The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(128)

The Police




There is a small body of men, based in St Helier, called the Paid Police. I’m sure they love that. They are much like English police but fewer and not so angry. They have uniforms and equipment; they seem honest and amiable; they don’t hit people. Unlike some I could name.

Much more important (outside St Helier) are the Honorary Police, who are of course unpaid. They do not wear uniforms – you are supposed to know who they are. Each of the twelve Parishes has a Connétable; under him are the Centeniers, each of whom in theory, protects and disciplines a hundred families and leads five Vingteniers who guard twenty families each. These are all elective posts but elections rarely afford any surprises, if you see what I mean, and in any case there is little competition for these honours.

No one is legally under arrest in Jersey until a Centenier has tapped him on the shoulder with his absurd, tiny truncheon of office (you can imagine how the Paid Police like that rule) and it is said that a Centenier who has mislaid his truncheon wrenches off the handle from the nearest lavatory chain. Luckily, Centeniers do not often feel it necessary to arrest their friends, neighbours and cousins, unless the offence is grave, and thus a great deal of public money is saved and a great many lavatories are left intact. It works quite well, really. The Centenier takes his erring neighbour for a quiet chat and puts the fear of God in him, thus preventing a recurrence of the offence much more effectively than an expensive trial, a suspended sentence and a year of reporting to some mud-brained Probation Officer with a diploma in Social Science from Nersdley Polytechnic.





One of the Houses




It belongs to Sam Davenant and is called La Gouluterie, from a water-meadow which is part of the estate. This probably takes its name from Simon le Goulue who was Connétable of S. Magloire Parish in 1540, but zealous antiquaries suspect that goulues – round-bellied pottery crocks for seething beans in – were once potted in this clayey field. I suspect that Simon or one of his forebears was called ‘le Goulue’ because he was a bit of a bean-crock himself. The dottier kind of amateur antiquary will, of course, assure you that the name has something to do with fertility-rites, but then they always do, don’t they?

Much of the building dates from the sixteenth century and there are traces of earlier work and hints of religious use. It is of a pleasant, pink granite of the sort no longer quarried and it has been tactfully coaxed into a state of comfort and dignity. There are tourelles, rondelines, bénitiers and so forth – I’m sure you know what all those are. For my part, I forget. Most of the front is at the back – doors, terraces and so on – but the front proper faces a sunny, agreeable courtyard on the other side of which lies the Other House, which belongs to Sam’s best friend.





The Other House




This belongs to George Breakspear who is Sam’s best friend and it is called Les Cherche-fuites – I don’t know what that means. It has been extensively dandified in the eighteenth century and its windows, because of the exigencies of the underlying granite, are all slightly out of kilter, which rescues it from the drab symmetry of most houses of that period. Like La Gouluterie, much of its front is at the back (gardens, pool etc.) and at the back, too, there is a curious and engaging porch with concave glazing of the kind associated in Jersey with ‘cod houses’ – places built in the piping times of the cod industry when dozens of daring Jersey skippers ventured to the Grand Banks and suddenly found themselves rich. At one side there is an ugly Victorian stable of yellow brick with a clock which doesn’t go.





Consider, Then,




These two agreeable houses beaming affably at each other across the old stone cider-press in the centre of the courtyard; consider, too, how rare and fortunate it is that the owners should be such firm friends. (The fact that the owners’ wives loathe each other’s essential tripes is of little importance, one supposes, and indeed it rarely comes to the surface even when they are alone.)





Consider, Too




The proprietors of these houses, starting with George Breakspear of Les Cherche-fuites. George believes in God, but only the C. of E. brand, as advertised on television by virtue of the Equal Time Agreement, although he has an Open Mind because he has seen some Pretty Queer Things in India and places like that. His manners are too good to let his religion show, which is as it should be. He is not a fool. You would guess that he had been a brevet major in the War; in fact he was a full and substantive brigadier and holds the DSO, the MC and many another bauble but, here again, his too stringent manners forbid him to use either the rank or the ribandry in civil life. (This is going a little too far, I think: it is subtly rude to keep your honours in your handkerchief drawer along with the french letters. Give me, any day, those jolly European hussar officers who swagger out at night in their splendid comic-opera uniforms, rather than those po-faced English Guardees who change, at the drop of a bowler hat, into sad imitations of solvent stockbrokers. Officers should have dash and debts and drabs and, above all, duns, whom they can horsewhip outside their quarters to give them an appetite for breakfast, don’t you agree?)

George is of middle height, average appearance and normal weight. His friends do not always recognize him, which is what it’s all about, isn’t it. In his favourite armchair in his club they recognize him, of course, because he’s there you see. The better sort of bartenders recognize him, too, but that’s their job.