The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(141)

‘It’s a toad,’ I said.

‘So?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Sod you too.’

‘I think there is no one here,’ I said gently ‘who would not be the better for a drink.’

Sam got up in a robotical sort of way and started to dish out the liquor; courteously assisted by me, for I feared that, in his distress, I might receive the wrong brand of Scotch, which would have quite spoiled my evening.

We guzzled our drinks silently, respectfully, like distant cousins helping themselves to baked ham after the funeral.

‘Oh, one other thing Violet said,’ said Johanna. We stopped guzzling: Johanna can make most people stop doing most things when she chooses, without even raising her voice. I wonder why that is.

‘Yes, that’s it,’ she went on, ‘she said she recognized the man’s voice.’

‘What?’ shouted two of the three of us.

‘Yes.’ Her lovely eyes danced innocently, aimlessly around the room, alighting on everything and everyone except Sam. ‘Well, to be exact, in the midst of some alarming chatter about her mother and so on she suddenly said, “I could tell that voice anywhere, anywhere; I couldn’t be wrong” or something like that.’ She paused; too long.

‘Well, who, for God’s sake?’ George growled at last.

‘She didn’t say. Perhaps she only meant that she would know it again.’

My ensuing silence was puzzled; George’s and Sam’s silences appeared to be merely disgusted, but you never can tell.

Why I was puzzled was because Johanna was using the warm, true, real voice which she only uses when she is lying. Which isn’t often, naturally; with all those looks and all that money, why should she bother?

I had the feeling, intensely, that a lot of complicated reactions were taking place in the room which I wasn’t quite following because I didn’t know what I was looking for. I’m not at all sure that Johanna knew, either, but it was clear to me that she was less at sea than I was. I gave up after a while with a mental ‘heigh-ho’ or two and applied myself to Sam’s Scotch.

Like a good guest, I saw to it that Sam, too, ingested enough of the delicious fluid to ensure him a good night’s rest in spite of everything; then we slunk away.

Johanna went to bed; kissing me but not fondly.

Jock was up, brewing ‘Sergeant-Major’s’ which is the sort of tea you used to relish when coming off guard-duty in a January dawn: it is the cheapest Indian tea boiled-up with sugar and condensed milk. It is not at all like tea as you and I know it but it is very good indeed. I gazed at it longingly.

‘You don’t want none of that, Mr Charlie,’ said Jock, ‘you’ll be wanting to get off to boo-boo’s.’ I glared.

‘Have you been listening at keyholes?’ I demanded.

‘ ’Course not. I’ve heard Madam use the phrase in public, frequently.’

‘Ugh.’

‘Yeah.’

I turned away.

‘Mr Charlie,’ he said.

‘Yes?’

‘That mate of mine I was teaching dominoes – the one you scragged.’

‘Yeah.’

‘He was going on about toads. He reckons the Jerseys think a lot of them, which is why they don’t like being called them.’

‘You put that beautifully, Jock.’

‘Yeah. He got on about it because the old geezer who’s come to do the garden just buried one alive in a pickle-jar to make the flowers grow.’

‘To make the flowers grow? Do go on.’

‘They all do it here, he reckons. It doesn’t seem to bother the toads, they’re nearly always alive when they dig them up in the autumn. Funny, innit? You’d think they’d get hungry.’

‘Or thirsty?’

‘Yeah. Anyway, a lot of the Jerseys, specially the old ones, reckon a toad’s sort of holy and they don’t like people taking the mickey about it.’

I took a gulp of his tea.

‘You should put a little rum in this,’ I advised.

‘Well, I haven’t got any rum, have I?’

‘Do you mean you have forgotten how to pick the lock of the drinks cupboard?’

He maintained an injured silence. I went to fetch the rum, while he made some more Sergeant-Major’s.

When we were firmly seated astride the tea and certain Welsh Rabbits which Jock had conjured up to help it down, I waxed informative, a vice of mine which I can by no means cure.

‘Jock,’ I said, ‘did you know that for fifteen centuries people believed that the toad had a precious jewel inside its skull?’

‘Reelly?’ he said. ‘What give them that idea, then?’

‘Pliny or Aristotle or one of those chaps who wrote it in a book.’ Jock munched and golluped awhile.

‘Well, didn’t nobody think to chop one open and take a look?’

‘Not as far as I know.’

‘Fucking ignorant, all them wops, aren’t they,’ he said, obscurely. I couldn’t find it in my heart to contradict him.

‘He went on about hares, too,’ Jock went on. ‘Seems there aren’t supposed to be any hares on the Island but a few years back there was a right big bugger seen and the farmers reckoned it sucked all the milk out of them funny little cows they have here. So they laid up for it and shot it and better-shot it but it wasn’t no use, so one of them put a silver button in his gun and shot it in the bum and the hare goes off limping and the next day this creepy old tart who lives nearby has a bandage on her leg.’