The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(16)

I applauded loudly and, since he was particularly indispensable at that juncture, begged humbly for another. He gave me ‘There is a Fountain Filled with Blood,’ which never fails to please. I tottered downstairs and into the street, my bowels heavy with strong tea and foreboding.

The Bethnal Green Road at half past six on a Saturday night is not a locus classicus for taxis. In the end I took a bus; the conductor wore a turban and hated me on sight. I could see him memorizing me so that he could go on hating me after I’d got off.

Much depressed, I entered the flat and stood limply while Jock took my hat and coat away from me. He steered me to my favourite chair and brought me a glass of whisky calculated to stun a Clydesdale stallion. I revived enough to play a record of Amelita Galli-Curci singing ‘Un Di Felice’ with Tito Schipa; that reassured me in the bel canto department and the rest of the album dissipated most of the foreboding. Bathed and dinner-jacketed, I was in the mood for Wilton’s lovely art-nouveau décor and even more in the mood for their Oysters Mornay. I also had a baked custard, a thing I wouldn’t dream of eating anywhere else.

Home again, I was in time for a rattling John Wayne Western on the television, which I let Jock watch with me. We drank a great deal of whisky, for this was Saturday night.

I suppose I went to bed at some stage.





5





For he ’gins to guess the purpose of the garden,

With the sly mute thing beside, there, for a warden.



What’s the leopard-dog-thing, constant at his side,

A leer and lie in every eye of its obsequious hide?





You must have noticed from time to time, self-indulgent reader, that brandy, unless you positively stupefy yourself with it, tends to drive sleep away, rather than induce it. I am told, by those who have drunk it, that with cheap brandy the effect is even more marked. It is otherwise with Scotch whisky; a benign fluid. All credit, I say, to the man who first invented it, be his skin of whatever hue. Indeed, my only quarrel with him is that sixteen fluid ozs of his brainchild, taken orally per diem for ten years or so, lessens one’s zest for the primal act. I used to think that my flagging powers were the result of advancing age combining with the ennui natural to an experienced coureur, but Jock disabused me. He calls it ‘brewer’s droop’.

Be that as it may, I find that drinking a sound twelve-year-old Scotch in good quantity gives me six hours of flawless slumber, followed by a compulsion to get up in the morning and bustle about. Accordingly, I got up, without the sweet coercion of Bohea, and stamped downstairs, intending to roust Jock out and point out to him the benefits of early rising. To my mild chagrin he was already up and out of the flat, so I made my own breakfast: a bottle of Bass. I can heartily recommend it. I shall not pretend that I would not have liked a cup of tea, but the truth is that I am a little afraid of these new electric kettles: in my experience they eject their plugs savagely at you while you stand beside them waiting for them to boil.

There is only one thing to do early on a Sunday morning in London and that is to visit Club Row. I tiptoed downstairs so as not to disturb my Madame Defarge and made my way to the mews. All three cars were there but Jock’s huge motorbike, which generates enough power to light a small town, was absent. I gave a whimsical Gallic wink and shrug to a passing cat: Jock was probably in love again, I thought. When chaps like him are in rut they’ll travel miles, you know, escaping from prison first if needs be.

Club Row used to be just a row of shifty chaps selling stolen dogs: nowadays it is an enormous open-air mart. I roved about for an hour but the old magic didn’t work. I bought a disgusting plastic object to tease Jock with – it was called ‘Drat That Dog’ – and drove home, too distraught even to lose my way. I thought of dropping in at Farm Street to catch one of those rattling Jesuit sermons but felt that might be too dangerous in my present mood. The sweet logic and lucidity of high-powered Jesuits works on me like a siren-song and I have a dread that one day I shall be Saved – like a menopausal woman – how Mrs Spon would laugh! Do they really wash you in the blood of the lamb or is that only the Salvation Army?

Jock was at home, elaborately unsurprised at my early rising. We did not question each other. While he cooked my breakfast I slipped the ‘Drat That Dog’ into the canary’s cage.

Then I had a little zizz until Martland telephoned.

‘Look, Charlie,’ he quacked, ‘it just isn’t on. I can’t organize all that Diplomatic bit, the Foreign Office told me to go and piss up my kilt.’

I was in no mood to be trifled with by the Martlands of this world.

‘Very well,’ I rapped out crisply, ‘let us forget the whole thing.’ And I hung up. Then I changed my clothes and laid a course for the Café Royal and luncheon.

‘Jock,’ I said as I left, ‘Mr Martland will be telephoning again shortly to say that everything is all right after all. Tell him “all right,” would you. All right?’

‘All right, Mr Charlie.’

The Café Royal was full of people pretending they went there often. I liked my lunch but I forget what it was.

When I got back to the flat Jock told me that Martland had called in person, all the way from what he calls Canonbury, to wrangle with me, but that Jock had turned him away.

‘He bloody near spit on the mat’ was how Jock summed up his parting mood.