured away at some of the craggier bits of the French coast and separated part of the higher ground from the mainland. You call the resulting islands the Channel Isles because you know no better: their true and ancient name is Les Iles Normandes. It has been argued that they do not belong to the United Kingdom but rather the other way about, for they were part of the Duchy of Normandy long before William did his conquering in England – and they are the only surviving parts of that Duchy. They are fiercely loyal to the Crown and the toast is still ‘The Queen – our Duke’. The Isles all have different, ancient and peculiar laws and constitutions, as well as some pretty odd customs. Of which more later.