The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(154)
‘I pity the prawn which pits its feeble wits against you,’ I quoted. His glare told me that flippancy was not suited to the mood of the moment. (I can’t help it you know: some unkind friend once showed me a passage in a Medical Encyclopedia.
‘MORIA:’ it said – ‘A morbid determination to make supposedly witty remarks. Sometimes occurring in people with frontal growths of the brain.’)
‘ “Doctor”,’ he went on, ‘proved to be a Viennese Jewess –’
‘Just like Johanna,’ I reminded him brightly, before he could put his foot in it.
‘Not at all like Johanna. This was Baudelaire’s original “affreuse juive”, she looked like a malevolent sack of potatoes. But surprisingly civilized and clearly on top of her job. She listened to the receptionist’s account of things with her hands folded in her lap, she didn’t look at her once but the receptionist was choking back tears in no time. Amazing old bitch. She had that kind of cheerful callousness you only find in the very best doctors: I’ve no faith in the grave, considerate ones: I knew too many medical students at Oxford. Then she took me up to her office and asked about Violet’s people and of course I had to tell her about “Lucia di Lammermoor”.’
I made tactful noises. ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ is what Sam calls his mother-in-law, who is about as affreuse as any mother-in-law can aspire to be. She dresses like a sixteen-year-old in dirndl skirts and little socks, her hair is long and gold and false and her face looks like an accident in a paint-factory. She is always in and out of expensive nursing homes for the nervously afflicted but whether this is just a rich woman’s hobby or whether she is a boozer who has to be dried out periodically or whether she really is barmy none of her family has ever decided – or much cared. When last heard-of she had taken wing to North Africa with an eighteen-year-old faith-healer who also happened to be a lift-attendant.
‘I gave Dr Wankel – yes, Golda Wankel – the names of the last two loony-bins she’s patronized and she rang them up straight away – said it could be important – but neither of them could find the case-history or whatever it’s called. Odd, that, don’t you think?’
‘Only fairly odd.’
‘Eh? Oh. I see. Well, then, she asked me all sorts of peculiar things about Violet – does she sort of tend to misinterpret things, does she muddle common turns of phrase – well, you know how we all tease her about saying things like “crafty as a door-nail” and “dead as a wagon-load of monkeys” – and I had to answer “yes” to an awful lot of them, which really made me quite worried.’
His speech was getting a little wobbly: I have a horror of seeing my fellow-men weep. I made him a monstrous drink and tried to change the subject. He took the drink and rallied, but he would not wear the change of subject.
‘The next bit was rather awful,’ he went on steadily. ‘We went up to where Violet had been put – nice enough room – and Dr Wankel squirted some sodium amytal into her. It stopped her staring at one in that awful way but it didn’t make her utter at all. La Wankel lifted her arm up (Violet’s, I mean) and it just stayed there. Then she bent it and it stayed there, too. She said that’s called “flexibilitas cereas”, which is typical of something or other, it seems. Then she shoved her arms down again and tapped it gently and every time it was tapped it rose a little – like an Anglepoise lamp. That’s called “mitgehen” apparently. Rather beastly to watch. Then I was chucked out so that Wankel could give her a thorough physical examination and I had to wait outside for about a hundred years. Afterwards I was too knocked-out to pay much attention but I gathered that it was a toss-up whether Violet’s trance was depressive or catatonic and that the difference was important. Either way there seems to be a good chance that Violet might suddenly rouse and dive out of the window – the catatonics seem to get the idea that they’re angels – and that turns out to mean an agency nurse all round the clock at another huge sum per diem. Then the kindly Wankel gave me a bed – free! – and a pill, and I slept until ’plane-time this morning and that’s all.’
I made him another drink, it was easier than saying anything.
Jock, his timing as perfect as ever, announced luncheon and we sat down to gulls’ eggs, terrine of rabbit and cold curry puffs. I defy anyone to dwell on private miseries with one of Jock’s cold curry puffs melting on his tongue, they stand alone, they really do. We drank bottled beer, for I disapprove of wine at luncheon: it either promotes drowsiness or inflames the animal spirits – either way it wastes the afternoon. Sam was a trifle less jumpy when victualled; George seemed somnolent, unwilling to join in.
‘Now,’ Sam said, ‘tell us about the Oxford venture, Charlie. What did your emeritus Magus suggest?’
I told them, trying to keep the apologetic tone from my voice, doing my best to offer blasphemous folly as the only kind of reason which could prevail. What had seemed to make sense in Oxford sounded merely crack-pot over a Jersey luncheon-table and their blank stares, their shared sidelong glances, did not much help me toward persuasiveness. I ended lamely.
‘And if you fellows can offer anything better,’ I ended lamely, ‘I’d be delighted to hear it.’
There was a long, treacly silence. George ran an exploratory index finger over each hair in his eyebrows, then checked the lobes of his ears and the cleft in his chin before starting to remind himself of the contours of his thumb-shaped nose.