The Mortdecai Trilogy (Charlie Mortdecai #1-3)(160)

‘You can say that again, sister,’ I growled, falling into her vernacular. She looked at me strangely, perhaps admiring my gift of tongues.

‘You mean the “Wow”,’ she asked, ‘or the other bit?’

‘Never mind.’

‘But this lovely needlework must have cost a fortune, Father Tichborne,’ she resumed, ‘wherever did you get it made?’

‘As a matter of fact I did it myself,’ he said, crimson with shame and vanity. ‘It took ages, I don’t mind telling you.’

‘Working from life, evidently?’ I put in.

‘Well, no, more from memory, really.’

It seemed a good point at which to end that conversation. As we rolled the corporal up George arrived to inspect Fr Tichborne. Introduced, he made the civilizedest noises he could muster, giving the impression that, in his view, the only good Papist was an unfrocked Papist.

Tichborne gained a little ground by asking him about his regiment but lost it all again by saying that he himself had been a chaplain with the Free French.

‘I’ll just bet you were,’ said Johanna brightly.

George’s face turned a sort of pale shade of black; he took it rather hard.

‘The French were on our side, George,’ I reminded him. ‘This last time, I mean.’

‘You will stay to lunch, won’t you, George?’ said Johanna.

He couldn’t, he had another appointment, he’d already had luncheon, he never ate luncheon, Sonia was expecting him for luncheon, he had a train to catch. There are no trains on Jersey, of course: I think he just wanted to go and kick something. It’s all to do with a place called Dakar, for some reason.

Luncheon was rather awful at first: it was the cook’s day off and therefore Jock had the duty and you could see that he didn’t much relish waiting on Fr Tichborne. He served soup to Johanna, then, despite my coughs and glares, to me. I gave Tichborne an apologetic grimace. His plate of soup arrived quite three minutes later.

‘Dash it, Jock,’ I snapped, ‘your thumb is in Fr Tichborne’s soup!’

‘ ’S all right, Mr Charlie, it ain’t hot.’ Tichborne frowned at me and shook his head, so I let it pass.

The next thing was kidneys wrapped in bacon and stuffed into baked potatoes. Quite delicious, except for Tichborne’s, which was small, late and badly burned.

Really angry now, I opened my mouth to admonish Jock severely, but Tichborne raised his hand.

‘Jock,’ he said in a quiet, gentle voice, ‘once is happen-stance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. By that I mean that if you once more disgrace Mrs Mortdecai in this shabby way I shall take you out into the garden and punch your nose quite flat.’

An awful silence fell. Johanna’s eyes were wide open, as was my mouth. Jock started to swell like a bull-frog. Fr Tichborne poured himself a glass of water.

‘Gaw blimey!’ said Jock at last.

‘Guard your tongue!’ commanded the little priest in a voice of thunder. ‘The words you have just uttered mean “God blind me” – you have already lost the sight of one eye: be very careful Whom you invoke to pluck out its fellow.’

I glanced up: no plaster was falling from the ceiling.

The awful silence went on.

Finally Jock nodded and vanished into the kitchen. He emerged and laid a large and beautiful kidney in front of Fr Tichborne.

‘You better have mine,’ he said. ‘Sir.’

When the green baize door had closed behind him, Johanna said, ‘Golly.’

Fr Tichborne said, ‘I believe I’ve made a friend.’

I said, ‘You must come and stay often.’

Later, as we mumbled a little cheese – Brie, I think it was – mounted (the cheese, not us, of course – I must learn to be lucid) – the cheese, I say, mounted on Mr Carr’s incomparable Table Water Biscuits – goodness, what a muddle this sentence is in, as dear Judge Jeffreys said at the Bloody Assize; let me start again. During the cheese-eating period I apologized to Fr Tichborne that I had not been able to offer him any turnips with his luncheon but that I was having the market scoured and hoped to be able to make those sapid roots manifest at dinner.

‘Turnips?’ he said, faintly. ‘Turnips? This is uncommonly thoughtful of you but, to be frank, it would be disingenuous of me to pretend that I was a leading turnip-eater.’

‘Not?’ I said puzzledly. ‘But Dr Dryden assured me, albeit cryptically, that turnips were of the very essence.’

He cogitated puzzledly awhile.

‘Hah!’ he cried at last. ‘Hah! Of course!’

‘Yes, yes,’ we agreed, ‘of course …?’

‘No no,’ he went on, ‘I see, I see; he knew I would need a slice or two of turnip for our ritual. You see, at the, ah, equivalent of the Elevation of the Host one must either use a consecrated Wafer which has been desecrated – and I’ve told you how I hate to be rude to the Other Side – or one must bake a travesty of it oneself naughty old Sir Francis Dashwood and his Hell-fire Club chums used to call it a “Holy Ghost Pye”) or, best of all, one uses what one might call a caricature of the Host: in fact, one makes it out of a slice of turnip. Stained black, you know, and cut into, well, a sort of curious shape, if you follow me.’ He looked at us worriedly. ‘It gives less offence, you see,’ he went on, ‘and it seems to work quite as well. Quite as well. Really.’