The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(144)
Some with heartbreak and tears;
And a God without eyes, without ears,
Who shall sing of him, dead in the birth?
To Walt Whitman in America
I took the noon flight for Heathrow the next day. I’m not one of the jet-set, more of the biplane set, Johanna says, but I don’t at all mind flying except in those terrifying little planes where you sit in the open behind the driver and have to rap on his helmet if you want to tell him to slow down a bit. This was a large, experienced-looking craft and it said on the side that its engines came from the Rolls-Royce stable, most reassuring. Two Jersey worthies whom I know slightly took the seats beside me and, when we were air-borne, I ordered three large gins-and-tonic with my customary munificence. The hostess asked me if I wanted them all in one glass; I believe she was being pert.
You don’t have to go right into London nowadays if you’re headed West: an airlines bus takes you from Heathrow to Reading quite painlessly and trains thence to Oxford, where Dryden, my old tutor, hoves, are plentiful.
Goodness, have you seen Oxford Station since they did it up? It’s quite amazingly smart and modern and not much more than twice as inconvenient as it was before.
Something quite dreadful happened to me as I stood outside the station waiting for Dryden: a leprous creature, clad in filthy tatters, beard matted and barbaric necklaces jingling, shambled up to me, mopping and mowing, his demeanour both piteous and threatening.
‘Be off with you!’ I quavered valiantly, brandishing my umbrella. ‘I shall not submit to your mugging; I happen to be a personal friend of the station-master, aye, and of the Warden of All Souls, too!’
‘Mr Mortdecai?’ he fluted in the purest Wykehamist tones. ‘My name’s Francis, I’m a pupil of Dr Dryden, he’s asked me to pick you up, he can’t come himself, he’s got the squitters. I’ve got the crabs, if you want to know,’ he added gloomily. ‘And a tutorial and two demos tomorrow.’
I fumbled around in my word-bag for a while.
‘How do you do?’ I said at length.
He took charge of my suitcase and led me to about five thousand pounds’ worth of Italian GT motor-car in which we vroomed painlessly towards the dreaming-spires section of the city. I didn’t know quite what to chat about, it’s the generation gap I suppose. He was extraordinarily civil and, on closer inspection, as clean as can be. I think he was just boasting about the crabs.
Scone College, my alma mater, hadn’t changed a bit except that the outside was richly adorned with huge painted words such as ‘PEACE’, ‘SHIT’, ‘TROTSKY LIVES’ and similar sentiments. I thought it something of an improvement, for it took one’s eyes off the architecture. Fred was on duty in the Porter’s Lodge as he had been when I was there last: he remembered me well and said that I owed him half a sovereign in connection with some long-forgotten horse-race. I wasn’t taken in, but I coughed up.
My rooms were ready for me and quite habitable, except that the undergraduate incumbent (this was in the vacation, you see) had pinned up a poster of a little fat black chap called Maharaj ji Guru in such a position that it smirked at the bed. I couldn’t move the chap’s poster, naturally, so I moved the bed. Bathed and changed, I still had half an hour to spend before I could report at the Senior Common Room where Dryden would, if recovered, meet me and take me to dinner at High Table, so I strolled over to the Buttery. On the lawn where, in the brave days, we used to play croquet some forty tatterdemalions were squatting silently – a sorry sight. No doubt they were meditating or protesting; they certainly weren’t having any fun. As I strolled past them in my exceedingly beautiful dinner jacket I raised a hand in benediction.
‘Peace!’ I said.
‘Shit!’ said a spokesman.
‘Trotsky lives!’ I answered stoutly. You see, you can communicate with young people if you take the trouble to learn their lingo.
‘Hallo, Mr Mortdecai,’ said Henry, the buttery steward, ‘have you been away?’
‘No, no, no,’ I said, ‘I was here only seven years ago.’
‘So you were, sir. End of a Trinity term it was, I fancy, and you were rude to one of those Hungarian persons that are all over the place now – I can’t ever say their names, they always seem to come out rude-sounding when I try.’
‘I know just what you mean, Henry. And I’m dying of thirst.’
He really did remember me, for he reached down one of the battered pewter quarts from which we giants used to sup our ale in the olden days. I strolled outside with my tankard so that I could pour half its contents surreptitiously onto the lawn, for I am not the man I was.
‘I suppose you find that sort of thing a bit galling, don’t you, Henry?’ I said, waving my hand towards the solemn sit-in on the lawn.
‘Oh, I dunno. I’ve been here all my life, as well you know. They’re not much different from your year, or any year. When I first come here it was top hats and frock-coats on Sunday and parading up and down the Broad Walk; then it was riding-breeches and fox-terriers; then it was Oxford bags and bull-terriers. After the war it was them blue demob suits, then tweed jackets and flannels; then straw bashers and blazers come back in and then it was jeans and bare feet and now it’s beards and beads and probably tomorrow it’ll be top hats again. Only thing I got against this lot is they will eat chocolate-bars with their little gills of beer, and they spend half their money on the french-letter machine in the Junior Common Room. They should be drinking their beer and rowing their boats and learning their books; there’s plenty of time for all that sex when they’ve got their degrees.’