The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(157)

‘Perfectly simple,’ George said impatiently, ‘Sonia gives a bridge party, invites Johanna, couple of extra men, no one leaves until we return.’

I gaped, horror-stricken. I knew not what to say; I could only shoot a piteous glance at Sam.

‘What is uppermost in Charlie’s mind, I fancy,’ said Sam, ‘is that Johanna is really rather in the international league at Bridge – she has partnered Omar Sharif – while Sonia, although she plays with gusto and brio, has this trifling inability to remember what are trumps, and, worse for some reason known only to bridge-players, persists in recanting.’

‘Revoking,’ I said.

‘I dare say you’re right, Charlie.’

George assumed his brigadier-voice; just like Matthew Arnold donning his singing-robe.

‘Look here, Mortdecai, I’d hate to think that you were making difficulties for the fun of it but I must say you’re not being exactly constructive in your criticism.’

I cringed a bit; I felt that I had failed the Staff Course at Camberley. Mortdecai would never wear the coveted red tabs on his khaki. ‘RTU’ (Returned to Unit) would follow his name for ever – never ‘psc’ (passed staff-college).

‘Ah, shit!’ I thought, as better men have, I’m sure, thought before me, at similar crises in their lives.

‘Well,’ I said aloud, ‘no doubt some other sort of party could be arranged; it’s not something to fuss about, is it?’

‘That’s better.’ George was prepared to give the weedy subaltern another chance. ‘Of course there are other kinds of party: there are whist-drives, are there not, and beetle-drives and canasta-evenings; all sorts of things. One can deal with that sort of detail at, ah, the time.’ (Once again, I heard him, almost, say ‘at platoon level’. ‘After all,’ he seemed to be saying ‘what are sergeants for?’)

‘Yes, George,’ I said, restraining my impulse to call him ‘Sir’. ‘But my last objection is one that I have raised before. The question of fire-arms. You simple cannot go popping off at people just because they’re rapists.’

‘I can,’ said Sam.

‘So can I,’ said George.

‘Well, I can’t. My .455 has to live chained up in the Pistol Club Armoury; my Banker’s Special and Johanna’s little Savage .28 have to be locked up in bed-side table drawers when we are in and in the safe when we’re out. I’d risk flourishing a pistol at a miscreant out-of-doors, I suppose, but if I shot someone, except in clear self-defence against an armed miscreant, I’d be in line for a long prison sentence. You men would, probably, be in a slightly better position because you’ve actually suffered from this chap and you’d get the benefit of the “no-jury-would-convict” convention, but I’d look pretty feeble up against a smart barrister explaining that I’d killed a chap because I’d thought he was a chap who’d ravished the wife of a chap I knew, wouldn’t I?’

‘All right,’ said Sam, ‘just don’t shoot to kill. You’re meant to be a first-class pistol-shot, aren’t you? Aim at his legs.’

‘First-class pistol-shots,’ I said, ‘know that to hit a human leg in motion with a pistol is a matter of the merest chance. Moreover, the human frame is extraordinarily perverse about dying. You can plant a bullet in the head and the subject walks away – witness that South African premier a few years ago. You can empty a magazine of ammunition into his left breast and he spends a few weeks in hospital, inconvenienced only by saw-edged bed-pans. Yet, pop a small-calibre bullet into the fleshy part of his leg and it nicks the femoral artery and he bleeds to death before the ambulance arrives. You get away with manslaughter and count yourself lucky.’

There was a long and sulky silence. Finally Sam said:

‘Argh, go piss up your kilt, Mortdecai.’

‘Certainly,’ I replied stiffly, ‘but I shall require a certain amount of privacy for that. Must you go? Can’t you stay?’

‘Oh, now, look here chaps,’ said George, ‘come on. Let’s not get excited about trifles. It’s quite simple and Charlie’s talking perfectly good sense. There’s no reason why he should risk a prison sentence just to oblige his friends.’

His tone made it clear that he would do just that, but that he was a true-born Englishman, unlike certain Mortdecais he could name.

‘It’s quite simple,’ he repeated, ‘we all go armed but Charlie carries an empty gun. And a stout stick, or something of that sort. All agreed?’

Sam made the kind of noise you make when you don’t mean ‘no’ but you’re too miffed to say ‘yes’.

I said, ‘Well, now, I’m afraid there’s just one more thing.’

‘Oh, sweet Christ crucified!’ roared Sam. ‘What now?’

I didn’t take offence this time. He had, after all, been through a bad time. But I had to make the point.

‘I’m afraid Jock mustn’t carry his pistol at all. His Lüger is highly illegal and moreover he has form.’

‘?’ said George.

‘Done some porridge,’ I explained.

‘?’

‘ “Porridge” is a term used by rats of the underworld,’ I said patiently, ‘and it means penal servitude. There is a legend, you see, that if, when eating the wholesome breakfast provided on the last morning of your “stretch”, you do not eat up all your nice porridge, you will be back in durance vile within the year. Any warder will tell you that. Jock has partly-eaten several plates of such porridge at Her Majesty’s expense and if he were to be caught with any kind of firearm at all it would go very hard with him. If he actually shot someone he’d get approximately ninety-nine years: with maximum remission for good behaviour, call it sixty-six. He’d be a hundred and ten when he got out and would expect me to give him his job back, although he’d almost certainly have forgotten how to make decent tea.’