The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(158)
‘Oh, stop drivelling, Charlie, your point is taken. Jock will be armed with a stout stick. All right?’
‘He has, I believe, a length of lead piping, covered with soft leather.’
‘Or a length of lead piping covered with soft leather. Is that all? Then I suggest we start tonight. Here are four sets of names and addresses. Any preferences?’
Quick as a flash I laid claim to Brisbane House, for Lady Quinn-Philpott has the finest cellar in the North of the Island, and no rapist in his senses would tackle her, for her strength is as the strength of ten, because her soul is pure, you see. Moreover, she has a Dobermann Pinscher. The others made their dispositions, leaving Jock, by default, in charge of a tomato-grower’s bungalow, inhabited by the most rapable wife you can imagine. Indeed, if Johanna ever left me any time for private study I could quite fancy her myself. I suspected that, if the rapist appeared at that bungalow on that night, he would have to ask Jock to move over.
George telephoned hither and thither arranging for our vigils. Sam seemed to be trying to win a wager as to how rapidly he could empty my whisky decanter. I explained to Jock exactly how my sandwich-case was to be filled. Johanna threw one of her rare tantrums when told that she was to spend the evening playing cards with Sonia. Jock had a shower and overhauled, I daresay, his stock of the products of the London Rubber Company – that excellent condominium. At last they all went away and I was free to do some serious thinking on the sofa, with my shoes off and my eyes closed. A heavy luncheon always brings out the philosopher in me.
The evening’s ambuscades were, of course, a complete washout as far as raper-catching was concerned.
I caught an excellent dinner and a splendid bottle of Chateau Léoville Poyferré ’61.
Sam caught a strayed Jersey cow in the udders with the unchoked barrel of his shotgun.
George caught a nasty cold from crouching under a hydrangea.
I hate to think what Jock caught but I’m sure it was worth it.
When I collected Johanna from the card-party at George’s house she wasn’t speaking to anyone, least of all to me. I told her about George’s ordeal under the dripping hydrangea and all she said was ‘lucky George’.
‘Good night,’ I said as we parted in the hall.
‘Good night, Clausewitz,’ she replied.
Jock was already abed, sure of a good night’s sleep, bless him, so I had to make my own sandwich.
As I stole upstairs with it I felt a sort of strange feeling about Johanna. Had I been twenty – or even fifteen – years younger I would probably have mistaken it for being in love. Perhaps it was a trace of regret for having, so long ago and so rightly, decided that emotion was not for me, that I was better without it. As I hesitated on the landing, the half-gnawed sandwich in my treacherous hand, I had an absurd compulsion to go into her room, to see her honey-coloured hair spread over the pillows and to say soppy, apologetic, affectionate things. Make her smile, perhaps. She might have been crying, you see; even women cry sometimes. But I have a fixed rule: whenever you feel like holding someone’s hand, have a drink instead – it’s better for all concerned in the long run.
I compromised by finishing the sandwich and shuffled off to my lonely bed in a miasma of spring-onions and self-pity: who could ask for more? Borges remarks that there is no more skilful consolation than that we have chosen our own misfortunes. ‘Thus,’ he explains, ‘every negligence is deliberate … every humiliation a penitence … every death a suicide.’
I brushed my teeth with especial care in case Johanna should take it into her head to come and say good night to me but she didn’t of course; they never do.
10
Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown gray from thy breath;
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.
Hymn to Proserpine
Kicking and screaming, then whining and sulking, I was wrenched out of bed and sent off to meet the Weymouth packet-boat and Father Tichborne, the practitioner recommended by John Dryden. I call him Father Tichborne, unfrocked though he had been, on the same reasoning that my grandmama would have called a ‘￡50 cook’, however virginal, ‘Mrs’ out of courtesy. (Mind you, that was ￡50 a year and all found, which meant four or five gross meals a day washed down with ale and stout; bones-and-dripping money, backhanders from all the tradesmen, the privilege of offering hot mutton sandwiches to Police Constables; the right to persecute everyone below the rank of butler or governess: licence to get hopelessly pissed every six weeks (except in Methodist households of course); at least one kitchen-maid to do all the real work (￡50 cooks never peeled potatoes) and often as much as seven days holiday a year if you could prove that at least one of your parents was dying. Today, no doubt, they would expect the use of a wireless set, too. You know, those people were happier before we started spoiling them.)
Yes, well, there I was on Albert Quay, awaiting the M. V. Falaise and Father Tichborne. (Albert Quay, imagine! Did you know that both Edward VII and George VI were really called Albert but the Family wouldn’t let them use it on the throne out of reverence for Queen Victoria’s Consort and the Privy Council wouldn’t, either, because it sounded so common. ‘Albert’ I mean, not the Privy Council. Both right, of course.) (‘This is the last and greatest treason: To do the wrong thing for the right reason’ sings Alfred Prufrock, if that’s the right way round. And if it matters.)